Star Force: Secession (SF13) Page 8

  9

  August 2, 2109

  A British cruiser fired its braking thrusters as it slowly arrived at the orbital holding point where Star Force was collecting the surrendering warships, under the escort of the blocky remote controlled corvette pacing it a few kilometers off. Already stationed at the point were thirteen other British warships, surrounded by a halo of Star Force warships centered on the large battleship controlling them all. Alongside the Balboa were several cargo ships waiting to take on the surrendering British crews and return them to Earth in shame.

  All across Earth orbit Star Force had holding points established where the surrendering British and Japanese ships were ordered to rendezvous at…and where the holdouts were being forced to move towards. Initially after the surrenders were offered everything had begun transitioning smoothly, until the two countries realized that Star Force was still seizing control of their infrastructure even after they’d surrendered. That caused a political ruckus and prompted sections of the surrendering fleets to renege on the arrangement and try to take up defensive positions around their key facilities.

  A few battles had been fought, but Star Force had brought so many warships to bear that it was little more than a token show of resistance. Some ships had to be forcibly boarded and a few of the stations didn’t want to relinquish either, but given the military might opposing them most knuckled under eventually, leaving the collection of ships and relocation of the crews being the last remaining tasks before Star Force wrapped up World War III.

  When the arriving British cruiser finally decelerated and moved into a parking orbit alongside its sister ships, a Cougar maneuvered up against it and connected their docking ports via a flexible umbilical that could tolerate a significant amount of sheering if the momentum between the massive metal hulks hadn’t been completely negated. Through it spilled the boarding team, led by an Archon to insure there was no issue with who was going to be in possession of the ship.

  With the red-armored warrior standing guard over the transfer the British crew left the ship and a Star Force replacement team came aboard for inventory and assessment, followed by a short trip through orbit to either a shipyard with an open slip or one of several storage zones where they had been tethering the mass of captured ships to kilometer-long metallic girders arrayed in a grid pattern to keep the closely packed ships from drifting into one another. There the ships would stay until shipyard access was available, whereupon any repairs or rebuilding would be attended to, after which the ships would be put into service or sold, with a few badly damaged ones being outright scrapped and the materials recycled.

  The cruiser in question was one of the larger ships captured and was flown out within the day towards one of Star Force’s shipyards, getting top priority for refit. Over the next two months all the weaponry would be stripped out and the interior areas reconfigured into small cargo bays. Its computer systems were upgraded, various navigation devices replaced or augmented, and the furnishings totally reworked. In the end it would come out of the slip looking almost the same as it had gone in from the outside, minus the external weaponry, but on the inside it looked and felt like a completely different vessel.

  With it being one of the larger captured ships allocated for sale, it had a buyer before the refits were even complete and ended up in the possession of Argentina and was put to work hauling small scale goods from Earth starports to Lunar ones, helping to grow Argentinean influence in the region by filling the economic gap left by the abrupt exit of the British, Japanese, and Americans. The newly minted free nations required a great many supplies being shipped in from Earth, and with the short term Star Force bans in place on them it gave other enterprising corporations and nations an opportunity to exploit.

  Argentina was not alone in this philosophy as many other nations rushed to fill the economic void, and with the captured warships and cargo ships that Star Force was selling on the cheap, many of the nations were able to double or triple the size of their cargo fleets, getting 10-20 repurposed ships for the price of one brand new Star Force model…though the quality of the used ships was considerably lacking, most of which had been built by other manufacturers, but the orbital hopping seemed almost inconsequential nowadays, and those nations interested in working within the Earth micro-system were content to use the older, weaker models, though they did rush to snatch up the repurposed Star Force designed cargo ships as they came up for sale, with all of them being purchased within the first hour of going on the market.

  Australia in particular picked up the majority of the Star Force models seized from the warring factions. Though many of them were 20+ years old, that was of little concern given the high quality of the craftsmanship. The newer models might have been faster, with stronger hulls and more efficient engines, but the older ones were still solid, and at the reduced prices available made them quite attractive to the nations with a bit more capital on hand to spend.

  The Australians were able to pick up a fleet of 32 such cargo ships, increasing their numbers by 13% over the next two years. With the extra ships, reduced American shipping presence, and the lack of any British or Japanese presence in the market, they quickly elevated themselves into the top economic notch, pulling slightly ahead of the resurgent Russians who collected an even larger number of the non-Star Force repurposed models and had them shipped out to the asteroid belt to expand their mining operations there tenfold into the newly opened up regions that the warring factions had been forced to vacate, along with new fields that Star Force was continually opening up.

