Desperate Defense: The First Terran Interstellar War book 1 (Founding of the Federation 4)

by Chris Hechtl

  Jack nodded and recorded a second response. “We'll transmit our medical history to you as well. No sense your people picking up a locally-brewed bug during shore leave either,” Jack said, relenting a bit.

  When he got a response back, he was amused. The captain's image blinked and then nodded. “We'll have inoculations ready. Now, about the ship's resupply. Obviously, we need fuel and provisions; fresh provisions would be nice. We'd need to check everything, no offense, but they need to be cleared of bugs and be safe for consumption,” the captain said.

  Jack leaned back and nodded to himself.

  “We have an authorization for payment from the company. I understand there is an issue there,” the captain said. “So, we also have credits and some trade goods we can offer if the authorization isn't acceptable,” he stated flatly.

  It damn well wasn't, Jack thought with a sour growl. Max looked up from where he'd been reading his tablet. Jack flicked his fingers for him to ignore him. Max flicked his ears and then went back to his reading.

  Wendy had gotten cute when he'd begun to offer resupply on his end. The new ships hadn't expected it so they hadn't had anything to pay for it. He hadn't charged port fees, though he'd been tempted. What he'd accepted was an IOU.

  And that was where Wendy had screwed him. Since they hadn't had an agreement in advance, she refused payment. She'd also stiffed him on the bill for the crew's shore leave. So, he'd refused fuel for the next ship to come in. He'd ended up negotiating a deal for a bit of fresh provisions from the crew, but they had been a bit put out over not getting what they wanted.

  They'd returned to Sol with instructions from him to Athena and others to work on banking issues. The third ship that had come had brought along bank authorization files. The crew had been debited for their charges on the planet. The debits had been encrypted and sent to Sol's banking aboard their own ship. Credits had come back on the following ship and so on. It was tedious and slow, but it was at least a functional economic exchange. Having Athena in his corner helped immensely. When she died … his thoughts slithered to a halt briefly. Even after eight years, her “death” still bothered him. He'd thought of her as immortal. He shook himself and then brought himself back on track.

  Getting repayment for the fuel and provisions had been a bit tougher, but he'd finally worked that deal out. But that was when he'd run into another issue, Wendy had retaliated when he'd tried to order equipment and goods from Sol. She'd charged him a premium on shipping the freight, plus all sorts of handling fees. Since only Lagroose ships had the data to get to Pyrax, she had him over a barrel.

  Which meant he learned to buy data as much as possible. She hadn't started to charge him for the mail services or data transfer … yet.

  He didn't like the tit for tat between himself and his daughter, but it was what it was. Apparently, time nor distance had cooled her ire for him and his method of departure. To be scrupulously fair, he still hadn't forgiven her for her coup either.

  He dickered a bit with the captain on the resupply until they both got bored with the process and passed it on to the ship's cargo master and Jack's spaceport manager. He decided to let them hash out the final details now that he and the captain had a basic understanding.

  “I miss Castill,” Jack said to Max when the calls ended. “They couldn't carry as much people and weren't in a hurry to get home. This guy … I bet he gets paid a bonus to move people like freight,” he said with a shake of his head.

  ~~*^*~~

  The colony ship was well prepared to move personnel in job lots in a hurry it seemed. As soon as they woke, they were checked out in a line by the ship's medics and then hustled to the shuttle bays. There they were loaded on board for the drop to the planet.

  There were four great big shuttles to land the passengers, 500 people per shuttle. Their cargo and baggage came down on two great cargo shuttles at a slightly less rushed pace. Before the first passenger shuttle debarked from the ship the two cargo shuttles had already been loaded and dropped.

  Jack shook his head. Most likely the shuttles had been loaded before they'd even dropped out of hyperspace. If they could have gotten away with it, they would have done the same for the passengers. Suddenly the space station they were building in orbit seemed too small.

  Oh well, they'd have to figure it out. Or let the ships deal with the drop. There was no way he was going to try to buy one of those colossal shuttles. The maintenance alone, parts … he shook his head.

  One thing the station was good for was the transfer of fuel and water to the ship, which meant the shuttles didn't have to be reconfigured on the ground to carry containers up to the ship. The ship would take on both as well as life support materials and offload any toxic materials for recycling once the passengers were cleared.

  Jack watched to be sure that the process was running smoothly. Every hour and a half a shuttle landed with personnel. By the time the sleepy stumbling passengers had been debarked, the next shuttle was coming down. The ground crew refueled the shuttle during the debarking, did a quick service check before the shuttle taxied to the runway just ahead of the next shuttle lining up for a final approach.

  “Smooth as silk, I'll have to give them credit for that,” he murmured.

  The only time the shuttles stopped was for a mandatory downtime shift to run a full maintenance cycle after every four drops. He heartily approved of that. He'd heard a couple of colonies had lost passengers in shuttle accidents. He didn't want to see the same here on his world. The people coming in deserved a proper greeting and chance at a fresh start, not a final ending.

  Jack used his implants to check the video feeds in the terminal. Some of the passengers didn't have their legs under them quite yet; they had to be assisted. Everyone had to run the gauntlet he'd set up however, so there was a bit of exasperation and testiness mixed with bottled-up anticipation. A lot of people spent time looking longingly out the glass, viewing windows to beautiful horizon beyond.

