by Aer-ki Jyr
“Yeah…about that,” Greg said, sitting down opposite of Davis with a guilty look on his face. “We’ve been a bit more aggressive than you’re aware.”
Davis raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “How so?”
“We…beat you to the outer zone,” the Archon said bluntly.
Davis’s eyes narrowed, then a look of shock crossed his face as full realization of Greg’s statement hit him. “Colonies?”
“Yeah. Two of the planets you just announced Star Force is expanding to we’re already on. Gandalf and Bond.”
“Your naming, I presume?”
“Oh, sorry. You have them listed as Diva and Perrywinkle. We didn’t care for the lottery names.”
“Neither do I,” Davis admitted. “How much have you built up?”
“Actually, we have…23 worlds colonized, plus a moon we haven’t built on yet.”
“All of you together, or Clan by Clan?”
“We worked together, then began splitting up the holdings as they grew larger.”
“Population?”
“A little under three million combined.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
Greg cringed. “Over 30 years.”
Davis drummed the fingers of his right hand on his clear desktop. “I admit I’m a bit perturbed that you could have hid something like that from me for so long, but I also must say I’m thoroughly impressed and pleased, so you can banish the look of worry on your face.”
“You are?”
“Of course,” Davis said, standing and pointing out the window at Atlantis’s cityscape. “I’ve built all this up by myself. I assigned your Marquises as an experiment to see if anyone else could do the same. If you’ve managed to colonize 23 worlds behind my back, then the experiment has been more of a success than I anticipated. The further and further we spread out, the less operational oversight I’m going to have. I need people that I can trust to be able to handle the difficult tasks of building and growing colonies when I’m not able to look over their shoulders. The Clans were my first experiment to determine if this was possible or not. The apparent answer is yes…assuming your colonies aren’t withering?”
“No, no…they’re doing quite well,” Greg assured him.
“Now that the cat’s out of the bag, would you mind showing me some statistics?”
Greg smiled and dug a data chip out of his pocket and tossed it to the man. “Thought you might want a peek.”
Davis caught the chip and sat back down, plugging it into his terminal and bringing up a holographic map of the star system over his desk, noting the new additions on the periphery.
“I see you’ve targeted the closer ones.”
“Mordor is a bit out of our range right now.”
“True, but there are larger planets in between. What have you been using to get out there?”
“We built some new ships with greater range.”
“Paul’s handiwork, no doubt?”
“We all chipped in, but he and Jason were the ringleaders.”
“I hope he hasn’t been holding back on me,” Davis said, finding a subdirectory on the data chip that contained a ship list. The Bulma-class starship was the first of three new varieties that Davis noticed and he pulled up a schematic in holo.
“Hmmn…nothing too dramatic,” he said, seeing that the ship was somewhere between a medium and large inter-planetary starship in size, but with considerably more bulk wedged into the more compact design. In fact, he could see several design elements that Paul had helped his engineers incorporate into the new Asp-class transports. “But interesting none the less. You’ve built up quite a fleet for me not to have noticed.”
“A little sleight of hand with the transponder signals works wonders,” Greg admitted.
“So long as you’re the only ones that can accomplish it,” Davis warned, not wanting a weakness in Star Force for others to exploit.
“It was an inside job,” Greg assured him.
“And the reason for not letting me in on the secret?”
“We needed to get there first to plant the flag, else we would have had to wait for you to partition the planets up.”
“My, what greedy little Clans you are,” Davis teased. “And now, here I can’t split them up for national allotments.”
“You’ve allowed other nations to lay claim to territory they explored prior to Star Force’s arrival in the past, most notably the Corporate Alliance in the main asteroid belt.”
“Yes…which is why we’ve worked hard to stay ahead of them everywhere else.”
Greg offered a half smile. “And that’s why we couldn’t tell you.”
“I see. Outmaneuvered by my own Archons. What monsters I have created,” he said, beaming with pride. “Would you mind if I leapfrog off your existing supply lines to get to some of the more distant planets?”
Greg frowned. “Not at all, but there are dozens more on similar orbital tracks to what we’ve taken.”
“Stepping stones,” Davis explained. “My intent is to lay claim to all planets and asteroids within this system before moving onto the next. You’ve helped me more than you know, probably cutting a good 20 years off my estimates.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That said, we’d be working off a relay network rather than direct transit. I had expected to have a functioning gravity drive by the time we were ready to explore deeper, but I see no reason to wait if the Clans can provide the footholds…as well as the full blueprints for this Bulma-class cargo ship so I can put it into mass production. Tell me, I don’t see a carrier version. Do you have regional ships out there?”
“Each of what we’re calling clusters has at least a small shipyard to fill that capacity. The other ships on that list are what we’ve built on site for in-cluster use.”
“Five clusters then?”
“Yes, but each is bigger than the inner zone entirely, which is why a few new models needed to be designed.”
“So I see,” Davis said, zooming in on the map to the Goku cluster. “There are other planets within range that you could add, yes?”
“We’ve been cherrypicking what we wanted, but if we extend the range of the cluster networks, yeah, we could add more to them. Another option would be to create more clusters to fill in the gaps.”
