New Canaan: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic: Aeon 14 (The Orion War Book 2)
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“I guess they do have some decent stealth tech,” Tanis said. “I wonder if there were some of these at Ascella.”
Sanderson nodded. “If they have them, you can bet they were out there.”
“Why show the capability now?” Captain Andrews asked. “Is this the stick to go along with the carrot?”
“It’s one hell of a stick,” Tanis replied. “They could have a thousand of these ships out there.”
Tanis hoped so. She was used to having the upper hand when it came to stealth technology. Losing that edge would create new concerns.
“Transmission,” comm announced.
“Put it on the tank,” Tanis replied.
A man and a woman appeared before them. The woman wore the same Transcend Space Force uniform as General Tsaroff and Greer had back in Ascella. Two stars adorned her lapels and she stood arms akimbo with a neutral expression as she surveyed the Intrepid’s bridge.
The man also wore a uniform, one that Tanis had seen in videos and images long ago. It was the millennia-old white and blue of the Future Generation Terraformers, the altruistic organization who journeyed across the stars with the goal of creating new homes for humanity.
“Intrepid colony mission, welcome to New Canaan,” the man said with a genuine smile and widespread arms. “The FGT has been waiting to greet you at the end of your journey for some time.”
A tear almost came to Tanis’s eyes. The FGT was still alive within the Transcend. Sera had told her that the core of the ancient service was still present, still dedicated to their work, but after her initial encounters with the Transcend government and its envoys, she had begun to doubt it.
Now, seeing this man, with his genuine smile and welcoming expression, she believed again.
“Thank you,” Tanis replied after a brief pause to compose herself. “I am Governor Tanis Richards. We’re glad to finally be here. Although, we were wondering if something had changed, given the beacon’s transmission.”
The man nodded and glanced at the woman. “Yes, I’m told it’s a required precaution—not at all a part of our normal procedure.”
“Admiral Isyra of the Transcend Space Force,” the woman said. “My associate here is Director Huron of the FGT. The beacon is to ensure that other ships do not venture into the New Canaan system. We are here to take possession of the technology you are to provide in exchange for the colony system.”
Tanis noticed a brief expression of distaste cross Director Huron’s face and she wondered if he disapproved of trading technology for colonies. It wasn’t in the FGT’s initial charter to do so, but given their current options, it was more than acceptable to Tanis.
“How would you like it?” she asked. “We have the data crystal which we were originally going to provide to your envoys, or we can transmit it to you.”
“You may transmit it for now.” Colonel Isyra replied. “Director Huron would like to bring a team to your ship. It’s the FGT’s standard procedure to review the system with you. I will accompany him, and you may deliver the data crystal to me at that time.”
Tanis nodded. “Very well. When can we expect you?”
“Within the hour.”
* * * * *
The greetings were perfunctory, and before long, Admiral Isyra and her passel of FGT terraformers assembled with Tanis and the colony leaders in an auditorium typically used for plays and performances.
Tanis saw Simon, the head of Bioscience, enter with Ouri at his side and she realized that she would have to release Ouri from her duties as a colonel in the Intrepid Space Force. It was finally time for her good friend to return to her original calling.
She already had Ouri’s replacement lined up, but she knew this change would give them much less time together. It would be a time of upheaval across the ship. During the near-century at Kapteyn’s Star, many in the crew had taken on new roles and responsibilities. Some were happy in their new positions, while many others were eager to return to their originally planned duties.
There were also over a hundred thousand Victorians now on the colony roster, descendants of the Hyperion’s crew, which Tanis had saved from the Sirians during the first battle over Victoria. That number was offset by a similar number of colonists who stayed behind at Victoria, choosing to remain with friends and families they had formed at that time.
And then, of course, there were the children.
One of the key prerequisites for colony acceptance had been a candidate’s desire to have children and raise them in a small family unit. For many colonists, waiting centuries to manifest that desire was not an option, and over the years, a quarter-million new colonists had been born.
The ship had enough stasis pods to handle that expansion, but Abby, the ship’s Chief Engineer, had insisted that they needed three hundred thousand spare pods in case of any failures. The result was a ship that had stasis chambers crammed into every nook and cranny.
Tanis had faced off against Abby dozens of times over the years, but she agreed wholeheartedly on this issue.
Speak of the devil, she thought as Abby entered the auditorium. At her side was her husband Earnest, the technical visionary behind both the Intrepid and its AI, Bob. Abby wore her typical scowl, as though this presentation was taking her away from incredibly important work. Earnest, however, had an expression of rapture on his face.
