by Aer-ki Jyr
They needed to replicate it because the Clans’ standing rules of operation were still in effect in this star system. They could not trade with anyone other than the Clans, including the much larger Star Force colonies on the planet that Hightower was growing rapidly. There were four other Clans on planet, but none of them were in a much more stable position than the Sabers, with all of them working towards achieving self-sufficiency before pulling in mass colonists that they may or may not be able to support through supply shipments from the Solar System.
As it was, those occasional shipments were what was sustaining the Sabers through this startup phase, bringing in the machinery to build their own factories and mining sites…of which two were located within the colony building and burrowing their way down into the bedrock, while another three auxiliary mining sites were located within a 500 mile radius, reachable only by Mantis or dropship…which were supplying more and more raw materials to expand their colony.
Specialty components still had to be shipped in, but as each year passed the Sabers’ onsite production list was increased in length, moving them in a predictable manner towards the minimum requirements needed for self-sufficiency, which had been well established during the foundation of other Star Force colonies over the past century.
Harrison took a long moment at the ridgeline outpost, not out of fatigue, but because he liked the view looking down on the colony and the surrounding forest both in front of him and behind him in the adjacent ravine. He walked over to the door to the outpost and went inside, grabbing a drink of water from the fountain and checking his run statistics on the nearby display screen, noting how long it’d taken him to ascend this side and judging his pace as ‘adequate’ considering he hadn’t been in a hurry.
He went back outside and stretched a bit on the concrete platform, sitting down and twisting up in a variety of positions, feeling the warm, dull ache in his muscles that was one of the rewards of a good, long run. As he was doing so the view of the moon overhead came into his eye line. It was partially obscured by haze, but large enough that it was hard to miss. Nearly 3/4 the size of Corneria, the moon was almost categorized as a double planet. It too was habitable and covered in forests, but there the similarities ended.
Dxun was aptly labeled after its Star Wars namesake. The moon had 62% gravity, a hot, humid, and oppressive climate generated from a globe-spanning ocean that had numerous, scar-like fingers crisscrossing the surface…and some of the fiercest wildlife Star Force had come across to date. They weren’t V’kit’no’sat, but they were large, savage, and mostly reptilian. Hightower had wisely decided that they leave the colonization of Dxun to the distant future, given that they had 3x the land area of Earth to work with on Corneria before they even had to think of putting down roots up there.
That said, Harrison and Paul had had a long discussion about the planetoid before he’d been sent out here and he knew their Clan leader wanted them to claim the wild moon at some point, knowing that doing so would be a challenge. There were far too few habitable planetoids in the galaxy to pass up, especially this close to Sol, and with Hightower not wanting to go anywhere near the moon it seemed fitting that its colonization should fall to the Clans.
That was all in the future though, Harrison knew, because they had to get their foothold established on Corneria first, then build up a significant industrial and economic base before they could start spawning other colonies within the system. That was going to take decades, but Harrison looked forward to the challenge. Corneria was a gem of a world, even more so than Earth, and both the Clans and Star Force planned to colonize every inch of Epsilon Eridani for what it was worth, given that it had 5 habitable planetoids.
On paper, Corneria alone had the potential to hold a greater population that the entire Solar System combined, then add in the other habitable planets and nonhabitable ones, orbital tracks for stations, and the potential for the star system made it very viable that, given enough time, Epsilon Eridani would usurp the Solar System as Star Force’s primary home…though that, indeed, was thinking well into the distant future, for now Corneria was still a virgin forest and had a population of less than 5 million…while the Solar System supported over 20 billion inhabitants.
Corneria was still frontier, and Harrison was enjoying the solitude. Archons had two modes…war and training. And given that Star Force hadn’t fought even a small war in decades, all he had known in recent years was the trials and his training.
As he stood up from his last stretch and prepared to run down the ravine back to the colony he took one last look out over the far ridgeline, which was a bit lower than the one he stood on, at the horizon and the forested tracks beyond as the sun overhead began to start creeping towards the surface. There was something raw and powerful about the wilderness that made training here seem all the more fitting. The higher gravity was part of that, he knew, but if he had to choose between an urban setting or this, he’d choose this any day.
Planning on spending a great many years of his life on the planet, Harrison tagged the timing pedestal and cautiously hit the descending trail in front of him, heading back down to one of the few bastions of civilization on Corneria, feeling like he had the best of both worlds and, perhaps, the best assignment of any Archon. As much as Earth was his homeworld, Corneria definitely felt like an upgrade, and at the moment Harrison was right where he wanted to be.
2
July 2, 2258
Solar System
Earth
Jules Portman ascended the circular staircase into Davis’s office only to find an empty desk. He frowned, wondering where the Director was. It wasn’t like him to be late for any meeting, let alone one he had arranged.
“Ah, there you are,” Davis’s voice said from behind him.
