Star Force: Canderous (SF16) Read online

  “Yes I did,” Davis said, turning to face him but remaining by the wall-like window that extended from floor to ceiling. “How would you like some contract work?”

  “Depends what it is,” Jules said, already interested.

  “Vanguard for national colonization. I want a test facility built by non-Star Force personnel to liaise with Russia, Australia, and Brazil as they make plans to establish their own sites. I want to hire you to experiment and set some benchmarks for their use. I don’t want to have to hold their hands once they get there. They either can make a go of this or not, and those three are the only countries I think have a shot of pulling it off.”

  “Where exactly are we talking about?”

  “The test site I want you to colonize is a small island a few kilometers offshore in one of the lakes on Corneria.”

  Jules eyes widened. “You want me to establish a colony for you?”

  “If successful, the colony would remain in your possession. I want to see how someone else handles the challenges of limited resupply, and I want to take your example to instruct the others. The way Star Force colonizes isn’t applicable to anyone else, so I need a test balloon for the public sector.”

  “Interesting,” Jules said, resisting the urge to agree without caveat. “Payment?”

  “I’ll grant you 100 billion credits for the project. If you’re successful you can keep what you build. If my people have to bail you out, I salvage and recycle what’s left over.”

  “Define successful.”

  “You create and manage a viable colony. Other than the credits you get no help from Star Force, though our usual markets will be available to you as they would be to anyone else.”

  “And you want me to coordinate with those three countries?”

  “I want them to watch and learn. Any more than that is your call, but if you play your cards right you could end up with some lucrative contracts helping them establish their colonial footholds afterwards.”

  “Why so generous?”

  “Because it’s not as easy as it looks,” Davis admitted. “Jumpship traffic to and from the system is still light, and right now Star Force is the only one strong enough to build the ships, each of which costs us well more than 100 billion.”

  “How much more?” Jules pressed out of curiosity.

  “Enough that we won’t be selling jumpships anytime soon.”

  “You’re sitting at what now, six?”

  “We have a few more than that,” Davis admitted. “Some we keep out of the public eye, but as far as the normal supply circuit is concerned we have eight in operation.”

  “And the circuit goes through where, exactly?”

  “Sol to Proxima, Proxima to Alpha Centauri, Alpha Centauri to Epsilon Eridani and back to here for route 1. Route 2 goes from Sol to Morpheus, Prancer, Rudolph, then back to Sol. Route 3 has yet to be established, but we do have out and back runs going to Barnard and Sirius.”

  Jules was forced to smile, not so much for the expansive nature of Star Force’s interstellar transportation network, but for the names of the star systems. “Tell me, where exactly did those names come from? They’re not official, are they?”

  “They’re official as far as Star Force is concerned,” Davis said, no longer finding any humor in the names the Archons had chosen for some of the systems that only had catalog numbers. Over the years he’d just come to accept them for what they were, not their namesakes.

  “I guess that’s your prerogative,” Jules relented, “seeing as how you’re the only ones that have been there. How many jumpships are dedicated to route 1?”

  “Three.”

  “Time for a complete cycle?”

  “Including layovers…14 weeks, though they’re not evenly spaced. All three are sequenced in 2 week intervals, leaving a 10 week gap in the rotation. Interstellar communication is by courier only, so all orders are placed through the first and second jumpships so that the second and third will be able to pick them up on the next pass…otherwise you have to wait until the first one comes around the circuit again. We keep our local markets stocked well, but certain items will be hard to get out in a timely manner.”

  “I’m beginning to see the difficulties you spoke of. Self-sufficiency is a bit more than a novelty then?”

  “It’s a necessity. Right now we have limited resources within each system, and if you’re expecting to get help within a few days time it’ll have to be local, which is why I haven’t opened up interstellar colonization yet. If someone screws up we might not be able to help them in time.”

  “Quite a load on my shoulders then.”

  “It is.”

  Jules smiled. “You know I can’t refuse this one. The money and my corporation aside, I can’t pass up an opportunity to get the jump on everyone else.”

  “I didn’t think you would. How soon can you be ready?”

  Jules blew out an unceremonious breath as he thought. “Depends how much we can purchase on site. I’d loosely say 6 months, but I’ll have to get back to you on that once we crunch the numbers.”

  “You do realize you’ll need to go in person?”

  “With the communications lag being what it is? Yeah, I already figured that out. I won’t get any flack from my board, not with the financial gains this endeavor has the potential to generate. In fact, they’ll probably insist that I go anyway to make sure everything comes off without a hitch.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Davis said, extending his hand.

  Jules took it. “You always did want me to work for you.”

  “I have a nose for talent.”

  “Thank you for the opportunity,” he said, releasing the man’s firm grip.

  “I hope you’re up to it,” Davis cautioned. “You’re biting off more than you realize on this one.”

  “Then you’d better get the info flowing my way so I can start to size it up.”

  “Got a packet ready for you,” Davis said, pointing back towards his desk.

  “Do you have time to thumb through it?”

