Star Force: Fiddlesticks (SF65) (4 page)

Heema watched via a display screen on the ring of his
personal nook, seeing the massive Sentinel station off in the distance. There was
currently only the one in the system, but with it was a Star Force warfleet
that would keep the lizards at bay indefinitely. That fleet wasn’t situated
around this planet, however, but rather one of six moons in orbit. It had been
named
Brobdingnag,
and was the location of a modest construction effort that was building the
framework of what would become an Axius colony, but one for the larger races
only.

That would bring the Axius Reen with it, giving
the independent civilization and their Axius kin a geographical link, as well
as the opportunity for the two to exchange individuals when they wanted. It
also meant that Star Force would be protecting one of its own worlds in the
system against invasion in perpetuity, rather than the Reen having to negotiate
some sort of payment deal to keep them here on contract.

The Sentinel had been placed around the planet,
both for strategic reasons and a sign that the defensive effort was going to be
a mutual one. The Reen had their warfleet now, with most of it present in this
system, and over time they hoped to improve it to the point where they wouldn’t
have to rely on Star Force, but right now they would back them up however
necessary if a reprisal attack from the lizards did come.

The Sentinel acted as an island in orbit that both
fleets could run to for sanctuary if needed, and just having one of the massive
stations here had a psychological effect on everyone in the system, for it
stated that this was permanent territory within the Star Force-led Alliance and
any invading race was going to have to pay a very high price in order to take
it from them on the first try, let alone the inevitable counterattack to come
later.

To Heema that single Sentinel signified that this
was home and part of the ADZ whether it was within those borders or not. The
planet may be 100% Reen, but the system truly belong to their benefactor, even
if they weren’t going to colonize past that single moon. That confidence was
what was attracting so many Reen here, for behind
Heema’s
flight were many more coming with individual citizens that had not been ordered
or deployed here in any governmental fashion. They were coming to take part in
the colonization effort on their own merits, and it was up to Heema and a few
other veterans to make sure they had room for them all prior to arrival.

4

When
Heema’s
transport
got to ground he walked out into the thick atmosphere, taking him and the
others a moment to adjust. He breathed in heavily, with the air taking time to
get all the way down his long neck and into his four lungs, giving him a bit of
a head rush when the higher concentration of oxygen processed through his
bloodstream. It passed quickly and he followed the others out across the
tarmac, looking around at the partially complete city in which they’d landed.

The green infrastructure was everywhere, which
clashed slightly with his blue/green body. He wore no clothes, nor did any of
the others, save from foot pads. His skin was hard enough to double as light
armor in some places and the Reen weren’t all that sensitive to temperature
changes, so the idea of clothing was something that their race rarely used. It
had been said that some in Axius had taken up the custom, but Heema saw no need
for it.

He walked over to a large entry port that doubled
as a tunnel that led into the city. Given the
Reen’s
native size everything here was built bigger than most ADZ civilizations. They also
had no
liftcars
aside from cargo transfers, leaving
people with the responsibility to move themselves around for the most part
within any given city.

Heema took to a series of ramps that descended
down into the subsurface, then found one of the main ‘roads,’ for there were
also no Reen vehicles for transport, given that they were themselves the size
of small vehicles. He accelerated up into a six-legged scuffle trot and moved
down the mostly empty throughways heading for the distant command complex. Building
ahead as they’d planned, the
emptyish
city was going
to be filling up quickly as more transports came down with passengers and Heema
wanted to get situated before that organized chaos began.

He traveled for several kilometers before finally
reaching his off-ramp and ascending up to the surface, crossing over a street
there and entering the command building. It looked like a stubby rock from
above, but within it was nothing short of gleaming with polished everything.
Most Reen construction was crude and functional, not given to aesthetic
concerns, but the command complex was one of the rare exceptions.

Heema passed by the ceremonial guards and moved
into the guts of the building, climbing a small ramp spiral up to where he’d
been told his pit would be, then walked out into it through an archway, seeing
several of his support staff already there and working.

“
How do things
look?
”

One of the other giraffe-like necks turned/twisted
around to look in his direction. “
The
construction efforts are slightly ahead of schedule and the offloading is
proceeding smoothly, though we’ve only had a small fraction of what’s in orbit
come down as of yet.
”

“
Get me up to
speed
,” Heema said, walking over to his personal pit and settling in. He
lowered his main body down over a short, wide pedestal with is legs spread out
around it and sank into the cushion, relieving his front legs to use to
manipulate part of the controls in front of him. The rest he would operate
using his head, teeth, and very supple neck.

