The peace agreement that ended the First War prevented the center from unilaterally closing passages serving settlements. Registered settlements took part in passage operations, and after the Declaration on the Right to Connection, they could no longer be excluded from the galactic network simply because their populations were small. The right was guaranteed, but no method had been established for paying its costs. The central polity government argued that places using passages more heavily should pay a larger share of the maintenance costs. The star-system alliances countered that the very reason they needed passages was their distance and low production, and that charging according to usage would make the right to connection meaningless. The dispute began when stabilization costs were raised for entrances leading to the periphery. The center did not close the entrances. It raised usage fees and pushed maintenance work further back in the schedule. The settlements could not prove a violation of the right to connection because the passages remained open. The star-system alliances stopped making their joint payments. The center lowered the priority of supplies bound for star systems that had not paid. Neither side admitted that it intended to endanger the lives of the other. One side was trying to maintain the galactic network; the other was trying not to be excluded from it. Both were right.
The war began when the star-system alliances took control of passage-management facilities. Fighting took place mainly around entrances and power facilities. Before the armies of the star systems themselves became targets, the transport schedules for food and medicine became targets of attack. As the scale of the damage grew, the two alliances came to the negotiating table. They concluded a peace agreement establishing the principle of shared responsibility between passage ownership and the right to connection. Costs were not charged solely according to usage; all star systems shared the basic maintenance expenses. The transport of emergency supplies was guaranteed regardless of whether payments had been made. Isolation in the periphery declined. The center no longer had to bear the cost of individual passages alone. The agreement temporarily settled the issues of passage ownership and cost sharing. The shared contributions were not used only for maintaining passages. An institution was also needed to decide which transports counted as emergencies and which settlements should receive priority in reducing risk. Its decisions applied to every star system that paid into the system. Even after the war ended, the dispute over the allocation of resources remained unresolved.