Starship: First Steps to Empire

by R J Murray

  “You have been doing some reading. That is a great idea. We may need to build a lot of them and the conventional weapons to go with them. You read anything else?” Eric asked.

  “Grapeshot. A bunch of balls fired in a canister at the enemy. We load a few warheads with scrap or even dirt and rocks and use them to take out their missiles.”

  “We need a weapons lab. Let’s write some of these ideas down and assign people to work on each of them.” Eric started.

  “I’ll take the weasel thing.” Phil volunteered. “Hector gets back he can work with me.”

  “Fine. I’ll get Chuck in on this and work on conventional warheads. Lee, can you look around for any kind of weapons people?” Eric asked.

  “I have a few ideas already. Our base in orbit would be a good place for a weapons lab, just in case something goes boom. Our physicists would be a good start. They seem to need more space than we have aboard your ship.” Lee said.

  “I thought so too, but I wasn’t sure what to do with them. They even asked me for a particle accelerator. They would have access to their own computer too and the materials to build some nice weapons. The dock would give them robots to build with.” Eric said.

  “We need research on Acadia as well. Agriculture, geology, minerals and even the trees and native plants need to be looked over and information added to our database. If we want this to be the first of many viable colony worlds then we need to get the teams and techniques established here on this planet. Survey teams, right?” Lee added. “What we did before was a waste of time considering how vast space is. These guys had dozens if not hundreds of ships looking for viable planets and we send out one. So stupid.”

  “Asi, did your people terra form worlds?” Eric asked.

  “Affirmative. Some planets are marginally acceptable and can be improved by adding our flora and fauna. Others are too primitive and must be developed over a period of decades with machines and algae before advanced flora can be added to the environment.” Asi answered.

  “Ships detected.” Came over the com. “Identity confirmed. It’s the Star Gazer and the freighters. Sir’s, Star Gazer has a Colonial Administrator aboard and Captain Thornton. Both have agreed to join us.”

  “Well, what do you know? We could use the administrator or his staff at least. They should have some knowledge about setting up a colony.” Lee said. “As long as we watch him closely.”

  ~~~~~~

  “Old weapons and submarines. Are they all brain dead on Earth?” Eric asked, checking the manifest.

  Administrator Juan Huang cleared his throat. “If I may?” He held out his hand and Eric handed him the tablet. Huang scanned through the lists quickly. “You were asking for weapons to hunt giant sea creatures and to handle the dangers of an alien planet. It seems to me that someone on a much lower civil service level decided to clean out a few warehouses of all the junk that had accumulated over the years. In this case, it appears it had actually accumulated over a century or more. Some of this was twentieth century goods. Amazing. Even I am shocked and I have seen a few things that would make this look righteous. It at least is in the proper category of weapons.

  “If you can make fuel or converter these vessels into a different energy source, they may be of some use to you. Otherwise, I would recycle them for the metals and build something else.”

  “Actually Commodore, we have made a few of these weapons functional.” Amos said. He motioned to Josiah who pushed a small floater over with weapons on the top shelf and ammo on the second.

  “This is a nice one.” Amos picked up a trench gun and loaded it before working the pump action and aiming it at a stump twenty meters away.

  Juan looked concerned and began to speak. “Is he actually going to fire . . .”

  BAM!

  “I supposed he is.” Juan sighed. His aide had jumped when the gun fired and then took a few steps back.

  The stump looked ragged and Eric took his turn. The stump was getting shredded.

  “Want to try it Juan?” Eric held the gun out, offering it to the Administrator.

  “When amongst barbarians, I suppose one should make an effort to blend in. How do I work this?”

  Josiah demonstrated and Juan cut loose on the evil stump.

  “My. That could be amusing after a while. It certainly does a good job on stumps.” He handed the gun back to Josiah.

  “If we use buckshot we can do this.” Josiah held the gun at waist level and pumped the action rapidly while holding the trigger down, expending the remaining five rounds into the now frazzled stump. “We also have a solid round like this we can use. Does more damage but you do need to aim. These buckshot are not much good outside of forty meters, maybe seventy for the slugs.” Josiah had a few of the round shot in a bowl to show them and a slug sitting on the shelf beside them.

  “That ought to do a number on the lizard things the Catroph left behind.” Eric said.

  “I have heard that word before. What is a Catroph?” Juan asked.

  “They didn’t mention you were entering a war zone?” Amos asked.

  “War? Scarcely a war. You’ve already established yourself as independent and Earth has few ships to send out here.”

  “Not us versus Earth. Humans and the Astangii against Catroph ships.” Eric explained.

  “You have completely lost me. I have no idea what you are speaking of.”

  ~~~~~~

  “The Maker preserve us.” Juan was shaken and his staff was white with fear. They had spent the last two hours watching the short version of why the Catroph were bad.

  “Those things are monsters! Why are we even out here?” Juan asked.

  “You people decided to send us, remember.” Eric answered.

  “I am a second level civil servant. I do not deal with those decisions, I had never heard a word about any of this until this moment, and I wish I never had.”

