Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms, we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. - For I Have Tasted the Fruit

Soviet physicist Prokhor Zakharov, celebrated designer of the Unity stardrive. The second-eldest of the ship's half-million passengers, Zakharov was eighty-two years old at mission launch and in declining physical health. United Nations medical staff estimated his odds of surviving cold sleep at only sixty-two percent.

An impressive service record paid testimony to the genius that had won for him a Noble Prize. Born in then then closed city of Vladivostok in 1989 to a father employed by the Red Banner Pacific Fleet and a mother on the Central Auditing Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Zakharov was educated at Moscow State University. An inexhaustible pen and a clear taste for controversy earned him a place on the editorial board of Physics Letters A while still an undergraduate. Multiple papers on low-energy nuclear reactions, popularly known as "cold fusion," introduced much-needed rigor to the study of that subject, restored its prestige in the eyes of the global Academy, and paved the way to a PhD in nuclear physics. Following graduation, Zakharov served his universal military obligation in the Reactor Laboratory Division aboard Ulyanovsk, one of his country's two fleet carriers, achieving the post of Captain, 2nd Rank.

From 2035, he was Deputy Administrator of Experimental Design Bureau-1 (OKB-1), largest and most prestigious of the multiple design bureaus in the Soviet space program. Here, he presided over the successful design and testing of second-generation Tifon spaceplane based on designs stolen from the United States. During that period, OKB-1 experienced largest relative increase in cosmonaut deaths since the earliest days of the U.S.S.R.’s manned space program.

Zakharov became an active contributor to Pravda of opinion pieces intended for consumption by audiences outside the Soviet Union. From the first, he stood a technocrat. He was a consistent critic of resistance to mass vaccination and the use of genetically modified food crops. Consistent with Soviet teaching, he declaimed “the feudal crutch of religion” as “the foremost barrier to the social progress of our species.”

At the height of his career, Zakharov was recruited by the Soviet Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine to develop a new program of geriatric medicine. His team was ultimately credited with major advances in anti-aging and preservational medicine, resulting in the “Long Politburo” of 2031-2065 and laying important theoretical groundwork for use of cryogenic stasis aboard U.N.S. Unity.

Zakharov was reassigned as head of Soviet delegation to U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission in 2052, and recommended unconditionally by U.N. Security Council for position of Unity Chief Science Officer in 2059. To mark the occasssion, he was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Subordinate only to Captain Garland and the Executive Officer, Zakharov became responsible for safe and efficient function of the ship’s fusion drive and associated sub-systems.

Brusque and arrogant, Zakharov was widely disliked by his peers on the ship's command crew. During the Unity Crisis, Captain Jonathan Garland found that Zakharov was unwilling to place the collective interests of the survivors and their mission ahead of his personal ambitions. Rather than awaken damage controllers, the good Soviet doctor had instead sent for his own hand-picked reactor crews, summoning them to him despite an intervening meat grinder of Holnist fighters. Zakharov refused to seriously consider his captain's suggestion that the crew return to cold sleep and take the Unity into a slingshot orbit around Alpha Centauri A, lying about the feasibility of such a solution, which he alleged to be impossible based on the level of fuel and oxygen remaining. In truth, Zakharov was afraid of the near-certainty of his own death should he be placed back into Wespe-Quinn-Vagner suspension.

Hunted by the Spartans, frustrated by Kellerite interlopers, and working at cross-purposes to the general evacuation ordered by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida, Zakharov's engineers proved unable to save the ship. Their doomed attempt to vent and recover Unity's collission-damaged reactors poisoned thousands. The burden of providing lifelong care for so many victims of radiation sickness, many of them permanently crippled and sterile, had dramatic implications for the community that would eventually become The University of Planet. Robotic servitors of Zakharov's own design outnumbered living colonists by an order of five-to-one as many as three decades after Planetfall.

Source:
Picture is, of course, Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Lady Deirdre Skye said:

In the great commons at Gaia’s Landing, we have a tall and particularly beautiful stand of white pine, planted at the time of the first colonies. It represents our promise to the people, and to Planet itself, never to repeat the tragedy of Earth. - Planet Dreams

It is the way of things that heroes are unheralded in their own times. To many survivors, Lady Deirdre Skye was one of these.

She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to minor Scots-Irish nobility. Her father, a U.N. security consultant, carried on with numerous women before her parents divorced when she eight. Soon after, her mother, heir to a powerful Protestant clan in County Antrim, became active in humanitarian causes. As the Second Troubles escalated to a fever pitch, a wing of the family home, Wainwright Downs, was converted to a Unionist women's hospital. Young Deirdre often escaped her tutors to spend long afternoons in the greenhouses with the battered and the fugitive.

Teenage pique carried her across the Atlantic. She received a comprehensive education at Cornell University just as North America's own internecine crisis was beginning. After a bachelor's of science in agriculture and a masters in environmental biology, the Lady Skye completed a PhD in plant genetics. Greatness beckoned. The Chancellors of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York, wanted her for post-graduate work. With them, she discovered the L7 hybrid corn variant, prized for its pest-resistant traits. This crop would go on to feed hundreds of millions in Eastern Europe, and Skye would eventually received the Nobel Prize for the part she played.

But there was other work to be done than with microscopes and pipettes. In March 2059, Skye was dismissed from the Lab's faculty following her arrest for trespassing and criminal mischief at the International Genetics Corporation's Orient Point research station. In a subsequent public statement, practically snarled into the baying cameras, Skye accused InGEN of "reckless and dangerous experiments involving plant matter whose behavioral characteristics are completely unknown to the scientific community, placing the Long Island Sound and Gardiner's Bay at great jeopardy from biological invasion." After a plea bargain, Skye was recruited to the Environmental Defense Movement, ascending to leadership during its direct action phase, which lasted through 2064.

In that same year, the Isla Nublar Incident led to widespread acknowledgement of InGEN's unethical business practices. When the company's CEO, John Hammond, shoveled dirt over the last of the eight coffins filled by his overweening ambition, the shade of Skye's reputation rose anew. With the help of sympathetic friends of her mother, and because self-preservation is not a privledge afforded to the desperate, she was made a supervisor with United Nations Disaster Relief Fund, still overwhelmed by the outcomes of the Six Minute War. Deployed to Peshawar, Skye braved the probabilistic certainties of cancer for the opportunity to do good.

In Pakistan, Skye focused on adapting food crops to high-radiation environments. Her voice proved decisive in the selection selection of v097 apple and Mark IV wheat strains for use in the contaminated soils of the Indus River Valley, widespread adoption of which helped to relieve famine conditions within the year. But controversy was not far behind. A decision to employ local women as administrative and research assistants provoked violent reactions from tribal leaders, necessitating the frequent intervention of the Pakistani Frontier Corps. There were frequent accusations from friends and foes alike that Skye instigated conflict with the locals, whose patriarchal values she openly disdained. Skye resigned her post in late 2066 following the deadly fire-bombing of an affiliated seed bank and the deaths of more than thirty of her people. While convalescing, Skye found time to author her Eden Thesis, postulating that patriarchal societies tend toward competition, inequality, and corruption, whereas matriarchal societies tend toward cooperation and growth.

The deliberations of the Nobel Committee and the notoriety of her writing placed Skye on the radar of the United Nations Security Council, which secured her services as Mission Botanist and extended to her a lieutenant commander's commission over the protests of Chief Science Officer Prokhor Zakharov. She was tasked with securing the mission's food supply, which included drawing up a plan for stocking Unity's seed bank after reviewing spectrographic analysis of Chiron relayed by the Pathfinder Probe.

Under Unity's emergency protocols, Skye was awakened early to check on the viability of the hydroponics bays. She was abandoned there along with her agronomists when Prokhor Zakharov declined to detail his engineers to make repairs to that space, hoarding them instead for work on reactor containment. Skye was still supervising the placement of bracing tape on cracked sunports when the mutineers made it amidships. Though she'd managed to dragoon a number of Francisco d'Almeida's security officers encountered en route to her duty station, they were too few in number, and most were slaughtered by Colonel Santiago's Spartans 'ere they could take cover and return fire. Victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat thanks only to the timely intervention of Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal and a scratch force of mission loyalists. Afterward, Skye and her followers gathered what foodstuffs they could from the wrecked greenhouse block, agreed to make a go of it on their own, collected certain farming equipment from storage, emptied the ship's seed vaults, and moved for the hangar levels.

Source:
Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra in Firefly.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outwards, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment. - Essays on Mind and Matter

Sheng-ji Yang followed an unlikely path to Chiron. Born in Chongqing in 1992 to a family disfavored by the ruling Communist Party due to a maternal grandfather's service in the Nationalist Army during the Second World War, Yang completed his formal education late in life and endured long exile in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, spending more than 45 years under state surveillance.

Denied more than a primary education, Yang received instruction in the Chinese classics from his father, a noted scholar of literature. By the time he was sent west at age twenty-two, he was a Master of the Five Excellences: calligraphy, poetry, painting, traditional medicine, and martial arts (t’ai-chi, wushu).

At the Bingtuan, other prisoners beat the timorousness from Yang, who sheltered in the possibilities of an Interlink degree. Beginning his formal studies in the twilight of his twenty-fourth year, he completed coursework in psychology and military history from Beijing University, earning a PhD in the former field. The combination of hard physical and mental seasoning toughened Yang and revealed previously unsuspected leadership competancies. He was made foreman of agricultural laborers, then sub-prefectural commander on the recommendation of the 12th Division political commissar.

Yang's administrative and intellectual qualities began to excite those once tasked with limiting his horizons. Yang's teams carried out the construction of new shelterbelts in the Taklamakan Desert, expanding the New Green Wall by thousands of kilometers. As an adjunct to the Military Studies faculty at Tarim University, Yang prepared War in the Global High Country, an exhaustive and densely-written analysis of the failures of the People's Liberation Army Air Force and Navy during the Third Sino-Indian War that gained significant attention from the Communist Party elite and became standard reading in military academies worldwide. Professional historians despaired of Yang's narrative flourishes, but his undiguised opinions were welcome ammunition for Politburo knife-fighters and easy for readers to engage.

Yang was mobilized during the Uighur Revolt of 2038, during which he was listed M.I.A. After a time in hiding, probably in the Soviet Union, he reappeared during the Golden Revolution as a senior officer in the new emperor's Lifeguard. He was later recommended for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri by his government as a Political Officer with special supervisory authority over the ship's Chinese contingent.

To his farmers and followers alike, Yang presented a philosophy of government emphasizing the Three Pillars: 法 (Fa), or Law, meaning that the law is known and obeyed because it is systematically enforced; 術 (Shu), or Method, whereby the ruler holds himself apart from society and applies "special tactics and secrets" to obscure his motivations, reducing the opportunity for confidants or supplicants to influence him inappropriately; and 勢 (Shi), or Legitimacy, which focuses on drawing distinctions between the excellence of the ruler and the flaws of the man who rules.

During the Unity Crisis, Yang was awakened to join the general evacuation. He quickly asserted his authority over his original command and, upon learning of Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida's abrogation of the U.N. Charter, consulted the ship's central mainframe computer regarding the choicest compartments to check for useful people and equipment. Next, at the head of a picked squad of People's Liberation Army veterans, Yang subdued the U.N. Security Forces guards placed over a nearby weapons locker. As the contest over Unity's carcass intensified, Yang didn't stint from making captives of entire damage control teams or shooting his way to sole ownership of contested cargo bays. He was specifically interested in caches of terraforming equipment.

Inspired by his many years in Xinjiang and armed with survey data collected by the Chiron Probe (thought corrupted by the U.N. Data Sciences Unit but intercepted and cleaned up by Chinese intelligence), Yang brought his convoy of Landing Pods to the shelter of the Planctae Upthrust, a massif in the inhospitable Dune Sea. Supervised by the Greek geologist and miner Archelaus Laskaris--a Morganite seed agent discovered wounded in a hangar bay hose room--the survivors excavated subterranean bases to tap Planet's deep aquifers and shelter from the heat.

The self-styled Chairman went on to administer a week-long battery of multi-disciplinary examinations to sort followers into classes. Those who demonstrated the least aptitude for implementing Yang's vision were immediately subjected to nerve stapling and neural re-socialization before being reassigned to perform menial labor or base defense. Persons flagged as potential Talents were earmarked for leadership roles and received direct instruction from Yang himself. Candidates who then failed to meet Yang's exacting physical, mental, and "moral" standards received "redirection" into mid-level technical and administrative posts.

Since the so-called "Human Hive" rarely relinquishes its members willingly, the only reliable information on Yang's grand experiment in social organization comes from a handful of traders and prisoners. Their consistent description is of a life dedicated wholly to the leader's whim, usually squalid, never with enough to eat, and always in fear of official reprisal for failure to meet quotas or demonstrate sufficient "thought discipline." The austerity and density of Hive living, combined with the desperate need to please an all-powerful individual, promote grinding competition that saps the innovation, enthusiasm, and mental health of every one of Yang's unfortunate subjects.

Sources:
This still of François Chau as Julies-Pierre Mao in The Expanse serves for Hive Chairman Sheng-ji Yang.

The connection between Yang and Legalism is apparently made here rather than in the lore. I explored the rudiments of the philosophy using Wikipedia.

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate. - Spartan Battle Manual

Somewhere along the line, Corazón Santiago determined that fate owed her the fair shake she had been denied all her life.

Hers was a tragic childhood. Brought from her native Puerto Rico to Miami, FL as an infant, Santiago was orphaned during the West Flagler Riots of 2042. Already a runner for the Jade Falcon survivalist gang, she served as surrogate parent for her two younger siblings for several years more. The Falcons made Santiago attend their community school, but numerous arrests for felonious violence led to a youth diversion program. While in detention, Santiago's sisters were placed in foster care. One died due to criminal neglect. The whereabouts of the second sibling were soon lost.

The contrasting experience of official and unofficial authority left a deep mark on Santiago. She left detention at age sixteen and struck out for greener pastures. She was soon in Wildwood, FL, alone, attending cookouts, "ready" weekends, and backyard book clubs hosted by the Dorian Militia. Her new friends displeased the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As tensions simmered up in Tallahassee, she was interrogated twice, though no charges were filed.

Santiago longed to make a difference but continued to bet on the wrong horse. As the threat of civil collapse mounted in late summer 2052, she returned to Miami just forty-eight hours ahead of Hurricane Ivoire as a founding member of the Florida State Fencibles, a public self-defense compact resisting imposition of martial law. Waving flares and firing automatic weapons, the Fencibles turned Federal Emergency Management Agency convoys around. Then the hurricane hit. A Category 5 that stayed over Florida for three days and four nights.

The Fencible leadership panicked. The state was in dysfunction, the federal government excluded. Santiago determined that she had inherited responsibility for them. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to dynamite Miami’s hurricane barriers to relieve flood pressure on wealthy developments, and Santiago now led the armed occupation of seawalls and municipal pump stations to prevent it. Once the storm was past, her fighters worked alongside the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department to maintain civil order in the city. They were invited to do so again following Miami’s unilateral declaration of independence from Christian States of America in 2053.

Santiago had become a folk hero and found it to her liking. With a constellation of other citizen militias, she enthusiastically helped to hold South Florida against both Federal recapture and intrusion of Christian States forces. Repeating the model that had worked in Miami, she began collaborating with local Holnists to obtain relief supplies for distribution to civilians. Convinced of the essential justice of her work, and preoccupied by running the distribution side of the operation, she ignored suggestions that their foraging was in fact theft.

In 2055, the forces of Union at last came south for the Holnists and their collaborators. Santiago was reported among those killed during a failed survivalist raid on Kennedy Space Center, during which the attackers managed to collapse the Vertical Assembly Building. Among the last coastal enclaves still in Federal hands south of St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral was an important political objective for the Florida Independence Movement. The Holnists pushed easily into the city and overran the space complex the following morning. Civilian hostages made easy sport for an army drunk on victory. In this manner, they were themselves ambushed: Federal defenders set off demolition charges. The blasts killed hundreds of the separatists and destroyed much of their accumulated loot.

Under an assumed identity, Santiago, nose broken, head shaved, followed the war west. Her new philosophy: if you can't beat them, join them. The Tahoe Crisis was nearly at an end. On the outskirts of Los Angeles, she joined the California State Forces (CSF), receiving an enlistment bounty of $3,000. Theater Commanders judged her an able battalion commander during the Federal offensive against Carson City, last of the major Kellerite strongholds. Santiago ended her CSF service as a major, responsible for guarding Holnist prisoners at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. Luxuriating on a major's salary, she started Interlinks Courses but earned poor marks. Most of her time was spent attending debriefings with high-value captures. She was finally released from service in 2056.

Rootless after the war, Santiago fell back into the skepticism of her old Florida friends. Wandering the post-war South, she wrote and self-published her “Spartan Thesis," attracting over four million followers on the Planetary DataLinks. Brevity was not Santiago's strong suit, but she practically lived at public libraries, synthesizing a huge reading list of philosophy, always careful to leave town before authorities could put a stop to her press. Thus she became noteworthy among the Second Wave of amateur philosophers to speak to issues first popularized by Nathan Holn and Jean-Baptiste Keller.

Santiago echoed the latter rather than the former in that she claimed to speak from experience. Under a pseudonym, she shared stories of fighting a long war of confused allegiances. Tapping into the new dichotomy between veterans and "stay-behinds," she sternly condemned those who had failed to take up arms, implying that indecision, neutrality, and "pointless pacifism" were greater crimes than service in an unworthy cause.

For one year, she was the talk of every counterculture movement from San Diego to Jacksonville. Then the popularity of her writings wavered as post-war consensus consolidated around the Houlihan Thesis: that Holnism, and by extension, all Survivalism, was a fundamentally selfish and maladaptive reaction to the emotional stresses of modernity, too deeply mired in racism and sociopathy to yield any worthy truths. Santiago's wartime experiences, once a source of credibility, now weighed her down to drowning.

She jumped again, joining the U.N. Security Force in 2060 on the strength of her CSF service, though being accorded only the rank of Sergeant. There was training in Antarctica, then a permanent posting to the Singapore Space Elevator. She did rotations as armorer and counter-assault team leader and received numerous citations for personal bravery and command excellence. This record of unbroken achievement led to her selection as part of the U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission, a prize few enough of her peers were chasing.

Even while in her position, Santiago continued to participate clandestinely in Datalinks political discussions under the pen name Thucydides, finding her U.N. paymasters less stern than the American Government. She managed to find a small audience, mostly Holnist collaborators and other insurrectionists covered by the National Pardon of 2061 who grudgingly lined up behind her advocacy for mandatory gun ownership. Santiago seemed to have reached an acceptance of certain facets of Houlihan: "Those who do not go armed," she wrote, "are making a choice not only about their own safety, but the safety of their neighbors and communities as well.” (Possession of firearms was strictly controlled in the Occupied Territories of the post-war United States.) Starting in 2064, Thucydides wrote at length about the ethical problems of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, especially crew selection, about which they were unusually well-informed.

Note: Based on the number, organization, and kit of Spartans encountered during the Unity Crisis, most faction security chiefs assessed with very high confidence that Santiago and her accomplices exploited their security access to infiltrate the ship's hull during construction, where they most likely arranged for the clandestine inclusion of survivalists and cached significant quantities of weapons, especially grenades, which were not a significant component of UNSF or Marine Forces loadouts.

Psych Profile
Exceptional self-discipline and demonstrated ability to suppress own needs and comforts for greater goal. Sensitive to the political purpose of military power. Elected Class Leader of 740th UNSF Intake at Fort Krychek, Antarctica. Demonstrated aptitude for cooperation across national and ideological divides, especially during crisis. Praised for self-possession by Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.

Intellectually curious. Working knowledge of the classics of Western political theory and military science. Strong written and spoken communication. Regarded by members of her command as both wise and experienced. Takes care to be informed about all aspects of Unity operations. Individually, subject has completed an unprecedented number of personal training modules.

Tendency to take on excessive duties can be discouraging to personnel with lesser motivation. Subject has reputation as a taskmaster, scheduling additional live training for her unit over and above what was required by their billet prerequisites, primarily in the area of shipboard emergency response.

Strong indications of perfectionism. Unwillingness to delegate could limit individual's suitability for commission.

Clear acceptance of use of force as a legitimate tool by United Nations to enforce the principles of the U.N. Charter in the protection of vulnerable populations.

Remarks Included by Chief Security Officer Rachael Winzenried:
Based on interviews with members of her squad, Sergeant Santiago appears to sympathize with certain tents of American Hypersurvivalism. There is a steadfast refusal to fully acknowledge the extent of Holnist misdeeds, and insistence that passivity or flight were worse crimes than misplaced aggression. The State of California acknowledged Santiago's honorable discharge but confirmed her close contact with Holnists, including high-ranking commanders in that movement. Additional psych evaluation ordered post-landing.

Sources:
Origin of the image of the female soldier is unknown. Potentially linked to a Fantasy Flights Games product. Shared by K. Gorman on Pinterest.

This faction bio uses the original language as a template, sometimes word-for-word.

The Jade Falcon Clan is a BattleTech reference incorporated into the original game lore by the designers themselves.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. Need as well as greed have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enough to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse. - The Centauri Monopoly

Though he would later style himself African royalty, Nwabudike Morgan was born into poverty in Damaraland, South West Africa, in 1998. His father, a diamond miner, was killed in an industrial accident when Morgan was three, and his mother relocated the family to Walvis Bai, taking domestic work in the household of a Boer preacher.

By his eighteenth year, Morgan was well-known to both South African Bureau of State Security and the Policia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, crossing regularly into Portuguese West Africa to fence stolen diamonds. Proceeds from that work purchased small arms from Portuguese Army garrison at Luanda. Morgan was then permitted to load the contraband onto a small fleet of fishing trawlers for transit to Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where they were sold at exorbitant markup to Biafran rebels. When guns could not be had, Morgan rented use of the boats themselves, ferrying saboteurs to the oil rigs in waters controlled by the Nigerian Federal Government.

Following Biafra's independence, Morgan recruited dozens of Ibo veterans to staff a private military company, SafeHaven. In 2020, the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure placed Morgan completing sale of private military assistance to Government of Chad. Morgan contracted to protect dozens of oil wells against rebel and Sudanese incursions. Within five years, his tramp airliners were delivering small arms and Toyota Hilux light truck bodies to multiple conflict zones in sub-Saharan Africa, frequently to buyers on the opposite sides of the same dispute. Morgan became notorious for his readiness to serve any client, no matter how dark their reputation or remote the point-of-delivery. Association with so robust a set of regional players allowed Morgan and his agents to broker numerous durable ceasefires and food deals, often enforced by Morgan-financed “private security” forces.

The Chadians defaulted on what they owed in 2025, and Morgan occupied the oil fields as forefit collateral. When government forces resisted, his men shot them dead. This engagement provided the wherewithal for the next expansion. In 2026, Morgan paid pennies on the dollar for the struggling American lobbying firm Wainwright-Balmoral, once billed the "Scourge of the Senate." Companies in the Morganite portfolio cultivated an enormous portfolio of business with the U.S. Government.

"The problem with Morgan," remembered California Senator Jerkins Benvenuti, "is that the enemy of his friend was just his next customer." When the prosperous North American democracies fell into civil war, Morgan practiced a religious neutrality: guns to anyone who could pay. It was a bad bet. When the Holnists and their fellow travelers failed, Morgan found himself persona non grata in Washington, Toronto, and Mexico City. Unionists blamed him for prolonging their national nightmares. The defeated secessionists complained that the price of Morgan's help had impoverished them. Morganite companies continued to receive federal contracts, but their market share shrank steadily as all three countries explored a newfound taste for fully domestic and parastatl production. At the start of the weeks-long hearings preceding the vote to nationalize the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC), Benvenuti told reporters: "[American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) Chairman] Oscar van de Graaf is corrupt and a patriot. Nwabudike Morgan is just corrupt." His contemporaries agreed. Republican, Democrat, Conservative, and Unionist came together in a landslide to grant the ARC a government charter rather than conscience its hostile takeover by Morgan's proxies.

Some of Morgan's well-paid friends in high places admitted to biting the hand that had fed them. "More than anyone else, he got me here," Minority Whip Halos Harrison confessed to rolling cameras in the Capitol Rotunda, "but I guess this is where I get off the train." The following year, his constituents returned him to Congress by a ten-point margin despite being severely outspent by his challenger. Similar logic led Washington to back renewal of the monopoly on space governance previously granted to Comprehensive Transport by international treaty, which Morgan had also hotly disputed.

Morgan withdrew from public life in 2056, the same year that a SafeHaven offshoot, Morgan Industries, was awarded a prime contract from the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. He was last observed departing Earth on the Kuiper Shuttle four months prior to mission launch.

Psych Profile
Utterly transactional worldview: believes success in any situation requires only identification of the correct currency. Profit, not service or fidelity to moral code, is highest virtue, indicating excellence. Long history of successful business dealings and escapes from legal jeopardy have probably reinforced subject's ego, while great wealth, political influence, and corporate structures insulate subject from the externalities of profit-driven behavior.

Has asserted that market forces are genuine indicators of popular will, and can therefore be trusted to supply social goods if and when they are needed, obviating the justification for government intervention.

U.N. intelligence analysts posit subject's well-documented obsession with private wealth and personal branding--he is an unapologetic megalomaniac--reflects psychological insecurity carried over from his youth, when he was a victim of racism, both official and unofficial. Money provided first a bargaining chip with which to mitigate state control over his body, and later an escape from both poverty and subjugation.

Sources:
Actor Ernie Hudson in "The Last Siege" is our CEO Nwabudike Morgan.

This faction bio uses the original language as a template for the Psych Profile, sometimes word-for-word.

Morgan's early story is similar to that of the character Manfred De La Rey in author Wilbur Smith's Power of the Sword.

Commissioner Pravin Lal said:

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Librarian's Preface

Who was Pravin Lal? A biopic in the December 2050 issue of Time-Life Magazine called him "King Midas in reverse."

Pravin Lal was born in East Bengal, Pakistan. The elder Lal was a Pakistani Army major frequently deployed on peacekeeping operations who met his son only twice before his death during a border skirmish in the Sundarbans. Lal's mother, a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières, returned, son in tow, to her father's house in Islamabad. Iskander Lal, the grandfather, was a spokesman in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Lal studied philosophy and medicine at Aga Khan University, specializing in thoracic surgery. The Red Crescent snapped him up for a three-year stint in Azad Kashmir, and in connection with this work he also traveled extensively in North-West Frontier Province. In 2024, Dr. Lal was elected to the Pakistani National Assembly, serving a single term before losing heavily over his criticisms of Inter-Services Intelligence.

Fleeing the stink of his unpopular policy, Lal returned to medicine as a junior researcher with the World Health Organization in Basel, Switzerland. Most of his work dealt with protein encoding for DNA repair, but the activist streak would not be suppressed. He signed a 2029 letter of protest against Nobel Prize nomination of Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi on grounds of ethical deficiency. As a biomedical researcher, Lal flourished, and at the onset of the Six-Minute War, he began a career with the U.N. Medical Service. Lal spearheaded significant improvements in the delivery of emergency services in less-development environments, acquiring a large fleet of air-mobile hospitals that surged to squelch emerging public health and refugee crises during the Sahara Burst Wars. In 2034, Lal was named senior adviser and health spokesman for the Office of the Secretary General.

The press seemed to like Lal, and he was soon interim Chief of Staff to Thai General Secretary Apsara Mongkut. Here, Lal wielded the Chairman's influence like a cudgel. The West believed he was, after the fashion of Mongkut himself, a Communist cat's paw. The Communists didn't know what to make of him.

On Mongkut's behalf, Lal negotiated the nastier details of agreements that put Chinese commissars and private mega-donors among the passengers of the U.N. Mission for Alpha Centauri. He connived with the French to arrange the "disappearance" of fugitive Carmelite ruler Vesper Abaddon while that worthy was recieving cancer treatment in Geneva. On Lal's orders, blue-helmeted peacekeepers helped the Nigerian Federal Army to hold the Mid-Western Region, leading the CIA to describe the U.N. as "their adjunct." He gave diplomatic cover and food aid to various armed resistance movements in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, recognizing their sovereignty over occupied rigs and reefs to the point that the Royal Navy requested shoot-down authority (which Number 10 only narrowly denied). In Quebec, U.N. forces stood credibly accused of criminal negligence for their inaction ahead of the Black Watch killings. Persistent conspiracy theories linking peacekeeper inaction to the eventual success of the Front de libération du Québec did lead to Lal's reassignment as Assistant Director of the World Health Organization only weeks before Mongkut's assassination.

In his new role, Lal managed the U.N. response to the mid-century Red Flu epidemic. Despite the strong urgings of public health professionals on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Lal declined to endorse mandatory vaccination or quarantines, claiming that these would be violations of the free will of billions of skeptics. The virus flourished while the emperor fiddled. In 2065, Lal was hounded out of his post. Unsure of what else to do with him, the WHO foisted him back on the U.N., who appointed their least-favorite son to be Unity's Chief of Surgery.

Psych Profile
Preference for intellectualizing policy problems can lead to apparent contradictions in application of professed ideals. Prone to false equivalence in the search for mediated outcomes.

Very high esteem for democratic ideals and personal experience of life in a former British colony may explain subject’s especially negative reactions to the perceived hypocrisy of the Western powers, contrasted with tendency toward silence in regard to regimes with unbroken records of illiberal and anti-democratic behavior.

CAUTION: Subject scored abnormally low (.32) on Atherholt Trauma Function Test, indicating unsuitability for crisis leadership. Contrast with extremely positive remarks from Morgan Emergency Services instructors following simulated compartment breaches.

Sources:
Actor Ben Kingsley is our Pravin Lal.

Vesper Abaddon is a character in the NBC show Kings.

Red Flu is a worldwide pandemic featured in The Last Ship.

The Black Watch Killings are a feature of a story about Quebec independence in Cold War Hot, edited by Peter G. Tsouras.

Thucydides said:

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. - Datalinks

Periodic manias for artificial islands gripped coastal nations on every inhabited continent at intervals throughout the first hundred years of the second millennium. Sold variously as the solution to shoreline erosion, post-war decontamination, and the more familiar problem of overcrowding, the formation, maintenance, and control of these territories passed in time from legitimate to illegitimate governments, thence to the corporations.

Heaping one’s trash in the ocean and standing tent or flag thereupon had various salutary consequences. Conservationists looked to the rejuvenation of species deprived of their natural habitats closer inshore. Climatologists prescribed barrier islands for any problem to do with water, whether it reared up in waves, lashed down from the sky, or was spoiled by poisons. New Orleans, Miami, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Shanghai, and Bangkok—all were girded very early in the twenty-first century by star fortress complexes of concrete-crusted sand. Generals sent dredges to extend the engagement envelopes of missiles and their spotting systems. Corporations built their own “heaps and rigs” for any number of purposes, ranging from support of aquaculture and deep-sea mining to traditional tax shelters. Morgan Industries built floating casinos within sight of every major American coastal city, luring the wicked out to play. But the early trend was about taking advantage of the deep sea for strategic defense or economic benefit, not colonization.

The story of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, better known as the "Big EZ," begins with the Six Minute War.

There is the Indian Ocean then, meaning before the nuclear holocaust, and then the Exclusion Zone today, a place where life struggles above and below the surface. Global cooling brought on by the cloud cover killed off fish, plankton, and coral. Acting as much from a sense of obligation as scientific confidence, the U.N. and others quickly backed an atrociously expensive scheme introducing thousands of different strains of artificial microorganisms to rebuild the maritime food chain. In so doing, they wrecked fresh biological and climatological havoc. English-speakers gained a new word, Crichtonic, an adjective describing what happened when well-intentioned solutions met a reality that simulations could not fully apprehend.

As before, technicians and soldiers occupied the very first outposts seasonally. Inspired by the Soviet example, a few nations built floating prisons. Permanent civilian residents came out of desperation when post-war radiological fallout and the lack of better options tempted them to seek the immediate safety of “clean” spaces, notwithstanding the sheer certainty of future natural disaster. Policing these movements was beside the point: death by rubber bullet was quicker and less awful than death by cellular degeneration. Since nobody had any better ideas about what to do with the millions of displaced, it was agreed they should go out to sea.

The earliest settlers put up scrap and prefab homes atop floating fields of garbage heavy enough to dampen the waves. The next piled onto abandoned rigs, stacking up their quarters and compartments like ludicrous games Tetris or Jenga. When they wanted for more room, they bought deposits of sand or crewed their own dredges. They ate what they could catch, or what the multi-national air- and boatlifts brought them. For money, they tapped into undersea pipelines, drilled their own unsanctioned wells, broke salvage, patrolled for pirates, and harvested the new marine life. Tapakeda's whales led entire fleets in chases that lapped the Pacific.

Over time, the inhabitants of the “Big EZ” developed a language and culture uniquely their own. Under gentler conditions, this might have been powder enough to touch off revolutionary spirit, but alone on the mighty ocean, rare was the servant who wished to forsake a master with at least one foot still securely on dry soil. Prophets of the new age promised interdependence only one generation off, yet following the old scripts, riches pulled up from the seabed or scooped from the waters rarely stayed on the sand heaps and platforms that the refugees were forced to call their homes.

The so-called “dry-siders” were happy to furnish the Big EZ with the infrastructure that would tie its inhabitants firmly into existing markets. Water filtration and desalination systems. Drilling rigs, cranes, and pipe. Turbines and photovoltaic cells for power generation. Communications. “Ancillary” services, to include brokerage, sanitation, medical service, and, of course, physical security. Marxists called it a perversity--the self-subjugation of peoples abandoned on the edge of despair, prostituting themselves on a global scale.

Not everyone agreed with this dark assessment. Some took it for progress. The flow of value was no longer mono-directional; supplies funneled in, and raw materials streamed out. And that was not to say the windfall of this economic revolution was strongly felt in the putative metropoles. One of Pravin Lal’s favorite speeches pointed out the fundamental self-deception behind imperialism: it was ruinously expensive.

U.N. Undersecretary for Development Dr. Pravin Lal said:

The colonial project is purely an emotional project. At the root of our desire to have sway over the choices of others, there is an inescapable anxiety: that somebody should have taken a path other than the one we thought was suitable for ourselves. – Valediction, 146th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, New York

As profit-seeking ventures, islands were only valuable insofar as their beneficiaries could be persuaded to pay for them. This meant either the governments interested in their continued existence, such as in the case of so-called “hurricane chains,” or the occupants themselves. From 2060, international convention and common practice had aligned to the point that the building up of such islands was always accompanied by parallel investment in local economic activity. Fisheries-based aquaculture and power generation via the tidal harness were trusted standbys, but carbon extraction, space exploration, and deep-sea mining already threatened to displace them. A good living could also be had either as an independent operator or cog in the enormous logistical operations required to supply the island-bound population and its industries.

Sister Miriam Godwinson said:

The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil - The Blessed Struggle

Adversity is fertile soil for credibility. As North Americans started coming to grips with the conclusion of their twenty-year self-inflicted nightmare, they cast about for the familiar and found Sister Miriam.

Miriam Godwinson was born in the basement of a convocational writchurch in Athens, Georgia in 2024. Holnism was still testing itself against the guard rails of conventional politics. Nathan Holn, a cashiered U.S. Army private and failed college professor had only just begun to beat his angry drum. Down South, some men liked what they heard. Samson Godwinson and his fellow parishioners wondered what Holn knew that they did not. As instructed, they began to lay in guns and ammo for a coming fight of uncertain proportions. They stopped paying taxes, removed children to public schools, and missed appearances in court. They called themselves the Evangelical Fire. Egged on by their leader, they spoiled for fights with police. In 2038, they got one. Their leader, a dentist named Allophylus Zeander, parked their church bus on a highway bypass and waited. A Georgia State Patrol radio car pulled up behind to assist. Zeander and the men of his congregation opened fire, ready to light the spark of the conflagration that would bring about the End Times. Samson was killed the same evening. So were twenty-four others, including six state and local lawmen. Zeander perished soon after in the death chamber of a federal penitentiary. It was an indication of what was to come.

The surviving Godwinsons' miseries were not yet over. The family's two youngest daughters, Rachael and Belquis, both unvaccinated, died of measles. Miriam, aged sixteen, was taken by the state and placed in foster care. Her new family taught her cello and hired tutors to furnish the general knowledge that a fanatic's education had carefully excluded. She did her undergraduate studies in psychology at Yale University, clerking summers for the Office of Senator George Malverne (Radical Republican-TN). She became his Director of Legislative Affairs the same year she gained her doctorate in theology from Yale Divinity School.

Her passion was mission work. In 2050, Miriam founded the Kansas City Mission, becoming one of the few relief leaders to operate in dispute territory. The 272 to join her, including former devotees of Zeander's defunct movement, rebuilt war-torn neighborhoods. But they were easy targets for both germs and opportunists, and 256 perished in the work.

Despite their discomfiture with her idiosyncratic politics, extremist media was quick to give Godwinson a platform. As far as heirs to the Zeander legacy, none were as accomplished. Her stern cautions against extremism infuriated fellow guests. The inevitable arguments made for enviable ratings. But they also made Godwinson herself a celebrity among a new kind of audience: loyalists on both coasts. The tides of war turned against the Holnists, and the good sister was soon in demand once more to replace a line-up of commentators tainted by their association with break-away ideologies.

Godwinson proved an eloquent spokesperson for both Christian ecumenicism and interfaith dialogue. A large body of postwar scholarship suggests that she may have caused, and not merely benefited from, conservative abandonment of Protestant Dominionism after 2055. Both Jewish and Muslim leaders also hailed the Godwinson for her deep familiarity with, and consistent respect for, their own foundational texts. Historian Christophe Wedgwood captured her essential appeal: "They turned in not to hear the particulars of her theology," he wrote, "but to do the equally-important work of assuring themselves that there was still somebody reasonable on the other side of the spiritual-secular divide."

Godwinson received an appointment to the Unity Mission in 2057 but in fact spent much of that year as the United States Government's Special Envoy to Insurrectionists, negotiating the disarmament of militia units throughout the Upper Mississippi River Basin.

The precise story of Godwinson's survival aboard the starship remains in doubt. According to central records, the individual occupying her cryopod died only nine minutes after departure from the Lunar Cradle, more than a century before before Unity entered the Alpha Centauri star system. Nevertheless, multiple people personally acquainted with Godwinson prior to the expedition have attested to reuniting with her after Planetfall, and Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi, the mission's foremost expert in genetics, famously confirmed the identity of the Conclave faction leader before the Planetary Council.

Godwinson had a controversial Planetfall. Followers today hail her as a hero who worked to evacuate the sick and the dying as well as the able-bodied. Detractors complain that she failed to compel scared crew members to do their duty and undertake crucial repairs--work that would surely have meant fatal doses of radiation for some, salvation for others. The embarkation deck on which the faction staged for departure was half open-air surgery, half feeding trough. The terms of care were so liberal that frightened crew members had merely to abandon their posts elsewhere in the ship and present for receipt of water, rations, and bedroll.

The Conclave arrived on Chiron with a host of more than one thousand eight hundred. After the University, they were in the worst condition. Miriam took anyone who wanted to go, never asking what they might do for her after the escape was made good. On the ground, the calls for food and shelter were soon urgent. Whether Godwinson personally commissioned the violent pillaging of other camps is beside the point. She certainly knew what to do with the resources her people brought back inside the wire.

Psych Profile: Prophet
Empathy and charisma make subject a natural leader; people are drawn to subject without necessarily understanding why. Able to use mannerisms and rhythms of speech to invoke deep spiritual responses in weak-minded individuals, or intelligent individuals seeking order and security in the face of chaos.

Subject has cast Unity crew and colonists as a “special Elect” and perceives Chiron to be a “New Eden,” given in replacement of Earth.

Must be cautioned against casting spiritual matters into a personal vision of a relentless God that may personify struggles existing within her own psyche.

Source:
Actress Stockard Channing is Sister Miriam Godwinson.

Jean-Baptiste Keller said:

Man: the ultimate social animal. Every species defends its young, its nest, its pack. We are the only species that shows an inclination to defend our neighbors also. Remember, these are the same people with whom we may be competing tomorrow for scarce resources. Our ability to use tools left us the undisputed masters of planet Earth, but it is our capacity to practice community with our fellow men that makes this mastery worthwhile, and keeps us worthy of it. - The Annotated Broadcasts of Jean-Baptiste Keller

Precise date and place of birth unknown. Speech analysis yields 82.3% probability of origination in Midwestern United States. Attended, but did not graduate, Iowa Technical College. Volunteered for Illinois Army National Guard (ANG) in aftermath of Hypersurvivalist raid on Moline, Iowa following death of two schoolmates. Completed abbreviated Non-Commissioned Officer’s Candidate Course; commissioned a sergeant during the Summer of Salt and Blood.

In 2053, held temporary rank of captain for eight months after superior officers deserted. WIA during skirmish with Holnist pickets preceding Battle of Cairo, IL and left behind by retreating unit. Recovered by devotees of anti-disassociationist cult leader Jean-Baptiste Keller. Passed through hands of multiple Kellerite families to avoid capture by survivalist death squads before recrossing Federal lines near Quad Cities. Diagnosed with Helsinki Syndrome upon return. Again listed MIA following rout of Guard formations during Fall of Davenport, IA.

U.S. Army Signals Intelligence intercepts indicate subject commanded Kellerite troops in combat against U.S. Army and auxiliaries shortly after his disappearance. Through a string of encounters over five years, subject’s forces significantly delayed reconstitution of U.S. Government authority west of Mississippi River.

Resurfaced in the High Sierras in overall command of a regional self-defense compact. Present at Berkeley, CA speech at which visibly infirm Keller reemerged from hiding to speak on Unity mission.

Caution: United Nations Intelligence Agency places very high confidence in assessments concluding that approximately 200 Kellerites boarded Unity while it was still under construction and there entered hibernation, intending to join the colony incognito.

For a Tribal, Pete Landers was the epitome of the welcome convert to anti-disassociationism: a well-meaning young man who, once he understood the Kellerite philosophy, sacrificed everything for its advantage. Aboard Unity, he was the chief author of their vengeance against the hated Holnists.

Once Planetside, the "Tribe" settled at the mouth of a broad river, which they named the Slowwind. Using Radnor hoverbikes, they also mounted local patrols, hoping to dissuade other survivors from coming too near.

Less than thirty-six hours after the Kellerites arrived, Spartan Colonel Corazón Santiago founded the settlement of Sparta Command on rocky heights not far upriver. Spartan landing operations were disturbed by the arrival of a Tribe security patrol. Santiago ordered her people into defensive positions and demanded that the "interlopers" withdraw. The Tribe commander refused, and the Spartans opened fire, killing three scouts and destroying a pair of bikes before the rest broke contact. Spartans gave immediate chase, capturing a third bike.

Within the week, and under close observation from Spartan rovers, Tribe 'Formers poured concrete for a bunker complex on an island forming in the final oxbow bend of the Slowwind before it reached the sea, effectively closing the delta to Spartan river traffic.

Psych Profile: Defender
Strong affinity for authority figures, especially those who subject believes are encouraging him toward altruistic behaviors.

At Quad Cities debrief, an American Reclamation Corporation trauma specialist documented insubordinate language, heightened paranoia, and “wavering commitment to mission.” Recommendation for Landers to be withdrawn from line for further observation was overruled by his Commanding Officer due to exigency of military situation.

Subject repeatedly criticized command decision to hold blocking positions amidst mounting reports of civilian massacres by survivalist flying columns during Battle of Davenport. U.S. Army Official History of the battle indicates Missouri and Illinois ANG companies were destroyed after disobeying orders to stand fast during a Holnist feint against city’s Mercy Medical Center.

Consistently judged a superior tactician, both by his immediate superiors and the Regular Army commanders to which subject’s units were attached. As an insurrectionist commander, subject inflicted casualties on a scale of 5:1.

Sources:
Credit for this faction and Jean-Baptiste Keller goes to Thorn of the community at The Frontier.com, a new-defunct forum for matrix-style games.

Gerard Butler in Coriolanus is Pete Landers.

Castor Anderson said:

Take the single mind worm, one of Chiron’s most fragile creations. Alone, this tiny grub is not so fearsome. In passing, I might crush it with my heel. But where can I find just a single mind worm? Like us, they abhor the solitary condition. More familiar to us are the mass and the boil. In these vectors, they are Planet’s apex predator. And what is needed to accomplish that trick, except that they stick together? - Minuteman

Tribalism, also called Kellerism after its founder, was an early twenty-first century reaction to the loss of hope in Middle America. From the 1980s, coinciding with the decline in heavy manufacturing in the Western world and the advent of the World Wide Web, personal and community identity became disconnected from shared physical space. Teenagers adopted avatars that reflected their imagined selves, while various political and social groups adopted explicitly global perspectives as they struggled to scope problems of economic dislocation and climate change. New problems were identified: opioid and Internet addiction, pervasive underemployment, increasing dependence on social services, and high rates of divorce.

Jean-Baptiste Keller was a failed farmer, lay preacher, and radio personality active during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries int he Midwestern United States. His favorite rhetorical targets were offshoring, agribusiness, partisanship, wealth inequality, and, of course, the Internet. Despite a relatively small live audience, tapes of his thrice-weekly Jeremiads were shared through the English-speaking world. His "congregation" saw reflections of themselves in his depictions of life as lonely struggle, rarely yielding spiritual fulfillment or dignity.

Some historians now trace the movement's formative inspirations back as far as the right-wing paramilitary ethno-nationalism of the mid-1990s and the parallel flowering of conservative talk radio, but though Jean Baptiste-Keller spoke to the same problems, he was neither a xenophobe nor a secessionist, much less a bitter-ender. The fundamental underpinnings of Holnism, to which Kellerism is customarily compared, were nihilism and individualism. Holnists denied the very legitimacy of positive law and attempted to recast natural law as the extension of the individual's own Id. Holnists did for themselves in the expectation that they would be rewarded with the opportunity to inflict themselves upon others after societal collapse.

President B. Nichols Thurville said:

The Holnist will set your town, including his own home, ablaze just because he thinsk he can snatch something of yours from the rubble. - Weekly Address of the President of the United States, November 1, 2052

Kellerites aimed to avert that collapse through a program of self-improvement on behalf of the wounded community. Its foundational concepts were hope and community. A Tribe was to supplement, and perhaps even to stand in for, the absence of central government, but should not reject its value in principle.

Keller's thesis was simple enough: the atomizing and amplifying effects of the Internet, by giving false hope to every radical, made it impossible for communities at any level--local, state, national--to engage in the collective problem-solving that is politics. Just ten years into the new millennium, "truth" was in the eye of the beholder on both sides of the Atlantic. Keller interpreted current events through this dark prism. The outbreak of Red Flu and climate-driven mega-disasters that preceded America's second great sundering were only so ruinous because their impacts was exacerbated by those who had something to gain from the suffering.

This analysis led Keller to three conclusions. First, that central government, though not to be feared, was unreliable because of the problems of distance, faction, and bureaucratic inertia. Second, that physical communities--especially blood communities--as defined by close geographic proximity and daily personal interaction were more important to the wellness and survival of the individual than virtual communities. To ride out the storm Keller insisted was coming, the wise would retreat from their device and narcotics addiction and live "in the moment," cultivating the practical skills and face-to-face relationships they would need to ensure basic survival. Keller advised his audience to “fall back first on relatives, friends, and neighbors--the ties of blood and shared destiny upon which you have always depended.”

With the end in mind, Keller called for Americans to take up Scouting, learn to swim, take advantage of the courses offered by local community colleges and technical schools, practice target shooting and reloading, and buy cars that didn't rely on computers. As a "prepper" of the second generation, he took a distinct communitarian perspective, instructing his listeners that guns, ammunition, food, and medical supplies should be stockpiled and held in trust for one's family and neighbors.

Jean-Baptiste Keller said:

The one who prepares shall be shepherd, not king. - The Annotated Broadcasts

Keller's emergence as a potent political force coincided with the destruction of Davenport, IA by anti-government militias, during which his son Brian was killed while serving in the National Guard. Keller initially urged communities to open their doors to FEMA and the U.S. Army during the unfolding national emergency.

As the cogs of federal power ceased to turn, Keller hit upon an alternative: he propounded a Charter, or guiding principles for the organization of mutual aid within and between communities "for persons who do not wish to descend into barbarism.” Recognizing his audiences’ fear of strangers amidst the general collapse of law and order, Keller additionally urged his listeners to “fall back first on your relatives, friends, and neighbors – the people who know you best, can vouch for you, and upon whom you have always depended.” Keller was explicit that these communities must not be circumscribed by "false dichotomies" of race, political affiliation, national origin, cultural practice, or sexual or gender identity. "Family is family," he thundered, "and you will never be remade whole if you leave behind even the least of them."

Yet unsurprisingly, communities that conformed to the code of behaviors promoted by Keller’s Charter were often able to manage the suspension of public services better than those where residents were disunited. Prototypical Kellerite communities maintained food kitchens, aid stations, and workshops where resources could be pooled, needs evaluated, and priorities set and acted upon most efficiently. They also mounted “vigilance patrols” to keep the peace.

Inevitably, the success of the Kellerites meant that they were subject to attack by opportunists, some of whom depicted the Kellerites as disloyal and incestuous cultists to justify their crimes. After Davenport, Kellerites were natural targets in an environment thick with predators. Secessionist governments and their Holnist supporters targeted the Kellerites for their pro-vaccine stance and often-outspoken allegiance to the United States Government. Excuses were easy to find. As armed camps, Kellerite townships could not be countenanced at the rear of a secessionist army. For followers of the Evangelical Fire, Kellerism was simple heresy to be extirpated with the sword. Combatants of all stripes knew Kellerite communities would be well-stocked with all the essentials of war. Kellerites were also beset by both ordinary citizens (who usually resented having been left “outside the fold” of prosperous Charter communities) and corporate security forces tasked to “reclaim salvage” from the war zone.

Kellerites' alienation from surrounding populations eventually brought them into direct conflict with the relieving federal forces. The group’s outlaw status was cemented during the Holnist breakout from the Federal blockade of Des Moines, when Kellerite militiamen operating in the same vicinity slaughtered hundreds of civilian refugees in retaliation for past lynchings of Kellerite foraging parties. The United States Government never forgave the Kellerites, whom it thereafter treated as enemy combatants.

Kellerism persisted for years after the war despite its adherents being forced into hiding, and pirate radio stations repeated Kellerite signals from holdfasts in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain chains, gradually attracting new adherents in the urban crimescapes of the Pacific coast.

The Kellerites' final vengeance on their persecutors was taken when they infiltrated the Unity hull. Two hundred Kellerites, led by the infamous Landers, made it aboard with the help of sympathizers in the Unity ground crew.

Kellerites in Game Terms
The Tribe is a faction that explores the concept of physical community. They are inspired by an Old Earth cult leader named Jean-Baptiste Keller.

Keller’s essential claim was that rapid advances in technology had eroded the ideals of physical community and popular consensus at the core of modern Western society. As digital access flourished, users were increasingly able to build communities to reinforce almost any belief. Whereas once they might have been compelled to abandon or conceal maladaptive ideas to participate in school, work, spiritual, or civic life at the local level, individuals instead grew stronger--and more violent--in their personal convictions, encouraged by distant confederates. This diminution of common values was accompanied by increasing rates of addiction to drugs and other devices that replaced the richness of personal interaction. In combination, sharper values divisions and heightened individualism tore the heart out of the essential ingredient in American community resilience: neighborly sentiment.

