War World: Discovery

by Discovery v2 lit

  With that heat output, the planet can be considered a borderline brown dwarf, not quite hot enough to ignite hydrogen, or even deuterium, to start its nuclear fires burning. The planet is the only one within the borders of the CoDominium to approach brown dwarf status. The system would have been overrun with astronomers and theoretical physicists were it not for the appalling distance from Terra and the equally appalling transportation arrangements needed to travel there.

  Haven is another rank improbability. Were it not for Cat’s Eye, Haven would be almost as cold as Mars, the fourth planet of the Sol system, and as dead as Hel, the fifth planet of ours.

  Averaging 1.4 AU distance from Byers’ Star, Haven is well outside the narrow band that forms the ecosphere of a G-class dwarf. At that distance it gets only 55% of the amount of sunlight that falls on the Earth. As a historical comparison for those enrolled for a classic Terran education, remember that an estimated 1% change in the heat output received from Sol caused the two C estimated drop in the climate of the European subcontinent and led to the Little Ice Age. What keeps Haven from freezing solid is Cat’s Eye.

  First, the gas giant emits and reflects enough energy to provide Haven with between four and five percent additional heat input above that received from Byers’ Star. Second, the tidal stress on Haven adds another few percent to the interior, keeping the oceans liquid all the way up to the polar caps, and even causing the ground itself to be somewhat warmer than would otherwise be the case. Not, as you well know, warm enough to warm your bottom, or even to melt snow, but, in a refined instrumental sense, warmer.

  The tidal stress has caused Haven’s core to remain more molten than expected, and has fostered extensive vulcanism and mountain building. One result is a plethora of geysers, warm springs, and geo thermal power sources which, alas, we do not have the technology to properly exploit. The vulcanism may even contribute to warming the planet by replenishing the several “greenhouse” gases found in the atmosphere.

  Unlike Earth, Haven has a relatively low density. Perhaps, like Earth’s Luna, it struck Cat’s Eye a glancing blow early in the formation of the system and now represents just the lighter outer crust of its former self. This would explain the lack of heavy ores or radioactives and the relative dryness of the planet. Or perhaps the planet just formed in a metal and water poor portion of the proto-stellar disk and was later captured. Given the sadly reduced state of knowledge today, we shall probably never know.

  The Byers System is thought to be relatively young, as these things go. Not over three billion years old. Cat’s Eye undoubtedly shone much brighter in the recent past, and has still not had time to radiate away all its heat of formation. The wide range of sophisticated life forms on Haven points to a much warmer time and a complex ecology much winnowed by the encroaching cold. No coal or oil has been found, so the planet was never jungle-warm. But some low-grade peat deposits indicate that the northern plains of the main continent were once much warmer and wetter. Parts of the tundra and semi-arid steppe may even have been shallow marsh with tall reeds and tides which reached miles inland across the flat plain. Bones unearthed at the shimmer stone mines are those of giant muskylopes and dire lion, long extinct progenitors of the standard muskylope and cliff lion.

  The future of life on Haven is as bleak as its once-verdant steppeland. Cat’s Eye can warm it for a few hundred more millennia, but soon even that mighty heat source will cool and the cold will win. Life will be forced back into the tidally-heated oceans, to eke out a Spartan existence near cracks in the ice or fumaroles in the seabed. Until then, we go on living, fighting the cold and each other, secure in our little victories and the knowledge that the Fimbulwinter will not come in our brief lifetimes.

  10. On Jordan’s Stormy Banks A.L. Brown

  2047A.D., Earth

  “Sit down,” said the small, pale man behind the large wooden desk. “Your name for this next mission will be Sergei, Sergei Pulatov. We will not attempt to hide the fact that you are Russian, only where your loyalties lie.” He slid a packet of paper across the desk. “You will have four hours to study and memorize the contents of this folder, and then you will return it to me.”

  Sergei smiled inside. He was not a tall man himself, but these case workers were always smaller, and their desks were always huge. And they always had a reek of vodka about them. As if the stresses of working in an office were anything like the stresses of working in the field. They were deep in the bowels of a large non-descript building in the middle of Moscow, and Sergei wondered if the case worker had ever done any duty outside this building, or just moved up the ranks of Federal Security Service by issuing orders to others. Sergei was a proud soldier, a Leytenant of the Spetsnaz, Spetsgruppa Vympel, and dealing with these FSB bureaucrats was one of the prices he and his brethren had to pay for their autonomy in the field

  “You have done well in your last few missions, achieving your goals with good speed and little collateral damage. In fact, the record from your eighteen years of service has been commendable overall.” the man said.

  Sergei nodded, thinking to himself about the blood left on his hands after those missions. To grow and thrive, Russia needed to eliminate those who threatened her stability, to find information on plots that threatened the Rodina. But even when the collateral damage was reduced, there was still a price.

  The man looked at him closely, “You have few ties at this point. Sad news about your parents. Your father was a pillar of the Navy.” Sergei flinched at the thought of the terrorist attack that destroyed the family apartment in the heart of Saint Petersburg, the anger that followed, how it had fueled him through a mission to find and eliminate those same terrorists. “And you seem to have ended a relationship with a woman recently,” the case worker went on.