  “For a project this important, yes, I can spare a few hours.”

  “Good,” Jules said as they walked back across the office. “Getting the master’s take is always helpful.”

  8 months later…

  “How we look?” Jules asked his Corvati Captain as he watched their dropship snug up against the docking port of the Tardis, the Star Force jumpship that would be carrying it and six others out to the Epsilon Eridani system along with a slew of cargo buried somewhere inside the mammoth hold of the carrier ship. Of the three assigned to route 1, the Tardis was the only jumpship designed as a carrier, meaning it was able to transport not only cargo and passengers, but other ships as well.

  A huge section of the jumpship design had been cut out along the midsection behind the armored nosecone where a portion of the cargo bays were located on the other jumpships. Inside this dead zone were docking clamps and umbilical attachments tethering the smaller ships to the larger one, much as had been done with inter-planetary carriers, only the size involved in this ship design was multiplied tenfold.

  Eight starships in total were berthed inside, none of which belonged to Corvati. Their dropships were wedged in between along with several other Star Force ones being shipped out simultaneously, gradually filling out their system fleets one shipment at a time while local shipyards helped where they could, but the amount of infrastructure in Sol vastly outnumbered that in other systems, meaning that most of the equipment, for the time being, was having to be shipped in rather than built on site.

  Jules didn’t have any starships in this lot, nor was he going to. Other than his one designated colony site he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The dropships would allow him to connect to a Star Force starport in orbit around Corneria and give him access to the local market, but other than that his people were going to be holed up building infrastructure as fast as they could to the exclusion of all else.

  In the jumpship’s cargo hold
was a number of prefab shelters and a host of construction equipment that his dropships would ferry down to the surface, assisted by Star Force ships to get the unloading accomplished in the short time window the jumpship would be on station. That had cost him a hefty sum, but there was no other way around the problem. Six dropships simply couldn’t handle the unloading on their own, so when they arrived a fleet of more than thirty others would rise up from the planet’s colonies to assist.

  They’d dump everything in a clearing his first surface teams would be excavating, then he and the others would be left alone to do their thing more than a thousand miles away from the nearest colony. At that point his work would begin in earnest, but for right now getting everything buttoned up for transport was his primary concern.

  “Right on the numbers,” the dropship Captain said, engaging the docking clamps that gripped the Herculium beams running around the airlock. With a loud groan the aerodynamically shaped dropship was snugged tight against the carrier’s frame and locked in place. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Good,” Jules said, clapping the man on the back while he smooshed his way back through the cramped dropship to the airlock. His people had crammed crates of supplies in every room and corridor to maximize their cargo space, given that they were having to pay a hefty sum for it. As per the contract, Star Force would deliver the dropships he’d purchased free of charge, but the cargo space taken up inside the jumpship was another matter, and anything they couldn’t cram inside the dropships was costing them extra to transport.

  That said, Jules had bought the minimum of supplies necessary for the startup operation. The big pieces he had to have, but the smaller stuff he could buy from the local Star Force market and avoid the exuberant shipping costs of sending them via jumpship. To date he was the only one to have paid them, but as Davis explained he was the trailblazer for those that would follow, and if they had to pay shipping costs to get here, then so would he.

  That made sense, though it also underscored that Davis was serious about Corvati being on their own on this one. They might be doing contract work for Star Force, but that work was separate and apart, even if they were on the same planet. Jules had to make this work on his own, and Davis had chosen him as the man most likely to make it happen…meaning he had to come through. Failure was not an option.

  That had made choosing items to ship out all the more harrowing. A great deal was going to be determined by his startup equipment, so he had spent an inordinate amount of time going through and tweaking the manifests, as well as getting redundant assurances from Star Force as to what products would be available from the local markets.

  When Jules got to the docking port he jump/walked into the umbilical, feeling himself pass out of the range of the artificial gravity plates in the brand new dropship and float across until he reached the jumpship side and dropped back down a few inches into its artificial gravity. The Captain stayed behind to power down the ship and seal things up for the trip, then would join Jules in the jumpship’s passenger quarters.

  Before that would happen Jules went around and checked on the other dropships, the cargo slabs in the main hold, and took a personal headcount of all his personnel to make sure they’d gotten onboard before he allowed himself to relax and retreat over to the mini-city’s entertainment zone where he found a smattering of Star Force crew walking the ‘streets’ of what would later become open to the public…but for now it was largely deserted, with most of the kiosks closed due to lack of customers.

  One of the dining facilities was open, however, and Jules met up with several of his people there for a long meal, during which the jumpship broke Earth orbit to head out towards the jumpline to Proxima and the first leg of their journey. The following 9 weeks would be the worst for Jules, given that all he could do was sit and worry about how things might go wrong. Once they made planetfall his nerves would settle down as he was able to work the problems that arose, but until then he consigned himself to the downtime and as many games, movies, and dinners he could find on the jumpship to occupy his time with.

  The last thing he wanted to do was sit in his quarters and stew, and he knew the best way to pass time was to fill it with something that would keep his mind busy.