“Tribals,” as they are called, advocate Keller’s vision of establishing charter settlements in which residents pledge face-to-face interaction, civic engagement, and mutual aid in times of danger or hardship. During the Second American Civil War, communities founded on this model generally fared better during suspension of government services than those whose residents were disunited.

The Kellerite faction lands with the smallest population, but a seasoned fighting unit and extra War Stores (reflecting the preparations they made for combat before stowing away). At just 36, Landers is the youngest faction leader, and unique for lacking an elite education. The Tribe's affinity is Purity, their preferred politics is Democratic, and they are opposed to re-contact with Earth. They begin the game with the Doctrine: Defense tech. Their Research focuses are Build and Conquer.

The Tribe enjoys bonuses to Cohesion (+2, picked raiders), Morale (+1, blooded fighters), Probe (+1, close-knit communities more difficult to infiltrate), and Support (+1, ethos of citizenship). They experience maluses to Efficiency (-1, everyone must have their say) and Research (-2, modern Luddites). They gain +1 to defensive die rolls during each encounter (veteran militia) and receive a Bunker facility in new base (strategic hamlets).

Sources:
Star Wars art by Kevin Jick.

Credit for this faction and its philosophy goes to Thorn of the community at The Frontier.com, a new-defunct forum for matrix-style games.

Director Tamineh Pahlavi said:

The conventional model of geneology is a tree bearing fruit at the terminus of each branch. Such a model implies that all branches are created equal, but this is not the case. Some are weak, others diseased. Orchardists solve this problem by pruning unhealthy branches, conserving nutrients for the choicest blossoms. Without this care, the tree produces nothing remarkable, and certainly nothing they would care to use as root stock to perpetuate the breed. - Homo Sapien Superior

Service Record
Born 2005, Būshehr, Iran. Descendant of Iran’s ruling dynasty. Sent into care of relatives in Geneva, Switzerland following deaths of parents from Red Flu, age 15. Received PhD in molecular biology from Stanford University. Husband died, 2026, of Neville-Townsend Disorder, after just five years of marriage.

Nominated for Nobel Prize in 2029 for breakthroughs in viral re-transcription with applications for suppression of autoimmune disorders. Prize denied following discovery that subject had written extensively on the desirability of mandatory genetic screenings and sterilization of persons with markers for degenerative disease and antisocial tendencies who would not, or could not, undergo remediational gene therapies.

In 2032, appointed Vice President, Special Projects Division, American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). Contributed to 2037 discovery of inoculation treatments for H4L21 strain of Red Flu. Repeatedly directed company’s private military contractors to forcibly immunize persons presenting at federal refugee camps.

Appointed to mission by via direct selection by ARC CEO Oscar van de Graaf as Director, Genetic Research Laboratory. Tasked to design and initiate long-term evaluation of Chiron’s effects on human genome.

The Genetic Research Division (GRD) was an incidental addition to Prokhor Zakharov's contingent. In fact, they'd fought for the honor. Pahlavi herself had been woken automatically when Pete Landers's hackers tripped fail-safe the protocols for her hab bay. It took her scarcely two hours to retrieve all the surviving personnel of her small pre-flight command. They soon acquired weapons in a similarly serendipitous fashion: passing U.N. Security teams, recognizing unprotected crew, apologized at their inability to stay and handed out self-defense weapons to ease the sweet sorrow of parting.

Although one of Zakharov's direct subordinates, albeit fairly unexalted, Pahlavi was not among the individuals awakened by him. Struan's Sabre Corporation mercenaries discovered Pahlavi's people in the midst of making the ice in which to pack the mission's collection of genomic databanks, freshly disconnected from the Data Core (now ejected) and still scalding to the touch. Canisters of knockout gas lay expended on the decking, along with the corpses of a half-dozen Morgan SafeHaven private security men. Each had been dispatched with a bullet to the forehead. Realizing that they were unlikely to pull off a second tactical coup, the geneticists wisely genuflected. Pahlavi declared that she was relinquishing her claim to the dead men's equipment. While the Dreamers were still absorbing the idea of receiving as gift what they already implicitly possessed by virtue of force, the good doctor hastened to offer even headier wine: the last recorded neuroimages of all supervisory mission personnel, recently imprinted to datatape.

The University's early decision to focus its intellectual work on "Chironian problems" frustrated Pahlavi. She was a passionate--and widely-resented--advocate for thorough analysis of the genomic and social psych information collected during Unity's voyage. Pahlavi broke with Zakharov and the other University chancellors around the same as Captain Malachi Ro, master of the Unity frigate Skagway, in the midst what appears to have been a sharpening of the University's core principles. Pahlavi's "crime" was to critique exploratory research begun in the area of mind-machine interface. Her punishment was to be stripped of tenure by a disciplinary committee. She responded by resigning her position and embarking upon self-exile with the whole of the GRD in tow.

Crossing the Daimones Valley, Pahlavi's skeleton command reached the base of the mighty Hyas and immediately began to ascend, knowing they would find year-round water in the high passes along with total relief from the danger of fungus. World-class experts who had once dubbed their canteen the Ambrosia Club ate survival bars for much of M.Y. 3. Their big break came when a Hunter caravan rolled through a tunnel cut in the ice shelf. The scientists set off plastique that blocked either end, repeating their old trick with the gas. Pahlavi had a vendetta on her hands, but also the makings of a menial workforce. Pahlavi declared the founding of the Human Ascendancy.

Psych Profile: Supremacist
Feelings of helplessness over loved one’s deaths displaced to pursuit of medical immortality. Subject has repeatedly refused treatment for post-traumatic stress.

Strong aversion to physiological infirmities. Has described those without access to genetic medicine as "slaves" for whom the full enjoyment of life and liberty is an impossibility.

ARC personnel file identifies the following Officer-Like Qualities (OLQ’s): clarity of purpose, high self-confidence, strong work ethic, and lack of tolerance for suffering of others.

The Human Ascendancy in Game Terms
Pahlavi’s intention is to produce Homo sapien superior, an artificially-engineered proto-human uniquely suited to life on Chiron. Her faction consists of scientists and their "cauldron-born" offspring living in a series of research stations ruled by the genetic elite. "Inferior" colonists are subject to repression and exploitation.

The Ascendancy is best thought of as a cadet branch of the University, laser-focused on issues of genetics. Think of them as this universe's version of the Bene Tleilaxu.

The Human Ascendancy believes that the most successful organisms are those equipped to thrive in their environment. For the human species to survive, and thrive, on Chiron, it will be necessary to jump-start the evolutionary process. Civilization on Earth failed precisely because the infirm placed too many demands on the able. Played straight, Pahlavi is a control freak mad on her own powers of creation. Subverted, she is running from the certainty of her own mortality. The Ascendancy looks to prove their new human against the "lesser" species, and to collect genetic material from Chiron's greatest exemplars to advance their project.

The Kellerite faction lands with a POP of just 3: a Talent, an Overseer, and a Drone. The Ascendancy's affinity is Purity, their preferred politics is Meritocratic, and they are opposed to re-contact with Earth. They begin with the Biogenetics Tech. Their Research focuses are Discover and Conquer.

The Ascendancy enjoys +1 bonuses to Efficiency {populace bred to their tasks} and Support {warriors bred to consume few resources}. Their units receive +2 to all combat die rolls {augmented "super soldiers"}. They may not use Cyborgs or Robots {biological solutions are more durable than technological ones}. The faction suffers maluses to Growth (-3) {only the best specimens are retained} and Morale (-2) {an individual's possibilities are predetermined at birth}.

Cohesion (+2, picked raiders), Morale (+1, blooded fighters), Probe (+1, close-knit communities more difficult to infiltrate), and Support (+1, ethos of citizenship). They experience maluses to Efficiency (-1, everyone must have their say) and Research (-2, modern Luddites). They gain +1 to defensive die rolls during each encounter (veteran militia) and receive a Bunker facility in new base (strategic hamlets).

Source:
Iranian actress Mahtab Keramati is Director Tamineh Pahlavi.

In the 1980s cartoon series G.I. JOE, Cobra ruler Serpentor was created by stealing genetic material from history's greatest conquerors.

Contre-amiral Raoul André-St. Germaine said:

The crew of a ship is a microsm of the perfect society. One captain, whose authority is complete because the responsibility is his alone. A crew, confident in its abilities and unified in the struggle against sea and sky. Rating and officer are dealt with separately because from each there is a different expectation, and to each, a different and commensurate reward. Individuals may rise according to ability, but not even the least of them is expendable. On the strength of this hierarchy, empires have been won and lost. - In the Heart of the Sea

Service Record
Born 2022, Montréal, Québec, French Union, the fourth son of minor French aristocracy. Following family tradition, proceeded to École Navale. First posting was Mers-el Kebir Naval Base, hotbed of irredentist politics. Subject gained reputation as outspoken conservative.

Commanded riverine flotilla attached to United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in Zaire (MONUSCO). Mentioned frequently in dispatches, with multiple decorations for heroism.

Worked closely with French-, Belgian-, and Rwandan-aligned warlords in eastern Congo. On three occasions, ordered sailors ashore without prior approval to protect local collaborators and their families. Popular sentiment and intervention by political patrons in French likely shielded subject from sanction for this and other violations while under U.N. command, including authorizations for dispensation of pain medication at rates 300% higher than any other comparable command in the Marine Nationale.

Wounded in action by Soviet-sponsored Jing-Swei Security Services missileers in Orientale Province and invalided to French Guyana. Used opportunity to join multiple overland expeditions to Amazonia. Later, leveraged favorable political climate to be returned to MONUSCO as head of lake detachment at Goma.

Amateur naturalist. Temporarily reassigned to support interior surveys in French Guyana and Tahiti in 2057 and 2058, respectively.

Court martialed, 2063, following allegations that sailors under his command massacred prisoners at Kisangani in retaliation for destruction of gunboat Légère. Acquitted on all counts but formally reprimanded for suppression of evidence. Discovered by French press to have resettled discharged subordinates and refugee auxiliaries on own family properties in Europe and North America.

Reassigned to submarine forces, French Antarctic Patrol, 2064 following electoral defeat of Unioniste Party. Selected to lead Aquatic Operations Section (AOS) during period when U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri was out of favor. The U.N. lacked the means to refuse a qualified officer from a donor country willing to finance an entire division of crew and materials.

He was aloof, antisocial, and, according to his Psych-Profile and service jacket, impolitic bordering on insubordinate. Serious doubts about his political reliability came home to roost during the crisis of Planetfall. Lacking faith in both Captain Garland and Third Officer Zakharov, St. Germaine disobeyed orders to awaken more engineers and instead assembled hand-picked members of his own AOS. This decision, which helped seal Unity's fate, left him with the makings of a viable expedition, and his people were among the first to make Planetfall after the Forward Landing Team. The faction organized itself in two so-called colones: an explicitly paramilitary structure for commissioned personnel and a hierarchy of job-related "estates" for civilians in which privileges and obligations varied according to their role in the effective functioning of the colony.

Psych Profile: Aristocrat
Aloof. Anti-social. Impolitic bordering on insubordinate. Unused to suffering significant consequences for misbehavior because of family connections or sympathetic patrons.

Prioritizes personal relationships over respect for externally-imposed rules and norms. Believes that persons of exceptional privilege or talent have moral obligation to care for those less fortunate, who in turn should trust their betters.

Highly paternalistic, especially toward lower ratings and persons or groups helpful to his crew. History of indulging anti-social behavior, including violence. Prone to double standards: subject forgives in others tendencies and attitudes he would not accept from himself. Resulting combination of permissive yet interested attitudes fosters extreme loyalty in subordinates.

Unparalleled qualification for submersible work must be weighed against high probability that subject will establish a personal faction.

The New State in Game Terms
St. Germain has written that fear is a driving force in human history. Our species is ingrained with an impulse to expand and contract in-groups and out-groups as our environment becomes more or less permissive. In plain English, men are willingly trade liberty for security during times of uncertainty. For a new Dark Age, we required a new set of lords.

In the New State’s retelling of The Fall, the inflexibility of modern Western political thought is most to blame. Rather than heed popular anxieties and countenance even minimal curtailment of freedoms of speech and movement that had proved vulnerable to the exploitation of bad actors, liberal governments insisted on a level of transparency and cooperation that caused them to be swept from office by a wave of illiberal populists who first corrupted, then destroyed the system rather than corrected it. An enlightened, paternalistic leadership and a carefully-curated society are necessary to avoid a situation in which the populace clamors for total despotism to relieve them of their anxieties.

Faction members tend to trust in ties of personal obligation and patronage over written contract or shared purpose. Colonists are sorted into discrete castes based on ability, corresponding to particular fields of specialization. Leaders are expected to guarantee the physical and moral safety of those in their divisions, with different privileges according to, and services expected from, each caste.

The New State seeks to (1) strike a working balance between the security and liberty that are needed to perpetuate a comfortable society; (2) exclude intruders from Planet's deep seas, which are their refuge; and (3) tap the Planet Core for energy and minerals.

The New State faction lands with a POP of 4 (average): a Citizen, an Officer, an Overseer, and a Technician. They receive 1 Sea Colony Pod and 1 Sea 'Former, along with a Unity 'Foil. The Ascendancy's affinity is Purity, their preferred politics is Feudal. They favor Simple economics, and their preferred value is Stability. They begin with the Pressure Hull tech. Their research focuses are Expand and Command.

The New State enjoys +1 bonuses to Administration {public service ethos}, +2 to Police {security in exchange for freedom}, +1 to Efficiency {experts in systems thinking}, and -1 to both Morale {citizens chafe under tight restrictions} and Research {leadership restricts access to "dangerous" information and technologies}.

Sources:
For St. Germaine's quote, I repurposed Santiago's ruminations about the captain of a ship at sea and took the name for his future work of a movie in 2015.

For St. Germaine's portrait, I used Captain Englehorn from King Kong (2005).

Supervisory Liquidator Shoichiro Nagao said:

I met a child today at the edge of the nutrient farms. He has grown up under an alien sky. He had with him a tuber of the native type. Not good to eat, nor to weave fibers. This world is as anathema to us as the deep sea is to a cactus plant. Would we ask the Anglerfish to live upon the Sahara? We hold not just the life of this child, but the seed of our entire world, in our care. We must not fail them again. - Yesterdays Tomorrow

Service Record
Nagao was Director of Terraforming Operations for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. Few were surprised by the Japanese Government's decision to nominate the man universally credited with orchestrating the successful decontamination of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and its associated exclusion zone on behalf of the Tokyo Electric Power Company. Subject's method of nitrogen soil fixation resolved inadequacies with the original frozen soil barrier laid down to prevent groundwater contamination.

As a child, Nagao had been a world traveler, accompanying his minerologist mother and reef biologist father to some of the Earth's last wild places, spending long periods in some of the most isolated environments on the planet, including the Canadian tundra, Aralkum Desert, Australian outback, Okavango Delta, and Gran Chaco. Present at the initial global response to the 2003 typhonic capsizing and breaches of the Ilam and Cām̐da Nuclear Power Barges in the IOEZ.

Subject’s personal diaries reflect deep appreciation for the diversity and plight of Earth’s ecosystem.. The transition to a collegiate environment in world's most-populous city was a traumatic one for Nagao. Though he received his B.A. in Geology and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Tokyo magna cum laude, Nagao was treated several times for clinical anxiety and depression.

Nagao's first work out of school was consulting for the Long Island Lighting Company. State and local opposition to the nine-reactor power complex in Shoreham, NY turned on skepticism regarding the viability of the site's radiological emergency response plan. Nagao convinced LILCO's Board of Diectors to buy out the surrounding communities, which were bulldozed and replaced with fields of radiation-absorbing sunflowers.

Eight years as project coordinator with the Amazon Basin Revitalization Project, responsible for redevelopment of the Pantanal floodplains. Published studies frequently cited by opponents of the Hidrova Project, which proposed redirecting Paraguay River to improve navigability and agricultural irrigation. Following destruction of the Panatal, subject joined the Sahel Reforestation Initiative in Mandatory Darfur as an employee of Green Oasis. Projects frequently slowed by complications arising from the ongoing Saharan Burst Wars. Subject eventually convinced employers to hire Triax Corporation mercenaries to protect his botanical testing stations.

Shoichiro Nagao said:

I was in one place, remanded to the custody of artificial things, and the true world was in another. I watched it die, and I did not leave my comfortable prison, though I could have done so at any time. - Memories of Old Earth

Nagao and his protégé, environmental architect Ikurō Kamatari, were among the most-important of the forward-deployed pioneers to part ways with Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh upon the latter's founding of the Hunters of Chiron. The decision was amicable, and Marsh honored a prior commitment to allow rejectionists a share of the heavy equipment under his control.

Nagao proposed to "map" Earth onto Chiron's biome through a project of aggressive terraforming and eschewed the idea that humans should attempt to situate themselves within the existing ecosystem, such as by planting hybrid crops or respecting the fungus as a living organism with inherent conservational value.

Following Nagao's vision, his followers established a settlement of their own at Eden's Promise. Kamatari served as Base Operations Director and presided over a massive program of clear-cutting.

The Shapers of Chiron, also called "Diggers," and sometimes derided as a high-technology mortuary cult, approached their new homeworld without humility. In his Planet: A History, documentary filmmaker Raphael Burns reduced the divergence between Gaians and Shapers to a question of guilt. Lady Deirdre Skye posited that men had ruined Old Earth. Her philosophy also focused on avoidance of repetition, but she and her people identified as disfavored victims of that original sin, whereas Coordinator Shoichiro Nagao assumed personal responsibility for those same ecological nightmares. Deirdre approached Chiron as a living entity with its own agency that, unless respected, would fail, dooming the colonists altogether. Nagao treated Planet as a mere petri dish containing growth medium--an environment he could, and must, remake to his own specifications.

Shapers injected the planetary crust with fracturing fluids and pumped out CO2. The resulting stimulation of fungal and worm activity was unwelcome, of course, but nothing Shaper militia was not trained to handle.

Psych Profile: Penitent
Strict, solitary upbringing resulted in unusual capacity for self-denial, bordering on asceticism.

Early exposure to Earth's natural wonders left a deep appreciation for the complexity, diversity, and plight of Earth's planetary ecosystem.

Passionate and decisive leader. Noted for a commanding personal presence grounded in unflappable calm. Scored .79 on Atherholt Trauma Function test.

Tendency to presume upon the greater importance of ecological conservation than other goals, including community prosperity and personal attachment to property impacted by conservation campaigns.

Practitioner of "Jiten," combining precepts of Gaian, Buddhist, and Shinto philosophy. Earth-worship.

The Shapers in Game Terms
The Shapers still dream of Earth. They believe that redemption is possible through the transformation of Chiron into a planet more suitable for human habitation. It is an agenda that calls for the complete reduction of the native ecosystem to its constituent biological building blocks.

The Shapers aim to: (1) clear the native biome to make way for Terran life, (2) restore communications with Earth to advise that survivors are welcome, and (3) prevent the reawakening of Chiron.

The Shapers begin with a population of 4: 1 Talent and 3 Technicians. Their starting pieces include 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Rig [a valuable high-tech tile improver and resource harvester capable of working outside a city radius], 1 militia squad [the "Liquidators"], and 1 squadron of Mr. Forester drones {drone-assisted terraformation}. They generate +2 minerals/season {expert miners}.

The faction's affinity is Purity, their preferred politics is Democratic. They favor Planned economics, and their preferred value is Truth. They begin with the Centauri Geology tech. Their research focus is Expand.

The New State enjoys a +1 bonus to Morale {the road to redemption is a happy one} and +2 to Industry {experts with earth-moving technology}. They may place a free Forest in the starting radius of every base {seeding the future by preserving the past}.

Sources:
This faction, and several of the ideas appearing in this profile, were designed by the user Thorn on a defunct web forum called The Frontier.

The Triax were one of two factions identified in the lore prepared for the 1980s "MEGAFORCE" toy line.

Botanical testing stations are a reference to the same in Frank Herbert's Dune.

The Mr. Forester drone is inspired by the Fallout line of Mr. Handy robotic helpmates.

Reddit user SyntheticGod8 contributed ideas to this work-up, including for the faction's heavy use of drones.

Oscar van de Graaf said:

The cornerstone of the American dream was each man’s inalienable right to property. A man’s land is his patrimony, and also his future. For the promise that they would be their own masters, farmers with fowling pieces were willing to pledge their mutual fortunes in war against the greatest empire of the Earth at that time. - No Step Backward: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation, Vol. 1

Biographical Record:
Born 2006, Cincinnati, OH, United States. Heir to multiple fortunes in rail logistics, petrochemicals, and manufacturing. Mother killed in Christmas 2019 bombing of Union Station in Chicago, one of the earliest recorded hyper-survivalist terror attacks. Father became notorious workaholic. Both parents were members of the Chiricahua Apache Tribe and part owners of the infamous “Peralta Mine,” rediscovered in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona in 1972. Descended from Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.

Read history at Trinity College, University of Cambridge before obtaining J.D. from Yale Law School. Personal interests include extreme sports (power gliding, motocross). Five-time America's Cup winner.

Most sources estimate that subject’s net worth plunged by between eighty and ninety percent during the first half of the Second American Civil War, and it is broadly accepted that Holnists inflicted most of this loss. Founded the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) in 2039 as a holding company to consolidate numerous personal and family assets then verging on receivership. Leveraging sympathies in the U.S. Congress, arranged for the ARC to be issued a Letter of Marque and Reprisal as part of a political experiment deter or punish secessionist communities. Provided front-line combatants, convoy escort, and rear-area logistical support to government homeland security missions, effectively operating as an auxiliary of the U.S. and Canadian armed forces.

Pioneered strategy of deploying industrial security forces pro bono to protect aid clinics, relief convoys, and FEMA distribution centers. Consensus among historians is that subject leveraged corporate assets and government affiliation to wage private war against survivalist militias and business competitors alike. On the three-year anniversary of its founding, the ARC employed one in six working Americans. From Denver in the West to Cincinnati in the East, old American cities had been laid waste. From their ashes emerged corporate cantonments and refugee camps. FEMA, ruined by the war, was rebranded as the Federal Disaster Service, which in turn was practically a subsidiary of the ARC. And so civic contribution became synonymous with corporate, rather than national, service. Detractors, including more than two hundred plaintiffs and countless friends of the court, asserted that van de Graaf was casting too wide a net, claiming as prizes property that had never been his, and to which the United States Government was not entitled.

Personally orchestrated independent liberation of Utah from hyper-survivalist militias in 2054, cooperating with Nauvoo Legion and the Volunteer Army of the United States, with virtually no assistance from the Regular Army. (The Army of the United States was an all-volunteer complement to the Regular Army, serving for a fixed duration of three years and formed due to concerns about the political reliability of the National Guard. Because its combat record left much to be desired, van de Graaf's contributions in the American West were a decisive factor in the Unionist victory.) Victorious defendant in landmark Waterson v. Van de Graaf, in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the ARC's authorization to operate military assets against domestic targets under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

CEO Oscar van de Graaf said:

A reporter for The Wall Street Journal once asked me whether I stuck my thumb on the scales of justice. Absolutely I did. The hand must be seen to sit firmly on that scale. That's the only way it works. We say that justice is blind for a reason. Too many people think that means it is fair. Not true. You've got to lead justice. You have to collect the facts, but you have to make sense of them, too. Justice itself isn't going to do that for you. The blind can't lead. - Under My Wings, All Things Prosper: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation, Vol. 2​

Ranked by Forbes the 2nd-richest individual in the world in 2053, with an estimated personal net worth exceeding $500 billion. Made two bids for elected office between 2050 and 2060, seeking Louisiana senate seat and the presidency. Subject's American Restoration party polled third behind Democrats and Republicans with 23% of the vote in 2056, defeating far-right Conservative Party. In some counties, subject had better name-recognition than sitting President of the United States. Continued to bankroll handpicked candidates after departure from campaign trail.

CAUTION: Numerous credible allegations that ARC regional administrators endorsed grand theft, debt peonage and other forms of human slavery practiced by allied militias and neutral settlements during periods of corporate stewardship over pacified territories not yet readmitted to the Union. Various media outlets also investigated ARC "company towns," concurrently uncovering substantial evidence of systematic abuses of workers' rights. ARC ultimately reached settlement with the Justice Department worth $1.3 trillion. The terms of this deal allowed ARC employees and contractors, van de Graaf included, to avoid formally responding to charges.

Following Reconstruction, led ARC in successful entry to civilian aerospace industry, with focus on zero-gravity resource extraction. Obtained exclusive contracts from the U.S. Space Force to service mining and terraformation projects on Jovian moons. First civilian to visit the Asteroid Belt. Subsidiaries of the ARC included Replicodon Tactical Genomes. Controversially lobbied Congress for buy-out of ARC stock on favorable terms to thwart attempted buy-out by Morgan Industries in 2064, leading to ARC's being chartered as an independent federal corporation. Served as entity's first chairman.

As ARC head, van de Graaf encountered numerous other individuals who would go on to join the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, including: Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi, a geneticist who briefly worked on pandemic response for the Red Flu; Dr. Aleigha Cohen, as a psych screener involved in the FDS's civil defense program; and Dr. Johann Anhaldt, who supervised the installation of supercomputers used by the ARC. Van de Graaf's personal endorsement later helped to secure Pahlavi's selection to the crew.

Prominent champion of the Unity Project. One of the first to urge U.N. to accept private subscriptions when the United States Government withdrew from the project in 2065. Retired from government service, 2069. Tapping his private fortune, subject secured one of fifteen proprietary billets at a cost of $232 billion in mission contributions and personally recruited 1,892 “stakeholders” to staff an expedition-within-an-expedition, competing hotly with the U.N. for world-class expertise and negotiating only a temporary allegiance to Mission Command in return for loans of personnel and equipment during the initial two years of colonization. Calling themselves “the New Two Thousand,” they drew rhetorical parallels to the fortune hunters of ages past. Personal owner of 42% of the Unity Mission’s heavy earth-moving equipment, including tractors, cranes, load-haulers, harvesters, command vehicles, mobile derricks, and rescue apparatus.

Before endorsing his inclusion, U.N. Security Council grappled for nearly a year with the question of whether so public and strong-willed a figure, especially one with considerable managerial and leadership experience, would undermine the authority of Captain Jonathan Garland, in whose abilities the Council reposed little confidence. The U.N. was also unhappy at the terms under which van de Graaf issued shares. U.N. Undersecretary Pravin Lal described the articles of van de Graaf's contract to The New York Times as "not much better than slavery."

As a colonial factor, Van de Graaf was awakened automatically along with the command staff but did not report to Garland on the bridge. Instead, van de Graaf awakened Charter personnel and fled the Unity with as much of his equipment as he could find—and much else, besides.

Two factors played into van de Graaf’s hands during the Unity Crisis: first, he had both ARC Security Forces and independent private military contractors at his disposal; and second, his charter colonists had been placed in the same birth, meaning they formed an obvious and ready-made faction.

Van de Graaf later regretted responding without hesitation to Captain Garland’s urgent request to release his people to support the emergency response: many were killed where they stood by Spartan defectors, while others were lured away from their contracts by the recruiters of other mission leaders. Van de Graaf’s rump constituency was considerably reduced in number, causing him to take prisoner a large number of unaffiliated mission crew, whom he held “in trust” against the other factions for return of his expedition’s “plundered stocks.” These, he divided among his shareholders as indentured servants during settlement construction.

Psych Profile: Empresario
Impulsive, personalistic leadership style. Unusual appetite for physical danger. Susceptible to vainglory, megalomania.

Pedantic. Record of business dealings indicates purely instrumental attitude toward the law.

Keen appetite for detail, but comfortable delegating of responsibility. Believes that experience is the best teacher and encourages subordinates to take risks.
Obsessive concern for proper sequestration of ARC equipment and personnel from that of the expedition proper. Possibility that determination to develop ARC colony as business venture will cause tension with settler population.

CAUTION: Many mission personnel are current or former ARC employees with some level of prior obligation to subject.

Oscarn van de Graaf's "New Two Thousand" in Game Terms
Called Pilgrims. Theirs is a subscription colony led by a chief shareholder whose personal wealth is the basis of the faction's capital stock.

These are practical, even hard-nosed strivers. Who else, they ask, will guarantee their right to the enjoying of their labors? For Pilgrims, the fate of Old Earth is a cautionary tale about what happens when people can no longer see a direct link between work and results. Earth's problems became so complicated, and the answers so baroque, that they could see for themselves no happy future. Very often, welfare systems incentivized people to disengage from the world around them anyway, ultaimtely amplifying the social ills that had originally brought them so low. The solution is to give people a direct stake in their own success--and a taste of the consequences when that stake is squandered by error or incompetence.

Oscar van de Graaf's goals are simple. Other factions "stole" the equipment he and his stakeholders put aboard Unity at their own expense. He will have it back. After that, the Holnists are owed a reckoning under Rule .303. Cohen and Pahlavi could be trouble, too, if inclined to talk about past projects performed in van de Graaf's service.

The New Two Thousand are organized, like the New State, in a caste society: chief stakeholders, petty stakeholders, smallholders, and the indentured, their drone underclass. Think Plymouth or Jamestown.

The Pilgrims begin with a population of 4: 2 Talents, 1 Technician, and 1 Overseer. Their starting pieces include 1 Colony Pod, 2 'Formers, 1 militia squad. They generate +1 trade goods/season. They begin the game with 1 War Stores {ARC assets}.

The faction's affinity is Supremacy, their preferred politics is Oligarchic. They favor Free Market economics, and their preferred value is Survival. They begin with the Doctrine: Expansion tech. Their research focii are Build and Expand.

The New State enjoys a +1 bonus to Industry {those who have a stake in the outcome work harder}, +1 to Police {contracts must be enforced}, +1 to Economy {spirit of free enterprise}, and a -1 to Cohesion {indentured servants}.

Sources:
Actor Stephen Lang is our Oscar van de Graaf.

The ARC is from Beyond Earth.

Replicodon Tactical Genomes appears in the FryxGames product Terraforming Mars.

Dr. Johann Anhaldt said:

The fundament of decision is fact. The accumulation of fact, wisdom. Given enough of the latter, probability moves steadily nearer to certainty. - Historical Projection

Service Record:
Native of Bern. Ph.D. in nuclear physics, MIT. Received Fields Medal at 26 for advances in combinatorial mathematics. Foil to Soviet researcher Prokhor Zakharov in 2051, 2054, and 2068 colloquies in Questions of Nuclear Computation.

Twelve years at CEA/Cesta simulating nuclear fission with the Megajoule laser. Twenty years at CERN focusing on particle acceleration and low-temperature reactions. Five years at RIKEN-TRI studying robotics in connection with Oceanus Procellarum recovery operations. Leading global advocate of fission-based solutions in the area of renewable energy.

Interested in the intersection between practical applications of nuclear power and public policy. Famously advocated on behalf of LILCO during the peak of public controversy over Shoreham and Lloyd Harbor nuclear power stations. Presented televised lectures describing reactor safety systems and site contingency plans that "although technologically incomprehensible to his audience, gave the overwhelming impression of competence that company executives were counting on to lull civilians into complacency."

Lead programmer for Terminal Sentinel program, a U.S. initiative to use self-regulating code to retaliate against those targeting the U.S. web presence. Terminal Sentinel was an early success in machine learning and has been seized upon as an example of government overreach and the dangers of unforeseen consequences. Anhaldt's code was subsequently harvested, replicated, and improved upon by both nation-state and non-nation-state actors.

Frequently experimented crowd- and machine-assisted decision-making to aid with complex problem-solving. Participated in San Francisco Roundtable on Machine Thinking as a guest of the American Reclamation Corporation in 2064. Retained as a consultant on same topic by Struan's Pacific Trading Company until 2070.

CONFIDENTIAL: Assistant Project Leader for Copperhead Sunday, classified 2050-52 United States study of the potential for tactical field deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons in light of defense readiness gaps caused by Second American Civil War.

Expressed opposition to mandatory vaccination and GMO food use, arguing that although not reasonable, the scientific community should make a habit of bowing to popular pressures--a properly self-effacing expression of their subordination to "the human values and concerns to which science must always, in the end, be suborned." These statements are sometimes credited with helping to mend cleavages between public and "political-scientific establishment" following Hypersurvivalist Wars.

Unanimous election as Mission Area Director to the Unity Mission's Atomic Energy Laboratory (AEL). Responsible for staff of more than 200 nuclear scientists and engineers.

Subject's superior, Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov, declined to send for him during the Unity Crisis, charging that Anhaldt's was "the inferior intellect." Anhaldt and other AEL staff were recovered instead by the data scientists of database controller Sathieu Metrion, who hoped to co-opt the AEL into supporting ground-side operations to sustain Unity's data core.

After the data core was ejected during a panicked assault authorized by no less an authority than Commissioner Pravin Lal, Anhaldt, his AEL subordinates, some of Metrion's programmers, a scattering of engineers and security people, and assorted Comprehensive Transport personnel evacuated in one of four Landing Pods secured by Metrion's partisans. A malfunctioning attitude thruster sent Anhaldt's lander off-course, and it touched down within sight of the Rock Heap with little more than basic survival equipment on board.

The polyglot community accepted Anhaldt's suggestion that they use a Cray Σ model supercomputer--one of their few unique assets--to automate certain base operations functions. Three years later, they made first contact with the Human Tribe, which discovered that although Anhalt provided the appearance of inspiring human leadership, virtually every meaningful decision taken in Colonia Secundus was run through the settlement's pet AI.

Psych Profile: Mediator
Gifted scientist and communicator. Disinclined toward conflict or vainglory. Genial attitude toward critics both public and private, combined with mathematical genius and high emotional intelligence quotient ensured that subject was frequently in-demand for controversial collaborations.

Adept at navigating large bureaucracies and politicized environments. Selection likely reflected Security Council concern that atomic energy would prove a controversial energy source among the colonists.

Low scores (.21) on Atherholt Trauma Function test indicate that subject should not be entrusted with direct role in first response. Special exemption granted from damage control training.

Delegator. Demonstrates high, and sometimes unearned or unmerited trust in subordinates. Conceives of self as an intermediary between workforce and executives despite extremely high performance when working as a sole contributor.

The Children of the Atom in Game Terms
A faction governed by computers. They believe that man has produced the thinking machine that can lead to our salvation, if only we can bring ourselves to listen.

The Children of the Atom want simply to enhance the quality of the algorithms they use to govern themselves while concealing their grave secret from the other Unity survivors, some of whom are hostile to artificial intelligence.

In game terms, the Children of the Atom are a minor faction that should play a bit differently than the "mainline" factions, basically renting out their supercomputers to perform strategic analysis. I don't know exactly what that should look like in game terms, though, because this isn't the "Probe" faction.

The Children begin with a population of 5: 1 Talent, 2 Technicians, 1 Officer, and 1 Librarian. [They are only of just three factions with an Officer.] Their starting pieces include 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 militia squad [the "Liquidators"], and 1 Research Pod {Cray supercomputer}.

The faction's affinity is Supremacy, their preferred politics is Meritocratic. They favor Command economics, and their preferred value is Knowledge [Stability?]. They seek the Computer-assisted Future Society. They begin with the Unity Computing tech. Their research priorities are Command and Conquer.

The Children of the Atom receive a +3 bonus to Administration {computerized efficiency}, -3 to Efficiency {blind obedience to machine thinking}, and +1 to Probe {atomized networks}. Every base receives a free Network Node. [The faction needs more than this, but I haven't finished with them yet.]

Sources:
Actor James Cromwell is our Dr. Johann Anhaldt.

Dr. Aleigha Cohen said:

Stop focusing on what you want to know. Focus instead on what you want to unknow. What prejudice will you abandon? What dearly-held principle will you permit to be holed? To be a scientist, you must believe in your own limitations. Science is pain. If it hurts, you're growing. - Organizing Thought

Service Record
Born in the Baghdadi Jewish community of Rangoon, the daughter of a Eurasian colonel and a debutante mother suffering from severe opioid dependency. British and Iraqi descent. Cohen circulated in the same high society as a youthful Roshann Cobb, who once famously brawled with her father during a state dinner.

Attended Wycombe Abbey School until expulsion at 15 for fighting. Permanently maimed a classmate during dispute over use of a video-telephone.

M.D./Ph. D. in neurosurgery from University of Melbourne. Disciplined twice by University Ethics Committee for advocating that patients be encouraged to choose experimental courses of treatment even when conventional medicine was as or more likely to deliver superior outcomes. Held over on strength of past work.

Conducted post-graduate research on cognition, sensory memory, and mind-machine interface for American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). Participated in psych screenings of 2061 U.S. candidates for U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, including several members of Congress and high-ranking national security figures.

Led team responsible for design and testing of neural monitoring equipment to be used during high-G space travel. Concluded that cold hibernation was a viable potential solution to both interstellar travel and nuclear winter, with long-term neural degeneration holding at "acceptable levels."

Convened Singapore Symposium on social deviance, 2066. Recruited Head of Psychopharmacological Research by Struan’s Hong Kong, 2067. Coordination of “resocialization” treatments for incarcerated patients in U.S.S.R. and Golden China led to black listing by Western academia. Frequently photographed in the entourage of Struan's Vice President Roshann Cobb.

Accepted Chief of Neurosurgery, Unity Mission, at urging of Russian and Chinese delegations. Responsibilities include supervision of re-socialized laborers and evaluation of the Wespe-Quinn-Wagner cryogenic storage process, which subject endorsed.

Cohen was on notably good terms with her superior, Prokhor Zakharov, a notorious misogynist who nonetheless appreciated her low tolerance for bureaucratic and ethical delays. Yet while Zakharov sought truth for its own sake, engaging in mundane projects as readily as controversial ones, Cohen showed a persistent aversion to subjects that did not inspire untoward emotions.

Psych Profile: Transgressor
Reflexive problem solver. Especially attracted to high-controversy projects.

Views knowledge as a highly portable form of power.

Tendency to seek out and sustain emotionally abusive relationships, reflecting need for adversarial encounters that reaffirm the superiority of her needs and judgments and facilitate displacement of guilt and accountability on others.

Passive-aggressive tendencies.

CAUTION: Suspected Cleckleyan psychopathy per Morgan Industries senior neurologist. Subject allegedly presents on all three spectrums: boldness, disinhibition, and meanness.

Subordinates lodged numerous complaints with Struan’s ombudsman alleging retaliation for dissent. No disciplinary records found.

The Dreamers of Chiron in Game Terms
Aleigha Cohen is one half of a duumvirate. With Factor Roshann Cobb, heir to an Old Earth mega-corporation, she presides over what amounts to little more than a destitute plantation-turned-opium den.

The Children begin with a population of 4: 1 Talent, 1 Overseer, 1 Robot, and 1 Drone. Their starting pieces include: 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Mercenary Company {the Sabre Corporation}, and 1 Trade Goods {medical supplies}.

The faction's affinity is Supremacy, their preferred politics is Anarchic. They favor Barter economics, and their preferred value is Truth. They seek the Eudaimonic Future Society. They begin with the Neuropsych tech. Their research priorities are Choose and Conquer.

The Dreamers receive a +4 bonus to Probe {masters of the neuro-digital battlefield}, +1 to Police {liberal use of the nerve staple}, -3 to Administration {leadership prone to self-indulgence}, -2 to Efficiency {widespread addiction wrecks havoc on colony operations}, and -2 Growth {disinterest in the physical world}. They reduce the highest die rolled during each combat round by 1 {addicts make poor soldiers}. This is the "Probe" faction.

The Dreamers seek to promote the popularity of Somnacin, a drug that can be used to induce shared, lucid dreaming. They also wish to find a labor force to sustain their colony. To preserve their monopoly on certain data, they must furthermore keep the Datalinks clear of "potentially infectious elements."

Roshann Cobb, bastard son of the head of the Struan's Pacific Trading Company, a Morganite and ARC near-peer, is a part-time wastrel and former MI5 man-turned-corporate-fixer who fancies himself a philosopher. It isn’t his vision that keeps his followers in line, but either his father's hired guns or Cohen's drugs. For some of the Unity castaways, survival is too great a project. Lucid dreaming is their escape hatch, and Cobb its keymaster. If the Dreamers have managed to collect various other detritus, it is usually because those individuals are either prisoners, or in possession of skill sets without immediate value to most other colonies (e.g., overseers).

The Dreamers are a commentary on a less conventional frontier, that of the human psyche. In his most-lucid moments, Cobb asserts their creed. The fundamental truth of the university, in his opinion, is that we carry with us the seeds of our own destruction, implanted deep in the unconscious mind. Old Earth died because we could not come to our senses. To survive and thrive on Chiron, Cobb suggests, we must come to know ourselves completely. Like Frank Herbert, Cobb conceives a kind of "race-consciousness" of memes, biases, and preferences shared by all humans.

Cobb was awakened by Cohen to discover that the Unity was not only damaged, but wracked by full-scale mutiny. Gathering his bodyguard of corporate mercenaries, he took prisoner several emergency action teams with the intention of using them as labor once on the ground. Cohen was pulled out of cold sleep on the orders of Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida to organize resocialized prisoners for high-risk repairs in irradiated compartments. Disregarding orders, she retrieved Cobb and his retainers, then brought her work party to the landing pods.

Like her partner, the self-aggrandizing, self-destructive Cohen is no natural leader. The motley crew of re-socialized prisoners taking her lead do so because she administers their dopamine regimens; the robots, because they are programmed to do so.

To simulate their thought theft in a past forum game, the Dreamers were entitled to ask the moderator any one true-or-false question per turn.

NOTE: Aleigha Cohen maintained a long-term consulting relationship with both British and American foreign intelligence services. Cohen’s service focused on the subject of “enhanced interrogations,” and records indicate that she participated in hundreds of interviews with prisoners kept in solitary confinement at the Special Intelligence Service’s Victoria Station in Hong Kong.

Sources:
The Dreamers are heavily inspired by Christopher Nolen's 2010 movie, Inception.

Our Dr. Aleigha Cohen is actress Daniela Amavia in Children of Dune miniseries (2000).

Struan's Pacific Trading Company appears in James Clavell's Noble House.

Factor Roshann Cobb said:

Such a long way to travel, only to discover we could not get away from ourselves after all. - Rebuilding Man

Service Record
On his rare good days, Roshann Cobb is an obvious genius, courageous enough to speak the truth to himself as well as to others. It is never the home that is broken; only the people in it. The Unity survivors are doomed to repeat the Great Mistakes if they cannot perceive that. The last frontier is not really space, but the Naïve Mind.

Unnatural son of Ian Dunross Struan, taipan of Struan’s Pacific Trading Company, and his Chinese mistress, opera singer Chen An-Wei. The relationship between Ian Dunross and his bastard was a bad one. The boy was illegitimate and unneeded at the time of his birth and therefore unwanted. Until his teenage years, young Roshann existed on the margins of respectable Hong Kong Society. He experimented with opium and became an odds runner at the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Both Cobb and his mother reacted badly when Dunross had the boy shipped off to boarding school in England. Educated at Eton Hall and University of Oxford. Read philosophy.

Cobb's tangential relationship to key power players in the Asian marketplace put him on the radar of a British Government eager to cultivate allies that could help it shore up a crumbling empire. Without any other claims on his future, subject entered British Special Intelligence Service, 2023. Three years later, Marc Struan, the taipan's natural son, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer too late for surgeons to operate. Released on hardship, subject obtained placement with Struan’s Hong Kong offices in the firm's pharmacology division, 2029. Navigated legal and reputational fallout of previously flawed clinical trials of psychodynamic drugs.

Vesper Abaddon said:

In an earlier age, Cobb would have been made a bishop or a cardinal. If very lucky, perhaps packed off to the Americas or India to make his fortune. If unlucky, he might become a midshipman or an adjutant. But this is the Rocket Age. On Planet, he may have a kingdom. – Spoken in Council

Under Cobb's leadership, the Hong Kong office served as "fixer" for other arms of the mega-corporation. With the help of American and Israeli mercenaries, Cobb built an in-house intelligence function known as the Sabre Group, which later spun out as a full-fledged private military corporation. Journalists remarked upon, but could never plumb, the seeming immunity of Struan's people and properties from mischief in some of the most insecure places on the planet. Rumors abounded that Morgan Industries executives were disallowed from making serious moves against Struan's interests without prior written approval from the Board of Directors.

Cobb positioned Struan’s as leading source of venture capital for research in mnemonics, oneirology, and memory encoding and retrieval. He also coordinated successful legal defenses for multiple cases of intellectual property theft brought against the conglomerate between 2062 and 2065. By the time he was 35, Cobb had survived three assassination attempts credited to corporate rivals, one in the Kowloon Walled City and another on the Singapore's Ayer Rajah Expressway, mounted from the sunroofs of passing Mercedes Sl-classes.

Respected authority on the commercial, industrial, and military applications for lucid dreaming. Called for sustained public investment in neural mapping, arguing that the genesis of modern conflict lies in the human Ur-mind, not the material world.

Named factor, head of Struan’s Unity contingent, following company’s accession as final Unity Project prime contractor. Remit to evaluate Chiron’s biological resources for potential pharmaceutical applications.

Cobb's problem is that he is a happy addict. The colony he founded with Cohen is merely a collection of people who cannot leave. One visits a Dreamer base to obtain only two things: drugs and intelligence. The Dreamer economy produces enough of both to keep itself going, but barely.

To be a Dreamer on Chiron is to endure purgatory at best, damnation at worst. Cobb pulled most of his original retainers off Unity--a collection of personal bravos, his father's picked mentors, and long-time enforcers. Some are genuine friends, and pleased to be along for an increasingly bumpy ride, but most await the uncomfortable day when Corporate arrives to sweep up after Junior's mess. (And of all factions, the Dreamers are the most assured that someone is coming after them.)

Then there are the workers, contractors outside Cobb's leadership circle who failed to jump ship in time to avoid being tasked with keeping his teetering colony from oblivion. Others are prisoners, either marched out of Unity's detention blocks by Cohen or taken Planetside during the faction's frequent slave raids. These receive the nerve staple and scutwork, if they are lucky enough to first avoid the Dream Twister.

Anyone who lingers too long in the Dreamer grottos risks becoming an addict. Rumor has it that the taste of Somnacin lingers in the air even after the fiercest dust storms, but the truth is that Dreaming has strong appeal to hopeless people despite the near certainty of easy addiction.

Played straight, Cobb and Cohen are listless sociopaths--the human monsters under the bed. But like those monsters, they are only dangerous to those who stray too far into the room. Cobb is dispassionately calculating when lucid, and indifferent to the consequences of crimes when in any other state. Most of his "waking" time is spent on machinations that usually succeed but rarely make life better for his subjects--high-profile assassinations, theft of critical information, and development of detailed psychological profiles that assist other factions to achieve world-altering results.

Subverted, Cobb and Cohen are center-stage in a tragedy. Cobb, the unloved number-two son, feels indebted to a father who obviously did not love him. He was a good spy and an excellent executive, but neither of these things brought fulfillment. Dreaming is his own invention, the ultimate tailored escape from a burdensome reality. Cobb has important stories to tell from beyond the pale but cannot quite get back, and having helped others to find their own way into the same quicksand, there is nobody left to retrieve him.

Psych Profile: Dreamer
Five years with MI6 reportedly left Cobb a changed man, and for the better. Gone was the wastrel who had misspent his Kowloon youth. In his place, a professional crisis manager took the wheel of Struan’s Hong Kong just as Asian financial markets entered a period of severe instability. Preserving the company's stock position meant papering over failed clinical trials of psychodynamic drugs and a rash of lawsuits for intellectual property theft, but the proof was in the pudding and the flavor proved palatable. In time, Struan’s gained the patents to protect their investments and the accolades to confirm the wisdom of their risk-taking. Young Cobb succeeded in positioning his father’s company as the uncontested global leader in funding for research in brain mechanics and lucid dreaming.

Highly charismatic. First-quartile emotional intelligence quotient.

Avoidant personality traits detected. Pronounced narcissistic tendencies may be a form of self-soothing cultivated as a childhood defense mechanism. Unrealistic self-image reinforced by abundant personal success and the romanticism of a career in national intelligence.

Expert negotiator. Ranked chess Grand Master. In both arenas, noted for exploiting counterpart’s anxieties.

Unusually self-critical leadership style. Proponent of fact-based management.

Moderate score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test (.54).

CAUTION: Pre-flight tox screens indicate elevated background levels of Somnacin, as well as synthetic adrenalin, endorphins, and a psychotropic aggression enhancer, consistent with StimPak abuse. This individual is unsuitable for an emergency response billet.

Sources:
Our Cobb is Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.

The Struan family is from James Clavell's The Asian Saga.

Vesper Abaddon was a character in the NBC series Kings (2009).

Dreaming is inspired by Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), from which I also took the drug Somnacin.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Look again. From the one perspective, men. Laden with creative potential. Their value: unquantifiable. From the other, biological batteries averaging seventy-four years of use on Earth, thirty-two on Chiron. - Instructions to the Intendants

Two Dreamers of Chiron Overseers prepare to administer nerve staples during a period of drone unrest at White Rabbit's Refuge.

Involuntary labor was a crucial feature of the faction economy. Dreamer talents might spend up to sixteen hours a day in a state of shared, lucid dreaming. To run their bases, the Dreamers used a combination of re-socialized convicts "rescued" from the Unity and enslaved prisoners captured during raids on neighboring settlements. Rampant addiction among the faction's technicians and made experiments with robotic servitors unsustainable. Even when Cobb's enforcers could coerce programmers to push upgrades and repair broken hardware, which was rare enough, they still found it impossible to tell failed repairs from sabotage. More than one miserable datatech escaped under cover of an Auto-Patroller gone haywire.

In theory, the standard of medical care available to Dreamers should have exceeded that of most other colonies. Cobb's retinue of hand-picked Struan's personnel included numerous practicing physicians and dozens of first responders contracted to the Noble House's Sabre Corporation subsidiary. Cohen brought with her a significant portion of the expedition's neurosurgical team. The faction was also well-provisioned with medical devices and prescription-strength pharmaceuticals. Cynically, the medical staff were assigned to dream dens. Medical supplies were meanwhile hoarded for trade, sale, or recreational use by faction elites.

Despite an impressive record of corporate governance when pinned under his father's thumb, Roshann Cobb walked off his Landing Pod in the grip of Somnacin addiction and, for months thereafter, evinced little interest in base administration. Decisions of importance were taken by a middle caste of unsupervised technicians and mercenaries who lacked both the moral and titular authority to engage in meaningful problem-solving but were equipped with the latest in "compliance technology."

The "nerve staple" was actually a package of medical and physical interventions classed under the broader heading of "Neural Resocialization," techniques designed to deter or suppress behavior considered deviant or undesirable by the administering authority. A combination of psychopharmacological cocktails and transcutaneous mechanical implants dramatically reduced cognitive, executive, and motor functions. The results, likened by Cohen herself to "partial lobotomization," destroyed the victim's free will. They became highly open to suggestion and helpless to meet their own basic needs unprompted.

In the Hive, it was said that one died because, after much consideration, the Chairman thought the colony would be better off without them, while in the Refuge, one died precisely because no thought had been given at all.

Sources:
Image is apparently from the British Army.

Neural Resocialization ("ReSoc") is a concept from StarCraft.

