Star Force: Unification (SF39) Read online

  Davis was in his office, as was typical, when the message came through. He put aside the shipyard expansion plans for Venus orbit and played out the message on his holographic desktop, only mildly surprised by the content. He hadn’t expected any of the nations to actually make it through the verification process, not because it was impossible or unfair, but it required them to have displayed foreplanning prior to the beginning, with it being virtually impossible to throw together a fully capable nation, even at what Davis considered to be minimum standards, within a 5 year span.

  He would have given himself a 50/50 chance with a treasure chest of credits and an empty territory purchase, but they weren’t him, nor did they have his experience. That said, Australia, Russia, and Brazil had a decent foothold on the problem given their long and beneficial history with Star Force, though none of them had been where they needed to be, still relying on taxation and a myriad of other old school bad habits to sustain themselves, with Australia being the one to show the most progress.

  As it was he figured they alone had a decent shot of making it, for they’d done considerable retooling before the verification edict had come down, and even more so since then…but they still had a long way to go and not a lot of time to do it, so he wasn’t really surprised to hear the Brazilian request. It was both logical and forward thinking, with their efforts to date accomplishing, if nothing else, to show them how incapable they were of true sovereignty.

  That put the remaining nations down to three, with Canada having immediately realized that there was no way they could meet the military and corovon requirements on their own. Before they’d hit February they had negotiated a deal to consolidate with New Zealand, abandoning their own bid for sovereignty and adding to that adhoc conglomerate that appeared doomed to fail, yet was limping on far longer than Davis had expected.

  Germany had given up a month ago, unable to secure a merger with any of the other nations, leaving the original big 3 plus New Zealand. With Brazil now out, for Davis was going to give them what they wanted, which amounted to a governmental replacement and restructuring that would maintain and upgrade all of Brazil’s current assets while removing their politicians, he figured it was highly likely that one more would go before the year was up, and he was hedging between New Zealand and the Russians.

  Australia, he knew, already had a stockpile of corovon because Star Force had recommended they create it more than a century ago. It was insufficient at present, but they were adding to it rapidly and he assumed they’d get the prerequisite amount, along with meeting the other round 3 requirements, most of which they were already in compliance with.

  New Zealand he expected to drop this round, but he was hedging his bets as Avril kept pulling one rabbit out of the proverbial hat after another, unwilling to write them completely off. Russia was the question mark, for while they had access to corovon mines of their own, plus a well-established military, they were beset with a number of lingering problems, the biggest of which was their reliance on taxation. With that option now gone they were financially weakened, having to rely on stopgap measures and draining their reserves to stay afloat long enough, they hoped, to begin generating the necessary revenue.

  They were fervently cost-cutting wherever they could, including selling off military assets to New Zealand, which was trying to assemble the prerequisite force through acquisitions rather than in-nation builds, which Davis knew they had no time for. The Russian ‘empire’ was larger than Brazil’s, and only slightly smaller than Australia’s, but it was heavier than both with a dense population and a large operating overhead. They had gone for a bulk approach to colonization expansions, building and building with little effort put into efficiency…and now that their heavy taxes were now extinct, that bulk was suffocating them.

  Already they’d jettisoned several territories, with Star Force stepping in to stabilize and annex them immediately. It was sloppy and reckless on the Russians’ part, leaving so many people hanging, but they knew Star Force was going to pick up their scraps so Davis didn’t hold it against them officially, but it did attest to their lack of foreplanning, something that was necessary for a nation that expected to survive past today.

  But the Russians didn’t have many choices, from their point of view, and were doing whatever they could to survive to the next round of the Nation Games as the media had come to call this contest, and which, Davis admitted, he had structured in a way that gave it a competitive feel. His own purposes behind it were lost on the public, for this was no game, though Star Force being there to pick up the pieces offered a sense of security that was not present in reality…which was what he was trying to hammer home to the nations involved.

  They had to be able to survive without him and Star Force, thus he had no qualms about putting the pressure on them in this time-constrained test. If they hadn’t prepared beforehand, and weren’t capable of learning quickly, then he was going to wash his hands of them. The time for tolerating these pretenders was almost over. Either they raised their game to a level he could work with or they’d be annexed into subservient colonies in which Davis could cut out all the dead weight that was dragging them down, replacing their leadership with his own appointees and getting everything moving forward in a typically efficient and redundant Star Force manner.

  He did give the Brazilians props though for recognizing the situation for what it was and making the best call for their nation, for which he was going to reward them. Wisdom is what he was most looking for in the verification tests, and they were displaying a considerable amount now.

  Davis ran through the list of terms he would need to give them, and decided it was too many to just wing, so he pulled up a writing prompt and keyboard and began making a list. Star Force security, transit, and military applications would assert themselves over what the Brazilians already possessed, along with a number of smaller applications that Star Force handled better with ‘empire’ personnel, but the rest of Brazil, in all its territories and systems, would continue to operate on local assets, though those would be reorganized as deemed necessary by the transitional leader that he would be appointing.