  Sergei flushed with anger, and snapped back, “Her motivations were not what I thought. As soon as I was no longer son of the Admiral, she was no longer interested in me.”

  The caseworker seemed to want to smile, but thought the better of it, and went on. “And your ties to your brother are not strong.”

  Sergei thought of that older brother, in whose shadow he had grown, a cruel and ambitious man, rising quickly through the Navy’s officer corps. Sergei tried to be a good uncle to his niece and nephew, but there was no love lost between the bothers, and nothing but pity for his sister-in-law.

  “Have you ever thought of taking a mission off-world?” asked the case worker. For the first time in the interview, Sergei became interested, keenly intent in what was being presented to him. From a young age, he had wanted to go into space, had read book after book on other worlds. But his father, the Admiral, was firm. The space services were an arm of the CoDominium, and no man in his family would ever serve as a tool of that corrupt alliance with the decadent Americans. So the dutiful son had followed his brother into the Russian armed services, and his only act of rebellion was to enlist rather than attend an academy and immediately join the officer corps. “Say more,” he replied.

  him.

  The case worker noted his reaction with satisfaction. “There is a new world that has been discovered, Haven, actually a moon of a gas giant. The world is habitable, but barely so, and the CoDominium has been dumping religious fanatics and undesirables there. The planet does have some mineral wealth, and there is open activity by the American company, Kennicott Metals, mining hafnium. But another company, Dover Mineral Development, is also operating on the planet, and there are rumors of great sources of wealth. Which is where you come in.

  “We need to know if these rumors are true. We think that CoDominium bureaucrats with American sympathies are keeping information from us, information that will keep them, and their capitalist masters, wealthy beyond imagining. You have spent much of your service along the Arctic sea lanes, working on the frontier and in the wilderness. We need someone like you to go there, find out what is going on, and then use the methods described in your packet to get word back to us.

  “We have f
ew agents on this world, and none of them have been able to uncover any of the information we need. If these rumors are true, and Haven is not just a dumping ground, but a source of riches, we will need to change the priorities of who we send there. Instead of riff raff, we will send good Russian settlers, military men and their families, forces who can seize control of the world. This will be a long mission, as it takes nearly a year simply to get to the planet, but we think you are the man for the job.

  “Are you willing to take this mission?” the bureaucrat asked.

  Sergei nodded, “Yes, I will go on your mission. He felt a surge of anticipation, a feeling he had not had in years.

  The case worker smiled, and replied, “Good. If it is necessary, we will make the rivers of this planet run with blood before we let it serve the rivals of the Rodina.”

  Sergei’s anticipation ebbed, and he felt a chill down his spine. Even though he was leaving the Earth, it appeared the price of his profession would be following

  2048 A.D., Haven

  Sergei stood on the gangway, breathing in the air of a new world. After nearly a year of shipboard stinks, it was a welcome relief. There was much that was strange in the air of Haven, but much familiar as well. The smell of a waterfront, the tangy scent of pine, the smell of wood fires. The air was crisp and cold--the crew had told them as they neared the planet that winter was approaching. He smiled for the first time in many days, a real smile that came from his soul. Thoughts of the mission would come later, now he would just enjoy the feeling of freedom. He grabbed his duffle, and turned around to the woman behind him; Pamela was her name, with a child on her hip.

  “Here, let me carry your bag.”

  She smiled with relief. “Thank you so much. After all you have done to take care of me and my family and our friends on this trip, I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

  He flinched a little at that. His heart had gone out to these people, the transportees torn from their homes. His orders were to draw no attention to himself. Besides his long ponytail and beard, shabby clothes and lack of possessions, his behavior was supposed to give no clue to his background. But there was so much theft, bullying and just plain violence on a CoDominium transport ship, he couldn’t bear to stand aside and watch.

  A man could only read books, watch videos or do calisthenics for so long before he craved some meaningful task. So in at least a few compartments, there was some order, where women, children and their men could remain in peace.

  “Think nothing of it,” he replied, “we transportees have to stick together.”

  The sky had a reddish-gold glow to it, and he turned to see the huge disk of the gas giant, Cat’s Eye, in the sky behind the shuttle. An amazing sight. It drove home the point that he was not in Russia anymore, not on Earth, light-years away from anything he had known.

  The first day ashore was a busy one. He was led to a long and low-ceilinged barracks building, filled with bunk beds. The room and its furnishings reminded him of the rustic dacha where he had spent so many summers in his youth. He picked the third and highest bunk in a far corner of the room. Sergei carefully marked where men he knew were bunking; those whom he liked and trusted, and those who bore watching. He put his bag in a cubbyhole that was marked with the same number as his bunk. He used the combination lock that they had issued him on the ship to secure his belongings. Issuing those locks to the transportees was a wise precaution for those who wished to cut down on thievery and keep the peace in tight quarters. Strong locks made for good neighbors.

