Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is purely for recreational purposes.
XXX
"Has anyone had a chance to look into any plans for starting a settlement?" I asked as I walked out of the cockpit of the ship, having just set the ship's Hyperdrive to active as I left the current system I was in, Raxus, before heading for the interstellar void between planets. Looking around, I saw my twenty daughters, all of them fully grown by now, the oldest being over forty years old by this point while the youngest was twenty, perhaps not fully developed physically, but very mature for her age. All of them were currently sitting around the hold of the Dagger doing next to nothing as some were working on projects of one kind or another.
"Honestly, mother? We've considered it but finding a planet far enough off the beaten path to settle down on will be tricky, especially one that hasn't been found by another race to colonize for ourselves." Answered Larahin, my third oldest daughter from my right. Currently, Larahin was looking over a number of medical texts that she had gotten her hands on, having hacked her way into a database and downloaded them off the Holonet, she often spent her time working the medical droids I had, mostly to learn more about the various fields of medicine and biology, with a slight hint of psychology on the side.
"Well, we could always try heading off into the Unknown Regions, not to mention we could always just disappear into Wild Space or one of the lesser explored sections of the Outer Rim, there is, after all, more than a few gaps between inhabited worlds where we could find somewhere to settle down easily enough to rebuild the Asari race." Jan'sha mentioned as she tinkered with an Omni-tool, a copy of a design that I had given to her, one that had been upgraded over the years to the current version as holographic projections danced above her arm, a Galaxy map being displayed in the middle of the room as a result. She was highlighting the unmapped areas of the Galaxy, certainly showing that there was a lot of 'dark' space between known trade routes and the Hyperspace lanes that the Galaxy knew of. I sighed at that, I knew that very few people even bothered looking beyond what they were comfortable with, Thrawn's Empire of the Hand was probably the biggest attempt to expand and explode the Unknown Regions, and I wasn't too sure how many races were encountered, but I was pretty sure it was a lot.
"I think Wild Space would be best. The Tingel arm is, for the most part, uninhabited and almost entirely unexploded except for a few of the older Hyperspace routes that are still floating around, only a few of which are even used now a days since there is virtually nothing out that way." Malany pushed forwards, getting nods from others as I smiled slightly, stepping back as I watched my daughters take amongst themselves.
"True. It's would be a lot safer than just floating around in the Unknown Regions, especially since it has been, at least partially, mapped. Means that we could get in deep before heading off the beaten path." Daughter number fifteen, Ireeme, observed to herself as others nodded.
"That still leaves us with the problem of supplies and what we do when we get there. The Dagger, even with all the modifications that we've heaped on to it, is not meant to be a colony all on its own, let alone carrying enough cargo to start up a colony on its own." Daughter number nine, Teluc, addressed that point as Jan'sha nodded, quickly moving through settings on her Omni-tool before another hologram appeared on it easily enough. The new hologram showed a rather new style of ship, easily modified and one that Pirates had already taken to using as ad hoc corvettes and frigates, mostly depending on how many gun turrets were added.
"An Action VI Freighter, these things have can carry up to eighty thousand metric tons of cargo and with plenty of space for the crew. Technical specs say that they take an eight person crew, but I'm pretty sure that even if we loaded the thing to bursting with supplies, materials, Droids and everything else we could think of, we'd still have enough room for all 21 of us, and a bit left over." Jan'sha stated, getting nods around as I cupped my chin in thought.
"True enough, but the problem with using one of those things is that they are capable of defending themselves as a Bantha in front of a Krayt Dragon's nest." I decided to point out a bit, speaking for the first time in a while. "If we wanted one of those things, we'd need to do all the modifications ourselves along with ensuring that the damned thing is even capable of flying."
"Meh. That ain't that much of a big deal, hell, we'd probably improve the damned thing well beyond what the producers believed was possible for their piece of shit." I smiled at the commentary of my nineteenth daughter, Sarum, as the other's chuckled at her rather blunt statement since it was rather true. The Dagger was proof of that since I had my doubts there was even a single piece of the original craft left in it.
"Ok, so, that's the general area for the colony and what ship to load up with supplies taken care of, we can get Credits the same way as usual, but that still leaves us with the questions of what we do once the colony is up and running? I mean, what about the population once we get things going? Are we going to impose a minimum number of births per Asari once they are able to bear them?" Jan'sha asked, I raised an eyebrow at that. Honestly, it was a good question, all things told, though it did seem a bit like the elephant in the room, as it were, since my Daughters had already discussed it multiple times already. None of them came up with a satisfying figure for how many children should be born per Asari once they were of age.
