Project Phoenix- Venus
Peter Vindaloo
O5 or the bad 5, is pretty much considered to be the worst year of the war, after Mars we thought our job was done. A herculean task of parahumans, academics and others. We were then promptly informed that no, no the world still needed our services, our job was to create entire worlds for the human race. Each victory against the Endbringers would be a victory for the human race. Which was a nice way of saying, we're scared that we might lose the war and need every bolthole we can get and if we win the war then we want as much spoils to divy up as possible.
With the new samples from the Endbringers, Ironwood came up with new ideas. New options opened up, lots of them. Mars was in many ways a failed prototype, it used too much power, would require decades to terraform, but it showed us it could be done. After the Sharr was defeated we had enough materials for another go, and the decision was made to terraform Venus. We had the needed cooling element, and with the remains of Sharr we had enough power. More people were hired, more Thinkers, biologists, ecologists lots of people. Unlike Mars, the terraforming process would not be a half-finished rush-job.
We finished the second seedling on March 14th and then, god then politics got in the fucking way. What remained of the arab governments tapped their remaining oil wealth and reasources and threw a fit in the UN general assembly. They argued that the islamic people had suffered a unique and horrible injustice with the attack on Mecca and that Venus was rightfully the collective property of all muslims.
You can fucking imagine how this went down, the Chinese were fucking livid, they grumbled about Mars but the fact was the americans let them and their mining companies play on Mars. They got to share in the profit of the World trees. They were essentially told that they would be frozen out of this new market. Lots of other countries were also upset, but there were also countries that saw an opportunity, like Indonesia and Turkey. It got to the point where a collection of countries simply stated that they would go home and not contribute to the war unless Venus was handed over.
There was a stand off, a tense one, the war effort might be doomed, and then a compromise was made. A World tree connecting Venus to Earth would be built in the Indian ocean. Controlled by the UN and manned by muslims from around the world. Venus would be handed over, but there was a price to be paid. The European Union demanded that all muslim refugees be sent to Venus, other countries backed this demand. Venus would have to be shared by all muslims, it wouldn't be an arab playground. Muslim refugees and immigrants going offworld had to be go to Venus until such time that it's carrying capacity was filled.
On the other side, the Outer Space treaty was ripped into shreads, the chinese were upset at this loss but saw an opportunity. There were still 15 Endbringers out there and they did the math, with the then current rate of one terraformed world per every other Endbringer corpse, well that's 7 more worlds, and the chinese wanted one. So they put forward the proposal that all 5 members of the Security Council should get a planet. An idea the russians backed because, hey free land right? The fighting got worse until they brought Ironwood in to tell them how many worlds we could realistically get.
He told us that one corpse could probably terraform one world, but there would be a slight loss of control over the result, and he would need more Thinkers to get the power usage to be more precise. This lead to the Solar Compact, the members of the Security Council would all get a world of their own. Ten of the worlds would be designated as regional worlds shared amongst a region of Earth with Venus being the first regional world. One world would be handed over to the UN itself, and Pluto would be designated as a dedicated prison world for the entire solar system.
If you think that's a waste you have to understand that prisons simply couldn't handle parahumans and sending them offworld was the best way we had outside of killing them to handle the major threats.
With the Solar Compact signed and agreements to finally settle who gets what post war, humanity stopped it's bickering and turned to the task at hand. Actually winning the war for our species survival.