  That would be the dynamic for the next decade…the Russians expanding their natural resource holdings while the Australians focused on the markets and shipping. The currency obtained by the economic activity allowed the Aussies to further expand the infrastructure in their territorial zones through additional Star Force purchases while the Russians used their growing natural resources to build their own, with both nations exiting World War III as the true victors, as far as spoils were measured.

  The Brazilians followed up the pair by using whatever capital they could scrounge up to purchase territorial zones on Mars that Star Force put up for sale. Being extremely expensive, most nations were able to purchase one at most, but the Brazilians managed to acquire 14 of them. Realizing that this wouldn’t help them in the short term, whereas repurposed starships could be put into service immediately, the Brazilians decided on a more long term strategy, willing to acquire and sit on the territories for many years, if not decades, until they had the resources available to exploit them.

  They knew well that given enough time they could turn the territorial advantage to their economic gain, given that the number of territories on Mars wasn’t expanding, and once the overall population of the planet increased they’d be in a position of dominance there. Within the following years the Brazilians would also acquire three more territories through trading with other nations that either didn’t have the finances required to exploit them or were just not that interested in expanding to the red planet.

  In the end, the Brazilians would end up with more territory on Mars than any other nation, second only to Star Force, and it was there that they would carve out their foothold in the Solar System. They participated in every territorial expansion from that day forward, but seemed only interested in collecting resources from the outer planets to barter with in exchange for more territories on Mars. Within 30 years the Brazilian population tipped the scale between the two planets, with the majority slipping away from Earth, after which they moved their national capitol off of the homeworld, making Brazil the first true interplanetary nation.

  Several other nations also benefited greatly in the aftermath of the war, each in their own way as multiple tracks to wealth and prosperity offered themselves to those entrepreneurial enough to pursue them. The 7 nations that had taken part in the war were not among them, however, and suffered greatly from the toll the fighting had taken on their infrastructure and fleets…not to men
tion the repercussions of the penalties inflicted upon them.

  Like the Chinese before them, the West Africans had received a permanent ban from Star Force, including a military restriction, but by forcing Star Force to come after them they had unwittingly cut their own throats because in the process of capturing their warships Star Force had also scooped up every civilian ship running supplies to them.

  This cut their available cargo fleet by a third, and with the British and Japanese having seized most of their orbital stations…and then destroying them…it left the West Africans with an incomplete infrastructure in Earth orbit. They would eventually fill in the gaps, but without access to Star Force purchases or building contracts, it would take them decades to recover to pre-war levels around Earth, which was where their economic activities would center. With no presence on Mars and no ability to be eligible for Star Force territorial allotments thanks to the permanent ban, they, like the Chinese, would be mostly confined to Earth’s micro-system while the other nations continued to spread outward, leaving the West Africans behind in the ever increasing colonization race.

  The South Africans fared better at Earth, given that they had been on the ‘winning’ naval side and had retained more of their fleet and stations, but they too were left behind until their temporary ban on Star Force services expired, after which they were able to reassert themselves on the outer planets once they were back in the territorial allotments. This allowed them to create a niche economy, but their participation in the war had essentially robbed them of any inner planet holdings, save for Earth.

  The Indians, having a larger economy to work with, weathered their ban better, growing the number of habitats in Earth orbit in the interim, then pursuing that course of action even further following the French model. They traded what outer planet holdings they would gain for more Earth-based assets to house their expanding population, with Star Force building for them the largest Earth orbiting stations to date, each capable of comfortably housing 1 million people. Over time, Indian would acquire a string of these stations in orbital zone 7, eventually stretching the entire way around the planet, with that habitat ‘necklace’ thickening with each decade that passed.

  The Germans, who had the shortest ban of the 7 nations, fought back aggressively to replenish their losses, initially linking up with the Corporate Alliance to establish a foothold in the asteroid belt, then using Star Force’s resources to acquire a piece of Mercury and heavily invest in the mining subsection of the Solar System’s economy. They would make that industry the linchpin in their slow return to prominence, feeding many of the other nations the raw materials they required as Earth’s populations exploded outward, growing in record numbers that saw the Human population double within a century.

  Later on, once technology had progressed to more equitable levels, the Germans would expand into shipbuilding, though they were never able to match Star Force’s engineers…nor was anyone else, but there was so much business available that Star Force couldn’t possibly supply the demand for more starships by themselves, so there was ample opportunity for the Germans and others to find their economic niche there.

  The Americans would recover, as they always did, and expand outward in a buffet-like approach to colonization, with multiple ongoing projects and their economic fingers everywhere. They would not, however, reassume a position of dominance, having been relegated to a second tier space power in the half century that they were forced to live out the Star Force ban. Their territorial holdings were minimal, given the allotments they missed out on, but their foothold in the Solar System was still significant.

  A later alliance with the Germans would spur a renaissance of sorts, but they were never able to reach higher than a powerscore of 5th, though that was still a significant achievement given how diverse and strong the competitive field had become.

