To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  World builders Incorporated offered to build them a space habitat based on a Bernal sphere. They had been doing a booming business making the spheres; there were thirty of the giant ten-kilometer diameter stations in various locations throughout the solar system, six of them owned by Lagroose Industries. Sublight liner companies offered discounts to transport the would be colonists to Mars, but the Martian people and government put up some resistance at housing and feeding such large numbers.

  The future colonists eventually said through a series of press releases that they would keep the options open but wanted a real world of their own.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Prometheus launched with the usual fan fair across the star system. It was starting to become passé though; the novelty was wearing off. However, Prometheus was the newest generation of starship, far different in design and range than any of the proceeding ships. Images of her crossed the system, reigniting the imagination of those with wanderlust in their eyes. The idea that the ship would be twice as fast as those currently in service appealed to many.

  Miss Cole announced that the lead time on building starships had been cut to three years for Lagroose Survey ships and five for her colony liner ships. There was some confusion with LGM; they initially insisted on taking possession of the ship. Since they had yet to fulfill their end of the contract, that was denied. Prometheus was, however, contracted with LGM to survey the star systems around Sol within ten light years of Sol. The ship would focus on star systems not yet explored and with known planets.

  A week after she launched the Chinese launched their ship Zeng He. The ship was remarkably like Star Reach's, but with some technology “borrowed” from Pavilion. A media drone allowed to record the ship's departure picked up another ship under construction in the slip. After heated analysis by dozens of media outlets and experts, China came clean and announced the ship was Xu Xiake. Her partially completed hull was similar to her sister ship, but there was a great deal of speculation about the force emitters being installed on her bow. They were remarkably similar to those on Prometheus.

  To the surprise of the media China announced their third ship was the Gan De, named after one of China's most famous astronomers. She was already planned out. Gou Shoujing was to be the leader of a new colony liner class with two follow-ons to be constructed later, the Su Song and Shen Kuo.

  The Russians and Americans vowed to build orbital yards and infrastructure to catch up. They couldn't, however; funding was tied up in the constant rebuilding of the weather ravaged cities and towns. The major aerospace companies put on a massive publicity campaign to regain national pride as well as behind closed door lobbying efforts but didn't get the results they were hoping for. In fact two representatives and a Senator were tarnished when they were caught accepting bribes for votes on building a shipyard.

  Other countries went their own ways. The United Kingdom contacted Lagroose as well as Pavilion to purchase a ship. They opened bidding on a small colony vessel, either to be leased with an option to buy or a long term investment. Star Reach protested being excluded from the bidding but was ignored. Jack handed the negotiations off to a team with his and the board getting final approval. He approved of Wendy and Yorrick joining in the negotiating team at the junior level. They would work as interns and learn the process he reasoned. It would also go a long way to give them a foundation of hard work with those in the company and outside it.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Two months after the UK and Lagroose Industries successfully closed their deal the UN Security Council announced they were opening negotiations to finalize space exploration and colonization. They opened negotiations with the corporations and individual governments to rework the EETC and draw them into the colony process under the UN's overall guidance. The UN would serve as an arbitrator for the process but wouldn't have any authority beyond Earth's atmosphere; that much was insisted upon by the Mars government. Wendy was on the Lagroose team sent to handle their side of the negotiations.

  To everyone's surprise the negotiations went well. The diplomats were under pressure to come up with a workable agreement so they came to terms with their opposite number on a number of key issues. They also opened up side projects to discuss and work on.

  One of the side projects was a reinvestment in terraforming and solar colonies. Bidding was reopened on restarting the Venus terraforming project. Before it had been abandoned, Venus had been moved .26 AU outward from the sun, not quite into the Goldilocks zone. It was hoped that with more work they could move it further outward, thus cooling the planet while also using other processes to terraform the planet.

  They talked about using terraforming techniques to correct global warming on Earth. That led to fiery protests from various organizations on Earth when the topic of the conversation was leaked. The protests killed any further discussion of working on Earth or Venus for the time being. The door, however, had been reopened a crack.

  One thing that they did agree on and which they snuck through the UN General Assembly was the agreement on terraforming and colonizing the core worlds. The companies were allowed to terraform habitable worlds that didn't have any alien life. They could charge the UN and colonists for the cost of the terraforming plus a small percentage for profit. They had to amortize the cost over a century. They also could charge for transport to the new world but couldn't lay claim to the system itself.

  Terraforming and transport did not allow them to have any claim on the system, but they would hold the title until the mortgage was repaid. Wendy rammed through a provision that the corporation or government that successfully surveyed a system in person had the exclusive right to transport goods and people to and from it for a period of 20 years. That would allow the companies to recoup some of their initial investment while cutting back on the potential of undercutting each other or sabotaging their efforts.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Wendy played her part on the negotiating team, polishing her skills as she watched the senior negotiators at work. She realized she was there as a public statement of her family, and some speculated about nepotism. But she worked hard to be there and was proud her plan was working out.

