Starship: First Steps to Empire

by R J Murray

  “If she keeps going and finishes as a rectangle, almost two thousand hectares. She won’t finish by dark though.” Ash said.

  “Mr. Reed, I would like you to take the flitter and go pick her up. Make sure she gets her markers down first though.”

  “We have a flitter Sir? I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “I just finished getting it together about an hour ago. I thought we would need a few here for the colonists so I started on one a few weeks ago. The nanobots did most of it once I got them programmed. She is sitting out by the ramp. You may christen her if you wish.” Eric said.

  “Yes Sir.” Reed left the bridge with a smile. He liked flitters.

  Eric watched him go. “The man is a born bus driver.”

  ~~~~~~

  Syble watched as the rectangular box landed in front of her, blocking her path. She got ready to argue her way past. Instead, the man in the pilot’s seat surprised her.

  “The Captain thought you may need a lift to get finished on time. Hop in.”

  “Really? I thought you were going to tell me to stop.” Syble jumped over the door and took a seat next to the pilot. “I’m Syble Aarons.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Reed, first officer and bus driver. Where to next?”

  “Where’s your gyro compass? Go there straight out at one eighty degrees for about three kilometers.” She pointed to a point close to the stream and Reed lifted the flitter and turned the nose south, pushing the accelerator to the floor.

  ~~~~~~

  “Attention on deck!”

  The colonists just looked at the door without standing. Eric entered and nodded to the group.

  “That does not include the colonists, only ships personnel. I am your captain, Eric Maddwell. I wanted to talk to you today because I think you misunderstood what we wanted yesterday. Are you all happy with the land you have chosen?”

  A few nodded and a few others said yes or yeah. Most just sat there waiting for whatever he was going to say.

  “Miss Aaron, are you happy with your plot?”

  “No. I couldn’t really get the size I wanted because it got dark.”

  “Miss Aarons has two thousand hectares laid out.” Eric said.

  The voices rose in the room, angry and clamoring for attention.

  “Easy now. Settle down. If you wanted more, why didn’t you mark out more? You in the front with the nice red beard. Tell me why didn’t you mark out more?”

  “Well, because land is restricted to two hundred hectares. Radiation and plant viruses have pretty much destroyed the rest.” Most of the other people nodded in agreement with a few ducking their heads. They had taken three hundred and hoped nobody would notice.

  “Where did this take place?”

  “What? What kind of stupid question is that? Have you been out here so long you don’t know about the food wars? It happened on Earth!”

  “And are we now on Earth?”

  Silence filled the room and stayed there.

  “You are the only people on this entire, fertile, open and available planet. Why would you restrict yourselves to Earth rules on land? We have one flitter done and three more under works. We have maps of land around this point. You walked some of it today. Tomorrow we will try this again. Take at least two thousand hectares each. I say at least, because you will need it to support your families in the future and ship grains and other crops back to Earth.” Eric waited, knowing they still had the wrong mind set.

  “We ain’t eligible for life companions.” A woman in the back row said angrily.

  “On Earth?” Eric asked.

  “Well shit. We ain’t on Earth, are we? So all those women up there, we got a chance at family and kids with them?” one of the men responded eagerly.

  “Well, as long as they agree. It does take two and you will have a chance to find someone as long as you go at it the right way. No selection board or genetics work here, just us folks. That means several things you may not have realized yet. There are no laws on how many kids you can have and no labs to make sure they are right for the population standards. You have a kid then you get pot luck. No more drugs to keep us docile and under control. We are no longer sterile either. Yeah, they did that too. We need self control out here along with just a touch of daring and maybe a little insanity. We need to take a few chances now and then and if one of you is better than someone else at farming then good for you. We are the government and I don’t mean just the men on these ships. You are in charge of your own lives out here so you better make the best of it.”

  “You’re saying we don’t listen to Earth anymore, that we are on our own. We can’t do that, they would arrest us.” One man said angrily.

  “And after they arrested us, they would ship us off to some distant planet to start a colony, right?” the man with the heavy beard replied.

  “Well, that’s what they do now. That’s where they shipped my cousin, to Mars.”

  “They already did numbnuts! Where do you think you are? We are how far from Earth?”

  “It is one thousand light years or five and a half months in your ships but only three and a half in ours.” Reed offered. “We are a long way from Earth law and Earth government and we have no intention of ever going back, not that they would let us return. This is a one-way trip for all of us so you better dig in and grab yourself a good spot of dirt to call home. We will ship goods to Earth in trade for what we need and not because they expect it and never for free. They want food, they can pay for it and we can deliver it and metals. All we need to do is to get started.”

  Eric hit the button on the wall com. “Is all this going out to the ships in orbit?”

  “Yes Sir.” Came the reply, “and they are getting mixed reviews up there too. Most seemed to think this place would be ready for them when they arrived. A few seem to be happy for a fresh start but most are still thinking about it. Almost all are happy about the kids and tell you the truth, so are most of us.”