"I think we should set it high, increase the growth factor of the colony and ensure that we rebuild as quickly as possible. The sooner we get up to an appresitable population size, the better." Larahin interjected, getting a few nods around as others frowned slightly, but looked to be considering the wisdom in her words.
"What about just doing what Mum did and having the minimum set at around twenty, or higher, and go from there for a few generations?" Malany asked, getting others to look at her as she brought out her Omni-tool and projected a new image showing a screen of math. "The simple fact is that, if we each bear twenty children, or more, that means that we have a bigger base population. Say we go with that, then we're looking at a total population of 421 once their fully grown, keep going like that and we're get to 8,421. Fourth generation would be 168,421 while the fifth generation would be around 3,368,421. And it would keep on going from there."
"Fair point, sister, but that is assuming that the entire population, assuming they stick with only having twenty children and no more, if they, and we, decided to have more children to bring the Asari people back into the Universe, then we could be looking at further growth than just that." Teluc observed with a half-smile, getting a nod from Malany before she looked thoughtful at that before turning to me, having stayed in the doorway to the cockpit to observe.
"Mum, does that mean that you might have more children, giving us more sisters?" Malany asked rather bluntly, getting glares from the others, mostly because they all respected me too much to ask such a thing so... Ineloquently, Malany preferred to just ask things as they were as I chuckled at the reaction.
"Maybe, Dear, but I make no promises." I teased as she smiled, Malany always enjoyed the feeling of having so many sisters, the idea of getting more, especially ones that she could treat as children, would certainly appeal to her. Then again, I wasn't going to order any of them to act as baby makers unless they wished to do so, hell, I'd already played the part, so I had my doubts about any of them deciding to complain about it, especially given the fact that I had given birth to all twenty of them.
Still, I had to admit that the idea of rapid population growth would might be useful, especially since I knew about what was coming.
XXX
Laying the ground work for a new colony was, by no measure, an easy or simple task.
Honestly speaking, the easiest part of the whole thing was buying the Action VI Freighter, an already modified one that was bought from a Black Market dealer for around seven hundred and fifty thousand Credits, a rather decent price given the extent of the modifications. Namely, the original owner had added a dozen turrets on to the thing, linked them to a central Droid brain that had been taken from a lobotomized Administration Droid and armed each turret with a Quad Laser Cannon, similar to the ones on the Millennium Falcon. These things were powerful and rather accurate as well, definitely. The fact that the guy had used a Droid Brain from an Administration Droid meant that the damned thing was really good at running the needed math to accurately target objects moving in space. Of course, the problem was that the Droid brain could only coordinate so many turrets at a given time, out of the total 24 turrets with the ability to aim half of those in any given direction, only about six of them could be used with any degree of accuracy at a given time. Of course, we rapidly replaced the old Droid brain with a triplet of VIs designed to work together and share information, though not to the level of the Geth, to coordinate the fire between all the turrets and other weapons to ensure that there were no blind spots to take advantage of.
Still, aside from that, there was little that we could complain about. The Shields were decent and the Hyperdrive was a Class 0.7, definitely better than most commercially available Hyperdrives, not to mention the fact that the cargo space was still in one piece, allowing for much the ship to retain its function as a cargo vessel. Of course, one of the first things that me and the girls did was to ensure that all the weapons were concealable, if only to prevent harbor authorities asking too many questions. Next, we upgraded the Shield system to being above average, definitely better than the original piece of shit before we included a number of ECM and ECCM suites using the local tech, if only because it was quicker and easier than making our standard of them. Following that was a modification to the Hyperdrive, allowing for it to be converted into a Tumble Hyperdrive with a flick of a switch.
Tumble Hyperdrives, also called Tumbledrives, were an old, rather crude prototype of the modern Hyperdrive, owning it name to the unique feature that me and my Daughters were taking advantage of to find a planet to colonize. The Tumbledrive was capable of incrementing it's jumps, allowing for the jumps to be of any distance or length of time that the pilot wished for, and, when paired with a pair of specially designed VI, would allow us to travel relatively easily through unexplored space to find a new home. Sensors had been installed, along with various probe launchers, to allow us to scout ahead before deciding on which path to travel as we would be looking for an uncharted system to call our own.
