Five men and women dressed in lab coats sat in the conference room, inspecting the hologram of Pollux V. Their forms flickered and wavered lightly, their ship’s civilian laser communications gear compensating for the fleet’s high-g maneuvers.
James sipped at his matcha tea, giving them as much time as they wanted to read up on the planet’s characteristics. What was a few minutes, when a botched terraforming could set them back entire years?
“It is possible.” The bald man at the center of the group said after some time, nodding sagely at the planet’s hologram.
“More than possible, I say.” His deputy said, the albino rubbing his bone-white chin. “Ten years?”
“Less.” A third scientist, this time a woman, corrected him. “The tectonics are good, the atmosphere can be modified, and the water’s just trapped because of low temperatures. A textbook case of Tarsis Bombardment.”
“Modified Tarsis.” The deputy countered. “We’d need to enhance the cloud seeding by at least-”
“Let’s not bore the duke with numbers.” The bald man interrupted the pair with a slightly louder voice. Turning to James, he bowed lightly. “Apologies, my lord.”
“Please, Chief Grey, there’s not need for apologies. Do you need more time?”
The veteran terraformist shook his head. “No. It is our professional opinion that Pollux V is a good candidate for terraforming. I estimate…two years until a colony can be established. Three, accounting for any complications or interruptions.”
James’ eyes widened at the scientist’s words. “How is that even possible, doctor?”
“I said habitable, milord, not livable.” Chief Grey shrugged. “We can free water from the ample ice, giving us the raw materials for electrolysis while at the same time lowering the planet’s albedo —how much sunlight is reflected— and kicking the average temperature up a few degrees C. With virtually free energy, industrial support and little worry of overheating the planet, that much is expectable.”
His hands moved to the hologram, using special gloves to modify the ‘planet’ with a twist of his palm. The image focused on the center of Pollux V’s north-most continent, inside a valley almost four hundred meters bellow sea level.
“This valley is an ideal candidate. It is approximately five hundred square kilometers, enough for several hundred thousand citizens as well as all the necessary infrastructure of a self-sufficient settlement. Thanks to its unique geography, inside a basin between several hills and mountains, we could concentrate our efforts on the area and create an environment capable of sustaining human life within a few short years.”
A chuckle escaped James’ lips. “That is excellent news. Please, tell me what you need to do.”
The chief blinked.
“Well…first we would need to set up a hydrolysis plant. Ice and snow from the mountains would be shipped in, melted into water and then used to oxygenate the atmosphere and power our fusion reactors. Since an atmosphere already exists, there’s hardly anything else we need to do to make the area breathable.”
“And that would take?” James asked, wincing at the scientist’s expression.
“I should preface this by saying we can’t be certain, yet. We need to examine the planet closely to answer such questions. But, from what we already know…six months. Six months to make the atmosphere inside the valley breathable. Of course, that’s just one part of the terraforming process.”
“Atmospheric engineering was mastered before the invention of the hyperdrive, as humanity fixed the ruined environment of Ancient Terra after the War of Annihilation. Creating an entire biosphere from scratch is…significantly more difficult. Again, the valley settlement could be ‘greened’ within a year or two. But bringing life to an entire planet takes time. We can’t just throw in a couple of artificially born animals and a coupe of tree saplings and call it a day.”
“One would assume so.” James smiled.
“Quite. Doctor Hegel, my deputy, is more suited to explaining the process.” The chief gestured to his albino junior, who visibly shrunk at the attention from his duke.
“M-Milord…you could compare the process to a line of dominoes.” The bone-white man said, taking a deep breath as he focused on his next words. “First, w-we need to introduce microscopic life on both sea and land. This is often done by seeding rain —artificial or natural— with billions of trillions of little eggs, that will then be spread evenly. We do this to create the medium for growing bigger organisms. On land, bacteria help create soil from dirt, clay and gravel, while at sea the microorganisms serve as food and regulate oxygen levels. With constant seeding and appropriate fertilizer —inorganic compounds found in asteroids by the kiloton— they can grow within months.”
As the man continued speaking, his rythm steadied into a confident pace.
“After that, we introduce bigger organisms. Rain seeding is once again the best option, used to drop the seeds of a hundred different types of grass and algae over the planet. Then our efforts are split, as land and sea operations become more specialized. In general, plants and animals are introduced in groups that are only reliant on each other as well as those introduced before them, recreating the food chain.”
