Carthage - A Space Opera Colonization Adventure (Aeon 14: Building New Canaan)
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CARTHAGE
BUILDING NEW CANAAN – BOOK 1
BY J.J. GREEN & M. D. COOPER
Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Readers
Marti Panikkar
Scott Reid
James Dean
Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn
David Wilson
Steven Blevins
Copyright © 2018 J.J. Green & M. D. Cooper
Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper
Version 1.0.0
Cover Art by Andrew Dobell
Editing by Jen McDonnell
Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper
All rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
WHAT HAS COME BEFORE…
MAPS
LACONIA
CARTHAGE
UPDATE
BLUEPRINTS
A SWIM
THE JOB
ROCK
ON THE WATER
CONSIDERATIONS
PLANET HOPPER
A SOLUTION
DATE NIGHT
PROGRESS
VACATION
SAILING
PICO
VILLAIN
REVEALED
ENGAGEMENT
RESUMPTION
ATHENS
THE SECOND STRAND
NEW ORDERS
CONTINUATION
TSUNAMI
TARGET
INSPECTION
RENDEZVOUS
THE PLAN
THE STRAND
LANDFALL
HART
ESCAPE
DEPARTURE
SOLUTIONS
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
THE BOOKS OF AEON 14
OTHER BOOKS BY J.J. GREEN
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
FOREWORD
Erin has always been a minor character that I wanted to explore further. From the first time we met her outside Ouri’s cabin in Ol’ Sam, to the meeting where she stood up to the other colony leaders at Victoria, I knew she was the kind of woman who had the right kind of moxie for an Aeon 14 story to be written about her.
Then, in November of 2017, Jenny (a fantastic SF writer who goes by J.J. Green) sat with me at a table in TGI Fridays in Vegas, and we talked about her writing an Aeon 14 series about colonization. We considered a few different characters, and when Jenny suggested Erin, I knew that our mild-mannered engineer was finally going to get her shot.
A great thing about Erin is that she’s not an ass-kicker (though she’s not afraid to draw on a person if need be) and she’s not going to seek out danger and adversity. She is, however, very, very competent.
That competency means that the colony leaders, Tanis especially, are going to give Erin the most difficult assignments. Case in point: before the Intrepid even reached Carthage, Tanis had dispatched Erin to begin building secret Gamma Bases within the moons of the outer New Canaan System.
I’m not only glad to have a story that dives deeper into the ‘building’ years of the New Canaan colonization, but I’m pleased that it is a story focused on Erin.
In addition, Jenny was the perfect partner to write this book with. She brings a new and refreshing perspective, focusing on the biology of the colonization process, and how that intertwines with the infrastructure and construction.
The plan Jenny and I have is to write three more books in the Building New Canaan series, each with a focus on one of the four terrestrial worlds. I’m certain you’re going to love the deeper look into how the colonists took the worlds the FGT gave them, and made them their home.
M. D. Cooper
Danvers, 2018
WHAT HAS COME BEFORE…
The books of the Building New Canaan series follow the events surrounding the construction of the colony within the New Canaan System.
All of these books take place during the timespan encompassed by the New Canaan book in the Orion War series. Despite the intermingling of events and storylines, Jenny and I strove to write this book in such a fashion that you can begin your journey in Aeon 14 right here.
However, if you would like to later read the backstory of how the Intrepid’s colony mission ended up at the New Canaan System, the books you should read are: Outsystem, A Path in the Darkness, Building Victoria, Destiny Lost, and New Canaan.
Barring that, here is a brief synopsis of how the colonists came to settle New Canaan.
The GSS Intrepid—one of the largest colony ships ever built—set out from the Sol System in 4124, destined for ‘New Eden’ (82 Eridani), where the FGT (Future Generation Terraformers) had prepared two worlds for them.
The Intrepid’s journey was not an easy one. Along the way, the ship suffered damage at the hands of both anti-colonial extremists, and a sinister individual named Myrrdan who wished to steal the ship’s most precious cargo: functional, reliable picotech.
Shifted off course, the Intrepid stopped at the uninhabited system of Kapteyn’s Star where they encountered a ship of refugees from the Sirius System.
The people of Sirius are subject to a strict caste system that is broken into two main groups. The Lumins are the upper class, and the Noctus are the lower. For all intents and purposes, the Noctus are little more than slaves, and this particular group, led by a man named Markus, fled Sirius hoping to make a new home in the Kapteyn System.