  Jack saw a familiar face with a ponytail and perversely tapped the nearest microphone and video feed to see her. Menolly was in line with the other medics to take charge and check each of the passengers over. “We're just following procedure. Just be patient,” she kept saying as they went through the checkup for each person.

  Jack snorted.

  One hundred drops to offload all of the passengers. Actually, a hundred and ten since some of the seats had been taken by crew coming down on shore leave after the first day he noted. All of the incoming colonists were former Lagroose employees or major shareholders. Some of them had traded their retirement benefits for a shot at coming to the colony. He already knew that a few thought everything would be set up for them; there was a growing line at the question booth.

  He shook his head. Some of the people didn't understand they would still need to employ themselves to feed, house, and clothe themselves. Those who were put out protested of course; he could see a couple people gesticulating wildly. Fortunately, Alan and a couple of his deputies were on hand to keep things in line.

  He sighed heavily. He knew he'd catch flack for the next month or so. The worst ones were the wheedling ones who didn't bother to bluster. The whiners he could do without too. Eventually they'd fall in line he knew; it would just take time.

  “Sir, your ten o'clock is here. But you've got two additional people who insist on seeing you today,” Jasmine said over the intercom.

  “Okay,” Jack said as he cut the feed and looked up as his door opened. “Marcello, right?” he asked as he rose from his seat and extended his hand.

  “Yes, Governor, sir,” the Neoorangutan said with a nod as he ambled in. “I'd like to talk to you about the forests. I'm a bit concerned about the logging you've allowed to start up in some areas …”

  ~~*^*~~

  Jack sat back as Marcello was ushered out of his office, if not in the same mindset as him at least a bit more informed.

  Like he was going to allow anything less than sustained logging pra
ctices? He shook his head. He had no intention of allowing clear cutting. The loggers were only allowed to cut the adult trees, and for every tree they took down, they had to plant three seedlings as replacements. That would allow them to “farm” the forests indefinitely.

  Perhaps putting Marcello up as a logging inspector might keep them in line and him in line, Jack mused. He turned to Max. “What do you think; we put Marcello up as a logging inspector? That way it'll keep the loggers honest?”

  Max looked up and yawned. “As long as he doesn't get carried away,” Max said.

  “True,” Jack thought. He pulled up his tablet and jotted out a quick missive to explore the subject.

  The Neoorangutan was clearly new to politics; otherwise, he would have come in with a group. Collective responsibility to lean on someone was a well tried and true practice. Voicing his concerns in a public setting would have also garnered support. Jack could and did admire the ape's chutzpa for coming right to the top.

  Well, Eden was no Earth that was for sure. They were not going to rape their natural resources, not when it took so long and so much effort to get them there in the first place! No, this time mankind and Neos would do it right he vowed.

  It helped that the population all came from the company, his company, the one he'd built from nothing. The one … he shied away from thinking of the betrayal of Wendy and Yorrick. He was still bitter over what they'd done to him, despite how it had turned out in the end.

  He frowned as he typed away at the memo; his mind automatically filling it out while his thoughts were on other things. Retirees and their families from Lagroose Industries were all over the planet and made up more than 98 percent of the population. There were a few others on the planet, people who'd traded their shares, but they were few and far between.

  Some of the newest crops had come with an eye to take over the colony eventually. Jack had seen through their rabble-rousing and had put them to work on their own projects to marginalize them but still make use of their talents. He had realized early on that some were there because his daughter had set them up as a coup attempt. He'd deliberately allowed a few to fail in order to make his point that he was in charge.

  Her coup attempts might work long term, but for the moment, he was on to her and still firmly in charge. Letters from Trevor Hillman and other friends still in Sol kept him informed of what was going on in Sol and in his former company.

  Lagroose Industries was still darling to the solar system, but it had been heavily reduced. He hadn't been at all happy about some of her antics, but he'd found out about them years later due to the transit times involved. He could do nothing about them after the fact. She'd stumbled a lot as she'd gathered up the reins of power and had made plenty of mistakes and enemies along the way.

  Her ruthless pruning would backfire eventually he knew. The one good thing was that she was smart enough to keep the secret hyperbridge to Rho sector within the company. That was why only Lagroose or specially-leased ships were allowed there he thought. He'd underestimated the number of habitable planets, or at least potentially habitable ones in such a small area. Ships were combing the space, either surveying them or beginning the terraforming process.

  Wendy had wisely kept the route secret so only Lagroose ships or those contracted to do services for them could use it to get to the area. It was a lucrative revenue stream for the company he had to admit. So was selling off the rights to solar systems that were terraformed. Given that there were dozens of potentially habitable star systems in the area, it was a wise act, one her father grudgingly gave her rare credit for.

  Many of the retirees who had come to Eden were Neos he knew. Some had traded their retirement benefits and shares to get to the star system. A few had just enough to pay for cargo and or land shares on the planet. Negotiating them was an ongoing process he knew. They were opening up virgin land at an increasing rate. Those who'd come first with the biggest land shares were making tidy profits.

