Star Force: Crusade (SF93) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  The power of Star Force now lay primarily in the Bsidd, and it was Karthen’s duty not to only maintain them, but to keep them growing. So after several hours of pacing around the glowing map he selected two new systems in the occupation zone. One was all the way down near The Line while the second was on the other side of the Uriti Preserve. Both had three habitable planets and a multitude of others and that’s what made them so valuable. Shipping between stars was damn expensive, but shipping from planet to planet within a system was far less so.

  Point to point on a planet was even better, but when you had a system with only one planet in it and you had a system with 3, you could essentially get rid of all interstellar shipping between those three and replace them with ships just as large but with far smaller gravity drives and weaker shields that didn’t have to stand up against interstellar debris and radiation. Of all the ships that the Bsidd built and flew, insystem transports dominated the charts in terms of numbers and tonnage.

  Which was why he had chosen those two systems from the occupation zone when he could have chosen ones within the Bsidd Region that had one or two habitable planets. It didn’t matter that they were farther away, for once he sent a large enough convoy there to get the ball rolling he wouldn’t have to worry about sending more supplies. There’d be personnel transfers to accommodate, and with them would come some more cargo, but the bulk transfer would happen up front and the Bsidd on site would use it to start producing what they needed locally while the stash they had brought sustained them through the developmental process.

  But such a thing wasn’t for an administrator to oversee. It would require a Baron, and most of the Monarchs were still Human. Why that was only Davis knew, but Karthen guessed that the experience levels of the other races just weren’t high enough yet to get them that rank, though there were a handful already helming worlds of their own that the Director felt were worthy.

  With Davis off in the Rim Region working his magic, orchestrating the home front was something that had been left to him and Vectir, which also meant assigning and reassigning lower level Monarchs. Davis was too far away to handle it, and to be frank too busy, though Karthen would always keep him informed as to what was going on and Davis could amend those orders if he so chose.

  To that end Karthen pulled two Barons from single planet Bsidd systems that had developed well over their tenure and assigned the administrators on site to continue on in their stead until their replacements arrived. Karthen had a few floating Barons that were currently unassigned that he could call on if needed, as well as a lot of administrators capable of stepping in and maintaining what had been built, but expanding upon it was something that really needed a Monarch’s touch, so he sent a message to Davis asking for suitable replacements.

  Karthen pressed a button and the panoramic windows of his office returned to transparency and the midday sunlight of Char flowed in, dimming the holographic map as the Bsidd city structures came into view. They were built more or less the same as all other Star Force ones, but these carried a purple tint as did most things Bsidd…and everything here was built larger than normal, making Karthen feel like he was ruling a land of giants.

  Last thing he did was log the acquisition of the two systems into Bsidd holdings and sent out the notification through the relay grid so no one else with the proper authority to snag planets would claim them before he got his colonization convoys assembled and on site.

  10

  September 5, 3489

  Grid Point Stargate

  Duke Torpe stood onboard the construct that she now was in command of along with a host of races from the Rim Region that had previous experience working on the gigantic stations. They were here to supplement the Star Force personnel that had been studying the constructs at Annsa and Mankla for just this task, but there were nowhere near enough personnel to get the job done yet, so a lot of ‘contract’ workers from newly acquired Star Force races were going to be used given the fact that the H’kar in Annsa had already been stretched out to the other grid points to replace Nexus personnel that had left.

  Add with the addition of a new construct to Annsa 15 years ago the available qualified staff thinned even further, so more than half of the people under the Duke’s command now had not been maturia trained. That wasn’t something she liked, but it was the nature of the beast that she was about to tackle and something that would rectify itself in time. The construct was of Nexus design and not Star Force technology, thus getting people in here that were comfortable with the machinery was a lingering issue…but at least there were no auxiliary stations to inherit, for this grid point was brand new and would be designed to Star Force specs.

  There was a slightly larger star in the starfield around the construct, that belonging to the Tarric 3 System that would be the local access jumppoint to get here. It was located in the occupation zone with three primary Nexus systems nearby…one for the Meintre and the others for the Albos and Gfatt that were also going to start building safe shipyards once the grid point system was linked in, but the Meintre were already here and building ahead of schedule so that once the link was made they could start sending ships en mass through and have somewhere they could start housing their growing refugee population.

  Those systems belonged to The Nexus and were not Star Force property, but this construct and the grid point were, and it was Torpe’s responsibility to develop it. Already there had been some inquiries from races and corporations in The Nexus about the possibility of creating infrastructure here and she expected that request list to explode once the connection was made, but right now she was still waiting back for the first probe sent through the link to see if the connection had been calibrated correctly.

