If NovusCorp has a true enemy, then in part due to its connections to SolGov and in part for personal reasons, this would be the Iridium Syndicate, an organization of criminals, terrorists, and warlords who target SolGov ships for capture and NovusCorp research institutes for pillage of scientific knowledge. We don't like them, okay? And they really don't like us.

With this in mind, NovusCorp tends to follow the protocols set by SolGov when encountering the Syndicate or its agents: capture-on-sight for ships and personnel preferable, destruction or death if unavoidable. The Syndicate has of late been attempting to smuggle agents aboardship in order to inspire ever-growing acts of hostility and destruction against NovusCorp and SolGov, up to and including nuclear annihilation or utter destruction for ships and everything they contain.

The Iridium Syndicate is best known for their habit of seeding otherwise safe regions of space with their swarmers, artificially intelligent devices that gather materials from ships they strike within their vicinity, causing risk to life and limb as they go. Supposedly, swarmers use the resources gathered to build new Syndicate constructs, making them an everpresent threat in civilized space.

Not as focused on self-replication, shredders are built to hack apart living organisms into a pile of limbs and organs. They also travel in groups, usually in the wake of a cluster of swarmers, aiming to pick off survivors after their allies eat holes into a ship.

Successfully installed in place of a loyal NovusCorp cyborg, a Syndicate operative can inflict massive damage with the level of access provided to them. Syndiborgs cannot be disabled with standard NovusCorp equipment, and when playing the subtle game can severely compromise a ship's operations.

Sometimes Syndicate operatives manage to subvert bioroid programming narratives with their own hostile intentions. Although this is of no fault of the original unit, these subverted units are known as Traitors, and must be captured or expunged for the safety of the ship and its crew. Traitors often have goals that are dangerous to the rest of the ship if carried out, such as stealing the AI, destroying the pulse cannons, killing the Chief Medical Officer, or similar.

These small manned ships are meant to document regions of space for later subjugation by their Syndicate masters. As enemies of SolGov, NovusCorp is in their right to neutralize these ships, salvage them, and arrest survivors for debriefing.

Full-scale combat vessels, Syndicate warships should not be attacked lightly, but are enemies of SolGov and NovusCorp and as such are acceptable targets for battle-hardened captains. Just make sure that you have enough weapons to neutralize the target.