The Stars Beckon - The Story of the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth [Modded Technocratic LP]

[ChicagoZohan]

Prologue: The Journey Begins

March 28th, 2200. A relay satellite operated by the Department of Physical Sciences in the outer reaches of the solar system blinks on as it receives a message. The message was broadcast only moments beforehand by Lieutenant Scientist Daniel Smith Jr, an Archeologist trained by the Department of Sociological Studies but operating under a grant from the Department of Physical Sciences. His ship, of course, was outfitted by the Department of Practical Engineering, which controlled the majority of industrial production in the Commonwealth of Earth, both on-planet and off.

This marked the first time that all three branches of the Directorate cooperated this closely since the Climate Accords of 2130, soon after the conclusion of the Third World War with the Day of Rationality. The scientists of the world had successfully convinced the highest ranking generals of each of the great powers that continued war would lead only to the destruction of mankind. The war must be ended, and the climate crisis dealt with strongly and decisively! they urged, and in 2129 the generals finally listened.

Soon after, the three great departments of the Directorate found that while they all upheld the principles of rational analysis and the scientific method, their differing perspectives often led to conflicting paths forward. Humanity avoided extinction, but the glorious future the Directorate had promised at the founding of the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth was slow to arrive.

By 2200, development in the Commonwealth had stagnated. While some of the Directorate's achievements were praised, such as their work in the Sahara, their inability to deliver on such promises as an automated workforce for the benefit of all or radical improvements in medicine translating to increased lifespan and quality of life has marred the Directorate's reputation.

Two thirds of Earth's population still worked relatively menial jobs, and while the basic needs of nearly all of Earth's billions were met sufficiently, opportunity for growth was rare. Nearly all children of working class families would remain working class for their entire lives. Even for the middle class, it was rare for more than one or two of their children to find the same sorts of opportunity that their parents had. Social mobility mostly pointed down.

Despite this, faith in the Directorate remained strong. The people hoped for a new generation of scientists to make new breakthroughs which would lead to another burst of growth. Governor Miroslava Larionova of the dominant (and in an open secret sponsored by the Directorate itself) Intellectual Party had been elected under precisely that mandate, promising to expand the planet's research facilities. In the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth, a position of Researcher was greatly coveted, especially as the rank of Director-General could be reached only by a Scientist approved by the three Departments.

The current Director-General, elected for a 20 year term in January of that year, was a non-nonsense architect from the Department of Practical Engineering. Before her election as Director-General, Katya Fedorova had spent time directing projects both on Earth and in space. Her biggest claim to fame was overseeing the construction of Uranus's wind turbines, which harvest its violent storms, as well as the asteroid processing plant on 4 Vesta. Her platform called to restore Earth to the time when new discoveries drove growth and innovation.

Following a Director-General's inauguration, they appoint a cabinet of Director-Colonels to head up the Departments of Sociological Studies, Physical Sciences, and Practical Engineering. These candidates are chosen based on proposals made which come from a pool of prospective in each Department. By law, the sitting Director-Colonels must make their own proposals, but generally at least two of the three are retained. Bucking tradition, Fedorova immediately replaced the whole batch of Director-Colonels. Her new cabinet consisted of three of the brightest young minds in their fields, each of whom was selected because they promised that under their guidance, the Department would accomplish new and remarkable things.

Director-Colonel Mathieu Fortin of the Department of Physical Sciences was the least experienced of the three, but he was also known to be something of a prodigy. His early work studying the anomaly that had recently been discovered near Pluto was quite remarkable, and under Director-General Fedorova's guidance, he directed the Department to study the wider implications of these strange readings on the Directorate's accepted quantum models, while his personal team dug into the anomaly itself.

Director-Colonel Natsuki Sato of the Department of Sociological Studies began her career in practical government, but after becoming frustrated with the entrenched political structure she returned to academia, determined to reform the process to be more efficient and produce better results.

*Director-Colonel Aluwanip Tshonyane of the Department of Practical Engineering is an industry titan and the owner of a great conglomerate of private research lab, manufacturing facilities, and asteroid mining operations. His appointment to the Cabinet again bucks tradition. Tshonyane studied the sciences and is certainly more than qualified for his position, and in his earlier years he held a number of lower positions within the Directorate. In 2197, as he prepared for reelection, his father (who at the time controlled the family industrial empire) unexpectedly passed away; Tshonyane abandoned his campaign to care for his ailing mother, and did not return to the public eye until his appointment in 2200. His qualifications aren't in question, but his status as a wealthy industrialist with control of over a third of Earth's manufacturing facilities worried many even before his political appointment. However, this was the result of a compromise; in exchange for this position, Tshonyane ceded 49% control of each of his factories to the Directorate.

Two months after the election, Director-Colonel Fortin called an Assembly of Directors, summoning his two equals as well as Director-General Fedorova to a meeting. It was here that he revealed the results of his investigation of the anomaly near Pluto.

About a year beforehand, the ECS Amazon detected strange radiation readings from an otherwise unremarkable point a way out past Pluto's orbit. Fortin, not yet a Director-General, was put in charge of a thorough investigation of this anomaly. While his findings remained classified, whatever he had revealed to Director-General Elect Fedorova convinced her to place him as head of the Department of Physical Sciences. Since then, his team had continued investigating the anomaly. These were their findings.

• The anomalous radiation readings were leaking from an unknown dimensional anomaly. This anomaly is not localized to a single point; instead, it stretches outwards in a line. The readings are incredibly faint, but they can be detected emanating from as far as one light-year away. It is likely they continue further, but current instruments are not sensitive enough to detect that far.
• The path of space which is generating anomalous readings points directly at the neighboring Barnard's Star. It is likely it continues all the way there.
• There are two other places in the solar system generating similar anomalous readings, pointing at two other neighboring stars.
• These anomalous readings are not consistent with any known physical model. Quantum theories attempting to explain the readings have struggled to come up with a natural way for these anomalies to develop, but under some models a sufficiently dense veins of dark matter linking between stars could generate these readings by bringing our dimension close to another, which may obey entirely different laws of physics.
• Fortin's proposal which so captivated Fedorova was that these veins were placed there by an advanced civilization, with some means of manipulating dark matter directly. With the right technology, it should be possible to generate a field around a ship which would allow it to pass through this weakened field in space, into this other dimension. It would be impossible to know for sure what awaits on the other side; but assuming that these veins ARE created artificially, it is likely they would have some use, considering the unimaginable energy expenditure of such a project. As the paths appear to connect between stars, it is likely they allow travel between the stars - perhaps even faster than light travel.

The appropriate technology to manipulate this field was indeed developed by Fortin's team - or so he hopes. Now he called the Directors together to gather their approval and aid in his new proposal: to send a ship to Barnard's Star.

So it was that Lieutenant Scientist Daniel Smith Jr. was placed in command of the ECS Aldrin, the first ship outfitted with a hyperdrive device. By mid-March, the Aldrin had made its way beyond Pluto and started charging up the new Fortin Device it was equipped with. A few days later, the Aldrin dropped off a satellite equipped with a modified Fortin Device to allow communication through the neighboring dimension, should all go well. Then it slipped through the anomalous region and disappeared.

A few days later, a message arrived over the relay. It contained only a single high-resolution image, taken by the relay device on the other side. Humanity had reached a neighboring star system.

*If this guy ever gets elected Director-General, I may need to change government type to a MegaCorp

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 1: The Stars Beckon

Earth was abuzz with news and bustling with excitement. A ship - and one with a human crew, no less! - was in orbit around an alien star, for the first time in human history. And how quickly they got there! In just a few days of lost contact -- a few days which they had no memory of. Their instruments showed that no time at all had passed between their entrance into the anomaly and their exit lightyears away. And yet, they had traveled, in mere days, a distance many lightyears long. It shouldn't have been possible.

Already debate raged as to the origin of the dark matter veins (which the public had dubbed "Hyperlanes", a term the scientific community begrudgingly adopted) which the ECS Aldrin had followed. Fortin, discoverer of the pathways, claimed they were constructed on purpose by an alien race. Within a few months a competing theory emerged. New models of the formation of the universe, informed by the strange quantum behavior measured around these hyperlanes, were supposed to answer some long-standing questions about the clumping of star systems in the early universe. If true, these models implied that the hyperlanes were natural, and many billions of years old.