  A large young man in a brown robe stood at the far side of the room, holding a quarterstaff and looking like he knew how to use it. He introduced himself as Deacon Miller, and gave the assembled men a briefing on their new lives. They were welcome to live in this barracks, with a bunk to call their own, and three meals a day, as long as they were willing to work eight hours a day, with one day out of every twelve a day of rest, in supporting public works projects, and the care and feeding of transportees.

  If they wanted to head out on their own at any time, they were welcome to do so, although the Deacon warned that doing so could easily result in their deaths from hunger and exposure. At the end of a standard T-year of satisfactory work, however, they could earn their place in a colonization program, be given a small supply of tools and provisions, and be sent out to one of the many new communities growing along the Shangri-La River valley.

  The Deacon tried to explain the days and nights on Haven, although his explanation left many of the transportees confused. A day-night cycle on Haven was long enough that the human settlers generally divided into four ‘days’ that were just shy of a Terran day in length. So you would spend two T-days in full daylight, followed by two days in at least partial darkness. This was further complicated by the fact that, during two of the three periods of darkness, the gas giant Cat’s Eye was in the sky, far brighter than the brightest moon on Earth. The times when the sun was down, but Cat’s Eye was in the sky, were known as “dimdays,” while the times when both the sun and Cats Eye were down were known as “truenight.”

  The fact that the skies were bright so much of the time was very favorable for the growing of crops brought from Earth, and one of the reasons this cold moon was habitable. Sergei looked at the heavy curtains on the windows of the barracks, and realized that their presence had just been explained. He also realized that the one day of rest every twelve days would probably be when the waking cycle occurred during a truenight, when it would be difficult to work on a planet where electric lights were rare.

  The Deacon spoke briefly about the Church of New Universal Harmony, and explained that anyone whose heart sent them in that direction would be welcomed into the church, but no one would be forced to join. He stated that there were a variety of other churches in the city, and that religious freedom was encouraged. Sergei wondered if there was an Orthodox Church among them--the chaplains aboard the transport ship had left much to be desired, most being of the irritating American fundamentalist variety.

  The Deacon grew serious. He went through a list of infractions and their consequences. The city had a rather large jail, with Deacons and Beadles providing law enforcement on the streets. While these officials bore religious titles, it appeared that their duties had become primarily secular. And even though the Deacons and Beadles were unarmed, they had a CoDominium Marine contingent backing them up, providing a menacing deterrent to those who might break the peace.

  That military contingent was berthed near the one fusion plant on the world, which largely provided power to the Petrocarb plant that kept most of the city’s populace fed. From the geological surveys it appeared petroleum was rare on Haven. The only known small field was in the Atlas Mountains and its production was dedicated to the food plant and to Kennicott which had set up the oil rigs. That protein ration provided the calories needed to survive, but was certainly not satisfying. Sergei realized the Harmonies had relaxed the strict pacifism that had distinguished their church in the early years--not surprising, as it would have been difficult for them to remain in political control without some force to backup their rules.

  Names were called, tasks were assigned, and Sergei found himself learning a protein distribution route, delivering the bland staple to a variety of barracks and homes in the eastern part of the town.

  Civilization was raw and new on Haven. Only a few modern devices were to be seen, reminding him that he was not in some historical video. Certainly there was nothing modern about the wooden pushcart that Sergei used to complete his rounds and make his deliveries. At the end of a hard day of work, one that ended at the start of a truenight, Sergei was given a few coins and sent on his way.

  The man showing him the delivery route called this pittance the ‘beer money,’ and Sergei decided to use it in that manner. Bars and pubs were an important source of information in a new city, and had been Sergei’s first stop during many a mission. In the first bar, he found that the coins would buy him three beers, as lo
ng as he stuck to the less expensive homemade brews. There was also a good market in harder liquors; vodka, whiskey and gin. Sergei drank alone, drinking each of his beers in a different bar, and listened carefully. The second bar was also a whorehouse, the Golden Parrot, and the third was also apparently the source of harder drugs.

  Sergei heard of stress between miners and the mining companies, clashes with CoDominium Marines, conflict between the mining companies and the church, and the recent formation of a new town, called Hell’s-A-Comin’, down the Xanadu River. The church was doing an inconsistent job of maintaining control, nearly overwhelmed by new transportees, with little CoDominium support to keep the situation in check.

  There was much conversation and excitement related to the Kennicott Metals and their activity down the Xanadu near Hell’s-A-Comin.’ There were also other company operations: Dover Mineral Development was rumored to be doing more secretive work at the headwaters of the Jordan River, while Anaconda Mining had mining works north of the Devil’s Heater. These operations were creating a variety of jobs, and many of the new transportees listened raptly to promises of good pay, less regulations, and a way out of the dead-end life in the barracks.

  As he was leaving the last pub, Sergei walked the streets to get the lay of the land, peering into windows as he went. Streetlights were few and far between, especially in this part of town, and the streets and most of the buildings were dark. At one point, he was in an alley, when he heard raised voices ahead of him. Without thinking, he clambered up the side of the building, and hunched up on the edge of the thatched roof. Two men came by, arguing loudly. Sergei pulled out a loop of discarded electrical cable that he had obtained on the transport ship, and wrapped each end around his hands.