  Eric turned back to the group. “Now listen up people. For the moment, we are the law and the government. We got you here and we will do our best to give you a good start. After we get settled and we start bringing the rest of you colonists down, you will need to get your own government started, a planetary government based on what works here.” Eric continued.

  “For now, we are going to feed you and then leave you alone to talk about what you want on this planet. We are not colonial overseers, we are your protection and your friends. You are going to get this done or die here. I think most of you will do well here, once you get your heads around being in control of your own lives.” Eric turned and looked at Reed and Ash. “None of this applies to the crews. Your butts are mine.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  ~~~~~~

  The mule landed somewhat gracefully and deposited another cargo container full of colonists in precisely the right spot. Twenty-one containers now sat near the ship on solid rock, eighteen with human cargo living in them until more houses could be built, and three still holding equipment for the settlement. The empty cargo containers were relocated to the rear of the landing zone to make room for the remaining colonists still in orbit. The land around the landing zone had been cleared for houses and fields were being plowed for planting. Everyone was doing something to get the colony established except for a handful who still thought disobeying Earth was too much to ask. That group grew smaller each day and only contained three men and two women now.

  Syble ran a bulldozer across what would one day be a road leading from the village to the farms. Her house was up and furnished more or less, with her bunk from the container, a few chairs and a table, the well was in and fields planted with a small vegetable crop for her and a part of the colony. She had planted just a bit more than they asked her to so that the ships crews could have some real food again. Her wheat fields were planted just like all the other grains they were supposed to raise for Earth. In the fall, hopefully, they would have a place to store it.

  The houses
were prefab things that might not do well here, but once the rush of the first season was over, they could build real homes here, whatever they wanted. All the colonists who were digging in to stay had promised to help each other next season to build better homes for families and not just bunkhouses for workers such as Earth had sent.

  Syble finished her section and got on the com. “This is Syble. What’s next boss?”

  Boss was an engineer named Delany who was now head of the construction team.

  “Done with that already?” was the response.

  “What do you mean already? You look at the sun lately?”

  “Shit. Half a day gone. I gotta get a watch with local time. Bring your dozer over to f-twelve and help them. They have boulders the size of a tractor in the fields to remove.”

  “Roger that. On my way.” She spun the dozer in a tight circle and clanked her way toward f-twelve. She could see other equipment headed in that direction and joined the column. Ahead of her she could see a long red beard waving in the wind as Franklin lead the way toward the boulder-strewn field. She sped up to keep in the column and saw another reason why his beard was flapping. The road was still a little rough at any decent speed, not that the dozer she was driving had a smooth ride anyway.

  They arrived and were stationed where needed. Syble hauled rocks to the side where they would one day be a road or a fence, depending on what was needed first. The field was going to become the lumberyard and cement plant so they needed a good level foundation for the buildings. Some of the rocks they were pulling out would become gravel and used in the concrete they would make here. Some would be shaped with the cutting beams and go right back in the dirt as foundation stones. Either way, they had to come out first.

  The whistle finally blew for dinner and everyone lined up their equipment at the edge of the field to sit overnight. They would catch a ride back to chow on the flitters heading their way now. When they arrived, Syble jumped on over the edge, took a seat in the back on one side so she could get out fast, and hit the shower before dinner. Franklin saw her and grinned, moving to the back to sit next to her.

  “Think you’re slick, don’t you, getting shotgun like that.”

  “Girls gotta watch out for herself out here.”

  “Don’t we all. You don’t mind me asking, but what did a kid like you do to get the government mad enough to ship you out?” He asked.

  “Asked too many questions I guess. I read a lot at night and I wanted to know why we had to do things this way. The wars were over, the danger was past, so why were the emergency provisions still being followed, that sort of thing.”

  “Emergency provisions? What is that?” Franklin asked.

  “When the food wars got bad the government started using emergency powers, stuff they couldn’t normally do like birth control for everyone and limiting who could have kids, rationing food and water to those they decided were worth keeping alive, deciding who got land and how much, that sort of thing. When the war was over, they just kept doing it instead of stopping like the law said they should. I mean, they just took peoples farms and businesses and did whatever they wanted to with the property.

  “When I started getting into trouble at school by asking, they sent a man out to check our rations. He said that if we didn’t eat properly it could affect us in bad ways. I figured that if it was good for us it should be good for the animals too so I fed my rations to my goat, Perversion.”

  “You named your goat Perversion?”

  “Yeah. If you ever met him you would understand why. He was mean and just liked to cause trouble. After I fed him my rations he turned into a lamb. I thought about renaming him Percy to match the change the government rations caused. I never ate them after that and neither did anyone else in the family, not once they saw what it did. We raised enough food for ourselves that we didn’t need them anyway.”

  Franklin listened for some time, asking a question occasionally until they were back at the ship. “Well, I learned a lot today, thanks to you. Let’s get washed up and eat.”

  They both jumped over the rail and ran for their respective showers.