At the time, no evidence of extraterrestrial life had been found, so Director-Colonel Fortin was privately ridiculed by many for his basis theories. All that changed at the first world visited by the ECS Aldrin.

While the Alrdin did not send down landing parties, Daniel Smith Jr. did record an impassioned plea to the Directorate, requesting that this world be earmarked for future study. The Director-Colonels unanimously agreed, and so Barnard's Star I was designated for further study.

While an underground ecosystem is no ancient mega-civilization capable of hyperlane construction, the fact that the first world explored contained life bode well for the odds of finding life in the galaxy.

These promising results encouraged the Directorate, and so as the ECS Aldrin continued visiting the worlds of Bernard's Star, a second ship was commissioned. The young and eager Viktor Dudnik was put in command of the newly commissioned ECS Grissom, and set off to explore the next star to which a hyperland led - Iresta.

Even while he was in route, the Aldrin had reported back with even more remarkable news. Evidence of intelligent life -- extremely advanced intelligent life, capable of constructing a Dyson Sphere eons ago, was found around Barnard's Star. No one was laughing and Fortin's ideas now, and the Director-General was praised for her foresight in selecting him.

On Earth, Governor Larionova announced that they would be breaking ground on a huge expansion of the planet's largest research complex. Huge amounts of data were pouring back to Earth from its exploratory ships, even with their cursory scans of the exoplanets. There were finally opportunities for young scientists once more; the population rejoiced, reading every press release with great enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Lt. Scientist Smith Jr. made yet another Earth-shattering discovery. Conclusive evidence of a confederation of highly advanced alien civilizations being active in the system two million years ago was discovered!

Yet there was trouble. These aliens were clearly gone. Why? What could have wiped out such an advanced civilization? And as the months went by, the models were refined, and the astrophysicists insisted: the fingerprints of the hyperlanes can be found in the pattern of star formation many billions of years ago. This First League could not have been the creators of the hyperlane system. So who were they, and where did they go?

Over in Iresta, Lt. Scientist Dudnik discovered a mineral rich planet. Scans of its depths revealed some sort of artificial chamber. Further investigation was clearly warranted, but for now Dudnik's orders were to map as many of the nearby stars as possible.

Back home, the Directorate's leadership was worried. Director-Coloner Natsuki Sato was convinced that it was only a matter of time before living aliens as advanced as the Commonwealth or beyond would be discovered, and it would pay to be prepared. If Humanity could find its way into the hyperlane network, so could other species. The other Directors agreed, and so as soon as the alloy refineries were ready, a third science vessel was commissioned. The ECS Darwin, helmed by another archeologist - Kirill Lazarev - set off to the last star system connected by the hyperlanes directly to Earth - Aethos. It would arrive by March of 2201.

Commonwealth ships were now exploring in every direction. Earth's economy was improving for the first time in two decades as more and more researchers were hired to go through the necessary data. Things were looking up.

Unfortunately, not everyone believed that the scientifically rigorous approach was the correct path forward....

The Commonwealth of Earth did not have a true military fleet, but it did have a few armed corvettes that were used as a police force. These ships were deployed against the rebel fleet in short order.

Director-General Fedorova was beyond furious. The loss of a corvette was actually quite a blow to the Commonwealth's economy; each ship took a sizable portion of Earth's yearly alloy production to complete, and this loss came at a time when she and Director-Colonel Tshonyane were trying to push for the allocation of alloys for additional military ships, in light of the evidence that spacefaring aliens existed in the region in the relatively recent past.

At least she wouldn't have a hard time convincing the others that combat ships were necessary, she mused as she ordered the boarding of the last surviving enemy ship.

As the Directorate prepared a fleet that could track down the renegades, scientific readings continued returning from the science ships. Having finished exploring Barnard's Star, the ECS Aldrin continued onwards to the star system Izar, where it found an asteroid filled with deposits of rare crystals, which the Department of Practical Engineering believes may posses unusual and exotic properties that could prove useful in the future.

An even more remarkable discovery is made by the ECS Darwin in the Aethos system, who discovers that soon after it arrived in the system, another set of spacefaring ships appeared as well, coming down another hyperlane path. These ships appear almost organic in nature, although with alien creatures nothing is certain.

Ordering her entire department to hold off on its reform project, the Director-Colonel of Sociological Studies Sato redirects efforts to the investigation of these alien beings. This is unanimously approved by the Directorate's high board, who consider the identification of these creatures a top priority. Luckily, they do not appear hostile, the the Darwin is able to continue its work.

In a series of fiery speeches aired on every television channel, the Director-Colonels declare that the Commonwealth is entering a New Renaissance, and commit to diverting every available resource to the greater understanding of all new discoveries, for the betterment of all mankind. The public, having been fed constant live streams of the exploration of alien solar systems, is extremely excited by the prospect.

This commitment seems to pay off almost immediately. In the star system Procyon, the ECS Grissom discovers a mostly habitable world. It is much more arid than earth, with very few oceans, and a lower gravity. But it definitely posses photosynthetic life that seems akin to Earth vegetation, and boasts a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Colonization is an immediate prospect.

In May of 2202, the construction ship ECS Amazon is sent beyond Sol's sphere for the first time. There are many mineral deposits that would be easy to harvest in orbit around Barnard's Star, as well as the planet bearing underground life and the evidence of First League life. The Directorate intends to claim the system for the Commonwealth.

In July, the ECS Darwin reports another phenomenal discovery. In orbit of Sirius is a continental world, very similar to Earth. Even more so than Procyon, Sirius III is a perfect prospect for colonization.

By September, the station around Barnard's Station is complete. Humanity is officially an interstellar species, and the minerals of Barnard's Star's worlds will soon flood back across the hyperlanes to enrich the Commonwealth of Earth.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 2: First Contact

By October of 2202, initial excitement over the strange spacefaring lifeforms discovered by the ECS Darwin in the Aethos system began to wane as the realization came that they were not intelligent after all. They turned out to be more like space whales, traveling between stars using a natural affinity for the hyperlanes and grazing on the upper atmospheres of gas giants. The most remarkable thing about them, according to the memo released by Director-Colonel Natsuki Sato, was that they had apparently evolved in response to the opportunity presented by the artificial hyperlanes. Whether this occurred naturally or through intentional engineering remained unknown.

Private meetings of the board began to discuss the possibility that some sinister force was destroying sentient empires before they could grow. Contingency plans were being formed for dealing with the attention of such a being. In despair, scientists theorized about stranger and more powerful forces that could be lurking in the darkness of space, waiting to destroy them all. The Femi Paradox had never loomed so heavy.

And then, with a peculiar stroke of luck, the matter would be resolved by a most unusual discovery made by the ECS Aldrin.

When the Directors first received Lt. Scientist Daniel Smith Jr.'s report, which was forwarded straight to them as all proof of live sentient life was to do, they thought the stress of helming the Aldrin had finally cracked him. There was simply no way this report could be true. And yet, when they tried to signal the hyperlane coordinates referenced by the alien charts Smith reported, sending out a string of prime numbers in simple binary code, they got a message back: the Fibonacci Series.

Cross-referencing the alien charts, which appeared to be written by someone with knowledge of both human and Mishnar languages, communication was achieved within weeks thanks to dutiful efforts by researchers on both ends. The aliens introduced themselves as the Mishnar Compact, a pacifistic and rational confederacy of vaguely humanoid aliens.

As the aliens appeared cooperative, and their homeworld habitable enough for humanity, envoys were quickly exchanged - it seemed the tradition was familiar to the Mishar as well. They are enormously strong, but quite solitary and docile by nature, preferring to isolate themselves in frigid mountain dwellings.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth had replaced the destroyed corvette, and built a fourth beside it. The small fleet headed off to the Iresta system, where some of the cultists had been traced. After a swift and decisive battle, this cultist fleet was destroyed as well by April of 2203.