  There had been 7 sent so far, hopefully received in Annsa with other probes being sent back to test this end of the link. If and when one was successfully received they would be bouncing probes back and forth regularly to check and secure the link so they would be notified if it ever went down. That was necessary, for no communication was possible between the two grid points save for couriers, and if one station suffered a malfunction you’d be sending a string of ships through to their deaths with no end in sight until someone happened to notice and traveled the long way around to tell you or a message was sent through the relay grid that was still not fully operational between the ADZ, the occupation zone, and H’kar territory…let alone out into the Rim Region.

  Star Force was constantly working to expand it, but the equipment wasn’t cheap and there were a lot of dots on the map that needed connecting. As it was, the probes that Star Force had designed to be sent through the grid point link would also carry comm packets since they would actually beat the relay grid signals from one end to the other in many cases. The magnetically propelled ships weren’t faster than the transmissions…at least not between this pair of constructs…but this was a straight line shot whereas the relay grid weaved back and forth, adding extra distance for the signals to travel.

  Linking comms into Mankla was just one of many duties Stargate was going to have, and a small one at that compared to what Davis had warned her was coming. There hadn’t been an addition to The Nexus’s grid point system in a very long time, and with the loss of at least one other there was going to be a shifting of assets and intense scrutiny of this new opportunity that was predicted to send entrepreneurs flooding through the link once it was opened.

  Her job was to make use of it all, and connecting into the ADZ economy was already a stated goal of many within The Nexus. The trip there from Stargate wasn’t short, but it was manageable. To save time on that there was going to be a huge market exchange built here, but if she could get investors to pay for at least part of the infrastructure she was going to. Already there were nearby Kiritak colonies generating an impressive amount of resources to be sold to the nearby Nexus members if they wished, and she was told that the Meintre were already taking advantage of that service, which she was going to direct the investors to.
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  If they wanted to build stations here they’d be Star Force models sold to them, for she wasn’t going to let any more foreign technology come in here besides that of the construct itself. Aside from logistical and compatibility concerns, Davis had specified that this grid point needed to have a distinctive Star Force feel to it so that visitors would immediately know that this was not The Nexus. The other grid points that Star Force now controled were inherited, not built, and their conversion was a slow process. Word was already spreading though about how Star Force did business, and Stargate had to take that generated interest and channel it accordingly.

  Which was why the Duke was holding off on bringing in any stations. Tarric 3 already had some infrastructure in place, including an Imperator, but Torpe wasn’t building anything here until the link was established…and right now was approximately the time the first probe should be returning. If there was a problem, then troubleshooting was going to take a long time sending couriers back and forth on gravity drives, so there was more than a bit of anxiety going through the construct’s crew and herself.

  The two massive discs were powered up and aligned with the distant location of Annsa, but it was up to the probes themselves to find the guiding signal being sent out from them and make micro adjustments so that they hit square on. The big question was whether or not the direction of the magnetic fields was pinpoint precise enough to get them close…or whether they’d be too far askew to self-correct and end up missing the target entirely.

  If they did they could hit ships nearby, obliterating each other in less time than it took to blink, or they could sail on past and be lost in the galaxy unable to stop, slowly starving or freezing to death once power ran out…which was why the test probes were unmanned.

  The Duke was waiting in the command center onboard the construct, which Star Force had already gutted and reworked with their own tech. That at least gave the crews familiar interfaces to work with here, though the rest of the station was still outfitted with Nexus terminology and symbols. Those would be gradually replaced over time if needed, but Torpe didn’t want to deal with those headaches herself so she’d had the command center changed to her liking.

  So it was on a standard Star Force holographic tactical display that she saw the first tiny blip of a an object decelerate against the ‘upper’ disc’s magnetic field and come to a stop on the edge…and not too far away from missing entirely.

  “Calculate how far we’re off and adjust,” she said relieved, but spotting an irregular final tract that wasn’t entirely the fault of the construct on the other end. “I want the next one spot on.”

  “It’ll take approximately 2 hours to readjust,” a H’kar told her.

  “Next probe is due in four hours, correct?”

  “If Annsa holds to schedule, yes.”

  “Hold outgoing probes until the readjustment,” she decided, then retreated to her office on the perimeter of the large room.

  They were on the grid now…sloppily…but there was a viable connection. Their own magnetic field had been slightly off, and by slightly it meant the column of acceleration/deceleration potential that reached out from each disc. There was more than enough there to stop the probe from ramming it, but when it’d been launched on the return trip it had not intersected that column as intended. It had come in from the side and bypassed the first part of that field. If a larger ship had done that then a collision might have been possible, but a tiny tweaking would fix it.