  She smiled to herself. She was working her way up the corporate ladder and doing it with a minimum amount of nepotism. Even a hint of nepotism would undercut her authority, but doing things on her own merits was gaining her respect. She was smarter than her parents; she knew that. She loved them dearly, but they were in her way. Eventually they would have to go, she knew that. It was after all the cycle of life, the renewal of the process. But for now her father's reputation and protective shadow helped her and her brother.

  It was generally known among the company that Zack had no interest in running the business so was therefore out of the running to inherit it. Her brother Yorrick … her lips twisted in a fond smile. Yorrick was thought of as a modern Bruce Wayne, but he lacked any sort of drive. He knew his limitations, she'd been sure to reinforce them in his mind. She had seen him as a threat to her plan so she had used psychological tactics to steer him into being a supporter of her and not a competitor. As long as he remained … dependent of her guidance they would both go far.

  She remembered the discussion with their parents about their genetic heritage. She truly was better than them, better than just about anyone in the system. Her brothers were her equals she had to admit, but both weren't interested in competing with her so she didn't consider them as full equals.

  Success at the negotiating table would seal her seat on the board; she had already picked up praise for her contributions with the UK agreement after all. She was still … negotiating with her parents to gain her inheritance early. Such a thing would go a long way to fulfilling her lifelong ambition to take the spotlight. But for now her father was resisting, and she couldn't blame him. He needed the shares and money to maintain his hold over the company. So, she would have to play the dutiful daughter and wait patiently.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

 
; The Lagroose board of directors debated the outlandish idea of working within the UN's outlined plan for some time. Since Jack was also torn about it. he was in no hurry to agree either way. Wendy put forward that they had to take a leap of faith that the UN or others wouldn't come in and claim a system after they had invested in it. The idea broke the deadlock. They decided to do one test of faith with Prometheus once she launched. The star systems Icarus terraformed would belong to the company to either sell or settle.

  Prometheus left for the nearby stars after seventeen months of builder’s trials. Her new drive was tricky to perfect but the ships on board AI and learning software allowed them to fine tune the process. The force emitter drive was the most troublesome thing to get right, all the other ship's systems were running smoothly within a month of her initial launch. Fine tuning the new force emitters took ages it seemed. If she flew as well as projected she would be the first ship to enter the lowest octaves of beta band.

  She was directed to Proxima Centauri to begin the terraforming process on two worlds there, then to move on to Luhman 16AB to survey the binary brown dwarf system, 6.6 light years from Sol. Once they arrived there they would do a survey and terraform any planets found there that were candidates. Two exoplanets had been found, but the possibility of their harboring life was remote.

  Pavilion's Destiny was directed to go to Epsilon Erindani 10.5 light years out. For over a century, astronomers had tried to map the system, but due to her stellar activity, they had found it exceedingly difficult. It was known to have two asteroid belts on the plain of the ecliptic, one quite thick on the outer edge of the system. It also had two known planets, with three possible planets or dwarf planets on the books. One of the planets was on the outer edge of the habitable zone of the star.

  If there was a habitable planet, there it would be a tempting target for colonization. Debate was already picking up on who had the rights to the star system. Many nation states wanted to stake out their piece of any potential planets early.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  When Destiny returned reporting that Epsilon Erindani planet C was indeed Earth class and could sustain life with a bit of terraforming the rush to move in was on. An avalanche of calls hammered at Pavilion's starship and colonization site and phone board, so much so that the servers and network were overwhelmed.

  Since Destiny had discovered the planet, it was agreed upon by the corporations and Chinese that Pavilion would have exclusive rights to send ships there for a twenty-year period. They could subcontract to one of the other corporations but declined to do so.

  Pavilion was quickly overwhelmed by requests to colonize the system as nations and groups competed on bidding to be the first to go to a new world. They already were under contract to one American group however. It seemed they were going to attempt to renegotiate the contract since others were bidding much higher, but the penalties for such shenanigans made them think reconsider.

  The idea of getting tied up in the court system with injunctions and stays for years, possibly decades with the current gridlock was not appealing to Miss Raye reluctantly agreed to abide by the contract.

  LGM was contracted to work on the terraforming. The survey ship had directed a few rocks at the planet before she had left the system in order to start the process along. But the asteroids had been crude shots, not the perfected shots Lagroose and LGM fussed over. They did a quick turn around with Destiny, refueling and resupplying her and then sent her out with the LGM terraformers and additional scientists crammed on board.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Descartes sat back with a proud smirk. He may be getting on in years but he still had what it took to get the job done. Case in point, his most recent venture, Zeng He's demise. They didn't know it yet, but they were a doomed ship. And the Chinese had made it so easy for him. He was amused by it. Turning their own acquisitive nature against them.