  “How bad does Earth need resources?” Lee asked. He had come up after hearing the gunshots and tried a few of the other weapons. He had a ten mm pistol strapped to his hip now.

  “In all honesty, we are desperate. Food is limited and fuels are in very short supply. Desert is still encroaching on farmland, clean water is in short supply and metals are almost exhausted. We could not build a fleet to come after you if our very lives depended on it. This last load of wheat actually prevented a planned famine in the eastern European region. We are stripping the old cities of metals to build more solar power units and wind turbines to keep disaster away for another few decades. After that, Earth dies, the environment goes to desert almost everywhere. Another decade or two later there is a severe climate shift and a new ice age. Mankind either leaves or dies.”

  “Isn’t Mars sending wheat and corn back to Earth?” Amos asked.

  “They were, but we ship out from Mars and we do not send anything back. For over a century we have been stripping the Martian soil of nutrients around the colonies and it is coming back to haunt us. We did the same thing to Luna and the colony there is finished. We cannot afford to do anything else on those planets. Resources are too scarce to mount another expedition doomed to failure once again. This is not known outside of the Committee. I only know due to the fact that I was coming here and I needed to push food shipments as hard as possible. Your Pathfinder and these other ships were the last Earth could build.”

  “So Earth is desperate but they have nothing to send us in payment but antique weapons and bodies. So be it. We can do something with the weapons and more bodies mean more food production and more everything we need here. It will be a little rough for a while, but that just means we will get tougher.” Eric said resolutely.

  The com on the wall beeped. “I beg your pardon Sir. The Constabulary has a problem. Three dead and two wounded. They want to know about either stopping the patrols or if they can get heavier weapons.”

  ~~~~~~

  Amos looked at the animal. It was big, almost a ton and a half. Six legs ending in claws and the mouth hel
d teeth as long as his hand. The skin was leathery and had hard plates almost as tough as steel covering the body, legs and head.

  “How did you kill this one?”

  “It choked to death when Harvey pushed his rifle down its throat.” Sergeant Nguyen answered. “Harvey died anyway, too much blood loss from his missing legs and guts. This is a baby by the way.”

  “Shit. Okay, we have a few heavier weapons for you. Josiah, you want to break them out?”

  “Yes Sir.” He began opening the crates and handing out rifles and trench guns to the dozen men still uninjured in the patrol.

  “These are what Earth sent us and they are better than what we had before, once we rebuilt them. Those six mm rifles were not much use out here except for the squirrel things. These are ten gauge trench guns and ten mm assault rifles. We have a few pistols in ten mm but they will be out later when we get ammo made up.” Josiah took a trench gun and loaded it, showing the men how it was done. Then he turned to the lizard and fired. Josiah took a step back while the body jumped and new holes appeared. “Forgot to take my braced stance. These do kick when you fire so brace yourselves properly.”

  “Damn. If we had had these earlier . . .”

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t and nothing will change that. Just be glad we have them now.” Nguyen said sharply. He shouldered the rifle and put three rounds into the corpse.

  “Nice. Full auto, three round burst and single shot selection. Thirty round magazines?”

  “Yes. We are working on restoring a few vehicles they sent out also. It was a tracked armored thing but the tracks are missing and so is the engine. We are installing contra gravity in it once we get the cannon working.” Amos said.

  “Cannon? I love it.” One of the men said.

  “Twenty millimeter auto feed with armor piercing, tracer and explosive in the belts. The tracer is one in five. It also has a twelve point five machine gun in the turret coaxial with the cannon and can carry six inside with firing ports along the sides. Should be nice and noisy for you people. If it works, we will build more here with whatever weapons we need.” Amos promised. “Think of it as a flitter with attitude.”

  ~~~~~~

  “Lizard front, twenty meters and closing!” came the cry. Ten men braced, watching the brush as the scanner pinged the closing rate for the beast through the thick brush.

  “Ten meters. Five. Twelve o’clock at one meter height, fire!” Sergeant Nguyen ordered.

  The weapons opened up, the staticco burst of the assault rifles mixing with the mechanical ching and deep blast of the trench guns. The lizard burst out of the brush and skidded to a halt two meters from the lead man.

  “Is it dead?” someone asked.

  Nguyen put a slug in the chamber and placed the muzzle of his trench gun against the beasts head. He squeezed off a round, the head bursting open and spraying his legs with what passed as lizard brain tissue. “I think so.”

  Chapter 12 The Administrator and Other fables

  “Your industrial base is pathetic, where it even exists at all.” Juan began. “If I am to make a difference here, stuck as I am on this planet, then you need to turn me loose and let me do what I know how to do. Build a colony. I don’t have to be in charge, but you do need to listen to me.”

  “Okay, shoot. What do we do?” Eric and several of the captains were in the office Juan was using dirt side. His staff was housed with him in one of the empty cargo containers for the moment.

  “First, centralized industry will not work here, even though that was the plan Earth sent. Your people are too far apart and transportation is abominable. Cottage industry, each village contributing something to the overall production will work. You did several things right, I might add. Your data base on skills is excellent. Several groups just started making things on their own, without any instructions to do so which I suppose is to be expected on this planet. This man here, this Carlos Plantagenet has begun his own firearms industry with eight people, some of them women and is building rifles for the colonists. On Earth, they would be executed but out here I suppose they are to be commended. Shoes, boots, clothing of many types including leather have begun.

