Manual:Asylum/Information Snippets

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Asylum

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Information Snippets is a collection of short pieces that, while generally not impacting the modification storyline, help to explain more about the circumstances and people involved in the conflict.

Contents 1 Current Snippet 1.1 Feb 21 2009 - Claude's Last Stand 2 Past Snippets 2.1 Feb 03 2009 - The Future History of Infantry Equipment 2.2 Jan 19 2009 - Radio Signal Alpha Papa 3 2.3 Aug 24 2008 - Lt. Carroway's Letter 2.4 Aug 23 2008 - Mike Harrison's Journal #128 2.5 Jan 17 2008 - Mike Harrison's Journal #127 2.6 Dec 20 2007 - Jason Stark's Email 2.7 Dec 14 2007 - Purged Message 2.8 Dec 12 2007 - Mike Harrison's Journal #126 2.9 Nov 28 2007 - Mike Harrison's Journal #125 2.10 Sep 29 2007 - Dominic Pereira Interview

Current Snippet

Feb 21 2009 - Claude's Last Stand

<Log of Claude Allard, Sheriff of Pleuron. Recovered March 7, 2437.>

<2437.3.1.2345> I thought we had bought the farm there. They think they have it bad in the north? It's nothing like down here. Total lawlessness, the roads are cut off, and those... things, are everywhere. The Guard's all up north. We have nothing to defend us down here. A captain who lived in the area with his family tried to organize all the weekend warriors at a rally point a few miles away in Redfield. I emphasize tried.

Redfield's gone now. Poof.

It just blew up, whole damn town.

I don't know where they came from, but Redfield and several towns east of here just got obliterated with low-yield nuclear weapons. My guess is they were targeting the private spaceport, and everything near it just went along for the ride.

One of my deputies tells me there are reports from people fleeing eastward that folks are getting sick all over the place about 50 kilometers to the west in Eugene. It's almost like they're having fun with us, seeing what does the most damage. Straight up fighting up north, nukes just east of here, chemical or biological to the west, and those monsters right here.

God help us.

<2437.3.2.0310> I am so damned tired I'm about to pass out here. But I can't. After six straight hours, they're still coming. We lost the police station about 0100 when one of those screaming things toppled a tree and it came down right through the building. That was right about when we had finished off the eighth one so far, and when squads of those lizardman things started showing up.

I lost half my men, but we managed to fall back to the library. Jim, the town mechanic, and his guys got cut off at the intersection of 3rd and Hauser on the way. We didn't see what happened, but it's dollars to dimes they were all dead within a minute of when we lost contact.

I still hadn't paid him for fixing my daughter's Phoenix last week.

<2437.3.2.0600> The blazing light of our yellow subgiant Tau1 Gruis is coming up over the horizon, like it does every 26 and a half hours. Somehow, it's not comforting.

We haven't been hit for the last two hours, and I think we either killed the last of those screaming things, or they pulled out when the lizardmen stopped showing up. Some of the men are kidding themselves into thinking the worst is past and now we just gotta wait till the Guard rolls in and declares everything safe. Undersheriff Green, the only one of us who served in the War, isn't saying a word to dissuade them. We need some hope right now. But just one look at his face tells you he's thinking the same thing I am: that was only the tip of the iceberg.

I called my wife about forty times last night, but there was no answer, and just after 4 the lines went down, so that's that. Wireless is of course useless from whatever jamming those aliens are using. I asked Green if he thought she might be okay, but he just stared out the window when I asked. Yeah, I don't think so either. I don't think I've ever felt this sick at heart in my life, but I can't show it right now, and I can't grieve. The men have been just one step from panic from the first fifteen minutes of this shit, and I'm well aware that I'm the glue that's keeping them together right now.

At least I know my daughter's okay. She left me a message just before the nukes hit. She was visiting her friend Allison Townes on the Townes Farm and she's holed up underground with her friend and her friend's family. I tried to call her back to give her instructions, but that's when the jamming started. I hope she has the good sense to stay there and doesn't try to come into town.