“And how long until we have a mature biosphere?”
Doctor Hegel shrugged. “Inside the aforementioned settlement, in as little as two years. Concentrating our expertise on one area will speed up each stage substantially, and a lot can be done in parallel with the atmospheric engineering. But planet-wide, the process could take ten or twenty years. I can’t say any more, because I simply don’t know yet.”
“I see.” James nodded in understanding. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen. We all have busy schedules, so let’s stop the meeting here. We will be entering Praxis V’s orbit in eight hours. Doctor Grey, please contact my chief of staff when your observations are complete so you can give me a complete report and time-line.”
“Understood, milord.” Doctor Grey acknowledge, the entire team bowing as their holograms evaporated into nothing.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
+++
“You gave him a planet?!” Mayor Himura Keiichi exclaimed, her mouth agape.
“Well….sort of?” Katrina felt herself shrink at the woman’s onslaught. Mayor Himura barely reached up to her chest, but she made up for her lack of height with a heart of fire and a voice louder than ambulance sirens.
“And what’s that supposed to mean, ma’am. Did you also give him half the system by any chance?”
“Again, sort of…” Katrina raised her hand to stop the mayor’s verbal onslaught. “But, and this is a big one, I didn’t ‘give him’ anything. He paid for it, fair and square.”
Sporting one hell of a frown, the mayor sat back down on her seat. “Ugh…alright. Lay it on us.”
Unlike the borderline-isolationist dwarf, the rest of her cabinet was at least somewhat partial to the deal she had made. Not that Katrina could reverse the decision now; the duke’s fleet was already burning hard towards Praxis V, and the agreement had been signed, witnessed, recorded and transcribed for posterity.
“Don’t look at me like that, Keiichi. Unlike the merchants and their mercenary rates, the duke has actually paid us well. I’m sure you’ve all seen at least the basic outline of his fleet as observed by Polaris Station, but in the case you haven’t let me just say two words. Mobile Refinery.”
A couple of murmurs flew between mouths and ears, and Mayor Himura’s eyes widened in realization.
“Yeah, that’s right. The duke has agreed to provide us with antimatter fuel in bulk.”
“For how much?” Secretary Marcus Siegfried asked, uncharacteristically pale. Katrina barely held back a chuckle; the man was probably expecting some exorbitant price tag.
“Ninety percent.” She replied, earning more than a handful confused glances. But not from her secretary of finance; the man was a veteran of his trade —one who she’d barely managed to poach for her venture—. “The duke will send a tanker every time somebody needs to refuel at Polaris Station, and collect ninety percent of whatever we charge.”
“Impossible.” Siegfried objected. “The biggest and most efficient refineries in the sector cap their margins at ninety-five, and they only give out those kinds of deals to the biggest, fattest clients in the block, like entire fleets of fuel haulers or super-orbitals. If we tried to get a deal like that with the fuel merchants, they’d set the margin to ninety-nine and ask for an exorbitant minimum. What the fuck is he getting out of this?”
“Beats me.” Katrina shrugged, and she was telling the truth. Running a refinery, and a mobile one at that, could not be cheap. “Maybe he’s counting on high traffic, maybe he doesn’t know how to run a business. In any case, we make a profit by virtue of simply existing.”
“Well…that’s decent money, but it doesn’t quite reach the ‘we sold a planet for this much’ range.” Himura argued.
“You’d be right, except that’s hardly it. The duke’s fleet has more than twenty ships, which include warships, passenger ships, freighters, fuel haulers and the aforementioned mobile refinery. And what does a large fleet need? Maintenance, and lots of it. Add in the fact it isn’t just any flotilla, but a colony expedition, and that means you need at least one ship dedicated in its entirety to producing stuff, from nuts and bolts to batteries, sensors and who knows what else.”
Looking down at the display in front of her seat, she shared some of Polaris Station’s sensor data to the others’ conference terminals. Seconds later, everybody was looking at the scans of a nine-hundred-meter-long armored freighter decorated with laser clusters and kinetic CIWS emplacements. The design screamed military, yet aside from its point defenses the ship had no weapons to speak of.
“This is their mobile factory. Or, at least, one of them. The ANS Blackmisth’s Bane, named after an extinct profession where a man forged crude metal tools using hammers, anvils and physical strength. Duke Akrites assured me that it could service our need for manufactured goods, from industrial machinery to mining equipment and even household appliances.”
