Drunk As Transport Services / DATS

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Two generations ago DATS founder struck a deal with the UEE to help reduce the overpopulated prisons by offering eligible convicts with lifetime sentences to work their way up to parole, eventually cleaning their records and regaining citizenship.

After some development, DATS came up with the Konstraint® System used as a method to control the convicts autonomously. Following teething issues, the UEE approved the scheme allowing DATS to place convicts into the workforce as long-haul transport pilots.

The UEE insisted that all convict pilots were marked as DRUNK; short for Degenerate Rouge Under Numerical Konstraint®, allowing them to be easily identified and avoided by the general public.
The Konstraint® System was a collar worn around the convict’s neck. The early models were considered a death sentence and nicknamed “the collar of death”. They were comprised of a shaped charge, and known to be a bit too sensitive, allowing convicts to deviate from the nominated flight path, even for good reasons like avoiding hostile attacks.

DATS quickly changed the design after it was deemed counterproductive and almost impossible to get the smell of chlorite out of the cockpit of the recovered cargo ships after detonation. The updated collars gave more of an allowance for deviation during combat maneuvers, simply by injecting the wearer with an encrypted virus that temporarily heightened the pilot’s skills to further protect DATS’s assets during combat, but would ultimately cause death if not treated by the delivery time.

After DATS’s great transport ship loss of 2845, the Konstraint® System features were further expanded with a proximity sensor; allowing fighter ships to escort the transporters and in doing so, increasing the safeguard of DATS’s assets. The shape charge was eventually replaced with an electric shock that would instantly kill the wearer if they stepped out of line, but would be much cheaper to clean up after such an event.

Twenty years ago an investigation by the UEE into DATS’s incredible profits revealed many of the employees were 2nd generation DRUNKs; it transpired that after regaining their rights as citizens, they had nowhere better to go other than to rise within the company ranks; still retaining their shady history and no doubt their connection to the underworld and black markets.

According to the press, the UEE ended the scheme because of several intercepted messages that surmised that DATS was using the scheme to simply break out high-ranking pirates.
No charges were ever laid against the company but most of the assets were dissolved, and apparently confiscated by one or two UEE officials; leaving only a couple of DATS employees avoiding jail time.
Even today, that rumor of an existing pirate connection has never been proven; however, it is a known fact that the company will hire almost anyone, as long as they can fly, and take on any job without question.
The stated aim is to bring DATS back to its former glory, that it once was.