Coordinator Ikurō Kamatari said:

Home. For us, now a concept. For our children, a place. - Preface, The Story of Earth

A Hive gunner sights his machine gun as The People's Teeming burns in the background.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang made a habit of sending his militia against virtually any outsider who dared cross the Uranium Flats, but the poorly-equipped and worse-led Hivemen rarely came away with an unspoiled victory. Historians and strategists alike have assessed that the Hive's emphasis on hierarchy and procedure were to blame for the very low frequency of tactical innovation by their units. Matters were not helped by the faction's isolation and relative backwardness: for more than a century, Hive militia fought with the same weapons once stacked in Unity's rather unimpressive armory.

In 2071, dumb-, direct-fire ballistic small arms and light, crew-served weapons like the PKM in this still image were classified under the broad heading of "hand weapons" by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. The term also covered basic personal protective equipment such as ballistic plate and helmets.

Only a relatively small number of hand weapons were included on the ship's official manifest. Most of the U.N. Security Force was issued sub-lethal weapons. That wasn't an uncontroversial decision. Game Warden J.T. Marsh, responsible for the colonists safety "outside the wire" of the planned main settlement, pushed back hard, and eventually secured two thousand surplus Light Anti-tank Weapons from the American Reclamation Corporation. Unity's Executive Officer, General Francisco d'Almeida, successfully campaigned for the inclusion of a United Nations Marine Corps contingent as insurance against potentially partitionist elements among the proprietary colonists. But the U.N. never achieved a shipboard monopoly of force.

A very large quantity of hand weapons were smuggled aboard Unity and later brought down with the survivors. Most rifles were chambered to 5.56 x 45mm NATO, 7.62 x 51mm UN, or 7.62 x 39mm WARPAC standards. Popular and ubiquitous firearms included the American M16 and M4, Soviet AK47 and 94, German G3, Chinese Type 191, and South African R-series rifles. Stowaways and corporations brought .50 BMG and DhsK heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades. Hand weapons remained standard-issue for Chiron militaries even two centuries after Planetfall. Some, like the M47 grenade launchers embraced as squad support weapons by every faction militia, were first used in anger during the Second Indochina War.

Military service was a fundamental duty of all members of the Hive. Reticence to endure the attendant hardships of a militia posting was disqualifying for a Hive Initiate. The Chairman expressed rare and genuine anger whenver one of his direct subordinates showed a lack of personal or civic courage. Yang was fond of reminding his talents that, for all their inferiority in other respects, no drone had ever refused to take up arms in defense of the colony. Neither high marks on one's screening examinations nor prowess in philosophical debate could excuse such an offense. Those who didn't rise to meet the Hermit King's expectations in this regard were expelled at once from his presence and permanently reassigned to a subordinate caste. They usually became technicians and data librarians, lesser cogs in the great machine.

Hive spotters saw the invaders from a long way off. Yang's captains stalked the foxholes and strongpoints, freely dispensing water and hard food. It was a windy day. Hive overseers manhandled nerve gas to the surface and released it, killing dozens of men that the Pilgrims could not afford to lose. Mortar fire directed at the enemy's flanks caused him to close ranks as the assault gathered. An autocannon, half hidden behind a berm, made the most of the element of surprise. Though inexpert, its crew blew the track off a jury-rigged assault gun that some mechanic among the New Two Thousand had built on a Supply Crawler chassis, then picked off a pair of Scout Rovers, shredding the pilots.

Yang's mania for autarky meant that this defender was probably low on ammunition even before the shooting began. Nevertheless, Oscar van de Graaf's incoming Regulators ended up with few prisoners.

Narrator said:

Your future. Safe, in our hands. - Slogan of Comprehensive Transportation

During the First Generations, Chiron was an ideal environment for a resurgence of interest in transportation by train. Rails were cheaper to build than paved surfaces, and locomotives more fuel-efficient than rovers, aircraft, or tracked carriers for carrying people and freight over the very long distances between factions.



Engineers designed the ultra-heavy atomic locomotives as rolling fortresses to keep the radiation in and danger out. A foot of composite armor blunted the psychic lashing of mindworms to tolerable levels and was also virtually impervious to the low-velocity ballistic weapons available to most militias. Locomotives invariably featured reinforced accommodation (albeit cramped) for both escorts and passengers. The later would muster from adjoining cars in case of emergency.

Trains were potent offensive and defensive platforms. Many carried parasite vehicles to effect minor repairs on damaged rail as well as to mount counter-assaults. The onboard reactors usually powered laser turrets with full 360° traverse. Using defoliants, rail-builders cleared generous rights of way so that train-board spotters could focus fire on potential trouble. When it appeared they might be overwhelmed, trains could vent super-heated waste steam and radiation from their sinks, converting crucial safety systems into deadly area-effect weapons. As further protection, trains usually traveled with at least three powered engines: the locomotive, a "midcar," and the caboose, all of which could detach to open up fields of fire for onboard defenders, thus creating defensive islands.

Speedtrains also helped bring necessary services to outlying colonies, either by serving fixed stations or making field stops that drew in the custom of wider catchment areas in carnival-like tent cities. In addition to basic stockcars, locomotives could pull surgical, laboratory, and recreational suites; machine shops; and modular facilities.

Adversaries were as likely to use track as to rip it up or destroy it. Conversion kits allowed Rovers to ride the rails for faster travel. The effectiveness of small-time sabotage diminished greatly when air cushion technology matured. Locomotives retrofitted with undercarriage safety bellows could stay true across up to 60' of damaged track, while powerful magnets, set in series, could be activated once geometry detectors confirmed that the train was again over parallel rails.

Sources:
First image is by Jarkko Kinnunen.

Second image is "Snow Train" by Wibble on ArtStation.

Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine said:

It is not disagreement we punish, but dissent. You disagree? Fine. But hold your tongue after the decision has been made, lest you provoke doubt in lesser men. Nothing better serves a sailor than confidence, and nothing so dooms him but the creeping thought that his course is already wrong. - The Discipline of Obedience

The 2019 invasion of Arunachal Pradesh was a near-total catastrophe for the Communist Chinese. Intending to have their way with powers they considered second-rate, the People's Republic instead pushed two enemies into a united front against itself.

A game of brinkmanship in the Himalayas was not yet two months old when, after rioting over a desultory earthquake response in Ashgabat, the Chinese Ministry of State Security facilitated the defection of the First Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party.

China's military overestimated its readiness for war, especially at sea. The impressively large People's Liberation Army Navy had only a fraction of the naval aviation experience possessed by its adversaries, each of which had been perfecting its doctrines for forty years or more. Postwar analysis also found that the Chinese had been unwise in their decision to use American configurations on old Soviet hulls. Without the ship-killing missiles and heavy throw-weight of Soviet shipboard defense schemes, Chinese commanders relied too heavily on their air groups on both offense and defense.

The combined efforts of the allied navies and scarcely-concealed assistance from GCHQ Hong Kong put three Chinese aircraft carriers on the Indian Ocean floor in quick succession, starting with the Shandong and Liaoning, dispatched off Sri Lanka by MiG-29K fighters flying from Ulyanovsk and Vishal, respectively. A week later, INS Vikramaditya, attended by the ancient Viraat and its small flock of Sea Harriers, fatally wounded Fujian off the Spratley Islands, where the PLAN had hoped she would have time to take on more interceptors.

The only bright spot of the war for China was when they found and finished off the already-fire-damaged Streltsy in the Southern Ocean. Senior Captain Wu Fang Bao's squadron rerouted from neutrality patrols off Port Prosperity to give chase with a combination of seventh-generation Type 092 missile frigates and a few corvettes. The Soviet carrier couldn't scramble fighters, and though its AK-630s and Kashtan CIWS did bloody work, the Renhuai cracked its bridge and magazine almost simultaneously.

Two of the Type 092s made up the Golden Chinese contribution to Unity's small surface fleet. Their missile armament and three rapid-cycling deck guns were supposed to offer the colonists a comfortable dome of protection against unspecified threats. One Type 092, dubbed the Skagway after the homeport at which its crew trained before mission launch, was contained within a Supply Pod that joined the exodus led by Academician Prokhor Zakharov.

Source:
This picture is from the sci-fi MMO Sea Fortress, made by IGG.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

And do you know the cause of the very first murder on our expedition? Light. Two crewman argued over possession a headlamp. Gripped by avarice—and, no doubt, by fear—one stove the other’s head in with a sonic hammer. Over light. Even then, in our first hours above this new world, energy was the thing. For what is light but its herald?” – The Centauri Monopoly

At 00:03 Mission Time (MT), 1 November 2116, Unity crossed the edge of the Alpha Centauri system, passing its outermost captive solar body, an asteroid designated Argus. The Forward Contact Team under Warden-Administrator J.T. Marsh deployed aboard landing pods. They would proceed to make landfall on schedule, four days hence, where they would immediately secure a planned landing area in north-central Shamash, Chiron's largest continent, on the southern shore of the Lycatian Sea.

The Forward Contact Team consisted of pioneers, roughnecks, and logisticians. Marsh was to develop a depot to receive the disgorging colonists and their cargoes. His immediate objectives, in order of priority, were to make safe the landing site, establish a base of operations for emergency crash rescue, construct a prefabricated triage station, and mark out assembly areas for the various crew departments and their respective equipment. Subsequently, he would organize resource-gathering farther afield and initiate a search for evidence of the Chiron Probe, a smaller expedition that preceded Unity by fifty years.

01:19MT, 3 November 2116, Unity was impacted on the port side by a micro-object forty-eight Astronomical Units (AU) from Chiron. Impact sheared off Cryobays 6, 7, and 8 and destroyed two of three hydroponics modules, A and B. In an instant, more than 68,000 people were killed, and the expedition lost the majority of its fresh food and 90% of its medicinal crops. Fires raged shipwide, consuming oxygen at a prodigious rate, killing helpless crew and ashing uncounted fortunes worth of irreplaceable supplies. Among those immediately flagged dead by the computer were Chief Security Officer Rachael Winzenried and senior Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson.

The port-side ventral hull was showered in shrapnel, causing breaches and depressurization spread across eighty-three decks. Primary reactor shielding was breached and emergency coolant systems crippled. Coolant system failure led to a rapid increase in core temperature. Safety systems immediately SCRAMMED the primary reactor, but radiation leaked into Cryobays 1, 2, 4, and 9. A secondary reactor powered up automatically but tripped twice during start-up, indicating that it too had suffered significant damage.

Unity's computer automatically woke the senior command crew and 150 damage control technicians to begin preliminary damage assessment. Executive Officer General Francisco d'Almeida activated the Damage Control Center amidships at 01:58 MT and woke an additional 400 personnel to conduct urgent firefighting. By 05:12MT, d'Almeida summarizes what was then known for the arriving Bridge Crew, themselves still fighting through debris. More than 40% of Unity's automated fire suppression systems had failed and dozens of airtight bulkheads remained inexplicably locked in the open position. Emergency lighting had not come on in key compartments aft and amidships. Radiation alarms were indicating potentially fatal contact doses in compartments along a full kilometer of the hull forward from the reactor spaces. Most crucially, life support readings foretold that the ship's supply of oxygen was at 82 hours and dropping. Unless drive power could be restored to complete a rapid deceleration burn, Unity would overshoot Chiron and pass through the star system.

Damage to lesser systems and cargo bays was equally critical. Lieutenant Commander Sardul Singh, head of Unity's Engineering Division, led damage control parties to the Primary Data Core, where halon fire suppression systems had activated. Singh advised of "significant apparent damage" to the core and began a full diagnostic. On his recommendation, Captain Jonathan Garland approved a transfer of data operations to the Secondary Core. Working with Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal, Lt. Commander Deirdre Skye began an inventory of compartments that were still showing non-emergency status and calculated that the quantity of safe rations remaining aboard might be sufficient for as little as one-fifth of the crew. Spacewalks of the hull confirmed grave suspicions that a significant quantity of free wreckage had become trapped in the ship's eleven kilometers of latticework, attracted by the microgravity drums fore and aft of the waist. Aerospace Operations Director Ssihash Regelman began vectoring drones to create clear paths around the launch tubes.

At 05:41MT, Captain Jonathan Garland sought options from his staff. If the ship's fusion drive could not be restarted within 97 (effectively 82, given life support problems) hours, the only alternative would be to enter an elliptical orbit, using Alpha Centauri's gravity to bring the ship back into range for Planetfall, a maneuver that would take fifty-seven standard years. Placing hundreds of personnel safely back into cold sleep was a practical impossibility, particularly on low-margin reserve power. The Wespe-Quinn-Vagner process was traumatic even under ideal conditions with medical technicians on stand-by to resolve the seizures that afflicted 21% of all sleepers. Most of the 500 souls awake aboard Unity would face a statistical certainty of death if Unity overshot. Garland ordered d'Almeida to awaken more workers.

According to survivors present with him at the time, access to information provided by damage controllers contributed to Executive Officer d’Almeida’s strong belief that Unity’s destruction could not be prevented. Heated discussion began in Damage Control concerning the probability of reactor repair and weighing the benefits of a total shutdown to conserve life and gasses that might be used to advance other solutions. Around 6:21MT, still conflicted, d'Almeida was caught off-guard by the patent insubordination of the ship's Chief Science Officer, Zakharov, whom he observed on camera violating orders to awaken additional structural engineers so that urgent repairs could be made to failing sunports in Hydroponics Bay C. Instead, Zakharov was organizing members of the Dosimetry and Reactor Engineering departments and countermanding evacuation orders for workers still in irradiated compartments. D'Almeida then tried and failed to raise Garland on central and point-to-point radio. Text communication was impossible as the data core was still rebooting and computer operations were limited to basic recall and supervisory control and data acquisition routines.

At 6:48MT, d'Almeida began receiving frantic radio traffic from multiple locations reporting that armed assailants were attacking responders. Damage Control Center personnel were astonished by the number, recklessness, and reach of the attackers, who seemed to be swarming at all points, as well as by the fact that most were apparently wearing U.N. Security Forces togs, indicating that a crucial segment of the crew complement had been suborned. D'Almeida remotely initiated recovery of General Marcel Salan and his Marines, far forward near the Bridge, but their contributions focused forward, on the personal defense of the Captain. The situation went from dire to untenable when the initial group of shooters found themselves in running firefights with a new set of organized attackers. D'Almeida turned on cameras to watch Kellerites swarm from one of Unity's many vestigial cargo bays. Over the next few hours, warrens of Charterists, including stowed-away followers of Nwabudike Morgan, Earth's richest man, followed the cultists' example, breaking out of hiding in supernumerary compartments whose precise history was unremembered even by the ship's builders. D'Almeida radioed his people that they were to stop waking fire crew. Instead, he furnished them a list of military officers known to himself and directed that they muster at the Ship's Armory.

Zakharov insisted to Garland that the fusion drive could be safely restarted and demanded permission to wake 2,000 additional engineering personnel. This would bring the total operating crew to approximately 2,600, severely taxing available supplies of food and water. Lal, Skye, and Atomic Energy Laboratory head Dr. Johann Anhaldt recommend entering elliptical orbit. A civilian adviser, Tell Stillwell, formerly a U.S. Secretary of Defense, pointed out that the problem would be moot unless Garland's forces could retake the ship. Gripped by uncertainty, Garland ordered forward damage control crews to redouble efforts toward the restoration of contact with d'Almeida and put people on the task of trying to locate Winzenried's lieutenant, Wael Salibi. He expressly forbade Zakharov from going ahead with his plans for the drive.

Garland send Lt. Commander Skye aft to Hydroponics Bay C to assess integrity. Though furnished with a squad of firefighters, she insisted that she also be permitted to retrieve a number of her soil biologists. En route to the hydroponics bays, Skye was surprised at the number of engineering and military personnel she encountered. Judging by some of their billets alone, these individuals, who were assigned to Zakharov or d'Alemida's divisions, had no business participating in a radiological or structural emergency. More than a few were armed, though weapons were still, in theory, strictly controlled and had not been ordered distributed, a decision that would need to be routed through the ship's security command. It was a foretaste of what was to come. When the door to Hydroponics C cycled open, a rifle bullet creased Skye's left bicep and inflicted a mortal wound on one of the rescuers standing just behind.

Source:
Screenshot from The Expanse.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Without water, there is no life. Without metal, there is no form. Without energy, there is no action. From the crudest outpost to the largest arcology, whether producer or consumer, these are the critical raw materials in the solar system. - FY2051 Annual Report, King Priam Mining

All faction operations in Alpha Centauri 2 are made possible by four resources: water, energy, minerals, and nutrients.


Survivors used oxidizing tablets to render the groundwater drinkable. Water passed through Landing Pod treatment plants was stored in casks to prevent contamination and preserve freshness. Upland colonies with access to high mountain snowpack did a brisk trade with vally-dwellers eager to irrigate their sandy soils.

Water was necessary not only to sustain human life, but also as an input for virtually every industrial activity.

Without water, your population will die and your production will slow to a crawl.


Fission products powered the Unity expedition. Donors cynically exploited the U.N.'s need to co-opt them in clean-up operations that were too little, too late for Earth. Nearly every one of the 22,500 vehicles carried aboard Unity had a waste fission battery or onboard microreactor.

On Chiron, energy was currency. Rather than issue money, factions tracked each individual's debts and credits on an energy index. Energy credits were redeemable as cash, fuel, nutrient equivalents, and time-cycles of light or data access.

Without energy, your base facilities will be rendered inoperable and your movement and signals intelligence will be severely impaired.


The mineral wealth of Planet could not be fully exploited except at great cost to it. Geomorphic warfare had been practiced since ancient times when Alexander of Macedon threw down a causeway to reach Tyre. The Hive went one step further, sometimes digging deep and fast enough to trigger intense backlash by native ecosystems that their subterranean bases could withstand far better than those of surface-dwelling adversaries.

Without minerals, your production will grind to a halt.


Unity's seed banks and livestock pens were virtually wiped out. A large fraction of the prepackaged survival rations stored inside the Landing Pods were also heavily irradiated.

Colonists ate the rations anyway, and grew the few remaining seeds in greenhouses. The ubiquitous Chironian fungus was inedible, and most leafy Chironian plants, though edible, lacked measurable nutrient value. Animals were a different matter. Native sealurks and crustaceans were not only palatable, but nourishing as well.

Without nutrients, your population will sicken and die.

Sources:
Water hauler is "Mining truck vehicle, Halo 5" by John Wallin Liberto.

Batteries are "SCI-FI Battery Pack" by Carol Sung.

Mining rig is from James Cameron's Avatar (2009).

Fourth image found on Wallpaper Flare. Original artist unknown.

Desert Journeyman said:

A Morganite speedtrain departs the mausoleum of T.M. Morgan-Riley, which it was rumored his grieving father also used as a treasure house.​

During the First Generations, Chiron was an ideal environment for a resurgence of interest in transportation by train. Rails were cheaper to build than paved surfaces, and locomotives more fuel-efficient than rovers, aircraft, or tracked carriers for carrying people and freight over the very long distances between factions.

A locomotive completes the steel climb into the Hyas Teeth where it will mate with water tankers at this waystation operated by the Children of the Atom before being hitched into a rack-and-pinion system for the dangerous descent. As on an aircraft carrier and aboard Unity herself, the rail crew are distinguishable by the color of their uniforms: yellow for traffic control, red for yard operations, green for loadmasters, and blue for climb configuration.​

Engineers designed the ultra-heavy atomic locomotives as rolling fortresses to keep the radiation in and danger out. A foot of composite armor blunted the psychic lashing of mindworms to tolerable levels and was also virtually impervious to the low-velocity ballistic weapons available to most militias. Locomotives invariably featured reinforced accommodation (albeit cramped) for both escorts and passengers. The later would muster from adjoining cars in case of emergency.

Trains were potent offensive and defensive platforms. Many carried parasite vehicles to effect minor repairs on damaged rail as well as to mount counter-assaults. The onboard reactors usually powered laser turrets with full 360° traverse. Using defoliants, rail-builders cleared generous rights of way so that train-board spotters could focus fire on potential trouble. When it appeared they might be overwhelmed, trains could vent super-heated waste steam and radiation from their sinks, converting crucial safety systems into deadly area-effect weapons. As further protection, trains usually traveled with at least three powered engines: the locomotive, a "midcar," and the caboose, all of which could detach to open up fields of fire for onboard defenders, thus creating defensive islands.

Speedtrains also helped bring necessary services to outlying colonies, either by serving fixed stations or making field stops that drew in the custom of wider catchment areas in carnival-like tent cities. In addition to basic stockcars, locomotives could pull surgical, laboratory, and recreational suites; machine shops; and modular facilities.

Adversaries were as likely to use track as to rip it up or destroy it. Conversion kits allowed Rovers to ride the rails for faster travel. The effectiveness of small-time sabotage diminished greatly when air cushion technology matured. Locomotives retrofitted with undercarriage safety bellows could stay true across up to 60' of damaged track, while powerful magnets, set in series, could be activated once geometry detectors confirmed that the train was again over parallel rails.

Sources:
First image is by Jarkko Kinnunen.

Second image is "Snow Train" by Wibble on ArtStation.

Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal said:

I am making no representations to desire a momento of home, nor professing disdain for the wise counsel that we tread here at our own risk. We are taking the Crawler because it means that we eat. Maslow before Miur or Martha Stewart.

The high heat and low oxygen levels on Planet are conducive to natural carbonization. Spectrographic analysis correctly predicted that Chiron's crust had trapped large reserves of potential fossil fuels. The chief problem was one of access: the nitrate-based plant economy choked most surfaces with many feet of organic detritus that colonies needed to clear before they could access the topsoil.

The oceans on Chiron are warmer, sweeter, and much more active than those on Earth. In colder climates, the turmoil is less. In exchange for lower biodiversity in a cooler and drier environment, the Peacekeepers who settled the Southern Pole faced a thinner mantle of nitrate spoilage and greatly reduced xenofungal activity. Mineral counts were also very good, while the ice sheet, thin though it was, provided an easy source of water.

Ice Station Taurok, an outpost founded by the Peacekeeping Forces, supplied supplementary power and water to Warm Welcome and U.N. Relief Station from M.Y. 0 to M.Y. 57, when it was at last destroyed by an electrical storm and left to molder.

Base layout was simple: the central pump station was flanked by irrigated greenhouse domes. An air defense emplacement, visible to the left, was built in M.Y. 15 to deter hostile landings. Because of its relative isolation and small, seasonal population, Taurok was considered at high risk of capture or destruction by Lal's chief adversaries at that time, the Nautilus Pirates and Dreamers of Chiron.

Turok was home to sixteen technicians seasonally, and never more than twenty-eight at any one time. Recreation opportunities were limited,. The hydroponics bays made passable conservatories from which to view the Borealis. Like all colonies, they also built a physio-therapudic saltwater pool to ease the vertical loading imposed on their bodies by Chiron's high gravity. Residents performed most administrative work suspended on floats. During electrical storms, when the pools were closed for safety reasons, they gathered in social commons and kitchens where overhead monitors cycled familiar favorites from the base's small datalinks library. Fresh-mixed nutrient paste was always on tap, along with a generous selection of "flavor-enhancing" powders that added more to indigestion than to enjoyment of meals. Drinks rations and cigarettes banished the unpleasant memories of mealtime--Ice Station Turok received a double ration--and both were often abused.

The work was hard. For six hours a day, the Ice Station's inhabitants wore powered exo-skeletons and did their best to tolerate supplemental oxygen drawn from self-contained breathing apparatus. The lower nitrate content in the local biome reduced the speed with which narcosis set in, but the deep subzero temperatures lent a new terror to routine mishaps. Tracked robots and computers played a significant part in keeping the Ice Station going to limit the outdoor exposure and menial work required of its living custodians.


Quarters were well-appointed to compensate for the hardships of the posting, not least of which was the social isolation. Individual habs were lush with cushions. Most colonists used ferns in decoration, a luxury made possibly by large picture windows--a huge imposition on the heating system. Wall-mounted technology suites, complete with programming tools, provided more functionality than it was possible to use fully on the small datalinks library, a true intranet. Too much time and too much equipment inspired digital painters who wrote their memory-intensive masterpieces on reel-to-reel storage impossible to obtain in other settings. Then there was "the jazz," a kind of artistic programming language first invented to add character to shared electronic message boards.

True to their creed, residents meet weekly in council. Rotating chairpersons facilitated according to Robert's Rules of Order. Subjects of dispute ranged from the mundane to the inane. A conversation that began by touching upon occupational health and safety matters might soon stray to the noisome personal foibles of "problem" individuals.

For fear of raiders, colonists went armed, though their arsenal was limited to the sub-lethal weapons typical of Unity's under-stocked armory. They had only shredder pistols, a kind of single-shot flechette weapon intended for crowd control. In the high gravity and open snow fields, they were all but useless.

Sources:
First picture is a base in the computer game Aven Colony.

Second picture is by late futurist Syd Mead.

Poseidon Energy said:

Begin your odyssey with us.

The project was, in generous terms, an unmitigated disaster. First conceived as the American Ares III intra-solar foundry, Unity's derelict skeleton had been a fixture in the nighttime sky above North America for more than a half-century before it was purchased by the U.N.'s Janović Commission for conversion. The ship then finished another forty-three years in geosynchronous orbit, followed by six of trials that took it only as far as Pluto. By volume, it was the largest object ever built by man. Knowing that technological progress would outpace them before completion, her shipwrights opted for obsolete but proven systems and modular design, hoping to install the engines, reactor, and computer mainframe last, while swapping out secondary infrastructure only when necessary. As the budget ballooned out of control, austerity measures forced the designers to use progressively less-advanced technology so that, in the words of Chief Engineering Officer Prokhor Zakharov, "What began as a starship ended up resembling a square wheel with spokes missing."

U.N.S. Unity's development was a case study in design flaws, self-destructive behavior, and the perils of consensus-based project management. Amidst countless arguments, industrial accidents, and incidents of terrorism and sabotage, entire sections were started, gutted, and started again as political will and available resources waxed and waned. Very often, whole sections of the ship were simply abandoned in place, operational but unwanted. To save time and money, construction crews usually sealed them up without bothering to salvage all the newly-installed equipment. Many of these "forgotten" compartments, more advanced than what was constructed to replace them, remained wired into the ship-wide power and water grids even though they gradually lost the ability to "talk" with the datacore. That was another mess--a retrieval system bearing the sum total of human knowledge that relied on near-century-old punch card, reel-to-reel, and disk storage technology. Some crew members trained seven years to achieve mastery in programming languages their great-grandparents had stopped using as teenagers.

Old technology did have its advantages. Unity was considerably less vulnerable to interstellar radiation than her more-impressive predecessor, the Pathfinder Probe, and was made safer by redundancies that even the most conservative spaceys could only dream about.

Nonetheless, a revolving door of visionaries, sponsors, and builders produced a "Frankenstein's Ark" of not only obsolete, but also incompatible components. Political imperatives often spoke louder than practical science. When the Western powers temporarily suspended their participation in the Project from 2014 to 2050, the U.N.'s new Chinese and Warsaw Pact dismantled and stole entire modules for closer study Earthside, replacing them with inferior or even inoperable counterfeits. During one of countless breakdowns in contract re-negotiations, Morgan Aerodynamics convinced Mission Command to write off and condemn dozens of already-loaded cargo bays previously installed by competitors, including Serrol-Merowe, Fairchild-Grumman, Verset-Brantley, and the Arcannon Group, then charged its customer to rebuild and restock similar bays on the ship's opposite side. In December 2069, less than two years before Unity's departure, the U.N. Intelligence Cell warned then-Secretary-General Degra Tallowan Irú that the number of stowaways, secreted away in purpose-built "secret compartments" that almost certainly contained weapons and equipment more impressive than what the mission had for itself, would more than likely cause severe political problems for the first colony. (Of course, they presumed, wrongly, that the stowaways would not be so foolish as to jeopardize the safe arrival of the ship at its destination.) An additional 2,000 Security Forces were then added to the manifest after a vetting process that also left much to be desired. To a U.N. Board of Inquiry still convening just hours before his departure for the lunar cradle, Unity's captain, Jonathan Garland, observed wryly, albeit accurately, that there was not a single integrated or accurate schematic--let alone a proper inventory--of the whole ship anywhere in existence.

Stocking Unity was equally disastrous. Food and other perishable materials, including biofuel, spoiled due to problems of power quality or because of industrial accidents, especially radiation and water main leaks that ruined electronics as thoroughly as it did rations. Donor nations gave what they could afford to part with--surplus not worth its own scrap value, and politically or environmentally problematic equipment.


Providing a crew for the ship presented a separate brace of problems. Tens of thousands of crew members perished in training, while many more died at the hands of mobs and terrorists incensed at the idea of being left behind. Some 18,902 personnel interred in cold sleep--about four percent of the total passenger list--were lost to mishaps like the ones recounted above before Unity departed the Lunar Cradle on its shake-down cruise. (And this was quite apart from those killed during training accidents or assassinated by mobs and political adversaries jealous of their good fortune.) During times of extremity, the U.N. made a habit of accepting donations from corporations, private individuals, and even criminal enterprises. Earth's best and brightest shared their one-way trip with exiles, outcasts, and stowaways of every conceivable stripe. Pursuant to a mission charter further amended beyond recognition after most were placed in hibernation, led by a multi-national crew on the verge of dissolution since the day it had formed, they were destined for a world where contact with the more-advanced Pathfinder Mission had already been lost without explanation.

Sources:
Poseidon Energy is a corporation from the Fallout franchise of video games.

Power plant is Shin-Ra Electric Power Corporation base and City of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII.

The name "Degra" is a nod to the eponymous character in Season 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Monorail picture is from Babylon 5.

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

To be a Survivalist is to live out the proud pledge not to be a burden others. This makes the traditional role of government inherently problematic. If I don't require as many services, it is not necessarily to bind me by as many rules. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

From the perspective of Hypersurvivalists, the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri was the final, intolerable indignity heaped upon the back of the working man. Claiming to bring salvation to all humanity, they believed that bureaucrats in New York and Geneva had in fact filled their great ark with only two types of people: those who didn't need saving (the well-heeled, well-off elite) and their wretched serving class of voluntary debtors who would step foot on a new world as slaves. Ever the aspiring poet, Corazón Santiago warned that Secretary-General Apsara Mongkut's plan "took only the top of the pyramid." Her less-literary followers boiled the crew manifest's guiding principle down to "taking pharaohs."

The problem for Santiago was that though her rhetoric was popular, direct action was not. To effect her great plan of reckoning, she needed co-conspirators who had already won their hard-fought placement aboard, making it less likely they would adjudge the contest as rigged, or those willing to take a bad gamble on first-generation cryotubes--the kind that could be smuggled behind false bulkheads and run on siphoned power without tripping loss alarms. She made up the deficiency of true believers by recruiting among the harder core of unreconstructed Holnists, wrongly presuming that their shared diagnosis of the problems afflicting humanity would translate, in the end, to agreement on the right prescription.

Spartans organized along paramilitary lines so that their bases resembled the North American service academies that came back into vogue during the three-decade lead-in to the Hypersurvivalist Crisis. They defied Chiron with a combination of calisthenics and self-abnegation. To entertain themselves, they staged trial combats, hunted the booming rodent population that had come off the Landing Pods (which they soon discovered had made the descent into partial cannibalism), and harassed their neighbors for sport or slaves. Some absorbed the nihilistic manifestos produced or recommended by their Colonel, broadcast from loudspeakers in the barracks halls and gymnasiums. Santiago wanted them tough: they used labor-saving technology sparingly, eschewing the powered exo-frame.

Spartan bases were built in a distinctive fortress style that resembled the earthwork defenses of earlier eras. The principles held. Spartans inflicted outsized losses on most enemies from behind murder holes or battlements. Common quarters afforded no privacy worth mentioning. Spartans slept, bathed, fed, and worked in teams so central to their lives that the bonds of comradeship frequently became romantic. Since they could not easily adorn spaces they did not personally own, they did it on their own bodies, developing a practical mania for self-decoration. Spartans also developed stenciled covers for their body-mounted flashlights that shone in configurations or colors unique to themselves or their squads, helping them to identify one another during combat. Social and contact diseases were a problem for the close-packed Spartans, who received daily antibiotics to manage the risk of fungal and other breakouts.

Hypersurvivalists, often called Holnists, soon found Santiago's party line intolerable. Fault lines had yawned wide from the moment the Spartans had launched their attack. Rather than seize "their rightful share," the majority of Santiago's "followers" had engaged in orgiastic violence that seemed to have no purpose other than to sate an appetite for troublemaking and self-aggrandizement. They committed murder without preamble, destroyed vital systems or supplies for the sheer thrill of destruction, and seemed not to care that they, too, were imperiled by Unity's plight. Once on the ground, many took bubbletents and sought a more solitary life than their leader and her acolytes thought prudent, existing as a collection of disorganized barnacles on the main society, or so Santiago believed. Poverty and hardship kept them fit for fighting, but internecine violence claimed a sizeable number of victims and forced the creation of penal battalions that Santiago eventually put at the forefront of her fights, hoping battlefield attrition would solve her problems of leadership where persuasion had failed.

The constant state of war in which the faction existed retarded social development. Food was never abundant and sleep cycles were interrupted almost daily by klaxons sending everyone to shelter. Spartans rested as often "rough" in foxholes or guardrooms as in their cots. They slurped 3,000-calorie "battle butters" and swallowed caffeine pills so often that solid food upset their digestion and tempers were rarely shorter than a hair. Many Spartans received injections of hemodynamics to help resist oxygen narcosis in case of battle damage to their survival rigs.

Datalinks use was unimportant to Spartans, who found a better outlet in radio chatter. Within the carefully-delineated lanes of strict radio discipline, Spartans collaborated in development of a battle language that awarded treasured call-signs and had an ever-expanding vocabulary rooted in context and allegory--one that required intimate knowledge of the faction's members and their exploits and was nearly uncrackable to outsiders. The Dreamers of Chiron paid premiums for Spartan prisoners whose secrets they could plumb with the "Somnacin Cure."

In theory, a Spartan sought battle with worthy foes. Tribals were worthy, if hated, and a trophy culture permitted the taking of skulls, ears, and, especially, the enemy's own weapons. The production and trade of shrunken heads was ubiquitous. They adorned spikes on the walls of Spartan bases. Some troopers kept menageries. In practice, Spartans learned from their less-restrained cousins to shoot at anyone unfamiliar luckless enough to stray into their sight, soldier or civilian.

Menial work was performed by slaves called helots--captives who, according to the Spartan creed, were made inhuman by the shame of their surrender. The Spartans arrived with hundreds of able-bodied workers corralled aboard Unity and immediately set them to work mining, planting, and hauling water. Any robots that fell into Spartan hands were reconfigured immediately for war. Rather than build, Spartans expected to take.

Sources:
Picture is "Desert City" by ARTek92 on DeviantArt.

The allegorical radio chatter of the Spartans is inspired by the "battle language" of Dune and the communication style of the Tamarians in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Darmok.

Nathan Holn is from David Brin's The Postman (1985), later made into a movie by Kevin Costner.

Vesper Abaddon said:

For these, the disposition of Unity’s inheritance is but an interesting piece of chancery. Men who are utterly indifferent to the legacy of the recently-deceased, except that some specific portion of it should come into their own hands. - Musings of a Mad King

Even once Unity's survivors had got away, the danger remained very high. Rare was the pod that touched down with the same number of survivors that had gone aboard.

A Landing Pod, also called a Unity Pod, was a short-range, single-use shuttle with which to make the controlled descent from high orbit to Chiron's surface. Hermetically sealed and abundantly heat-shielded, there was a pod for every task and a task for every pod.

Those built by Fairchild Grumman were passenger carries, meant to ferry up to three thousand passengers in dubious comfort and acceptable margins of safety. At nearly ten stories tall and most of a city block wide, they were practical settlements in their own right. Designers meant that they be incorporated wholesale into the first settlements. Standard contents included:

• Elevated command center with 360-degree views and holographic "sand" tables
• Operatings theaters stocked for impact trauma and burn victims
• Seed banks, with accomodation for reserve power to ensure constant refrigeration
• Agricultural grow-racks suitable for both vertical and horizontal configuration
• Diagnostic laboratories ready to perform body imaging, brain scans, and microanalysis
• Large-capacity galleys with serving kitchens
• Self-sanitizing dormitories with racks stacked five high and eighteen deep
• Machine shops and their garages, with attendant motor pools
• Full-service armories ready to reload spent ammunition and recondition surplus weapons
• Threaders to rewind, erase, and reuse old data tape
• Broad-band communication suites with radio-frequency tags for the pod's fleet of parasite vehicles--
• Cranes and derricks for loading and construction
• Breeder reactors and batteries for on-premesis and off-site power
• Water and chemical hook-ups, with pump houses, to feed irrigation networks or conduct dredging
• Brigs for unruly colonists
• Recycling facilities
• Abundant office space
• Water filtration
• Robotics workshops stocked with legions of General Electric Automators and Cray Construction Units

Pods built by South African Kentron were legendarily festooned with survival gear. The parastalal's engineers had doubted the tolerances provided by U.N. Mission Command and turned out over-engineered marvels that would go on to withstand atomics. Whatsmore, of their thirty-six decks, twenty-two were given over to rack after rack of crackers, flashlights, batteries, reflective blankets, water canisters, fuel cells, pneumatic drills, hydraulic jacks, and every other product or device congenial to one who might be stranded.

Dassault Avionics, Hindustan Aeronautics Unlimited, and Imre-Meinertzhagen were engaged to produce pods with primary duties other than general evacuation. Some would use telescoping manipulator arms to dismantle Unity herself, claiming entire reactor blocks from the superstructure for subsequent re-entry. The largest pods, configured for automated descent, were reserved for cargoes that would be unaffected by relatively high-G landings: construction materials, vehicles, and solid-state network nodes.

Awkward control arrangements required as few as two or as many as six pilots. Due to the amount of heavy wreckage around Unity's launch tubes, observers stood at observation ports to help inform attitude adjustments. More than twenty-five pods wrecked, lost with all hands, in spite of that. Pods not manually launched by departing colonists were eventually dumped by Unity’s fail-safes before it passed out of Chiron’s gravity well.

The pod designs of Soviet design bureau NP Lavochkin mounted a remote weapons station with a rotary cannon. Though there are no recorded cases of the weapon being used to harm other evacuees, their occupants used the Lavochkin's unique addition to blast away at errant debris, providing safer vectors for escape. Not a single Lavochkin craft was lost.

A pod's cargo bay, once relieved of other contents, became a motor pool for the large parks of "parasite" vehicles inevitably carried inside per U.N. loading conventions: fleets of tractors, tugs, high-loaders, cranes, and other small utility runners, including self-powered pumper carts for firefighting, half-squadrons of Unity crawlers (tracked low-loaders), and complement of earth-moving machinery--dumpers, graders, and power shovels. Dedicated pods with bigger retro-thrusters brought down the true terraformers, huge in their own right, as well as the even larger harvesting rigs.

Complicated landings convinced some passengers that it was safer to stay aboard indefinitely. Sub-divisions in larger pods made post-launch accountability all but impossible. For weeks after Planetfall, some colonists avoided participation in the colonization effort by pretending work they made up for themselves in the familiar grey corridors.


Source:
Vesper Abaddon was a character in the NBC television series Kings (2009).

First picture credit to MacRebisz on DeviantArt. Picture title is "Ambition 1 Lander."

Bottom picture is "Battleship Corridor UE4" by Finlay Pearston on ArtStation.

Vice Dean Spiros Theophanos said:

Information is power. I cannot learn except in dialogue. The secreting of knowledge is an act of tyranny, camouflaged as "proprietary research" by Morgan's overseers and "prudence" by Conclave synods. On a world about which we know so little, it is also tantamount to murder as surely as if one has pulled the trigger of a gun. - Opening Remarks to the 5th Congress of the Academy of Planetary Sciences

Densely-packed schedules. Rigid hierarchy. Regular intervals of bloody drone violence. These were essential features of the University experience as much as of the Hive.

Commissioner Pravin Lal said:

The Proctors bequeathed to Planet a society that nourished the mind while leaving the soul to starve. - A Social History of Planet

University bases divided themselves neatly into academic faculties led by deans who together formed a senate, the resolutions of which were subject to the veto of the faction chancellor, the Academician Prokhor Zakharov himself, to whom the senate delegated authority on matters of faction governance they did not otherwise address. In each base, student and service workers' unions was entitled to observe senate proceedings but not to vote. Membership in the faculty was limited to those with doctoral degrees.

There were three types of bases. Residential colleges, where the bulk of the University population dwelt, were closest in organization and purpose to traditional settlements. Institutes--really isolated research stations--were organized like Soviet design bureaus, harvesting the best graduates to supply the breakthroughs in materials science that became the faction's hallmark. Symposia were academic junk heaps where those assessed as lacking the talent or temperament for "better placement" found new purpose in development of syllabus content and the practice of library science.

Social and political incentives within the University swung sharply toward the pursuit of higher education and careers in the STEM fields. Engineers sat at the top of the pecking order, followed by administrators, then social scientists, students, and, lastly, the small, undifferentiated mass of laborers. By custom and regulation, the latter were intellectual inferiors, barred from the levers of power and, unless academically inclined, restricted in their choices of residence, occupation, and recreation.

The superabundance of robots to perform difficulty or uncongenial tasks combined with the precariousness of life in a hyper-competitive environment enhanced prejudice toward anyone with less than a terminal degree, leading to periodic expulsions of "excess human capital" into the planetary wilderness. Justifications ranged from the pecuniary to the Darwinian. The situation was especially grotesque because so many of the faction's citizens, including leading minds, were physically disabled by radiation sickness or wounds suffered during the Unity Crisis.

A special committee, with Zakharov as chair, awarded tenure, which exempted its beneficiaries from the public-facing stacked rankings that tracked one's accumulated credit hours, publications, and teaching output. When in M.Y. 24 the University began accepting endowments from other factions, these, too, were added to the calculus.

Tenured faculty received a fixed annual energy stipend to fund self-guided research. They appeared before a tenure committee every three years to defend the value and pace of their output. The committee handed down recommendations that faction leadership usually applied without amendment, adding to some stipends and curbing or withdrawing others. The defense was notoriously demanding. Approvals skewed markedly in favor of the physical and computer sciences. About half those appearing before the committee at each session were relieved of their stipends.

The University population in M.Y. 72 included 4,720 tenured positions out of more than 20,632 total members of the academy and another 25,006 students below the doctoral level. Among those with tenure, just 82 were social scientists. The average time from award of a Ph.D. to that of tenure from M.Y. 10 through M.Y. 70 was nine years, with substantially more work expected by comparison with degrees programs on Earth.

Students reacted to the social and emotional burdens of Zakharov's educational dystopia by engaging in bouts of spasmodic violence against faction authorities, a tendency that faction leadership inadvertently indulged by maintaining separate systems of justice according to academic attainment. University Security lived in terror of rabble-rousing students, which University policy said could not be resisted except with tear gas and by grappling. Drunkeness, licentiousness, sutures, and datalinks violations were all features of a complete student experience.

To soothe the moods of his followers, Zakharov and his favorites subscribed to the philosophies of civic design extolled by Commandant Sardul Singh, Unity's Mission Area Director for Corrections. As a foremost apostle of the Recuperative Movement, Singh taught that behavior was a matter of nurture more than nature, which in the twenty-first century was often judged "correctable" with surgical and pharmacological intervention. Following Singh's precepts, which the Commandant himself applied at his own bases, University architecture was open and soaring. Lush green spaces punctuated exteriors and interiors alike--no small feat during the early periods of settlement when life support imperatives pushed base designers to "go small." Professors lectured to open-air amphitheaters. Business was conducted increasingly at garden parties, which suited Zakharov's preference that senates be seen and not heard.

Career came before virtually all other considerations in University life. A researcher's wealth, romantic matching prospects, and place of residence closely correlated with their field of study. Auxiliary staff were even less secure. They and their families were traded like favors between bases.

Sources:
Found the image here, on rethink.earth. Artist unknown.

Warden Jeremy Tanner J.T. Marsh said:

Architects tell us that form ought follow function, but the man in the bush knows that function can only ever follow form. Lack of spirit and indulgence have combined to rob us of our form. Motion and hardship—the stuff of progress—have become too difficult and are despised. “There’s a machine for that,” says the man. But what is a man if not a body whose purpose and value are clear only in the moment of adversity? Here is the essential issue: we can simply invent out way out of being human. - Peregrinations of Planet

Service Record:
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to an unwed mother. Soon placed in care of maternal uncle, the Viscount de Mohrenschildts, a sisal planter in the Central Highlands of British East Africa. No relationship with father, a lieutenant in the Royal Signals killed on deployment in Cyprus.

Graduated RMA Sandhurst. Posted to 23 Special Air Service Regiment. Awarded Victoria Cross, 2044, for rescue of two squad mates when FV430 was fire-bombed in Derry during Second Troubles. Following recuperation, sent to Mombasa. Participated in Action at Meru, liberating 20 British Government personnel and 37 other hostages from insurgent prison camp. Escape involved a supremely arduous overland trek of 120km.

Wife and daughter killed in U.K. motorway accident, 2009. Resigned Army commission and relocated to South Africa. First operated safari company catering to the ultra-wealthy. Game warden and lands supervisor at Kruger National Park through 2054, including during catastrophic fire seasons of 2051-53. Served intermittently with South African Defense Force in 2/44 Parachute Battalion, largely in Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa, and periodically in townships. Deployed periodically to South West Africa for "police actions" and anti-terrorism missions against South West African People's Organization and allied People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola rebels.

Consulted for various private military and humanitarian organizations on subjects including intelligence-gathering, logistics, wilderness fieldcraft, and austere medicine. Retained as practitioner-in-residence by Avalanche Corporation. Confirmed engagements with Gezah Valley Authority [Carmel], Verne Stellar Navigation Co., and Yugoslav State Security Service (UDBA) coeval with the Slovenian Crisis. Suspected by MI5 of brokering arms to Biafran rebels during Saharan Burst Wars.

In 2052, joined Seven Summits Expeditions, leading three climbs on Mt. Aconcagua. Pioneer in the management and sport hunting of resurrected megafauna, including predators from Mesozoic and Pleistocene periods. Briefly advised International Genetic Technologies, Inc. (InGEN) of Palo Alto, CA on theme park venture in Costa Rica. Receive severance of indeterminate amount after workplace injury.

Invited to submit credentials to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri on the recommendation of Colonel Derek Hacker, British Special Intelligence Service. Responsibilities included reconnaissance, external security, and natural resource management. Received extensive training in space-borne damage control and zero-gravity and confined space rescue preparatory to becoming training supervisor with U.N. Olympus Mons mission intake facility.

Note: Based on Chiron Probe telemetry, subject arranged for hundreds of surplus M72 Light Anti-tank Weapons (LAW) to be taken into Unity armory ahead of mission launch.

Psych Profile: Hunter
Olympic-level athlete. Accomplished tracker and expert marksman.

High-range emotional stability, interpersonal dominance, introversion, social boldness, and self-reliance. Low-range rule-consciousness, sensitivity, and abstractedness. Regards lack of physical conditioning or personal independence as evidence of selfishness inconsistent with the social contract. Nevertheless, exhibits compulsion to assume responsibility for those less able. Strong preference for democratic traditions over hierarchical command structures.

Unprecedented .98 score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test. Emotional "projector." Readily inspires others to follow his personal example. Heightened interest in, and tolerance for, risky behaviors.

Consistent critic of labor-saving and augmented-reality technologies as well as synthetic narcotics due to their “emasculating” effects. Fears that mankind will use his technical aptitude to create a world in which his body and mind will be steadily eroded.

Miscellaneous
Forward Landing Teams departed Unity three weeks ahead of scheduled landing. Their mission: to secure the ideal location for a colony and make ready basic infrastructure. Pioneers sank automated mines, clear-cut forest to make way for planting, and set the first moisture traps on Chiron. To perform their mission,they were equipped with rugged, all-terrain vehicles capable of operating independently over extreme range and in all weather conditions as well as power-armor shells.

Whereas the Spartans perceive the human story as one of tribe set against tribe, the Hunters treat the natural world as their great adversary. Survival and success alike depend on achieving mastery over one’s environment, which first requires mastery of one's own body. On Earth, man was the apex predator, but on Chiron, he is a prey item. Accordingly, Hunters are nomads, living in tents pitched against their Scout Rovers or a Mobile Command Vehicle. This bubble gum-and-bailing wire existence naturally lends itself to pure democracy: the Hunter is a doughty sort, trusting in few, living hard, and offering his or her opinions readily. That said, they are never above a trick or two if the moment is ripe.

Marsh’s was the only faction to form independently of the Unity crisis: his Forward Landing Team departed the ship weeks ahead of its fateful collision. This gives the faction exceptionally high homogeneity, as all members are essentially practitioners of a narrow set of common professions, usually miners, pioneers, and roughnecks. They became the Hunters of Chiron.

Author's Notes
This faction is inspired by the call to adventure and exploration of traditional masculinity. They are a meditation on the question of what makes a “real” man, and one answer to the question, “By whom was the West really won?” Is there anything inherently desirable about the idea that the strong owe something to the weak? Ought we draw distinctions between man and woman? The faction also explores anxieties about the impact of technology on man's ability to do and think for himself. As we provide ourselves with every convenience, do we lose some animal aspect of ourselves that is actually integral to being human?

The character of J.T. Marsh combines aspects of Louis L'Amour's itinerant, fortune-seeking cowboy (whose rough-and-ready values, while no longer suitable for "civilized" society, are the only means by which to tame a lawless and pitiless frontier) and Wilbur Smith's great white hunter, who measures greatness only according to the yardstick of physical courage and cannot abide the "domestication" of settled life in village or town.

Hunters in Game Terms
Marsh felt that over-dependence on robotic servitors had ruined the physical fitness and mental toughness of human civilization. Like the Spartans, whose conflict-oriented policy he disdained, Marsh felt there was an urgent need to reinvigorate society in the most literal sense.

Without adversity to test, inspire, and renew the man, he could not become great. The answer was to pit oneself against the natural world. This philosophy, which dictated that humanity could find its salvation only in the Great Outdoors, dictated a strong conservationism.

The Hunters are nomads, capable of building outposts but not bases. Instead, they operate mobile headquarters and cut deals with other factions to obtain the resources necessary for growth and production. The Hunters' affinity is Harmony, their preferred politics is Anarchic, and they are opposed to re-contact with Earth. They begin the game with the Doctrine: Mobility tech and access to the Rover chassis. Their Research focus is Explore. The Hunters have just two population at game start, one Talent and one Technician, but they begin with 2 'Formers and a Scout River (the Main Force Patrol).

The Hunters enjoys bonuses to Cohesion (+1, landed ahead of the ship's main company), +1 Planet (leave no trace), +1 Support (survival experts), -2 Growth (nomadic lifestyle inimical to large families), -2 Industry (mobile workshops can't achieve economies of scale), and -2 Police (living wild and free). They gain an automatic reroll to one combat die (early experience with a dangerous new environment) as well as +1 mineral/season (roughnecks and rockbreakers). They also begin with the comm frequencies for every faction (we saw you come down). They may not use Cyborgs, Robots, of Specials (aversion to labor-saving technology and body modification). They begin with 1 War Store, reflecting Marsh's careful preparations for managing dangerous wildlife.

The Hunter mission calls for exercising and enforcing their usurfuct rights--free access to land, water, and the other natural boundies of Planet. They also look to test their mettle by completing the first Planetary Survey.

Sources:
"J.T. Marsh" is the main character in the 1990s animated series Exo-Squad.

