I, and Crown Intelligence, have had many more conversations with Ke-Vol and many others since she arrived home, and they’ve given us a lot more insight into their culture. True, it has nothing to do with their warriors, but knowledge of how quickly they can build the weapons and ships the warrior caste use is valuable. Plus, I learned they’ve begun the process of reintroducing their male population. I offered to help in any way I could, but she politely declined the offer saying that it’s something they need to do for themselves. I still reiterated that if they ran into issues, we would be more than happy to help.
If you remember, Congress was asked to accept responsibility for the Alkarin on Albin and defend them. In my view, they’ve gone above and beyond what I’ve asked of them. A large group of them, along with many reporters, went to Albin. The reporters were given permission to interview whomever they would like. They talked to not only their leadership but also the average being on the street. Their reports were relayed back by link.
Congressional members all came to the same conclusion that I, Crown intelligence, and the AIs have. The worker caste is harmless and desperately needs our protection. Scary-looking they may be, but they show themselves to be bright and personable beings.
That said, when the members and press return, they spend a few days debating with their colleagues and finally, approve them for admittance into the Commonwealth. As Kevin said, it was a foregone conclusion that it would happen when they got to know them.
Also, Ke-Vol told the group of them that when they’ve finally had their males reintroduced and they’ve grown up, they would more than likely join the Commonwealth military since they don’t have the docility programmed into their DNA like the female workers. We’ve already seen that they are excellent fighters, even if the current crop of female warriors aren’t able to adapt quickly.
Albin’s recovery has been progressing by leaps and bounds. From all the reports, our troops are very popular with the population. Not to mention that the Alkarins want to know everything they can of our culture, and they’ve adopted several aspects of it. Amazingly, they’ve really come to love our movies and series. English is the common tongue for our people, and since they are now part of the Commonwealth, English is replacing Alkarin as their language, although they were teaching it to their population even before their admittance.
We’re still being cautious with large portions of our technology. They are allowed to have and use finished products, but until the Alkarin Empire is destroyed, we aren’t giving them access to nanite facilities or more advanced ships, even civilian ones.
Many Alkarin worker castes have requested, through their leaders, that we either open schools on Albin or their children be allowed to attend our colleges here on Earth. I’m seriously considering allowing them to come to Earth. In my view, it would likely be a good thing since the public would become more familiar as they interact with them, and they’d learn that they aren’t the big scary aliens they think all of them are. The News has informed the public about the differences between the warrior and worker castes, but I’m sure not everyone keeps up with the news. Even so, it takes time for attitudes to change. Humans may have come a long way, but bigotry still exists, even amongst ourselves.
[Thursday, March 17]
As we’ve done before, starting at midnight tonight, the military begins picking up the selected colonists, which, again, goes smoothly. This will also be the final colony ship heading to Beta Hydri, giving them a total of 1.3 million colonists and a bit more than 500,000 military personnel.
[Saturday, March 19]
My spouses and I leave to go to the Artemis. I again give a short speech telling the colonists why they are here and where they are heading. Then, the Artemis and her escort fleet leaves for Beta Hydri
We’re still building colony ships, though building them doesn’t have the same priority it did before. We still have scouts out looking for other habitable systems, but systems with Earth-like planets are relatively few and far between. Scientists have located another likely system, and we’ve dispatched a scout ship to it as well. Nu2 Lupi, which is 47.5 light-years from Sol.
Originally, it was thought that it only contained super-Earths, but with a more detailed look, they found a relatively Earth-sized planet in the middle of its habitable zone. A huge plus is that spectroscopy shows that it has an O₂/N atmosphere. At worst, we’ll find intelligent life and leave, for now, because we already have our hands full, and we don’t need to take a chance of another conflict with a highly aggressive species. At best, we’ll find a habitable planet. In the middle ground, we might have to wipe the biosphere using nanites and recreate it with Earth life.
The shipbuilding facilities around Mercury are well ahead of all projections. They are turning out a strike fighter carrier or escort dreadnought every 31 hours. The improvements made in the production nanites are showing their worth. Their associate facilities are finishing outfitting them in another 26 hours. On Earth, the strike fighter production is speeding right along, with each facility about to produce 19 per day and there are over 200 sites producing them scattered around the world.
Eventually, we have plans to move all production facilities into space. First, they are a bit safer in space. Second, gravity slows production since the nanites have to fight gravity to do their job. So, you can see how it makes sense to do it.
I might mention that our shields have, yet again, been improved. I’m amazed that they were able to do so, so soon after the last improvements. Now they can reduce the damage from energy and plasma weapons by 64% and Kinetic impacts on them by 44%, which is nothing to be sneezed at. The Duraminium armor has been thickened across the board on all of our ships to further improve their survivability, especially in critical areas such as arms, engines, and the weapons themselves.
