by Aer-ki Jyr
Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series)
Aer-ki Jyr
1
May 19, 3101
Shangri-La
System (Cygnus Arm)
Inner Zone
Count Jeyron stood on the bridge of the Mammoth-class cargo ship that he’d spent
the last 2 years and four months on, for the most part, as this supply convoy
of 284 jumpships made its way up the tether from the ADZ. They’d stopped off at
a few ports along the way…Lothlorien, Mandalore, Dakara…but most of the
breadcrumbs of systems leading out from the ADZ and into the Perseus galactic
Arm they’d skipped over, either flying through them or bypassing those star
systems entirely.
They weren’t all arrayed on a straight line, meant
rather to be quiet outposts that most people wouldn’t notice. They weren’t a
secret to the locals, but there was no map in the ADZ that had them included,
save for the ones the Archons and the Monarchs had, and up until he’d been
assigned this mission by Davis he hadn’t even known about the Tether’s
existence. He’d been a Baron for some 83 years without hearing so much as a
whiff of a rumor, which he attributed to the Director’s ability to keep secrets…and
this one was a doozy.
Star Force had quietly stretched a string of oases
across the local Orion arm and into The Nexus’s domain, then hopscotched across
it with even greater distances between Tether outposts. They’d actually
established a link across the entire Nexus, through the Perseus Arm, and out
into the very big Cygnus Arm that made up the fat edge of the galaxy.
Cygnus was more than twice the width of the Orion Arm
and even bigger than Perseus. It stretched out through thick star clusters and
technically even contained the much thinner dispersion of stars that bled off
into the galactic void. There was no fixed edge to the galaxy, and those border
systems were technically still part of it, though their relative location to
each other would make travel impossible unless you had very strong and accurate
gravity drives.
Star Force hadn’t made it out there, not even close
yet, but the fact that they had not only left the Orion Arm but were all the
way out in Cygnus had astonished Jeyron when he’d been let in on the secret,
along with the destination system that they’d recently colonized that he was
going to be tasked with grooming and growing even further.
Then the bombshell of the V’kit’no’sat had been
dropped on him and suddenly Star Force’s history and actions up until this
point had crystalized into understanding and trepidation. If the dinosaurs ever
came back they’d wipe Star Force out, not quickly, but assuredly. Meaning that
unless they wanted to die when that happened they’d need someplace to retreat
to that was off the V’kit’no’sat maps.
The system that the Count was looking at now was one
of those systems. The primary, as it was now. It wasn’t part of the Tether so
much as it was the first of the new territory that Star Force had built the
Tether to connect the ADZ with. The goal had always been to reach Cygnus, and
now that they had they’d been doing more reconnaissance and scouting missions
than they’d done before establishing that line of breadcrumbs across the
galaxy. They’d essentially mapped a corridor out here, now they were doing a
much more thorough survey of this region.
Which was still a drop in the bucket compared to how
much raw territory there was. The Nexus had no public maps with information
this far out, and Star Force hadn’t made contact with any of the local races so
they were essentially flying blind as they sent out hundreds of scouting
missions to add to their map while looking for a place to put down their first
permanent colony.
Not that the breadcrumbs weren’t permanent, but they
were never intended to be built up as large or as fast as the primaries. If
Star Force lost its industrial muscle on Earth and the ADZ entirely, it was
going to need something to fall back on for ship production. And small yards
weren’t going to cut it.
Luckily Star Force had quickly stumbled onto a region
that was virtually uninhabited. For all they knew it bordered a major power
that they’d end up being enemies with, but right now it was essentially a dead
zone full of systems but no races that could leave their own worlds. Nearly all
of the systems were uninhabited and they were continuing their mapping missions
to expand the perimeter of that area…in which Shangri-La had been found.
That was the name given to it upon discovery, and even
while the mapping expeditions hadn’t progressed as far out as he and even the
Director would have liked yet, they knew they could not pass on this system.
They’d colonized it like the Tether systems immediately, then had been sending
additional support to further build it up to a manageable starting point. An
Archon had been in charge thus far, but now there were enough pieces in play to
warrant a Monarch be sent to put down the firm roots that the Director wanted,
and Jeyron had been his choice.