The character of Robert Muldoon in Jurassic Park, played by British actor Bob Peck, is our J.T. Marsh.

George Sergius de Mohrenschildt was an interesting figure involved in the Kennedy assassination. I simply like the surname.

Avalanche Corporation is a tip of the hat to AVALANCHE, the rebel front in Final Fantasy VII.

7 Summits Expeditions was created by the Walt Disney Company as a reference on a commemorative windowpane along Main Street in Orlando's Magic Kingdom in honor of deceased Chief Operations Officer Frank Wells.

Derek Hacker is a portmanteau of some of my favorite characters on Yes, Prime Minister.

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different? - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

War was a commonplace of the twenty-first century. Nations dueled with their neighbors over resources, with their ideological rivals over influence, and, more and more, with themselves over the future of political and social affairs. When it set out to select colonists and crew for the great expedition, United Nations Mission Command agreed on the principle that there should be fewer veterans than mere statistics would yield from a representative sample of the global population. Mercenaries were hardly any better. This thinking was received favorably by the Security Council, which worried that strong feelings of national allegiance might fuel mutiny. More than that, the aggressive mindset inculcated as part of military training everywhere seemed an unnecessary and unstable element to introduce to living environments that would put colonists in extremely close quarters under predictably high stress.

Records of life in the lunar training camps didn't support their continuing pessimism, but as in so many other settings, unjustified bias proved easy to enforce. Secondments from member states' armed forces already protected and trained mission staff. A policy was enacted to shunt veterans into roles supporting, rather than participating in, the Unity Mission whenever possible. Psych screening for current and former service members ran twice the standard length. By preferring a younger age cohort, the U.N. also reduced the number of years of service eligibility behind each applicant.

The increased incidence of inter-state war had led to explosive growth in national military spending, and many countries had relaxed their draft schemes to recognize civil contribution as a form of national service running parallel to shorter stints in their armed forces. When recruitment of veterans could not be avoided, the choice first went to those who had not been to war, then to those long out of uniform. Unity's captain and chief engineer fit the former description; its executive officer, the latter.

Significant exceptions did apply. U.N. Security Forces members had, on average, three years of service behind them, often in combat or domestic policing roles, a legacy that Morgan Emergency Services tried to suppress by retraining them according to a curriculum that stressed delayed confrontation. In an act of massive cognitive dissonance, anyone who fought in the vicious battles for the Space Elevators--when the U.N. abandoned any pretense of reliance on less-lethal methods--was immediately deemed unfit for mission accession. Certain other skill sets, such as in the domain of deep-sea exploration, could be obtained only through service in a military or paramilitary organization, national or corporate. When they able to drive bargains favorable to themselves, donor nations unenthusiastic about the project but seeking to bank favors with the U.N. jumped to foist their hardship cases on the mission. Thus the appointment of disgraced Contre-amiral Raoul André-St. Germaine.

There was a disparity of access to military expertise among the survivors. The U.N. Marine Corps mostly rallied under its original commander, Canadian General Marcel Salan, and constituted an island unto itself. Any Marine survivors not serving Salan threw in either with Commissioner Pravin Lal, who claimed to have inherited the mantle of mission command from Garland via d'Almeida, or Commander Kleisel Mercator, who likewise established something resembling a military command from loyalist remnants. The New State, too, was practically a self-contained navy pledging personal allegiance to its French leader. Both the Human Tribe and Spartan Confederation were armed camps, and their members veterans almost to a one, though they had done their fighting by and large as auxiliaries and lacked even the whiff of a service-driven identity.

The wealth-driven factions had planned ahead. Morgan, Cobb, and van de Graaf had brought paid men. The former's, provided by one of his own companies, Morgan Safe-Haven, were well-regarded until Planetfall, then turned out to have little stomach for earning pay they couldn't spend. Struan's Sabre Company killers discovered similar misgivings. Van de Graaf's American Reclamation Corporation volunteers liked their arrangement better (they received land rather than pay), but the telling part of the calculation was probably that, unlike the Morganite or Struan's mercenaries, they hadn't expected to return to Earth soon after arrival.


Sources:
I don't know the provenance of the first picture. I found it on Tumblr. It appears to be related to the video game Star Citizen.

Second picture is from the Fragments of a Hologram Dystopia page. Couldn't find the artist's name.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

The answer to the problem of practical invisibility was known to the magician and the charlatan long before it was clear to the scientist. - Field Notes

The higher gravity and thicker atmosphere of Chiron provided ideal conditions for smoke warfare. Smoke weapons especially attracted the factions forced to build their own arsenals practically from scratch.

Heavy smokes (Conquer) were formulated to linger for extended periods of time at altitudes of between .2 and 1.8m, and they appeared for every mission. The technology depended on prior understanding of Centauri Chemistry and Centauri Meteorology (Explore).

All factions used incendiaries against mindworms. They also made a fine close-in defense for armored vehicles beset by enemy infantry, as the Kellerites learned to their detriment during the fighting in the Slowwind Delta.

Pilgrims and Shapers shot defoliants in amongst the Gaian defenses during the Marshland Battles. Gaian mortars returned sonic shells that scythed down their attackers like wheat. Dreamer slaving parties fired wax slugs, still liable to be deadly at close range, along with exploding rounds that cast rubber pellets the size of large gumballs.

Smokes could also be employed on the defensive. Hive militia used dense formulations to shield tactical movement on the saltpans. The Spartan Battle Manual recommended carbon-rich obscurant smokes to defeat lasers.

Sources:
First image is "grenadier quickly" by Asahisuperdry on DeviantArt.

Second image is a still from the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, directed by Byron Haskin.

Third image is from an unknown artist. I found it on Wallpaper Flare.

Dr. John Bridges said:

A foole and his money is soone parted. - Defence of the Government of the Church of England

Well-informed opinions differed on the optimum solution to the problem of starvation, a danger facing all early colonies.

Lacking useful insights about the land, most societies founded their first colonies--inevitably, their first capitals--precisely where they had come down from space. This, they soon learned, was often a mistake that, once made, was not easily corrected due to the high labor costs of relocation.

Charitable arrangements were not unheard of. Skye's folk voted two containers of nutrient cracker to hungry Believers a week after founding Gaia's Landing, and it was only a loosely-guarded secret that visitors to the Tribe could expect hot meals provided they stayed overnight. Exploration was the commonest way of getting more of everything, and some factions, such as the Watchers of Chiron, equipped powerful columns to go abroad in search of salvage.

Still, more extreme measures were sometimes accepted when managing limited food supplies. Bare weeks after making Planetfall, University cryotechs defied both manufacturers' instructions and generally-accepted standards of practice in attempting to cryogenically reinter medical hardcases--those who, in the words of their leader, "consume much and give nothing"-- with fatal results. Many factions, including the New Two Thousand, the Human Hive, and even the Peacekeeping Forces applied physical banishment as a judicial punishment for its salutary economic benefits. The Morganites cooked up a war.

Through repeat encounters with Kellerites, Morgan foraging parties were relieved of most of the carefully-hoarded rations that paid confederates had placed aboard Unity on their behalf. They were down to a two-month supply window when the CEO authorized his mercenaries to demonstrate in the vicinity of University Base.


Long-range patrols by "Mr. Gutsy" reconnaissance tripods confirmed the presence of human interlopers not far the limits of University sensorfields. Academician Zakharov panicked. His small medical staff was overwhelmed. In those first days, University Security was but a sad joke. Base Operations didn't even trust them to carry agitating sprays. (Several wrong-footed encounters with rowdy students drunk on fungal wine had led to thrashings for the uniformed protectors.) Knowing little more than that he was facing armed men who seemed to know which way to point rifles, Zakharov opted for simple appeasement.

At first, Zakharov hoped to be able to relieve himself only of spoiled rations--cartons irradiated past the point of safe consumption. The Morganite commander drew a harder bargain. At the encouragement of his lieutenant, he produced a dosimeter and was soon in possession of three-fifths of the unspoiled food left to the University.

Forty years later, Morgan's diary from the period claimed he hadn't the stomach for war. His raiders were no more or less adequate than their luckless victims. He told them to accept whatever terms might be proffered, avoiding battle at all costs. "What had we to fight an armored war machine?" asked the CEO of his readers. "Nothing!" The light machine gun housed inside the floating globe of a Gusty should have done for them all.

Back to home, the mercenaries were given two extra meals apiece, a week's worth of calories. Amazingly, Morgan held back the remainder. Only the Board of Directors was apprised of the risk that had been run, and to them he promised the new food would be kept as a last resort, but simultaneous discovery of a well-stocked Supply Pod soon rendered the whole adventure moot.

Sources:
The picture is from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Mr. Gutsy is a combat robot in the Fallout video game franchise, made by General Atomics.

Thucydides said:

...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand. - History of the Peloponnesian War, Datalinks

The exact fate of their captain preoccupied the expedition's survivors long after the ashes of vengeance were cold upon their grate.

Dr. Aleigha Cohen said:

The False Garland was the father we all wanted. He stopped what he was doing when you approached. If the dream involved his death, it was unintended: you were the assassin's real target, and he intervened without hesitation. Other people failed Garland, and he forgave them. On waking, the tragedy of his loss was for a moment unbearable because you felt an overwhelming sense of opportunity lost. The real Garland was actually none of these things. They held him apart during training to prevent charges of politicization, but it was just as well: he was distracted by the yawning gap between the magnitude of his task and the inadequacy of the resources provided. Hours of deep conversation with the U.N. Intelligence Cell robbed him of the ability to engage in the retail politics that would be essential in a crisis. On the bridge, he found it difficult to feign respect for certain subordinates--people he held in moral contempt, but who had ready-made constituencies among the crew and far more tangible agendas. Since he was accustomed to command in a context where all present shared the same purpose, Garland's first thought was almost never for diplomacy. The father-child relationship is between superior and subordinate. But Prokhor Zakharov and Nwabudike Morgan saw themselves as Garland's betters. - O Father, my Captain: A Biography of Jonathan Garland

Sources:
First image is a still from Ender's Game (2013).

Second image is Stephen Lang in Avatar (2009).

Third image is Meta Lab of ZeiferZ, found on Pinterest.

Fourth image is David Corwin, a character from the series Babylon 5.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

But of course we must have secrets! No, I cannot tell you why. - Remarks to the Board of Directors

Persistent rumor had it that a complete cell of U.N. DEEPEYES special forces was placed aboard Unity on the initiative of the Secretary-General Halder Georges Simmelmann, successor to the murdered Apsara Mongkut. Unlike Mongkut, who was content to rely on French and Soviet muscle when the need arose, Simmelmann wanted a force loyal to his office, if not the ideals enumerated for which it stood.

An obvious problem arose in that the nature of a Praetorian Guard, especially one trained and equipped along the lines of DEEPEYES, which made no secret of its readiness to take on offensive missions as well as defensive, was, by certain reckoning, at odds with the stated goal of international peace and security. The United States was not alone in questioning why the Secretary-General should feel that his ordinary constabulary lacking. By their contributions of troops and materiel, member states conferred legitimacy on United Nations operations. Given independent forces, the U.N. might become unmoored.

And it did. Since no government would tolerate direct recruitment of its citizens, Simmelmann scoured U.N. refugee camps and the IOEZ for stateless persons. Many were reputed to be the cast-offs of private security programs, standards for which were already notoriously uneven. They trained in fits and starts with Soviet Spetznaz, special heliborne forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, and the French Foreign Legion. As expected, DEEPEYES went on to amass a checkerboard record in the 2060s, adding targeted killing to the menu of U.N. services and botching the arrest of more than one warlord.

Rather than align themselves with either of Jonathan Garland's generally-recognized heirs apparent--Marcel Salan, his enforcer; or Pravin Lal, his chief imitator--DEEPEYES troopers presented themselves as servants of Chiron Probe grandee Joralamon Hardacre. On paper, the logic was sound. Assuming one accepted that General d'Almedia had been acting within the limits of his delegated authority when dissolving the Mission Charter, Hardacre, not any member of the Unity crew, was the senior surviving U.N. official on Planet. That might have been the end of it, had Hardacre not protested to the Planetary Council that he had never had any dealings whatsoever with an organization called DEEPEYES, nor any persons claiming to be affiliated therewith.

Sources:
First, and the DEEPEYES military unit, are from Final Fantasy: Spirits Within.

Warden J.T. Marsh said:

You cannot be king from a throne; only from the saddle. - Peregrinations of Planet

Hunters of Chiron reckoned themselves to enjoy a fine living, and in a certain manner of speaking this was indeed true.

The industrial pioneers, dry land ecologists, and associated trades represented on the Forward Contact Teams (FCTs) were well-provisioned for a months-long mission of exploration and exploitation far "beyond the wire" of the main colony. At his disposal, the Warden had forest harvesters, combine seeders, tanker sprayers, rock drillers, armored low-loaders, and a host of other machinery that would later make his people targets of renown.

Launched weeks ahead of the main body as Unity first crossed into the Alpha Centauri star system, future Hunters grew wise to the themes and moods of Chiron whilst their comrades lay yet entombed in glass cylinders. By the time they got the hard news that all was lost in the sky above, they had less to fear in the dark. The mines, wells, and outposts dug for a landing that would never come became their coin in trade. Brother Camroe Horus of the Conclave siphoned the Brethren their first fresh water from an FCT pump jack. Though in later years she would imply the Stepdaughters had found it unassisted, Hunters led Deirdre Skye, her head still bandaged and ringing, to the Place of the White Pines where she first claimed to hear the Song of Planet.

Followers of the Warden's personal credo lived in fully or seasonally-nomadic caravans taking work where they found it. Cumbersome devices that seldom lasted out the day held little appeal by comparison with the animated (and often well-lubricated) delivery of a skilled raconteur who acted all parts and sang for his mates' entertainment. At fire camps across the southwestern slopes of the Shamash Divide, loggers boiled tea in billy tins over flameless heaters and remembered the mad dash of Rawcanth Hines to the sea, Spartan rockets falling all around. They were miners, too, and bush pilots, rescuers, and scalar engineers. Some were courageous firefighters, not too stingy with their skins to help dig the brakes that saved the Hive at Deepscour, Yang's scrub-garlanded toehold beyond the edge of the Uranium Flats, the closest he would ever get to green grass.


Time turned them from their brothers' keepers to simple laborers, leading Institute Hunter-Killers in search of enemy Probe Teams, guiding the first caravans down what would become Peacekeeper magrails, pursuing the bounties paid out on the Morganite exchanges, or perhaps running high-value cargoes through fungal blooms for the likes of Colonel Santiago herself.

In all their forms, Hunters were risk-takers. Their preferred sport, full-contact racing, resulted in dramatic sacrifices of men and machines that sent other factions into apoplexy. Who would dare sacrifice so much to the gods of vanity? They defied the certainty of war with more territorial neighbors, refusing to speak terms with Governor Oscar van de Graaf despite the savage mauling administered by him at Terra Nova. For the Spartans, they were the last, best defense against Gaian treachery, summoned to do battle with the mindworm menace when even Myrmydons would no longer stand firm.


Sources:
The first two images are from Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

Popov is by Kenney Solis.

Last picture is by an unknown author. I found it on the Pinterest page of "patrick loveland" but could not trade it all the way to an original artist.

Dr. Aleigha Cohen said:

Clouds obscure the son. - Chaos Theories

Struan's traditionalist Colonel Artagan John "Joiner" Banes, formerly a National Security Council back-bencher, seethed over Roshann Cobb's leadership shortcomings. Unlike the cowed set of aides and minders that had been with him since the beginning aboard Unity and knew full well the depravities he so easily commissioned against enemies real and imagined, Banes spent another decade asleep in the belly of a submerged Hab Pod. Hunters fished him out along with four hundred others and traded the full lot to Oscar van de Graaf as the ransom for outriders taken in the Sensorfield Fight. Van de Graaf, who regarded most uniformed service professionals as intellectual inferiors, made a gift of Banes and his various retainers to Roshann Cobb at the Colonel's own suggestion.

Later, Banes recalled their "rising horror at the awful stench that coiled like some visible serpent" a full two kilometers from the rust-streaked walls of White Rabbit's Refuge. Banes owed nothing to Ian Dunross's heir and refused to be impressed by the MI5 connection. Based on personal knowledge of the Old Man, Banes was prepared to believe that Cobb would receive the quick axe whenever the auditors arrived, and warned his peers that the skinflint would not thank them for their obsequious loyalty to a sociopathic failure.


No fool, Banes kept his opinions to himself even while forming the makings of a splinter element. With so many new charter colonists in tow, Banes was immediately a power to be reckoned with. Cobb had little choice but to accede to the Colonel's insistence that his fighters take on the vital long-range objective raids that Cobb's dwindling cohort of Sabre Corporation mercenaries could no longer handle.

General Artagan John Joiner Banes said:

Unity wasn't a lifeboat, it was the Titanic. You don't put your only surviving son aboard a lifeboat and then decline to climb in beside him. - Ken Burns's Planet: A History

Banes's men were Mara'Toan Martians, descendants of hydraulic bureaucrats who have gone down in the history of two solar systems as members of a "post-modern cargo cult." On Earth and Mars, the Mara'Toans, who originated in the IOEZ, built a distinctive identity around the feast-and-famine cycle of supply barge deliveries, becoming experts in the field of recycling and metabolic self-regulation. They were quick studies in their first few years on Chiron, and their behavior inspired doctrinal advances in water discipline later adopted by the majority of mission survivors. Mara'Toans in Bane's service wore distinctive red ranging gear to distinguish themselves from the yellow-orange color favored by the Saber Corporation.


At the height of the faction struggle within Dreamer society, the Saber Corporation struggled to protect its principal. They were short of everything, including warm bodies. Although 150 had embarked with Cobb, just 42 of the original contingent remained in service. To rebuild their strength, the unit had taken in volunteers from among the healthy prisoners, such as this one-time Spartan fugitive from the Fall of Xerxion.

Although he appears still to receive regular hemoglobin injections to counteract oxygen narcosis, the rest of his kit is reflective of the chronic supply problems and serious indiscipline that otherwise plagued his new employers. The helmet, a steel pot purchased by Struan's from French Indochina stocks, is painted in reflective coating suitable for laser combat, whereas most of his adversaries will use hand weapons. A pair of bomb switches clipped to the rubber hatband await counterpart explosives. Also carried on the helmet are a rangeviewer (left side) and a collapsible baton.

The dressing pouch worn over this soldier's heart is mildewed to the point that the contents could endanger a patient. His marksman's rifle is the unholy union of Belgian stock and British barrel, probably dangerous to discharge. Most alarming of all, an anti-stab vest (with the baton, indicative of this man's primary concerns) is worn in place of a flak vest.

Sources:
Late actor Powers Boothe is our Artagan John "Joiner" Banes.

Second picture is from Star Wars. I think it's a still from The Mandalorian.

Objective raids are a concept in Battletech.

Water discipline is a concept from Frank Herbert's Dune.

The final image is "Scarif Rebel" by Caleb James.

Colonel Artagan Joiner Banes said:

Stand in too much darkness, and you won't be able to see until you leave it. Stand in too much light, and you may never be able to see ever again. - Sunshade

More than one historian of Planet has speculated that John "Joiner" Banes would have been happier had he seconded himself to a better master. The popular money is on Raoul André St. Germaine, outwardly a fellow conservative, though such interpretations do grave injustice to the motivations of both men.

They were each of them pruners of other men in their own way, but the contre-amirale's notoriously conservative politics sprang from a different conceit than those of his American counterpart.

St. Germaine's take on future society reflected his pronounced class prejudice. Along with Sheng-ji Yang, he held it axiomatic that the "lower classes," distinguished by their excessive passions, could not rule themselves. Moral instruction was the natural prescription for this ailment. Yet if the Hive taught these lessons through brutal repression, the New State coddled its malcontents in the tradition of Bradbury, removing that which was offensive from their gaze through strict censorship, the cult of command, and well-limned social conventions. Certainly the submariner's was also a fairly light touch, so that while certain opinions and behaviors were "unwelcome" in public settings, private freedom of conscience was scrupulously respected. In yet another distinctive departure from Yang's example, the contre-amirale himself behaved erratically, such as by placing himself in the thick of combat or consciously cultivating favorites whom he excused for misdeeds ranging from corruption to outright insubordination. Aquanaut conventions provided clear avenues to move between castes, and mobility was within reach of the ambitious, but the stratocratic bias was undeniable and the possibility of individual pardons for most misdeeds fueled grave abuses of the public trust, especially by the captains answerable to no one but St. Germaine himself. As one might expect, this inconsistency was ruinous for faction cohesion. Long submarine patrols already placed a significant portion of the warrior caste, including nearly all senior officers, outside effective supervision for years at a time. Animosities festered. In extremis, St. Germaine alternated the velvet glove with an iron fist, personally executing three senior captains between M.Y. 12 and 17 during private audiences following their returns to home port.

The contre-amirale's excessively personalistic approach to governance created another problem unknown to the Hive: it utterly discouraged the emergence of any obvious successors, for rather than hone himself to a sharper edge, St. Germaine merely made himself available to his followers so that no one else need grind the knife. St. Germaine prided himself as the paterfamilias, an emotional role in which he strove to do right by his dependents, but was never constrained by explicit obligation to them. The "household" of his faction was an open sandbox, and he amused himself by meddling in his followers' affairs, believing that his was always the superior judgement. Officers and other leading citizens resented but could not refuse the intrusion, while common rankers celebrated the knowledge that they could always appeal grievances to a higher authority.

It is not certain that St. Germaine was ever a "happy warrior," for though a success in his chosen profession and a favorite with his crews, there had never been any question whether he would make a career of military service. Combat was both the expectation and prerogative of his station.

Banes was much St. Germaine's opposite, in fact. He was an administrator, not a combat commander, and never as individually controversial. St. Germaine regarded command as the thing for which he had been bred, while for Banes, it was a sacred calling. St. Germaine knew himself for a leader, while Banes regarded himself as the foremost servant of his fellow citizens.

Until the Holnist revolt, Banes had been a peacetime soldier and was nearing the end of a respectable yet unremarkable career. The jazz of an intelligence speciality had faded from hearing within only a few years of receiving his commission. Banes's reputation was that of a competent administrator and a sought-after mission planner. Promotions came at a steady pace, but he was neither covering himself in battlefield glory nor driving revolutions in the way war was fought. At best, he followed the principles of his trade with enough fussy precision to limit loss of life. He was a talented writer, and this kept him close to the Pentagon. With fifteen years in, he was placed in charge of target selection for special operations forces attached to United States Southern Command. This duty gave Banes a front-row seat to one of the most impactful levers of American power, but he was largely immune to its charms, an outlook that may well explain why he had been picked to begin with. The Colonel was skeptical of what he considered the unseemly and even anti-democratic warnings of peers, particularly FBI men, who wanted to go "gloves off" against "the radio preachers." To friends, Banes despaired of hypersurvivalism, which he felt demeaned the essential goodness of public servants everywhere. Men like Holn--a despised wash-out from the profession in which Banes had made his bones--wanted something for nothing. Nevertheless, Banes pointed to his oath when asked why he believed such troublemakers were entitled to shout their grievances from any rooftop.

Like many of his generation, Banes later internalized a share of blame for the catastrophe of fully-metastasized Holnism. It was a guilty seven-year war for the American national intelligence community, and Banes fought his from behind a steel desk, sending others to die in a war he felt should never have been. Amongst certain colleagues of his, a new theory began to gain currency from the 2060s: that the leaders in their circles had allowed the global crack-up to happen inadvertently through their own misguided inaction. "We should have pushed the President harder to authorize extrajudicial killings," they said. "We should have done what Holn accused us of doing. We paid for it just the same as if we had."

Banes facilitated hundreds of operations against the Holnists, which had acquired large followings in the so-called "ABC" nations: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. It was a relatively low-tempo war in a lesser theater until affairs in Florida prompted a change in theater assignments and Florida was handed off from Northern Command. Banes was quick to perceive a truth that eluded many senior commanders: while Floridians were generally enthusiastic about succession, they were divided between "Home Rule" and membership in the Christian States of America (CSA). Some hoped for the Sunshine State to play a dominant role in this alliance with smaller states, while others feared a quick fleecing. Banes used his helicopter-borne commandos to seize or destroy key federal installations statewide, limiting the number of bargaining chips Florida could bring to negotiations with the CSA and stimulating internecine disputes over fair apportionment of blame within the constellation of uneasy partnerships propping up the secessionist movement. After grave deliberation, he also authorized missile strikes that destroyed relief supplies needed after natural disasters. Millions suffered for it, but the scarcity of every needful thing put the selfishness of the insurrectionists on full display.

When the U.S. Army shrank in the post-war years, Banes and his ilk, now an embarrassing reminder of the failure to "get it right," received their discharge papers. Pensions were smaller than expected in the lean post-war economy. Banes was just fifty years old, but his daughter, Taylor, a former combat medic, had been made a paraplegic by the war and required intensive home care. At the suggestion of a sympathetic colleague, Banes found his way to a corporate sinecure.

The ARC was already glutted with veterans still in uniform. Morgan Industries had become the hated enemy over their role in Middle America's war. For those who set their sights high, that left only Straun's. It was rare that the Noble House took on an American executive, but Struan's Portuguese clients had been dealt an urgent setback by Morgan-backed mercenaries in the Amazonian Andes, and Banes had a record of success against Morgan Iron Lock, the primary advisers to the Spanish garrison in Far Peru. A small contract was arranged with Steelhead-Barrett, a Struan's subsidiary operating from Caracas.

Banes's attention to detail saw him promoted to Struan's Macau Office with the intent to put his experience of airborne operations planning to use in the IOEZ, where Struan's hoped to elbow Morgan Industries aside, but a chance meeting with the Tai-pan over drinks at Santa Sancha (Macau Government House) saw the Colonel's fate redrawn. He ended up the old man's confidant, described in newspapers as "a freelance crisis concierge." In practical terms, Banes presided over the bribes, killings, sabotage, and interventions that served the interests of the Western-aligned governments for which Struan's labored. In Banes's view, these distasteful activities made the world safe for those who were now dependent on corporations for services they had once obtained from their governments.

After deposing Cobb in White Rabbit's Refuge, Banes attempted to do properly what the former Dreamer leader had found too difficult: design a program of interventions that could temper a person's most destructive impulses and provoke them into the insights expected of the wise. Pahlavi bred excellence; Yang tutored it; Banes excised it from baser pursuits, one nightmare at a time. Cobb had wasted his energies on experiments and squandered the faction's potential through clumsy mental safe-cracking. Banes usually subjected others to Dreaming for a supposedly more constructive purpose, forcing them to face down and overcome deep-seated fears and simulating stressful encounters until the sleeper achieved a minimally acceptable outcome. He also attempted to move on from mere piracy to something more organized, spending Saber Corporation and Mana'Toa blood less willingly. He refused to honor standing contracts to deploy Dreamer Probe Teams on behalf of paying clients and turned the operators toward new targets.

To explain Banes's approach to government, Commissioner Pravin Lal in his A Social History of Planet related an old joke about the Soviet Union. A train carrying all the great leaders of that country was stopped somewhere in Siberia for unknown reasons. Rising from his seat in the passenger car, Josef Stalin ordered the engineers to disassemble the locomotive and fix the problem on pain of death. When they failed in this task, he had them shot. Khruschev, despairing of such brutal methods, proposed instead that all should disembark. They would attempt to pull the train into station using cables. This, too, failed, and the premier returned to his place dejected. That was when Gorbachev leapt up and shouted his own solution: "Why not draw the curtains and pretend we're moving?" It was a solution tried gamely by the contre-amirale.

There were, of course, other options. When Yang found reality unsuited to his purposes, he used two strategies. Sometimes, he attempted to ignore it. The old saw that Hivemen would simply hold their breath until they learned to get by without oxygen was not really so far from the mark. In other cases the Chairman made snap decisions, erradicating or mechanizing those he did not care to educate, reform, or let be. Banes tried for surgeries of another kind. Pushing down the same track that Cobb had plowed, he used the óneiromachaíri in an attempt to produce better citizens, sometimes through inducement, sometimes compulsion. Identifying lost causes in the Dreamer power structure, he killed them. The faction, he said, would turn its considerable powers toward a new cause: suppressing the will-to-power that shepherded the rise of men like Holn, and, yes, would-be despots like Nwabudike Morgan, or "kicked dogs" like the the Imperial Military Focus.

Other leaders hardly knew what to make of the transformation. Though the Dreamers were now much closer to the ideal envisioned by some higher-ups in the Peacekeeping Forces or the Restoration of Earth, neither faction was prepared to trust in a "mere mercenary" like Banes, while Cobb's traditional victims refused to give up cherished hopes of vengeance. So Banes kept fighting.

Factor Roshann Cobb said:

What could be worse than for a man to have morals that are not his own? - Rebuilding Man

Sources:
Still is Powers Boothe from "24."

Motto of CTR said:

Victory through knowledge. - Datalinks

Sources:
First picture is of Weyland-Yutani Commandos, action figures posed by user DarthRick3rd on the NECA Reddit threat.

Rock Island Refuge was my first LEGO set as a child. It spawned a life-long love affair with the building toy.

The second picture is apparently a production still from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I found it on Pinterest.

The third picture is from the film Vesper.

Datalinks said:

Vengeance is a season. - Iron Law of the Mara'Toa, Traditional

Sources:
Top picture is "Warzone" on ArtStation by Akkarapon Veeravisan.

Second picture is a still from "Give them back the light, short movie Part II" on ArtStation by Victor Anceaume.

The flavor is here. - Digital Billboard on the Garland Road near Morgan A-Tron

Though survivors were never issued the dreaded meal pills teased in the science fiction periodicals of the 1960s, alimentary options on Chiron were nobody's idea of good eating.

Pathfinder experience had confirmed that Chiron's atmosphere and soils were, on the whole, hospitable to Terran crops. Both the Probe and Unity expeditions carried seed banks and stock pens. But food production was problematic in the extreme.

First, the biological feed stock of both expeditions was poor from both the qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Most of the animals brought by the Probe had perished from lack of care at the height of the Red Flu epidemic, insects included. Unity's animals were killed by fire or loss of life support 'ere they made Planetfall. Unity's seed was severely irradiated. According to dosimetry gathered by the Tomorrow Initiative, about 78% of all seed lines had to be written off immediately as unsuitable for consumption. Second, Planet did not have the native insect population necessary to supplement human farming techniques, limiting the hardiness and spread of crops planted in native soil. If a single faction compromised a seed line, as the Believers did when Corn Variant L19 Bravo failed twice due to cold during the short M.Y. 2-3 growing season, it was probably a permanent loss. Third, Planet mounted a vigorous natural immunological reaction to Terran lifeforms. Xenofungal growth increased by rates up to 400% per day on the margins of human settlements and had to be fought back by vigilant work parties to protect the viability of the soils.

Early attempts to safeguard Terran crops often triggered the Crichton effect familiar to anyone who had witnessed the handiwork of the European colonial powers in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Game Warden J.T. Marsh long regretted an attempt to introduce phosphate solubilizing bacteria into the water table at Matilda's Waltz. The Hunters hoped to stimulate nutrient retention in their plants even as fungal roots competed for the same spoils, but their hardier stalks of golden wheat were soon buried by six feet of mucilaginous spores. The fallout accumulated so rapidly that all of the workers on-premises were trapped before they realized the threat. When the air recyclers seized up, the thirty-seven residents suffocated.

Planet did not always win the struggle between native and non-native life forms. Safari ants played havoc on the ecosystems of the Monsoon Jungle and Wet Coast, rapidly annihilating the subrid colonies that thrived in the moisture-laden lowlands. Their reign was so brutally complete that Peacekeeper and Pilgrim ranchers organized to make joint drives three or four times each year to repopulate the crustaceoid spawning beds from their own excess broods once the hungry ants had gone through.


To avoid ecological retaliation, colonies often practiced small-scale hermetic, or greenhouse agriculture, a practice that was labor, space, and energy-intensive. The Lord's Conclave stood firm against Hive spoiling attacks to operate a prominent example of such a station on the northern ridge of Balian's Depression. What Yang learned about Planet's water table through his national sponsors, Miriam deduced through observation. Reasoning that Yang could not have come with his own water, she arranged for a Hunter drilling rig to take soundings until they found the aquifer.

Some factions never grew their own food. Aside from captured meals, Spartans ate irradiated M and R-rations until their faction's final battlefield defeat. Santiago's holdouts were thereafter known to trade with SMACERs their non-perishables for fresh food, but there is no record even of garden farms among those who survived to carry on the legacy of armed self-reliance. Spartans preferred to seize or steal, not to sow.


Those willing to forsake flavor could find their way to a new dispensation. The Hive literally ate their own, casting all organic refuse into great rendering vats from which their scientists extracted a "nutritionally optimal" paste distributed in silvered-foil squeeze packs remade from the weather-proof packaging of Unity survival rations.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Nowhere is the fruitless obsession with comfort better showcased than in the quest for more flavorful food. Why should food have flavor in this era when we already know it is safe to eat? Flavor has outlived its primary function. - Essays on Mind and Matter

Yang left behind hundreds of memos in which he refused to accept the broad unpopularity of his feeding methods. To hear his official position, Paste was necessary not just to overcome shortages, but as a physical rejection of biological determinism. To do only what was necessary and sufficient, but not pleasant, embodied the living that Yang propounded to every one of his hapless minions.

Nwabudike Morgan took great delight in other factions' obsession with efficiency. The Chairman mobilized armies of text-bots to ridicule the misery of life in other factions. Tragically, fugitives from other societies often ended up at the mercy of corporate recruiters who enrolled them into truck systems so unsparing that they received the same ration as Hivemen.

Some factions took turns at ranching the native wildlife or grafting hybrid crops. Led by Deirdre's old lab-mates, the Gaians spent decades bringing forth a melon known as the mercantelope, which wags claimed so resembled the head of Commander Kleisel. The canary yellow pulp oxidized almost as soon as the rind was cut and stank like refuse but was sweet to the taste and reasonably nutritious, with very high water and Vitamins C and D content.

Sources:
Top image is from the May 1960 edition of If magazine.

Second image is from Scientific American.

Third image is from the video game Star Citizen.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

A student asks: "Is it possible one can be too curious?" Let us remember that even Folgier has been canonized. - Records of the Symposia

Sources:
First image is "Mountain climbing," a 2015 work by Art Station user whinbek.

Second image is "Sci-fi armor" by Robert Navarrete Moreno on Art Station.

Third image is "Snow Flyer" by Scott Robertson on Art Station.

Fourth image is "Sci-fi Grenade" by Dmitriy Gvozdev on Art Station.

Dr. Johann Anhaldt said:

The difference between compass and computer is no more than a few billion switches. - Building a Lighthouse

Sources:
First picture, "Portable Cognition Unit," and key terminology (PCU, neuronal matter) are the work of Patrick Sutton, lead artist at C77 Entertainment, on ArtStation.

Second picture, "Military buggy" is by 3D artist Gregory Trusov on ArtStation.

The third picture, from "Oversize Military ATV explorations," belongs to Christian Bravery on ArtStation.

Miriam Godwinson said:

Here, shed the burden of who and what you once were. Be renewed and remade by God's Eden. - Letter to the Gaians

Errata:
Reflagged Nagao's title to Land Architect.

Sources:
Roriton Station picture is Jean-Pascal Mouton's "Remnants of Sci-Fi Locomotives in a Jungle" on ArtStation.

"Avrotank design" is by Maarten Hermans on ArtStation.

Third picture is Toby Burnside's "NCR Trooper (F4NV)" from the Fallout 5 franchise, found on ArtStation.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Comparison is the source of all misery. A drone counts himself a king to dine on thin gruel so long as he feels certain that his companions have only water. - The Book of Twenty-Six Princes

Nearing the bicentennial of human settlement on Chiron, Librarian Sawenna Omruds thought to collect entertainment clippings from each of the factions major. The results of her survey, published in a series of widely-read updates on the Peacekeeping Forces' Datalinks, caused hysterical laughter in White Rabbit's Refuge, gnashing of teeth in New Jerusalem, and hours of work for tabulators and constables in The Core. Prisoners at the latter base rioted after learning what they were missing. Morganites demanded new entertainment packages for their money. Censors yanked the cables in Atlantis.


Though they pretended to enjoy the educational program piped free into their kitchen terminals, University tastes in entertainment were strictly low-brow. Callow undergraduate and mad scientist alike preferred to unwind with a bit of slapstick. They would go as far as serialized adventure in the style of Commando Cody or Space Patrol, a romanticized rendering of what could be done with the wondrous tools they created by people far more worldy than themselves, but anything more serious struggled to gain an audience. Walt Disney animation also took deep hold in Zakharov's territories. This form of escapism showed on long loops in the faction's crowded anti-radiation clinics, and Dr. Ludwig Drake von Duck was narrating "Maths Magic" by Autumn of M.Y. 2, although nobody in University Programming explained how his Austrian accent had been lost in favor of Azeri.


Gaia's Stepdaughters watched overwrought telenovelas, the heroes and heroines of which were sure to be hobbled by debt and perpetually unlucky in romance. The matriarchy found it difficult to gets its arms around the obvious tension between the identity values it expressed as faction policy and popular fantasy, gradually walking back restrictions until, in M.Y. 24, it released a statement accepting that the two could exist in "imperfect parallel." Attention turned to naming deficiencies in the attitudes and behaviors depicted in entertainment rather than forbidding them. As it turned out, Gaian students relished the opportunity to craft essays savagely deconstructing the flaws of their screentime idols, enthusiastically comparing their own assessments to those of parents and grandparents at the same age.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan naturally used the misalignment between Gaian fantasy and reality to taunt the Lady Skye as an unstable leader, though more incisive takes on the Gaians' inner lives wondered at the cynical throughline: the futility of trying to hold on tight to that which one loved.

Hive Drones craved sport, the bloodier the better. Commentators for Chironian Rules Football found their way into public service audio. The same voice shouting, "Foooul!" with unrestrained enthusiasm also reminded one to don their eye protection if venturing to the surface levels. Yet the most popular programme in Hive circulation--oft touted before the Planetary Council when the Chairman wished to deflect accusations of tyranny--followed the Kafkaesque journeys of Itilan Gann, a relentlessly cheerful Drone who repeatedly failed his merit exams for lack of study and arrived at his workstation each morning to find bizarre instructions dispatching him to distant service tunnels. Never would he finish his journey: at the bottom of the half-hour time slot, an urgent cable summons always saw Gann recalled, though not before he'd finished drawing the double ration for overtime work. The show consisted largely of feed from Gann's point of view and mentioned the Chairman only as the sort of person Gann felt he might like to buy a beer. Enthusiasts searched with relish for "his" stickers, planted frequently by Overseers.


In addition to Chironian Rules Football (their team, the Fort Defiance Derangers, won numerous titles with no whiff of doping accusations that stalked other clubs), milk-fed Spartans attended their history lessons. Commissioner Pravin Lal remembered in his diary that the informational content and even-handedness of Spartan documentaries "struck me doubly." He wondered at the accuracy of the reputation surrounding the Spartans in light of "this refreshing honesty that would not have been the least objectionable coming from our own terminals."

Tribals did not watch; they listened. Radio was an obsession, hearkening back to the "olden, golden" days of yore when flu-addled, flood-stricken Midwesterners used the very last of their battery power to tune in for the latest diagnosis of the nation's plight from the gentleman farmer [Jean-Baptiste Keller] they imagined to be very like themselves. Each base had a different stable of disc jockeys, and only a minority bothered to rebroadcast the sermons most listeners knew by heart. Better to blast the Rock n' Roll music.

Dreamers tried "digital drugs," using binaural beats to cause the brain's sound processing center (the superior olivary complex) to alter the brainwaves to compensate. Adjustments in frequency could stimulate or inhibit different psychological conditions, some therapeutic, some potentially problematic. Many addicts claimed that the sensory input that could be got from their home terminal was an inextricable aspect of the high, as essential as the tube that delivered the Somnacin itself. When sober, Dreamers tended to search for a news feed, usually the trusted World Restored service run by the Peacekeeping Forces, through which they could learn information that their own faction was incapable of providing to them. By M.Y. 194, the Peacekeepers reserved whole blocks of daily programming for audiences in other societies. Some Hivers followed the radio signals to freedom. Dreamers soaked up storm tracks, wormsign reports, and news from active military fronts. Morganites (and interested SAMCERs) noted the comings and goings of caravans.


Sources:
Pulp sci-fi art by Bob Larkin.

"IBM 5150 Personal Computer" is the work of Tristan Chesselet on ArtStation.

Police detective is "The Agent," by Josh Newton on ArtStation, for the board game Horrified: American Monsters, apparently a spin-off of Arkham Horror.

X-Files references made lovingly. Marmon Harrison's name is inspired by South Africa's WWII-era armored car. SAFE, an acronym that has no translation, is the name of the intelligence agency used by the Free Worlds League in Battletech.

Lunching still is from the fifth season episode of Babylon 5, "A View From the Gallery."

The "Derangers" were a team featured in the early 1990s series Mutant League, inspired by the Electronic Arts video games of the same name.

On binaurual beats, I consulted WebMD, which I'm not sure is scientifically valid.

Final picture is "DEFCON 1" by Zaki on ArtStation.

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

Brevity is the soul of wit and of warfare. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

Sources:
First picture is in "In-A.22 Nikto-ega - Very Fast Stripes" by Eluqqa on DeviantArt.

Second image is from Star Trek: Enterprise via the "Space Warship Design" page on Atomic Rockets.

Third image is by Pierre Mion via the "Spacesuits" page on Atomic Rockets.

Warden J.T. Marsh said:

Crossing an environment means changing it, but that doesn't mean you have to destroy it beyond healing. - Peregrinations of Planet

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Call me old-fashioned, but there is still something about arriving on the battlefield in a tank! - Promotional watchvid, Morgan Military Machines

The U.N. wanted for vehicles, and it could hardly refuse charity, even the backhanded kind. To meet their obligations, donors gave what they could or would no longer use: post-war surplus, items in liquidation after radiological clean-up, and whatever else had been worn out or refused by their own forces. Thus, the greater proportion of Unity's motor pool was tracked.

The survivors' small inheritance of rotary aircraft, experimental hovercraft, and under-powered hoppers might point to a better tomorrow, but for more than two centuries, wheeled or tracked vehicles were the only scalable mobility options accessible to all colonies. Even the New State was forced to keep a significant portion of its operations "sandside" because it could not turn out enough pressure hulls.

Wheeled vehicles were faster, better over rocky ground, and easier to repair and maintain. Because of their greater surface area, however, tracked vehicles could take substantially heavier payloads despite also requiring much larger engines. Early vehicle-scale lasers in particular demanded power supplies to heavy for wheeled transport. Tracked vehicles could also (usually) keep lower profiles becaue tyres were oversized to provide the ground clearance that lent them their off-road advantage. Pilots of unarmed cargo Crawlers and tracked gun platforms crashed with practical impunity through all but the mightiest fungus and brush. They also had better luck on the many saturated and sandy surfaces of Chiron.

To get the most out of their investment of precious vehicle power plants, most factions put even tracked military vehicles to work as tractors when they were not needed in combat.

In Game Terms:
May cross light or medium xenofungus without penalty.

The Crawler chassis may carry up to 2 mission modules.

Sources:
Soviet tank is "Tesla's Tank" by Lennard Claussen on ArtStation.

Second tank is "tank_heavy" by Colie Wertz on ArtStation.

Third tank is "Post-Apocalyptic Tank" by Yakolev Art on ArtStation.

Fourth vehicle is "Arctic Communication Module / Tracked Vehicle Concept" from Alex Advuevsky on ArtStation.

Selectman Peter Pete Landers said:

The argument for kings and government dies at the first moment of their weakness. Do not give your loyalty to someone who thinks they can forsake you without forsaking themselves. - Against All Others

Sources:
First picture is "Mission to Minerva" by Jon White on ArtStation.

Second picture is "Deep Sea Sub" by Ben Harrison on ArtStation.

Third picture is "SR-7132N Deep Space Tow Tug Cockpit" by Ben Harrison on ArtStation.

Base Facility: Sonic Fence said:

We must first exclude to find the self. Then, we must include to perfect it. - Governor Oscar van de Graaf, Command Diary

The motto of the British Special Air Service is "Who dares wins." Game Warden J.T. Marsh, a veteran of that unit, practiced the maxim, organizing a series of spectacular raids on Shaper bases in the Terryon Basin in M.Y. 23 and 24 that made use of diversionary attacks to facilitate hijacking of more than sixty precious 'Formers. It was a double victory in that most of the vehicles captured by the Hunter Probe Teams had once belonged to the American Reclamation Corporation.​

Sources:
First image is "Sci-fi Boat" by Scott Robertson on ArtStation.

Second image is "Spacesuit" by Zongwei on ArtStation.

Third image if "Photobash Practice" by Zongwei on ArtStation.[/I][/CENTER][/i]

The Conclave Bible said:

And Cain did again what displeased the LORD, and in his House all other manner of iniquity was also practiced. Now the Sons of Nod laid waste the Kingdom of Lut, and when all was smoke and ash, they returned to their homesteads, which they fired, and then slaughtered the kine, treading out even their own vineyards, for blood was their sweetest wine. - Datalinks

Unity passed out of the Sol system carrying 591,894 colonists aboard and another 20,000 estimated stowaways. By the time word was passed to abandon ship, more than half that total had been lost.

Survivors faced all the nightmare scenarios cooked up by the Red Teams at Morgan Emergency Services and more. The initial micrometeorite was bad enough. Aside from the loss of lives and ship’s stores, multiple vital systems were crippled or destroyed in a series of cascading impacts.

The power system was failing. Spall shattered the main reactor housing aft and destroyed primary feed pumps on two of the four secondary reactors. This was a radiological catastrophe of the highest order. To approach the reactor halls aft was to recieve potentially lethal doses of radiation. Meanwhile, the loss of so much electrical firm load threw the ship onto battery power even as life support systems were ramping up to counter both the widespread loss of atmospheric containment and the sudden introduction of hundreds—then thousands—of crew. It was too much. Fuses blew. Breakers tripped. Unity went dark.


In theory, this surge in demand could be offset even if the reactors were offline, for the ship trailed a solar sail—a potentially inexhaustible power source if fed by the Alpha Centauri system’s three stars. Yet this crucial back-up system had been ruined, holed in countless places by pieces of Unity herself, while the mechanism for deployment of its redundant auxiliary lay likewise smashed. There was now no hope of restoring electrical power except by recovering the fission plant.

Life support was in even worse shape. The errant space rock had severed Unity’s water mains--including the firemain and its three auxiliary lines. A complicated system of valves sprang shut to staunch the outpouring, but this only created small islands of reserve water useless for any practical purpose except local firefighting. (Six days into the crisis, Machinery Leading Chief Petty Officer LeFevre organized rust techs to pump the dregs down to the hangars using a daisy chain of fire hoses.) This residual supply was still on the order of several tens of millions of gallons, some of which continued to be lost from malfunctioning sprinkler heads or unattended hoses.


Atmospheric loss had the same results: emergency bulkheads deployed shipwide. Approximately 70% of compartments were opened to vacuum. In many cases, electrical shorts delayed activation of the seals until after damage control parties had begun operations, including Hab Bay evacuations, so that hundreds were killed repeatedly in mass strandings. So many compartments suffered explosive decompression during the first hour of damage control operations that Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida began routing responders to cargo bays rather than risk them to retrieve "worthless artisans" and "needless bankers."
Emergency lockers throughout the ship were inexplicably empty. Under such extreme conditions, most protective gear was donned improperly. In machinery spaces, crews repeatedly suffered line-of-fire injuries as equipment shook itself apart. Large sections of the ship became inaccessible due to internal structural collapse. Fires raged out of control wherever oxygen or chemicals would feed them. Whole cryobays became fatally entombed in fire suppression foam. Upon learning that the occupants were still alive and mostly unharmed, Damage Control Assistant Giat Keo famously broke out fire axes, ordering miners and foresters to take shifts chipping survivors out of the mess.


Alas, the armed assailants calling themselves "Spartans" made it their business to gouge the expedition’s already-grievous wounds. The mutineers slaughtered every damage controlman they could find, apparently with the intent of dooming the ship to destruction. A small fraction may in fact have been Survivalists. Many were naught but sociopaths, human trash working overtime to conceal racism and misogyny behind pseudo-intellectual papier-mâché. To protest their exclusion from Project Unity, they did what came naturally: open fire.

Their killing was so indiscriminate it astonished even their erstwhile leader, ultimately revealed as the faithless Security Forces lieutenant Corazón Santiago. Between bouts of professing her manifesto the bridge crew—a popular hobby also taken up by another stowaway, the Morgan Industries CEO, and eventually, Prokhor Zakharov also--she was forced to execute more than a dozen “friendly” fighters for offenses ranging from unforgivable breaches of fire discipline to simple insubordination. Santiago was soon in crisis. She had not anticipated that so many of her own host were fully committed to self-destruction.

Adjunct Instructor Sheng-ji Yang said:

The essential problem of generalship is that soldiers expect you to make provisions for them to come back. - Institutes of Leadership

Given the loyal crew’s focus on systems restoration and the depth of Santiago’s treachery, few Security Forces survivors materialized to defend the former. For a time, d’Almeida attempted to make do with pressed mercenaries and veterans reassigned from other divisions, but with losses mounting and other key leaders diverting personnel for their own ends, those scratch efforts soon gave way to thoughts of self-preservation. The Spartans and Holnists were too fast and too many, the able and willing defenders too few and too disorganized.


When the lion hunts, the jackals shall feast. Another active threat, more fearsome but also more disciplined, stalked the ship in parallel with the Spartans, who they shot on sight. While they could and did sometimes negotiate temporary ceasefires with crew who held their fire, the Kellerites were not above cold-blooded murder. They had bones to pick with authority, circumstances be damned. At least these newcomers were intent on making it down to Chiron.

Whether Jean Baptiste-Keller himself ever made it aboard the object of his obsession is unknown. His followers got close enough to ask Garland for his autograph, storming as far as the damaged computer core (just minutes from the Bridge) before rallying Marines broke their momentum with help from sonic grenades and Cargo Corps flankers. Pete Landers, the Kellerite commander on the scene, had come of age on the Mississippi River not far from the riverboat casinos. He well knew: if the House starts to win, choose a different game. His people melted away, descending into the lower levels, relinquishing their chance at prime captive so that they might be free to take rations and fuel cells.



D'Almeida gave the official order to abandon ship, but the giving up on Unity's salvation had begun almost at once. The tone had been set by the Chief Engineer himself: in defying Garland and d’Almeida, even in service of the lofty goal of bringing the secondary reactors back online, Zakharov signaled the legitimacy of questioning orders. For every courageous soul who obeyed the muscle memory created by months of training and exercise to go and serve their fellows, three others scurried for the exits while the fifth availed themselves of an opportunity for target practice and the sixth fed psychotropic drugs to those just decanted.

Dr. Aleigha Cohen said:

The seasonal fever has come again. Mobs hunt Spoilers in the flex tunnels. A hopper pilot, his skill irreplaceable, is caught and dragged outside to be suffocated. Later, we will see that it was a case of mistaken identity, but the cathartic feeling won't be diminished. - A World Upside Down

Any run on the Landing Pods inevitably veered straight through the nearest cargo bays. No faction was to be denied a share of the starship's endless variety of cargo. From apple seeds to ammunition, anxious survivors and would-be monarchs claimed anything they could lay hands on, often by gunning down someone who had gotten there first. Mostly, the objects they secured had immediate value, such as food, medicine, and hand radios. Sometimes, they were a putative investment in the future, as when Tamineh Pahlavi's people emptied cold storage of more than fifty thousand genetic samples from family lines that had not got a descendant aboard Unity.