Theirs was a strange relationship. For as much as Tanis and Abby fought, she was fast friends with Earnest. He was also one of only a handful of people who knew that Tanis’s mind was slowly merging with Angela’s.
Tanis knew that Earnest had dreamed of being on a colony mission since he was a young boy. The desire to step foot on a virgin world and build a new civilization was the driving force behind much of his life’s work. His marriage to Abby, a woman capable of building his incredible ideas, made them a dream team for a colony mission.
Tanis wished that Joe were present, but he had Fleet Con on the Intrepid’s bridge. They didn’t expect any trouble while the FGT delegation and Isyra’s small Transcend Space Force contingent were on the ship, but she wasn’t about to let her guard down.
It struck her how incongruous it was that after spending fifty years in the Terran Space Force, the Transcend Space Force was the new TSF in her life. She didn’t leave Sol on the best of terms with the Terran military, and she wasn’t starting off on the best footing with the Transcend one, either.
Tanis glanced at Admiral Isyra, who sat next to her chatting with Commandant Brandt.
Up on the stage, Director Huron signaled for everyone’s attention. The room quieted in moments, and he looked across the crowd, beaming with delight.
“This is a momentous occasion,” his voice boomed through the room, picked up and amplified by the auditorium’s systems.
“You may not know this, but I was stationed on the Destiny Ascendant while it was building the New Eden system. I wasn’t a Worldship Director then, but I spent a lot of time working on the first of the two terraformed worlds—mostly on the oceans. I’m sure you all know from your time at Kapteyn’s Star how important it is to get those just right. That was excellent work you did there, by the way. Your terraforming of Victoria has gone down as the textbook methodology for a tidally locked super-earth. We don’t do many of those, but there are more than a few in the Inner Stars now.”
Director Huron chuckled. “I digress, I’m passionate about our work and get caught up in it a lot. Anyway, we waited at New Eden a long time for you, but by the time the current inhabitant’s ancestors arrived, I wa
s long gone and I missed out on their landfall.”
The FGT director paused, his gaze sweeping across the assemblage. “You have no idea how excited I was to learn that you, that this ship, the Intrepid, would take possession of this system, which you’ve named New Canaan. By the way, I appreciate the historical reference, losing Eden and ending up in Canaan. But believe me, New Eden has nothing on this system.”
With that, Director Huron flung his arms into the air and a projection of the system appeared in the air above the stage.
Angela commented.
Tanis replied.
“I’m sure you’ve all studied the data our envoys provided, but let me give you the real story behind this gem of a heliosphere,” Huron continued.
“When our early prep team arrived just under a thousand years ago, this system was a mess. The star hadn’t really settled down yet, and the innermost Jovian planet was still jostling for position with the outer worlds. There was a real risk that it would move in toward the star and eat one of the three terrestrial worlds there.”
The holo projection above Huron updated, showing a much more chaotic and more crowded system.
“We weren’t about to allow that to happen and spent considerable effort shifting the outer planets into more stable orbits to leave enough room in the gravitational dance for the terrestrial worlds. We did too good a job, because when it was all said and done, there was room for a fourth.”
The holo shifted, showing a system with the three terrestrial worlds moving around the star and the outer worlds shifted further away, their orbital periods slowed. In many respects, the system was messier than before the FGT begin their work. Dust, gas, and perturbed asteroids were strewn across the heliosphere.
“You’ll see that out beyond the Kuiper belt, there were these three rocky worlds.” Huron gestured at the holo and three of the many scattered disk dwarf planets lit up. “We carefully nudged them in toward the inner system and mashed them into one world. We situated a Planetary Energy Transfer Ring around it and drew away the excess heat.”
Tanis had to admit some excitement. She had read about the FGT’s use of their massive energy transfer rings—constructs they created as needed and often discarded when their work was done—making for the foundation of planetary habitation rings.
“The ring, we like to call them Peters, is still there; it has another thousand years of work to do. While we can draw the majority of the excess heat from the planet in a few hundred years, the final stages need more finesse. The crust needs to settle and orderly magma flows must be established beneath the surface. Major tectonic disruptions are past, but the only temperate regions are above the sixtieth parallel, so it’s a bit of a hot place right now. You can choose the names, of course, but we call this world Gemma. It’s a bit of a joke and a long story that I’ll share sometime.”
Huron surveyed the crowd. “However, if you keep an eye on the scheduled tsunamis, you can enjoy some pretty amazing surfing conditions.”