Still, I had my doubts about it being difficult to find a place to call home, especially since, beyond the Corporate Sector, the Tingel arm was mostly Wild space, mostly unexplored and free to colonize as we wished. We had already planned for that, mostly deciding that making a home as far into the Tingel arm as possible would be the best idea, security through obscurity and all that. We'd spend as much time as was needed simply building a new home in whatever place we settled on before coming back to the Galaxy, though, many of my Daughters were fiercely against telling the Galaxy where we lived, possibly using something like a Hyperspace Gate or an equivalent of a Mass Relay to control travel between the Galaxy and our home. Honestly, I wasn't bothered too much by that, but I understood that security was a good idea.
If nothing else, it would make Customs and Border security rather simple since there was only one way into the system, one that we would have full control over.
XXX
"Mother, we've got a list of systems that we think might be the best choices to settle. Want to have the final pick?" Jan'sha asked as she came to the bridge of the refitted Hopeful Journey, the retrofitted Action IV Freighter had undergone a massive change since they had bought it from its original owners and such modifications hadn't stopped just because they had upgraded everything to a better standard. No, they all had pitched in to keep innovating and upgrading the systems while keeping it to local technologies, Mother having stated that they weren't going to upgrade it with their own tech until they started building their own ships.
Better to keep themselves hidden and not draw attention from other groups unless they were ready to act at large. Their Mother had always taught them to 'stack the deck', as it were, and not taking the time to do so, while building a suitable powerbase, was seen as the height of foolishness by all the sisters.
"Sure, pass them over." Her mother, Nyiss Arteis, replied as she looked around over her shoulder, having spent the last few hours running back to back diagnostics to ensure that the ship was still running as good as it had been a decade ago, when they had first purchased it from the markets of Nar Shaddaa. By this point, it was more habit than anything else, they knew the ship's systems backwards, forwards and inside out, they all knew that the ship would not fail anytime soon, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
A moment passed as Jan'sha passed the file to her Mother's Omni-tool as the message flashed and the file appeared around her right arm, the orange hardlight projections flashing into place before her as they displayed a total listing of fifteen planets, all of them scattered across the edges of Wild space, but near the very tips of the uncharted space. Honestly, calling it uncharted was a bit of a mistake since they had spent the better part of a decade mapping out a decent sized section of it with Probes and figuring out Hyperspace paths if they ever needed them to get back out into the Galaxy.
"So, out of them, which would you recommend?" Nyiss asked as she looked at the file before her, pictures of twenty worlds floating before her with summaries about their environments, local systems and native life all spelled out for easy reading. More details were present if one were to activate the link at the bottom of the file, but most of it was covered in the summaries. Jan'sha jumped at the sudden, and rather unexpected, question before she looked to see her mother looking over her shoulder at her, one eye still skimming over the document as she nodded at the other chair next to her. The oldest of the twenty sisters took that for what it was and took a seat next to her mother, fidgeting with her hands as she bit her lip in thought.
"... I'd have to say option seven." Jan'sha muttered quietly to herself, though still loud enough for her mother to hear as she clicked on the planet in question as the file shifted, bringing up a larger image that was as big as an Astromech to show the planet in full detail.
The planet itself was large, a radius of just over seven thousand kilometres with an average day length of about 29 hours, the planet was beautiful from orbit with vast sections of flat plat sandwiched between long beaches and cliffs leading into massive oceans, and, on the other side, large forests and jagged mountains that disappeared into the atmosphere. It was not an uncommon sight to see the clouds parting as the tops of some mountains disappeared above them, visible even over the clouds and just visible to the Probes in low orbit. Average temperature of the planet was just over 24 degrees Celsius while the planet had just under one G of gravity. Most of the planet was further covered by oceans that plateaued out before dropping sharply into abysses deep beneath the waves, the tides being held at bay by the complex mesh of Moons and asteroids around the planet with three moons that had one main moon with two more rotating around the first. Two additional asteroid belts wrapped around the planet, one made primarily of ore-rich rocks while the other was filled with fragments of frozen water and gases.