  The British, however, would not recover. Their destruction of the Nimbus habitats along with dozens of other stations had created so much debris that they would be banned from any sort of space activity for an agonizingly long 8 years, on top of which Davis slapped them with a 100 year ban on services. That economic death sentence relegated them to a minor power, buried outside the top 50 on the powerscores and left so far behind the others that while they were able to grow their holdings and prosper on an individual national level, they were never able to catch up with the competition and lost their political standing.

  The fate for Japan should have been worse, but the business savvy nation turned their misfortune around better than the Brits did. Davis laid down a 200 year ban along with the clean-up penalty that likewise saw them with no space activity for an 8 year period, after which they had to rebuild their space infrastructure from scratch. The extra 100 years had been added with Davis citing the deaths of the shipyard workers they had nuked as being ‘completely uncivilized behavior.’ As such, they were going to have to pursue their spacebound economy without Star Force’s assets.

  Japan responded to the challenge with patience and persistence, taking the penalty in stride and using the Corporate Alliance and others to supply them with material to begin rebuilding. Instead of relying on outside services as a rule, Japan sought to build up its self-sufficiency, learning and recruiting highly skilled individuals from the outside to teach them the finer aspects of the technology others were buying in order that one day down the road Japan would be able to build it for itself.

  That goal would be achieved many decades down the road, but again, the pace of growth of the other nations outstripped Japan’s success, and they too, like the British, would never return to a place of dominance, though Japan would come to be regarded as a valuable business partner with several of the other smaller nations, building up its rep amongst the ‘3rd tier’ league, so to speak. In this way they regained a measure of respect, but their actions in World War III had set their fate in the colonization race that would reshuffle Earth’s political structure, leaving once dominant nations broken, and formerly broken nations dominant…and everything else in between.

  Not only did the war spurn the reshuffling of power, it also created many more players in the game with the large number of colonies declaring independence. Many of them wouldn’t survive on their own and would be voluntarily absorbed into a Star Force run federation, preserving their separation from Earth while alleviating the burden of attaining self-sufficiency given their small size and population.

  Others would prosper, however, and grow to have a larger space foothold than most of the nations originating on Earth. All together, the war had kicked into higher gear an era of great opportunity that saw many changes to the social and political structures founded on Earth as they migrated into space, with Star Force becoming the preeminent and undisputable guiding power that ushered Humanity forward with a light, but firm grasp, bringing with it great power and wealth as it quietly led the nations down the path it wished, in preparation for the challenges ahead that no one yet knew they were about to face.

  10

  May 26, 2110

  Davis clicked on the wall screens behind him in the amphitheatre with a flick of a handheld selection wand, bringing up a map of Earth with population density statistics for the assembled national ambassadors to see.

  “As many of you well know, overpopulation on Earth is beginning to approach critical levels. We estimate that within four years food production on the planet will become insufficient to the point where we’ll have to start importing foodstuffs from off planet. India has already begun heavy rationing of their food supply and other countries are doing the same in a more moderated manner. Many of you are closing your borders to immigration to be able to sustain your own populations. To combat this problem before it consumes the planet, I give you project Exodus.”

  Davis activated a secondary wall screen with more statistics and a theoretical version of the main map accelerated down the timeline with the bright red overpopulated regions of Earth dimming to orange and yellows.

  �
�Mass colonization will relieve the population stress on Earth, and Star Force already has the groundwork in place to begin growing new, independent colonies on our own Lunar and Martian territories. The habitats are already being constructed and the first stages of relocation have begun on an experimental basis, to stress test our acclimatization and teaching programs. We’re not simply going to pick people up off of Earth and dump them on Mars, but rather we’re going to train them for the challenges they’ll face their and on Luna, and once we’re satisfied with their scores they’ll be settled accordingly.”

  “This program is voluntary, but given the overpopulation problems your nations are facing I have no doubt you will have plenty of volunteers. We can and will run this program through civilian angles if we must, but your cooperation in the facilitation of the mass exodus would greatly expedite the process by clearing away some of the legal hurdles the potential colonists will face.”

  “We currently estimate that we will be able to handle a comfortable million plus when we go public with the program six months from now, with an additional million every year, given current orbital facilities that are continuing to grow. I do not have a current breakdown on which countries we will allow how many slots…that will be determined later along with your level of cooperation.”

  “Let me make one point clear, these citizens, once transferred to us, will no longer be counted as part of your nations’ population. They will become Star Force wards during their transition, then citizens of the new colonies we are founding. The colonies will not be segregated according to previous nationality or language. Common culture will be learned during the transition period sufficient for them to coexist on a moderate level, with true unity probable only with successive generations.”