Jules turned around and looked at the desolate side of the office behind the staircase to find his colleague standing next to that portion of the panoramic window that ran the entire circumference of the office.
“Here I am,” Portman said, walking around the central staircase pit and over to his location.
“I have a proposition for you,” Davis said, turning his attention back to the window as Jules walked up and stood shoulder to shoulder next to him.
“I thought you might,” his friendly rival businessman said, glancing out over the cityscape. “Something wrong with your desk?”
Davis pointed out the window. “Over there…see that thin trail of smoke?”
Jules focused on his line of direction. “No.”
“It’s hard to see, in the nook of the taller tower where it connects to the adjacent building.”
“Barely,” he said, seeing a few whiffs rising up off the roof.
“A meteor hit there a few minutes ago, I think. Probably space junk. We’ve still got bits and pieces of trash floating around in orbit from years back.”
“Any damage?”
“I’ve got my people investigating. I doubt any critical systems were hit, but it’s possible someone was in that section when it fell.”
“I hope not,” Jules offered. “No armored rooftops? Bit uncharacteristic of Star Force.”
“Atlantis is old, built well before we established our standard construction protocols. That said, the construction is still rather sturdy. I’d estimate the object was at least a meter in diameter.”
“That large?”
“I’m being conservative. I saw it come down out of the corner of my eye and at first glance it appeared much larger than that, but there’s no way for me to be certain. And no, Atlantis isn’t capped with military grade armor.”
Jules nodded, realizing this wasn’t the normal space junk that typically burned up in the atmosphere upon descent. “You said something about a proposition?”
“Yes I did,” Davis said, turning to face him but remaining by the wall-like window that extended from floor to ceiling. “How would you like some contract work?”
“Depends what it is,” Jules said, already intereste
d.
“Vanguard for national colonization. I want a test facility built by non-Star Force personnel to liaise with Russia, Australia, and Brazil as they make plans to establish their own sites. I want to hire you to experiment and set some benchmarks for their use. I don’t want to have to hold their hands once they get there. They either can make a go of this or not, and those three are the only countries I think have a shot of pulling it off.”
“Where exactly are we talking about?”
“The test site I want you to colonize is a small island a few kilometers offshore in one of the lakes on Corneria.”
Jules eyes widened. “You want me to establish a colony for you?”
“If successful, the colony would remain in your possession. I want to see how someone else handles the challenges of limited resupply, and I want to take your example to instruct the others. The way Star Force colonizes isn’t applicable to anyone else, so I need a test balloon for the public sector.”
“Interesting,” Jules said, resisting the urge to agree without caveat. “Payment?”
“I’ll grant you 100 billion credits for the project. If you’re successful you can keep what you build. If my people have to bail you out, I salvage and recycle what’s left over.”
“Define successful.”
“You create and manage a viable colony. Other than the credits you get no help from Star Force, though our usual markets will be available to you as they would be to anyone else.”
“And you want me to coordinate with those three countries?”
“I want them to watch and learn. Any more than that is your call, but if you play your cards right you could end up with some lucrative contracts helping them establish their colonial footholds afterwards.”
“Why so generous?”
“Because it’s not as easy as it looks,” Davis admitted. “Jumpship traffic to and from the system is still light, and right now Star Force is the only one strong enough to build the ships, each of which costs us well more than 100 billion.”
“How much more?” Jules pressed out of curiosity.
“Enough that we won’t be selling jumpships anytime soon.”
“You’re sitting at what now, six?”
“We have a few more than that,” Davis admitted. “Some we keep out of the public eye, but as far as the normal supply circuit is concerned we have eight in operation.”
“And the circuit goes through where, exactly?”
“Sol to Proxima, Proxima to Alpha Centauri, Alpha Centauri to Epsilon Eridani and back to here for route 1. Route 2 goes from Sol to Morpheus, Prancer, Rudolph, then back to Sol. Route 3 has yet to be established, but we do have out and back runs going to Barnard and Sirius.”
Jules was forced to smile, not so much for the expansive nature of Star Force’s interstellar transportation network, but for the names of the star systems. “Tell me, where exactly did those names come from? They’re not official, are they?”
“They’re official as far as Star Force is concerned,” Davis said, no longer finding any humor in the names the Archons had chosen for some of the systems that only had catalog numbers. Over the years he’d just come to accept them for what they were, not their namesakes.
“I guess that’s your prerogative,” Jules relented, “seeing as how you’re the only ones that have been there. How many jumpships are dedicated to route 1?”
“Three.”
“Time for a complete cycle?”
“Including layovers…14 weeks, though they’re not evenly spaced. All three are sequenced in 2 week intervals, leaving a 10 week gap in the rotation. Interstellar communication is by courier only, so all orders are placed through the first and second jumpships so that the second and third will be able to pick them up on the next pass…otherwise you have to wait until the first one comes around the circuit again. We keep our local markets stocked well, but certain items will be hard to get out in a timely manner.”