Truthfully, all of the sisters had agreed that this was the best option, but they had all submitted one idea since it was what their Mother had asked of them. This one, simply called Option Seven for the moment, was located in a small system with a young yellow star, another three planets within the uninhabitable zone of the star, closer to it than Option Seven, their surfaces constantly a burning sea of molten rock and metal. However, that presented great opportunities, especially since the planets were rich in high quality, high purity metals that may have been of use in the future, on the other side of Option Fifteen was an asteroid belt that ran around the entire system before being followed by two Gas Giants, both being several times bigger than Option Seven rich in valuable gases. It was a perfect location, helped along by the fact that it was completely untouched by any race and seemed to lay right on the very edge of the Tingel arm, the very edge of Wild Space and the Galaxy as a whole. The only real problem that the sisters could think of was the simple fact that, unless they created some kind of short cut, travelling through the mapped hyperspace routes they had made would take them weeks to return to the rest of the Galaxy, if not months.
However, that was hardly a problem at the current time as privacy and secrecy were the key points of what they wished to do.
Watching, Jan'sha looked at her mother as the older Asari's eyes glanced down the page before she finished reading all the information, absorbing it quickly into herself before she cupped her chin in thought as she returned to the original file. Glancing at each of the planets in turn, Nyiss seemed to be lost in thought for a moment before she leaned back into her chair and looked at her oldest daughter.
"Judging by what I'm seeing here, I have to agree with you, Option Seven looks like the best option for settlement." Nyiss said with a half-smile as Jan'sha nodded, her own beaming smile in place, as Nyiss started up the Nav Computer.
"I'll set course for what soon will be New Thessia, you go back to the cargo bay and tell the rest of the girls where we are going. Also, tell them to warm up the Omni-Foundries, set half of them for rapid material processing while the other half can be set to begin the construction of the items marked in the 'Initial Settlement' file I downloaded on to them." Nyiss stated as the daughter nodded once more, smile still in place as she stood from the chair just in time to see the stars flash by to announce their entry to Hyperspace.
Hopefully, things would only get easier with time, especially now that they had somewhere to call home.
XXX
"Well, I think I can say it. This is the perfect location for the initial settlement!" Malany shouted as she looked around from the highland she stood on, the slightly raised ground surrounded by more flatland to the East and the South as it was backed into a Mountain range with a thin strip of forests between her location and them. On the other side was a curved coastline that, directly between the water and Malany, was a sheer cliff face that dropped some 135 metres straight down to the water, with a further drop of 68 metres before one hit the sea floor. Further along the coast, it opened up to lines of brilliant, white sand with spots of what their Mother had called 'Palm trees' sticking out from the sand every now and then.
"Agreed." Larahin commented as she looked up from her Omni-tool. "Soil samples are showing a good nutrient content in the ground, should be good for farming if we want to go that route instead of hydroponics or aeroponics. I just got a message from Jan'sha and her group as well." Malany raised an eyebrow at that.
"Oh? They were looking into scans of the local mountains for raw materials, right? What did they find?" She asked as Larahin swiped her Omni-tool, sending the file to her eleven month older sister.
"Lots of things, though, they seemed to fine large amounts of Titanium, Copper, Palladium, Platinum and Iridium, among other things. The really big catch, though, was probably this." Larahin explained as she showed an image before her. It was a picture of a massive cavern filled with glowing lights, projected back from veins of crystal that lined the walls.
"Mother's already examined the images and she said that they might be some kind of Kyber crystal, normally used by Jedi and Sith to make Lightsabers. Though, I heard her mention that they were also used to make high-quality computer processors and memory storage devices." Malany looked at that thoughtfully for a moment before she smirked.
"Did Mother mention how much those kinds of upgrades usually went for?" Malany asked innocently, getting a knowing smirk from her sister as another document appeared between the two of them, this one detailing pricings for Kyber crystal-based computer upgrades.
"Depending on the clarity, sixe and diffraction index of a specific crystal, we could be looking at anywhere from several thousand Credits to well over the tens of millions of credits. The best example I could find was one piece that was the size of my thumb, it sold for roughly nineteen million Credits and was then made into a computer processor that is used by the Republic to rapidly catalogue data for their central registers. It cost them 22 million Credits." Larahin explained as they both shared sinister smirks at what that meant. If nothing else, it meant that when they returned to the Galaxy, they would have a quick way of rapidly acquiring wealth based on the sales of these crystals alone. Checking the document again, both saw that the profit margins were there, not to mention that using Synthetic crystals, while fine for Lightsabers, would have a negative impact on performance if used in such a manner. The fact that the Jedi jealously horded such locations to obtain these crystals meant that finding enough to upgrade a number of computers was often difficult.