  With Earth still battered and polluted, the population had moved to a colonization mentality. Not just to get away from what Earth had become he thought, but for some who'd lived on it at the turn of the last century to get away from the pain and horror of the A.I. War. He couldn't blame them.

  He didn't see many of those people of course. The occasional Neo or human soldier who'd been in the company before transferring to the Space Marines, yes, but none of the civilians. They were going after other colonies like in the neighboring Janus star system.

  Seven loads of colonists had made it to Pyrax, Jack thought. Seven, a lucky number for some. Each of the first three ships had delivered twenty-five thousand colonists. The fourth ship had been thirty thousand, then the next two had each delivered forty thousand, and now Susan Constant's load of fifty thousand he reflected. In the twenty years since their first landing over a quarter of a million people, 235,000 people had moved to Eden.

  The population leaned heavily to Neos, especially the native born. Their birth rate on the planet had pushed the population numbers to soar to three million. They were expected to hit six million within another four years at their current projected birth rate. It was all thanks to the clean air and a large number of Neos in the population he thought cheerfully.

  To be fair, there usually was a baby boom after a war—something about facing death and wanting to renew the social contract with making life. He wasn't into that sort of thing, but he understood the urge. Mars and other places were growing as well, but Earth was just too polluted and damaged it seemed.

  They were growing and not just in population. He'd been smart enough to take as much industry as he could on Castill. He'd packed two automated tugs, a gas giant refinery, a small modular space station, satellites, a couple automated industrial platforms, and a pair of shuttles to service them all, plus a modest supply of parts to keep everything running. The ships that came could now refuel and resupply to a modest degree, offsetting their costs significantly. It added an incentive for them to come to Pyrax and gave the colony something for interstellar trade.

  Having the space station and satellites in orbit was both a boon and a curse. Some people believed they were premature and in some ways, they'd be right. The automated tugs ran fuel back and forth from the gas refinery to the station. They had a modest fuel surplus in a fuel depot platform. Under Jack's direction they'd begun expanding the station, adding more habitat modules, structural truss segments, and solar panels. Getting them built on the ground and then up and installed had been an exercise in patience for everyone involved, but they now had the system down.

  He had to resist the temptation of moving up to the station. He knew it would divorce him from the planet and the people there, which would destroy his political career. Besides, Menolly and Max loved the planet.

  He had to admit he did too, which was why he was trying to keep most of the industry in space. Not that greenhouse gases wouldn't be welcome to keep the planet moving towards a nice warm glow, but the population liked to breathe the unpolluted air too. Besides, the other chemical pollutants could be recycled and reused or sent on a one-way sun scuttle. It wasn't so easy to do that on the ground.

  The two industrial platforms were divided in use. He'd intended to let one of them just build parts to expand them exponentially, but that plan had hit a snag at first. Just keeping them supplied with raw material had been one headache, and the constant need for one thing or another on the ground had been another. But a decade ago he'd managed to get enough parts to put another platform together, then a fourth larger one. The fifth platform was a dedicated electronics platform, though they couldn't make some of the advanced molecular electronics—at least, not yet at any rate he thought with a furtive smile.

  The satellites were the one thing everyone agreed on keeping he knew. Not only did they provide communications worldwide, but also weather monitoring and warning, something critical in some regions where sudden storms could crop up. He had also invested in two sky watch platforms. The astr
onomy satellites were in polar orbits and watched for incoming vessels or possible asteroids. He didn't want any unexpected surprises to come calling.

  Over the years, he'd grown into being the governor of the planet. It hadn't been easy, but with Menolly's help, he'd stuck with it. Of course, he had to contend with Wendy's long-distance machinations to marginalize him or perform a coup. He had opened the lieutenant governorship up to a once-a-decade election in order to allow a bit of self-determination for the population and a means for people with ambitions to identify themselves. Deborah Gates, a Neogorilla former manager of Lagroose Industries, had won the last one. She was good, damn good he thought and no friend of Wendy after what she'd pulled on the Neos.

  Earth was still spinning he knew. Sol was ticking along, and from the look of it, they were rebuilding at an increasing pace. That was good he thought, though he secretly knew deep down he could have done a better job of it. He also wouldn't have put the company through so much head and heartache over the years.

  ~~*^*~~

  When he got a surprising reschedule, Jack had a bit of free time. He checked the news download from the ship. Their small media outlet was most likely, processing the stories and then choosing which to run first. He'd already caught a few of the headlines. His people tagged a few for his viewing. Jeeves had his own list of priorities as well. Jack ran through them and then hit some of the top ones that he hadn't seen.

  One thing he didn't expect was a bit of a missive from Deborah Gates that Jeeves specifically flagged for his attention. Apparently, Debby had picked up on a fresh tidbit through Sharif; the Susan Constant was one of four ships of her class. All four ships were designated to come to Pyrax with more to follow.

  “They can't be serious,” Jack said as he read Debby's missive out loud for Max to hear. Max looked up and then flattened his ears in response.

  “The news said they were moving out a ship a month from Sol. But a ship every three months here? Thirty to fifty thousand new people here?” Jack shook his head.