“Which I intend to do,” Davis declared. “I like this cluster idea, even though in time the orbital drift will rip them apart. Do you mind?”
Greg saw him pointing at the map and nodded.
Davis used the keyboard to open up the editing function for the map and began tagging planets that had not yet been claimed. “New clusters…6,” he said, pinpointing one of the closest planets. “7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.”
From there he went out to the original 5 clusters and beyond their furthest edges and tagged more of the tiny planets, forming a string out to one of the big ones. He repeated the process six more times, the last of which led all the way out to Mordor.
“If I establish these conduits,” Davis asked, looking up at Greg, “can the Clans expand into the rest of the system?”
Greg frowned. “You want us to?”
“I want all those planets in our hands, I don’t care in what form.”
“We’re not sharing them with the nations?”
“They don’t really care, to be honest,” Davis said, pointing to Neptune’s prescribed orbit. “Beyond this line they have very little interest due to the shipping costs. It’s to their advantage to build more orbital habitats than to try and grab up distant cold rocks to build on. There are a few exceptions, but the masses aren’t interested in what’s out there…yet. That may change if they find new value in it, but as far as the territorial allotments are concerned I’m stopping at Pluto. I can negotiate in private with the others if they want to continue expanding into the high zone and beyond.”
“You’re giving us a mandate then?” Greg asked.
“If you’ll accept it,” Davis
said, standing again and crossing his arms over his chest. “I hereby appoint the Clans with the privilege and responsibility for laying claim to and colonizing all planets within the outer zone that I have not claimed here,” he said, pointing to the recently edited map. “You are to siphon off as much of Earth’s population as you wish via Project Exodus and take the lifeless wastes of the periphery and turn it into a bastion of civilization…before anyone else has the inclination to do likewise.”
Greg stood formally. “On behalf of the Clans, we accept this mandate. We also request additional supplies to assist with the establishment of transportation infrastructure.”
“Denied,” Davis said, smiling. “Get your own.”
Greg laughed. “That’s the way you want to play it then?”
“That’s the way I want to play it,” he confirmed. “It keeps with your standing rules of operation…and also consider it a form of payback for keeping me in the dark for so long.”
“Yeah, we had that one coming,” Greg admitted.
“Get to it then,” Davis said, sitting back down.
Greg smiled and turned to leave.
“Oh, one more thing,” Davis added. “The three Clans that impress me the most get first dibs at colonizing the next star system. I’ll send the particulars along later.”
“Biggest prize yet,” Greg noted. “That’ll keep us busy for a while.”
“I imagine it will,” Davis said, waving him off playfully. “Go. Claim us some more worlds.”
“Our pleasure, ilKhan,” Greg teased as he left, using the Battletech title of the ruler of all Clans.
As the Archon left Davis pulled up the data files that were attached to the holographic map and began studying in detail what his sneaky little supersoldiers and Marquises had managed to create on their own.
6
August 3, 2182
Taryn sat on the floor with her head between her feet, stretching out her limber body as she watched the sun rise from the observation dome at the peak of Clan Croft’s headquarters in Antarctica. She moved slowly from one pose to another in the pristine quiet, able to look at the slight blue light in the distance, then straight up through the clear dome at the stars overhead. Soon that blue light would morph into the orange of a rising sun, but for the moment the darkness still held sway.
As was her routine, Taryn went through her morning flexibility regimen before dawn, using the serene, spire-top platform as a personal retreat to clear her head, reflect, and plan for the future. She’d had the dome created for just this purpose years ago when the spire had originally been built and had insisted on an unobstructed view. The octagonal platform was the size of a basketball court and completely covered with a perfect half sphere of clear polymer several inches thick and hard as steel, which kept both the winds and the cold out, as well as protected against any low yield weaponsfire or debris.
The engineers had done good work, because on most days she couldn’t even see the material of the dome unless snow had stuck to the outside and today wasn’t one of those days. Comfortably warm, Taryn sat in various contorted poses feeling like she was outdoors…a mage atop a medieval castle practicing magic on a distant enemy.
With an unobstructed view of the horizon, the city beneath her was hidden by the platform that she sat in the approximate middle of. Clan Croft was one of the ‘homeworld’ Clans that had significantly built up their 250 sq mile plot in Antarctica and conducted business from that location rather than offworld like most of the others did. All Clans had established infrastructure in Antarctica, but most had simply used it as a springboard to other planets. Taryn’s Clan, along with a handful of others, had decided it would be a waste to squander their only territory on a habitable planet and had built up their infrastructure accordingly.
Croft Manor, as she’d aptly named her capitol city, was centered on the massive tower on top of which she now sat, and spread out around it in concentric circles with more and more rings of infrastructure added as the years passed. From high above the growing city looked like a target with an arrow hitting dead center, which the targeting specialist especially appreciated.
At present, Croft Manor was home to 11 million people, with another 253 million inhabiting the Clan’s holdings beyond the main asteroid belt, within which the Clans were forbidden to colonize save for their single plots in Antarctica. They weren’t the largest of the Clans, or the strongest, but they’d grown into a nation of their own with a solid tradition of marksmanship and overall quality of workmanship.