“I’m beginning to see the difficulties you spoke of. Self-sufficiency is a bit more than a novelty then?”
“It’s a necessity. Right now we have limited resources within each system, and if you’re expecting to get help within a few days time it’ll have to be local, which is why I haven’t opened up interstellar colonization yet. If someone screws up we might not be able to help them in time.”
“Quite a load on my shoulders then.”
“It is.”
Jules smiled. “You know I can’t refuse this one. The money and my corporation aside, I can’t pass up an opportunity to get the jump on everyone else.”
“I didn’t think you would. How soon can you be ready?”
Jules blew out an unceremonious breath as he thought. “Depends how much we can purchase on site. I’d loosely say 6 months, but I’ll have to get back to you on that once we crunch the numbers.”
“You do realize you’ll need to go in person?”
“With the communications lag being what it is? Yeah, I already figured that out. I won’t get any flack from my board, not with the financial gains this endeavor has the potential to generate. In fact, they’ll probably insist that I go anyway to make sure everything comes off without a hitch.”
“Welcome aboard,” Davis said, extending his hand.
Jules took it. “You always did want me to work for you.”
“I have a nose for talent.”
“Thank you for the opportunity,” he said, releasing the man’s firm grip.
“I hope you’re up to it,” Davis cautioned. “You’re biting off more than you realize on this one.”
“Then you’d better get the info flowing my way so I can start to size it up.”
“Got a packet ready for you,” Davis said, pointing back towards his desk.
“Do you have time to thumb through it?”
“For a project this important, yes, I can spare a few hours.”
“Good,” Jules said as they walked back across the office. “Getting the master’s take is always helpful.”
8 months later…
“How we look?” Jules asked his Corvati Captain as he watched their dropship snug up against the docking port of the Tardis, the Star Force jumpship that would be carrying it and six others out to the Epsilon Eridani system along with a slew of cargo buried somewhere inside the mammoth hold of the carrier ship. Of the three assigned to route 1, the Tardis was the only jumpship designed as a carrier, meaning it was able to transport not only cargo and passengers, but other ships as well.
A huge section of the jumpship design had been cut out along the midsection behind the armored nosecone where a portion of the cargo bays were located on the other jumpships. Inside this dead zone were docking clamps and umbilical attachments tethering the smaller ships to the larger one, much as had been done with inter-planetary carriers, only the size involved in this ship design was multiplied tenfold.
Eight starships in total were berthed inside, none of which belonged to Corvati. Their dropships were wedged in between along with several other Star Force ones being shipped out simultaneously, gradually filling out their system fleets one shipment at a time while local shipyards helped where they could, but the amount of infrastructure in Sol vastly outnumbered that in other systems, meaning that most of the equipment, for the time being, was having to be shipped in rather than built on site.
Jules didn’t have any starships in this lot, nor was he going to. Other than his one designated colony site he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The dropships would allow him to connect to a Star Force starport in orbit around Corneria and give him access to the local market, but other than that his people were going to be holed up building infrastructure as fast as they could to the exclusion of all else.
In the jumpship’s cargo hold was a number of prefab shelters and a host of construction equipment that his dropships would ferry down to the surface, assisted by Star Force ships to get the unloading accomplished in the short time window the jumpship would be on station. That had cost him a
hefty sum, but there was no other way around the problem. Six dropships simply couldn’t handle the unloading on their own, so when they arrived a fleet of more than thirty others would rise up from the planet’s colonies to assist.
They’d dump everything in a clearing his first surface teams would be excavating, then he and the others would be left alone to do their thing more than a thousand miles away from the nearest colony. At that point his work would begin in earnest, but for right now getting everything buttoned up for transport was his primary concern.
“Right on the numbers,” the dropship Captain said, engaging the docking clamps that gripped the Herculium beams running around the airlock. With a loud groan the aerodynamically shaped dropship was snugged tight against the carrier’s frame and locked in place. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Good,” Jules said, clapping the man on the back while he smooshed his way back through the cramped dropship to the airlock. His people had crammed crates of supplies in every room and corridor to maximize their cargo space, given that they were having to pay a hefty sum for it. As per the contract, Star Force would deliver the dropships he’d purchased free of charge, but the cargo space taken up inside the jumpship was another matter, and anything they couldn’t cram inside the dropships was costing them extra to transport.
That said, Jules had bought the minimum of supplies necessary for the startup operation. The big pieces he had to have, but the smaller stuff he could buy from the local Star Force market and avoid the exuberant shipping costs of sending them via jumpship. To date he was the only one to have paid them, but as Davis explained he was the trailblazer for those that would follow, and if they had to pay shipping costs to get here, then so would he.