With the promotion to Count he’d been sent out here
along with another supply convoy, taking the long road that bypassed The
Nexus’s transport grid. They’d used traditional grav jumps between stars and a
handful of black holes, following the trail blazed by others until they’d
arrived at this destination point moments ago with the map being updated with
current sensor readings and transmissions from the limited infrastructure
already in place.
That gave them laggy connection to the battlemap, but
it instantly filled up with new facilities built in both orbit and on the
ground of the single planet that had been colonized…out of 306 total, not
counting moons. Of those 306 planets situated around a giant white star, 57 of
them were habitable and 16 marginal. The rest were airless but none the less
had good amounts of gravity, including a few that topped 2g. That meant there
was a wealth of raw materials buried in them, not to mention the fact that Star
Force didn’t need atmospheres to colonize planets.
This one system was the equivalent of dozens, if not
hundreds of others back in the ADZ, all confined into orbits around a single
star. This was where Star Force had to put down roots, and it wouldn’t need to
look beyond this location for some time, for there was plenty of worlds right
here to build up to a level that even Sol or Epsilon Eridani couldn’t begin to
reach.
But that was far down the road. This system had
potential…and that was about it right now. The colony had a population of
; 394,000 prior to this convoy arriving, which would add another 126,000. Not the
smallest starting point in Star Force history, but without even a million
people to work with this was considerably smaller than Jeyron’s last
assignment.
Though his mandate here was far bigger than anything
back in the ADZ and he had to make it work, for literally everyone’s lives
could be riding on it someday in the future. Shangri-La was to be the invisible
backup to the ADZ, and right now it could barely throw spitwads militarily. He
was going to have to change that, and do it almost entirely with local
resources. More convoys would be coming regularly, but with the massive
distance involved both he and Davis knew this had to be an independent
operation. The convoys were just a shot in the arm to get the process started.
After that Jeyron would be the lone Monarch out here, with orders to build an
empire within a single star system…the most important star system on the Star
Force maps.
He’d asked the Director why a Duke wasn’t assigned, and
he said that if Jeyron was able to pull this off he would have gained the
experience and skills necessary to warrant that title. So he had assigned a
Duke to this, in the sense that this is what it took to become one aside from
going through the Clans, but he also pointed out the fact that managing such a
small colony at this point would be a waste of a Duke’s skills. They were
needed on much larger fronts organizing existing infrastructure and
populations, not building new ones from scratch.
And right now, seeing the updates flowing in via the
battlemap transmissions, he heartily agreed. For there was nothing here worth
mentioning.
A single city had been established on planet A, which
hadn’t even been assigned a name yet. The city itself was more than just a
startup and had been here a while, so he was glad he didn’t have to start entirely from scratch, but there were
only a few auxiliaries on this planet and a few other locations around the
system. Mining sites and such, without even the smallest of shipyards having
been built yet.
That was like a gut punch to a Monarch, for without a
shipyard you might as well have been back in the Stone Age. He’d hoped the
Archon in charge would have built, or at least started to build one by the time
Jeyron got here, but no such site was being listed on the battlemap…though
there was a large new section of the city on planet A that hadn’t been there
before.
Jeyron used a console to zoom in on that area as the
ship continued to soak up more battlemap signals across the system-wide
lag…which would be even worse considering the size of that star’s gravity well.
Planets orbited at distances that would have put them outside other star
systems, giving this one a very large volume of space to move around within.
Fortunately the battlemap signals were constantly transmitting, though he
wouldn’t be able to retrieve specific information without querying for it and
that would require and out and back from the comms systems.
But right now he had position and status data on every
facility and ship, noting a decent grouping of military vessels in orbit of the
planet. 6 Warship-class jumpships
full of drones were already here, with another two having arrived in this
convoy. They would have absolutely nothing to do in this deserted region of the
Cygnus arm, if the scouting reports held true, but there was no way Davis was
going to let this system be established without immediate defenses.
The Archons he was bringing with him told him that it
wasn’t a big deal so long as they had a sanctum to train in. Boredom didn’t
exist for them, and a lack of missions and fighting just meant more time to
increase their skills. That was a very positive spin on it, and in their case
he actually believed them, based on his somewhat limited knowledge of Archon
customs and culture, but the fact was this was out in the middle of nowhere so
far away from home that they were essentially lost in space save for a few
convoys coming now and then.