<2437.3.2.1310> That goddamned computer. We lost the library.

Now we're down to twenty: six of my deputies, myself, and thirteen armed civilians, two of whom are these frail teenaged girls who can't aim worth a damn and whose favorite activity seems to be assassinating the men's morale with their constant bellyaching and crying and panicking. As far as I can tell, we're the only people in Pleuron still alive.

Let me back up a bit. We had sporadic fighting start up again with those reptiles around 10 in the morning, but nothing we couldn't handle. The library's in a pretty defensible spot. Then about noon the power started coming back on, and we got communication back to Grus City. Apparently the damage to power and communications wasn't too bad, and Copernicus' automated repair systems managed to fix them by working through the night and morning.

All the men were cheering, and we thought we were saved. Then we discovered the communication with Grus City was all one-way. Copernicus apparently broke into every computer system in town and trashed its data before hitting it with a power spike and frying it. Shortly before he overloaded and blew the power substation for the whole area, he spiked the transformers at the library and set the whole goddamned building on fire with us in it.

After what was left of us managed to escape to here, I asked him why.

Books.

He was deleting the books.

Doesn't seem to give a damn that he deleted some of us with them. Unbelievable.

The only reason I'm still typing is this dumb terminal here at the theater runs off the same utility grid as the traffic cameras, which Copernicus is apparently using. I cursed him and demanded he let us communicate with Grus City. I wanted a link to the traffic cameras too.

You need to calm yourself.

That was his reply. That and stating that he could, without compromising security, leave this terminal online so that I could record our thoughts and pertinent information for future use incase there were some survivors able to recover the data.

I just want to say for the record that that computer is completely insane.

<2437.3.3.0050> We haven't heard from anybody but Copernicus in 24 hours now. I wonder if we're the only ones left on the colony. Probably not, Grus City proper has to still be there if Copernicus is still there. My gut tells me that may be all that's left though.

I hope my daughter is still all right.

A group of aliens attacked again, but we managed to stop them. These were a lot smarter than the dumb screaming monsters from before, and the lizardmen. This time some new type, these big chunky things the height of basketball players except way more heavily built, were here leading the lizardmen. The lizardmen are hard fighters, but the one saving grace is they seem to be tactically stupid. Otherwise we'd have died the first night (the first night... feels like a year ago already, and this is only the second night).

Not these big guys. They're sharp as a whip, if a bit overconfident. Defender's advantage and luck are the only reasons they didn't kill us this time. We damn near lost the theater to them in the last attack. There were two of them leading the squad of lizardmen, and they had just about pushed us completely back into the recesses of the building when Green brought a chandelier down on top of one of the big aliens. Apparently their shields aren't enough to stop 200 kilograms of chandlier being pulled down on them by 1.07 G. The other one freaked out and pulled the lizardmen back, and we reclaimed the lost part of the theater. I don't know where they went after they pulled out.

Speaking of their shields, here's what we observed: They have these energy shields that flare up and vaporize our rounds when they get within a certain distance, allowing them to stand right there in our fire and direct their troops. Kind of like the electrified layer of modern vehicle armor, except this is somehow projected into the air. After a good deal of hits we noticed one of them (the one who later fled) started taking cover and being more careful, and what hits he did take seemed to be countered closer and closer to that weird suit he was wearing. We think it must mean they can only take so much punishment before those shields fail. If only we had something with more punch than just these small caliber semi-automatics. Ken's hunting rifle and Green's 10mm SMG from the station are the only heavy duty firepower we have.

<2437.3.3.0430> Green thinks it would be a good idea if we take Copernicus' suggestion seriously and put our heads together to work out what observations we can make concerning the aliens since we seem to have had semi-decent luck against them.