In an unexpected turn of events, the Noctus’s Lumin overlords chased after them, braving the fifty-year journey just to prove a point.
Tanis Richards, Lieutenant Governor of the Intrepid’s colony mission, wasn’t going to let the Noctus’s cry for help go unanswered, and she saved the refugees and defeated their oppressors.
Over the next seventy years, the Intrepid’s colonists helped the Noctus terraform both a world and a moon in the Kapteyn System, establishing for them a prosperous colony, while also repairing the damage done to their own colony ship by the saboteurs and Myrrdan—who they believed to have been defeated while at Kapteyn’s Star.
During this time, the two groups intermingled, and some colonists remained behind when the Intrepid finally left, while many of the Noctus joined the great ship’s colony mission.
And then things went awry.
As the colony ship journeyed across the interstellar darkness, the Intrepid was caught in a gravitational lens created by a supermassive stream of dark matter.
When the ship finally managed to re-enter normal space-time, they found themselves over five thousand years in the future. In the intervening time, FTL (faster than light travel) had been discovered, but many other advanced technologies had been lost. The Intrepid and what it carried had become even more valuable.
Through a daring series of events, Tanis Richards managed to secure a friendship with a scion of the Future Generation Terraformers (now known as the Transcend), a woman named Sera Tomlinson.
Sera aided the Intrepid’s colonists in securing a colony system in exchange for much of their advanced technology, but not their picotech. Tanis also secured for the colonists several new technologies, namely anti-gravity systems and FTL.
Upon arrival in the New Canaan System, Tanis knew that the Transcend would watch the colonists build, and wait for the right time to demand they surrender their picotech—despite her friendship with Sera.
And if not them, then one of the other empires who hungered after the treasures the Intrepid carried.
Knowing this, Tanis—now governor—reached out to one of her most trusted eng
ineers, Erin, and tapped her to begin the construction of hidden shipyards, nestled deep within the moons of New Canaan’s outer planets.
It is here that we find Erin, hard at work carving out space within the latest moon on her list, a featureless orb named ‘Laconia’ in orbit of the gas giant, Sparta….
MAPS
LACONIA
STELLAR DATE: 11.17.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Laconia (Gamma III Site)
REGION: Sparta, 9th Planet in the New Canaan System
Two and a half years after the colony’s founding…
An explosion ripped out a chunk of Laconia’s interior, sending chunks of rock and aggregate flying across the moon’s hollowed-out core.
Fragments hit the shields protecting the viewing platform, and debris obscured Erin’s view of the project’s progress, until slowly, lazily, the floating, churning rubble was cleared away, siphoned out by ships that lurked just outside the entry portal.
On the opposite wall of the great gulf that would ultimately become a secret military shipyard, a concave gash was all that remained at the site of the explosion.
Good, Erin nodded in satisfaction. The excavation is nearly complete.
said Walter after a moment.
Erin replied.
Bothering her with this matter while she was concentrating on work wasn’t helpful at all, but Erin didn’t want to say what she really thought of his interruption.
She and her new AI were still in the getting-to-know-you stage of their relationship, and she didn’t want to make things uncomfortable between them. But her screen was displaying figures that required her full attention; discussing her life plans could wait.
Blasting away the core rock in order to remove it was tricky. The less mass the moon had, the more it was affected by the forces generated by the detonations—not to mention the gravity of the gas giant it orbited.
Any of the final few could alter Laconia’s orbit.
Putting the moon back on track wouldn’t be a problem if she had all the time in the universe to do it, but several spaceships were close by. In addition to the mining vessels that were collecting the explosion debris, the Resolution would arrive soon—delivering the crew who would install the shipbuilding equipment. A shift in orbit, resulting in a collision between Laconia and nearby ships, was a real danger.
If the moon came flying toward them, they might not have time to maneuver out of the way.
Not for the first time, Erin wished they could use molecular decouplers to pull the interior of the moon apart. Not only would an MDC be faster, it would be safer. But the core of Laconia was iron, and the Transcend knew it. An MDC would ruin the ore, and it was imperative that the Transcend’s observers believe this to be a legitimate mining operation.
She couldn’t understand why Murry, Carthage’s planetary AI, had recommended him as a replacement for Alice. She and Alice had gotten along well, and she’d been sad when the time limit for their partnership had been reached. Now she couldn’t seem to gel with Walter.