The plunder might even be living people. Elements of the ex-Canadian Vanadair Guard, taken on by Oscar van de Graaf, fought hard against poachers come to pick "his" cryobays clean of the colonists with the choicest service records. Sheng-ji Yang, Raoul André St. Germaine, and Sathieu Metrion each consulted the ship’s databanks before so much as lifting a finger to help their fellows, intent on finding those who mattered to them.


Sources:
Grainy explorer image is "The Wreck," by Guillaume Menuel on ArtStation.

LeFeuvre is "Scfi cybergirl" by Bulygin on DeviantArt.

Neon astronaut is "Funky Astronaut" by Amanieu Rebu on ArtStation.

Auto-gunner is "Combat Engineer Demo" by Johnson Ting on ArtStation.

Actor Gerard Butler, seen in Coriolanus, is our Sgt. Pete Landers.

Rocket Raider is "Pleinpaper" from the tumblr page of ishouldsketchmore.

Dr. Johann Anhaldt said:

For centuries, kings have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Now we have built such a one of our own devising. We freely admit it is flawed. What king was not? But this, our king, we can make better. Who else could say that? - Salvation by Numbers

Name: Guadalupe Selinas Torada
Rank: Ensign (rising)
Position: Supervisory Scriptrunner
County of Origin: Imperio Mexicano
DOB: 01-2-2041

Service Record:
Born 2041, Mazatlán, Mexico. PhD in post-conflict econometrics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Post-graduate fellowship with Toron-Garcia, a grant-bundler working Venezulean Reconstruction. Accepted for SPAR assessment by Morgan Pearl Standard after correctly predicting 2064 trends in oil market contraction.

Denied SPAR due to hazards arising from interaction with medications required for suppression of Bollon-Sprauge Radiation Syndrome. At own request, participated in development of AEGAEON software package used to design and organize construction of the Caribbean Plate Tri-cities.

Joined 2067 Mexican National Commitment to Project Unity. Total mission training reduced to seven months. Prior to hibernation, worked an additional three months as a compiler in the Data Services Division helping to transliterate the preliminary A-Code behind the Unity's stellar navigation system to the century-old Apep proprietary machine language used in the Unity Data Core.

Approached by Morgan SafeHaven operatives during the Planetfall Crisis with an invitation to join in the CEO's escape. Declined. A resulting standoff was broken only with armed intervention ordered by Data Services Lt. Commander Tạ Dọc Thân. After rescue, subject was organized into Dr. Johann Anhaldt's ground team.



Psych Profile: Skeptic
Expresses core attitudes common among her generation: skepticism toward market economics and corporate replacement of public services, aversion to personalist politics, and openness toward expanded presence of Artificial Intelligence in daily life.

A technocrat. Believes that machine-assisted government is more trustworthy than the "corruptible" rule of popularly-elected leaders and self-interested oligarchs.


Sources:
Portrait sourced from Pinterest, which traces back to a website called wallpapermaiden. Artist unknown.

Second image is the work of Travis Charest on characterdesignreferences.com.

Third image is the artillery crew from Guns of Navaronne.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, becauise there is no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash before it ever gets off the ground. - The Centauri Monopoly

For most colonies, "profit" was an afterthought; something to be considered long after everyone was sheltered, bandaged, and fed. In Morganite territory, within mere weeks, it was practically the only thought. Base services from air supply to medical care were furnished by contractors.

Service costs were deducted automatically from each workers' salary. Morganites became notorious for chasing deals by flitting between their own and other factions' bases, creating Planet's first reliable travel flows, and with them, consumer price signals.

Those who couldn't pay owed a periodic labor tax akin to the medieval corvée. Eventually, more than a quarter of the Morganite colony was reduced to this plight. Often, the CEO used them to advance projects that enhanced his personal wealth.


It did not take long for the Chief Executive to suspect that the contract killers of Morgan SafeHaven were losing their sharp edge. His answer was to bring new gladiators into the stable. In short order, he chartered Morgan Security, then the obliquely-titled Morgan Industrial Defense Service (MIDS).

On paper, each unit was to perform a unique function. The once-proud praetorians of SafeHaven were retasked from personal protection of the Board and CEO to objective raids against other factions. Morgan Security assumed responsibility for base defense under a "bunkers, barriers, burn-out" model that was supposed to keep their focus outside the perimeter walls. MIDS stood watch in the opposite direction after receiving authorization under Board policy to police the Company's employees and secure its property against theft and misuse.

As it happened, Morgan encouraged inter-jurisdictional rivalries and rewarded poaching. The three units therefore became almost indistinguishable from one another but for their uniforms. SafeHaven continued to post gate watches alongside Morgan Security. The infamous Saharan mercenaries also retained control of the small brigs in both Morgan Industries and Morgan Metagenics, indifferent to formal reprimands. The Board also repeatedly overlooked the fact that both MIDS and SafeHaven made a habit of joining Morgan Security militia during base defensive actions despite refusing to train together, resulting in multiple friendly fire incidents. This was hardly mere comradeship: neither of the two "attending" units slouched in claiming the bounties offered for adversaries killed or captured.

Here was the point: military service in the Morganite world was a money-making venture. Under faction bylaws, the officers of Morgan Industries were compelled to purchase commissions in Morgan Security--a reflection, Morgan said, of the company's public service ethos. Yet corporate policy also forbade officers from taking that very service on grounds that "sideline ventures" deprived the employer of the employee's full value. Ergo, substitutions had to be obtained. (This substitution was usually a middle manager, but, as time went on, increasingly an ex-Spartan or a SMACER.) Handicraft victuallers paid for annual monopolies on sales to different units, then squeezed them for every cartridge and canteen. SafeHaven, which at times made an art form of doing the outrageous, demanded and won the right to charge training fees to the very Morgan Security personnel that replaced them. All three outfits abused their arrest powers to build up chain gangs whose labor could be sold for profit.

The natural conclusion of Morgan's policy was to cripple faction military potential. Loyalties and doctrine split three ways. The system was also grossly top-heavy by design, with three sets of leaders performing the same work. (Left behind in the evacuated trenches below Xerxion, anti-disassociationalist soldiers found hand-drawn playing cards featuring more than four dozen individual Morganite officers, many in the ironic pose of the Suicide Jack.) Taken on the whole, any benefits from competition were entirely wiped out.


Unstructured time was sacrosanct among the Peacekeepers, who used it for lively debate and other forms of self-enrichment. Gaians hiked and meditated. Hunters raced. Spartans relished their bloodsport. Most factions firmly prohibited more than six hours of work for health and safety reasons. Morgan scoffed at this calculus. His governors collected a tax on leisure not spent at approved amusements (i.e., corporate gambling halls). Many "dodgers" figured they got ahead by engaging in individual entrepreneurial activity, including the sale of their own excess labor. Accident rates soared during these after-hours "gigs," when workers were already exhausted in both mind and body. Prosthetic limbs were disturbingly common in Morganite settlements. Companies would front injured workers the cost of limb replacement. The recipient rented their prosthetic under very disadvantageous terms. When their credit ran out, the limb seized up.


Sources:
First image is Disney concept art for Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities.

Second image is from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Third image is "Celsius 13 - Worker revamp" by Jan Weßbecher on ArtStation.

President John F. Kennedy said:

This technology represents a promise to our children, and to our children's children, that they can sleep safely under a blanket of peace. - Address to the Federation of Atomic Scientists, 1962

Project Orion was the American effort to perfect nuclear pulse propulsion as a method of interplanetary, and especially interstellar, space travel. Rooted in theories propounded by Polish mathematician and physicist Stanislaw Ulam and American physicist Frederick Feines in the late the 1940s, Project Orion culminated in the successful construction and deployment of the world's first nuclear-powered space superiority platform, the space battleship of the same name, and touched off a century-long military space race that ended in disaster for the Soviet Union. Feasibility calculations were completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory and by General Atomics. Ground-side construction took place at Newport News Shipbuilding, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which Project Orion helped save from closure. Funding and direction came from the U.S. Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with additional input provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Northrup-Grumman, and the United States Marine Corps. The prime contractor was General Atomics.

Elementally, the vision for Orion involved using a sequence of one megaton thermonuclear shaped charges to create extremely high exhaust velocity and thrust, far exceeding the speed factors available from chemical rocket engines. Acting on a pusher plate mounted at the rear of the payload, the explosions could propel 400,000 tons to a terminal speed of 0.03c during an acceleration run of 10 days. As many as 300,000 of the compact, 6" diameter, disc-shaped charges would need to be released at a rate of one charge every 1.1 seconds to achieve this result. The Coca-Cola Company consulted on the design of the mechanism used for that purpose.


The technological, political, environmental, economic, and cultural consequences of Project Orion were felt worldwide.

Along with the Apollo Program, which placed a permanent habitat on the Moon in 1980, Project Orion ushered in an era of technological flourishing. The first locus was in the United States and Great Britain, while the second was in the Soviet Union. Research on the shape and yield of atomic explosions and the need to demonstrate political confidence in the technologies underlying the Orion concept breathed new life into the Atoms for Peace program. Defying credible and growing concern about atomic fallout, industrial-grade nuclear devices became widely used in mining and terraformation. Dozens of nuclear power stations were built throughout the United States where the abundance of cheap energy led to a collapse in fossil fuel markets, promoted a general trend toward electrification of consumer products including automobiles, and tempted Army experiments with laser weaponry. The amount of intellectual potential devoted to Orion by both superpowers created the so-called Atomic Generation. Between 1956 and 1984, one in three adults in either country spent ten or more years working in a STEM field. Echoing the downstream effects of atomic research on the civilian energy industry, lessons-learned from the Orion Program and its Russian Counterpart, Project Zharptitsa (жар-пти́ца, or "Firebird"), also caused a flowering of aeronautical and commercial space ventures. Indeed, the Orion herself was constructed in two parts, and the pusher plate, which had been severely ablated during blast-off from the Nevada desert, was reworked in high orbit using uranium mined from Near Earth Asteroids by a growing fleet of independently-owned-and-operated spacecraft.

Perhaps the most important outcome of Orion was to demonstrate the viability of the propulsion concept for what would become the Chiron Pathfinder Probe, a pusher-plate design of the mid-twenty-first-century that made the journey to Alpha Centauri in just 40 years by taking advantage of compact fusion pellets to gain more thrust at less weight than with the original bombs.

Orion kicked the Cold War into overdrive. Soviet Premier Marat Barrikad, who had spent two years in San Francisco with the Soviet consulate there, rejected the traditional dictates of Escalation Theory. Knowing that the Americans would beat the Soviets to a nuclear missile shield, he guessed that the resulting surfeit of confidence would tend to soothe rather than aggravate American bellicosity, creating conditions in which voters and politicians in the United States would tolerate an expansion of Soviet power outside the Western Hemisphere. Accordingly, Barrikad's Politburo reduced funding for Zharptitsa while dialing conventional aggression sharply upwards to compensate, including on and beneath the lunar surface, where Soviet and American troops clashed seven times in the 1970s with deadly results. Barrikad also repaired his country's rift with the Chinese Communists, wooed India firmly into the Soviet sphere, subjected the Dutch to a twenty-year insurgency in the Netherlands East Indies that led to partial Indonesian independence, and nursed client regimes in Burma, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Italy, Nigeria, Libya, Somali, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Radiological pollution created by the nuclear Space Race led to a sharp increase in cancers worldwide. Several nuclear disasters have been linked to Project Orion-inspired reactor construction, both directly and indirectly. In the end, Congress and the Air Force managed to protect their investment from cancellation only at the cost of a massive erosion of public trust that helped fuel violent eco-terrorism beginning from the 1990s and laid the groundwork for the pervasive anti-government sentiments of the following century.


The complexity of pusher-plate shock absorption was very high. Pusher plates were highly prone to damage and misalignment, especially if, as in the case of the Soviets, nuclear, not conventional, explosives were used to break Earth's atmosphere during first take-off. Furthermore, the thermonuclear warheads used by the Gagarin were of unreliable design. Prokhor Zakharov warned his colleagues and superiors of these two risks in a position paper in 2023. Four years later, Gagarin's pusher plate malfunctioned with fatal results. During routine repositioning from geosynchronous orbit above the dark side of the Moon, a bomb pellet failed to pass through the port in the pusher plate and exploded prematurely, wrecking much of the mission module. The ship was stricken. While there was enough mass between the crew and the explosion's epicenter for crew to evacuate, the escape pod failed on Earth atmospheric reentry with the loss of all hands.

Disaster prompted the Politburo to take up again the shelved research on chemical rockets, leading Zakharov to the fusion stardrive he built for Unity in 2061.


Sources:
Space Battleship Orion picture by Andrei Stanavov. Found on ToughSF Twitter feed but originally from ArtStation.

X-Ray lasers appear as a warship-scale weapon in Babylon 5.

The science for this article was taken from the Wikipedia page for "Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)" and "Fusion rocket," as well as the YouTube video "The insane USAF space battleship that almost got built - Project Orion Battleship" by Found and Explained.

Space battleship Admiral Gagarin is an image of an O'Neill Cylinder from the webpage "Stories by Williams." For her systems, I was also inspired by some pictures found on Deep Space Forces on rhysy.net and commentary on space warfare on the Atomic Rockets website.

Sister Miriam Godwinson said:

The first step to knowing God is knowing his greatest creation: the self. - A Prayer for Peace

Sixty years after Planetfall, at the place called Shurath, where once a wide river curled, the Lord's Conclave finished the man that was a mountain. He was, said Sister Miriam Godwinson, "our fitting penance," built to acknowledge the great hurt done to their fellow survivors during the hungry days when the Nauvoo Legion had swarmed undefended camps like the frogs and locusts of Exodus.

Godwinson's neighbors were unimpressed. "I cannot fill empty bellies with the self-righteousness of the blind!" Governor Oscar van de Graaf thundered to his stakeholders. At his behest, the propertied families among the New Two Thousand voted a special allowance for military operations that put two thousand militia in the field. Miriam's people defended their great monument to the last. The kasan stone from which Man was built dispersed directed-energy weapons fire with better than 99.2% efficiency. The Nauvoo Legion built fighting positions inside the feet and ankles of the statue, resisting the Pilgrim assault for decades with only a minimum of effort. Then, in Mission Year 94, a separate upcountry campaign severed supply lines to the Shurath Valley. No quarter was asked, and none was given. The Governor celebrated his victory by inviting the Shapers of Chiron to dump their spoils at the foot of "this bold-faced monstrosity." In ten years, the tallest structure on Planet was buried to its ears in tailings from Coordinator Nagao's borehole mines. The valley became a wasteland.


Sources:
First picture is "Expedition V2" by otomozok on DeviantArt.

Second and third picture are from theamazingdigitalart on Tumblr. The former is from Fara Shanyar, while the latter is credited to Friendly Robot, François Leroy. Both are on ArtStation.

"Volokhovo" is from Fantasy Name Generators.

Final picture is "Darkest Odyssey Portrait" by Friendly Robot, François Leroy, on ArtStation.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf said:

There are only two watchwords of progress: "Stay out!" - Manifesting Destinies

Sources:
First picture is "Water Farm" by Rob Cross on r/ImaginaryTechnology.

Second picture is "See You Space Cowboy" by Barry Brown on Digital ArtLords.

Third picture is "The Wall," concept art for a project called "Sons of Light," by Pablo Olivera on ArtStation.

Fourth picture is by French artist Pierre Deschamps, as found on this-is-cool.co.uk.

Selectman Peter Pete Landers said:

The best doors knock back. - The Good Neighbor's Bible

Sources:
Picture of Landers is from concept art for Alien by an artist called Moebius. This image, found on Pinterest user Rhys Hayward's page, was reportedly scanned from Fantastic Films (Blake Publishing Corp., 1979).

EVA Sign is a rebranding of Belter Cant from The Expanse.

The mountain landscape is by Gavin Manners from this-is-cool.uk.

Final image is fanart for the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Artist unknown.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf said:

The beasts of the soil built our forefathers great empires. They had oxen to haul their wagons, horses to carry them at speed, small critters to make their fields and forests grow. They found these things living with the land and converted them to their purpose. Now, we find none of these helpmates. So we must build them ourselves. With hammer and tongs, we shall forge mechanical pollinators and self-guided plows. - Plowman's Paradise

Dr. Johann Anhaldt said:

I can see no reason why timidity and cupidity should be our leaders into the twenty-second century. You say I want to take all the heart out of it. Well, you are very correct. Those hearts are hard. Those hearts are weak. I want my taxes to pay for something worthwhile, not failures with a human face. - Quoted in Le Monde, November 2028

Sources:
First picture is the work of Pascal Blanche from this-is-cool.co.uk.

The Igour's origins owe a good deal to the cloning methods offered by Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park. I did a bit of poking about on the Jurassic Wiki. I also tried to get something out of this article in Scientific American.

Second picture is the art of Sergei Borisenko, also discovered on this-is-cool.co.uk.

I learned a bit more about the brain from Wikipedia and this article on PubMed.

Third picture is "Artwork Rover" by Grafik on DeviantArt.

Dr. Aleigha Cohen said:

The great sweetness of science is to be first to success, but the truth is that we rarely start from scratch. - Chaos Theories

Oscar van de Graaf said:

A good teacher will explain the things you don't know in terms of what you do. Take vaccines. Until recently, vaccines used either dead or weakened versions of the germs against which they wanted to protect. Like frog-marching a thief through town so that everyone is put on their guard, or releasing ex-outlaws to hunt their old boss. The second of those strategies can be very effective, but you have to take care the parolees don't back-shoot you when you're leading from the front. That's why the new mRNA vaccines are so interesting. They're the equivalent of calling out the town guard before the raiders arrive. - The Personal Diaries

The Uranium Flats were created by the detonation of Unity's secondary nuclear reactor vessels and subsequent spillage of nuclear fuels. It was not long before they became a common dumping ground for "hot" equipment as well as the corpses of those struck down by radiation.

Salvage was a thriving business on Chiron--factions often traded in spite of ongoing hostilities--and survivors made a point of never discarding objects that had not been exhausted of all value, but opinions about where to set the threshold of that value differed--as did the ability to exploit what remained--and so the Flats attracted scavengers who hoped to find treasure in other colonies' trash.

As the boundaries of the Flats expanded unpredictably, vehicles (and people) with inadequate shielding might be caught by surprise. Here, a Hot Crew of the Chiron Guard, amply-equipped and well-trained for NBC warfare, recovers a wheeled [/i]Unity Crawler once operated by the Peacekeeping Forces.[/center]

Contre-amirale Raoul André St. Germaine said:

It has been said that failure is the education of a free polity. Failure is a killer, too. Democracy is a complicated machine. It is not too much to insist on proper safeguards for handling. - The Organization of Fear

Sources:
"Sänger Spaceplane and Horus Orbiter" are by GrahamTG on DeviantArt. Model by N. Stevens.

Biohazard picture is "Vaccine" by noro8 on DeviantArt.

Final picture is "Martians / Tutorial" by amirzand on DeviantArt.

Datalinks said:

Passion paves the road to poverty; moderation, the road to wealth. To be successful, love nothing too much. - Fylan Rei, Stakeholder

Sources:
Sarkan's Coffin is "Depot2" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

"Shuttle 204" is by MacRebisz on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "Cargo capsule retrieval team" by MacRebisz on his website, Space That Never Was.

Sister Miriam Godwinson said:

With their axes, Noah and his sons felled the cypress trees of Syria and Lebanon to build his ark. For to make Unity, mankind first felled cities with bombs.- The Blessed Struggle

Sources:
First image is "MountainCity" by K41Lab on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Space Engineers_Decompression" by IvanLaliashvili on DeviantArt. Third image is "Space Engineers_Road" by the same artist on the same site.

Fourth image is "Orbital Waste Land vistas" by 2buiArt on DeviantArt.

Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh said:

What other purpose hath a living thing than to seek to reduce all its labors? We simulate death before ever it meets us. We are too lazy to run towards it. - Peregrinations of Planet

After the discovery of fabrics that could heal themselves, scientists set their sights on those that could heal their wearers. The answers lay in the combination of advanced piezoelectrics and bio-sensing textiles. Kinetic energy produced by natural motion at first powered sensors calibrated to sound caution alarms in case of pending fever, heat stress, hypothermia, or hypoxia. Second-generation suits constricted to control bleeds, slackened to assist fatigued muscles (in the presence of heightened levels of lactic acid), and deployed sticks of glucose, adrenaline, and pain medication.

Datalinks said:

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. - Andrew Carnegie

Datalinks said:

The first Morgan got rich by breaking the law of his land, the rest by making it. - Popular Jest

Repeated battlefield setbacks swept four long-serving Morganite proxies from the conglomerate's ten-member board in MY76, leaving the family with a narrow majority of just one. Replacements included ousted Unicorp risk chief Velson Choi, who called for a "head-to-toe audit" of all subsidiaries, and Chiron Probe grandee Tollace Markinson. The latter had penned an explosive mission statement promising negotiated peace with the État Nouvel that was supposed to result in a fee structure for maritime transit. All four new board members were killed in the only recorded Mag-Lev deceleration failure, an accident that involved the cascading failure of fifty-six independent safeguards.


Passionate in their preening, University scientists were hardly the type to keep new inventions to themselves. Beyond providing a valuable source of income to fuel their further experiments, commercial activities were undeniable proof of excellence in the one space that mattered: bringing the hostile world around them to heel.

Subrids interrupt their grazing to study the arrival of second-generation Spartan adolescents. They will be abandoned here in the Syfolt Wilderness with the traditional materials: twenty four hours of breathable air, water purification tablets, salt cake, personal blade, automatic hand weapon, and a single clip of compatible ammunition. By tradition, life-saving medicines are forbidden to be carried, although students are implicitly encouraged to defy this edict.
Sources:
First picture is "The Exploration" by derektye05 on DeviantArt.

Second picture is "Empty Office" by Dominique-van-Velsen on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "W20160703 - AG Drive Desert Planet Concept" by StMan on DeviantArt.

Fourth picture is "Garbage trucks" by sergeo-art on DeviantArt.

Fifth picture is "Red Planet' by sergeo-art on DeviantArt.

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

Proper care and education for our children remains a cornerstone of our entire colonization effort. Children not only shape our future; they determine in many ways our present. Men and women work harder knowing their children are safe and close at hand. And never forget that, with children present, parents will defend their home to the death. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide

A proper University education began in the home. Interactive elements in windows and appliances stimulated curiosity through reward. Polymorphic software tailored the pace, focus, and depth of information exchange to the particular characteristics of the user, accommodating physical, visual, and neurological distinctiveness.

Parents could call upon the considerable insights of specialists and well-stocked libraries of practical material when confronted with the routine problems of adolescence.

The teenage and young adult years were the most problematic: students fell under a different, more lenient set of criminal laws than did "technicals," the faction support staff. Many took advantage. Drunken brawls with University Security were a rite of passage.


Nearly all meaningful Gaian education took place outdoors, often alone. Gaian parents thought nothing of entrusting their offspring to Chiron, which rarely resisted the Stepdaughters' presence.

Gaian children attended faction moots from a tender age. The youngest read poetry to help them become accustomed to public speech.

One noteworthy aspect of a Gaian upbringing was the performance of the Adaptations, aerobic and exposure exercises to reduce oxygen consumption and heighten allergen resistance.

Gaian property passed matrilineally.


Like his counterparts in the similarly unsentimental Ascendancy, the Chairman learned quickly that long-term separation of parents from their children was a serious disincentive to both compliance and mindfulness. Ill-conceived breeding and sterilization programs gave him similar results.

Aptitude tests, administered many times on the road to physical and mental maturity, suggested a drone's potential, while "morality drills," which often involved crude attempts to lure individuals into "anti-social" misdeeds, determined exactly how far they would rise. Yang rewarded families with extra rations and rest cycles not for giving birth to genius, but for inculcating selflessness.

Hive propaganda celebrated menial labor to the point that Acolytes usually questioned the social utility of classroom study when first selected.

The Chairman was especially discerning in his appointment of teaching staff and at first performed nearly all formal instruction himself.


Spartans were taught the fundamentals of "self-help," the first and most important of these being marksmanship. Their teachers were almost always disabled veterans.

Spartan children were little more than helpmates for their parents once released from the crèche. Between group lessons in target practice and fieldcraft, they performed basic household tasks: cooking, cleaning, and running ammunition. Childhood regularized after the fall of Xerxion.

Spartans and Tribals were unique in that they had not come aboard Unity as the foremost representatives of a recognized global elite. In consequence, they were less inclined than the adherents of other factions to direct their offspring toward pursuits of the mind, finding more value in handicrafts and war-making.

Datalinks said:

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. - President Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 1864

Morganite youth were easy prey for any of a million distractions, the deadliest of which was surely Dreaming.

These dissolutes were sure to run down their Social Credit, resulting in debt bondage.

Sources:
For the first image, which is by futurist Syd Mead, see kimsarc.com.

Second image is "Listening" by Xhuuya on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Spartial Zen, Cyborg Buddhas" by DreadJim on DeviantArt.

Fourth image is a still from The Postman (1997).

Fifth image is "Electropium Den" by Zirngibl on DeviantArt.

Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine said:

History consists not of facts remembered, but feelings inherited. - The Organization of Fear

Peacekeepers pursued the well-rounded ideal. Enrichment in the libraries, exercise on the pitch, instruction in the classroom, relaxation in the pools. The council chambers were closed to adolescents.


Childhood in the Conclave was idyllic. Miriam's essential commandment: love thy neighbor. A community approach to child-rearing in such a polyglot society promised rich cultural experiences for anyone willing to take part.


Many young Conclavists of the second generation found that faith was a natural concomitant of their hardscrabble life. Without the weight of painful memories to discourage them, they embraced Scripture with fewer questions than their parents. Faction chaplains tended to see the massive Conclave Bible as a total replacement for academic histories.

Once described as the most-entitled people on Chiron, Conclavists approached physical interaction with New Eden with scarcely less enthusiasm than the Gaians.


Tribals embraced the institution of Scouting, a somewhat tamer, if more formal variation of the past times enjoyed in Sparta.

While recreational use of the Datalinks was not forbidden in Tribal society--government was too disinterested to move so false--young people most enjoyed the practical crafts handed down from their elders, especially rover repair.

The risk of high consanguinity was overcome by generous terms of pardon for non-Spartan prisoners, whereas any of Santiago's followers who surrendered was simply shot out of hand.

The striplings of L'État nouvel joined naval cruises as cadets whose job was to be seen and not heard. Each shift ended with group problem-solving sessions that culminated in a combined escape from a flooding compartment just prior to graduation. For one in twelve cadets, the experience turned fatal.​

St. Germaine's was one of the two colonies on Chiron to operate a Social Credit system, but estrangement from the state, not punishment at its hands, was the price of a weak account. Those who refused to toe the line were effectively marginalized in society--free to live the life they chose, but not where anybody was watching.

Sources:
First image is a still from Ender's Game (2013).

Hardlight is a concept from Planetside 2.

Second image is a still from Lost in Space (2019).

Third image is "John Carter Concept Art" by Ryan Church from ConceptArtWorld.

Fourth picture is still from The Expanse, depicting a colony on the planet Ilus.

Fifth image is from Aliens (1986).

General Ôrad of Utár Wawesh said:

It is the things we do not abandon that define who we are. - Datalinks

Utár Wawesh was a constituent commandery of the County of Toltan, one of the three thousand "sandbox" nations dredged up by the likes of Eos Planetary Renewal in the Southern and Pacific Oceans in the 1990s to relieve South American overcrowding and provide a landing place for refugees of nuclear accidents becoming steadily more common as the technology cleared the hurdle of broad commercial adoption.


Descended from original settler stock (the same who bequeathed Chironians a term they later used for themselves, "newlander"), Ôrad set aside his childhood interest in music to become a soldier so that his family would not lose valuable rights to land, pearl beds, and shares in whaling fleets under Toltan's merit-based inheritance laws.


The Cold War was heating up in the Southern Hemisphere in the first decade of the new millennium when Ôrad found himself a fresh-faced cadet at West Point Military Academy, one of sixty International Cadets. Domestic woes had begun to sap America's ability to play its traditional role of global policeman. Soviet agents stepped eagerly into the void. Their promises stoked the emergence of an increasingly violent liberation consciousness among the destitute, dispossessed, and colonially subject. Ôrad returned home by Concorde supersonic jet to spend school holidays in the uniform of a special policeman brawling with fishermen and algae tenders that ate just two meals a day on the U.N. dole.


From the first, Ôrad sought opportunities to reach the acme of his profession, earning jump wings at Camp Hero, New York before spending six months with the 27th Armored Division during a deployment to wide swing through Atlanta to bring the Christian States to heel. In 2045, Ôrad received instruction as part of the Central Intelligence Agency's short-lived Great Neck Project, designed to groom the officers of allied governments in the fundamentals of national security and derided as "coup school" by its detractors. Ôrad put what he learned to good use, participating in the bloodless overthrow of his country's democratically-elected government two years later for failing to ratify accession to the SEPTO.

In return for his services to the new ruling junta, Ôrad was made Viceroy of Asidaph, a strategically significant atoll that, at the time of his appointment, had become a haven for pirates under an ex-American naval officer, Cyril Banes, who punctuated his depredations with ostentatious gifts to the burgeoning IOEZ and Pacifica drone population and claimed the mantle of "environmental activist." Using his newfound authority, Ôrad commandeered a tramp freighter impounded by the Toltan Water Watch and, with a scratch crew of reservists, sank the pirate mothership at anchor in a daring night raid.


Ôrad's career drew to a close just as Toltan began an aggressive courtship of the U.N., then casting about for almost any assistance to replace inconstant sponsors in the Global West. Ôrad counted himself a skeptic. Good people owed their lives to the U.N.'s relief programs, but they had not, in the end, provided a viable blueprint for regional development--only a crude existence that corroded the human spirit and stoked friction between social classes that, sharing the same space, ought to have worked together. Local critics accused Ôrad of reading Jean-Baptiste Keller. Ôrad had them jailed and returned to brokering fishing quotas with the Philippine government.

Retired for more than a decade by 2059, Ôrad buried his wife, their daughter, and two sons in that year, the saddest, he said, of his entire life. They were victims of crop blight, too weak to fight off the Red Flu season. Toltan, like many third-world nations, purchased rights-controlled rice seed. The varietal was engineered by Zerant Technologies (ZtN) to manifest biological defects, including botulism, after a set period of time if the purchaser did not obtain genetically-modified insects capable of restoring its viability. Toltan could afford neither the high asking price of the designer insects nor the price asked by Struan's for its life-saving defoliant. Flu inoculation at clinics in Chile proved useless: the headwinds against the preventative had been too strong, producing conditions in which the virus easily mutated to resist the latest drugs.

For weeks, Ôrad contemplated suicide. Then, word came that Carmel had fallen into a second bout of civil war. Toltan stood by its traditional ally. Ôrad returned to uniform and led the Pacifica Battalion, an all-volunteer force that joined the desperate fighting along the Küv-Dan Line. Ôrad's forces took hundreds of prisoners for which the Gathis were unprepared.

Ôrad's solution was to offer the Shilohne captives to the U.N. as replacements for the colonists they were no longer enrolling through their original talent lottery. Nearly all the prisoners accepted this offer, reasoning that they were otherwise facing certain starvation. The U.N., strained otherwise to the breaking point, ignored the protests of the disgraced Benjamin government in Gilboa. After once drinking such sweet wine, the U.N. developed a taste for it. Soon, it became accepted practice for governments to give convicts, no-pats, and others the choice of exile.

As for himself, Ôrad refused to be lured away from the false archipelago for which he had done so much. Instead, he used his newfound fame as a platform from which to question the ethical and practical basis for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri.

General Ôrad of Utár Wawesh said:

We, who can make nations from the sea and pitch ourselves forty-four light years through nothingness, despair of the simple project of saving ourselves. It is not apocalypse we are outrunning, but the shame of failure. - Datalinks

Ôrad released an autobiography shortly before Mission Launch. The datatape was an obscure one, but it made it as far as the personal effects of Roshann Cobb, recovered from White Rabbit's Refuge, and the voluminous libraries of Liquidator Shoichiro Nagao, who returned often to the islander's accusations, which he told subordinates were true, however upsetting.

Sources:
First picture is a still from the NBC series Kings (2009).

Second picture is "Craters of Lyra 9" by Artur Rosa on ArtStation.

Third picture is by Simon Stålenhag, found on Radical Ocean Futures.

Fourth picture is "Fishing Village" by jpeabody on DeviantArt.

"U.N. Standard Care" inspired by "Basic Assistance" in The Expanse.

S.S. Arkannen is "Tramp Freighter" by LordSopping1885 on DeviantArt.

Vice President Eret Ingollsman said:

We have already discovered immortality in the form of generational wealth. Long after my name is forgotten, the decisions I make in this life will have shaped a comfortable future for my children's children's children. - Datalinks

Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

Imagine the entire contents of the planetary datalinks, the sum total of human knowledge, blasted into the Planetmind’s fragile neural network with the full power of every reactor on the planet. Thousands of years of civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation. That is our last-ditch attempt to win humanity a reprieve from extinction at the hands of an awakening alien god. - Planet Speaks

Sources:
First quote is paraphrasing the character of Donald Whitfield, played by Timothy Hutton, in 1923, produced by Taylor Sheridan.

First picture is "Stargate Research Base" by Nevena-Jevtic on DeviantArt.

Second picture is "Watercity After Storm" by the same author on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "Alien World 2" by the same author on DeviantArt.

Fourth picture is "Xiang Lavigne" by CodexBorderlining on DeviantArt.

Renewer Ikurō Kamatari said:

It was easy to love the Earth. Standing barefoot in the sunshine, we swallowed cold lungfuls of juniper-tinged air and plucked apples from the trees. What use to us is this other place that we cannot even taste? - I Reject

Sources:
First picture is "Crater" by NeotericEvolution on DeviantArt.

Second picture is "Bridges" by AndreeeWallin on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "Zaide Sayadova" by CodexBorderlining on DeviantArt.

Lady Deirdre Skye said:

Like the teeth of some ravening monster, the hard angles and false promise of mechanical ingenuity have come again to reduce us all to drones. - We Must Dissent

The tenterhooks of nationalism had loose claim on most mission survivors, and no leader with any significant following proposed forming colonies around national or ethnic ascription. In the chaos of the escape from Unity, there had been no time for such a sorting. Yet the political bequests of our divided homeworld were obvious.

As a shining success from a brutal system, Academician Zakharov retreated from students' calls to act decisively against such things as hazing and provide greater insight into faction governance. In public, he denigrated the ability of the "lesser-educated" to "apply the necessary discernment" around what to study or where to allocate scarce resources. Privately, he lamented the presumptuousness of the student body and rarely expanded his circle of close confidants, always men, frequently fellow products of similar authoritarian regimes.

Many factions tolerated the continuing use of national symbols like the Red Star or the Union Jack as a means of either fostering collective memory or rejecting the continuing authority of the United Nations, which had instructed they be painted over.

One-time U.S. presidential hopeful and ex-Cabinet member Oscar van de Graaf went furthest in exploiting the memetic qualities of national identity--Pilgrims waved the American flag--but his vision of the future was essentially a fantasist's riff on concepts of self-reliance and fair dealing popularized more by the likes of Walt Disney than the Founding Fathers. Van de Graaf saw no requirement for equitable courts, much less an independent legislature jealous of its own prerogatives. Besides that, his colony had a distinctly international mien since he'd hired without much consideration of national allegiance. To whom would his workforce write home?

Other key leaders spent much of their lives abroad from the countries of their birth: Deirdre Skye, J.T. Marsh, Roshann Cobb, and Aleigha Cohen were as much victims of British imperialism as loyal citizens of Empire or Commonwealth. Nwabudike Morgan was a political renegade that had tried more often to unmake governments than to serve them. Tamineh Pahlavi was an expatriate by circumstances outside her control. A short stint in the service of the American Reclamation Corporation had hardly inclined her toward national consciousness. Johann Anhaldt was of more use to the French government than the Swiss, but left his homeworld embittered. St. Germaine and d'Almeida both cultivated national cadres, and the Executive Officer was reckoned a hero by his country's elite, but the Contre-amirale was too much a believer in the correctness of his own wisdom to have loved France better, while d'Almeida was too much a realist to attempt the resurrection of a thing bound to another time and place.


Sources:
First picture is "Sci-Fi_character practice." by TylerThullCreations on DeviantArt.

Second picture is "Sunshower" by JonasDeRo on DeviantArt.

Third picture is a screen capture from Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993).

Colonel Corazón Santiago said:

The moods of history, like the laws of energy, suggest that, for every advantage gained by some, there must be a disadvantage inflicted on another. Let it not be you. - Armed, Forewarned

For as long as humans have lived with the Earth, we have attempted to change it, usually for commercial reasons. The dam and the ditch have been our preferred tools. Egyptian pharaohs ordered canals to be dug between the Nile River and the Red Sea. Governors used them to make New York City into a hub of industry and turn the Great Lakes of North America into vast highways of maritime trade. Soviet leaders attempted to drain the Aral Sea for irrigation water. Huge dams harnessed old waters to bring electricity--modernity--to burgeoning cities in the American West, Central China, and the Amazon Basin. The European Economic Community dammed up Homer's Wine-dark Sea beginning in 1982, with sub-projects extending south, deep into Central Africa. This work resulted in one barrier across the Dardanelles, a second across the Strait of Sicily, a third at the Bosporus, a fourth on the River Congo. Lake Chad swelled to reach Faya-Largeau.

From the 1950s, the great powers did much of their digging with what they dubbed "Atoms for Peace." Nuclear charges blew the tops off mountains and scoured deep trenches in the Earth's crust. This practice was especially appealing to developing nations and imperial powers in possession of large, sparsely-populated or politically-subjugated territories. Leading the way were the Americans, Soviets, French, Indians, Portuguese, and South Africans. Las Vegas became the City the Bomb Built. Atomic engineering was used again on the Moon and Mars to excavate sub-surface habitation, and as a motive force to move small asteroids into accessible orbits for scientific investigation and subsequent strip-mining.

Rising sea levels spurred strong interest in the creation of artificial reefs and island chains. Three distinct habitation zones emerged: a storm barrage along the North American Atlantic Littoral, including in the Gulf of Mexico; in the Indian Ocean in the Bay of Bengal but later extending to the waters due west of Perth, for purposes of refugee resettlement; and in the Southern Pacific Ocean, largely tied to resource extraction.

Use of atomics for purposes other than killing had become so frequent on Earth that the United Nations thought little of supplying Chiron Interstellar Probe and Unity Mission colonists with a full range of warhead sizes. Early settlers used them immediately for terraforming as well as flattening mountain ranges to alter the paths of rivers or patterns of precipitation and water retention.

Performance against fungus was notably unsatisfactory. Different from the lesser wounds inflicted by fire and conventional explosives, the radiological output of nuclear weapons appeared to stimulate planetary aggression and the re-population of fungal mass. Secondary ignition of nitrate beds was problem: wildfires rarely burned hot or long because of Chiron's low oxygen levels--just 41% that of Earth--but fine dust kicked up through atomic activity choked atmospheric filters and produced deadly and destructive arc flashes.

The question of just whose interests were served through these radical reconstructive surgeries of the living Earth was never explored in full, and each megaproject inspired passionate, sometimes violent, resistance. Agribusiness, cultural chauvinists, the non-patriated, and inland city-dwellers were at the forefront of pushing schemes like the creation of "Atlantropa." Politicians sweetened the offer by promising cheap land and lifelong work for those who had neither. The perspectives of coastal populations, logistics firms, and transhumant people were cooler even after assurances were given of priority relocation and huge tax breaks for impacted businesses. Environmental liberationists struck hard and often. As the impacts were disproportionately inflicted on populations and interest groups with the least political voice, critics reckoned sea level change a form of cultural genocide.



Sources:
For more about Atlantropa, see this article on allthatsinteresting.com.

"Fantastic Voyage" diagram is from Sylvain Martel, "Magnetic Microbots to Fight Cancer," IEEE Spectrum, Robotics, 25 September 2012, https://spectrum.ieee.org/magnetic-microbots-to-fight-cancer (accessed: 5 March 2023).

Clumping magnets are described here on howstuffworks.com.

Rem exposure chart from Idaho National Labs.

Third picture is from the Apple+ show For All Mankind.

Sholt Plumb Martin said:

If you've ever wondered what true despair looks like, ask a prize-winning author to help you dig a latrine. - Life, Barely

Specialization of labor is both the first sign of a wealthy society and the very means by which it can become that much wealthier. Tests of faction leadership on Chiron were often about creating opportunities for some of Earth's best-educated people to do what they were good at.

Mission planners had tried to mitigate that very problem through painstaking selection. At first, consideration for inclusion in the mission was limited to candidates who fell within narrow parameters of age and physical fitness. The rule was clear: prefer the well-rounded 'jack over the narrowly-focused master. Once accepted, prospective colonists began two or three years of intense practical training in any of two Colony Occupational Specialties. Mathematicians became journeyman welders and elite rescue swimmers. Surgeons tried their hands at welding. Then came the time in classrooms. Theologians fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were taught machine language. Poets studied criminal justice and project management fundamentals.

Standards relaxed, then vanished. About a third of Unity passengers graduated the full program. Another quarter completed some training through the U.N., usually the physical component, with a focus on life-safety. Approximately the same number of colonists and crew undertook "equivalencies" with their national governments or qualifying corporations, some in addition to their U.N. commitment, some in lieu of it. Jonathan Garland believed such replacement education was suspect, amounting to political indoctrination, and he turned over document verification to Rachael Winzenried's Security Forces for three months before higher-ups in New York overruled him. Anyone not participating in U.N. or national training was awarded between two years and one month of credits to participate in InterLink correspondence courses--just enough, remembered Aayla Cantwell, to begin to confront all the things one didn't know. Crew members called it being "scared straight."


Once on the ground, natural hierarchies arose. They followed a familiar pattern. Leaders and their coteries gained and retained status by assigning posts and dispensing favors. Absent coercion, techs of any kind were next-closest to the top of the heap since anyone who could keep a body or machine going in adverse conditions was nearly guaranteed to receive supervisory duties and the perquisites that went with them. (Subordinates were to learn through proximity and observation.) The next layer belonged to professional soldiers and safety responders, first in the way of harm. Weapons were useful and scarce, therefore valuable. Morgan, Santiago, Cobb, and van de Graaf incentivized their combatants with the promise of plunder. On the third rung were those who filled out the common labor pool, digging and hauling. Below these was anyone who could do no more than watch a gauge or check the seals of a spacesuit.

Within each layer, more granular divisions emerged. Medical professionals were early celebrities. Among paramilitary types, national service usually trumped.


In time, adjustments were made. Morgan and Van de Graaf linked political power with property rights so that one's occupation mattered less. The University made distinction between those who only worked at a job and those who could instruct others in its performance or otherwise contribute to their "economy of ideas." Factions that employed overseers--the Morganites, Spartans, Dreamers, Hive, and Ascendancy--initially ranked them alongside or just below soldiers, but all learned quickly to carefully circumscribe their authority and limit their access to weapons lest they become an internal fifth column.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Practice economy by match reward with need. Recognize the veteran and the drone with food and rest. Tomorrow, they will fight and work all the harder. Send the doctor to the datalinks and he will educate himself in a finer technique. Give the parent a primer and she will use her time to better her child. - Institutes of Leadership

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Happiness is a menu with many options. - The Centauri Monopoly

Sources:
Joseph Plumb Martin was a Continental soldier and diarist who, after the war, left behind an autobiography titled, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin.

First picture is from "Mech Constructor" by Slava Zhuravlev on Bēhance.

Second picture is "training-0217" by Jay Li on Art Station.

Third picture is "Netspectre - Cyberpunk Hacking Roguelike - Hummus bistro" by Joseph Surý on Art Station.

Traditional said:

I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. - Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

Shipboard radiation levels remained so high for so long that the original storage measures failed to prevent widespread radiation poisoning. Knowing full well the dangers of introducing alien crops to a new biome, all factions preferred to recover Supply Pods deployed ahead of the disaster, but they also raced to grow fresh food in Planet's willing soil.

At first, spoiled rations couldn't be entirely avoided. Democratic societies arranged schemes to keep dose rates equitable, factoring age, weight, and other health factors. Crawlers like this one shuttled supplies between bases where Base Operations oversaw distribution. Some leaders had other ideas. Spartans fought duels over the small number of clean meals. In the Ascendancy, Pahlavi ensured that the older and sicker residents received the worst rations. As intended, they died in droves, relieving her of the duty for their care.



Sources:
First image is from The Expanse.

Second image is "Where you want 'em?" by Marrekie on DeviantArt.

Third image is from the film Alien.

Fourth image is from the TV show Firefly.

Fifth image is "Pocket-Sized Star Wars Emergency Ration Kit" by Chrononaut on Autodesk Instructable.

Sixth image is from The Lost World.

Tạ Dọc Thân said:

Whether they knew it or not, Holnists were confronting a timeless problem. It is impossible to tell an audience what has happened without also influencing how they feel about it. – Media and Modern War

Notwithstanding the near-catastrophe of 1973, Israel and Iran more or less ran the Middle East table from the late twentieth century forward, acting in concert themselves, or with the United States, to blunt the ambitions of neighboring states.

In early 1979, the Shah was dying of aggressive cancer, and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein thought he saw an opportunity to meddle in the succession. But Iraq’s Intelligence Service was inferior to SAVAK in every way, and attempts to stir up pro-Communist sentiment failed, triggering an Iranian ground invasion that quickly gained the northern third of Iraq as a Kurdish homeland.

The U.N. spoke airily of experiments in national reconciliation, but retaliatory pogroms gripped the new Kurdistan Republic and two hundred thousand Iraqi Arabs fled its new capital of Mosul hot on the heels of the retreating Republican Guard. Among them was the extraordinary Essa family.

Awad Essa had been a conservator of manuscripts with the University of Mosul, but a vehicle wreck during the escape to Baghdad left him unable to work. Second son, Boualem, joined the army where he earned assignment to an air defense unit and trained under Soviet advisers sent to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces. Radar operators trained for three months in the Soviet Union, where Boualem saw his first computer, an Agat-7 micro-terminal.

Through black market trades, Boualem acquired an RCA Cosmo personal computer and a word processing program in the form of a ROM cartridge. Boualem’s son, Gulzar, built and rebuilt the machine for the year it took to buy writable memory, at which point the real work began: digitizing the text of centuries-old documents their family patriarch had taken with him into exile.

Patriotic feeling had run dry among Gulzar’s generation, and an uneventful conscription did not tempt him to make soldiering his career, but as a typist he made it onto a colonel’s staff. That colonel ran interference with the United Nations on behalf of his political masters, and from those diplomats of the Mongkut School, Gulzar learned of the opportunities available to the descendants of war refugees like himself.


To grasp hold of the future, Gulzar first had to cut ties with the past. Enormous bribes and genuine transit papers provided by one of Boualem’s former commanders took Gulzar northwest across the border into Mandatory Syria, then on a passenger flight to Marseilles, home of the United Nations Interlink.

Data services were the fiefdom of a Tạ Dọc Thân, a notorious martinet who used paramilitary language and stylings whenever his superiors were looking the other way. To Gulzar’s surprise, he was taught less about the fundamentals of database management or electronics repair than the politics of popular memory. Thân, he noticed, had a taste for length. No documentary was too long, no memo too detailed. He delighted in knowing things that other people did not and once explained to a packed classroom that Data Services existed not to determine what should be stored in Unity’s computer systems, but to know where to find what was.


Thân’s leadership aboard Unity was decisive. He knew his purpose: defense of the Data Core, and abdicated other duties in its favor. For terrified subordinates like Essa, it was the obvious choice: a leader committing to remain with his people when he was most needed. They would not attempt to respond to what was happening ship-wide, Thân explained, and would instead fall back to tending the only machine that really mattered. Whoever was left, they would surely perish without the fund of knowledge held fast in the Data Core.

Gulzar Essa killed his first man for Tạ Dọc Thân in the sixth hour of the Disaster. A Holnist broke into one of two electrical closets abutting Memory Hall ψ. From concealment, Essa shot the man in the side of the head and recovered his rifle. In the finest traditions of the Data Services Division, he organized the defense of his position under heavy duress until the enemy’s resolve flagged.

Brevet promotion followed, and once Planetside, Essa looked to reunite with the mentor he had come to idolize. Only then did he learn the terrible truth: the great man was dead and the Data Core lost—fallen, perhaps, into unfriendly hands. In Thân’s place was a lieutenant, Sathieu Metrion, with a problematical interest in second-guessing his dead master’s decisions.

Tạ Dọc Thân said:

A librarian is a field guide, not a creator, and certainly not a curator. There is no decision about what to take, only the most precise attention to where it will go. – Ancient Architecture

Sources:
Gulzar Essa is represented by Seth, a character from the first entry in the long-running Command & Conquer series from Westwood Studios.

Computer image is from IBM, included in this Business Insider article from 2016.

Forklifts picture is “research” by Darnok9 on DeviantArt.

Vyachisalv Kolchaiev said:

Our job is to do for thinking what Henry Ford did for the production of the automobile. - Fragments from the Joining

To find himself one of the Unity colonists was a disgrace for Kolchaiev, a decorated combat commander whose only "crime" was believing deeply in the correctness of Communist political doctrine at a time of political rapprochement with the West. To keep Kolchaiev from making common cause with more militant hardliners, the KGB allowed his emigration to Sudan.

Mercenarism being the highest form of fascist corporatism in his estimation, Kolchaiev kept himself fed by taking contract work with United Nations anthropologists attempting to preserve the cultures of crisis-afflicted populations. In 2068, Kolchaiev was recalled to the U.S.S.R. on the occasion of his son's death and handed his fate.

Kolchaiev's name is known to have appeared on several manifests used by faction leaders as divergent as Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov and Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal to sort out the choicest conscripts for their causes. In fact, he was made a Forward Controller by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida and oversaw the defense of Unity's reserve reaction mass. (The Holnist rampage was so beyond reason that one body of Santiago's people tried to dump the compartment and thereby throw the ship off-course, thereby to consign all its passengers to starvation or strangulation--whichever came first.)

Hard on the heels of the Survivalists, Roshann Cobb's people came looking for Kolchaiev. Proximity to an exploding grenade cost Kolchaiev one ear, one thumb, and, temporarily, his wits. When he woke, Kolchaiev found that the attending physician was none other than Dr. Aleigha Cohen.

Years passed. Too valuable to be wasted on a work gang, too dangerous to be traded carelessly away, Kolchaiev studied his captors and the technologies that enthralled them. Never partaking himself of lucid dreaming, Kolchaiev nevertheless joined the culture it spawned.

Members of the Joining communicated with one another by accessing a sequestered terminal in a storm-damaged agricultural research bay. "Aspirants," as they called themselves, agreed that perceptions and emotions as well as ideas and data should be shared as part of an intellectual commons. The purpose of Dreaming should not be the individual enlightenment supposedly sought by Cobb, much less personal amusement. The truest form of public service was participation in a mental collective that, once large enough, must outpace the University's innovation, predict market shifts more accurately than Morganite polysoftware, and even regulate the baser emotions of its own participants.