To put it the way he did, "The fighting always refines the populace down to those who are not only capable of fighting, but also have discovered how to best their enemy. Then these inflict the most damage before dying." Apparently, that means us since we're all that's been "refined" from Pleuron, and now we'll kick the most ass before the aliens kill us. I guess.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Green is truly able to take the stress, or if his stoic demeanor is just him retreating far inside himself and looking at the situation as if he's not even here. I don't know what he saw in the War, and I don't want to know. I'm going to keep a closer eye on him though, something about the way he's acting doesn't seem right.

<2437.3.3.0745> The lull continues. I hope we've either been lost in the fog of war, or they've simply decided a bunch of armed Colonials holed up in a theater in some suburb aren't worth the effort. Green thinks it's probably the latter, with one stipulation: he says they're ignoring us because they're going to just blow the building up whenever they move through here in force. He said this completely nonchalantly, as if it didn't even matter. Except for when we're discussing the enemy, he does nothing now but sit at his post on top the top floor and stare out the window. He's becoming dangerous to what morale we have left, but I don't know what to do about it.

Not to mention we've lost another three people, in addition to the three in the last attack. One of the teenage girls managed to convince two of the more bravado-filled civilian men that it would be a good idea, now that there's a lull, to help her find her dad who lives just outside of town. I tried to talk some sense into them, but they became belligerent, so I just let them go. Probably better off without them. That puts us down to fourteen now.

Anyway, here's what we've worked out between us:

WOADS – These are the "monsters" I referred to early on. These are some kind of creature that we figure the aliens probably drop as shock troops to wreak havoc on weakly defended populated areas. When we still had communications, we tried to ask advisement on dealing with them from the guys up north and they didn't know what the hell we were talking about. No military forces encountered them, yet they were all over the place here, and we had plenty of reports of them being in other suburbs as well. Just as well, because while they're fast, aggressive as all hell, and strong, they're also dumber than a pile of bricks. They crashed into people's homes and mauled them to death and ran down and killed whatever they could find in the streets, but we were able to bring down the ones that attacked both the police station and library using our concentrated fire well before they got close enough to be dangerous. Unlike the other aliens, they don't use any weapons other than their own bodies. Even though they're bipedal, we figure they're some kind of attack animal. The name is courtesy of Professor Higgins, one of the civilians with us. He teaches–well, taught–ancient history at Marcus T. Benedict Colonial University. He thinks they seem a lot like these fierce Celtic fanatics from ancient Britain who would paint themselves with the woad plant and were utterly insane in battle, and were apparently nicknamed "Woads" by the Romans. Makes sense, and the name stuck.

ISTRIKA – The lizardmen. We didn't have to come up with a name for these. When the police station was overrun, one of my deputies, Toshiro Omura, was knocked down in one of the halls by a chunk of flying debris. at the opposite end from me. I started to go back for him when one of the things crashed through the door of one of the offices a few feet away from him, and saw him. It dropped its weapon, lifted up him up off the ground by his neck, and pointed to itself with its clawed hand, saying in a hoarse, hissing voice, "Hiss trih KAH!" Then it smashed his head against a pillar. We witnessed something like this happen again at the library during another attack; they seem to want their prey to know their name. Physically they're pretty damn frightening, or at least they are to me. Picture this buffed out tailless bipedal lizard. Not as tall as most men, actually only around 170 centimeters average I'd say, but that's as big as they need to be. They're covered in this tough, knobby skin that just looks like you'd need a chainsaw to cut through it, and wear this heavy, plated ballistic armor that managed to shrug off everything we shot it with except for Ken Dillinger's 12.7mm hunting rifle and 10mm AP rounds from the submachinegun we had in the armory at the police station. The rest of us had to aim for the heads and the limbs. They wear this form-fitting, perfectly molded metal hat/helmet that fits on top of their heads and covers the upper rear of their heads, the top, and extends down their gecko-ish snouts to where their upper and lower teeth meet. Only openings are a pair of unprotected holes for their eyes. I wish I had a camera, that'd explain them in one photo, but I don't. They're fierce fighters, and I mean fierce. Better and braver than we are, that's for damn sure. But they seem to be geared or trained toward fighting out in the open. Indoors, if we can engage them on our terms, we can beat them, as their tactics indoors are almost non-existent.

