Monk

"I am currently pregnant."

I smile as Sam gives the news, Tifa raises an eyebrow.

"What do they call a man who knocks up three different women?"

"Lucky."

She rolls her eyes.

"Congratulations."

"I am glad I am in the process of successfully reproducing."

She sits down next to me, I read through the files.

"Are you sure about supporting this man?"

The election was slated to happen in 2530 and I suddenly realized that that time was coming close. I also realized I was actually ahead of schedule on defenses, and I realized why. I had pretty much assumed I would end up doing everything on my own, but I was wrong about that.

It turns out when you forcibly industrialize an entire system during a war people don't just sit around and stand idle. When life is on the line they take your factories and use them.

"He's the one who knows the civilian side of things the best, so he's our best option."

Tifa nods her head, and I read through the files on the Front. To understand Front space you need to understand its history. The UNSC was created by the UN, so each country got a vote. When it was all settled there were 200 countries on Earth which were included in the transition and kept their vote. Then, as space was settled, votes were given for Mars, Venus, and the various moons. So all together Sol had 500 votes with Earth having 200 of those. After the UNSC outgrew Sol an entire system would only get a singular vote so Sol would have more power. The result was that the Inner Systems had 230 star systems but over 700 votes. The outer systems often didn't have any representation at all.

So who moved out here? Social outcasts, religious groups that felt persecuted, and people with debt problems.

Looking through the numbers, 40% of the Front is some version of Hindu, 40% some flavor of Christian, mostly catholic, 10% Jewish, which surprised me until I found out that the 10 systems had been founded by an ultra-orthodox cult with cloning technology. And the rest don't even make up a single percent on their own. It's a pretty diverse group of people, all more or less united around the idea that the inner colonies are assholes.

Hate of an external enemy isn't enough to build a nation though. I got a message and sighed in relief.

"What happened?"

"We got an approval on the freedom of religion."

Tifa nodded her head.

"That's important?"

"Very important, a religious conflict would rip us apart."

Constitution first then elections and I frowned.

"Mark?"

"One second. Cloud?"

My son looked up.

"Yes, daddy?"

"Please take your little brother and go play?"

"Ok, daddy."

I took a deep breath Tifa looked at me.

"What's wrong?"

"They're talking about making the Star Forge the capital."

Tifa blinked.

"Why?"

"No one can agree on what system or planet should be the capital. The idea of having a mobile moon-sized habitat as our capital is being floated as a compromise."

"Isn't that good?"

"This is a military vessel and it's mostly dedicated to manufacturing. I mean... yes, we have complete biomes and living space but those are training yards. If the Star Forge becomes the capital I'm going to have to take a literal army of robots to move everything around."

"They will figure it out. No offense but no one is going to want this place to be their capital when they could have an actual planet."

I prayed Tifa was right.

Monk

"No."

"Why not?"

"The Star Forge is a military facility, a highly secured military facility, one that holds our most advanced technology. What you're asking is to let a bunch of civilians have free access to it."

I paused.

"Even if you can trust the elected representatives, and that can be a big if, can we trust their aids? Can we trust their family members? Can we trust their interns? And once we make it our capital, guess what? The UNSC embassies will follow and we sure as shit can't trust them, Jacob."

The governor looked at me.

"That's actually a good point."

"It gets worse, the job of the star forge is go into vulnerable systems, you would be putting our leadership on the front lines does that sound like a good idea."

"No it does not."

"And you better believe this doesn't make the politics less complicated! It makes it ten times as complicated because now instead of being a military facility that's upgrading everything it's the nations capital."

"You said you would be finished with that soon."

"I said I would be finished with the currently inhabited systems, but that's 300 star systems out of a 1000. We have hordes of refugees fleeing from the UNSC's outer colonies because entire worlds are getting straight up glassed. How long do you give it before some of those refugees settle an uninhabited system and claim membership in our nation."

I paused.

"Do you think we could survive the diplomatic fallout of not helping them? Do you think we could refuse those numbers? Refuse that growth?"

"Any way you could build a moveable capital?"

"In the middle of a war for national survival? No. That's a years-long vanity project, and it won't be as defensible as a planet with reinforced shields, it won't have the same industry, it won't have a host of advantages. I know Earth is shit but it's shit because it has way too much representation for the numbers of people. It shouldn't have 200 fucking votes."

I rubbed my temple.

"What do you think could be done then?"

I looked at my star maps.

"There is an uninhabited system pretty much in the center of Front space."

"Why is it uninhabited?"

"No garden worlds, no resources worth exploiting. It has 3 planets, two gas giants and one world with Earth-like gravity and an active crust."

"Problems?"

"No atmosphere, it would have to be terraformed but it can have planetary shields which would make terraforming much easier and it's in the Goldilocks zone. It would be a real bitch to terraform, but we could have it as a neutral zone that hopefully makes everyone equally unhappy."

"Ugh...good point I will bring this to the council. Jacob Jiles, out."

I leaned back. Like fucking hell I was going to deal with politics on top of all of my other work. Fuck that shit.