Sources:
Information Socialism, also called Nanosocialism, along with its fictional originator Kyle Porters, were introduced in Jan F. Zeigler's Transhuman Space: Fifth Wave, a sourcebook for the GURPS role-playing game system.

First image is "Hardcoding: Redshift Study" by Zaki on ArtStation.

Santiago Cabrera as Cristóbal Rios is our Kyle Porters.

Starling Dad is "Cyberpung girl portrait" shared by paisacrypto on reddit (r/midjourney).

Kolchaiev's picture is "World in Conflict-Soviet Assault, Cutscenes" by Miguel Iglesias on ArtStation, produced for UbiSoft.

Sarah Williams said:

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night - Datalinks

Sources:
First picture is "Lomonosov Venus Lander" by Mark Maxwell (1986) from David Hardy's Visions of Space (1989) on the Tumblr 70s Sci-Fi Art.

Second picture is "Mining colony apartment" by JamesCombridge on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "The Outer terrorities-Shipyard" by PeteAshford on DeviantArt.

Fourth picture is "north" by polosatkin on DeviantArt.

Commissioner Pravin Lal said:

As our ambitions elevate above petty survival, we ask ourselves: what sacred thing remains to spoil? How long before the water cannot be drunk, nor the earth tilled? - A Social History of Planet

Sources:
First picture is "Space" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Second picture is "Turbine" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Third picture is "Into the woods" by Rajanandepu on DeviantArt.

Sister Miriam Godwinson said:

Children and adolescents are a paradox for our mission. They offer the great danger of distraction while providing that which is indispensable: a promise of continuity. - Speech to the 76th World Congress of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child

Warden J.T. Marsh said:

Young, healthy, and fearless is a sometimes-fatal combination, but one to be savored. - The Lost World

Governor Oscar van de Graaf said:

If you ever think, 'I'm not tough enough for this,' just remember: you're still here. You've been tough enough every day until today. Why shouldn't you be tough enough tomorrow? - Manifesting Destinies

Sources:
First image is "Cyber Frankenstein" by Vladimir Manyukhin, discovcered on Instagram under the "Evil Design" account.

Second image is "Carefree," by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Sandy Road" by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.

Fourth image is "They told me I was gone" by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.

Fifth image is "Big Big Tree" by MCfrog on DeviantArt.

Sixth image is a still from Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997).

Seventh image is a still from Lost in Space (Netflix version).

Eighth image is a still from the MMORPG Ashfall found here.

Ninth image is "Details for wild west sci-fi colony 03" from a Tweet by Francis Goeltner.

Resocialization ("ReSoc") was the process by which Marines were made in StarCraft.

Datalinks said:

God is on the side of the big cannons. - Napoleon Bonaparte, Apocryphal

Sources:
First image is "X-Ray Tank" by Anton Tenitsky on ArtStation.

Second image is "Mjolnir" by KaranaK on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Troika" by jflaxman on DeviantArt. Biofuel idea is theirs.

Kleisel Mercator said:

Unless we learn to lift our sights, we already know our sinking fate. There is something inescapably true about Morgan's logic: nothing is ever big enough for sharing. - On Guard for Tomorrow

Sources:
First image is "artillery barrage" by 5ofnovember on DeviantArt.

Second image is actor Pierce Brosnan in "The Fourth Protocol."

Third image is "Relic" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Michael Hefferan, Steven Zale, and the Atherholt Group are creations developed in the Chronicles of Pre-Unity, a speculative fan fiction effort hosted on the defunct Alpha Centauri forums back in 1998. Hefferan is a creation of the user MikeH, while Zale and the Atherholt Group belonged to the user Octopus.

Colonel Ricardo del Moreno Aguirre said:

Exigency is the best argument of kings and cowards. - Defensa de la Justicia

Texas governor Frederick Anthem--he retained the old title even after signing a unilateral declaration of independence--launched simultaneous invasions of Oklahoma and Louisiana. From the first neighbor, he wanted more oil. From the second, control of the Mississippi River delta. Both, he thought, could later be traded for a promise of perpetual peace with the rump United States, but a proposal along those lines was rejected out-of-hand by President Katherine Detweiller.

The Texas Occupation of large sections of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana lasted more than three years. Finding he could not sell the assets back to their original owner, Anthem negotiated instead with a multinational corporation, Morgan Industries.

Reyes, made a captain in Texas service but demoted by the U.S. Army to private after the war, was briefly imprisoned at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar, receiving a pardon after two years as a beneficiary of general amnesty. She returned to Texas but found herself blacklisted by the American Reclamation Corporation and was therefore unable to obtain war recovery work. She became a Datalinks journalist, living hand-to-mouth before learning through an outlawed veteran's association about work in the Caribbean.

A Morgan Industries subsidiary, the Rook Corporation, hired Reyes as an Outbound Cargo Manager for the Quito Worldport. Rook furnished Reyes with forged credentials that saw her past U.N. Security Council safeguards on employment for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. She kept her superiors closely informed about the particulars of the fitting-out process and the manifests submitted to her care.

During the Unity Crisis, Reyes and fellow green-shirts made up part of the [/i]ersatz deck gang that prepared the Landing Pods used by Morgan and his followers. Although Reyes herself was taken aboard, she was given the unenviable task of denying access to additional survivors so that space would be available for additional pallets of undifferentiated cargo.


Servantism, also translated as "Service Attitude" in non-English-speaking contexts, was an intellectual movement influential among the armed forces of the world in the mid-twenty-first century. The movement's origins lie in the statements made by Reyes and other commissioned officers regarding their loyalties.

Servantism broke with the older, American articulation of civil-military relations rooted in the post-Revolutionary period and the emerging United Nations doctrines of public service, both of which tied themselves to formal written documents--the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, respectively. Indeed, American Servantists, many of whom were secessionists, argued that they had been punished for attempting to exercise the Duty to Disobey contemplated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, reflecting the inadequacy of the old system and the reality of its "subservience to special interests."

The new philosophy refused to take its cues from either the popular will of democratic majorities or common codes of principle and law. Majorities were fickle and the mob could be cruel. Centuries-old constitutions could not contemplate the problems of modernity. Courts were bought, or ideologically suspect. The fix, according to Servantist thought leaders like Corazón Santiago, was for officers to "be their own conscience." Servantists circulated recommended reading lists for officer enrichment containing works as diverse as Magna Carta Liberatum, History of the Peloponnesian War, the Conclave Bible, The Four Books and Five Classics, Das Kapital, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

Many armies forbane the profession of Servantism on grounds that it ran contrary to their creeds. In the Soviet Union, Servantists were often sent to the GULAG. Post-war loyalty oaths in the United States, Australia, Mexico, and Canada required adherents to explicitly renounce Servantism. Servantism survived in the liminal spaces on the map and, later, enjoyed a rebirth on Chiron, when large numbers of cashiered officers began working for sub- and trans-national organizations or ideologically-motivated factions without strong public service traditions parallel to those that had animated the national armies of which they had once been a part.

Disagreement about the legitimacy of Pravin Lal's claim to be the ranking mission leader fueled the deployment of Servantist rhetoric both as a genuine expression of belief and a cynical rationalization for resistance. The Struan's agent Carnaveron quoted Servantist logic on the Peacekeeping Forces faction datalinks in response to rebukes during public forums during his time as a guest-cum-prisoner at Warm Welcome. After the Fall of Xerxion, Servantists among the Spartan Federation, led by Santiago herself, eventually forswore the Holnists as morally unfit to practice their creed.


Sources:
Captain Victoria Reyes is Julia Reyes (played by Adira Arjona) from the film Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Second image is from the RPG Twilight 2000, sourced from the Black Gate.

Third image is another still of Pierce Brosnan in The Fourth Protocol.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Two moments when the system is most vulnerable: at the loading and unloading of tension. - Essays on Mind and Matter

Sources:
First image is an artist's depiction of Communicore at EPCOT Center.

Second image is Coruscant concept art by Ralph McQuarrie, discovered on the tumblr "Consumed by Star Wars Feelings."

Third image is "The Tunnel" by wonderlandartworks on DeviantArt.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf said:

Last month at their Headquarters, the U.N. marked survival. A solemn spectacle, if ever I did see one. This world does not require more solemnity. Here, we celebrate achievement. - Founder's Day Speech, M.Y. 2

Sources:
First image is "Cinematic Concept Art Mentorship Batch 02: Week 03 Demo" by Leo Avero on ArtStation.

Second image is "Steroid Pershing Tank" by Michael Kus on ArtStation. Madam Mim is the villan from 1963's The Sword in the Stone.

Third image is from the collection "Atomic vehicle" by artist Tomasz Nowak on ArtStation. Nowak credits an unnamed pinterest.com concept as his inspiration.

Factor Roshann Cobb said:

The fundamental problem of our species is that we are better-equipped to handle routine than choice. - Follow the White Rabbit

Popular mythology blames administrative incompetence and corporate malfeasance for most cases of colony death, but the historical record is replete with examples of self-immolation over social conflicts.

Unity's destruction at the hands of nihilistic sociopaths seeking only the emotional high of retribution itself was the retelling of an old story, preceded in history by both the Second American Civil War and the Copernicus City Riots.

In 2060, more than seven hundred people suffocated to death during a failed attempt to extort changes in healthcare policy by the Parilon Corporation, which managed the Copernicus ice-production operation on the Moon. Hoping that improved health outcomes would boost production by increasing morale, Parilon had rolled out a new policy in which biological organ replacement would be replaced by cybernetic implants. Notwithstanding scientific consensus that machine components were more reliable, less likely to be rejected by the patient's own immune system, and substantially more functional, workers reacted with a combination of terror and anger. A stunned board reversed the policy and called for mediation, but the original protest had too quickly merged into much broader, global disputes over the role of machines in daily life.

Work stoppages escalated into a hunger strike, then extortion. Human Front agitators arrived from Aldrin Circle with media, entered the Hab Complex, and fomented a campaign of sabotage, venting oxygen from storage. According to survivor interrogations, the saboteurs expected to force the notoriously risk-averse Parilon board into becoming their mouthpiece and hoped that the prolonged unrest at Copernicus would yield a bumper crop of new recruits to their cause. Instead, an unrelated shuttle accident delayed delivery of emergency supplemental oxygen and supplies could not be restored in time to prevent disaster.

These past traumas haunted Chiron faction leaders as they weighed the benefits and danger of ideological drift.


Before factions connected to the Planetary Datalinks, "awakened" colonists were often manipulated into believing there was nowhere to run.

Commissioner Pravin Lal famously agonized over how much information to disclose about the status of other societies. Charterists were a special problem. Those who had exacted generous terms from the likes of Struan's or the van de Graaf Expedition were naturally hopeful of improving their fortunes through escape or emigration, while the considerably larger population of indentured workers inclined toward the argument that preexisting contracts should not be enforced.

It was not unusual for faction leaders to collect and titrate Unity colonists, timing their reanimation for political propitious moments under cover of the claim that resource constraints discouraged adding new mouths to feed at present.


Choice of affiliation was a luxury available to only a small minority of Unity survivors.

Those with a tolerant attitude toward emigration included Academician Prokhor Zakharov, Sister Miriam Godwinson, and Game Warden J.T. Marsh. The University's situation was partly determined by the very high demands of patient care arising from widespread radiation sickness, which made it difficult to police desertion, and Zakharov's personal disinterest in the perceived challenge of assimilating "unsuitable perspectives" into his society. Santiago's mutiny and the failed shipboard security response fueled violent antagonism between the Engineering Division and Security Forces. Officers who should have led the faction militia instead were sequestered for their own safety, or sent out on long roving patrols from which they sometimes did not return. After a period of mere weeks, the Office of the Registrar proactively exiled a list of billets handed down from the Provost, including virtually all military and paramilitary functions. While he denied them more than token food and refused to give up any medical supplies--to the point of stripping crash kits from their vehicles--Zakharov otherwise let these unfortunates have the run of his warehouses so that they would make appealing new additions to other settlements.

For two days after Planetfall, Miriam Godwinson remained in a coma. Sympathetic followers had brought her along in their Landing Pod with the intention of offering a planetside burial. Immediately after Planetfall, dozens of survivors dispersed into the bush, most never to be seen again. Once recovered, Miriam's agenda contemplated no priority beyond mere survival, forestalling discussion of politics. Poor planning and failed harvests led to starvation conditions. When they showed up at the gates of rival settlements, Believers were more likely to complain of empty bellies than misinterpretations of Doctrine. Political malcontents showed themselves only later, as Miriam's intent to use faction resources to subsidize faith practice became more obvious.

Marsh appears to have decided on principle to give the Forward Contact Teams freedom of conscience, though the practical problems involved with enforcing his writ over such a mobile, self-sufficient, and self-directed workforce were much on his mind.


In the brutal and dubious tradition of the European Freikorps, the Hourglass Battalion, later reflagged with a corporate identity, Hourglass Services, was an association of Hypersurvivalist veterans of the Second American Civil War. Canadians, Americans, and Venezuelans predominated, with companies of Argentines, Australians, and Britons serving at various times in its history.

The unit's colorful history runs from its founding in Florida as the majority of that state's Independentist militia during the period of CSA courtship and incursions to the Central Intelligence Agency's cynical attempts at "rehabilitating" its members by involving them in the overthrow of the Cuban Communist government in 2061.

The hourglass badge was in the same vein as the old death's head symbol--a meaningful boast about the unit's ultra-reactionary ideological proclivities and, less-accurately, its battlefield élan.

Hourglass Survivalism was corporate in its sentiments, with less of self-aggrandizement behind so-called mainline Holnisms. "Hourglassers" wanted fascism--performative populist authoritarianism short on ideological consistency--in which they could have modest employment as hired guns by the repressive state. One FBI dossier accurately concluded that Hourglass Survivalism was a lifestyle more than a roadmap for law, although a super-majority of believers were highly skeptical of established power structures--academia, "science," corporations, and government.

Hourglass Battalion performance was markedly superior to that of Holnist volunteers in general. As a semi-professional military unit, it demonstrated unity of command and discipline levels usually lacking among irregular forces. Regular forces were never available in the desired quantity even after the Florida National Guard was back-filled with stay-behinds from dissolved federal units headquartered in the state, and Hourglass was often called to plug in the gap.

Hourglass prisoners were not eligible for the general postwar amnesty in the United States. Foreign-born members in Federal custody were deported, sometimes to face execution in "homelands" they could not remember, sometimes to be welcomed with open arms by U.S.-allied regimes that embodied their preferred ethos. About two thousand Hourglass participants in the successful Cuban venture were given a plane ticket to the non-U.S. destination of choice. Morgan Military Products employed several hundred in Peru. Canvassers for Corazón Santiago, still a big name in Florida survivalist circles, found and reconciled the old fighters to her cause.

A Chironian faction's destruction provided opportunities to map the ideologies prevailing among its members. Scattered after the Fall of Xerxion, the Hourglass Battalion held Santiago to blame for the faction's defeat and offered their services instead to Director Tamineh Pahlavi of the Human Ascendancy, who accepted.

At face value, the Hourglass Battalion's attitudes most closely tracked with those of L'État nouvel, though the Contre-amirale, famous for his formal denunciations of "robotic deviancy," drew a firm line at persecution that most Hourglassers were wont to cross, and the faction's strict speech codes, combined with St. Germaine's own ambivalence toward showmanship, would have cut against the mercenaries' taste for the politically dramatic.

Sources:
"Follow the White Rabbit" is a taunt from The Matrix (1999).

First image is is "Copernicus City" by AdrianMarkGillespie on DeviantArt, from whence I get the eponymous lunar city.

Second image is "Crash probe" by Fetscher on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Beyond The Horizon" by sulvijan on DeviantArt.

Fourth image is "Old spaceship," a piece of AI art by Leoncio22 on DeviantArt.

Fifth image is "Pitbull" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov said:

To militia, we say: Think first. Then shoot. - For I Have Tasted The Fruit

The mercenary was the freest person on Planet. Armed to travel, he roamed wherever the whistle of bullets beckoned and so became wise in cultures and experiences strange by comparison to his own. Fatted with pay awarded in preference to more reliable faction militia, he found welcome at nearly every trading house and drinking establishment without question as to his ideological convictions. His captains were courted assiduously by leaders of mythological stature, including several of the more severely reclusive variety, and on returning shared with him with political intelligence more comprehensive in it ways than was available to any probe team.


Strangers fighting for pay were trusted in preference to familiar Jeremiahs. Faction militia stood on guard for four types of hazard: that arising from nature, that brought by contact with other human factions, that caused by disputes within their own walls, and simple desertion. Once a body knows there is grass beyond the fence, he will seek it out on the mere assumption it is green.

Many factions paid trackers a percentage of supplies recovered from defectors. Reactions toward these so-called "quittists" ran everywhere towards violence. Faction charters frequently prohibited unilateral separation on grounds that it set too dangerous an example and was almost always accompanied by acrimonious disputes over scarce resources leading to general unrest and potential lynching.


Lancer Shellowa Strong, a decorated senior non-commissioned officer of the Spartan Federation and ringleader of the Tallow Conspiracy.

Conceived in a test tube, raised in a common creché and cast away early by her creators, Strong was an uncelebrated drone belonging to the Human Ascendancy before escaping a faction timber camp in MY14. A compass sewn into her togs provided direction to reach Cruesot Pass where she accepted water and food from the Children of the Atom.

She became wise to a Spartan patrol near Fort Montag, following for two days before announcing her intention to join them on the strength of having liberated herself.

Sources:
First image is "Razorback" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Stranded" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Lt. Hanover" by ObsidianPlanet on DeviantArt.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

The Boss said he would give me mealies, not information. That, my friends, is real power. - Golden Dreams, the Authorized Biography of Nwabudike Morgan

The data wheel was a mono-directional information-retrieval device used for mind-machine interface during the late twentieth century. Distinguishing components included a high-capacity tape reel and an electrode-covered stent ("stentrode") threaded through the circulatory system directly into the wearer's cerebral cortex.

Data wheels provided what their West German designer, neurosurgeon Konrad Diest, called rapid memory expansion ("RAME"). In layman's terms, the wearer could recall information stored on the tape reel as if it had been committed to their natural memory. Recall was near-instantaneous and consistently perfect.

Diest specialized in the care of patients with Alzheimer's disease. His intention was to make palliative care more effective by helping patients to access certain critical information such as their home address or the names and images of family members, but the applications for his data wheel far exceeded even those laudable ambitions. Industrial workers used data wheels to help them perform difficult work more safely. Militaries used data wheels to provide their elite soldiers with mission-specific information to increase survivability. By 2070, the data wheel was an ubiquitous presence in most knowledge-centered and high-risk occupations.

Although there is some evidence that use of data wheels resulted in the creation of durable trace memories in the wearer, both corporations and governments appreciated that knowledge transmitted by data wheel was perishable.

Given the number of skills and diversity of information necessary for an intersolar expedition, the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri stocked hundreds of thousands of data wheels and millions of tape reels.

Attitudes toward data wheels differed according to a society's relative comfort with cybernetics. Peacekeepers, Hivemen, Morganites, Children, and Tomorrowans embraced the data wheel as a valuable tool for work and learning. In University culture, the wheel was disdained as a crutch for lesser intellects, but many instructors used it to lecture rather than devote time to classroom preparation.

For some societies, tape control was an obsession. University Security, Corporate Security, and Dreamer militia regularly tossed citizens' habs for tapes--the University and Morganites to protect their ideas, and the Dreamers to limit access to exploitable dream records.

In the Ascendancy, use of data wheels was grounds to be sentenced to the Nerve Staple. Authorities in L'Nouvel Etat were skeptical of the data wheel, which diminished its public profile and therefore its private adoption.


"Hikes" were handheld personal microcomputers used to read and write to low-capacity data tapes. Hikes replaced data wheels in the hands of factions uncomfortable with mind-machine interface, the number of which grew over time as cybernetics took on nakedly political overtones.

Hikes was useful in ways that the data wheel was not, but the speed of learning and the fidelity of information transmission were exponentially less.

Sources:
First image is "Survivor 2" by fightpunch on DeviantArt.

On mind-machine interface and the stentrode, see this story in Wired magazine.

Second image is "Handheld C64," a 3D rendering by Cem Tezcan as seen on the indieretronews tumblr.

The Dark Glass said:

Only assessments of strong confidence (70% certainty) or greater are included in this product. - Yearbook of Chiron, M.Y. 21

Starting with the example set by J.T. Marsh, whose road crews provided support for other factions largely without discrimination during the moment of Planetfall, Chironian societies attempted to create markets for goods, services, and too often, people, for which they had no immediate purpose.

The Memory of Earth was one of many factions selling tailored intelligence products, though unlike the Dreamers and Morganites, they limited this offering to allies in good standing. This service was usually provided via The Dark Glass, a commercial venture named after a passage in the Second Testament of the Conclave Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Precisely where the Glass obtained its notoriously accurate information has never been answered. Leading theories include secret uplink to still-active Unity spotting devices, a primitive space launch capability that allowed the faction to sent aloft its own spying machines, intercepts of signals intelligence, and a large network of human assets. An investigation prepared by the Children of the Atom using their ZHANG LIANG Calculator concluded that the Projectionists must be working directly with other faction defense forces to produce the highly specific material handed on by The Dark Glass.

Annual reports, compiled under the signature of company president Alessandra Marković, formerly of the Yugoslav State Security Service, or UDBA, were mandatory reading for audiences as diverse as the Spartan High Command, board members of Morgan Industries, the Governor's aides in Terra Nova, the Tribal Command Council, and cadets of L'État nouvel.



Sources:
K Squadron is "Red Zone Rumble" by Karl Beiler on ArtStation, a piece of art based on the Command & Conquer franchise.

Second image is "Space Raiders" by Imad Awan on ArtStation.

Third image is "JGSDF LAV-25" by BeignetBison on DeviantArt.

Fourth image is "Swamp fort" by JuavT on DeviantArt.

Fifth image is a still from The Postman (1997).

Pahlavi's raiders are "Descent" by sekido54.

Train attack is "Contact - Aliens on a Train" by Shimmering-Sword.

Our Marković is Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster in Black Widow (2021).

The Great Beltan Power Station is "nuclear power plant" by Biubiubiu on ArtStation.

Perhaps the high gravity best explained Unity survivors' great enthusiasm for Laser League, a fast-paced sport combining elements of individual target shooting, team orienteering, and the child's game of laser tag. Exhausted to the point of immobility by the day's labors, oppressed by an alien gravity one-third greater than Earth's, workers saw their own aspirations for freedom of movement play out in the vibrant, coruscating ballet on their terminals.

The rules were simple. Competing teams of five, seven, or eight athletes used rocket packs and weak laster marking guns to play a game of elimination. One shot, one "kill." Five teams played the game simultaneously: blue, yellow, green, white, and orange. Gunners started singly in random locations on the gridiron behind hardlight barriers of their own color.

For each team on the field, there was a controller sequestered in a radio booth with full overhead view of the gridiorn. A controller's job was to supply route guidance, early warning, and tactical recommendations for their gunners, while also putting down shot-obstructing "hardlight" barriers between rounds. All team members sat the controller's chair twice in a season.

Hardlight was impassable for both gunners and their beams, but the gridiron's outer boundaries reflected light and could be used to bank shots. Barriers were reconfigured every three minutes, and again after each kill. The number of barriers available to controllers increased over time until the game's final rounds were fought in heavy cover. Barriers were laid in sequence. The controller of the last team to score a kill laid down the first segment, followed by the next team laying down the second, and so on. Teams tied in score were given a random order of precedence.

Games of Laser League took place at Entertainment Centers, glitzy, windowed successors to the drab gymnasiums and closely-supervised reading rooms of the First Generation. Drones were the main clientele, wont to lose themselves in drink and dance before ending the night on arcade games like Ski Free and High Noon. For a few credits more, they could also log into the Planetary Datalinks. Faction networks continued to be used for knowledge-sharing and commentary as before, but Chiron's World Wide Web soon came to resemble that of Earth: dominated by the production and reproduction of conspiracy. Leaders soon learned to distract their more restive elements by organizing team sports, played by semi-professionals, that could unite fans in the ecstasy and agony they would otherwise seek out on their own.

Laser League's appeal was broad and enduring. There was something for every taste. The game was played continuously in the Planetary Olympics from MY 96. Every faction supplied a team. Hive teams were big on sacrifice plays, rushing two flankers forward to distract and divide their opponents. Spartan and Morganite controllers devoted themselves to just one star player while the remaining gunners operated as "free agents" unencumbered by a common plan. Conclavists moved in cautious formations of two or three so that most contacts generated a prolonged firefight. The New Two Thousand played aggressively, thrusting hard in the early game when the burdens on the controller were still small. New Statists and Memorialists played defensively for time until surviving players could operate as a single fire team, clearing corners systematically.


More traditional pastimes certainly kept their luster. Chess continued to fascinate as a social game. University children were assigned chess problems beginning in the third form to stimulate spatial reasoning. Morganites gambled heavily on mahjong. Hunters organized races eagerly attended by their employers. These were actually overland expeditions intended to perform commercial tasks, but with the addition of a catchvid team, they became spectacle for viewers who were themselves too timid to stray "outside the wire."

Sources:
Inspired by the game Laser League by Roll7.

First image is from Disney's Tron (1982).

Second image is from Laser League.

Hardlight barriers are from Planetside 2.

Ski Free is an old computer game for Windows 3.0 released in 1990.

For every job that posed an unacceptable high risk of injury or death to a human, and many more that did not, the Unity mission designers arranged for a mechanical stand-in. Whether the settlers would deign to use them was another matter.

Robots like this British-built Carrington Mobile Systems Critical Response And Suppression Helpmate (C.R.A.S.H.) showed themselves valuable almost at once, performing duties as varied as firefighting, electrical fault detection, medical diagnostic testing, and cargo bay inventory monitoring.

C.R.A.S.H. unit characteristics were typical of Second Generation androids: vaguely humanoid configuration, multiple articulated appendages including lamp arm, articulated gripper, foam monitor, and hydraulic jacks. Just one minute after the micrometeorite impact, Unity's central computer dispatched fourteen hundred C.R.A.S.H. units ship-wide to conduct preliminary damage assessment.

This "Carrington C.R.A.S.H." clears a path to the bridge from the main cargo bays. Bridge sections are indicated by the vertical band of blue from floor to ceiling. The C.R.A.S.H. follows a path from the ship's main holds, indicated by the yellow reflective tape on the deck plating. The so-called ark was really a labyrinth. At the time the crew entered cold sleep, Unity remained unfinished. Responders trained on physical mock-ups of the ship's interior. They had never walked her decks.

For crew, to stray from the surety of the tape was to risk becoming lost without hope of reorientation. The ship was so large, call boxes had to be installed to supplement the colored deck traces. The idea was that lost workers would "call in" to Bridge, where, if the circuits had not been cut, they could receive assistance with navigation. But there could be no certainty about the path from "here" to "there." Following C.R.A.S.H. units was out of the question. The data tapes that spelled out their instructions were inaccessible from outside the cranial command module and they were unable to receive external commands. Instead, they worked to their own tune, following prearranged routes, solving only the problems imagined by their programmers--usually bit-rate workers whose many inevitable errors compounded with tragic results.

Debates over the role of robotic help played out across two distinct cleavages. The first cleavage concerned whether to use robots in any capacity. Hunters took the most reactionary line, followed by the Ascendancy, the New State, and the Gaians. All four factions practiced a philosophy eventually to become known as Conservationism around M.Y. 100, under which they sought to avoid incorporating certain "enervating" and "integrity-compromising" devices into their societies. The precise list of prohibitions varied, but the intent was always the same: to reduce opportunities to surrender routine tasks to machines, whether occupationally or intellectually. Speaking practically, Conservationism's hallmark was the absence of machine cybernetics or any technology made to compensate for human frailties. A Hunter would gladly use a radio, motor, or electronic navigation--technology judged not to impinge upon human prerogatives--while refusing an artificial limb replacement or to use a robotic assistant for camp tasks.

The second cleavage arose over the extent to which robots should be allowed to learn, such as through the iterative process enabled by polymorphic algorithms. Artificial intelligence and robotic companions designed to replace the human worker attracted considerable interest by some of the factions most certain of the individual: among the University, the Morganites, the Tribe, Dreamers, and Peacekeepers. Robots were tools, and better tools meant a better life.

Those with a darker outlook on human nature were more leery of trusting machines. Pilgrims, Spartans, Memorialists, Hivemen, and Conclavists speculated that their creations might one day betray them. Tomorrowans and the Children of the Atom were less concerned that they would one day lose control of their machines than that unfettered programmers could outrun their own expertise, inadvertently damaging their interests. Sathieu Metrion reminded his companions that the total number of known errors in the Data Core's machine code exceeded four hundred trillion lines. The accepted solution for "roboskepticism" was strict "disk obedience," limiting users' ability to reprogram their machines.

Sources:
Image is concept art from the Disney movie Black Hole by Robert McCall (d. 2010).

As his body began increasingly to fail him, so Academician Prokhor Zakharov's hunger for new knowledge grew. Already infamous as the Man Who Doomed Unity, Zakharov gained further notoriety for impatience. Scholarly ethics committees were told to concern themselves with unethical proposals "only to the extent that they might not work." Recklessness was his new watchword.

There were indulgences in Somnacin from which he had to be awakened by external defibrillation. One long walk through a fungal forest, made at the cost of three militiamen, ended when Zakharov cried out, "I can hear no song!" Seizing a flamethrower, he burned his way out. Another attempt to stimulate resonance activity involved detonation of three small mining warheads at ground level and a fourth in the sea. (This last was answered with bombardment of Hydrothermal Institute by New State pressure hulls.) Agritechs released a quarter-million bees from the tent apiaries of University Base, though without apparent effect. Over several months, a known polymorphic virus replicated on the faction network unchecked while Institute of Electrotechnology computer science students measured for sentience across forty-four indices. Progress on research ground almost to a halt faction-wide as findings were copied laboriously to data-tape and exchanged hand-to-hand. In M.Y. 30, rumor had it that two Ascendancy prisoners were vivisected while the Academician made dispassionate suggestions from the observation deck over the surgery.

The old man despaired of the inadequacy of his prosthetics: an oculus for the left eye, overcome by cataracts; a hoversled because doctors refused hip replacement under what they said were "unfavorable" conditions in which to perform such a complicated procedure; transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for vertebrae crushed during the hard landing. Attempts to grow new eyeballs in a wet lab with the help of stem cells were dashed by transcription errors in the retina. To keep his mind sharp while the rest ailed, the Academician carried on as many as forty games of chess at any one time, overriding the stern warnings of his own faction security to engage such adversaries as Morgan Industries CEO Nwabudike Morgan and Factor Roshann Cobb of the Dreamers of Chiron. Determination to preserve the best part of himself lured Zakharov toward the mind-machine nexus, though not before he inflicted permanent brain damage on a slave purchased from the Dreamers for the purpose of a "neural incursion," in which learning algorithms and stem cell therapy were deployed in tandem to attempt to colonize the victim's brain.

Sources:
Image is from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.

On the possible future of cures for blindness or eye damage, see this article.

The twentieth century bore witness to the state at its zenith, expressed in the war-, wealth-, and sense-making potential of the Great Powers and their Three Ideologies: fascism, communism, and democracy. In the Atomic Peace that followed World War Two, bureaucrats and their computers changed everything. The war had been a testament to the importance of political and industrial organization, lessons that continued to be applied with gusto. There were New Deals, Five Year Plans, Great Leaps, and Great Societies. Soviet and ex-Nazi science propelled Yuri Gagarin into space. American science carried Raia Muñoz to the floor of the Challenger Deep. The promise of Tomorrow was close within reach.

But the promises soured with time, as promises always do. The Bomb was dirty. And it was tempting. The soil began to fail. Cancers and birth defects reached epidemic levels. New wars, fought in minutes, wrecked such havoc as had never been known. The men in this equation were fallible, but now, easily replaced. Why pay a man of uncertain character or skill a steady wage when you could buy a robot tailor-made to do that same job instead? Computers were more than calculators, they were prophets, and anyone who rejected their dispassionate conclusions was a Communist or a Capitalist or a Splittist, or whatever people became when they refused to recognize the truth of something and chose to remain a slave to their own emotions.

Trust eroded. In Europe, the huddled masses longed for simplicity. In North America, dignity. In the Soviet Union, freedom. Early in the twenty-first century, the Hypersurvivalists revolted under the argument that a state provided nothing but trouble. Their effort was for naught. Decades of warfare simply made space for a new master, the corporation. Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. Corporations rewarded those who served them, true, but they were less willing than states to share their spoils, and, unlike the state-sponsored ideologies of yesteryear, corporate business plans did nothing to soothe the alienation of their beneficiaries.

This history, Tamineh Pahlavi and her followers knew intimately. Their point of divergence lay in the Eisenhower years, when machines were trusted only with tabulation, government was in the hands of responsible adults, and the worst ravages of the atom were as-yet unsuspected.

High up in their snow-bound mountain redoubts, management was reserved for the aged--those made wary by the honing blade of their own past mistakes. Pahlavi would let no callow youth lead her people on some doomed crusade. Robots were not made in the likeness of the human form, nor used for tasks that were easily performed by a human. Machines, she said, were incapable of resolving "the emotional component" of a decision. Then there were the breeding programs--efforts to restore the "natural progress" of the species using a population that had been mostly chosen for its superlative qualities and certified free of the defects that some thought would make natural population replacement impossible on Earth as soon as 2100.

Prototypical Ascendancy citizens came from the politicized sciences--rocket bureaus, technical ministries, and federal laboratories--or the allied professions of the Administrative State. The purpose of science was not to know, but to control. Likewise, the purpose of governance was not to advance the general commonwealth but to execute a particular agenda of empowerment for those best-fitted to rule--not because of a cultural bequest, as in L'École nouvele, but according to their intellect and education.

Pahlavi played a hard game. The Ascendancy was notoriously paranoid and aggressive. She wanted captives to fuel her eugenics work and relieve the burdens on her scientists, and the safety that is possible only when one's neighbors have been wiped out.

Sources:
Our Pahlavi is actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, Secretary Avasarala from The Expanse.

Mortens Andersen said:

In a word, brutality. - Datalinks, excerpt from a discussion with Staunton Communications on the life of Nwabudike Morgan

Shortly before his death during a botched surgery in July 2066, conflict journalist Mortens Andersen gave an exclusive interview in which he discussed the major themes of his latest book, a biography of the world's richest man, Nwabudike Morgan.

He was not a celebrated inventor either of products or business models. Gun-running had been a venerable profession for centuries by the time he first came along. As managerial geniuses went, there were many ahead of him in line. The strategic missteps that saw his companies take up the part of blatantly weak and broadly unpopular secessionist movements have occupied many volumes in the discipline of failure studies. Nobody in his own time was particularly interested in what Nwabudike Morgan had to say about the performance of specific funds or the future of particular commodities. What most set Morgan apart--what Andersen said made it possible for him to reach the pinnacle of material success--were his willingness to do unto others what others had previously done unto him, and his lack of any firm obligation to a government that could have moderated his behaviors.

Andersen explained the reason for Morgan's success bluntly: he was a sociopath incapable of empathy. Was that not the root cause of enduring public fascination with his infamous response to appeals for the plight of refugees or environmental conservation? "Why?"

At first, Westerners saw what they wanted to see. American Central Intelligence mistook Morgan's interest in the displaced Igbo population of Nigeria as a "weakness for the underdog." The vehemence of Soviet denunciations of Morgan's early ventures convinced Morgan's boosters that the Young Buccaneer had a well-deserved place in the firmament of ideological allies of market capitalism alongside Pinochet, Park, Tshombe, Protokev, and Diem. When Morgan turned on his Chadian paymasters, they dismissed the coup as fair play in a faraway land where the rules were supposedly different. Comfortable in their unexamined racism, they changed the channel.

In independent Biafra today, public buildings are named in Morgan's honor. School children are taught that his ingenuity helped to make possible their present safety and security. The government insists that Morgan came out of a kindred sense of duty to another oppressed people. Speaking to an authorized outlet years after his first visit to wartime Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Morgan remembered the experience very differently. The Nigerians already had suppliers in the form of the British and Soviets. They weren't interested in the third-hand relics Morgan had to hand--stockpiles of old hand weapons captured from rebels by Portuguese Flechas. He sold to the Biafrans because they were willing to take his low-quality product. And he later hired Biafran veterans "because they were in Port Harcourt, and so was I," when the next opportunity came from Chad.

Morgan earned his fortune by making deals that others would not. Both the CIA and the KGB relied on him to conduct assassinations and prisoner rendition. The Sahara became ground zero for new Cold War intrigue. Spies rubbed shoulders with buyers acting on behalf of warlords, narco-terrorists, and the "temporarily displaced" ruling elites of nations suffering through "periods of unfortunate revolutionary transition." There were three places one could go to see the rich and famous: Hollywood Boulevard, Walt Disney World, and L'avenue du 10 Octobre in N'Djamena, where it was popular knowledge that Morgan housed a parliament's worth of down-and-out leaders hoping to fall into the means to finance their political resurrections. In the mid-2040s, two successive American presidents resigned in disgrace after special counsels discovered that both had paid the New Adventures Corporation, a Morganite holding company, to send mercenaries to fight in the war between Egypt and Sudan, violating a Congressional amendment.

"What's lacking throughout," Andersen insisted, "is any trace of concern about the consequences for others." More than once, Morgan claimed to have implicated others in his own thefts from the Namibian diamond pits he worked as a youth. His company's take-over of Chad, sometimes interpreted as a form of comeuppance by hagiographers, involved assumption of ownership for national resources, but not acknowledgement of any obligation to govern. Morgan's mercenaries and allies defended the towns in which they were interested but stood by as the remainder of the country fell into chaos. Eventually, Libya and Sudan shouldered their way into territory that Morgan was then happy to sign away--as if it had been his responsibility after all. Pride in his reputation for supplying clients with only the most effective operatives didn't keep Morgan from signing untrained criminals and refugees to fill billets in Texas, Missouri, and the Christian States--a situation brought about by the unwillingness of properly-informed people to take up the secessionists' flagging cause, he said. Leaked board room audio reveals that Morgan Industries executives laughed upon being told their deception was convincing. These were conflicts Morgan didn't especially care about winning. Morganite unit commanders were forbidden from coordinating across state lines because the clients hadn't thought they should have to pay for the privilege.

Morganite operations in Spanish Peru reveal the full nihilism of Morgan's take on the Human Predicament. Within just five years, virtually the entirety of the Peruvian Amazon was clear-cut to open range for cattle. A few dozen conservation and pleasure domes were built to advance pharmaceutical research and ecotourism.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

Conservationism is of no concern; after all, you have just told us Earth is dying. - Morgan responds to his critics on "Roundtable," a production of Track Eight News

Morgan is happy to spin his attitude as a sublime philosophy. His favorite tactic is to question his interlocutors. Why should Morgan be asked to do the work of caring about humanity when there is nobody to help him do it? Even if he were to try, he would fail for want of help. It is just a tactic to distract him while others put themselves first--which is their right, of course. Appearing twice in absentia before Congress, Morgan fulminated against being denied the right to do business in the Restored United States over his role in their civil war, arguing that the country's historical commitment to free enterprise made it necessary to conscience his return. "Regulation is simply another word for fear of freedom," he said. It should not be up to governments or their cronies to decide what was best for people--they could do that themselves through observation. (This extreme take, echoing the anarchic strains of Holnism, was no longer as well-beloved by Americans after their prolonged bloodletting.) When called to account for his part in the arms trade, Morgan wrapped himself in Luttwakian Ethics. Some things were worth fighting for--and, if so, deserved to be brought to a swift conclusion, if only so that the warring parties could reassess their willingness to keep it up.

On Planet, Morgan used the lure of Hedonism to build and sustain his empire. To do this, he held himself out as a dissenter from the campaign of self-sacrifice "waged over the last six generations." What had the market socialisms, "compassionate" conservatisms, and Communist dictatorships really done for Earth but ushered it unhappy to its demise? Perhaps, as inevitable victims, they ought to have instead eaten a fine last meal, savored a last cigarette? It was an easy leap for those too shell-shocked to give any more of themselves on behalf of the mission. Work hard, Morgan said, and you will be allowed--even encouraged--to play hard. Corporate guardianship had been common enough on Old Earth. Governments could be fickle, but businesses, at least, had a reputation for single-mindedness. At least there would be comfort and consistency.

Morgan used the stick and carrot for motivation and imposed few expectations beyond the generation of value in terms of energy credits. Safety margins were worse than those in the Human Labyrinth, which at least recognized that a human life was worth precisely the output of its thought and labor. The politics was very bad. Since failure meant seizure of one's assets by creditors--up to and including one's future labor--the competition was exceptionally intense. Theft, sabotage, and intimidation were acceptable business practices. Without regulation, many inadvertently drank, gambled, or otherwise signed their freedom away without ever intending to do so. To buoy spirits, the availability of drink, drugs, and distractions was pushed to its limits. Six hours of labor for seventeen of pleasant numbness. Morgan himself was surprised by the number of people for whom these arrangements were seemingly acceptable, a placebo for the superior fulfillment they doubted they could get in service to other causes.

Capitalism was just a buzzword to Morgan. A free market was indeed supposed to reward good ideas naturally as customers adjusted their behavior to pursue more of what they liked. But, contrary to Morgan's assertions that an economy was most free when governments exercised restraint--the freedom to exploit, Andersen called it--no healthy market could endure without active monopoly-busting. The vision Morgan sold his adherents was a lie. Morgan had no qualms about engaging in market-distorting behavior if it was to his own advantage.

Sources:
Picture of Morgan is a Midjourney AI creation made and shared on the AlphaCentauri sub-Reddit by user Gold-Ad-8211.

Morgan's second quote, along with his take on the rainforest is from an alternate history work by RvBOMally, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri," on DeviantArt.

Calling his musings Seed Theory, Roshann Cobb began at age fifteen to propound the idea that he was a prisoner of coping mechanisms he scarcely understood. "Less than the sum of my traumas," he wrote in a Business Organizer purloined from his father's office.

He smoked opium cigarettes and drank wine without knowing why they appealed to him. Started fights for no better reason than the mood struck him. Found himself placing bets on chess games he already knew he would throw. Confounded by the complexity of his own case, the adolescent Cobb chose an easier study: his father, Tai-Pan Ian Dunross Struan.

There were similar cracks in the allegedly brilliant facade. He was the notoriously jealous master of a multinational conglomerate without ever being able to exert order in his own household. Made and broke eight marriages despite a decades-long and very public infatuation with the same mistress, placing his financial holdings in jeopardy each time. Alienated each of his four legitimate and twelve illegitimate children to the point that several were institutionalized and one attempted to stab him. That last, he shot dead in self-defense.


With this new perspective in hand, Cobb fit his hypothesis to other contexts: industrial accidents brought on by failures of organizational culture, such as the failure of Ice Binder One at the mouth of the Isidis Basin on Mars; public health crises exacerbated by the performative medical obscurantism of well-educated politicians; even the selection process for United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri prime contractors. The results overwhelming supported the existence of the Collective Unconscious, a mental schema of preferences, phobias, and logical defects common to every member of the human race.

Cobb's great desire was to create a taxonomy of the mind--a master reference to filter the personal from the impersonal. Here is what it means to dream of falling, to obsess over danger, to profess faith in something intangible. Without this work, Cobb predicted that the Unity survivors would merely repeat the mistakes of previous generations.

Factor Roshann Cobb said:

For how can I know you if our common ancestors keep getting in the way? - White Rabbit's Refuge

The role of genetic inheritance and the large size of the data sets necessary to make his proofs caused Cobb to take special interest in the Human Ascendancy and the Children of Chiron. Collaboration with Pahlavi came naturally: both societies were comfortable with slavery and, lacking for alternatives, it was convenient that the two should make common cause. Anhaldt, on the other hand, extended the services of his data-techs only as a victim of extortion.


Most of Cobb's research was self-contained within base intranets. The faction never developed a Datalinks. Although the Tomorrow Institute is known to have made several failed attempts to obtain Cobb's research notes via Probe Team insertion, it is not even certain the material survived the Factor's capture by Pahlavi after the two leaders fell out.

Better-attested is the passion with which Cobb revisited his earlier thinking after Pahlavi removed him from the Punishment Sphere, a "cure" she claimed had broken the prisoner of his addictions. Cobb was disturbed to find significant differences between the brain activity of first- and latter-generation colonists, a trend broken only among captive Hivemen.

Sources:
Young Roshann Cobb is "Somebody go tell Andy he is smoking again" by Lidiash on DeviantArt.

Actor Pierce Brosnan is our Ian Dunross Struan, a character from James Clavell's Asian Saga.

RDUs are "Retro Robot Prints" by JubbenRobot on DeviantArt, inspired by Forbidden Planet.

HMS Vanguard, last of a breed, photographed at Port Faud, Israel, in 1977. Laid down at the start of the Second World War in October 1941, she received her commission only in May 1946, but served the Royal Navy for sixty years thereafter.

Many a Prime Minister wanted her struck from the Navy list and broken up for low-background steel but the Foreign Office found it convenient to "send a battleship" wherever appreciation of British prerogatives or the safety of British nationals was in doubt. Vanguard was present for the first half of the Malayan Emergency, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967-70 Biafran Crisis, and the 1982 Falklands War. On campaign in the South Atlantic she was struck twice, aft and amidships, by Exocet missiles, courtesy of Argentine Super Étendards. Both hit above the water line and one was totally defeated by her armor.

Over the course of her very long service life, Vanguard lost three of her four 15" turrets, half her 5.25" turrets, and nearly all her remaining Bofors guns to make provision for Seawolf missiles and Royal Marine Commandos. (When called up for Operation Corporate, Bofors and Oerlikons were hastily cut from museum ships to bulk up her antiaircraft capability.) In 2040, HM Government admitted that Vanguard had sometimes sailed with five-kiloton nuclear artillery shells, although it was categorically denied that any were issued for Corporate. The battleship never fired its big guns in anger again after Malaya. In the Falklands, her role was primarily as an armored decoy and accommodation ship for general staff.

Boiler trouble discovered in March 2001 finally put paid to Vanguard. She was decommissioned in February 2002 and sold for scrap. The breakers took her under tow to India but she foundered coming into the yards and partially sank in rough waters not three miles off the coast. There she remained, a popular target of photographers and gulls, until 2048, when a recovery fleet sent by Morgan Marine re-floated the hulk and shuttled it back across the Arabian Sea to Üroan, an unrecognized secessionist state huddled in the shadow of Puntland. Huge sheds hid the hull from view for more than three years. (In Washington, the British ambassador was obliged to make repeated assurances that there was nothing of special interest left aboard, though it was properly understood that the hull was being stripped for armor to use on another warship.)

An American ballistic missile submarine, Rhode Island, bombarded the island with eight submarine-launched cruise missiles. Pentagon brass were horrified when at least two were shot down by land-based point defenses. Close reconnaissance was impossible, but satellite photography suggested a kill: at least five of the missiles hit their target. It was a decoy.

The life-extension package didn't come near to restoring the ex-battlewagon, now rechristened Surger, to its former glory, but as a poor man's cruiser, it had huge capacity for parasite craft and, because of its tonnage and power plant, was an overmatch for anything short of a capital ship. Morgan Industries used it as a mothership for "anti-piracy" and customs enforcement operations.

Senior Morgan Emergency Services rescue-techs on Honua Station remembered their time aboard Surger well enough to regale Unity trainees with stories about hours spent trying to staunch leaks in the Surger's hull. Apparently, she was never fully watertight again after her long soak off India. Many of the principles the Morganites applied to make the battleship serviceable again were applied aboard Unity, including installation of quadrupally-redundant generators.

France is an idea. France is progress. France is stubborn. As Unity left the Sol System, France was still synonymous with political erraticism, fashion, haute cuisine, automation, civilian use of nuclear energy, and, less salubriously, colonial repression.

France spent the twenty-first century attempting to unwind the long diminution of its political, cultural, and economic relevance during the nineteenth and twentieth. This meant bloody attempts to retain the crown jewels of its old colonial empire and refusal on principal to integrate with political and economic initiatives not of its own making.

Results varied. French ambitions exceeded French resources. Until the mid-1960s, France was essentially a pensioner of the United States and a junior partner to Great Britain in ham-fisted attempts to reassert European prerogatives in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Despite some success, this humiliation was too much to bear, and, starting as early as 1958 under the leadership of war hero Charles de Gaulle, France began to chart the independent and often-hypocritical course in world affairs that his many less-talented successors would follow for another hundred and fifty years.


Politically, France succeeded in retaining Algeria, much of Lebanon (divided with Israel), and most of Indochina. A combination of American bombers and gifts of tactical nuclear weapons salvaged major blunders at Điện Biên Phủ, but the wayward colonies remained bleeding ulcers, atrociously expensive to pacify and severely divisive at home. Student riots and labor strikes became a semi-permanent feature of life in continental France, so common they reshaped the work week and dictated train schedules. Workers received automatic time off because employers could not prevent their attendance at demonstrations. White settler populations grew explosively from the mid-twenty-first century as rising sea levels in Europe made emigration to war-torn colonies more attractive, and together with ex-servicemen and local garrisons, formed a power bloc that French presidents crossed only at their mortal peril.

This great inversion of power tempted politicians to use all three subjugated nations in ways they would not have used their own. Southern Algeria and French Polynesia became testing grounds for the French nuclear weapons program. In 2030, the DGSE sabotaged Friendship Station Nam Đinh in North Vietnam, which melted down unexpectedly at the cost of eight hundred thousand lives. Ecological advocate Deirdre Skye explained this cruel dynamic to tens of millions of readers for the first time in 2059:

Deirdre Skye said:

The more they were victimized by the decades of atomic fallout caused by tests and by war, by the countless industrial accidents encouraged through weak regulation, by environmental travesties inflicted through the utter carelessness of their colonial masters, the greater was their dependency on the administrative and logistical powers those same masters refused to let them build for themselves. This was the essence of colonialism. We would beat them until they cried out for us. – The Eden Thesis

After a period of post-war adjustment in the mid-twentieth century, the gross domestic product of France consistently ranked fifth or sixth globally. Led by strong energy, agricultural, recycling, and heavy manufacturing sectors, the French economy was diverse and its workforce highly skilled. Behind the two superpowers, France was third in the sale of defense products. Behind the United States and Japan, French firms vied with those of India for third place in the sale of consumer electronics equipment. French automakers Renault, Peugot, Panhard, and Citroën had a stranglehold on the African and South American markets.


Influenced by both national chauvinism and socialist deputies, French economic policies were blatantly protectionist. Foreigners paid dearly for access to French markets, and mercantilist policies turned Algeria, Indochina, Lebanon, and later, Quebec, into captive markets for goods and services made in France. In the late 1970s, France developed its own telephonic, videotex intranet service, the Minitel, never fully embracing the World Wide Web.


The Minitel preceded the Web and, until 2005, offered considerably more functionality to its users for lower cost, including directory services, transportation scheduling, mail-order shopping, library services, games, and chat. To encourage wider adoption of the Minitel, the French government distributed terminals at its own expense in campaigns that reached every corner of the Union. Similar gifts were made to French allies. The scheme was remarkably profitable after factoring in savings from reductions in print services, physical mail delivery, and the use of live operators. The government was deliberate in courting potential opponents of the Minitel, especially newspapers, which received preferential treatment on the service.