  3

  June 7, 2259

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Jules came down on the third dropship load of supplies, after the first run had delivered the forest-clearing cutting devices and the second delivered the prefab structures to set up their improvised landing pad. He took up residence there, overseeing the grounding of his equipment and personnel as a regular stream of the winged dropships descended from orbit and landed on the scraped dirt clearing, floating down into place on anti-grav engines.

  His seven dropships were the most recent Star Force models. 5 were Mark VII Sparrows, the smallest dropships they made, while the other 2 were Mark VII Eagles, the medium version. They made repeated trips up to the ship, but along with them came the Star Force-owned dropships to assist with the cargo transfer.

  Or rather handle the cargo transfer. Duke Hightower hadn’t sent over any Sparrows or Eagles. Instead, he sent over the large Falcons and even two of the new Dragon-class dropships. The extra-heavy lifters had only been put into service once the advent of anti-grav tech had hit the market, for without it there was no way the giant boomerangs could ever have flown unassisted.

  With the larger model dropships unloading the bulk of the Corvati cargo in a relatively short time, Jules had to stay ahead of the surface unloading, as did the clearers who were having a hard time cutting down the thick trees and clearing away the underbrush before subsequent dropships would arrive. They had no other options for unloading other than what his crews cleared, given that the 247 square mile island had no natural clearings and only a thin beach around the perimeter.

  A huge pile of brush was mounded up just south of the command center as the cutters worked their way east and west with the dropships landing in a roundish clearing to the north and their cargo being transferred off ship and laid out in a grid along the center, spreading out as if it were chasing the cutters east and west. Those crates that could be stacked on top of each other were, to save space, making for several artificial mountains dotting the dirt-fresh clearing.

  Between running manifests and coordinating placements Jules would go topside on his command module to get his bearings, as well as watch the work being done in person. The upper balcony was still lower than the tree pile, but just taller than the highest crate stacks, having been constructed of several prefabricated segments that had been reattached to each other upon landing to create a four story tall building supported on thick legs that sank halfway down into what had just been the forest floor.

  Overhead another Falcon came down, momentarily blotting out the sun as the large-sized dropship hovered over the makeshift camp, waiting for another to leave the landing area so it could take its place. Two Falcons could sit side by side on the landing ‘pad’ and give the offloaders plenty of work room to spare, but when a Dragon came down it had to have the pad to itself. For the moment though, both of the behemoths were back in space, being loaded up again for the third time.

  Jules knew the jumpship had other cargo to unload and a schedule to keep, so he didn’t begrudge the Star Force crews their breakneck pace as he fought to stay ahead of it. They had more than half of their cargo on the ground now, and for some reason it seemed much larger in volume on the ground versus being stashed inside hold of the Tardis. That…and he also had to allow access roads in between the stacks so they could sort out what they needed rather than just stack it in a big pile like they had on the jumpship.

  “We’ve hit a snag,” Uriel said, walking up behind Jules on the upper platform. “The east clearing crew has come across a boulder they can’t move.”

  Jules half turned to look at the woman as he kept his attention on the now landing Falcon. “Tell them to keep moving on. We’ll just have
to work around it for now,” he said, looking to the east.

  “Damn,” he whispered as she left to go below. Now that he knew what to look for he could see the top of the rock, which must have been bigger than a 2-story house. They’d either have to cut it apart later or build around it…something he didn’t want to do. It’d be a time killer either way.

  He glanced back in the other direction, seeing the large cutting machines with their spinning blades hacking through the upper levels of the forest, then dipping down for another cut midway up, slicing the trees apart into segments rather than trying to topple the giants in one fell swoop, which would have been extra hazardous given their height and falling range. After reading through Star Force protocol, which he was obliged to follow now that he was doing contract work for them, he’d asked Davis’ for an allowance to use the massive cutters, which the Director had granted given that the planet had no wildlife. Otherwise, Jules would have had to have taken a much slower means of leveling the trees.

  He didn’t really care one way or another for Star Force’s respect for wildlife, he was just concerned about keeping his schedule, though he had to admit it didn’t seem to slow the mega corporation’s expansion enough to matter. They were the most prolific builders in Human history, and given that record he didn’t mind having to follow their protocols, for in them might be some unspoken wisdom that would aid his own construction efforts.

  By the time the last of the cargo shipments arrived it was nightfall, with the massive Star Force dropships landing in an impressive display of running lights. His own people had spread beacons out around the landing zone for visual reference, but he knew the navigational computers onboard the ships were sufficient to bring them down without the illuminated markers. Regardless, it helped to define a bit of order to the makeshift camp that remained even as the bigger dropships departed.

  His own seven ships put down in the landing zone, parking close together to fit inside the perimeter as the rest of his people filed out, having waited on the jumpship until the very end. During the interim several more prefab modules had been assembled to the south of the command center, giving them their temporary quarters and workstations. Jules met up with them as they arrived and got them settled in, then caught a couple hours of sleep himself before getting back to work before the sun came up and a new 22 hour day began.