  Actually it’d be a large team that would go through and make changes to Brazil where necessary, though in this case he was going to take a personal hand in making those changes. It’d take a chunk out of his available work time, but he felt he owed them a few tweaks here and there where he could make them to keep their national identity more or less intact. They’d been a longtime ally, unlike many of the other nations, and he wanted the new government to reflect that, even if in the end they hadn’t been able to measure up.

  Germany was another matter, being a nation that had rode the metaphoric fence throughout its history. Its annexation would leave it geographically intact, but most of its core structure was going to be rewritten into a more or less brand new nation, saving what pieces of it were deemed functional. The colonies it’d absorbed recently wouldn’t stay with it, and split off to form or merge with other factions as deemed prudent.

  Brazil would keep all of its, though Davis was undecided as to what to do with Russia when it finally caved. There were large chunks of the nation that were well developed, along with sections that were totally unsustainable. He’d been teasing himself with the mental challenge of how he could salvage their situation if it was his doing, during his off hours, which were few, and while he saw several avenues to pursue, none of them were obvious…and he wasn’t going to give them any tips. This test was about what they could figure out and achieve on their own.

  New Zealand, when it finally caved, was a monstrosity that had to be disassembled. Davis hadn’t formed any firm plans as yet, but he’d been floating a few ideas for the Lunar colonies and some of the other off Earth ones, but the conglomeration of territories on planet was a mess that he could tackle in any number of ways.

  Australia, if they couldn’t make the leap he was asking of them, would remain intact, much as Brazil would be, for they had been
Star Force’s most staunch supporter and attentive student. Davis had already been planning their light annexation, with the only real question being how long it would be until he implemented it.

  But in truth, while he spent an amicable amount of time on the nations of Earth, his recent thoughts, when his mind was free to wonder, were focused on what the Archons were doing out there, as he thought of it. He’d never been outside of the Solar System himself, and rarely off Earth. Sometimes he felt like a prisoner in Atlantis, though the only one confining himself there was…himself. Logistically he had to remain here, unless there was a really, really good reason to go elsewhere. Star Force’s empire had grown so large, and the Solar System so densely populated, that he needed to remain here to oversee it while his most closely trusted ‘apprentices’ oversaw the other systems, Hightower first among them and running Epsilon Eridani, Star Force’s second home system.

  Once the verification procedure was over and the old nations converted into proper Star Force colonies, a great deal of his attention could be turned elsewhere, for they were really the wildcard in the system. He realized now, as he had somehow missed before, that his focus should be the same as the Archons…the war they were fighting and that would, if not somehow blocked, find its way to Sol and Earth.

  Patience, he reminded himself. Only a few more years and his headaches with Earth would be abated. Then, as a united front, they’d turn their full efforts to fueling the monster of an empire that the Archons were creating out there, and which Davis had little to do with. He’d taught them well, or rather, they’d learned well from him, then taken the tools and personnel he’d given them and ran wild with it. They had his full trust, and on occasion, even taught him a thing or two.

  The Kiritas in particular intrigued him, and he could sense the immense power they wielded…not in a military sense, but from an economic one. Natural resources were critical to their ability to counter the lizards, and the little aliens were proving to be very adroit at procuring them once given Star Force equipment and training. Randy in particular had done a spectacular job with them and the creation of the Kiritak, with Davis eagerly awaiting any progress reports from Beta Region as he followed their progress.

  More and more he found himself wanting to be out there, on the frontier, working with them to build and expand their empire. Occasionally he’d offer suggestions, tweaking some of their plans they sent back for his appraisal, but for the most part they were on their own, sovereign nations above and beyond their Clans. The trailblazers were everything the nations of Earth weren’t, and Davis badly missed their company and counsel.

  But they needed him here, and he knew it. Without Sol’s massive industrial machine, the Archons wouldn’t have a tenth of the warfleet they currently fielded, and he knew it had to get larger…much larger, in order to give the trailblazers even a chance of holding back the lizards, which was what he was working on at Venus and other locations. They needed more shipyards and engineers, and were finding the later far easier to acquire than the former. They were especially short of the massive slips necessary to create the progressively larger ship designs that were starting to put them on par with the other races, as far as tonnage was concerned.

  Davis was part of a team, and he knew he had to come through on his end, else the trailblazers, no matter how skilled, would be too shorthanded to succeed.

  With that thought in mind he set himself to the task of composing the return message to the Brazilian emissary, for once he had that task completed he could return his attention to the important matter at hand…that being Humanity’s continued survival.

  8

  June 9, 2456

  Solar System

  Luna

  “There’s no way around it,” Jessica said firmly. “You have to meet your quotas.”

  “Your requests are putting a strain on our ability to maintain our exports,” Manfred Elon said to her far right on the gigantic ring of a table that seated the 37 colonial heads she’d summoned to the moon. “Without them, we cannot maintain the market you set up to fund your government.”