Eventually, the Minitel’s capabilities were surpassed by the World Wide Web both in terms of data speeds (served by dedicated lines rather than coterminously with voice traffic) and application variety. Nevertheless, the French government resisted encroachment of “foreign” services and successfully leveraged the monopoly status of the Minitel to charge “extortionate” fees to foreign entities seeking an entree into France’s territoire électronique via the Web, which they required to be done via the Minitel. One legacy of the Minitel is that France was essentially behind a firewall. Thus, the country suffered considerably less than other developed countries during the decade of Global Information Purges beginning in 2017.

Culturally, France was safe in the hands of Élodie, Minister of Culture for three presidents, who organized for France on the Minitel an exhaustive database of language, genealogy, art, literature, music, cuisine, and national mythology that provided the pattern for the subsequent U.N. effort to index the cultural heritage of the Earth. Élodie called her achievement La Note.

France naturally resisted the creation of the European Common Market, both from fear of competition and to discourage the success of another forum in which Britain or West Germany might press their respective national interests. To get a run in on its neighbors, France was a leader in detente, the systematic reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union, and became the major pipeline for passing western technology through the Iron Curtain. In return, the Soviets cancelled, withheld, or reduced their traditional support for insurgencies and client regimes active in French colonies.

In international politics, France quit NATO. Paris refused to contemplate nuclear test bans. France also put itself forth as the patron-of-last-resort for reactionary regimes from Pretoria to Taipei and intervened aggressively in Saharan Africa under the pretext of responsibility for its former colonies. During the Burst Wars of the 2040s, Foreign Legionnaires parachuted down to preserve French-aligned governments in Mali and the Central African Republic in the face of pressure from Morgan SafeHaven. A proposal to reconstitute French Equatorial Africa (ostensibly as a bulwark against corporatism) went nowhere, however.


Without success, France attempted repeatedly to assume leadership of the Non-Alignment Movement, which it hoped to bulk up into a counterweight against the United Nations. This courtship was ill-fated: as an inveterate imperial power, France lacked the credibility to speak for nations that themselves were only recently liberated and wanted no part of the kind of neo-colonialism in which France unreflectively trafficked.

French domestic politics was famous for its oscillation between Socialists and Conservatives (Republicans). Socialists predictably opposed automation and favored detente with the Soviets while conservatives took opposing views. The French remained notoriously sensitive about their country’s relevance in global affairs, and proud of the manner in which they have navigated between the Scylla and Charybdis of Cold War alliances while at the same time adapting to the inundation of more than ten percent of European France’s total landmass. (Rising sea levels also claimed large swaths of populous northern Algeria and southern Indochina.) Frenchmen also credit themselves for the continued survival of pariah regimes in South Africa, Israel, Rhodesia, Biafra, and Taiwan.

Traditional Survivalism didn’t get much traction in France even among the colons, who frequently shared the Holnist’s taste for machismo, violence, and the politics racial grievance but preferred to suborn rather than fight the government and its all-important ministries—the best guarantees, they knew, of their precarious livelihoods. Nevertheless, revanchism gripped the French, manifesting in land-grabs on behalf of “oppressed” French-speaking minorities in Wallonia, Switzerland, and Riviera Italy during the chaos of the Floods.

Unsurprisingly, France played a major role in the Second Crisis of Québec Secession, running diplomatic and media interference for the separatists and their excesses. French companies and French intelligence helped get weapons to FLQ fighters. After Quebec gained its negotiated independence, France organized the referendum that resulted in its accession to the shambolic Union as an “independent” member. Quebec Francophones were happy to participate in this arrangement, and France soon nationalized Canadian and international firms resident in the ex-province, which became a cockpit of railroad and aerospace manufacturing. A majority of those who left France as refugees from flooding resettled in Quebec.

The French military was well-respected. The French soldier was tough, innovative, and above all, daring. The French were acknowledged experts in counter-insurgency warfare. France made its military equipment available on liberal terms to virtually any buyer. It did a brisk business with the Portuguese, Israelis, Argentines, and South Africans.

The Force de Frappe, France’s nuclear strike assets, consisted of land-based tracked and rail launchers and submarine-carried nuclear missiles. (France’s three aircraft carriers could arm their strike fighters with nuclear missiles, but were not officially considered part of the Force, which remained a dyad.)

French intelligence had a hair-raising reputation the world over. The DGSE took on the role of extortionist, applying the necessary “incentives” for smaller countries to play within the boundaries set out by the politicians in Paris. French spies were killers, it was said, and could be hired to carry out the dirty work of shahs, board executives, and even the Soviet Politburo.

France’s very active space program was based at Korou in French Guyana and in the Algerian desert, with lesser operations in French Polynesia and leased facilities in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville). In 2002, construction commenced on a space elevator in French Guyana that contributed to the construction and fitting out of U.N.S. Unity. Though a founding participant in lunar settlement (a domed French Quarter is among the very few charms of Verne City), France focused mostly on “downward-looking” space applications via satellite operations, including deep ocean mapping.


French support for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri peaked in the 2040s, waxing as American focus was diverted to war at home, but many French politicians still viewed the project as a constant and painful reminder that there were other more potent actors than they on the world stage. France charged the U.N. heavily for access to its space launch infrastructure.

Two French mega-corporations, the Groupe Aéronautique Degére (GADE) and manufacturer of prime movers, Former Ciel, were major sub-contractors on the Unity Project, together employing a workforce of almost 90,000 in Earth and space.

The major French “bequests” to the Mission were a large stock of surplus hand weapons (mostly ex-American) left over from its colonial wars and tens of thousands of older Minitel terminals for connection to Network Nodes.

Sources:
French paratroopers picture is from a History Channel website article on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Picture of future Paris is by French company Vincent Callebaut Architectures, shown on archdaily in an article by Holly Giermann.

"Starscraper" name and picture are from "Starcraper #1" by miggysmallzxd on DeviantArt.

Desert cathedral is "Arizona Arcology - Earth That War" by nixoninevile on DeviantArt.

Picture of French troops in Mali is by Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times.

Verne City picture is from this article by Joshua Hawkins on BGR.

The character of Élodie was created by Strategos' Risk/MysticWind.

Stims were mildly narcotic stimulants used as performance-enhancers. They were chemically simple. Primary ingredients included caffeine, Ibuprofen, and epinephrine. Stims were popular among military and space professions.

A stim was injected sub-subcutaneously using a single-use pneumatic auto-injector about the size of an adult thumb. The injection was suitable for delivery through capillaries and could therefore be applied to almost any portion of the body.

The expected primary users of stims among mission staff were emergency and security personnel. Stims were Class 2 equipment, issued personally to all crew for their lock boxes and included in all medical, emergency response, and survival kits.

Stims were habit-forming. Stim addiction was a disqualifying trait for mission personnel recruited by the United Nations. According to the World Health Organization, nearly all users of higher-grade narcotics also abused stims.

Private manufacture of stims was very common, especially by teenagers and spacers. Modification of stims was treated as a serious crime by most judicial systems.

Hallmarks of stim addiction included eye mydriasis, episodic hypertension, insomnia, constipation, and heart arrhythmia. After extended use, side effects included visual, auditory, and tactile exclusion, creating a sharp cliff of diminishing returns.

Because of disparities in the supplies accessible to different factions before Planetfall, med-techs rarely had the medicines necessary to treat the many traumatic injuries afflicting their patients, nor any way to manufacture them. Stims were a popular, albeit minimally effective, treatment for chronic pain.

Factor Roshann Cobb of the Dreamers of Chiron suffered from addiction to stims.

Stims were a part of the culture of many factions. Stims could be obtained from vending boxes at most University bases, though their public use was limited to academics (drones were considered less-responsible). Stims were paid out as an accompaniment to wages by the Dreamer faction, which produced them in bulk. Morganite overseers were trained to dispense stims to any worker that met their daily quotas. They were available on a complimentary basis on the gaming floors of company casinos. Mercenary outfits expected stims before fighting.

Leaders in the Ascendancy, New State, Gaians, Hunters, and Conclave inveighed loudly against stims, which they saw as antisocial, though they were popular with Hunter road crews and New State mariners. Colonel Corazón Santiago seized stims when she could and openly punished those who used them. The Human Hive outlawed them altogether.



Sources:
First image is "Stim Pack" by karlavaggio on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Future Nightlife District" by ClaudioPilia on DeviantArt.

Commissioner Pravin Lal said:

Like the stunned womanizer who promises change only after his much-abused lover has at last begun to collect her things, they realized the fullness of their mistake. - What We Left Behind Us

Sources:
First image is "Gone Astray (to the stars) by aerroscape on DeviantArt.

The Anti-Ozymandias Protocol was a faction designed by Cetashwayo for the forum-based mega-game "An Unraveled Tapestry" on SufficientVelocity.

Second image is "FUE Soviet Space Station" by MeckanicalMind on DeviantArt.

Third image is bridge art for the Nostromo from Alien, artist unknown.

Sister Miriam Godwinson said:

We did not require to be told the obvious--that once the apple is plucked, it can never be restored to the tree. - On the Nature of Progress

The atom bomb was used again in anger after the Second World War. Taking advantage of its strategic bomber force, the United States used atomic weapons against the North Koreans and Chinese four times in 1950 and 1951. Central Intelligence Agency pilots of the American Civil Air Transport program dropped a small atom bomb on Viet Minh forces in early spring 1954, inadvertently dooming much of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to radiation sickness but lifting the siege on the French base at Dien Bien Phu. The Iraqi Republican Guard detonated an atomic device in Khorramshahr in 1980 during Saddam Hussein's unsuccessful invasion of Iran, with ruinous consequences for the Shatt-al-Arab. (The Imperial Iran military easily shouldered aside Saddam's troops, temporarily occupying Baghdad and prizing away Kurdistan for their trouble.) Pakistan and India traded nuclear salvos during the 1991 Kargil Conflict, an exchange that by some estimates eventually cost the lives of a half-billion people and rendered Gujarat, western Rajasthan, and Sindh essentially uninhabitable. What is believed to be a domestic terrorist partially detonated an atomic device in Seattle in 2051 during the Second American Civil War.

Proliferation, though worrisome to the Great Powers, was widespread. In some cases, patrons assisted their clients to a bomb. The British helped its Commonwealth allies Canada and Australia to find their way to the Bomb. The French underwrote much of the Israeli program, and the Israelis, in turn, assisted the South Africans and the Taiwanese. Spurred by Soviet adventurism in other theaters, the United States quietly helped Communist Yugoslavia grope their way into a deterrent much later. Independent regional powers like India, Pakistan, Argentina, and Iran developed atomics as the bluntest sort of insurance against their traditional adversaries.

There was no convention against the militarization of space, a problem unmoderated except by cost. (As of 2071, only the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are known to have troubled themselves.)

The atomic powers and their dates of accession to the "Club":

• United States of America (1945), now the Restored United States of America
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1949)
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1952)
• French Fourth Republic (1960)
• Canada (NLT 1963)
• Commonwealth of Australia (NLT 1963)
• People's Republic of China (1964), now Empire of Golden China
• State of Israel (NLT 1973)
• Republic of India (1974)
• Federal Republic of German (1975)
• Republic of China (Taiwan) (1979)
• Iraqi Republic (1980) [believed to have been provided by the U.S.S.R.]
• Portuguese Republic (NLT 1986)
• Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1987)
• Republic of Argentina (NLT 1988)
• Republic of South Africa (NLT 1989)
• Imperial State of Iran (NLT 1992)
• Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (2002)

Fission is the primary method by which electrical power is produced worldwide. Most military equipment is powered by nuclear reactors or fission batteries. Most space propulsion is by the nuclear pulse method.

Government trade agencies regularly detonate "commercial-scale" bombs in support of mega-projects around the world, especially in the western United States, Africa, and South America.

Major commercial nuclear and radiation accidents, defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as events involving damage to reactor cores and significant radiation release, occurred at an average rate of three per year in the United States and Canada, starting with an explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls in 1961 running through 1970. Domestic extremism in the United States prompted a reassessment of power system security around the turn of the millennium and in 2023, the Francisco Act significantly increased the stringency of regulations governing emergency operations and physical security at nuclear stations throughout the United States.

Military accidents are also a global commonplace, although for obvious reasons the details are usually suppressed. A rare New York Times expose of May 1992 reported that U.S. Strategic Air Command was unable to account for at least seven bombs in the American arsenal.


Powers that pretended to economic and military greatness valued colonies as easy sources of raw and human material, captive markets for noncompetitive goods and services, quiescent proving grounds, and valuable bases from which to project power into distant regions or, if in equatorial latitudes, to put payloads more cheaply into orbit.

Imperial ambition and atomic terror went hand-in-hand with large standing militaries and the budgets to match.

On the ground, colonial populations often policed themselves. British readers were eminently familiar with the exploits of the King's African Rifles (KAR), the Brigade of Gurkhas, the Singapore Rifles, the Burma Rifles, and the Royal Ulster Rifles. The Far East Expeditionary Corps was composed primarily of fighting men from Algeria, Lebanon, and Indochina.

Mercenaries and expatriates were a common element in many militaries. The French and Spanish operated large foreign legions swelled by the exiles of climate change and fallout. The British enrolled South Sudanese in the KAR. The Portuguese inducted Zairian exiles into the colonial armies of Angola and Mozambique. Rhodesia aggressively courted veterans of French colonial and American internal wars. The richer sovereignties in the IOEZ let contracts for service with firms like Rockhalter and R.J. Earlingborne & Sons that sifted the professional cream off the tops of elite Western units.


Operating from 1992 to 2050, the Kings Mountain class of American cruisers favored automatic 5" and chemical laser mounts over the temperamental missile armament of other late-century warships and shipped up to six Sea King helicopters in cavernous internal hangars. While highly effective for fleet air defense, the lasers could do almost nothing else, and both the Royal and U.S. Navies found the quick-firing cannon to be even less satisfactory than the TV-guided missiles they were meant to replace.

U.N. Chief of Staff to the General Secretary Pravin Lal described cruisers as "the last bastions of scoundrels," for they possessed enough crew and firepower to conduct essentially independent foreign policy. The theory behind twentieth and twenty-first-century cruiser warfare could be heard echoing on Chiron where military units were at times ungovernable and needed to be given extreme latitude because of basic communications difficulties.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf said:

Have just been told I am at war with Sparta and Ascendancy. Leaders, unknown. Their crimes, very bad. Locations, unclear. Reasons for hostilities, unclear. Friendly casualties, very high. -Personal Diary

Global telecommunications were hamstrung by long-standing international animosities, extreme weather, and regime obsession with domestic stability even in the traditional democracies. Electronic data storage limits were low, retrieval speed even lower, and the power draw of supercomputers capable of industrially relevant calculation was extreme. Rudimentary national intranets created a phenomenon called the Splinternet, meaning that information exchange had a variable rate of speed, proceeding speedily within the same language bloc but slowly between blocs. Scientific and cultural experience became fragmented. A Soviet scientist knew of theories and techniques his American counterparts did not, and vice versa.

Sources:
NB-36H picture is a 1955 image from the U.S. Department of Defense (U.S. Air Force) labeled DF-SC-83-09332.

For more on nuclear escalation during the Korean War, see this article in Smithsonian Magazine.

"Neo Hong-Kong Sunset" by is by JJcanvas on DeviantArt.

Cruiser CA-847 is "Advanced Gun Cruiser beautyshot" by kaasjager.

"Splinternet" concept introduced to me by MisterP on alternatehistory.com.

What's up in Africa?

• [li]Western tolerance for independent settler states was almost limitless, reflecting anti-Communist hysteria (worse since the Americans themselves had used the Bomb), the political impossibility of critiquing colonialist practices in which Europe was still heavily involved, and the need to "outsource" leadership on the continent during the apogee of Hypersurvivalism in the North Atlantic world.[/li]
  [li]The successes of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga in the 1960s and Morgan Industries in the 2020s convinced other companies that nation-building could be a profitable endeavor.[/li]

What's up in South America?

• [li]Early points of divergence for the alternate history. In Brazil, the colonizers held on tight. In Peru, they returned shortly after independence. (Spain reconquered Peru in stages beginning with the Chincha Islands War.)[/li]
  [li]In return for stabilizing its faltering economy, Spain gifted the Peruvian Amazon to Nwabudike Morgan as virtually a private fiefdom.[/li]
  [li]A Bolivian junta stood for self-determination on the continent but was in fact dependent upon American defense assistance to pursue simultaneous wars of territorial aggrandizement against three of its five neighbors.[/li]

Is the level of technological advancement any different?
Yes. Computer guidance systems were still rudimentary in 2071. For this reason, the precision of missile weapons was quite low. Missiles could only be used successfully when very large (read: atomic) payloads compensated for this drawback, but in tactical applications, wire and CCTV guidance was still the norm.

Lasers were viable in combat because of the prevalence of fission batteries, but bulky. Most designs were vehicle-mounted.

Robotics evolved with a heavy emphasis on human control. The performance of a robotic companion had to be closely monitored for acceptability and their behavior adjusted through frequent input by an experienced programmer.

Technologies required to tame and explore the world's oceans, and the wider solar system, were considerably further along than in OTL. However, this work was extremely labor-intensive.


In what ways is culture different?
Supersonic passenger flight was a commonplace. Most wealthy people could afford terminals that connected them to the World Wide Web and its hundreds of unmoderated newsgroups. By 2071, their emerging technocratic uni-culture placed strong emphasis on STEM education in preference to the "crass" and "political" humanities (tainted by the perception that they were easily deployed to excuse political violence); government service over corporate or independent employment (the former was "padded slavery," the latter a road to sure penury; guilt-free use of consumer robotics; acceptance of designer medicine, especially to confer disease-resistance and manage the effects of aging; and class consciousness.


"Drone" was derogatory, emphasizing the perceived loss of human value inflicted upon the subject, who was usually assumed to have entered into the arrangement foolishly and with both eyes open, implying guilt. The work assigned to drones was stereotypically dirty and dangerous--to be avoided if it could be helped. Drones were acutely vulnerable because there were so many of them. Failure to satisfy the overseers meant loss of access to food, shelter, and physical security as well as the meager creature comforts that low-paying work could accumulate.

Sources:
Picture of future Potosi appears to be an AI (Midjourney)-generated image. Found in El Comercio.

Sending Rig is "Colony Mining facility" by PeteAshford on DeviantArt. Sea Base Alpha and Hydrolator names are homages to the Living Seas attraction at Disney's EPCOT. Mata Nui is an island in the story behind the LEGO Bionicle toy line.

Final picture is "Starcraft 2 SCV" by ArtofRagnar on DeviantArt.

Global Warming heralded the return of two great preoccupations of the human species: religious millenarianism and seaborne piracy.

The 2060 decennial review of The International Journal of Maritime Crime and Security explained this renaissance of free-booting as a simple maths equation. Vulnerable populations were up, state capacity was down. Sailors, divers, shallow- and deep-water engineers: from necessity, coastal nations were minting new entrants to these professions at breakneck pace. Once released into the wild, it was inevitable that some would be diverted to illegitimate ventures.

Jurisdictional clarity hit a four hundred-year low. Not since the Thirty Years' War ruined Germany had it been so difficult to "know one's prince." Islands came and went with each new storm. Even on those rare occasions that governments were certain of what was theirs' and had the wherewithal to enforce such convictions, they might find good reasons to do otherwise. Kickbacks farmed from pirate gangs underwrote municipal government for the Baratarian Commonwealth, successor to the State of Louisiana, and the same was true in Santiago de Cuba, Dakar, Constanţa, and Maracaibo. Speaking as a cabinet member, Oscar van de Graaf admitted that ARC police were sometimes stood down from interdiction runs in New York Harbor as a political pressure tactic in the federal government's bitter war with private capital. And anyway, one man's pirate was another man's freedom fighter. Vermont pirates made a patriotic virtue of raiding Quebecois river traffic, returning home to receive the approbation of local authorities.

ARC Administrator Oscar van de Graaf said:

Citizenship is a compact. If a commercial enterprise isn't going to keep their end of the bargain, why should we keep ours? Taxpayers expect more wisdom of us than that. - Testimony to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. Senate

One of the most successful of the American pirates, Tyral Collins, claimed to have raised the Black Flag after the drowning of his native Boston. As a member of the United States Coast Guard, Collins bore personal witness to the city's failed evacuation, a disaster that cost him a mother and four younger brothers.

At the urging of his own crewmates, Collins led a successful mutiny against the officers of his own ship, the cutter Merrimack. Their strategy was simple: avoid the feeding grounds of more successful predators. Respect for the United States Navy and the New York Naval Militia sent them scudding due south. The Caribbean was a violent sea, but like-sized challengers were fewer and farther between.

Collins came ashore in the Northern Floridas and, despite moonlighting with the Prohibition Patrols, learned to disdain the Christian States cause, which he felt dealt with esoteric problems not relevant to its own population. But if Bible study appealed little, he nonetheless consumed enough Genesis to think deeply on the situation of the Patriarch, Adam. He also explored the literary output of the New Environmentalists. Collins drew strong parallels between the two sources.

Master Tyral Collins said:

Adam couldn't keep the Lord's Garden, and was expelled. We had better keep His Pond. - Racing the Rain

Collins reported to Unity as a nominee of the Cuban government, which first issued Merrimack a Letter of Marque in 2051. With Tonkin Vraal, Collins was the chief theorist behind the emerging Harmonist creed of the Nautilus Pirates--lipstick on the more atavistic violence perpetrated by faction leader Ulrik Svensgaard.

Sources:
Battleship is "Marshal Zhukov Class Modern Battleship - Studio Renders" by Jamison Cunningham on ArtStation.

Tyral Collins is Travis Fimmel in Raised by Wolves.

Expedition Leader John Moraine said:

Rest is for the Lord, not His creations. - Chronicles

Name: John Moraine
Rank: Warrant Officer
Position: Xenohydrologist
Assignment: Aquatic Operations Divison
Country of Origin: Mobile Experimental Deep Foraging Object 4 (MEDFOR)
DOB: 02-17-2028
Height: 181.9 cm
Weight: 80.4 kg

Service Record:
Vault-born. (Released, age two.) Child of American parents, both seismologists affiliated with Dr. Emyr Flinting Oceanographic Laboratory. Raised aboard a roving research platform operating on the ocean floor. Early education by Interlink Correspondence.

Raised as a First Conversant. Taught that mankind has a positive obligation, documented in the Book of Genesis, to find and study all God's creations, animal, vegetable, and mineral, and the cosmic rules (physical laws) that govern them. Followers of this sect chose professions that fitted them to participate in oceanic and space exploration, leading to over-representation among crew of U.N.S. Unity.

Graduated U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. Posted to research submarine U.S.S. Lantern Fish as diving superintendent. Accumulated significant experience with very-deep sea dive rescue and ship's husbandry. Participated in Ballingwrath Expedition to study mud volcano located in Puerto Rico Trench. Recommended against construction of the Sea Base Echo habitat near same location. Testified before Congress when habitat dome cracked from structural overloading. Afterward, regarded as protégé of Congressman Jabez O'Comry.

Organized collection of ice cores from above Arctic Circle while Lantern Fish provided ship-to-shore power for City of Anchorage from 2060-62. Reassigned to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri by American National Selection Commission in 2065 on O'Comry's recommendation. Assisted in final review and approval of mission emergency management protocols.

Taken from cold sleep during Unity Crisis on the orders of Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson. Assisted her entourage to make safe progress from hab bays to landing pods. Tactical leader during skirmishing with charter colonists from CNR Corporation, a subsidiary of Struan's Pacific Training Company. Persuaded Godwinson to include watercraft among the faction's take of expedition supplies. Singled out for special recognition by Godwinson at Great Convocation to acknowledge his "coolness under pressure," but forced into exile the following year by faction elders who accused subject of poor judgement (the boats were taken in lieu of additional seed, fertilizer, or foodstuffs).

At subject's own request, dispatched on long-range overland reconnaissance. (Elders had lobbied for subject to be placed in command of raids on neighboring settlements, which were expected to suffer very high casualty rates.)


First Conversants had much in common with the University of Planet. Moraine shared Academician Zakharov's belief that knowledge was the toolbox in which the solution to every one of Mankind's problems could be found. Yet if Zakharov wanted to engage in what Miriam called "petty creation" of his own, Moraine stopped short of that. Adam was not to add robots to the litany of fish and birds, cattle and wild animals. And as the University cloistered itself away from the physical world of contaminants and turned over ever more of its problems to machine intelligence, First Conversants learned by moving through Creation physically and experiencing its wonders firsthand.

Psych Profile: Adventurer
Classified as "soft" believer by Federal Bureau of Investigation--one whose convictions do not have immediate political implications for duly-constituted government or authority. U.S. Navy personnel record contains no contraindications.

Parents selected for participation in Vault Program by U.S. Army as part of Project: Aftermath, an attempt to cache millions of carefully-vetted soldiers and civilians who could reemerge from hibernation to rebuild the United States following a nuclear winter. Vault was re-opened early due to mechanical problems.

Very high physical fitness and mental resilience; .91 score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test. Long exposure to vault and submarine environments makes it highly likely that subject will thrive in high-density living conditions.

Veteran of numerous actual emergencies aboard MEDFOUR. Close attention to detail and safety matters.

Apparent aversion to violence except in clear cases of self-defense.


Sources:
Moraine is Robert Patrick from Last Resort.

The concept behind First Conversants is from David Brin's Earth. Credit to MysticWind for bringing it to my attention.

Vault Program is from Fallout universe lore.

Picture of the planet pearl is "The Black Pearl" by ATArts on DeviantArt.

"Spinner" colony picture is "Wind Turbine Bridge Colony" by ATArts on DeviantArt.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

The architect has much to teach the overseer, for what is more ruthless than a human colony? - Centauri Reflections

Sources:
First image is "Hidden Desert Cities on Alien World" by lestrium on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Arcology Walker" by theNo7er on DeviantArt.

Third image is "The Farm" by Abiogenisis on DeviantArt.

Lady Deirdre Skye said:

Living systems cannot be fully described in mathematical terms. Successful examples have a value greater than the sum of their individual parts. - A Comparative Biology of Planet

Aleigha Cohen said:

On the frontiers of science, we should wish for audacity more than for brilliance. - A World Upside Down

Sources:
First image is "Terraforming Station" by Matthew Burke on ArtStation.

Morley cigarettes are a prop brand used in movies and television. They were the preferred choice of the Cigarette Smoking Man on X-Files.

Second image is "Snow scape robotic machines" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Concept art AI generated" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.

Director Tamineh Pahlavi said:

The most virulent disease is failure. - Homo Sapien Superior

I offer a draft map of the world in November 2071 as U.N.S. Unity set out for the Alpha Centauri star system.

Flooding affected every continent, so we shall focus our discussion on the other eccentricities.

The new island clusters are artificial. The largest of these, Shamash, can be found in the Southern Indian Ocean, roughly equidistant between Australia and Madagascar. That name, Hebrew for "servant," was used again on Chiron.

In North America, Quebec gained independence in the mid-twenty-first century. A determined Francophone separatist movement timed their terror campaign to coincide with hypersurvivalist revolts in both the United States and Canada and catastrophic flooding in the U.K. Both the Soviets and the French provided material assistance, to include combat advisers, while the United Nations ran diplomatic interference. NATO dared not deplete local forces in Europe. Canada was reduced to accepting military assistance from the likes of the Southern African Treaty Organization. Hawaii is independent, probably a fluke of presidential politics.

In South America, traditional regional hegemons--Colombia, Portuguese Brazil, Argentina--were laid low by flooding. Bolivia used the opportunity to expand at the expense of traditional enemies Paraguay and (Spanish) Peru. Madrid underwrote its colonial war effort by outsourcing defense of the Viceroyalty to Morgan Industries. Their asking price: practical control over a tract of resource-rich territory larger than Uruguay. Note the Republic of Rio Grande Del Sol, a remnant of the Triple Alliance War and Paraguayan hegemony during the late nineteenth century. Argentina continued to seek continental greatness after its defeat in the Falklands in 1983, falling in with the French while the Americans chose Bolivia and the Chileans leaned into a British alliance.

Europe's borders were more changed by water than by man. Sweden and Finland came together in self-defense during the protracted violence of the Russian Revolution. Acting from similar motivations, Norway joined them in 1951. Greece managed to achieve much of the Megáli Idéa in the 1920s, opening a bitter feud with Turkey that spiraled into violence several times thereafter. France held onto Algeria and Lebanon as colonial dependencies. Along with Israel and Turkey, these enjoyed an honorary status as members of the European community.

The Soviets occupied a remnant of North Korea in 1951 and Afghanistan from the 1970s, propping up an unpopular regime opposed by neighbors Iran and Pakistan. In 2017, Soviet tanks rumbled forth into Xinjiang.

African independence remained an elusive dream as of 2071. White settlers still ruled in Algiers, Nairobi, Luanda, Lourenço Marques, Salisbury, and Pretoria. A decade after their shared centennial, Katanga and South Kivu were kept afloat by Belgian mining interests. The Soviets made inroads in humiliated Nigeria and embattled Ethiopia. Sudan hewed to the Americans, South Sudan and Biafra to the Israelis. Morgan Industries toppled Chad and made a muddle of the Sahara during the Burst Wars of the mid-twenty-second century. Rwanda fed happily off the carcass of Congo, too big to succeed. U.N. interventions there and in Darfur and Somalia achieved semi-permanence around 2050.

In the Middle East, Israel won a series of wars beginning with the conquest of Sinai in 1956, later going on to smash the Hashemites and the Syrians in Lebanon. Iran runs the table to the east.

India and Pakistan committed mutual suicide. Their populations moved north into Kashmir and the Himalayan foothills or south into the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone.

The British held on in Burma and Singapore, and the French in Indochina but for North Vietnam. The Dutch held West New Guinea, dividing the island with the Australians.

China reunited under the Golden Emperor, but the British used the moment to renegotiate their lease on Hong Kong.

On Shamash, Shiloh is presented in tangerine, Gathi in periwinkle. By 2071, they were united in federation. Nod, always independent, is seen in honeydew.

Sources:
Map is based on a template I found on The Frontier, a website that went defunct in 2017. Original artist unknown. Global warming impacts are sketched from "Q-BAM Base Map Sea Level Rise 100m" by Metallist-99 on DeviantArt.

This version of Quebec separatism is based on that found in Cold War Hot, Peter G. Tsouras, ed.

For more on Greece and the Megáli Idéa, see this article on the Avalanche Press website.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang said:

Planet is a machine, like a tractor or a human body. More complicated, yes, than the examples with which we are generally familiar, but equally as predictable once disassembled. - Essays on Mind and Matter

Sources:
First image is "Moon mining AI concept art version 2 of 3" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Superheavy Transport Concept" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.

Third image is "The Last Holdouts" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.

Desert botanical testing stations were a feature of the Imperial occupation of the desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's Dune.

Fourth image is "Salvage Operation" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.

Sources:
"Atoms for Peace" airship image can be accessed from Google Arts & Culture.

Missourri conversion is "Iowa Commando Ship Conversion" by Tzoli on DeviantArt.

For nuclear-powered plane, see Dark Roasted Blend.

Vault programs are a central concept in the Fallout universe of computer games conceived and published by a string of companies including Interplay Entertainment, Black Isle Studios, Bethesda Game Studios, and Obsidian Entertainment.

Sources:
"Old Number Seven" is "Harvester" by Pieere-E. FIESCHI on ArtStation.

Shredder pistols are Phased Plasma Guns ("PPGs") from Babylon 5. The image I used was found on a Pinterest post by Mark Martinez.

Third picture is "Cliguari's Drop" by sleepcircle on DeviantArt.

What better can be said of Corazón Santiago than that she is hopelessly naive? Was it not inevitable that the Holnists would defy her control, those miscreants infamous for fragging their own leaders? The Holnist was a parasite unable to resist killing his host. Canny Statist commanders operating in tandem with Holnist irregulars soon learned to post guards whenever they occupied any territory they intended on keeping, lest the militias perpetrate casual atrocities on the people recently liberated. But Santiago was not the first to pay them court in hopes they would excel themselves given a worthy cause. Still smarting over the fate of her sisters, she could not conceive that a person could love only themselves.

Santiago is also, of course, a remarkable figure. Out of consideration for her childhood traumas, we might forgive the alienation from authority that made her a fertile convert to the Survivalist cause. It is surely to her credit that she should have acquired an education in spite of her poverty and rootlessness. Her leadership qualities, including a knack for compromise, are well enough attested by enemies, let alone by her friends. And who else is a more legitimate voice for the miserable Left-Behinds? Unity had a long way to fall--from humanity's greatest expression of itself to a grotesque indictment of liberal internationalism. Is this what the visionaries of the 2010s had in mind? That the ship's berths should be filled with billionaires and their future servants?

Yet something critical is missing from the Spartan equation on Chiron. Santiago's Earthside exploits were performed in the alleged interest of marginalized peoples who could not or would not fight for themselves, and there is no reason to presume her intentions false. But on Chiron, there are no peaceful or indisputably victimized civilians whose part the Spartans can take. And so the Colonel is a fish out of water, and her true believers, an army without a nation, play-acting as soldiers. She yearns for something more noble.


The Tribe has always been one of my favorite factions. The beauty of Kellerites is that they're such effective Boogeymen. Oscar van de Graaf has to assume they're gunning for him. Santiago, too. Nobody is very sure what goes on behind those high walls. To Zakharov, the Kellerites are death cultists that have turned their backs in ignorance on the science that could save them. Pravin Lal can't overlook the fact that the Kellerites contributed to the destruction of Unity. Miriam will have a hard time convincing her followers that the Kellerites are not Satanists.

The Kellerites are explicitly insular. Their leader, Pete Landers, has no particular interest in the other factions except as objects for the taking of vengeance. Nobody weened on exaggerations of Kellerite deviance would be likely to give his emissaries the time of day, even were he inclined to send some. And Landers speaks through the barrel of a gun, not the mouth of a diplomat.

Landers's conversion to the Kellerite cause was an honest one. For an impressionable youth, the kindness of the Tribals was a profound lure, a debt he attempts to repay with the only coin he has to give: the tactical genius that made him a fast sergeant in the U.S. Army. The Kellerites' running feud with the other factions is fueled by a sour combination of offensive realism and simmering resentment.

The Tribals are the smallest faction by population size--just a few hundred people. They took almost no captives and attracted almost no hangers-on during their sweep toward the exits. Befitting their homogeneity, they have exceptional cohesion--after all, each one was hand-picked by Keller and his lieutenants because they could offer something as a stowaway.

Kellerites are fierce fighters, especially on the defensive, but they're constitutionally wedded to inefficiency as ardent individualists whose horizons extend only as far as the stockade walls. On top of that, they are Purists, and quite possibly human cultists (to borrow from Saw Guerrera). The Ascendancy rejects androids because biological organisms are supposedly superior where it counts. The Hunters avoid them so as not to become addicted to easy living. But the Tribals don't like robots because they are unfamiliar objects usually created by corporations, the same relentless entities that hunted them nearly to extinction.

I think Landers must be too self-conscious for his own good. Keller had the vision and the following. Landers was at first dependent upon his tolerance, and his leadership role is derived in no small part from Keller's personal favor. A string of military defeats would invalidate the case for his leadership role with the faction.


Miriam probably found it difficult to return to ground after her experience being cast as a messianic figure. Did she believe it herself?

Can we call her an angel of mercy? The good Sister is one of the few sympathetic figures in the retelling of the Unity Crisis. Though she soon regretted the oversight, there was little thought spared for contesting whatever the other factions were claiming as their own.

Miriam and most of her followers stop short of body modification, which they believe approaches the boundary of sacrilege. The Book of Maronicus admonishes, "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul," which members of the Conclave take to mean crossing the mind-machine barrier.

Miriam begins our story with a great deal of forbearance toward those not similarly-sentimented. Over time, the perversity of the factions toward one another and the constant stressors of survival push a minority of survivors toward a hard interpretation of Scripture that promises punishment for the Believers' enemies. It is even possible that the Believers might come to regard even fundamental violations of the U.N. Charter as a function of God's anger.

To compensate for their military weakness, the Conclave adheres to a firm neutrality. It will attempt to clothe and feed everyone it can. Conclave med-techs honor their Hippocratic oath to a fault. Conclave bases are the "Rick's Cafés Américains" of Planet, welcoming traders and spies who must escape harsher controls.

Miriam is less spymaster than trapeze artist, clumsily using whatever her counter-intelligence bureau can glean to help navigate a "middle way" through the vendettas being pursued all around her. In time, the act is too much, and she must cede more ground to a more bloody-minded set to help her rule.

Sources:
Santiago is Halo: Reach concept art: Female UNSC Army Soldier from isaachannaford.com.

Gerard Butler in Angel Has Fallen is our Pete Landers.

Tilda Swanson takes a turn here at Miriam Godwinson.

"Thou shalt not disfigure the soul" is a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert.

Andelko Saratov said:

They would not take me, they said, because I was a murderer. Moses murdered. Because I was a thief. Prometheus stole. Due to my implication in revolutionary activity. Since I recognized no boundaries. Did not know my place. Refused to stay silent. Lacked "proper understanding" of risk and reward. Who better to form the vanguard? - Anger in a Thousand Places

Avtoritet Ryang

Name: Avtoritet Ryang
Rank: none
Position: none
Country of Origin: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
DOB: 4-29-2037
Height: not on file
Weight: not on file
U.N. Intelligence Cell Personal Background File
Born in Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, to ethnic Korean parents resident in U.S.S.R. since Joseon Dynasty and deported to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin. Entered Russian mafia circles during childhood. Became Vor v Zakone sometime prior to 2056. Adherents may accept no charity and must not perform honest work so long as they live. Branded an outcast by criminal compatriots for accepting conscription, violating pledge never to collaborate with government. Served three tours in Afghanistan with Soviet Airborne Forces. Frequently seconded to GRU intelligence operations.

Ascended to leadership position in Tashkent organized crime circa 2061 following assassination of top rivals. Cooperated with KGB to place underworld tails on suspected Western intelligence operatives.

Subject exploited commercial and underworld contacts in Turkey, Persia, and Golden China to arrange more than $700 billion in credit for the Soviet government during Financial Crisis of 2064, lining up more than half of all funds secured. Negotiated similar agreement with U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission in 2065 to make one-time donation of more than $1.2 trillion on behalf of the Constituent Peoples of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Subject's criminal enterprises are most commonly linked to the sale of Soviet weapons on global markets, with significant sidelines in human trafficking. Subject's networks were especially active assisting Chinese Communist leaders and other political refugees to flee the purges of the newly-ascended Golden Emperor following regime change in Peking. Major broker of arms to SWAPO, ANC, MPLA, DERG, SFR Yugoslavia, and the United Arab Republic.

INTERPOL analysis tied the Tashkent Banda to several high-profile aerial thefts of rail-bound radiological cargoes throughout Central Asia in the early and mid-2060s, including casks of nuclear fuel and intra-continental ballistic missiles, some with atomic warheads, in northwestern Iran, Kashmir, Manchuria, and Eastern Anatolia.

Former Soviet military operatives participated in large numbers in the undeclared war of assassinations waged internationally by corporations in the final half of the twenty-first century, the Tashkent Banda included. Along with three other unidentified Russian males, subject's second-in-command, Igor Ivetchkin, was shot dead in New York City by a Gallano Crime Family hitman in 2067 who, upon arrest, was found to be carrying the business card of an in-house attorney for the Consolidated Fruit Trust.

Arrested in Leningrad, 2069 for unknown reasons. Remanded to Gulag system. Current whereabouts unknown.

U.N. Intelligence Cell assesses with high confidence that most convicts assigned by Soviet Union to Project Unity owe final allegiance to subject's organization.

During Unity Crisis, subject is known to have contacted Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal with offer of assistance to "facilitate transit" through contested ship's spaces.


How Ryang made it to ground is still uncertain. He is clearly the intelligence behind the Promise-Keepers, a set of criminals that continually put themselves forward to carry out questionable actions on behalf of faction leaders, especially theft of high-value supplies and the murder of ideological dissidents. Both Prokhor Zakharov and Tamineh Pahlavi paid Promise-Keepers for test subjects. Lady Deirdre Skye recorded wrestling with what was probably a Promise-Keeper's suggestion that she sanction the killing of a rival for power late in M.Y. 2. Colonel Santiago pitched a still-living Promise-Keeper agent over the walls of Xerxion in a public repudiation of "underhanded means" during a particularly tense confrontation with Holnist malcontents, though this did not dampen rumors that she was somehow responsible for the deaths of several Hypersurvivalist warlords nominally under her banner. Morgan Industries officers openly condoned the use of Promise-Keepers for strike-breaking. The Promise-Keepers were particularly alienated from the Dreamers of Chiron, which kept a strangle-hold over the manufacture and sale of pharmaceuticals, especially narcotics, on Planet, and retained many Vory in captivity.

Psych Profile: Non-conformist
Demonstrated willingness not just to serve, but perpetuate, the Soviet system of government despite total repudiation of Soviet labor philosophy, lifelong attraction to criminality, and own personal involvement in protracted conflicts with Militsiya and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Linked to the deaths of more than 300 Soviet police and military personnel.

Simultaneous repudiation of "legitimacy" and tumultuous relationship to the Soviet state indicate that subject may struggle with self-acceptance.

Subject apparently derives pleasure from their unconventional lifestyle and feels a special fraternity with criminals that transcends politics.

Outstanding soldier with demonstrated capacity to carry out extra-legal killings.

Sources:
Daniel Dae Kim in Stowaway is Avtoritet Ryang.

Second image is from The Expanse (episode Winnipesaukee).

Johann Anhaldt said:

The scientist is servant, not a leader. Old Believers understand this fundamentally. God is the greatest scientist of them all. The complex systems at work in our universe reflect His labor. And so it is with Artificial Intelligence. God created Adam, and we created AI. The ability of AI to defy human control is no more real than the power of sinners to escape God's Judgement. - Adam, His Atoms

Johann Anhaldt is interesting to me in that he represents, I feel, a perspective that was not embodied by any single faction leader in the original game. The dangers of a society managed by Artificial Intelligence are instead addressed in the flavor quotes that accompany tech progression. Any society can fall prey to it.

Were somebody to write a literary critique of this fan fiction, they might position Johann Anhaldt's earliest origins in the 2014 forum-based megagame that preceded this work. A large number of the player-designed factions in that game were looking to absorb humans into a mechanized hive mind. But I think Anhaldt doesn't really take full form except in light of David Brin's The Postman. My first thought for him was as the harried administrator of a fragment of the Unity computer core that his faction used to make all its decisions. These were going to be people so doubtful of their own capacity that they wanted to be told what to do. Except that people weren't to be trusted, so they were turning over every important decision to the great calculator. To make matters worse, only Anhaldt knew that the computer was inoperable, like Cyclops of Corvallis.

Gradually, I hung some new concepts on this same peg. I came up with a neat-sounding name, the Children of the Atom, and decided that they would have an unusual affinity for nuclear power, although it didn't fit with any other aspect of their identity. This was OK. I thought the Nautilus Pirates of the Crossfire expansion committed a worse sin, having a neat gimmick without a coherent ideology to go along with it, however good or bad a fit.

Digging down to a deeper layer of detail, it's possible that Anhaldt thinks nuclear power is a game-changer on par with AI. Could he believe we are outrunning both an energy and a problem-solving choke point in our world-historical development, necessitating that we embrace both advances immediately?

Anhaldt is a deliberate mirror to Zakharov, insisting that traditional social values should be placed ahead of technocratic ones. In Zakharov's view, society should "follow the science" to a self-evidently better tomorrow, while in Anhaldt's, science should be led by the needs and preferences of its human masters. Zakharov is in the vanguard; Anhaldt is a servant.

To be sure, both men worked hard to "sell" their science to a skeptical populace. Anhaldt was much better at it, mostly because he finds it less necessary to belittle others.

In his first appearance in this essay, Anhaldt is given the appellation Mediator, whereas I later experimented with Programmer. His title is currently Plotter, indicating that he is a mere functionary of whatever machine is generating output in his capital, Colonia Secundus, today.

The Children sell their services as a latter-day oracle, harnessing the unprecedented computing power at their disposal to solve complex problems on behalf of other factions. We can assume these problems relate to the mapping of the prediction of the weather, mindworm activity, and diplomatic or combat results.

Anhaldt has ties to the American Reclamation Corporation as well as Comprehensive Transport, an American mega-corporation that holds the franchise on supply runs to the Outer Planets. In his faction leader profile, I detail a history of serving as an advocate for atomic energy that gives him perhaps too much the same flavor as Zakharov.

I've never fully fleshed out Anhaldt's value system, so let's try to do that right here.

What is the fundamental truth of the universe? Humanity finally produced an intellect superior to itself. It would be an act of mass suicide were we to try to organize our affairs without it.

Why did civilization on Earth fail? Our civilization generated problems that humans themselves could no longer solve.

What is needed for the survival of our species on Chiron? To harness the full potential of artificial intelligence.

These answers are accurate, but it becomes difficult to part Anhaldt from Zakharov. That could be inevitable as one makes more factions.

Maybe Anhaldt feels that scientists like Zakharov misled humanity. Whereas Zakharov lays the blame for Earth's misery on popular resistance to science, Anhaldt might throw that back in his face: experts tried too hard to deny "regular people" the right to make their own choices. This is rich, of course, coming from someone who earned the reputation of paid shill for the Axis Atomical Corporation, but it's true to the kind of person we known Zakharov is. With the slight change of Anhaldt's answer to question #2, "People were asked to follow science rather than to guide it," his answer to #3 takes on a new light. Would Anhaldt say he is still the master of his own fate because he chooses to trust in machines, whereas Zakharov is the blind follower?

I feel as if there has always been this idea in the story that the computer outran Anhaldt, but there could be some value to creating a character that is constitutionally unable to arrive at that conclusion. Someone who thinks the child, though he can perhaps be of very great service to the father in his great age, could never exceed him.

Source:
James Cromwell is Dr. Johann Anhaldt. The still is from Succession.

The Soviet legacy was a complicated one for Mission Survivors. To Americans, Anglophone Canadians, a majority of Britons and Eastern Europeans, the Portuguese, African whites, the Iranian elite, Bolivians, Yugoslavs, Afghans, Greeks, Filipinos, Australians, and about half of Scandinavians, Soviet Communism was best described by President Ronald Reagan: "Life as it could be, not as it should be, Mr. Ustinov."

There was truth, of course, to these concerns. Soviet citizens were the property of the state. There were no freedom of the press, no freedom of movement, and only a sad simulacrum of free enterprise beginning in the 1980s. Particulars prohibitions might change at the margins, allowing for self-expression or retroactive critique of past leadership, but the labor camps were once again full in 1980 and remained that way until the 2020s. There were a dozen Soviet satellite states, and little effort wasted on pretending that orders were not passed down daily from Moscow. East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Qwin, and Koryo were only rarely out-of-step with the Soviet march. The special plight of the Afghan peoples, driven from their homes, their children maimed by landmines, was rarely out of the American press.

Yet the Soviet Union was indisputably a superpower. Russian standards of living rose sharply during the later half of the twentieth century, especially in the largest cities. By 1980, the average lifespan of a Soviet citizen was seventy years--up from forty in 1917. Soviet education produced world-class physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, geologists, and computer scientists. The Soviets led the way into space and achieved numerous firsts: first orbital launch vehicle (1957), first satellite in orbit (1957), first person in space (1961), and first person on the Moon (1969). Other Soviet inventions included the programmable computer (1950), the nuclear power plant (at Obninsk in 1954), the hologram (1962), and the personal computer (1965). Soviet medicine was known to be well advanced in the areas of aerosol vaccination, organ transplant, and the humane treatment of psychiatric conditions. The Soviet navy actively participated in arctic and antarctic research. Aeroflot operated the world's largest fleet of commercial supersonic passenger aircraft and, from 1982, carried all space traffic sunward and back by special agreement with the United Nations, over the strenuous objection of Comprehensive Transport and the United States of America. In 1994, the U.N. adopted Soviet principles of construction for mid-ocean rigs as a global standard. Soviet automobiles and farm machinery were ubiquitous features of modernity in Second and Third World countries. Soviet assistance was indispensable to infrastructure megaprojects like Egypt's Aswan Dam, Cuba's Juragua Nuclear Power Plant, the Sunda Strait Bridge, Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam, reconstruction of the former Dutch space elevator at Jakarta, and the Lake Baikal Diversion that watered most of northern Mongolia.


Among Arabs, Frenchmen, almost half of West Germans, for an overwhelming number of Africans, and in India, "the Russians" were treated with hopeful caution. Anyone not warm in the American embrace or held fast beneath a European thumb could rest assured that the Soviets would take an interest. They would listen. Advocate in the world's great multilateral forums. Remonstrate, perhaps, with the Americans or the Europeans. And when the time came, the Soviets would live up to their words--with generous subsidies of arms and men. The French, the Indians, and to a lesser extent the free Baltic states, learned to play the Soviets at their own game. "The French Proxy" entered Western lexicon as any vote or initiative in the U.N. out of character for the caster but advantageous to Russia. It was an open secret that French and Indian firms resold Western technology to the Soviet Union, especially electronics. Embarrassed by the politics of the decades-long Afghan debacle, the Soviets touted instead their popularity in Xinjiang, where they were greeted as liberators by the oppressed Uyghur majority in 2017. Strong Soviet allies included Cuba (before 2050), Ethiopia, Nigeria, North Vietnam, India, and Indonesia.


The Soviets were active humanitarians, making the largest per-capita commitment to recovery operations in the Indus Valley Exclusion Zone among all contributing nations. Soviet hydrologists played a major role in earthquake and tsunami response in Turkey, Syria, India, Japan, Israel, Lebanon, and the IOEZ.


Western scholarship has coalesced around the idea that there have been two phases of Soviet foreign policy: a Timid Phase shaped by American boldness during the short window of its nuclear supremacy in the 1940s and early 1950s, and a Muscular Phase beginning with the Sino-Soviet Clash of 1969 that reached its maximum expression with the Christmas invasion of Afghanistan ten years later.

Soviet war planners were caught off-guard by the American escalation to atomic warfare in Korea, and it caused them to throttle back on actions that might have been considered provocative to Washington. Although the primary human costs were felt by the Chinese and North Koreans, the Soviets contented themselves with seizing a small buffer zone to protect Vladivostok before pressing Beijing to negotiate. A final accord was reached in February 1952, leaving the South Koreans in control of a mostly unified but utterly wrecked peninsula. The American public hailed the war as a great victory and wondered what else the Bomb could do for them, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Korean recovery cost them more in blood and treasure over the next twenty years than Korean defense had in less than three. Just two years later, the Americans let the French use four small atomic bombs in Indochina, underlining the mortal danger to any power that could not reply in kind.

Soviet leadership was spooked. Huge new investments were made hardening the U.S.S.R.'s strategic rocket forces and increasing both rail-based launch systems and ultra-long-range bombers. Despite local superiority of conventional and nuclear forces in Europe by 1960, the Soviets remained concerned about American unpredictability. When the Americans agreed to remove PGM-19 Jupiter missiles from Turkey in return for removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba in October 1962, the Politburo felt the two powers had come to something of an informal understanding--a tit-for-tat relationship in which saber-rattling had no place. They tried diplomacy instead, toning down their bellicosity almost to the point of obsequiousness, even ceasing material support for independence movements working against the French, hoping to widen the growing rift between the United States and its European allies over the Suez Crisis. The strategy paid some dividends in 1966 when the French withdrew entirely from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, although critics charged that the Soviets had missed huge opportunities to influence the direction of post-liberation politics in Africa. The wooing of France became a blueprint for future Soviet adjustments of the international order. (Similar overtures to Portugal were less successful, and the Soviets persisted in supporting both the MPLA and FRELIMO into the new century.) Threats of military force were more useful against those too weak to resist: a mid-decade build-up of forces on the Finnish border dissuaded the new Scandinavian Union from affiliating with NATO altogether, and wrong-footed the Dutch in Indonesia, eventually dooming their attempts to preserve a colony there.

