FICTION: "FYB" -- A Declaration of Independence

Historians differ on when the Commercial Space Age actually started: whether it was SpaceShipOne, or Dragon C2+, or DragonRider Alpha Flight, or Bigelow's Proteus Station. Opinions are much more united on when the State Space Age ended.
ESA Station ''Joseph-Louis LaGrange'' was originally intended to be Europe's first great manned expansion beyond LEO: a demonstrator for cis-lunar infrastructure: a couple of leftover ATV hulls rebuilt as a mini-station, and shifted to EML-1 with the help of Russian tugs in mid-2026. LaGrange would form a depot and staging post, the core of a steady, measured expansion in the ESA/Roskosmos unmanned (and ultimately manned) exploration of the Moon. After the Kharkhov Coup of 2027 distracted the Russians and slowed progress on the joint Lunar program, ESA was forced to look elsewhere to continue supporting their flagship station.
In an agreement with a commercial consortium including LunAlliance LLC, Planetary Resources Inc., Norsk Astro asa and Deep Space Engineering Ltd., ESA leased one of the two axial docking clusters on the LaGrange station for the attachment of a commercial habitat. In what turned out to be a significant oversight, the agreement did not stipulate any restrictions on commercial subleasing, or the attachment of additional ...