  Jessica leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on the table.

  “If we don’t get that jumpship built, there won’t be a government.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Broncholl said from his seat beside Jessica, “Illumia is feeling the strain as well, but the only way we have even the slimmest hope of keeping to the construction schedule is by going all-in, markets or not. Once this project is complete the flow of natural resources will resume, making this a temporary disruption only.”

  “Not if Davis adds another even more ridiculous demand in the final round,” Elon pointed out. “Merkeria is more or less self-sufficient, but to meet your quotas we’re going to have to compromise our reserves and begin scrapping current infrastructure in order to make these quotas. If this was a onetime issue then it might be feasible, but we have no idea what Davis will demand next.”

  “No we don’t,” Jessica admitted. “And I agree that building our own jumpship probably isn’t the most drastic item on the Director’s list, but it’s what we have to do in order to stay alive through this round. So unless you want to forfeit, let’s discuss ways of making this happen rather than offering up additional negativity. I know well the strain this is putting on our collective economy, and believe me when I say that I’m having a much harder job holding everything together than you are in your respective colonies.”

  “That point is well taken,” the Arcadria Governor emphasized. “You’ve done a miracle of a job holding this group together thus far, but the numbers are just too steep for us to manage.”

  “That’s why I asked you here, because you know your colonies better than I do. You can find ways to scrape up more resources that I cannot. We all but gutted our credit reserve buying up corovon, so this next ‘miracle’ is going to have to come from you,” Jessica said, leaning back in her high-backed chair and remaining silent, leaving the floor open for someone else to speak.

  “Have you considered a merger with the Russians?”

  Jessica looked at the Governor from Channi, a collection of orbital habitats that sat in high Earth orbit beyond Luna. “No, nor have they offered. And I would like to point out the stupidity of such talks now, given that both they and us are already well into the fabrication stages of our jumpships. The time for merger talk would have been at the outset.”

  “Our colony will meet its quota,” he insisted, “but the others will not. They cannot. Most are tapped out already, and I’m not taking their word for this, I’ve been going over the numbers. There simply isn’t enough resources off Earth to finish the jumpship, and you wouldn’t be up here trying to shake the proverbial tree if our planetary colonies were putting out. I’m assuming they’re mostly consumptive. Am I correct?”

  “Partially,” Jessica allowed. The homeland territories were a considerable draw on resources, but they were also producing specific items that the conglomerate needed, so it wasn’t like they were a dead weight around their neck…as several talking heads in the media had suggested.

  “Then I don’t think we’re going to even get close to finishing the jumpship, let alone on time. We have three weeks to dig up additional resources or the production timeline is screwed. If we can’t make it on our own we need to consider all options.”

  Several other Governors nodded, and she could sympathize. They were trying to keep their colonies independent, and didn’t truly care who they had to ally with to do it.

  “Then let’s discuss all of these ‘options,’” Jessica offered. “If you have something to add, no matter how small, now is the moment, and we’ll take as much time here as needed. If we’re coming to the end of our run, let us make sure we leave no rock unturned.”

  Three days later she left Luna via orbital ferry, transitioning from one Star Force starport to another as the dedicated starship carefully flew her and several hundred other people through the mass of stations that littered Earth orb
it. Jessica sat in one of the plush passenger seats between two other people, neither of which she knew, sagging heavily as the weight of her responsibility seemed to be crushing her into her seat.

  It was over now, and she knew it. She’d convinced the Governors to continue meeting the quotas as much as they realistically could, leaving the door open for her to find another way out of the jam they were in, but what little she and her advisors hadn’t previously considered the Governors had thrown out at her, detailing the ‘end of the road’ scenario they were now in.

  Her New Zealand conglomerate was now more or less self-sufficient…but it had few resources left to do anything else other than keep itself running. Davis had said he wasn’t interesting in dealing with weak parasites, and while her nation might have gotten off the parasite rolls they were the textbook definition of weak. Forcing the remaining nations to undergo a construction project of the size and complexity of building a jumpship, even when Star Force had supplied the blueprints, was an all too true test of their industrial muscle…for it was showing they had none.

  Constructing a spaceport and starport had been challenging enough, but the jumpship was much larger, and while not one of the monster varieties Star Force was producing nowadays, it contained so much mass that, without the exterior markets to buy resources from, New Zealand was coming up painfully short, and there was no magic wand around to summon up parts that didn’t currently exist.

  The Governors had agreed that, unless she could figure out a way to get past this round, it would be preferable to be annexed into Star Force as they were, rather than attempt to solicit a merger with the Russians…not because they didn’t feel that was a workable option, which some people differed on, but because the Russian system of government was not to their liking. An alliance might have worked, but absorption into Star Force, who’d already let the Brazilians maintain most of their former structure, was deemed preferable to conversion into the hierarchical Russian domains.