Around this time, Director-Colonel Tshonyane announced that his department's broad analysis of new advances in nanomechanics had concluded, and he proposed a number of avenues for further research. After some discussion, the Directorate agreed that the production of powered exoskeletons for military and industrial use would be of a top priority. Privately, Tshonyane believed that advances in this field would open up new opportunities in the world of robotics, freeing up more citizens to work on research instead of as technicians or farmers or miners. His own conglomerate, of course, would benefit greatly from these improvements in capital - especially as, with the Directorate possessing a large share of the company, they'd be inclined to hand more of their contracts to him.

At her next State of the Commonwealth speech, the Director-General again praised the work that the exploration ships were doing, as well as the work of the researchers who dutifully crunched the returned data for the betterment of all mankind. Additional resources were committed once more to the exoplanet project, with the promise of Humanity's ascension to an interstellar species to follow shortly.

Despite this speech, and Governor Larionova's lobbying to further expand the research facilities again, military leaders insisted that with the discovery of the Mishar just a few star systems away, friendly as they may appear, additional investment in naval capacity was crucial for the Commonwealth's survival, and Director-General Fedorova reluctantly agreed. While not as influential as the scientists, the Commonwealth's generals had always remained powerful, and with the discovery of alien life and the Temple of Unity insurrection their influence was growing once again. And so the next project was not an expansion of the research complex, but the construction of additional alloy foundries across the planet.

Fortin's Department of Physical Sciences, meanwhile, had completed its own survey of new models of quantum mechanics. Rather than continue the theoretical discussions, Director-Colonel Fortin proposed a test. A number of the new models predicted vastly more energy efficient methods of generating deflector shields could be possible. Fortin assigned competing labs the resources to develop prototype deflectors based on their new models. The successful models could be put into production, and would advance the Commonwealth's understanding of physics.

The discovery of the massive Tiyanki raised the possibility of more hostile forms of spaceborne life. As the ECS Darwin began to explore the star system Jabeth, it discovered evidence of just such a creature. Luckily, it was dead, but the generals and admirals were now nearly frantic in their demands for a proper defensive force. Director-General Fedorova now lent them her ear, and even began toying with the suggestion of allowing an admiral into the meetings of the high board; for the moment, resistance from the Director-Colonels prevented her from doing so.

In the latter half of 2204, the Department of Sociological Studies had caught up to the others, despite its diversion to study the Tiyanki; Director-Colonel Sato's Planetary Unification campaign was complete. Sato now shifted focus, piggybacking on the public's thirst for knowledge of the exoplanets. She directed her team to shift focus to the study of the incredibly diverse ecosystems that developed on each world, and with unanimous approval from the Directors created the great scientific-study/public-relations-campaign for which she would go down in history, the Habitable Worlds Survey.

In late 2204, the Joint Chiefs of the Defense Department sent a letter to the High Board of Directors. The letter explained the strategic situation, as agreed upon by the Joint Chiefs.

Sol, they pointed out, was rather close to the galactic core, on the outer edge of one of four arms. The stellar system of Izar, to the galactic south of Barnard's Star, is a key strategic point. It is the only bridge in Sol's immediate vicinity which connects to the next galactic arm through the hyperlane system, which appears reluctant to cross the gap between arms.

The Mishar's home star, which they call Shar, is on the inner edge of the next arm, and is the star connected to Izar by hyperlane.

The Mishar had built an outpost around the star Suulan before we even made contact with them; and recently they expanded to the star system Voon. Clearly they would soon expand to Izar as well.

To prevent this, Izar must be seized and fortified; borders with the Mishar must be closed. The envoys can continue doing their work - there is no need to war with the Mishar; blocking them off from expanding into our arm would be enough.

After hours of deliberation, the Directors agreed unanimously. Izar would be taken and fortified, and borders would be sealed - at least until Earth had established control of all the worlds it was interested in.

The message went out on the 25th of November, 2204. The Mishar appear genuinely confused by the demand, not understanding why their ships would offend us; but they agreed with no issue reported Wolfgang Stein, the envoy to the Mishar Compact.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 3: Gradual Growth

Predictably, the Mishar soon closed their own borders in response. Despite this, relations continued to improve overall, and a few months later the Mishar Compact proposed a cultural exchange as well as a series of political, commercial, and scientific agreements which brought the two fledgling star nations together.

At the same time, the Commonwealth's exploration efforts were truly beginning to pay off. In the star system Jabeth, the ECS Darwin stumbled onto an ancient fortress built by the First League. In June of 2205, Director-General Fedorova delivered a fiery speech urging the people of the Commonwealth to reach out and take their place among the stars. Another science ship and construction ship were commissioned by the Commonwealth, the ECS Hawking captained by Lt. Scientist Msibi.

The Hawking would soon find its way to the Alpha Centauri trinary system. Around the largest of its three stars, two habitable worlds were discovered; both rather small, but one quite similar to Earth while the other was mostly covered in water, but possessed a few small islands that could be inhabited, and rich oceans full of fish-like xenos.

At the same time, Director-Colonel Tshonyane unveiled a number of new powered exoskeleton designs for use by the armed forces and in industrial capacity. With the cultist threat looming, the Department of Practical Engineering shifted its focus to the development of new, more powerful mass drivers.

In preparation for the coming battles, the Directors unanimously ordered a massive expansion of the fleet. Government stockpiles of raw materials, food, and consumer goods were traded internally for all the alloys the Directorate could squeeze out of Earth's economy, and the fleet was expanded.

As the ships began leaving the shipyards, science ships were sent to follow the ion trails discovered when the cultists were first defeated. A small cultist fleet was found to the galactic north, in a system called Ovaslivum. To the south, around a binary system called Lothandra, a larger fleet was discovered, which included a massive ship of strange design that the cultists were calling the "Temple of Light". By September 2206, the fleet was sent north to deal with the smaller fleet. Following a quick and decisive battle, the cultists were defeated. The fleet's admiral, Nadezhda Ulanova, greatly distinguished herself in the battle. Admiral Ulanova's influence would grow, and with the discovery of the giant cultish ship Ulanova finally convinced the Directors to allow her (and by extension the Commonwealth Navy) a temporary seat at meetings of the high board during times of conflict. The Admiral had a reputation for a remarkable stubbornness -- once set on a course, nothing could change her mind, unless the situation had changed enough to make that course infeasible.

The massive purchase of alloys wasn't only meant to expand the fleet, however. In December 2206, following speeches by the Director of the Department of Sociological Studies (encouraging humanity to rise to its fullest potential) and the Admiral of the Navy (reminding the Commonwealth's citizens of the vulnerability inherent to being a single planet species, and pointing the extinction of clearly far more advanced alien races as a potential hint of a looming threat), Director-General Fedorova announced that the colonization of Sirius III would soon commence; the shipyard had already started construction of the colony ship, and all that was needed now were volunteers.

The colony project had so many eager and qualified volunteers that the launching of the ship was delayed long enough to expand it, allowing a larger batch of colonists. By late September of 2207, the ECS Hope set off for the Sirius system; the transit would take nearly a whole year.

As the Hope was being built, the Department of Sociological Studies completed its analysis of the newly discovered xenoecological systems, Director-Colonel Sato shifted focus back to policy, seeking to develop an efficient system of offworld trade, as would be needed once the new colony had grown.

The Department of Physical Sciences, meanwhile, had a number of viable deflector candidates following their experimental trials. Fortin chose a design to be put into mass production, and announced the next departmental competition: the same quantum principles that had been honed through shield design would now be applied to the design of a device capable of containing a fusion reaction for a net gain of energy. Fortin's top physicists assured him that this could lead to the development of miniaturized fusion reactors, much smaller than the bulky ones used for power generation on Earth, and that these could replace the fission reactors currently powering Commonwealth ships. In the meantime, it would greatly increase power generation on-planet.

As the colony ships set out, so did the Commonwealth 1st Fleet. It, too, was headed south - past Sirius, to the star system Lothandra where the massive cultist ship had been spotted.

Meanwhile, far to the galactic north, a science ship discovered a massive ruined installation, which had served as the construction yard of some ancient super-advanced civilization. Unanimously, the Directors and the Admiral agreed that taking this system was of paramount importance.

On September 27th, 2208, the colony ship Hope set down on the planet Sirius III. The colonists had settled on the name New Roanoke, despite that colony's ill fate.