“
Status reports
are waiting for you
.”

The Reen jabbed one of its long legs out and triple
pressed a button, sorting through a primary display prompt and getting to the
preset data packet. He used a nearby set of buttons to scroll through the table
of contents and selected the overview, knowing that the rest would be more
detailed information of everything summarized here.

Heema read through it slowly, but didn’t double back
on anything. A lot of it he already knew, and it was just a matter of getting
caught up with the communications transit lag. A relay network hub had been set
up immediately following the defeat of the lizards, and ever since this system
had been on the grid, but that still left a considerable delay given the
distances involved, plus the time he’d spent blacked out during transit.

The majority of the resources being used to construct
the city were being shipped in as well, and to facilitate that a series of six
depots had been set up on the surface from prefab structures. Heema checked the
resource levels within them, finding their stockpiles had dwindled down to
almost nothing. The convoy he’d come in with, which was actually staggered over
a series of days, was bringing a lot more cargo to infuse those depots with,
but the long term development of the planet couldn’t rely on such interstellar
shipments.

The cost of such shipping was enormous, meaning like
any prudent planner would know, you had to build from a local base of resources
if any massive project was slated.

Heema checked on the status of their mining sites,
finding four that were in the initial stages of setup. None were operational as
of yet, but one was already burrowing down into the crust to set up the first
of the catacombs that would house the primary mining habitats and processing
centers, all of which would be located below ground, with only a spaceport and
surface transit line hubs being built on the surface.

The rail lines were also under construction,
stretching out from the growing city and about halfway to the nearest mining
site. Once completed they’d be running cars back and forth on four different
tracks that ran parallel to each other with a few hundred meters gap separating
them. The first load of cars was in a jumpship half a day behind
Heema’s
, so it looked like they were going to be arriving
prior to the completion of the tracks, which was proper. They didn’t want any
delay in ore shipments once they began coming up from below ground, for the
simple reason that they had nowhere to store them on site.

The main resource center was going to be located in
its own region of the city, with a massive yard filled with bins and warehouses
to contain it all as it arrived via train, then the ring of factories
surrounding the yard would begin processing the already sorted and crushed materials
into whatever basic building blocks the Reen needed. Structural ribs, wall
segments, adhesives, wires, lighting…there was a long list of compounds the
mining operations had to find and produce in order for the factories to do
their job, and Heema knew that list wasn’t going to be fulfilled overnight.

To expedite matters there was already a pair of
recycling stations up and running. They were connected to the city via a dirt
road with thousands of Reen vehicles crisscrossing the countryside and cycling
back and forth from those mobile stations, which were moving around
periodically to hunt down the piles of lizard debris that Star Force was
letting them salvage from. The Human-led
empire
was
taking most of it for themselves, which was only right given that they’d
reclaimed the planet, but they were as interested as the Reen in seeing the planetary
colonization spur get underway.

What exactly it would gain Star Force Heema wasn’t
sure, but he knew there was always an angle to whatever they did…it just wasn’t
always a greedy one. He still hadn’t, after all these years, fully figured out
the motivations behind their decisions, but their actions were very
predictable. Those who behaved themselves and showed merit were courted and
rewarded. Those who caused trouble or showed themselves to be inept were
contained and dismissed as irrelevant.

He had no doubt that the Reen were here now because of
their past actions, and that those long term efforts were now paying dividends.
Heema was convinced that giving them this system back was another test, leading
up to what he couldn’t guess, but he’d noticed that when Star Force gave
someone as much leeway and free assistance as they were giving the Reen now,
they were interesting in seeing how they used it.

And Heema was adamant that they not waste a moment of
this opportunity.

After getting situated with the new staff and the
familiar few that he’d brought with him, he immediately headed out into the
city to start making contacts with the newcomers and getting them put to work
immediately, for there was a bit of uncertainty spreading amongst the incoming
population as to what to do next, with most seeming to think they’d have time
to relax and linger as if this was a holiday before the hard work started.

