Where no Man has gone before
A Stellaris Story – by Sir Claus
Chapter 1: Meetings past and future
Hello my Friend, how are you? It has been a long time since you graced me with your appearance. Why are you laughing? It is true, you never come to visit me anymore. Well since you are here let me tell you another story.
It is the Story of a brave race called Human. They are a Deviant species of rapid breeding mammals with Hair on multiple Places on their body, the longest on their Heads which is an object of Pride for most of those Female. How they endure their complicated communal system is beyond me, but you now that I am a lone wolf so it is probably just me.
I heard they are Quite Xenophile, a good thing when you're a space faring race. And They are Fanatics in all things Material, always looking for a way to do things with maximum efficiency. If they Believe in Gods, they are wearing Jerseys. And even with their Technological view on things they never managed to Master Energy Weapons. And since those Mass Driver Weapons were not efficient enough they stood with Space-to-Space missiles for quite a while.
If you look at their ships you can't ignore the resemblance to those of Children's from this other galaxy I told you about. Who just escaped a 50.000 yearly doom which was going on for roughly some millennia. You still remember that story, don't you?
So, they live in a form of Autocracy, which favors technological progress and efficiency. It takes away a lot of personal freedom (at least in my opinion) but they don't mind it. Human Consensus, a fancy name for a fancy and complicated ruling scheme.
Their System is on the North Side of a 4 Arm-Spiral-Galaxy, more to the Inside than the outside of the galaxy, which has a lot of stars by the way. Really funny how things end up, with galaxies who have just about a couple of hundreds of star systems and others get thousands of them.
So now that you now the basics let's start the story.
It was the New Year's Eve, and if one took a moment to look at the backdoor of the Consensus building (which everyone just called "The Tower") one would see Admiral Jian Deng of the 1st Strike Force smoking a big fat lady with his longtime friend Nadya Alexseyev, the leading Scientist of the USS Arbiter, a proud exploration vessel, which was just leaving drydock before Christmas, a remnant of a past long gone. "It will be a busy year for us" exhaled Jian into the cold winter air of Terrania City. "Well, more for me than you" laughed Nadya poking him. "You will just stand there on your fancy bridge drinking tea and let the others do all the hard work." "At least you get to leave the Orbit. It is unlikely we will encounter hostile life forms in our own system, so all there is to do for me is painting star ships and parading around to boost morale." The Door behind them opened and an assistant of the Governor of Earth Yelena Yerzov addressed them. "Overlord Harrison is ready to start, if you´d please follow me?"
Deng put out his cigarette and sighed, „Well let's get to work", dragging his friend with him. "Don't wanna!", "Oh no, you are not going to bail out of this and let me suffer the wrath of your colleagues on the Science Board." "But they are always mean to me since I got the job on the Arbiter. Especially André. Well Mr. Pan is just weird but I swear he and Kamaria hate me." "That's no reason to let me endure this madness. Besides, you're the Head of an Exploration Crew, it is your Job to be at meetings where we decide the future of the Human race."
A man stood up from his place on the window side of the large circle round table. He was in his Uniform which had a blue shade with golden insignias, declaring him the Sole leader of the Human Consensus, Overlord Ashley Harrison.
Everyone went quiet. He took a deep breath and gave the silence a voice to fill it.
"Hello everyone. I am Ash, as you most likely already know. And beginning today until my death I shall be the overlord of the Human Consensus. I want to welcome you, the council of leaders who will advise me on upcoming matters. It is me believe. That Humanity is made to achieve great things, so let's start with a fulfilling meeting."
The others gave polite applause for his opening speech, and after he took his seat Governor Yelena Yerzov spoke.
"The first topic today is the upcoming Mission of the USS Arbiter, our very first exploration Vessel, capable of performing manned long term mission. Miss Alexseyev please…"
"Of course, Madam Governor. Hello everyone, I am Nadya the Leading Scientist on the Arbiter. For your information, the USS Arbiter is a Crescent Class Space vessel with a small fusion core, basic radar, our most efficient and modern chemical thrusters and of course a state of the art research lab. We left drydock last month and now with the festivities finished we are standing by to await orders."