As the colony ship was setting down, a few lightyears away the Commonwealth 1st Fleet finally encountered the cultist fleet. The battle against their massive battleship had begun.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 4: Exponential Growth

By November, Admiral Ulanova reported the utter destruction of the cultist fleet at the cost of one Commonwealth corvette. She requested a science ship to be sent to investigate the debris, but as none were in that part of the galaxy at the time, this would take some time to accomplish. Further, a science ship would be needed to scout out the path to the last star system where cultist activity had been traced.

Back on Earth, despite popular pressure to open up more Researcher position, reality once more got in the way, and factories for the production of civilian goods were ordered instead. Earth's growing population and the additional requirements of sustaining life on other worlds (air filter masks, special sunscreen to account for different wavelengths of light being filtered by the atmosphere, and a million and one tiny details that double the cost of everyday life, as Director Colonel Sato would explain to anyone who'd listen. Until New Roanoke could produce such components on its own, they'd have to be shipped in from Earth.

D.C. Tshonyane had a different proposal for resolving these shortages. With the coilguns developed and tested, he gained Admiral Ulanova's approval for their mass fabrication before redirecting the Department of Practical Engineering towards a new goal: the production of autonomous robotic workers, capable of learning to complete any number of simple and repetitive tasks. In December of 2208, the Department's full resources were officially allocated towards this goal.

Meanwhile, D.C. Sato was forced to put her development of offworld trading protocols on hold for yet another urgent alien analysis. Strange spacefaring vessels, somewhat larger than a corvette and apparently alive, were detected by a science ship in the Hagawa system; worse, they were apparently hostile, and quite numerous.

After retreating from the alien beings, the science ship made yet another remarkable discovery close to the ruined shipyard. A ruined matter decompressor, capable of pulling material out of the event horizon of a black hole!

Tuayama now became even more strategically important, as access to it would secure the Yamek's Singularity system where the matter decompressor was found.

Back Earthward, in June of 2209 a second colony ship began construction, this one headed for Alpha Centauri's continental world. D.C. Sato's vision for the Alpha Centauri system was a pair of interconnected worlds, each a jewel in its own right but together forming the backbone of a mighty galactic empire. The marketing campaign designated the two colonies Apollo and Artemis, after the twin deities of Greek mythology, and the system dubbed 'Delos' after the ancient gods' birthplace.

In December of 2209, the analysis of the newly discovered aliens was finally complete. They were dubbed 'space amoeba' by the public, somewhat ironically considering the danger they posed. As the new colonies were nowhere near ready to begin trading with Sol yet, the study of these beings was deemed a high priority, and though D.C. Sato dissented, the high board agreed to continue prioritizing this over the offworld trade project. This project would take much longer, halting further study on offworld trade for nearly three years.

In May of 2210, D.C. Fortin had completed his field modulation project, and confirmed that energy production had increased throughout Earth's generators. While he proposed further study to prototype a miniaturized fusion reactor for use on ships, a proposal backed by Admiral Ulanova, he was overruled by Director-General Fedorova and D.C. Tshonyane, who requested the Department of Physical Sciences instead focus on the development of more advanced AI - advancements which would aid Tshonyane's roboticization project.

Finally, a science ship headed by Lt. Scientist Daniel Smith Jr. made its way to the cultist wreck. Its findings pointed to a star system to the galactic west as the source of the cultist ships. Smith would be ordered to scout the hyperlane path forwards, allowing the fleet to follow.

By the time Smith reached the Poligar system, however, he was forced to retreat -- some kind of strange, mechanical craft were patrolling the system, preventing him from moving forwards. Smith would scan the systems to the south while waiting for the fleet to arrive and clear the path.

In November of 2210, D.G. Fedorova gave a speech which had come to be fairly standard by this point ahead of the midterm elections, urging the Commonwealth's citizens to continue their work towards the settlement of the new worlds. The colony ship headed to Alpha Centauri had already left Sol by this time, and was expected to arrive early in 2211. Approval in the Directorate had never been higher.

Despite this, the election did not go as expected. The Empirical Commonwealth of Earth was a representative democracy in name, but with few exceptions the party approved candidates had won election every time, for over a hundred years. Polls showed that Director-General Fedorova's party, the Academy of Technologists (informally the Intellectual party) had as high an approval as they've ever had. Yet somehow, for the first time in decades, a sizable minority -- nine of the twenty eight senators -- were members of the Directorate-approved opposition party, the more liberal True Democracy Watch headed by Lt. Scientist Viktor Dudnik (who helmed the ECS Darwin).

In theory, the True Democracy Watch party planks called for a move towards more direct democracy. In practice, they were entirely made up of Directorate-approved Scientists, and so did not deviate very far from the mainstream. Still, their rise as a real political party in the 2011 term would signal the end of one party rule in the Directorate; some in the party, Dudnik included, believed that this election had given them a mandate to assert their will upon the nation. Some radicals in the party even floated the idea that the meetings of the high board should be extended further, to include the Director General, the three Director Colonels, the Admiral, and also the leader of any party with sitting senators; but for now, this was rejected, even by Lt. Scientist Dudnik himself.

The rest of 2211 saw the landing of the second colonization ship on the planet dubbed "Apollo" in April; in September, a second foreign empire was discovered. Hyperwave contact was made with a race calling themselves the Lokken Mechanists, who seemed to share the Commonwealth's rationality. They had mastered robotics even before they reached space, a fact which made D.C. Tshonyane absolutely giddy. He convinced the rest of the high board to develop friendly relations with the Lokken, redirecting Wolfgang Stein to their homeworld of Lok and signing a research agreement with the Lokken. As the Mechanists were more than a little further ahead than humanity in their technological development, his arguments faced little opposition, and friendly contact was soon established.

With Lokken aid, the Department of Practical Engineering unveiled their first robotic prototypes in March of 2212; their deployment would begin on the colonies first, then on Earth if proven successful. Tshonyane's next project was the development of more efficient mineral extraction techniques.

In April, the colony of New Roanoke had fully been established. The first human children born on an alien world began cropping up throughout the colony. Celebrations on both New Roanoke and Earth lasted for days. The colonists on Apollo could only spare a few hours for celebration before continuing their labors; soon they too would join New Roanoke as a full-fledged colony.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Interlude: A Speech by Director Colonel Sato at the founding of New Roanoke

My friends; my fellow citizens of the Commonwealth. Today we embark on a new journey.

Some in our Department have asked me, how can I support Director General Tshonyane and his proposal for the roboticization of society? Won't this create massive unemployment, massive unrest? Won't it make the poor entirely dependent on the whims of the owners of the robots?

These are concerns which I have had as well, believe me. I understand the problem facing us. But after a long and in-depth discussion with Tshonyane, and a joint study commissioned by both our departments, I think a test is justified. For now, robots will not be allowed on Earth. They won't be taking your jobs. And for now, the Directorate will be the only legal owner of autonomous robots. I hope these two factors will negate most of the potential harm.

What we will be doing is an experiment. An experiment to build an entirely new type of society. Under the Department of Sociological Studies' guidance, the colonists on New Roanoke will be attempting to build an entirely new type of society -- a post-scarcity society, one where autonomous robots run the factories and the generators while humanity is free to pursue more lofty goals.

I cannot tell you if this experiment will result in success or failure, but what I can guarantee is that no changes to our own society here on Earth will occur until we've seen the results, and on more than one world. If we find the results to be a failure, we will dismantle the robot factories, and use them on newly colonized worlds to prepare the way for humans. If we find the results to be a success, there's no limit to what humanity can achieve.

I hope you will have trust in the Department of Sociological Studies, and allow us to make this attempt. Thank you; I will not be taking questions.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 5: Paradigm Shift

By June of 2212, Earth's place in the galaxy was becoming clearer. To the southwest and northeast, the hyperlanes led into systems unknown, free for Commonwealth ships to survey. To the east, alien empires blocked all possibility of expansion. And to the west, the hyperlanes faded away at the edge of the great galactic center, where stars and clouds of gas crashed together in an orgy of violent storms of matter and cataclysmic releases of energy.