Maybe I should have taken a rest from pairing with an AI.
Behind her, in the control room, deputy engineer MacCarthy spoke up. “Detonation number forty-two counting down. Five, four, three, two, one.”
Another explosion rocked the viewing platform, and Erin’s view was obscured again. They were nearly finished. Just a few more blasts, and she could relax and leave the shipyard builders to do their job under MacCarthy’s able supervision.
The engineer was new to the team, but he’d proven reliable and smart, displaying good judgment under pressure. She would move the rest of her crew on to the next moon. The schedule set by Tanis Richards was tight, but, barring any disasters, they could meet it. In fact, they were already ahead.
Then the repercussions from the latest explosion hit.
Walter said,
Laconia was drifting. The blast had shifted too much mass, and her orbit was out of whack.
“How many columns?” MacCarthy asked.
“All of them.”
Erin had stationed the massive stabilizing structures around Laconia in case the moon decided to do a walkabout. They had plenty, more than enough to put the satellite back on course, but could they do it in time?
Pulling up the sensor data, she scanned through the moon’s remaining crust depth and density, attempting to discern why the moon had spun out.
Then she saw it. One of the ore shifters outside the surface hadn’t moved its allocated debris into the right orbit, and hadn’t reported the delay. The imbalance, combined with the latest detonation, had been enough to wobble the moon into a higher orbit.
She brought up a map that showed the position and predicted flight path of all the ships near the moon.
When Penny told her, Erin nodded in satisfaction.
“Now we—wait. What’s that?”
A ship was speeding toward the wayward moon. Its braking vector around Sparta had put it on a direct collision course.
“It’s the Holgate,” said MacCarthy. “Cargo.”
The ship was delivering the raw materials needed to construct the new fleet of military ships. It was a regular supply vessel—arriving at an irregular time.
“What the hell is it doing here now? Linch,” Erin barked. Another of her deputies turned toward her. “Hail the captain of the Holgate. Tell whoever it is to immediately alter course spinward. MacCarthy, what’s happening with those columns?”
“I’ve got the drones moving them as fast as they can. One’s in place, but it isn’t having much of an effect. That last detonation had a big kick. A second is nearly there, and the others are close behind, but I’m guessing it’ll be another thirty minutes before we begin to regain some control.”
Erin couldn’t physically sense the moon adopting its new orbit—the control room’s gravity compensated for external motion—but she could imagine Laconia swinging out into the black, tugging at the grip of its planet. The satellite was like a toddler broken free from its parent and racing into the woods, unaware of the bugs it squished on its way.
“I can’t raise the Holgate,” Linch said.
“What?” Erin exclaimed.
“The ship’s in a blind spot, Sparta’s magnetic bands are blocking us. We won’t be able to make contact for another four minutes.”
Four minutes.
said Erin, who had just finished the mental calculation.
Erin gripped the rail in front of her. All she could see under the dim glow of the excavation lighting were the remnants of Laconia’s interior, floating gently toward the exit portal, and the rough walls of the moon’s inner shell. Outside, the mining vessels were safe; Laconia was drifting away from them. The Resolution and its passengers and crew were also free from danger in Captain Penny’s
capable hands, as she moved them out of the moon’s path. But the Holgate….
The dumpy cargo ship was one of several brought ready-built aboard the Intrepid, all the way from Sol. Its current captain was a Victorian, Erin recalled, one of the roughly hundred thousand who had elected to join the journey to the colonists’ final home, New Canaan.
A former miner, the man would have been retrained in order to become a ship’s captain, though she couldn’t remember his name.
What she did know was he had less than a minute and a half to alter his ship’s course if he wanted to avoid a short, brief meeting with a large, hard rock. But a minute and half was plenty of time, providing the Holgate answered the Resolution’s hail right away.
The Holgate’s trajectory remained unchanged. If the ship had picked up the Resolution’s transmission, it wasn’t acting on it.
Erin said,
“Linch,” Erin said, “tell every ship in the vicinity to try to contact the Holgate. You know the message.”
Seconds ticked by while Erin struggled to find a way to avoid the impending disaster. The a-grav columns were out of the equation; they would never be in place in time to prevent the moon from gliding into the cargo ship’s path.
Another solution crossed off the list. There was an answer, though, Erin was sure of it. She just needed to reframe the problem.