Then came disaster. For most of 1969, the Soviet Union and China were at war in northern Manchuria. From that point forward, Soviet attentions shifted decisively eastward. The Fulda Gap remained a convenient political pressure point, and Moscow continued to recognize the United States as its primary competitor for global influence, but Soviet forces expected, and prepared, to fight against a numerically superior enemy on a front spanning more than 5,000km. China was the more urgent threat. By 1974, growing desperate, the Soviets added a new tool to their arsenal: the All-Union Science Production Association Biopreparat, which would give rise to the world's largest and most dangerous bio-warfare program.

Soviet space efforts, code-named "Firebird," meanwhile lost ground during the 1970s as the geopolitical storm clouds gathered. To compensate, the Soviets tried sabotage. There were several clashes between American and Soviet moon men. Each side accused the other of provocation, but the Soviets got the better of most of the fights, which later records confirmed were pursued at Moscow's instigation. It did little good. The U.S. Marines were authorized to add 2,000 "space commandos" to their ranks. In 1980, the Americans built the first permanent colony on the Moon, taking back the initiative in the Space Race. The U.S.S. Orion, a space-borne warship, went up that same banner year and finished trials in '85. The new American president, Ronald Reagan, terrified the Politburo, and they readily believed his assurances to the world media that Orion could shoot down ICBMs in-flight.

Enter new Soviet Premier Marat Barrikad, who had spent time in the United States and thought himself a keener judge of the American psyche than most of his contemporaries. Barrikad believed that as American military superiority increased relative to the Soviet war machine, a countervailing soothing effect would result. They would come to see themselves as invulnerable, and the Soviets as an unworthy opponent who no longer demanded a forceful response. Democratic Party opponents were already criticizing Reagan as a cowboy, and even fellow Republicans worried over the runaway costs of his defense build-up. This gave the Soviets options. Barrikad dialed up support for liberation movements in Southern Africa, where white minority governments and colonial regimes were fighting a rear-guard action against Western public opinion. Soviet infusions of money, advisers, and equipment were carried out through Cuban, Yugoslav, and East German clients, and timed for peaks in the cycles of mutual alienation between Portugal and the State Department.

With nuclear power flowing freely in the United States, Barrikad also saw his moment in the Middle East. The Soviets rebuilt the armies of the Syrian-Arab Republic and egged them on against the Israelis (an over-calculation that cost Jordan a fifth of its national territory, culminated in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, and, paradoxically, reinforced the growing American conviction that the Soviets were second-rate competitors). After learning that the Shah was sick with cancer in 1978, Barrikad accelerated support for Iraq. Reasoning that China was more afraid of the Soviets than the Soviets of China, Barrikad reopened diplomacy with Beijing, securing a long period of deescalation. He welcomed Indonesian independence as a Communist state, ignoring the ill-fated rump in Dutch New Guinea, and, in 1991, hacked Italy from NATO through support for a successful Socialist majority in that country's parliament.

The Soviet's worst blunder came in the late 1980s, when Barrikad tested American resolve by passing a low-yield nuclear warhead to the Iraqis for use against Iran. The backlash was swift and overwhelming: the Iranian military swept across Iraq's northern tier to effect the secession of Kurdistan while the Americans quickly and correctly traced the offending isotope back to its source.

While Barrikad drew down funding for subsequent Soviet moon landings and imposed delays on the country's answer to Orion (less an expression of doubt than to avoid economic overheating), he pushed for greater action in the Inner Solar System, and is usually acknowledged as the major influence responsible for the Soviet grip on activity above Mercury and Venus. These latter footholds proved to be a saving grace for the Soviet economy. When Barrikad died in 1992, he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose name is now synonymous with political and economic liberalization. To achieve his vision, Gorbachev forged close relations with fellow leaders in France, Italy, Turkey, and India, often cooperating on industrial and research projects to spread costs.

The twenty-first century for the U.S.S.R. was dominated by five themes: discovery and interaction with the Mercury vulcanoids, renewed conflict with China and the United States, environmental catastrophe, interference in the IOEZ, and post-liberalization criminal activity.

In 1982, Soviet probes discovered the hypothesized vulcanoid objects inside Mercury's gravity well, some of which contained new elements, including Barrikadium-109. The hard currency earned from strip-mining these asteroids in the early 2000s helped keep the Soviets afloat through the disruptive "shock therapy" of exposure to the free market under Gorbachev and the "snap back" that followed when the hardliners returned to power six years later. The Soviets did make important contributions to the settlement of Mars and the exploration of Titan but otherwise kept their focus sunwards. The Soviet space program was always bedeviled by the lack of access to a friendly space elevator, and benefited considerably after the Indonesian Revolution from the restoration of the elevator built by the Dutch at Batavia, renamed Jakarta.


By 2017, the Russians had reached the point of defensive alliance with India. Pakistan hastened into a similar arrangement with China, which increasingly worried about the breakdown of civil order in the nuclear blast zones created during the 1991 Six Minute War. In March 2017, the Pakistani government was facing crisis. Popular unrest in Dacca was overwhelming civil authorities. India was threatening intervention on humanitarian grounds. At the invitation of the Pakistanis, China invaded Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese calculus was three-fold. First, the Chinese Politburo hoped to signal to India that it would not tolerate intervention in favor of Mukti Bahini guerillas in East Pakistan. Second, Chinese leaders believed the gains they would make could be traded away during subsequent negotiations for favorable concessions in northwest India. Third, Chinese leaders wanted better intelligence on the quality of the Indian Armed Forces since the nuclear holocaust. The war was a disaster for both Pakistan and China, resulting in Bangladeshi independence and the destruction of most of China's nascent blue-water navy after the sinking of two of its aircraft carriers at the hands of Indo-Soviet task forces. (Quite the feat, since both the Indian and Soviet navies suffered from very poor maintenance practices and Soviet aircraft cruiser Kremlin experienced a deadly shipboard fire just hours before the engagement that sank the Shandong.) The war ended in 2019 with a Chinese return to prewar borders and powerful Pakistani misgivings about the value of Chinese friendship that pushed them toward the waiting Americans. This was not the optimum result for Moscow, but it did at least review the instructive lesson of 1969 that Soviet arms were not to be trifled with.

The Soviet Union's greatest coup against the United States since the 1970s occurred in Quebec, where the Soviets worked closely with the French and the United Nations to gain the province's independence during the Second American Civil War. Soviet involvement was extensive: Soviet submarines delivered weapons to Felquiste terror cells and Soviet special forces helped inflict serious casualties on the NATO (mostly American and Commonwealth) forces that could be spared to help Canada's small army hunt the terrorists. The Soviets used frequent false-flag attacks to turn public opinion against Ottawa, massacring Francophone civilians and blaming Anglophone "Black Watch" militias. There is scattered evidence to indicate that Soviet troops also entered the United States to leaven state separatists and Holnist forces despite the avowed anti-Communism of those movements; many of the sub-contractors provided by Morgan Industries affiliates were Russian speakers who claimed to come from the Russian Diaspora.

The Soviet Union was an Alpha-class nation--more than ten percent of the country's landmass was claimed by rising sea levels. Only Western Europe and certain Polynesian islands suffered greater calamity. Most nations coped with the change by taking to water. The Soviets in particular preferred land or space, drawing their displaced peoples inward and building large habitats at the L[sub]1[/sub] and L[sub]2[/sub] LaGrange Points. Soviet industry was highly active in what became the badly-polluted intermingling of the Black, Aral, and Caspain Seas. The problem was made considerably worse by the prevalence of industrial disasters, especially nuclear disasters, within the country's borders, which exposed tens of millions to life-altering illness and inflicted severe losses on Soviet agriculture so that the country was often a net importer of food.

Following the example of Barrikad, later Soviet leaders maintained a large civil and military presence in the IOEZ, where training and cooperation with the Indian Navy helped create the groundwork for successful joint maneuvers during the 2017-19 war. Soviet missions were no different than those carried out by other Great Power interlopers: delivering humanitarian supplies, ferrying evacuees from the path of typhoons, suppressing pirates, and conducting diplomatic visits in support of commercial appeals. The Soviet Navy constructed various artificial islands for its own purposes, including as listening posts.

Criminal activity in the Soviet Union was known to be extensive, providing a living to an estimated eight or nine percent of Soviet citizens. Corruption was widespread due to political disaffection, especially over cronyism. Many officers sold military equipment to supplement their salaries, an acute problem among those deployed to foreign war zones. The Soviet government often used Russian organize crime as a front for intelligence operations.

Sources:
The date and idea for the Russian moon landing are from the television show For All Mankind. Source for the moon landing art is unknown.

Quora user Alexander Ginnegan offers a fascinating list of Soviet scientific-technological achievements.

Picture of "East Berlin" is "777Jihad" by isleeyin on DeviantArt.

Picture of tractor is "Steam Crawler" by kceg on DeviantArt.

Picture of futuristic Moscow is "USSR 2.0" by ianllanas on DeviantArt.

The Quebec Independence War concept of false-flag attacks by a "Black Watch" unit is from Cold War Hot, ed. Peter G. Tsouras.

Marty Robbins said:

No one dared to ask his business / No one dared to make a slip / The stranger there among them / Had a big iron on his hip - Datalinks, Traditional

Unity's computer systems followed the principles of mainframe computing, slaving many terminals to two high-reliability computational engines, a primary and a back-up. This also simplified standards selection for the hardware and software that could be contributed by mission donors. Mainframe Computing is a UNITY tech.

By special agreement with France, the mainframe ran three operating systems simultaneously, the shipwide standard (using Bharat Operating System Solutions, BOSS), a partitioned Minitel instance for user-to-user plain text communication, and a partitioned Soviet-sourced Kronos instance dedicated to the ship's fission plants.

Cold War tensions prevented emergence of a shared programming language, and the field of practical computer science was fragmented along national lines, with well-established English, French, Russian, Japanese, Indian, Esperanto, and Chinese branches.

The official mission language was English, and proficiency with that language was a requirement for crew selection prior to 2050, but non-English-speakers together formed a plurality of the crew. Non-intuitive keyboards hampered timely, accurate input for systems administrators and made text communication practically impossible for traditional life-safety responders.

Even within Data Services, only a small percentage of technicians could work proficiently with the French- and Soviet-made sub-systems. The Minitel system survived through efforts by the New State to establish a closed network, but Zakharov declined to use Kronos for his nodes on grounds that science required collaboration. Use of a Chironian Standard was a major plank of Council business for the Morganites and Data Angels.

The Children of the Atom experimented with trinary and quatrinary (quantum) machines not long after Planetfall but chose to use BOSS for most of their applications because of the difficulty of manufacturing new hardware in the colonial setting.


The ship's secondary core was manually disconnected from the primary by a Data Services panic button moments after the mainframe control room was breached by mutineers.

The secondary core was physically absent from its housing twenty-five hours after the micrometeorite impact when Data Services teams organized by Sathieu Metrion reached the ship's data center to perform damage assessment. Two U.N. Security Forces officers lay dead of flechette wounds at the man trap.


Computer scientists were prized targets for recovery, recruitment, capture, or elimination, depending upon one's ethical predisposition.

Colonist Morgan and Governor Van de Graaf organized retrievals based on lists of colonists with whom they had previously contracted for computing services. Directors Anhaldt, Pahlavi, and Cohen, and Assistant Director Metrion, moved to retrieve their respective staffs. After the mission's dissolution, Cohen and Pahlavi returned to claim as prisoners various others that has escaped their initial sweeps.

Data Services was not monolithic. Many of its personnel spent their careers seconded to other departments, rarely interacting with the leadership of their own. As a consequence, these forward-deployed Data Services members usually absorbed the cultural and political outlooks of their new environments wholesale. Seconded crew were therefore treated identically to the core members of any department they served for purposes of evacuation and faction alignment.


Sources:
Abbasov Institute bears the name of former Azerbaijani Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Mammad oglu Abbasov.

First image is "Futuristic city Moscow" by Pickgameru on DeviantArt.

Second image is the Astuter Computer Revue at Commicore at EPCOT in Walt Disney World during the 1980s.

Third image is Fate of the Vanguard BACK COVER by JonHrubesch on DeviantArt.

On the advice of his physicians, Chief Engineer Zakharov chose not to relocate from the unfavorable location where his landing pods first came down. There were too many sick to contemplate relocation.

The ice fields surrounding University Base were metal-rich, at least, and gave up their secrets without complaint. Core samples recovered by teams of University geologists yielded important insights about Planet's enigmatic grand seasons.

His scientists built their new civilization largely unmolested, spreading reading solars and xenomaterials labs among the snowbound foothills of the Orithyian Range. Crossing those mountains, they later came across the Upland Wastes to within sight of Sunny Mesa on the far horizon.



Sources:
First image is "Scavenging" by Kawassass00 on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Ice Planet" by doms3 on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Athra" by Commonbymaru on DeviantArt.

Nwabudike Morgan said:

Convenience is what you want? Any closer and we'd be family. - Promotional material for MorganBazaar

Sources:
First image is "Slaver" by Keithwormwood on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Erth621" by Elvisuall.

Third image is "Abduction" by GameLikeFire.

Unity Mission Landing Manual said:

Section 4.2.3a(12) - Emergency Communication. For all emergency transmissions, use radio channel 433.

Sources:
First image is "Fallout 4 - Retextured Terminals - 4K" by Ephla442 on DeviantArt.

Second image is "ЛП - 183" by Maxim Buyanov on ArtStation.

Third image is "Sci-Fi Device" by Rogelio Delgado on ArtStation, inspired by the work of Tony Zenitium.

Sources:
First and second images are from the collection "Battlefield" by Daniel Romanovsky on ArtStation.

Third image is from the collection "Ballast powered descent vehicles" by Patrik Rosander on ArtStation.

Warden J.T. Marsh said:

Food is the soul's ammunition. - Peregrinations of Planet

Sources:
First image is "space farm" by macarious on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Inside the Market" by METAPHOR9 on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Cyberpunk Tavern" by panprince on NightCafe. It was made with AI.

Sources:
First image is "Repair-Team Color" by MackSztaba on DeviantArt.

Second image is "An hazmat soldier wearing full body armour and Black-Glass Gas Mask" by weepy-hyena73 on Prompt Hunt.

Third image is "Soldier 5" by ProxyGreen on DeviantArt.

Lady Dierdre Skye said:

This living world takes us for its own example. As we do unto Planet, so Planet will do unto us. - Planet Dreams

At seven, Dierdre Skye escaped her tutors to become lost in the moors. Home for school holidays, she fetched blankets and books to the battered women sheltering in the servant's quarters of Wainwright Downs. Some were scarcely a decade older than the impressionable seven-year-old herself.

Shailene Skye encouraged her daughter to learn the stories of others without disclosing her own. People needed symbols, she said, more than they did friends. The Lady Skye was more away in Edinburgh and Brussels than she was at home, tending the business of charity.

As an adult, Dierdre found she could take the part of others with little in the way of deeper knowledge about their circumstances. She held herself a leader--first to recognize oppression, first to contemplate action, first over the barricade. Her Earth liberation handlers knew her as credulous. This new recruit would throw a bomb or divulge trade secrets on the flimsiest suggestion that a righteous cause would be gratified. To her supervisors, Dierdre was a gifted botanist with regrettable fixations--an albatross they tolerated so as not to offend the influential mother, at least until the point she was jailed, providing adequate pretext for summary dismissal.

Dierdre's work straddled two worlds: she was trained to study a people-less past in furtherance of the future, but she spent her career trying to rewire a natural order upended by Man. The tension was exquisite. Dierdre felt the academy could not keep pace with the horrors of modernity--of war and industry, to be precise, and the scars they inflicted on the land.

Never lacking in physical courage, but blind to the privilege that spared her the full consequences of failure, Dierdre picked fights she had no hope of winning. Anyone in her proximity was potentially at risk of becoming a casualty. The U.N. overlooked that unfortunate business in America in favor of Dierdre's credentials. Her combination of skill and spirit seemed vaguely appropriate for a war zone. Recruiters hoped she might "prove resourceful" when matters inevitably deteriorated.

In Peshawar, with the radical mullahs against her and police leadership paralyzed by fear, Dierdre set aside the pleas of her own staff for conciliation with their oppressors. The female clerks stayed. The clinics and granaries remained open. Dierdre importuned the Northwest Frontier Force for more men and stronger guarantees. Jihadists murdered eight of Dierdre's people, maiming six more. Security forces were slow to investigate. Instead, they accused Dierdre of provoking the bombing. She had been warned many times what would happen if she insisted on defying prevailing customs.

Officially, the U.N. suspended Dierdre's operation for reasons of safety. Unofficially, she was blackballed for a second time--written off as a loose cannon without the reserves of patience necessary for her post. She retired to Wainwright and began to resume the acquaintances of a past life. Her "rehabilitation," culminating with accession to the Unity crew, was merely the happy accident of becoming a Nobel laureate.

Captain Jonathan Garland said:

Any believer in a prejudice will tell you plainly: it is a failing that is best when shared.

Dierdre's aggressive spirit showed itself immediately. Gaian raiders wasted no time falling on other factions in southern Shamash. They had their reasons. From Spartans and Kellerites, they wanted blood. Morganites were collectively to blame for the death of Captain Garland. Pilgrims and Dreamers were common thieves not entitled to the excuse of exigency. Anhaldt was the very face of the irresponsible science that had made it necessary to flee Earth. Pahlavi's geneticists were crypto-racists, Zakharov was a fool, and Miriam a geo-imperialist.

Skye's taste for the performative aspects of rulership led her to endorse physiolatry. Gaians leapt, danced, sang, and drugged themselves with untreated water. They celebrated the things they could see, touch, smell, and taste. They approached Chiron from a place of curiosity rather than opportunism, and in so doing learned more about its ecology than if they had rushed to kill and dissect.

Warden J.T. Marsh said:

The first great civilizations were sun worshipers. God first made light. We, a people of the sun, raised full generations underground, or wrapped in metal cocoons. But you're not really human if you've never felt the heat of sunlight on your upturned face. - The Lost World

Sources:
Dierdre Skye is Morena Baccarin as seen on the StarGate franchise.

Factor Roshann Cobb said:

A king is just a banker who spends men in place of money, and usually with less distress. - The Puzzle Box

Alfred Siegfried was a successful trader in seal fur prior to winning election as Shiloh's first monarch in 2029. He took the regnal name Silas and adopted the surname Benjamin, claiming descent from the ancient Israelites.

The new king was driven to insolvency by his wooing for the crown and began pulling the levers of state patronage to reward the backers who had made him. Disaster followed promptly. Third-party auditors reported that the central reserve bank was keeping bad reports. The national university at Antioch, previously recognized for excellence in oceanography and the study of tropical disease, gained new proctors who promptly sold most of its $14 billion collections. After deep cost-cutting by the national airline, a passenger flight crashed into the sea just short of Durban, South Africa. All 220 souls aboard were lost.

Foreign investors panicked. Then a sargassum bloom appeared along Shiloh's west coast. Disputes in the crowded fisheries off the Selah Bight escalated to violence. After the abduction and brutal murder of two ethnic Chinese fishermen, Beijing sent a pair of destroyers that opened fire on a pair of factory ships owned by the Shilohne government as they departed the small harbor at Küv. The bombardment overshot and struck a fuel depot ashore. Both irreplaceable factory ships sank and some 582,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the sea caught fire.


Attempts at economic stabilization came to nought. Shiloh had little arable land and almost no natural resources were accessible from the surface. Silas first contemplated seizing U.N. trust lands from the country's Sikh minority, but backtracked when police admitted they would be unable to enforce the measure if contested. Six expeditions to the lava fields of the Slaar Cone came together after the dynasty mortgaged its crown jewels and adopted World Christianity as the state religion (badly alienating its own multi-confessional subjects) but these, too, ended in disaster. The colonies were abandoned after disagreements with their benefactors, leaving behind $4 billion worth of scientific equipment that Benjamin's government lacked the means even to salvage. Dutch objections scotched negotiations with Geneva over a new space elevator. A visit from the American supercarrier USS Bob Dole (CVA-121) next convinced Silas to send the Soviet ambassador packing with polite rejection of his country's offer to rebuild Küv.


Facing food riots and calls for his abdication, Benjamin accepted the advice of his senior general, Linus Abner, and authorized the invasion of Shiloh's northern neighbor, Gath, a country more than twice Shiloh's size, but with just one-sixth its population. On October 7, 2032, Shiloh advanced two small corps north, led by the crack 3 Motorcycle Battalion.

Gath was caught by surprise. Port Prosperity, the continent's largest metropolis (population 420,000), was isolated from the rest of Gath by an 808-meter massif. The border was undefended. Leading elements of the invasion force road cable cars in from the suburbs unmolested. The local commander, an ex-Canadian Allophone expelled from Free Québec and resettled in Gath by the U.N., was killed in a car wreck speeding to the barracks. His successor, a Major F.R. Bilev, was helicoptered into the city from a pleasure yacht where he'd spent the previous night. Arriving to general chaos, he attempted to enact his predecessor's battle plan, hinging a defense plan on the city's waterworks, only to find that radio and satellite communications were being jammed. With reports of catastrophic casualties, Bilev surrendered the remaining defenders--4,600 of them--in less than two days.


Victory in war provided Shiloh with only dubious benefits. Port Prosperity was quiescent, casualties had been blessedly light despite two years of figthing, and much of the Gathi arsenal, including a modern frigate, fell into the hands of Abner's Royal Army, limiting the possibility for effective partisan activity in Occupied Gath and strengthening the Shilohne military's hand in national politics. A car carrier was intercepted fleeing the fighting, and Abner was able to gift his king with 1,700 Dacia automobiles, soon redistributed among courtiers in Gilboa. On the other hand, most of Port Prosperity's resident industries were unavailable for expropriation or resale. These included large railway workshops owned by Imre-Meinertzhagen, modern port infrastructure belonging to a Danish consortium, a navy yard managed by Grumman Engineering, and steel mills run by a subsidiary of Indian giant Vedanta. Silas left them unmolested, expecting they would remit future taxes to him, but instead they paid no one. Both combatant nations were also heavily indebted to arms traders. Abner had brokered a number of deals with Morgan SafeHaven to keep his soldiers in ammunition and clothing. (Various African warlords and ex-rulers consequently ended up at Silas's court over the next few years, some as guests of the House of Benjamin awaiting Morgan's fulfilment of promises to return them to power, others as beneficiaries of his mercy after being deposed.)


Less than five years after the victory that made him a household name worldwide, Silas Benjamin disappeared. Whether he was killed during the Gathi bombardment of Gilboa in 2040, or became a prisoner of his great enemy Vesper Abaddon, it is unlikely he survived to see Unity on her way. Yet his problematic legacy went with the colonists to Chiron. Even as nationalism fell increasingly out of favor, Silas and Vesper dueled in abstentia through a series of ghost-written essays that appeared on the Planetary Networks beginning in MY4. Many were later traced back to faction leaders themselves.

Foremost among Abaddon's defenders was Miriam Godwinson, who understood Abaddon's self-abnegation as a Pauline allegory with important ramifications about the capacity for lasting reconciliation in the absence of retribution. Colonel Corazón Santiago celebrated Abaddon and Benjamin as the ideals of the reluctant warrior--prepared to fight in the last extremity, but always as monarchs in the pursuit of better circumstances for their respective kingdoms. Morgan was thought to have spoken through intermediaries on behalf of clemency to avoid setting the precedent that leaders might be accountable for crimes to a court other than one of their own making.

Oscar van de Graaf admitted that he'd have liked to hang Silas Benjamin as both a murderer and a charlatan, but held out Abaddon as properly ruthless in his pursuit of peace through total victory. Foreman Domai and Dr. Johann Anhaldt wanted both leaders condemned for squandering what meager national resources they'd had at their disposal. J.T. Marsh struggled to find evidence of good on either side but allowed, like van de Graaf, that Abaddon's was the better claim to clemency as the party "first wronged." Factor Roshann Cobb confined himself to wry remarks on the fact that the human species seemed only to have two solutions for any problem, and both of them war.

Sources:
Silas Benjamin was a main character in the 2009 NBC television show Kings. His part was played by Ian McShane. His general was Linus Abner.

"...and 20,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea caught fire," is a quote from a Clarke & Dawe skit, "The Front Fell Off." I've always loved that turn of phrase.

Walvis Bay, Namibia, stands in for Küv.

Slaar colony is "Ground work -Edge Colony" by Pablo Munoz Gomez on ArtStation.

Port Prosperity is Corto Maltese as seen in the Suicide Squad.

Our Morgan Resolutions mercenaries are cartel fighters in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger.

Special thanks to the Internal Movie Firearms Database for the trove of relevant images.

Plotter Johann Anhaldt said:

Feeling is information: a reflection of lived experience, and ritual a means of accessing it. - Human Calculus

The Tribe and the Hunters began with the smallest populations on Planet. Just 254 Kellerite stowaways boarded Unity. Three perished in passage, victims of faulty wiring jobs to cryobeds of second-hand provenance, and another forty-two during the struggle for supplies and escape. Rather than chance their wounded with either the U.N. or Security Forces mutineers, Kellerites shot friendlies who could no longer give battle. Faction fighters took another twenty-seven prisoners along the way, keeping only the able-bodied--thirteen--as slaves.

Marsh gathered 750 of the Forward Contact Team at a promontory called the Scalpel to declaim his manifesto but retained just shy of 400 when the rovers broke up. Nagao's defection, requested in private, led to a row of four hours. It was all a severe blow for a man who fancied himself a gifted leader, especially by comparison with the more "professorial set" like "Zachy" and Garland. A bottle of mushroom liquor got the better of him for the next three days and the matter was thereafter closed to discussion.

The largest faction at landing was the Lord's Conclave, bloated with the injured and the dying, but food ran out quickly and many starved. Believers nonetheless took seriously the Lord's commandment to multiply, and by Mission Year 5 were against the most numerous people on Planet.

Nwabudike Morgan's appeal proved as broad as it was familiar, and for a time during Mission Year 1 and 2, as others foundered, his well-supplied, completely isolated faction was the largest by a wide margin.

Birth rates were very high among the Pilgrims and Believers whenever food was plentiful and the same was suspected of the Gaians and the Hive. Both the Hive and the early Spartans practiced forced breeding, though their populations were much reduced by constant warfare.

Birth rates were abnormally low within the University, the New State, the Ascendancy, the Dreaming, and the Children of the Atom. The scientists were sick, sterile, or disinterested in traditional family life. Beneath the waves, St. Ledger's people needed little prompting to procreate but established a lottery system out of prudence to avoid overtaxing available life support. For the genetic supremacists high in the mountains, new life was created only in the test tube, which meant slowly. Cobb's people were too traumatized to reproduce, some because they were drugged, others because they were unfree. Anhaldt's developed a collective anxiety with similar consequences.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan said:

The human settlement is a self-regulating system that eventually achieves through popular demand the self-same cleanliness, splendor, and calm that it is impossible to impose at the founding. - Notes on Value

Sources:
First image discovered on Pinterest account of Tkachenko Zp, linking back to this Russian-language webpage.

Second image is "The Lonely Chull" by InvictaHistory on reddit (r/Cosmere).

Third image is "Mars" by CGCortex on ArtStation.

Prokhor Zakharov said:

Sentimentality is the greatest foe of the human species. We think only of today’s happiness and pleasure, never of tomorrow’s harvest. – Address to the United Nations

A willingness to spend lives like rubles and lack of detectable conscience certainly greased Prokhor Zakharov’s rise through the hierarchy of Soviet academia, but his political patrons were most interested in him for another reason: he was a Cassandra who excelled at predicting catastrophe.

The first contraindications that Chiron was suitable for human habitation were obvious even before the expedition launched. Soviet, U.N., and Indian intelligence consulted Zakharov on telemetry gathered from the Chiron Interstellar Probe that reported significant changes in local ecology coterminous with the time of settlement—changes that were too extensive to have been caused by the colonists themselves. His calls for an international symposium on the matter were declined.

Zakharov also expressed dissatisfaction with the condition of Unity’s powerplant, complaining that the diameter and stoutness of the watermains were not adequate to supply emergency cooling—information that helped Moscow to prevail in arguments with the Secretary-General regarding the number of cryobeds set aside for Soviet passengers. Zakharov furthermore questioned the credentials of most of his senior shipmates, offering replacement lists of his own devising. Deirdre Skye, “overly emotional.” Pravin Lal and Johann Anhaldt, both “indifferent to methodological rigor” and “prone to inventing data.” Those he kept included Tamineh Pahlavi, who might bring “estimable realism” to her duties, and Aleigha Cohen, “a researcher of superior courage.” Zakharov’s low view of Lal tracked with that of the Soviet diplomatic corps, which regarded Mongkut and his inner circle as something like stooges to be pitied.

Ironically, despite his misgivings about fellow crew and his caution that the ship’s systems were “thoroughly unready” to meet the demands imposed by moderate-probability disaster, Zakharov was satisfied when invited to select a further three hundred nominees to the Engineering Division as a hedge.

Few villains had a more enduring presence in the popular imagination. Planetary datalinks polling, open to users of all factions, rarely placed Zakharov lower than fifth place in the list of proposed candidates for indictment by the Planetary Council for disobeying the orders of his captain.


The relationship between Morgan Industries and the United Nations lasted more than four decades and marked a distinct departure from the century preceding. Until that time, peacekeeping missions were hamstrung by the vagaries of geopolitics. Successful interventions were possible only under the most exacting of circumstances: during periods of global economic vitality when donors were plentiful; outside the immediate spheres of influence of the Great Powers; continuing only if casualties were very light; and under dangerously cumbersome terms of engagement. The use of veteran, non-patriated mercenary soldiers provided muscle and coherence far beyond anything the U.N. had enjoyed since its founding. Conflicts could now be quashed within hours or days. High-tempo and special operations were no longer unthinkable. In March 2038, a SafeHaven strike team arrested South African Bureau of State Security General Charl Viljoens when his South African Airways Boeing 777 made an unscheduled fueling stop at Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos, Nigeria enroute to Maison Blanche Airport in French Algiers. The general was convicted of crimes against humanity and later died in prison in Geneva awaiting sentencing.


Drunk on its newfound efficacy, the U.N. found it convenient to accept certain unfortunate realities about its new partner with a stubborn and studied silence. Morganite contractors showed less discipline in camp than regular soldiers and followed no recognized rules of warfare. Nor was it unusual for Morgan to broker services to both sides of a conflict. U.N. auditors complained that Morgan was an obvious self-dealer, pouring gasoline on the same fires he was paid to fight. The U.N.’s increased independence also troubled what had been its greatest sources of general funding and military contributions. The West withdrew. So did developing countries that counted themselves victims of Morgan’s business practices. Thus, there were no good options when Morgan refused to accept assignments.


The U.N. was also inevitably dragged unwilling into Morgan’s great feuds—with the Americans from the 2040s, and with other mega-corporations from roughly the same time. American naval air strikes against Morganite facilities and paramilitary forces worldwide inflicted hundreds of collateral casualties among U.N. staff.


Morganites were “fair game” for Kellerite and Pilgrim settlers. So severe was the automatic aggression that Oscar van de Graaf remonstrated with his expedition to use methods of killing that would at least preserve the goods carried by Morganite traders. Pete Landers was more accepting: the heads of Morganites were readily displayed on the defenses of Keller City alongside those of Spartans and Pilgrims.

Sources:
First image is Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael in Andor.
Source of the second image is unknown. Found on Google after a search for “rebel marine rogue one” and clicking about on related images. Appears to be a cosplayer.
Third image is “Midjourney 4983” by Javiet-Lluesma on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is “Nod Cargo plane” by Madin for the mod “Command & Conquer: Tiberian History” found on moddb.com.
Fifth image is “Battle fo Taipei, 2021” by Aisxos on DeviantArt.

Contre-amirale Raoul André St. Germaine said:

If I am to be subject to a tyrant, let him also be the better man. – Personal Diaries

Powerfully discredited by the experience of the Great War, governing monarchies vanished from the Western world for nearly a century-and-a-half. Where they endured in Africa and Asia, ruling dynasties usually traced their roots back to soldiers—traditional “big men” (and they were always men) whose claims on power were better legitimized by the armies at their backs rather than the blood running through their veins.

Kingship as an institution was revived on Earth by refugee communities in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, and although violence continued to play a role in the consolidation and perpetuation of their power, the monarchs of the Big E-Z often legitimated themselves by appeals to merit.

By 2040, the fruitful marriage of genetic engineering and social psych was in its second decade. With the help of supercomputers, bioengineering firms like the Planitzer Group and Replicodon Tactical Genomes (later purchased by the American Reclamation Corporation) were growing what geneticist Dr. Sarnam Grunta called “a new human architecture”—people with the genetic prerequisites to live 120 active years, compete at the level of Olympians, resist most diseases, and respond positively to most drug combinations. Raised in social laboratories, they were afforded every opportunity to achieve an early social and intellectual flowering, and most tested above genius levels, with an average IQ measured at 162, shifting the traditional the bell curve distribution leftward. So-called “Planitzer Perfects” were paid large bounties to enter corporate and government service. They swelled the ranks of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri whenever meritocratic selection was favored over other avenues of accession. In time, genomic medicine, nootropic drugs, and cognitive conditioning provided opportunities even for those born under “less auspicious” circumstances to “better themselves” in the quest for Perfection.

Critics such as faith leader Miriam Godwinson, lay preacher Jean-Baptiste Keller, and noted public science interlocutor Dr. Johann Anhaldt charged that Perfects were part of what Godwinson herself called “a pronounced crisis of self-doubt in the human race.” There was something inhuman, they said, about trying to beat the odds and reverse-engineer the Miracle of Life.

Perfects engendered significant jealousy. “Authentic” geniuses such as Soviet physicist Prokhor Zakharov were at pains to present themselves as “self-made” men even when the circumstances of their upbringings closely mirrored Grunta’s formulae for successful child-rearing. Many believed that Perfects were victims of mental conditioning. Survivalist Corazón Santiago warned her Datalinks readers that Perfects formed a Fifth Column poised to overthrow governments. In her private correspondence with the Struan’s Board of Directors, Aleigha Cohen suggested that it would have been a “serious dereliction” for Grunta and his financiers to have avoided such an obvious and lucrative application for their creations.

Yet for others, Perfects were a legitimate answer to the loss of human capital caused by the calamities of the early and mid-twenty-first century. In the Big E-Z, Perfects were heroes of labor. They were also a cheaper alternative to supercomputers for groups interested in jump-starting independent governments with the capacity to deliver social goods. The first new monarchs of the twenty-first century were elected by the people of the islets, platforms, and floating cities they served. The House of Benjamin, which eventually governed in Shiloh, was founded by a Perfect.

As symbols tied intimately to the performance of state power, the conservation of traditional values, and the distribution of largess, pretenders to monarchy have been the focal point for political intrigue since time immemorial. In the 2030s, French Unionists rode back into power on a wave of popular backlash against industrial and government automation. They offered instead the promise of policy stability and cultural continuity embodied in the restored House of Bonaparte.

Champions of the “new monarchy” included French military officer Raoul André St. Germaine; mogul Nwabudike Morgan, who announced in 2050 that company historians had confirmed his matrilineal connection to the Ondonga kings of Ovamboland; and geneticist Tamineh Pahlavi. Proponents of kingship laid out a familiar case against democracy: that it produced tyrannies no less severe because popular, that its leaders were taught thereby to be fickle, and that only a person bred to the role should be entrusted with the awesome authority to act on behalf of the body politic. Like many colonial soldiers, St. Germaine bemoaned the large gulfs between what Frenchmen claimed to want and what they were willing to endure to get it. He felt that a monarchy, properly clothed in law, would also break the power of the media to stir up faction since such a system would admit no viable alternative to the present ruler.


Sources:
First image is from the NBC television show Kings. The House of Benjamin is the ruling dynasty in Shiloh, a fictional kingdom that was the setting for Kings.

Second image is from Apocalypse Now: Redux.

Perfects are discussed on p. 94 of Jon F. Zeigler’s GURPS treatment of Alpha Centauri, published by Steve Jackson Games.

Replicodon Tactical Genomes is a company created for the board game Terraforming Mars, published by FryxGames.

Electrician's Mate Sedgel Meertens said:

The human alone seeks to explain his existence beyond survival for the purpose of reproduction. I say, the purpose was known to us even in ancient times: to be of some good use to our fellows.

Their reputation preceding them, Kellerites did no recruiting aboard Unity and little on the ground thereafter. Two early experiments to absorb survivors pulled from nearby Colony Pods yielded mixed results in Keller City: most were amenable enough to the faction's frontier communalism--an almost obvious remedy to the grand emergency that was Planetfall--but lack of affinity toward their new saviors exacerbated the million dangers and indignities of life under siege. Hoping in vain to build a better reputation with his neighbors, the colony's selectman, Pete Landers, permitted over half the newcomers to depart the base when Santiago withdrew her forces. This left natural births as the only significant source of new colonists before M.Y. 10, a slow and expensive method of population replacement even before considering the very high rates of injury and death prevalent on Chiron.

Little did Landers know at the time that his was not the only Kellerite enclave to make the Crossing from Earth. Like other Millenarian movements, Kellerism sank its deepest and strongest roots wherever traditional sources of social goods--civil order, living wages, and cultural continuity--were most at-risk. By 2050, much of Northwestern Europe was underwater. What remained of Dry Belgium came into French hands following a Walloon uprising. The parents of Sedgel Meertens, both university professors, threw themselves into municipal organizing as an answer to foreign imperialism. Their ninth natural child, a son, was born that same year in a caravan in the enclave of Saint-Remy along the border with France.

Sedgel's people followed the familiar Kellerite formula: kitchen gardens, home workshops, community clinics, and target practice. Meertens was instructed in falconry, soldering, diving, and boat-building according to a community curriculum that attempted to reposit a diversity of skillsets within each family group. In its last, desperate hours, the failing Belgian government recognized the Kellerites as willing allies and managed to distribute enough weapons to harden these communities against raids by Walloon irregulars. French authorities moved conservatively: the French gendarmerie secured key industries and natural resources and delivered assistance to friendly populations but otherwise left the dissenters unmolested.

In this way, Kellerism achieved new heights of intellectual integrity. The Meertens raised Sedgel in the prescribed manner. He kept a well-annotated Bible and discussed his conclusions with a Worship Circle around his own age. Along with that cohort, he performed acts of service in the community as a testament to his faith. Beginning at age fifteen, he stood watch on the town walls and filled sandbags when it rained. Sedgel was blooded young, but no warrior, a participant in occassional skirmishes with Walloons and Frenchmen that inflicted few casualties and were treated as incidental matters by both sides.

Belgian Kellerism was heavily antiquated in its stylings: the enclave lived entirely by the artifice of its own hands, disconnected from the outside world, which provided only the occasional piece of salvage or the odd, transient visitor who might as well have come from the Moon. American Kellerites, like the Evangelical tradition from which they grew, fought to draw their members away from the seductive embrace of the World Wide Web and corporate serfdom. But in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, Kellerism was the refuge of people already determined to wall themselves in.

Over time, global Kellerites did become conscious of the American Kellerite tradition and plight. Although it cut contrary to the ideals of the movement's founder, who insisted that communities would find strength from commonality of place rather than of belief, European Kellerites were enthusiastic to build linkages with others who practiced their modes of living. Many were drawn to volunteer for missions in the United States and Canada, earning the label "kiteists" for the way that "blew in from across the Atlantic." As outsiders to the North American civil wars, foreign Kellerites were astonished by its ferocity to the point that many experienced a crusading zeal.

Until his dying day, Jean-Baptiste Keller considered himself an American citizen. His was a "Lost United States," neither that of the Hypersurvivalists nor of the Federal Government that increasingly transformed itself into something unrecognizable so as to better fight the war it had been unable to avoid. Sedgel and his ilk were also nationalists in their own way--"Belgians by refusal," even if their way of life was dictated by an American pamphlet. In letters to the United Nations in Geneva, they made their case for inclusion in the Unity Project as the last living links to a proud legacy. Over strident French objections, they succeeded.

It was the U.N.'s practice to diversity billets so as to avoid over-saturating particular operating divisions with too many crew of the same national origin, but the Kellerites tampered with official records to circumvent these restrictions, intending that their community be preserved after Planetfall.

Meertens trained as an electrician's mate to repair communications as part of Jeremy Tanner Marsh's Forward Contact Team. He landed with these crews, ahead of the main expedition, serving as radio operator aboard a 'Former, and was no longer at pains to conceal his beliefs. Upon learning of Unity's destruction, Meertens and several dozen other Belgian Kellerites were detained briefly on Marsh's orders out of suspicion that they might act in concert with the stowaways. Although later released, the parolees quit Marsh's service and made the long trek to Keller City with their share of supplies in tow where they were greeted with astonishment by the Selectman himself.

The addition of the young Meertens, now a leader among his own cohort, reinforced certain Luddite and confessional tendencies within the broader faction. Meertens had imbibed some of Marsh's suspicion of robotics as a threat to the retention of learned survival skills and saw the ethical content of Scripture as a social glue that set the Tribe apart from other communities of human survivors less inclined toward religiosity. Meertens also called for a more democratic government, demanding that Landers put more decisions to a popular vote and questioning why personal affiliation with the movement's founder should be considered a qualification for faction leadership.

Faith attracted Meertens to the Conclave, and he was eventually made Landers's ambassador plenipotentiary to Miriam Godwinson's court at New Jerusalem. Meertens was present during a baptism at the Wells of Moriah when a University student set off a bomb intended for the Sister. Medical adhesives saved Meerten's life but left him permanently disfigured.

Sources:
Image is "Mikhail" by GerryArthur on DeviantArt.

Sources:
First image is "777Jihad" by isleeyin on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Gmod | Juggernaut Prep" by OlmateUbafest on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Shock trooper" by Asahisuperdry on DeviantArt. CMC combat suits are worn by Marines in the StarCraft series of computer games. Pain shunts are a BattleTech technology.

Fourth image is "Silent city" by emilysart on DeviantArt.

Fifth image is "Species A" by jbrown67 in DeviantArt.

Oscar van de Graaf said:

They make superb transport, excellent eating, and reliable early warning systems for everything from weather to gas leaks. Given time and gyroscopes, I estimate they will also make worthy gun carriages. - Plowman's Paradise

The only thing sweeter than a subrid's meat was its disposition. Violent encounters with the species were usually the the result of misunderstanding, not predation.

Lady Deirdre Skye said:

Planet is wise to the intruder. Humanity and its artifacts are magnets to local fauna. Every member of the First Generation remembers a time when they could sleep on an empty camp but wake up to a throng of subrids so thick, it was possible to walk a mile without touching soil. - Planet Dreams

Subrids soon became unwitting pawns in the vendettas between factions. Pilgrim ranchers stampeded herds of the ungainly beasts through the tent camps of unwary trespassers in the dark of night. Three hundred Morganites died in agony after subrids cultivated with fungal spores wandered across the Gaian frontier to collect at the ground seeps around Crazy Igor's Cash-N-Carry. Hive patrollers learned to emulate the burrowing behavior of the dry land subspecies to burst with their mounts from the sands. In M.Y. 38, the Planetary Council authorized and funded the Chiron Transhumant Police, a seasonal gendarme staffed mostly by Hunters. The agency was charged with reducing inter-faction violence during the "petite" migratory periods between changes in season but spent its seventeen-year history locked in a continuous shooting war with Pilgrim snail-punchers and Spartan rustlers.

All factions with access to temperate, tropical, and arid climate zones raised subrids for food. Hunters, Tribals, and Spartans learned subrid handling as a survival discipline. Pilgrims counted subrids as personalty. The Governor often rewarded his retainers with choice specimens cut out from his crawls. Morganites speculated on subrid futures; Oracletians sold predictive analysis of future spawning behavior. High up in their mountain fastness, the University and Ascendancy marveled at the enduring draw of horse cultures on the human imagination.

The Dreamers were notorious for vicious experiments with subrids. Roshann Cobb was enthralled by the creature's uniquely open to a symbiotic relationship with humans and developed the theory that subrids were attuned to Planetary harmonics. To this end, he arranged for vivisections that yielded insights he never shared.

Sources:
First image is "Chull from The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson" by Pablo Zamora Almagro on ArtStation.

Sources:
First image is "Zaiya Ikowuro: Volume III - Wild Outpost (Evale)" by GratefulReflex on DeviantArt.

Second image is "RC-24 Design System: Vehicle Builder" by GratefulReflux on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Quarantine Patrol" by saralgam1980 at DeviantArt.

Fourth image is "Tears of distant sun" by ukitakumuki on DeviantArt.

Annunciator Sathieu Metrion said:

Man without history is a loaded pistol pointed at the wrong target. - Timelines

Name: Sathieu Metrion
Rank: Ensign
Position: Senior Archivist
Country of Origin: Thailand
Date of Birth: 06-06-2031
Height: 170.18 cm
Weight: 72.6 kg

Service Record:
Born in Chiang Tung, United Former Thai Territories, Thai-occupied Shan State. Mother, a librarian supporting "cultural conservation" of the area's Thai legacy. Educated at boarding schools in Bangkok after security situation in home province deteriorated. Contact with parents thereafter limited to written correspondence until their deaths.

Exemplary A-NET scores led to secondary screenings by Buenos Aires-based Tomorrow Institute under the Global Human Resource Project, a collaboration with various governments to identify future candidates for national leadership roles. Graduated Royal Thai Naval Academy. Posted to inshore patrol, primarily combating traffic in plundered antiquities. Initially disliked by subordinates for imposing additional training and education requirements at the expense of their recreation. Subject eventually won their loyalty, and popular acclaim, commanding several victories against trans-national criminal, corporate, and French Union incursions through Thai waters.

Studied data science at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. Temporarily assigned to Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency for SEATO's Fourth Earth-Io Mission aboard the Hayyānu, an orbital surveyor operated by the Trans-Neptunian Development Corporation. Crew claim to have discovered previously-unsuspected deposits of water ice, but the ship's data payload was corrupted and life support compromised by an infiltrator traced through Interpol to servers at the University of Trinidad. Subject later inducted into the Honorable Order of Rama for rapid restoration of central computer functionality despite severe injuries from cold, saving the lives of everyone aboard. Amputation of subject's left hand was mitigated by cybernetic replacement, leading to a long period of rehabilitation that included medically-supervised Dreaming.

Meritorious appointment to the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri with Thai national contingent, 2066. Entered Data Services under Lt. Cmdr. Tạ Dọc Thân. During mission training, subject participated in the so-called Frankenstein Debates, a series of networked meta-conversations about the likelihood that humans would inadvertently create a hostile artificial intelligence. With Thân, subject posited that the risk of such an outcome existed in proportion to the number of modifications to original software code. This was the beginning of the "disk obedience" movement in software engineering.

In 2070, subject led interplanetary evaluation team tasked with identifying the most-important areas of human knowledge for preservation in the Unity Data Core. The final report urged U.N. planners to devote more disk space to cultural products, arguing that these were less independently reproducable than practical information such as manuals on small unit tactics and remote imaging of Chiron's moons.

Awakened during Unity Crisis. Delivered most Atomic Energy Lab staff, including their director, Dr. Johann Anhaldt, from cold sleep before joining the larger body of Data Services responders in the Data Core. Participated in initial system impact assessments and remote damage control operations.

As conditions deteriorated, Thân countermanded the orders of Captain Garland and Executive Officer D'Almeida in order to prioritize support for Chief Engineer Zakharov's reactor repairs, leading to a brief confrontation between the two men. Subject was ordered out of the Data Core 36 minutes before its ejection, during which Thân was killed.

Subject gathered Data Services survivors, declaring his intention to follow Thân's plan of preserving "this fund of human knowledge--our sacred trust." En route to hangar bays, Data Services personnel recruited disorganized survivors of other divisions, including U.N. Security Forces wounded, structural engineers previously dispatched forward by Zakharov, damage control parties isolated by failsafes, and contractors of Comprehensive Transport, the quasi-governmental body responsible for regulation of space travel throughout the Sol System. They ultimately commandeered two Landing Pods.

Colonists under Metrion's supervision were first to interact with survivors of the preceding Chiron Interstellar Probe, from whom they contracted Red Flu, triggering draconian quarantine protocols to stem serious losses.

Psych Profile: Sentimentalist
Mission Psych Battery confirms observations by past superiors of surliness and persistent failure to build trusting relationships. Subject also suffers from moderate depression. Strong interest in mementos and memory recovery reflects longing for an idealized past.

Peer interviews demonstrate subject was widely understood to disapprove of Thân's leadership style. Private remembrances, accessed through random audit, indicate subject found Thân "preening."

Thân meanwhile characterized subject as "bookish" and "emotionally immature" and repeatedly withheld promotion in filings endorsed by Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.


Sources:
First image is "Cyberpunk portrait of man as cyborg, sci fi concept art, dramatic, artstation trending, highly detailed," created on Lexica by an unknown author.

Second image is part of the portfolio "777Jihad" by isleeyin on DeviantArt.

Sources:
First image is "Harvester" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Terraformer 2" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Assembly" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.

Gaia's Stepdaughters stubbornly maintained a handicraft economy--partly out of concern for Planet's natural ecology, and partly because heavy equipment was largely diverted to the militia after First Contact with other factions.

Because of their advanced techniques, nutrients, water, and (considering their low draw) energy were often plentiful, but minerals were harder to come by. Production and technological progress were painstakingly slow. Mechanical and electronic devices were kept in good order, but significant repairs or replacement were possible only with the help of sympathetic Hunter Lodges or visiting New State shipping--both rarities. A half-dozen supercomputers scavenged from recovered Supply Pods were remanded to Gaia's Landing for weather forecasting and gene sequencing. Heavy equipment not converted for war-making was pooled and apportioned under the supervision of a council answerable to the Lady herself, but almost always found it way to agricultural use.


For resupply, Gaian fighters depended on battlefield salvage. Standard practice was to let mindworms incapacitate enemy patrols before stripping them of their equipment. The prisoners, treated with scrupulous care, could then be traded back as the price of a temporary truce.

This powered combat suit, a Norinco-made Jiànkè (剑客) originally supplied to the expedition by Golden China and once used by Spartans for base security, was more than 110 years old when it stood in defense of The Autumn Clade.


Cranberries, which favored acidic soils, were a popular early transplant.

Here, Gaian drones harvest the fruits from a bog with the help of jury-rigged safety equipment. The shells are clearly spacesuits, while the hoods are bladders sewn from hab-tent scraps and the re-breathers have been converted from water filtration devices. Although similar, the suits are not identical, pointing to the all-important role of improvisation in frontier living.[/center]


Sources:
First image is from the beauty render in the portfolio "Canyon Civilization Rural Village" by jordi van hees on ArtStation.

Second image is "The Rot begins" by DustBye-Fantasies on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Harvest" by Eteriv on DeviantArt.