With the worlds closer to Earth having been surveyed, some of the Commonwealth's scientists could be spared from exploration duty and instead sent on surface missions. On one of Alpha Centauri's dead worlds, entire cities had been discovered. Not wanting to leave potentially hazardous relics unclaimed in an inhabited system, the Directorate redirected the ECS Darwin, led by Lt. Scientist Lazarev, to excavate the site and determine its origins.

At the July meeting of the high board, Director Colonel Sato presented the findings of her department's investigation of the space amoebas. Research had revealed that their external chitin-like exoskeleton possessed some truly remarkable regenerative abilities. The alien creature's hide was found to contain high concentrations of tough alloys, and by genetic modification of the external chitin tissue, Sato's team believed it could produce a coating to cover the hulls of military ships. In the event of hull damage or even breach, the amoeba's tissue could be used to scab over the hole like blood over a wound, roughly repairing the damage until the ship can return to port.

While the Directorate praised the Department of Sociological Studies' progress, it was ultimately decided that the investigation of the newly discovered drones would be a higher priority.

In August, D.C. Fortin unveiled the new administrative AI program, a prototype upon which future robotic networks could be built. With actual robots yet to be rolled out in the colonies, Fortin's team instead build their AI to optimize the Directorate's research programs. Each researcher across Earth or its colonies would fill out a simple form when working on each project -- the field of research, the specific questions being asked, any related studies used so far. They would also enter all data and research notes on computers linked to this new network. The AI would then constantly monitor all research being done throughout the Commonwealth and alert researchers to any potentially related findings made by other scientists. Credit for any achievements built on prior research could then be automatically assigned, and proper incentives awarded, ensuring that cooperation remains the best way forward.

After some debate -- Admiral Ulanova was worried about the security risk of granting access to so much information to a potentially vulnerable Artificial Intelligence, but Fortin reassured her that this would be a rather primitive pattern-matching neural network -- the new Administrative AI was approved by the Directorate and implemented throughout the Commonwealth's research facilities.

By April of 2213, Sato's identification of the newly discovered aliens was complete. Her team had determined that the mining drones were built by an ancient empire, sometime shortly after the fall of the First League. For once, it was the Department of Practical Engineering which had to divert resources from its active research to continue studying the drones, rather than Sato's team. Under Tshonyane's guidance, listening posts were established on Earth to try and determine how the drones were operating.

In July, a second colony ship headed for Alpha Centauri was commissioned, this one bound for the ocean world dubbed Artemis. This was the third colony ship to set off from Earth, and though it was met with enough enthusiasm, it was no longer the paradigm-shifting event that the launch of the ECS Hope had been. Enough colonists signed up to head to Artemis to make the colonization viable, but they were mostly those who couldn't afford to pay for their own passage to New Roanoke.

The first quarter of 2214 brought a number of remarkable discoveries that once again challenged Humanity's understanding of the universe itself. In January, one of the science ships discovered a strange abandoned device, just above the event horizon of a black hole. Careful study revealed two apparent facts: the L-Gate, as it came to be known, was created through the use of advanced nanotechnology; and it had somethig to do with the same alternate dimension that allowed hyperspace travel.

In April, New Roanoke's authorities confirmed the discovery of a strange dimensional portal, leading to an unknown destination, somewhere on the planet's surface. The portal would be monitored, but the Directorate deemed a more thorough study to be too low a priority to redirect the Department of Physical Sciences at this time.

In June of that year, Admiral Ulanova at the helm of the Commonwealth fleet had finally made its way south to the Poligar system, where hostile mining drones blocked further progress towards the cultist renegades' last known location. The Commonwealth fleet's shields held strong against the enemy's mining lasers at first, but the system held more drones than anyone had predicted. Slowly, Ulanova's forces were ground down, until despite her unyielding instinct she was forced to order a retreat, the ships making an emergency jump to hyperspace. Of the twenty corvettes of the First Fleet, only nine survived.

Lt. Scientist Smith, whose ship remained in the region, confirmed that the drones were not attempting to leave the system. Replacement corvettes were commissioned, and Admiral Ulanova retreated Earthward to lick her wounds and prepare for a rematch.

In October 2214, good news returned to Earth from the Alpha Centauri system. The colony of Apollo had fully established itself, cementing humanity's foothold in a third system. Just a bit further towards the galactic north, the ruined megastructures which had been discovered had spurred further exploration, and though the hyperwaves allowed near-instant communication across the galaxy, Apollo's relative proximity had made it a hub for the processing of the data pouring back from the scientists to the north.

At high board meetings over the coming months, Admiral Ulanova continued to stress the strategic importance of the megastructure systems. D.C. Tshonyane also placed great importance on the megastructures, as he believed that securing access to the ruins for the Department of Practical Engineering would greatly improve their capabilities for rapid innovation. They were both strong advocates of continued exploration of the region to the galactic north - a sentiment eagerly echoed by both the rest of the Directorate as well as the public.

In April of 2215, the Directorate would come closer to the creators of these ancient marvels than they'd ever imagined possible. A science ship in the star system Ijax reported contact with an unknown vessel; eighty-six minutes later, the Directorate's main hyperwave frequencies were suddenly hailed by a new contact.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 6: Fedorova's Legacy

The First Emergency Session of the Expanded High Board was, in many ways, a paradigm shift for the way business was handled in the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth. In the past, the Directorate would have tried to handle an event like the establishment of contact with the Zenak Continuum quietly, after a quick but thorough period of study, and without involving the public. Once the situation was resolved, they would provide a full accounting of their actions. When the system worked, the public would then determine whether they approved of these actions or not, and inform their representatives, who would either praise or replace the officials responsible.

The Zenak, however, had made contact over almost every hyperwave frequency in use by the Commonwealth. Freight ship captains carrying supplies to the colonies heard the message over their interstellar comms; scientists at research labs across Earth and its colonies. Media conglomerates picked up the message via the same antennas they used to broadcast content to the colonies, and within hours almost every human of able mind had seen a video of first contact with the Zenak.

"A few things became very clear almost immediately as we view their greeting" explained Director Colonel Fortin as he paced before the assembled members of the Expanded High Board. The other Director Colonels were there, of course, as well as Admiral Ulanova, who had become a permeant fixture at these meetings. Director General Fedorova was there too, of course, but for the first time, she was present in two capacities: as Director General of the Commonwealth, but also as the representative of her political party, the Academy of Technologists. For the first time, Lt. Scientist Viktor Dudnik had joined the meeting of the high board, representing the True Democracy Watch.[1]

"First - these beings are incredibly powerful. They've allowed our science ships into their system, and what they've seen -- well, it's clear that this is the same civilization that constructed the ruined shipyard in orbit of Tuayama, and the matter decompressor around Yamek's Singularity. This is a civilization so beyond our own that it would be foolish to even try to imagine what they are capable of."

"They seem to posses three ringworlds - enormous artificial worlds that stretch around a star like a ring, and could house many trillions apiece - though two are ruined beyond repair. The remaining ringworld is their home, and.... Well. Even one of their fleets would be capable of destroying our entire species. Hell, I'd give a single one of their ships an even chance."

The entire High Board looked enormously uncomfortable, but it was Admiral Ulanova who spoke first. "If these beings are so powerful, how come two of their ringworlds are in ruins? How have their wonderful constructions fallen into disrepair, lightyears outside space they even lay claim to? And why haven't we even heard of them yet? Shouldn't they be ruling the galaxy?"

Fortin smiled. "Precisely. I have been pondering these questions myself - but these are not questions of the laws of physics... but of the laws of societies." He returned to his seat as Director Colonel Sato rose.

"Here is what we have been able to determine. The polity we have been interacting with - this Zenak Continuum - is not composed of the original creators of these wonders. At some point, whatever civilization built these things collapsed. Perhaps they were related to this First League, but perhaps not - apparently some recently translated First League documents seem to imply that some of the member nations of this league had known of the Zenak, in a form quite similar to the one they have now." She paused.