Croft Manor was the largest Clan city in Antarctica, which was a feather in their cap, but it was also the most densely constructed. Knowing that they had limited acreage to work with, Taryn had instructed her Marquis to plan ahead and make the most of what they had. As a result most buildings in the city were wide, high, and curved to match the concentric roads ringing the central tower that stood at least twice as high as the tallest buildings in the city.
Below ground they’d also expanded heavily, with a labyrinth of chambers going down several miles until the bedrock became unbearably hot, which denoted a bottom level to the ever expanding city. Both on the surface and below, Croft Manor’s footprint covered about a third of their assigned territory, which left them with considerable room to expand…but Taryn knew that eventually even that acreage would be ate up and they’d be forced to look elsewhere for growth.
Though Clan Croft was designated as a homeworld Clan, they hadn’t scrimped on their offworld infrastructure. Taryn had been careful to consolidate her holdings via selective trials and trade with the other Clans into six locations. Jupiter’s moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto had been divvied up through national territorial allotments, but Star Force had still retained more than 60% for itself, part of which had been made available to the Clans in piecemeal allotments over the years. Clan Croft had focused on the largest of the moons, Ganymede, and established a sizeable foothold there, though it was fragmented into 3 different locations on the planetoid, each of which had been built up into individual cities similar in scope to Croft Manor.
Taryn’s people had also established two footholds in Saturn’s orbit…one on the atmospherically thick moon of Titan and another on the smaller moon of Iapetus. On Titan Clan Croft held its largest population spread across 12 distinct cities, having traded off a great deal of its other holdings for a piece of the higher gravity world that most of the other Clans eschewed because of the thicker-than-Earth atmosphere that required them to use specialized dropships to access the surface.
This also meant that Taryn could establish and field an actual aerial division for her Clan, whereas all trials in that discipline were simulations. Other than Earth, there was little use for that skill set save for Venus, which the Clans were forbidden from expanding upon. Given this fact, Clan Croft had developed some of the best aerial pilots within Star Force and used those skills to grab up some key trial wins, which they then traded off for the prizes they truly wanted.
Taryn had wanted to establish a foothold on Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, but had been unsuccessful in winning or trading for territory there. Instead they’d settled on Titania, the co-largest of Uranus’s moons but significantly smaller than either Ganymede or Titan. It had a diameter of 1,500 km, almost identical to Iapetus which rounded out to the same, though Titania was more dense, having a gravity of 3.8% while Iapetus only stood at 2.2%.
Both were too low for unassisted colonization…meaning gravity discs or cylinders had to be constructed on the surface. Ganymede and Titan each had gravities of 14% and sizes slightly larger than Luna, making them applicable for large scale colonization. These two moons held the bulk of Clan Croft’s population, while Iapetus and Titania were tagged as heavy mining sites, around which orbited the bulk of her Clan’s heavy industry.
The other two Clan Croft holdings were in the newly accessed outer zone. One foothold was on Thor, a mining heavy world with gravity at 5.4%, too small for colonization but Taryn had
ordered orbital habitats built up around the planet to give the Clan a piece of the new pie being divvied up out there.
The 6th foothold Clan Croft possessed was the newest one. Through some careful negotiation and trade they’d acquired full rights to the tiny planet of Cam, also in the O’Neill cluster along with Thor. The planet only had a diameter of 1,100 km, but oddly enough it sported an atmosphere of Neon thicker than that of Mars and capable of reliable aerial flight, given the low gravity that was remarkably high at 6.2%...meaning that the planet had a significantly higher density than the others, making it a good proposition for a mining base.
Clan Croft had been set up on the odd little planet for the past 4 years, beginning to dig down and harvest its unusual collection of metals and ores. While the other Clans pressed on to more and more planets being opened up to their annexation, Taryn focused her Clan’s efforts on expanding their current holdings with additional infrastructure and population, especially on Cam. She liked that her Clan now had a world all to itself and had recently acquired the plans to a medium-sized Canderian station which she intended to replicate in orbit, which would allow her to establish a large civilian population despite the surface gravity being untenable for normal colonization.
She’d resisted the urge to press on and grab up whatever new territories they could, knowing that her Clan could trade for some of them in the future if need be, but the real reason was staring her in the face each and every day.
Taryn lifted herself up into a handstand and held the pose for several minutes before flipping over onto her feet and stretching out her arms one last time before walking over to the edge of the spire-top platform. The sky to her left was now bright orange and the stars above her had vanished as the snowy landscape of the southern continent began to reveal itself in the distance, but everything beneath her as she looked down over the edge was cityscape stretching off several miles from her high point of view.
Impressive as that sight was, it wasn’t the impetus for her Clan’s self-appointed purpose. Further off on the horizon…beyond the land that belonged to Clan Croft…there were block-like buildings of ridiculous size sprouting up like huge ice cubes on Antarctica’s surface. Hundreds of miles away and still visible to the naked eye, the Star Force Project Exodus habitats served as monoliths marking the passage of Humanity offworld.