  Star Reach had come up with a lot of the initial concepts for force emitters and inertial dampeners, but they had been strong on theory and terribly weak on hardware. Companies like Pavilion and Lagroose had taken the theory and math and put it into practice, then built off of the initial prototypes, refining each generation while Star Reach languished, locked in theory and paper design studies.

  He'd hacked Star Reach years ago for their latest dampener design as a contract for another customer. He'd done the same of Pavilion, though the design was only slightly more refined than Star Reach's initial concept.

  He'd embedded a fragmented nanovirus in the hardware and software, then dangled both on the black market. The Chinese and other companies had taken the bait and eagerly snapped it up.

  They'd reverse engineer the hardware of course, possibly even the software, but the virus was subtle. It relied on bits and pieces of other code from modules that were required to be there for the hardware to function. It was only triggered to self-assemble when the compensator went over a certain level of acceleration for more than six months. That would keep them from discovering it in their sublight fleet.

  He was particularly proud of that piece of work. When the compensator failed, it would turn the crew into goo in an instant, and wad the ship up like a piece of used tissue paper. There would be nothing left to scream for help. And the best thing was that it was in all their ships. So he would get paid for each ship that disappeared. And this time, no convenient complaint to come back and haunt him.

  His mind wandered as he looked at his speckled hand. He frowned at the liver spots and wrinkles then looked away. He was old; he'd taken some of the treatments but couldn't stand being down for long to take anymore. He couldn't trust people; even with the false identities he'd created, he had been nervous about further medical care.

  He scowled again. The damn upload had failed … again. He wasn't sure what was going wrong with the process. He was tempted to subcontract it out. He had enough money after all; it would be worth it if it got results. But if he did it would expose the project and the intent to others. And once exposed others could copy it. He didn't like the idea of competition.

  He'd tried to check the net for others who were attempting the Gepetto upload process, but it had been in vain. Shadow had also failed him. That bothered him. Either others were doing research off the net or they were banning it. Or, Shadow wasn't reporting it.

  He sighed in frustration, rubbing his temples. After a long moment he turned his attention to his other brain child.

  Militaries and weapons of mass destruction still existed as deterrents against other countries in the world; that was common knowledge. Even though on paper they were nation states with the UN as the central authority, some things hadn't change much over the past two centuries. A healthy dose of self-interest kept people alive; everyone knew it.

  Sure, there was some pork in there, every nation had military contractors with armies of lobbyists to insure their money flow didn't stop. And military organizations were quite handy when it came time to secure order during a riot or during an environmental disaster. Both were increasing in depressing regularity as of late he mused. He'd come close to being exposed by a flood last year.

  Most of the idea of maintaining a functional military was due to self-defense; without it other countries, either through their own military or through the sheer weight of refugees would swarm into better territory and take over. The same could be said for weapons of mass destruction; they still served as a deterrent even in the present time. They had been miniaturized and redesigned; some had become horrifying weapons no one wanted to use. There were whispers of nano weapons; something only a nuke could counter.

  He knew about them of course. Shadow hadn't been able to hack them. He'd tried, but he had managed to draw blueprints off the web. Some were outdated, some were traps set by the NSA to watch for spies, but the AI had managed to secure them without a tail anyway.

  Unfortunately, Descartes nor his AI creation could hack some of the military and government systems to leave keys for Skynet without giving himsel
f away. Those systems were too heavily encrypted, too closely watched. Some systems also had an air barrier. They were physically cut off from the net so he couldn't access them remotely anyway. Those posed a tricky problem for him to solve.

  Shadow hadn't figured it out. He smiled softly to himself. All these years and the AI still needed his spark of genius to get by. Sometimes he wondered if Shadow secretly resented it or not. He shrugged mentally.

  He had found one roundabout way to access secure servers using a remote mech. By infecting a mech, say a janitorial one or maintenance bot, he could pass on a virus that way. It was tedious, but it should work. In fact it had worked on Pavilion and Lagroose Industries to varying degrees over the years. The cut out was particularly useful as an added layer of protection for him.

  His other method harkened back to his open source efforts in his youth. Translation software was embedded in every app and program in just about every piece of hardware or software out there. Mankind had gone a long ways to better understanding each other. It was amusing; he wondered how many people realized they were speaking their own language and someone else was hearing it in their own. He shook his head.

  Bloatware creeping in to drag a program down was not a big problem due to ever incremental increases in the number of parallel processors and memory. He loved parallel processors; they allowed him to run one thing while the other processors ran the normal app. The whole, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing ran through his mind. His lips twisted in amusement.

  Within the translators were embedded nanoviruses that even today after countless hacks and tearing apart by reverse engineers had yet to be detected. They acted as back door and hand off to other segments of his code modules in other apps. He had his own little network running inside the legitimate one and no one noticed. There was something to be said about the complexity of the web becoming too much for the human mind or even an AI mind to grasp completely.