"In any case - the Zenak Continuum are the remnant robotic caretakers of this ringworld, which was meant to be a sanctuary in the event of some kind of galactic disaster. Perhaps this disaster wiped out the Zenak's creators; perhaps it never came, and some other catastrophe wiped them out. Regardless... This AI is programmed to protect organic life living on the ringworlds, but either no one ever showed up, or they did, but died out. There's nothing but a couple billion robots on the surface now - I say robots, but if our scans are to be believed, they're extremely advanced, and likely as intelligent as we are, in their own strange way."

Dudnik raised an eyebrow. "ONLY a couple billion robots?" he asked doubtfully. "Well, yes" replied Sato, "from our scans, just the sections of the ringworlds that remain intact could house trillions of robots - and billions of organic lifeforms, even sentient ones, to live their lives on nature reserves of seemingly untouched nature with surface areas many hundreds of times as large as the Earth's. To be curated and cared for by the trillions of robots." D.C. Sato fixed Tshonyane and Fortin with a gaze. "Do try to make sure this isn't the future your robot program will have for humanity..."

**********************************************************************​

The high board would eventually conclude that, while curious and potentially worrying, the Zenak Cotninuum did not pose an immediate threat, so long as no hostile action would be taken against it. As such, expansion to the galactic north - and the reclamation of the abandoned megastructures - would continue unabated.

Relations with the Mishar Compact continued to improve; in May of 2215 a downed ship's cargo was recovered and returned to the Compact, earning them much goodwill with the people of Earth. A short time later, the ten year delegation that had been established with the Mishar finally concluded. Some on Earth pushed for the signing of a migration treaty, which would allow free movement between the two nations; while the Mishar would have been happy to accept and even made a number of proposals to this effect, the Directorate resisted, citing concerns about the cost of outfitting cities to accommodate for the physiological needs of numerous Mishar.

Still, these dealings with the Mishar had given the Department of Sociological Studies to finally complete their recommendations for the development of interstellar trade regulations to promote efficiency and safety. With a unanimous vote, the Expanded High Board approved this mandate, as well as Sato's next proposal: to return to the study of the space amoeba's regenerative tissue for potential naval applications.

In October of 2215, D.C. Tshonyane would announce the completion of the mining drone analysis project. Fortin announced significant developments as well, as the Department of Physical Sciences had spent some months analyzing Earth's energy grid and optimizing it, to significant results. Fortin's next task would be to adapt the administrative AI (which had been proving very successful with Earth's researchers) to aid scientific vessels and automate some of their tasks.

In December, the Directorate would unveil a new courier network of small vessels allowing transport of individuals, light cargo, or messages without relying on public hyperwaves or slow freight ships.

In January, the ECS Darwin's archaeological dig in Alpha Centauri would complete. The ruined civilization had driven itself extinct through a combination of highly unique propagation strategies and a strange and seemingly species-wide angst; a blend which the Department of Sociological Studies would continue researching for decades to come, and which would spawn numerous first-term papers. Regardless, no threat to the fledgling colonies of Apollo and Artemis was found.

In October of 2216, DC Tshonyane would unveil a new set of mining protocols, which had brought together techniques learned from the drone study (as well as lasers reverse-engineered from their wrecks), the recently developed exoskeletons, and of course robotic aids. With resource acquisition improved and ever more threats constantly being discovered, the Department of Practical Engineering would next refit the orbital shipyards for more efficient production of corvettes.

In March of 2217, Admiral Ulanova would lead a retrofitted fleet against the weakened mining drones once more. This time, the drones were defeated with only two corvettes lost, and in August Lt. Scientist Daniel Smith Jr. would continue past the defeated drones in order to map the hyperlane paths that would lead to the system where the cultists were last detected. Tragically, they had learned from their past encounters with the Commonwealth. As the ECS Aldrin left hyperspace, it found itself already within firing range of the final cultist fleet. As target lock alarms blared, Lt. Scientist Smith calmly recorded his final message, confirming that the cultists had been found and sending what scan data he'd managed to collect on the enemy ships before the Aldrin was destroyed.

By the end of 2217, Fortin's Automated Exploration Protocols had been developed, and the Department of Physical Sciences returned to the study of theoretical containment fields in order to squeeze a little more efficiency out of Earth's mighty reactors. Energy usage was a constant concern as more and more credits had to be sunk into development of foreign colonies. None of the three worlds were self sufficient yet - Earth was essentially feeding their growth.

It wouldn't be until the end of the next year - December of 2218 - before Artemis would become fully self-sufficient and begin construction of its own generators. At around this same time, construction of robot assembly plants on New Roanoke would finally begin, to some opposition. There were those who worried that heading down this path would see humanity extinct and a shiny new metallic neighbor to keep the Zenak company replace it, but the Empirical Commonwealth never gave much thought to such luddite philosophy.

Meanwhile, far to the galactic north, the ECS Hawking collected a strange box, which would be sent back to Earth for safekeeping. Fortin's Department of Physical Science would claim it, intending to open it at some point in the future.

In late 2219, as campaigns for the selection of the next Director General were underway, a third alien race was discovered, to the south of the Mechanists. With the Mishar Compact and Lokken Mechanists both representing rational-thinking races, many in the Commonwealth and especially the Departments of Physical Sciences and Practical Engineering began to voice hope that all space-faring races would, by nature, be rational-thinking. The newly contacted Great Aramathi Commonwealth seemed to contradict this idea; they were a violent, honor-obsessed warrior people.

Finally, in 2200 the next Director General of the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth was announced by the Directorate. Now that the High Board allowed party leaders, Katya Fedorova was happy to resign -- she was 62, and her twenty years at the head of the Commonwealth had been quite enough for her; she was more than happy to retire to the helm of a science ship and live out the rest of her working days exploring these wonderful exoplanets she'd read so much about, but had never actually experienced (As of yet, no sitting Director General had ever left Earth orbit).

There were three other serious contenders for the position of Director General. Natsuki Sato, Director Colonel of the Department of Sociological Studies, was running under an agenda of serious fleet expansion. While that may seem a strange position for one as socially conscious as Sato generally was, this was in fact more of an economic position than a military one. The Directorate's current alloy policy was to slowly ramp up production as robots came online on the colonial worlds, while Sato believed that alloy factories needed to be built first, and to employ humans; to push this agenda, she argued that the necessity of fleet expansion required moving too quickly to await the construction of robots.

Lt. Scientist Ayanda Msibi of the ECS Hawking, meanwhile, ran on a classically popular policy: a focus on science and research, trusting that continued development would open up new opportunities that couldn't even be dreamed of beforehand. Twenty years earlier, Katya Fedorova had run under a similar policy, and under her guidance humanity had become an interstellar species.

Last, and by far least popular, was Kirill Lazarev[2], commander of the ECS Darwin. He ran on a policy of xenophobia, promising to cut off relations with the Mishar and to ensure an amendment to the Commonwealth's constitution is made, preventing aliens from ever becoming citizens or even legal residents of Earth or her colonies, and to terraform the colonial worlds to resemble Earth as closely as possible, driving their native life extinct and replacing it with Earth life.

After a short debate, the High Board votes to make Ayanda Msibi Director General. He is officially inaugurated for his twenty year term on January 11th, 2240.

[1]From here on out, representatives of the parties would continue appearing at meetings of the high board; as a sort of legal fiction, they were never officially added to the high board, hence you will see future meetings referred to as sessions of the Expanded High Board.

[2]This guy becomes..... interesting. I haven't quite decided what I'll do with what happens next, with him.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 7: A Galactic Nation

The newly appointed Director-General of the Empirical Commonwealth of Earth Ayanda Msibi spent most of his inauguration speech praising the prior administration. In his personal communications, Msibi made it clear that he quite idolized the outgoing Director General, and wished to establish himself as a successor rather than a replacement.

Where he did speak of the future, he focused on humanity's shared future and the promises it held. With the Mishar Compact blocked off by the starbase at Izar and the uninhabitable core on the other flank, Msibi first planted the seed of what would later become official Earth policy, speaking of the vast stretches of empty worlds along the galaxy's arm - especially the vast empty space to the galactic north, where the Zenak Continuum's abandoned megastructures lay tantalizingly close - as humanity's destiny, the fertile and unclaimed soil that would serve as the growing bed for a mighty interstellar nation.