There were a few chuckles from the audience, and Tanis recalled enjoying her few trips to Victoria’s sunward ocean and the insane water-sports in which people engaged on its tumultuous shores.
It was impressive to think that less than a thousand years ago, the planet hadn’t existed at all, and now there was a world with an oxygenated atmosphere and the beginnings of life at its poles. In just two-hundred years, it would be cool enough that its poles would ice over and its temperate bands would widen.
“This one is a favorite of mine,” Huron explained as the holodisplay shifted to the next world, third from Canaan Prime. The planet filled the space above Huron and the first few rows of the auditorium, giving a clear view of its five major landmasses, all positioned above and below the fifteenth parallel. Several major islands lay in the tropics on one side of the globe, and a massive archipelago stretched across the equator on the other side, joining two of the continents with a loose chain of islands.
“Often, when we do a full greenie, we have to situate a ring around the world to manage the climate, but this one does it all on its own. You’ll note that there are no major land masses on the equator, and the ocean currents work in such a fashion that few doldrums exist. This keeps warm air and water circulating the globe, and the deep channels we worked into the north and south polar regions keep them warm year-round.
“We dubbed this one Carthage, after the ancient sea-faring civilization on Earth.”
Tanis had to stifle a laugh. The naming was indeed ironic, given that her name was a variation of Tanit, the ancient Phoenician goddess of the stars, sun, and the moon.
Angela said with an insidious chuckle.
Tanis groaned in her mind.
“Next up we have the world of Justice. We named it that because no matter what we did, the world made its own calls, and was always right,” Huron said as the view above them shifted to the second planet from the star. “Justice was naturally pre-disposed to be a world of extremes, and, given that we had so many terrestrial planets to work with, we decided to leave it like that and enhance its natural beauty.”
Even from view high above the planet, Tanis could see what Huron meant. The dozen continents were all small, with three approaching one another on a slow-motion collision course. Every landmass showed massive mountains, their white peaks reaching high above deep green valleys below. Vast deserts, plains, and inland seas were visible across the world.
“You can see that this planet has everything you could wish for,” Huron described. “It also has three moons, one of near-lunar mass, which keep things shifting on the surface below. If you want to stabilize it, you will need to move their orbits further out, but if you ask me, variety is the spice of life, and this world adds some spice.”
“Last up we have the planet Tir. This one is also pretty much as we found it, only now it’s habitable. Tir’s mass-to-circumference ratio was such that we didn’t have to make any adjustments to achieve a pleasant level of gravity. It comes in at a hair under one gee, and, as you can see, is a farmer’s paradise.”
Tanis had to agree. The continents were just the right size to keep from forming interior deserts, and the few mountain ranges that were present would funnel rain evenly across broad grasslands. A few forests dotted the surface, and a small continent at the world’s north pole would give it cooler winters and more pronounced seasons than the other planets in the system.
“We’ve worked hard to get New Canaan ready for you, and there’s still more to be done—we had planned on spending another few centuries here—but we’re told that you are going to take over and finish up. Given your work on Victoria and Tara in the Kapteyn’s System, I am confident that we’re leaving this system in the good hands of you, the crew, and colonists of the famed Intrepid!”
Huron paused and thunderous applause broke out in the auditorium. He let
it sound for a minute and then raised his hands.
“Given our impending departure, we have a lot of knowledge to transfer and only a month in which to do it. Your leaders have set up a variety of meetings for us to get acquainted and begin that work, so I suggest we all get some food—which I’m told is being served in a hall a short distance from here—and then we can get started,” Huron said as everyone began to rise.
Tanis remained seated, reviewing the worlds Huron had described. Her eye was drawn to Carthage, third from the star. Though the two worlds closest to the Canaan Prime were further along in their terraforming process—in stage four, as opposed to Carthage which was still in phase three—the FGT had chosen to build the space elevator and station above it. The elevator’s strand reached down to one of the large islands in the eastern archipelago—it would make a beautiful location for the system capital.
She wanted to take a closer look at the station, which appeared to be too small—with just a fifty-kilometer circumference—to dock the Intrepid at, but Admiral Isyra interrupted her.
“I need to return to my ship, but I assume you have the data crystal?” she asked brusquely.
“I do,” Tanis said as she stood. “This way.”
She led Isyra through the crowds and out into the corridor. Most of the attendees turned left toward the hall where a buffet had been prepared, accompanied by long rows of tables awaiting deep conversations about the final stages of terraforming and the steps to begin colonization in earnest.