Heema quickly put such notions to rest, culminating
with a speech to the highest ranking 300 or so Reen on the planet in which he
outlined his suspicions that Star Force was testing them here and that they
could not let an ounce of laziness or indecision creep into the colony. They
had to be focused on clear goals and working to achieve them round the clock.
Lack of coordination or visible purpose would send the wrong message, and even
while the civilian population began to arrive and figure out what part they
wanted to play here, the leadership core group could not afford any such
wanderings.

Plans had been made previously, and Heema reiterated
them again, giving clarifications where needed, then the group broke up and
returned to their respective duties with a much quicker pace. Most of them had
thought of this as their chance for some breathing room away from Star Force’s
oversight, but grumblings as to that once again being present confirmed the
other
Reen’s
acceptance of what Heema had said. They
viewed it as partially a negative, whereas he truly saw it as an opportunity,
as well as a goad.

Were the Reen competent or not?

Wanting to prove that they were, Heema set himself on
a tireless schedule, personally checking in and sometimes overseeing every new
startup operation as it came online, as well as making personal contacts with
the populace and it continued to grow. He had help from a few of his colleagues
that arrived later, but the larger the population would grow the harder it
would be to keep everything moving at lightspeed. Some lagging would take place
somewhere, and
Heema
was insistent on hunting it down
and rooting it out, replacing the personnel if need be.

This colony had to be full speed ahead round the
clock. Anything else was unacceptable.

The growth of the Axius colony on the moon above
happened slower, not because of Star Force’s construction crews being inferior
to the Reen, but because they devoted only a small number of them to the task
at hand. This was not going to be a large startup, and it took more than two
years before the first transfers were allowed, with nearly all of the inbound
Axius colonists being Reen.

A few others that qualified for the ‘large’ Axius
colony, due to their bodily size, came with the
hexpeds
,
but that was more out of a sense of adventure in going somewhere new than any
connection with the planet below. The Reen in Axius were interesting in seeing
how their race fared, as well as in establishing personal and business
relations with them. In the beginning there were only a few hundred thousand
Axius colonists, and when they took up residence the construction crews left to
move on to other startup projects.

That left local construction crews with the
responsibility of expanding the city as needed, and such expansion was
deliberately kept at a slow pace. The majority of the resources collected from
the nearby moon mining sites was directed into the shipyard in orbit, starting
with a single small slip and expanding the infrastructure out into a progressively
larger facility that would be able to service the war fleets operating on the
nearby front lines.

Having a safe haven where they could refuel, rearm, or
undergo repairs was invaluable, for otherwise the transit times would be long
and lengthy having to run back to the ADZ for such things. The moon colony
wasn’t building any drones or cargo ships, but it was focusing on building up a
stockpile of spare parts and ammunition production so that they would be able
to service a growing number of vessels coming back from a wide number of
ongoing battles and the raiding fleets continuing to probe deeper into lizard
territory ahead of the reclamation invasions.

The Axius colony therefore focused its efforts on the
service function rather than pushing to grow their population. A trickle of additional
infrastructure continued, as did a small amount of immigration that was
strictly controlled. They’d offer up a few slots now and then, as most Axius
colonies did, with people swapping residences for a number of reasons. After
the shipyard was established a fair number of non-Reen Axius came in to work
them, as well as the mines and factories that fed them materials, but the bulk
of the civilian population remained Reen and was gaining about a third of its
growth from planetary individuals seeking to join Axius.

Several annual slots were reserved for them as well,
but the numbers were minuscule given the size of the colony. They had to
contend with maturia growth estimates and not
overflood
the moon with population, always wanting to keep residential occupation at no
more than 90% capacity, allowing for quarters swapping and advancement. They
did not want to tell an individual who had earned an upgrade that there were no
units available, so they had to make sure habitat construction always ran ahead
of population numbers.

So
Brobdingnag would remain a mere spec of Star Force
civilization within the star system while the Reen infrastructure grew by leaps
and bounds. Within a decade of their arrival their population had grown to half
a billion, with many more ready to make the move once additional facilities
were built underneath a halo of Sentinels. No one seemed overly concerned about
the threat of the lizards, Heema included, for Star Force never would have
built a shipyard here if they felt it was a vulnerable location, and as the
years passed more warships would be seen in orbit guarding that station, with
an occasional and very welcome shipment of new Sentinel segments coming in to
assemble yet another massive piece of anti-lizard deterrent.