He finished his speech with a warning (widely accepted to be an indirect threat to the Aramathi) that any who stood against humanity as it strove to achieve its destiny would be met with force - "As will soon be made clear to the Temple of Unity renegades who have murdered so many innocents! Even now, the First Fleet is preparing to make the hyperlane jump into the Pell system. Soon, those vile renegades will be no more!"

By April, the Temple of Unity's refurbished alien shipyard had been smashed to bits by Commonwealth railguns. Unfortunately, the leader of the cult managed to escape, making her way to an unoccupied system, hidden within a nebula cloud and blocked off from Commonwealth space by the Mishar's homeworld. Final vengeance would have to wait.

The new Director General found his plate quite full as 2220 gave way to 2221. As the fleet was built back up to its full force, D.C. Tshonyane's corvette production initiative completed, and the Department of Practical Engineering reported a great increase in shipyard efficiency. With the colonies rapidly growing and requiring further development, Tshonyane ordered the Department to redirect its effort towards the improvement of planetary construction efficiency through standardized assembly patterns which could be sent to the colonies for local production.

D.C. Fortin, meanwhile, had announced that his department had gone as far as they could optimizing current planetary reactor designs. While power consumption remained a concern, no obvious avenues of further research presented themselves, and so under pressure from Admiral Ulanova the Department of Physical Sciences redirected its efforts to the miniaturization of fusion reactors for use on naval spacecraft. Privately, Fortin hoped that this research would spur his specialists to come up with radical new ideas for power generation.

The Directorate also commissioned an additional exploratory vessel - the ECS Tesla, helmed by Lt. Scientist Alfonso Giordano.

Even as the Tesla set of, remarkable news arrived from the northern frontier. In a system far to the north, in a region known as the Void Sea Nebula, a primitive alien civilization was discovered on the world Xudra IV. The world was a harsh and arid one, and its people were strange and squid-like humanoids. Their petty kingdoms warred with one another fiercely; xenophobia and militarism were everywhere, and the Genoggian appreciation for the sciences extended only so far as the design of advanced weaponry with which to kill one another.

With the study of this remarkable culture underway the Department of Sociological Studies declared their Habitable World Survey an astounding success. The Department declared the Xudra system to be of national importance to the Commonwealth, and the rest of the High Board unanimously agreed.

In June of 2221, D.C. Natsuki Sato announced that the study into the amoeba's regenerative tissue had been completed, although deployment to the naval corvettes was delayed due to cost concerns. The Department, meanwhile, began its next task: the improvement of genome mapping techniques. In a speech delivered during Sato's first visit to the colonial world New Roanoke, Sato pledged that within five years, all citizens would have access to full genome mapping for the identification and treatment of genetic diseases.

On Earth, popular support for Director-General Msibi soared as the Commonwealth continued to prosper. In November, his supporters unveiled a statue dedicated to Msibi in front of Earth's largest research institute. Msibi was invited to speak at the event, and did so, but only to again praise his predecessor Fedorova, pointing out that she deserved the lion's share of the credit for the achievements he was being celebrated for.

Around the same time, the colony Apollo began construction of its own robot assembly plants, following in the footsteps of New Roanoke. No robots had actually been deployed on that world yet, either.

In December of 2221, at an address commemorating his first two years in office and planning for the next eighteen, Director General Msibi would reaffirm the Commonwealth's Galactic Ambition to thunderous applause. "That arm of the Milky Way upon which our species was so fortunate to evolve on is, by right, the true heritage of Humanity!" he declared. "For two million years, our kind has fought, tooth and nail, just to survive in that cruel environment we call 'Nature'. For thousands of years, we fought each other, striving for supremacy. Now we have, through logic and rationality, risen above such baser instincts; and this galactic slice is our reward!"

Further expansion was prioritized, with system after system claimed by the Commonwealth. A renewed commitment to research investment was once again prioritized; "The time of Humanity's Technological Ascendancy has come!" and research down avenues considered 'far-fetched' was encouraged; how could humanity broaden its understanding of the universe without tugging at the fraying edges of that understanding?

As 2221 gave way to 2222, and a number of minor elections were decided, a new political party entered the scene. The same little-known scientist who'd thrown his hat in the ring for the Director-General position as a long-shot candidate under a policy of human isolationism - Lt. Scientist Kirill Lazarev - had used the news of the discovery of the primitive aliens to rally a small number of constituents under the banner of the Alien Protection Alliance. His party had just barely won the support it needed to win official seats, and Lazarev himself earned his way onto the High Board. In the first meetings of the Board, he pushed for the recognition of other sapient species as deserving of human rights, and the enshrining of such rights in the Commonwealth's constitution; he even pushed for a bill that would allow alien refugees to be taken in by the Commonwealth.

When asked why he had changed his mind on the matter of aliens, Lazarev would simply change the subject with a non-answer. His accomplishments for alien rights - theoretical as they were, since no aliens actually lived within Commonwealth space - had won him and the APA popularity.

As 2222 came to a close, further advancements were reported by the Directorate's various departments. The Department of Physical Sciences successfully produced a design for a miniaturized fusion reactor to be used on ships, and proceeded to continue their military research, now adapting the administrative AI that had earlier been developed for use in naval vessels.

The Department of Sociological Studies, meanwhile, unveiled a new DNA sequencer, capable of mapping a full genome from a vial of blood in just under six hours. Combined with rudimentary gene therapy techniques, virtually all genetic disease disappeared from the next generation in the Commonwealth, essentially overnight.

As the Commonwealth's colonial holdings were growing ever more cumbersome, Sato's next order for her department was to develop new protocols and guidelines that would make the nation's bureaucracy more responsive to change.

Chief Scientist Viktor Dudnik continued his archeological research throughout the worlds claimed by the Commonwealth; in the Iresta system, he excavated a deep mineshaft that had been spotted years earlier when the planet had been scanned from orbit. The dig was ultimately a failure, but some of the techniques developed - and observed during his investigation of prior digs of alien origin - made their way into the mainstream, improving the Commonwealth's construction methods.

Admiral Ulanova had been keeping busy as well. After a bitter lobbying campaign, she managed to convince the rest of the Directors that the starbase at Izar must be fortified, in case the Mishar ever prove hostile in the future.

Meanwhile, in the galactic south, a science ship discovered a gas giant filled with strange and quite enormous life - creatures dubbed 'behemothaurs' whose enormous bodies served as homes to entire ecosystems. While the creatures lived their entire lives within the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Poligar V, their enormous size once more raised fears of hostile space-faring life even more powerful and deadly than the amoebas.

To combat such a potential threat, in January of 2223 the Department of Practical Engineering completed their planetary construction efficiency project and instead began the prototyping of a new class of naval vessel, far larger than the corvettes and capable of carrying far deadlier weaponry.

By then the Izar station had been completed; with Earth's station overfull and the Mishar posing no immediate threat, the station was turned into a sort of anchorage, allowing the Commonwealth to deploy, support, and maintain a larger fleet.

By the end of 2223, Commonwealth space had extended all the way up to the Tuayama system, where the ruined shipyard of the Zenak had been discovered. Unfortunately, mining drones had moved into the system, preventing civilian ships from safely entering it.

In September, the First Fleet would be deployed to clean up the drones - a task it would complete with ease.

As 2223 gave way to 2224, scientists exploring worlds within claimed Commonwealth space confirmed that the cold, dead world of Tirramore had once been inhabited by the First League, who had kept a massive outpost in orbit of the planet. That outpost had crashed onto the surface millennia ago, potentially contributing to the demise of the biosphere.

In January, Fortin's team completed their adapted administrative AI for use in combat. This AI would take over some of the simple (and less simple) tasks involved in piloting a combat vessel, such as aiming, setting orbit, or using the thrusters for evasive maneuvers while under fire while correcting aim for these disruptions.

The Department of Physical Sciences would next begin its investigation into the strange deposits of high-energy particles (dubbed Volatile Motes) which had been discovered in orbit of certain worlds. Fortin hoped these motes would revolutionize certain industrial processes if they could be exploited correctly, and perhaps even synthesized on Earth if needed.

By May of 2224, construction ships had moved in following the First Fleet's victory and constructed a station in orbit of Tuayama. The Commonwealth had now claimed its way far to the north, but already the Directorate's eye would fall on Xudra, the station even further north along the galactic arm where the primitives had been discovered.