  The food was no longer served for the colonists in the ship. A mess hall and an open pavilion handled the almost ten thousand people much easier and faster. Colonists cooked cleaned and stood in the cafeteria line refilling pots and pans as needed. People took turns, but there were a few who never cooked, as requested by the general vote. They were terrible in the kitchen but they could wash dishes and fill trays so they helped there when it was their turn.

  The water in the transports had been spiked with drugs, just like the other ships, but emptying them and refilling with fresh from the ice belts soon made a difference in the population. There were even a few fights now and then to break up the monotony. The food had not been tampered with by the time the colonists had made contact with Lee so they dumped the drugs and kept the rations wholesome if not tasty.

  The food was augmented by a few vegetables that were ready to harvest quickly, lettuce, radishes and other small things. Beans, corn and potatoes were going to be another two months but a few others might be sooner.

  Eric watched as the lines, slightly less orderly than on Earth, moved rapidly through the food lanes. It was noisy, people talking and laughing, something you didn’t see in public gatherings back on Earth.

  “Come a long way in six weeks, haven’t they?” Reed asked, coming up behind Eric.

  “Haven’t we all. Getting those drugs out of our systems was the big thing. I tell you how the director wanted Betty to cut off my oxygen and dump my body?”

  “No. They really did that?

  “Yes they did. That is how I found out about the secret orders our computers were given. I didn’t get them all right away but as I kept getting fresh water and diluting the drugs in the tanks my mind cleared. They ordered her to leave me behind if I went back on the Astangii after I first found it. You were there when we found out about the drugs too, weren’t you?”

  “Yes Sir, I was. Nasty shock that.”

  “Betty announced that she had just been ordered to knock me out and dump my body. She had to ask me how since she didn’t know. I started a read only file with all those orders in them. You want a good scare, you read through it some time. Stupid orders from control.”

  “I will. Those people scare me. They will not be happy we’ve gone renegade on them.”

  “No they won’t.”

  Chapter 9 We Need More Everything

  “How do we tell the difference between a Catroph ship and ours?”

  “They shoot at us.” Lee answered.

  “Cute. They shot at us when we tried to enter that base. How did they know it was us and not one of their ships?”

  “Well, it was not the nanobots.” Lee answered with a grin.

  “The Catroph engines have a different frequency modulation in their FTL drive on standby. The difference is small, but can be detected with the proper equipment.” Asi answered.

  “So with Catroph ships we can get right next to them without their knowing any different? Can we interact with the Catroph computers if we are attacked?” Eric asked.

  “It is possible before we are attacked. The programming in the Catroph ships is designed to transfer data when two or more ships meet after a prolonged absence. It updates all files with current data and provides for strategy to be transmitted quickly to all ships. The Catroph still use radio for communication.” Astangii answered.

  “Did your people ever try to feed them a virus?”

  “Affirmative. They were able to detect our ships as enemy and stop the virus from entering the main frame.”

  “Okay. So how did they tell it was you and not one of them?” Eric asked.

  “We believe it is in the formatting of the computer.”

  “So if we had one of their computers we could control, we could send Betty over and let her take control of the ship. Betty, is that possible?” Eric asked.

  “Too many
variables at this time. I will study the other computers but I will need to practice on an untouched system before I could answer that with any certainty. The Furry ships we have now were damaged by age and relatively easy. A newer or well maintained vessel could be much different.” Betty responded.

  “Work on it, both of you. If we can capture undamaged ships, it will make our work out here easier. A bigger fleet is a necessity for our survival.”

  “We need metals and rare gasses. If we build a shipyard or restore a shipyard it is useless without metals.” Horace mentioned.

  “We find the mines on this planet yet?” Eric asked.

  “We got the locations but the entrances are buried and all the equipment is at the settlement in use. I felt using a nuke would be a bad thing.” Lee answered.

  “I will second that. No nukes on our home planet, which is what this world is now. What about the asteroid belt? Asi, did your people mine the asteroids?”

  “Many samples were taken and metals were found, but it was easier to mine this world than set up operations in the belt. Gasses and chemicals were taken from the gas giants in the next system twenty light years from here. Locations are now marked on the nav com.”

  “Thanks. How do we mine asteroids with our existing equipment? And how do we mine a gas giant?” Eric asked the others.

  “Beams. We have cutting beams and Asi has beam weapons. Blow them apart gently and heat the ores till the metal separates.” Lee suggested. “Asi will have to explain mining a gas giant.” Asi complied and they all looked confused.

  “We will get back to that. Asi, where was the ore smelted?” Eric asked.

  “Next to the mines. A converter was set to process the ores to metals.”

  The men all exchanged looks. “How did you set a converter to do that?” Horace finally asked.

  “It is a simple matter of prioritizing the conversion process as follows. First . . .”

  It was a long session, most of which they didn’t understand, but it was recorded and printed out as diagrams and math symbols way beyond even the navigators knowledge.