However, now they had a means of rapidly obtaining wealth once they returned to the Galaxy, a steady supply of such crystals would probably make a lot of people rather happy.
XXX
Looking out the cockpit window of the Hopeful Journey, I smiled as I saw how work was coming along on the beginnings of the colony. Mechs were working around the clock to build up the basics before moving on to other things, namely vast cities that were planned, said towers being planned to take the form of Asari towers with smooth curves and organic lines, rising high into the sky. Still, their completion was a while off as I looked out to note my daughters, all hard at work, arguing with each other over the final details of what was to happen once the initial colony was finished.
For laws, it was decided to stick with the original ones of the Asari, basically laws that meant that if one tried stealing, killing, enslaving or mind-raping another Asari, it would result in instant death. However, aliens had no such protection from these laws, mostly due to how my daughters had all agreed that the Asari should show unity with themselves, anything else was simply taking advantage of an opportunity. Likewise, they had already agreed on the final, minimum, number of children each Asari should have for the next four generations, eight hundred years, effectively. Each Asari would have to give birth to a total of forty children, I was exempt from this since my daughters had decided that, since I was their Mother, I had the final say in such things. I still wondered about setting the bar so high, but that was on them rather than me since I thought twenty was pushing it as far as it should go. That meant that, if each of those four generations only had forty children, then the total population after each generation would be, 821, 32,821, 1,312,821 and 53,412,821, respectively.
So that was going to be a population of over fifty million by 60 ABY, if the math worked out correctly.
Aside from that, the girls had also be arguing over other things such as the system of government, having decided to set up a council of themselves, shamelessly called the Council of Matriarchs, with me holding the head position as the 'Queen Matriarch'. They had also chosen that, from there, each of them would take different surnames and form Houses that would each work to control a given sector of the Asari government, for instance, Jan'sha Aveyne was planning on having her House dedicated to the military in general, but specializing in the Naval aspects of it in particular, with control over the logistics, shipbuilding and command structure as a result. Malany Morus had decided to go for a more science-like, yet hands-on approach and decided to have her House dedicated to industry, with a specialty in material science to create better materials to fill various roles, not to mention dabbling in economics. Larahin Jaora, however, had surprised me when she decided to have her House dedicated to the Arts, music, painting and sculpting, along with other such things. I had asked her about that, and had found myself grinning while she gave a smug smirk.
Larahin was planning to use such things for long term cultural manipulation via a number of methods, up to and including the seduction of alien artists and altering their views to be pro-Asari via a Mind-meld. She fully planned to have the Asari stand at the top of the Galactic pecking order, and was fully willing to use all of the... Racial traits that the Asari held to make it happen. I had made a note that, within a century, to expect Larahin and my Tenth daughter, Esaley T'rena, to control the Galactic markets through backroom deals and heavy use of exports that other races simply wouldn't be able to produce on their own.
Patent Protection Technologies, Fabrication Protection Technologies and very thoroughly black boxed systems would see to that. It also helped that Esalet was fully planning to ship crates of Medigel and Medical Omnigel out, with only basic instructions for the former while leaving it in the hands of Asari 'Specialists' to use the latter. She planned to build a dependency into the Galaxy that meant that they required what we would be selling rather than what they, themselves, were producing. Sure, they could easily go back to what they used before hand, but my daughters were planning to do this over a long time period, working effectively to remove competition from the Galactic stage.
Of course, this all linked back to a rather interesting phrase that I had heard one of my daughters utter: " Tyrants are those that rule through violence and intimidation, removing the 'freedoms' and 'rights' of those that he rules to ensure their compliance. Of course, this leads to the reverse; A near-universal to react violently when one believes that these 'rights' are being infringed upon, leading to resistance and open revolt in short order. It is better, I believe, to not be a Tyrant, but a manager of opinions and events, sculpting a people's beliefs and opinions to match that which you find acceptable before moving forwards, putting one's self into the spotlight before the people... Force these individuals on to the seat of command. So long as the masses never see how truly chained and enslaved they are, they will not look too deeply and will follow along like a herd of bantha, it is just a matter of ensuring that you carry the right feed to get them moving..."
It was rather interesting to note that this was a lot like, at least, from my perspective, a favorite phrase of mine.
The greatest trick the Devil ever played, was making the world believe that he didn't exist.
XXX