 

[ChicagoZohan]

Chapter 8: Picking Up Steam

The year was 2224, and the High Board had just gathered for another expanded meeting; the second of the year.

It had been a fairly mundane meeting thus far, all things considered. The Board did vote to commission a new colony in the binary system of Pataggor, to the galactic south; the world was known to be home to a variety of large, ferocious beasts, which a certain type of 'rugged individual' found attractive. A group of such specimen calling themselves "The Pangea Society" had been lobbying the Directorate for a commission for some time, and the budget had finally allowed for it.

The High Board also discussed the latest news from Apollo, where a former professor had made his way up the ranks of the local government pushing for Apollo to become an academic center for the Commonwealth. While the Directorate was happy to humor him, Apollo would remain mostly a resource-gathering operation long after Salvadore Gomez's time. Still, his influence would lead Apollo down a greater path, a long way down the road.

The last topic of discussion, brought up by Admiral Ulanova, involved the Temple of Unity. Their flagship, and the cult's leader aboard it, had escaped to a system beyond the Commonwealth's reach, past hyperlanes under the control of the Mishar Compact. While Ulanova stressed the importance of hunting down the renegades, there was simply no way to the system where the cultists had escaped to.

With no solution in sight, Director-General Msibi prepared to adjourn the meeting. Suddenly, an attendant rushed forward, holding up a tablet. On it, two figures faced each other - the ridge-headed humanoid form of one of the Mishar, and the strange reptilian profile of one of the Lokken. But it was a human voice coming from the speaker - Wolfgang Stein, the Commonwealth's envoy to the Lokken Mechanists. He was being interviewed by a newscaster -

"...represents a major change to the diplomatic landscape of the Galaxy. The Lokken are our firm allies, but our relationship with the Compact has been fraught for some time now. Will this improve our relationship with the Compact, or worsen it with the Lokken? I can't tell you that yet."

The newscaster asked their next question: "You are speaking here of the Mechanists and the Compact, like they're two separate nations - but didn't the Mishar just become a puppet state under the Mechanists?" The heads of the assembled board members snap up, their attention fixed on the tablet. "What happened?" demanded Msibi, before the tablet answered him: "Not quite. The compact the two xenonations signed here isn't quite that binding. But the Mechanist delegation essentially... 'reminded' the Compact that their fleet is powerful enough to protect both nations; and that if the Mishar don't want to invest in their own fleet, they're best paying the Mechanists a monthly tribute in mineral wealth and energy to ensure that the favorable situation the Mishar have found themselves in continues."

At a signal from Msibi, the attendant silenced the tablet. Msibi looked over at the other members of the board. Many of them had visibly paled. "Admiral Ulanova. How would our fleet compare to the Mechanists', if it came to it?"

Admiral Nadezhda Ulanova was not one to go pale. She looked straight at Msibi, and answered, "Pathetically, sir."

What would follow would be a slow and steady buildup - of the alloys necessary to construct spaceships; of the colonial populations necessary to gather the resources needed to arm up; and of course, of territory. Science ships continued to search the fringes of Commonwealth space, closely followed by construction ships.

In March of 2225, the Department of Sociological Studies unveiled their proposal for massive bureaucratic reform. Humanity, Director-Colonel Sato argued at the meeting of the High Board, was once again in a state of exponential growth. Four centuries before, mankind had put aside irrational thought and adopted the way of Science, and with it had entered an Industrial Revolution. The governments of that time were stuck in their old ways, though, with disastrous results. But now, a new Enlightenment had brought mankind to place its trust in Science once more, and Science had rewarded it in turn by granting it the stars. Now we must not repeat the mistakes of the past. We must adapt the way we govern our society to the changing times."

The High Board unanimously approved her proposal.

In November of 2225, contact was made with a strange alien ship -- seemingly another exploratory vessel - in the far galactic north, near the world where the primitives had been discovered and in the direction towards which the Commonwealth was slowly but surely expanding. Attempts at contact were begun, but in December, a shocking message would come not from the unknown creatures to the north, but from the Lokken Mechanists nearby...

The Mechanists' 'offer' of protection was declined, and though the Directorate's High Board gathered in a Second Emergency Session to prepare for a declaration of war, none ever came. The Commonwealth was greatful for the armed spacestation in the Izar station, on the only hyperlane path into Commonwealth space from the Mechanists' arm, and continued to keep a wary eye on their more powerful neighbors.

As if Ulanova didn't already have enough reason to push for more naval funding, in March of 2226 contact was made with the civilization that had sent out the unknown vessel that had been discovered. They called themselves the Silicron Absorbers, and they were a race of networked machine intelligences. Worse, they apparently cybernetically augmented other organic life forms - by force if necessary - in order to reproduce, in addition to simply building more of themselves. And they were prepared to war with the Commonwealth for more hosts to 'augment', if their rhetoric was to be believed.

Their territory stretched nearly all the way to Xudra, where the primitive civilization was, reported a breathless Kirill Lazarev (the head of the Alien Protection Alliance). To prevent their assimilation into the Silicron Absorbers, their system must be claimed and protected by the Commonwealth. Again, this was agreed to by unanimous vote.

More advances would be made over the coming year as the Commonwealth continued to build up its strength. At the midyear meeting of the High Board in 2226, the discovery of living metal in the southern system of Iswyria was announced; the Department of Practical Engineering's new Bolton-class artillery destroyer design was unveiled and its production ordered; and the mote stabilization techniques that the Department of Physical Sciences was developing were finally realized, allowing the capture and use of these high energy particles.

Both teams would continue upgrading the Commonwealth's naval capacity, developing better thrusters to facilitate travel within systems and in combat as well as more advanced listening equipment to be mounted on ships or stations and allow the detection of ships in neighboring systems through the measuring of gravity anomalies over the hyperlanes. Of course, traditional techniques are useless for monitoring neighboring star systems, since the light from them takes many years to arrive.

That year, the Commonwealth also made contact with another neighbor - quite close in absolute distance terms, but quite far along the hyperlane network, past the Mishar and Lokken. This was the Varelviv Star Dynasty, a race of horrific-looking fungoids who had evolved on the 'death world' of Viverva, with its acidic seas and incredibly hostile wildlife.

The Varelviv themselves, meanwhile, are fanatic isolationists. They despise all non-Varelviv life, but are also fanatic pacifists; their Philosopher-King Kaghoreem I, who appeared in the video contact, demanded that the Commonwealth never contact them again nor intrude in their space before terminating the recording.

More and more hostile empires in the Galaxy - and yet, some good news at last. As the Mishar Compact was now a tributary state of the Lokken Mechanists, they had to align their policy with the Lokken's in a number of ways - chief among them, opening their space to Commonwealth ships. By May of 2227, the First Fleet, accompanied by a science ship to chart the hyperlane path, had arrived at the system where the Temple of Unity cult leader had fled to.

As final battles went, this one was a bit anticlimactic. The First Fleet's numerous corvettes swarmed the enemy vessels in an onslaught of railgun fire; heavy slugs shredded the smaller ships, and quickly disabled the capital ship. Marines were called to board the vessel, and it was seized and taken back to the Commonwealth for repairs, to be outfitted for the navy.

In August, the Lokken Mechanists declared war on the strange mammalians known as the Aramathi. The alien Commonwealth had already been invaded by some other force, which had seized their planet in the system Aramus; now the Mechanists had joined in the frey.

In November, the ECS Grissom discovered an enormous mass of mining drones in the Eissam system. Luckily, it managed to escape, but the number of drones in the system was beyond the First Fleet's ability to deal with, even with the aid of the refurbished cultist ship.

By late 2228, the first robots had been deployed in Apollo's farming sector. Around that same time, Artemis began construction of its own robot assembly plants.

In October, construction of a starport in the system Xolomon had begun. While the Alien Protection Alliance protested that this would mean the Commonwealth was abandoning its goal of claiming the system Xudra, the other Directors assured him that Xolomon would merely be an anchorage, to enable the expansion of the fleet and the facilitation of further northern expansion, rather than a starfortress meant to mark the Commonwealth's border.