  Fortunately the amount they were askew wasn’t enough to make their outgoing probes miss. As she pulled up the telemetry logs the probe brought back with it from the other side she saw that it had almost missed but had been able to yank itself back into alignment thanks to the beefy gravity drives the probes also contained. A magnetic carrier would not have been able to in time, but with each probe sent and received they’d get the alignment centered a bit more until they were satisfied on both ends, at which point the traffic would start pouring through.

  And there was a lot of it waiting in Annsa. In addition to the telemetry logs, there was a wellspring of data carried by the probe, including some personal messages for her from Duke Lothel and others stationed there. Most notable of all was the battlemap captures of the waiting ships. Hardly any of them were Star Force and there were literally rows upon rows parked nearby the construct waiting for transit to Stargate…so many so that it would take months for them to get rides even once the link was open, for there weren’t that many carriers available despite the shifting resources sent their way.

  “Geez,” she said under her breath as she looked at the itemized ship lists. “And I don’t even have a welcome center built.”

  It would take more than 2 months to get the final alignments down to the two Dukes’ mutual satisfaction, at which point both declared the links were open for transit. Some of The Nexus ships from the Meintre were waiting here in preparation for passage back rather than hoofing it on gravity drives like they had been doing for several years, but she couldn’t dispatch them because there were no carriers here. They’d have to wait for the first one to come through then book passage going back, and right now those fees weren’t going to Star Force, but rather the owners of each carrier ship.

  They then paid a fee to use the grid point system…a fee that the Duke had cut by some 50% from Nexus standard rates. Each grid point chose their own, with the fee paid on the outgoing jump. Since this was a one route grid point it didn’t really matter, for carriers would pay at both ends regardless, but the cheaper you made the fees the more profit there was for the carriers to relocate routes through you.

  Annsa had chopped their fees by some 30%, but the rest of the grid points in the Rim Region had kept theirs moderately stable because the local economies were relying on those fees. Since Stargate was just getting started she could set them at whatever she wanted and build up around them, hence the lower price to encourage more travel…which would mean more commerce flowing through here and making the link to the ADZ more advantageous.

  And there was a link already established for personnel and assorted cargos. Big ships would have to travel on their own, but in Tarric 3 there was already a starport linked into the Star Force transit grid that had a single line coming out from the ADZ to here. There were a few other wispy connections throughout the occupation zone, the most notable of which were to the Uriti Preserve and to the H’kar, but if a Dvapp wanted to buy a ticket at a Star Force starport in their territory, they could ride the grid all the way out to Tarric 3, and from there take the dedicated ferries that would move through the slow jump from star to construct and back again.

  Right now though there was no place for them to land except the giant station, and it wasn’t built for visitors. Her crew could come and go that way, but as of now Tarric 3 was the endpoint for tourists traveling on the transit grid until she got some additional infrastructure set up here to accommodate them.

  But if the traffic that was soon to come from Annsa wanted to, they could park in the nearby star system and ride the Star Force infrastructure wherever they wanted to go, or if their ship was small enough dock it inside a carrier jumpship and be whisked away to a whole plethora of new systems for them to visit or trade with.

  Torpe had made sure to have that link established before the grid point went online and the people at Annsa knew it as well, so when the first carrier did come through and decelerated almost dead center on the giant mag disc, its ships immediately departed for Tarric 3 while the carrier itself contacted the station to arrange payment and scheduling for their return jump.

  On the spur of the moment the Duke decided to give them a free ride, given that they were their first customer, but the second arrived less than 20 minutes later…and after that a rapid fire arrival schedule dumping ship after ship into the grid point, including a huge carrier that was larger than anything she’d been told about.

  It carried within its grasp a single ship, with the designator labeling it as belonging t
o the Albos. The Duke didn’t need to read further to identify its purpose, for the various struts and cargo boxes made its function obvious. It was a mobile construction facility, undoubtedly headed to their new system to get to work building infrastructure…and with the size of this thing, they’d be setting up shop real fast assuming they could get the necessary materiel.

  And promptly after it arrived more Albos ships came through, one of which made contact with the station and requested just that. Access to the promised market for raw materials.

  And they weren’t the only ones immediately petitioning for this and that, all of which was routed to the Duke’s staff who’d been set up to handle just this sort of situation, though within days it became apparent to Torpe that there was going to be a lot more interest here than even Davis had imagined.

  It took only 8 days before she got the first heart wrenching request for sanctuary coming from a beat up ship that looked like it had taken all it could handle just to get this far and probably didn’t have anywhere else to go. They identified themselves as Kleek, having come from a race on the far side of The Nexus that had been pushed off their homeworld by invaders that no one had bothered to stop. The Kleek fleet had moved from one grid point to another asking for sanctuary and being denied, with many ships scattering to find work or to sell what they had to get currency to put down roots somewhere.