Our weapons researchers believe they’ve cracked the gigawatt per centimeter limitation on our laser weaponry. In small-scale tests, they’ve been able to produce the equivalent of 1.4 gigawatts per centimeter. I’m looking forward to seeing a full-scale test of the improvements they’ve made.
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The great thing about jump engines, other than the amount of power supplied to them, is that there are no changes needed for them to reach higher bands in dimensional space. So, all that needs to be done is retrofit our ships with the new higher capacity power plants. Ohta is hoping that he’ll eventually be able to build even smaller, more powerful ones, which will enable our ships to generate the power needed for them to reach the delta band. If he can, then our ships would be capable of traveling 48.5 light years per hour. Meaning that we could cross the Milky Way, which is 105,700 light-years across, in roughly 91 days. If you can’t grasp what a feat that is, then I don’t know what to say.
Most of the design projects that have been approved and implemented are showing results. Notably, the new strike fighter carriers, escort dreadnoughts, and autonomous attack satellites. They’ve already been produced in high quantities.
I’m more than pleased with the results of the strike fighter carrier groups. After many simulations, Jason found that the strike fighter group is great for harassment raids, but they perform best when employed as a battlegroup of 10 strike fighter carrier groups. So, 20 strike fighter carriers, 30 escort dreadnoughts, and 46,000 strike fighters.
In tests against an OPFOR setup like the Alkarin fleets we’ve faced, a single battlegroup was more than capable of engaging and defeating in detail a fleet of 10 times their number. Yes, they took fairly heavy damage in doing so, but the concept is valid. I believe that they are a battlegroup that the Alkarin don’t want to face. At the moment, minus what we sent to Beta Hydri, we have enough of them to make 14 strike fighter carrier battlegroups.
The autonomous battle satellites have been produced in vast quantities. They’ve been deployed in groups of 250, 125 of each version of them, around the normal exit point for the Alkarin fleet, scattered amongst the Oort cloud, and the asteroid belt in likely approach vectors. So far, we have 190 groups of them, and that number is quickly climbing. If the Alkarin return to the Sol system, they are in for a rather rude surprise. Eventually, they’ll be deployed throughout the system.
[Wednesday, June 22]
The HMS Artemis reports back that it has arrived at Beta Hydri.
[Monday, June 29]
[Captains Log]
We arrived at Nu2 Lupi 16 days ago, immediately engaged full stealth mode, and began our survey of the system looking for any signs of intelligent life, which we failed to find. After our initial survey from the outer system, we cautiously moved further in-system for a closer look and still failed to find anything other than plant or microbial life. We then moved around the system for 10 days as we surveyed the planets.
The system contains four planets and several fairly large dwarf planets which orbit within the asteroid belt. The habitable zone extends from 0.69 to 1.39 AU from Nu2 Lupi. A rather dense asteroid belt begins at 1.68 AU and extends out to 3.22 AU, along with innumerable icy bodies. Curiously, there are no Jovian planets, so the asteroid belt is much more stable than the Sol system’s.
The innermost planet is a super-Earth we’ve named Ater. It has a circumference of roughly 102,000 km and has no atmosphere to speak of. Ater is 0.093 AU from Nu2 Lupis and completes an orbit in approximately 12 days.
The second planet is another super-Earth we’ve named Breon. It has a circumference of roughly 434,000 km and has a hydrogen/helium atmosphere along with various traces of other gases. Breon is 0.167 AU from Nu2 Lupis and completes an orbit in approximately 27 days.
The third planet is another super-Earth we’ve named Chilia. It has a circumference of roughly 397,000 km, and its atmosphere is made up of Argon/hydrogen/helium with trace amounts of other gases. Breon is 0.411 AU from Nu2 Lupis, and completes an orbit in approximately 107 days.
The fourth planet is the entire reason we were sent here. We’re calling it Darvin, and it’s right in the middle of the habitable zone at 1.06 AU. It has a perfect O2/N atmosphere. Lots of plants, but nothing more than microbes for other lifeforms. Darvin has an average daytime temperature of 27.4℃, so it’s likely summer on the planet. Its atmospheric makeup is 73.3% nitrogen, 22.7% oxygen, and 4% various other gasses. It has a circumference of 54,258 kilometers, 54% water, 46% land, and gravity of 1.02 g. It’s the most Earth-like planet we’ve ever come across while exploring.
The survey reports have been compiled and are being encrypted to be transmitted to General Chambers.
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[Jason Chambers POV}
[CMCC]
After receiving the report from the HMS Jame Hobbs, I’m more than happy to make the call to report the good news to Sora.
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