  “First we need to decide what we still need. We cannot look to Earth for much but we can ask for more antique weapons and materials similar to what they sent the first time. We tell them we are recycling the metals and adding them to the stocks for shipment. We need a continuous flow of materials, more freighters and more warships if this war is going to get active again. We need warships like that Astangii one but the little ones will do I suppose.

  “We need oils and we must plant crops to produce them. Biofuels are all we have left on Earth and they work, but there is not enough land for more crops. Here we can set up thousands of hectares for biofuel crops and set a processing plant in the villages close to the crops. That will also supply us with diesel if we ever get those submarines working again.

  “Cloth must be made here and we must plant cotton, flax, and build a chemical plant for synthetics. I understand you are actually mining the atmosphere of a gas giant. Amazing. It would never happen on Earth, it can’t be done, they would say. We keep enough for ourselves and make what we can from it.

  “Here is a requisition for the next shipment to Earth. More plants, trees and seeds of crops we do not have here but can be of use to ourselves and Earth. More antique weapons and machinery to be recycled or rebuilt as we need. More bodies with specific skill sets we do not have here and a fully equipped hospital unit. They always have a few doctors and nurses who are in trouble one way or another.

  “Transportation. More mules, several shuttlecraft to transport to and from orbit and the moon base, flitters and scout ships, so on and so on ad infinitum. It’s all there in my proposal, three hundred pages and addendums with indexes.”

  “Damn. You keep saying we.” Eric finally said.

  “Yes, well, I am stuck here and it’s not a bad planet at all, other than homicidal aliens and nasty beasts. If I do this,” he waved his hand at the tablet Eric now held, “then I am truly one of you. I cannot return to Earth after playing along with this revolution. It does have a few benefits also. My staff actually has ideas of their own and is much more active than before. I actually held a conversation with several of the clerks the other day, an intelligent conversation. That would never happen on Earth, I can tell you that.”

  “That can happen when people are not drugged down to the intelligence of a slab of bacon.”

  “Ah yes, bacon. Have you ever eaten real bacon Eric?”

  “Not since I was a kid. We had a few hogs and we always killed our own for meat. At least my grandparents did up until they disappeared and the government stuck me in a genetic research crèche. Be nice to have a few animals, enough to have ham and eggs or a BLT again.”

  “Genetic research crèche? Not many of those around and few who come out of them for anything except the military. The Council has privileges they keep from the population. On occasion, I received bacon from my superiors as a gift for the holidays. I was always so jealous, that they had bacon and I did not, making do instead with protein bars and soy meats. I would like to have bacon again one day. We should all enjoy such things when we can, I suppose. That day will come as I am requesting animals in sufficient number to be able to open a packing house and ship meats back to Earth.”

  “There are Astangii cattle on the southern continent and they do cook up nice. We could start with them.” Lee said.

  “Are there many?” Juan asked.

  “One hundred and thirty million before we stopped counting. At least two or three times that number we think.”

  “We can do that and we should. We can use the leather for shoes, belts, clothing and other such items. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, items usually only available to the Committee members should be on every freighter going back to Earth. Luxury items all and wanted more than needed, but wanted badly. Leather clothing, coats and hats, beyond the reach of many but wanted by t
he few. Even though some people lack bread, bourbon continues to be distilled, beer brewed and wines aged. It all goes to the privileged few and if we cater to those few, we will get what we need.” Juan sat back in his wooden rocking chair, a local product of the cottage industry. “It is a crime to do this, but what can they do to me? Banish me to a colony world?”

  ~~~~~~

  The freighters were gone again, and the Astangii went with them along with two Earth ships. The cargo had been unloaded and a most of it distributed among those who needed it or had the experience to use it.

  Syble stood back and looked over the canes. Fifty healthy boysenberry canes and thirty raspberry along both sides of her house. Her apple trees were further away, all forty of them and she could almost make out the peach trees her closest neighbor had planted. Her chickens were clucking happily in the yard, their fenced enclosure open in the daylight so they could forage for themselves. She even had four goats in the barn, something that made her smile even broader. Ice cream was only a few days away, once the nice man from the ships armory finished her ice cream maker, hand cranked, of course. Sugar was around this year, but next year it would be scarce unless they got the sugar cane crop going down south where it was hotter. Coffee was going to be a problem for many too. They hadn’t sent any coffee plants this trip and by the time the ships returned next year, they would be out.

  A new section opened further south for hot weather crops and many of the new colonists had gone there. Some were raising rice for shipment back to Earth while others grew corn. Even watermelons were in the southern fields and Syble was looking forward to that harvest. She had cantaloupes now and even squash of all kinds for the menus. She heard that they were going to grow cotton and something called flax in the south also, but she wasn’t sure what the second plant was used for.

  She heard a flitter and walked around the porch to see who it was. Franklin was just setting the flitter down when she saw him.

  “How you doing Syble?” He asked.