But that’s why a Monarch had been assigned. Operating
independently was what they were good at. And if he really was going to someday
warrant the Duke’s title he was going to have to prove it here first…and by the
time he did this system would no longer be nowhere. It’d be somewhere, the somewhere in Cygnus, from which everything
else in this doomsday territorial expansion would flow.
The cargo ship he was riding on sat in stellar orbit
and waited for the rest of the convoy to arrive before they transitioned over
to planet A…which would be getting a new name as soon as Jeyron got around to
it. He wanted something special, so he was going to wait and give it some
thought. He should have been doing that on the trip out but he’d expected
someone to have assigned one by now and he hadn’t planned on undoing whatever
moniker it had already gotten.
But it seemed that this system was an entirely blank
slate for him to get around to naming. One of the few perks that was usually
reserved for mapping expeditions or Archons, and he had a whole list of planets
here that he got to label as he liked.
Putting that on his eventual to-do list, Jeyron stayed
on the bridge and got a better view of planet A when they microjumped into
orbit. He’d seen records of it previously, but watching it here in realtime was
an entirely different experience. This was live, not some data file, and if he
didn’t do his job everyone out here could be put into jeopardy. Not because he
was indispensable, obviously. This colony had gotten along fine without him to
this point, but taking it forward was his responsibility and there was no way
of knowing when someone out here might come sniffing around and find them.
And if they were a superpower like The Nexus, well,
Jeyron would have little to defend this system with…and the number of planets
alone would be reason enough for someone to take it from them if they found it.
Calling for help would be pointless, for they’d be
dead before a message could make its way back to the ADZ. No, the defense of
this system would lay, for the moment, in the Archons and warships sent here to
watch over it, but in the long run it would come down to what defenses and
ships that Jeyron could build from local resources. Archons would come from the
Earth and always would, but commandos, naval officers, pilots, techs, etc could
be ‘grown’ locally out of the population. Maturias would be established and
freedom of movement would be retained via the sporadic convoys, so no one would
be stuck here if they truly wanted to leave…but by the same note volunteers
would still be coming in to supplement this system’s population.
Fast forward centuries and you’d have a large enough
population that you’d see people staying here rather than leaving, meaning that
this little piece of the Star Force empire was going to be almost entirely self-contained,
&nbs
p; and it was up to Jeyron to design, build, and manage it. That was a monstrous
task and one that he was kind of glad was going to take a while, because he was
going to have to learn as he went, as all Monarchs did, though the Director had
given him some notes for him to make use of going forward. Notes from Davis
himself that he’d compiled over the years that Jeyron had virtually memorized
on the trip out here.
“Count, there’s an incoming message for you,” Captain
Jihadia said, startling Jeyron out of his daze.
“Go ahead and put it on the main display. It can’t be
my mistress all the way out here,” he said with a sarcastic wink.
Jihadia snorted a quick laugh, then the holographic
image of an Archon striker appeared out of armor, but with the telltale
identification stripe on his uniform that Jeyron could just barely make out.
“Welcome to Shangri-La, Count Jeyron,” the man said
with a polite bow.
“Klevin, I presume?”
“I am. I’ve gotten this system up and running, but it
needs a Monarch’s touch and I’m glad you’re finally here.”
“Situation report?”
“Still empty space around us. Scouting teams have
found a few more native civilizations, all pre-grav drive tech. If there are
any significant powers out here they’re not right on our doorstep.”
Jeyron visibly sighed. “That’s a relief.”
“Quite so.”
The Count winced, trying to find a non-accusing way of
asking this. “I didn’t notice any shipyard construction yet?”
“Priorities,” the Archon said apologetically. “Getting
the base industry established was more important, thus I had resources focused
on giving you as many building blocks as possible. We’ve got enough ships at
the moment, so a full shipyard was unnecessary.”
“Support craft?”
“Dropships are being built in a surface shop within
the city.”
“Ah,” Jeyron said with some pleasure. So they hadn’t
built a proper shipyard, but they did have a tiny one for the smaller craft up
and running. That was most welcome news. “I had hoped for as much. I trust I
can leave the security of the system in your hands while I get to work?”
“Always. We’ll watch your back while you build.”