Nadya was quite nervous speaking in front of such important people, even if she was one of them, and thus she rushed a bit with her report, making the Overlord smile.
"And Orders you shall receive. Take your ship and start your system wide survey at Luna. Our last manned missions were ages ago so I'd like to start the new database with a clean fresh approach. After that look at our Sun followed by those objects closest to you. Mercury, Pallas and Uranus should be among the first ones. Followed by Mars, Juno, Vesta and Saturn plus its moons. Take your time and make a Call if you find something. Finish up with Venus Ceres Jupiter plus its Moons and Neptune. Then you come home and get yourself some vacation. That's an Order Miss." He finished with a smile on his face "I was told you tend to overwork yourself, so make sure to stay in the correct refresh cycles, otherwise your mission will take longer than necessary or you will overlook something."
"Traitor" was the mumbled response, but not to Ashley, but to her Neighbor Admiral Deng, who made an innocent face.
"Next we would like to welcome Leading Engineer Bao Pan who will tell us about the possible new Technologies he would like to develop." Governor Yerzov had to fight a smile at the Spacers antics.
"Yes, yes, much to do, much to do. I have come up with three options to narrow the choices. We can either consider Nano mechanics, which would help us greatly in discovering new technologies as it would allow us to build new facilities.
Second option entertains Nanocomposite Materials, Especially Amor, which will come in small medium and large sizes, to protect our spaceships from everything out there in the black ocean.
Finally, an assistant of mine has come up with a possible Theory for Fusion missiles which would be roughly 15% more effective than our current nuclear missiles. The materials are quite costly at round about 50% more but…"
"Let´s put them aside at first." Interrupted Harrison, I would like you to take a shot at those Nano mechanics, it will help us down the road with better research capabilities. Knowledge is power after all."
"Okay dokay mister Overlord." Chirped Bao.
"Miss Akiloye, we talked about this briefly before so correct me if I am wrong. We got to choose between Biodiversity studies or looking up some ways to legalize bigger navy or colony ships?" – "That is correct Sir"
"Well, then make us some Ships" "I am not making them, just developing blueprints and legalizing their construction." "Figure of speech, Kama." Ash liked to tease his personal a lot.
André Fortin was up next. "Mr. Harrison, we have multiple things we can focus on. The first Option is a further development of Quantum Theory. Our achievements will provide us with knowledge to upgrade our labs. The Second Option is a new Technology called ´Orbital Energy Conversion´, basically it's just gathering energy resources through a series of Solar Panels which can be Integrated into our Space Station. The last option is installing a Databank Uplink in all of our Exploration Vessels, allowing us to use their capacities while they are in orbit of our planet for a greater research speed."
"The last one is out obviously as the Arbiter will not be in Orbit for quite some time. I think the Quantum Theory sounds quite exiting, what do you think?"
"It is, in my humble opinion, the most Fascination field of research I have come across."
"Great. Then let's do this."
"At third comes the matter of Planet Earth, and what to do with it. 37.5% are not of any use for us either due to slums or old Industrial Wasteland which we did not clear jet. We have limited resources' and quite some needs, and Admiral Deng wants to increase the Fleet. On top of that comes our Ground faring military, or lack thereof. You still have not chosen an elite Guard, and aside of local law enforcement there is no ground defense for our planet."
Harrison took a moment to think on that. He would have to choose a Guard soon, but that got time. No use for an army or navy if you have no one who will fight you. That only left 3 choices. Clean up some land. Build up new economy which we will need to make things happen or save some resources for possible mining space station on spots the Arbiter could find.
"Can we clean up, build new AND save some resources' all at the Same time?"
"We should be able to, if we can hold our efficiency above average."
"Then let's do this."