“And they’ll…let us use it?” Chief Engineer Gerhard Masur asked, hungrily staring at his display while rubbing his white beard.
“Not quite. They are willing to provide us with industrial capacity, paid with raw materials. Essentially, we’ll be paying with ore. The costs come out incredibly low.”
“And how do we know they can support our needs? What stops them from saying they ‘miscalculated’ or some other excuse?” Mayor Himura pointedly asked.
Katrina smiled. “Because of this.” She tapped her console.
The bulky black form of the Blacksmith’s Bane disappeared from everyone’s screens, replaced by a sleek gray warship.
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Reliance-class system patrol boat. It’s a hundred-meter-long, twenty-five kiloton warship built for anti-piracy operations. It has point defenses, kinetic weapons and missile launchers, military-grade shields and boarding craft.”
“A nice ship, perfect for our needs.” Himura nodded, though the frown hadn’t left her face. “How much did you spend on this?”
Ships were expensive. A transorbital shuttle cost upwards of five million aurums, and that didn’t include the exorbitant costs of shipping it out to the frontier. An actual warship, armed and armored for a proper fight, ought to have cost the colony its gross domestic product for the year.
“Forty kilotons of steel, or an equivalent quantity of any other metal in terms of rarity.”
“Hu?” The mayor let out a confused sound.
“Exactly my response.” Katrina chuckled. “The duke has offered to built up to four Reliance-class boats, each of which requires about two dozen kilotons of metal. Since our main export is refined minerals, he’s offered to accept them as payment. Half as a down-payment, and half upon delivery of the vessel. And he’s offered exchange rates for most other metals, which I’d say are pretty good.”
It was actually more than ‘pretty good’. It was phenomenal, and even the stubborn mayor knew it. For the price of five transorbital shuttles they’d buy a bona-fide warship.
+++
It took some more arguing but ultimately the meeting’s participants left, satisfied after thoroughly grilling their leader.
‘I wonder if the duke has to deal with the same spiel…’ Katrina thought as she walked outside colonial headquarters building and into the cool polarisian air. Her own home was close enough that she didn’t need to walk, and the colony was small enough that there wasn’t any serious threat to her person in public.
All she wanted to do was lie down in her chair in front of the fireplace, have a drink and fall asleep. She hadn’t slept for twenty hours, and considering a day in Polaris was twenty-two standard hours that really was pushing it.
“Aurum for your thoughts, ma’am?” A gruff voice called out from behind her.
Turning around, she saw Crane Bishop in his signature fur coat approaching her with a smile.
“Oh, cut the ma’am shit out, Cray.”
“I dunno, you looked like a ma’am-worthy person back during those negotiations.” The miner-turned-executive chuckled, matching his pace with hers.
The two of them walked in silence for several minutes, surveying the calm streets of southern Goldspeak. While the northern portions of the colonial capital were always busy, the southern suburbs had a village-like quality to them that Katrina hadn’t known she needed.
“We almost lost this today.” He muttered.
“And yet we’re still standing. I hear they’re toasting to the Duke’s name once every half-hour in the pubs, and there wasn’t any significant damage on the ground.” She replied.
“All thanks to our mysterious benefactors, banishing the pirates like fairytale heroes.”
Katrina turned to look at her long-time friend and partner, frowning. “Don’t tell me Keiichi got you into her isolationist band-wagon.”
“Pfft, please. The woman is insufferable. No, I don’t think we should hide under our shells and keep on living as if pirates weren’t this close to putting a collar around our necks a day ago. But…do you think we can trust him?”
“The duke?” She asked, sighing. “You mean the guy in command of a warfleet meaner than a Hegemony battlegroup? We’ve got a wrecked orbital, three hundred policemen armed with shock batons and a few dozen security folk with flechette guns. Honestly, Cray, do you think we have a choice?”
“No…and I don’t like that.”
“I don’t like that either, but at least there’s a chance we can win big. Heck, I would’ve given him the planet if he’d just asked nicely. The fact that we got a king’s ransom for it makes up for the lack of choice and then some. This isn’t what we planned for, but it sure is better than praying the next ship that makes orbit doesn’t try to rob us for all we’re worth.”
“Now…” She paused as they arrived in front of her residence. “Are you going to come in for a bottle of alkbrew, or do I need to break out the good stuff?”