LEADERS – We don't really have a name for these. These are the big creatures I described before that led the Istrika against us. They have those energy shields I talked about, and wear these form-fitting suits with some kind of very lightweight armor attached at various points, though I can't speculate as to how effective this is at protecting them as the one whose shields we seemed to have just about worn down started taking cover from us, and the other was smashed by the chandelier. I have to say, that shield did make a spectacular flare just above his head a split second before he became one with the floor. I can't say much about them physically or otherwise that I haven't already, as the first one got away, and the other was so mangled by being crushed and mutilated by the chandelier that I can't observe much about him other than he seems to bleed this bluish fluid rather than the red we and those Istrika things bleed. Higgins thinks they probably use hemocyanin in their circulatory system rather than hemoglobin, as some Terran creatures as well as indigenous life on other planets that we've found use. He says it's less efficient than hemoglobin, but is survivable in some environments that would be fatal to a creature with hemoglobin blood. Maybe they come from that kind of environment, I don't know. The Istrika seem much more effective indoors when being led by these leader creatures, though still nowhere near up to par with modern human forces. I guess raids on entrenched opponents in buildings aren't a big thing where they come from.

Shit, something's going on outside. I'll continue this later.

<2437.3.3.1230> Celeste is gone. I watched my daughter die today, only meters from me. Why did she come here? I'm not really sure what happened. I've... I did not take it well.

Bill tells me she came driving up in her Phoenix. Who knows how she found us, but when she reached the parking lot, the Istrika opened fire on her immediately from a nearby building. They had been sitting and waiting all this time for us to come out so they could face us on open ground. Clever bastards.

By the time I got to the upper floor, her car had been perforated by whatever projectiles it is they fire, as well as seared by the leader aliens' plasma weaponry. She was bleeding, crawling away from her car and toward us, calling to us. We fired and fired at them, but they wouldn't... they just wouldn't stop... shooting at her. The guys on the second and first floor tried to get to her, but they opened fire on us from the roof of the other building with some kind of mounted solid state laser they must have brought with them and chased our guys back into the building and started searing chunks off of it and blowing the windows out.

I tried to yell to her to tell her to stay put, that'd I'd save her. But I don't think she could hear me over all the noise. Just as well, since I was lying to her. When the trio of Istrika emerged from the trees in the roadside divider near her, I couldn't control myself. I emptied my rifle, then I fired my pistol, again and again, while they shot back at me. I couldn't think, all I could do was pull the trigger over and over and yell my hatred to their alien ears. I saw the leader alien emerge from the other building, and then they reached her, and they did it. These Istrika things, they carry these spears with them that they use up close... it pointed to itself, and then...

No man should have to see that. I don't know what happened next. Bill says I sat down, put my pistol to my head, and started pulling the trigger over and over. Fortunately (or maybe not) it was empty.

I really can't say anymore right now.

If I die and someone finds this, I hope you kill them. Every last one of them, I hope you burn all their worlds to ash and you hunt them to extinction. That is my charge to you.

<2437.3.4.0800> I've gotten ahold of myself since last time. It still hurts, but I've replaced my grief with hate, and found it to be an able partner.

I don't know, what could I have done? Run out there and died myself? I thought I would do more good trying to kill them from where I was. Maybe I was wrong, I don't know. I'm the sheriff of a small town. The most action I've seen was confronting an armed robbery last year. How am I supposed to fight an invasion?

I don't know where my wife is, I'm sure she's dead. My daughter who I took out for ice cream and a trip to the Mall of the Rim on her fifteenth birthday two months ago was run through with the spear of an alien in front of my eyes yesterday. Two thirds of my staff, who looked to me for leadership, are dead. I'll be surprised if the other third's bodies are even still warm a week from now.

Maybe we've gotten too soft. We had those attacks by those marauders years ago, sure, but we relied on the Guard to save us from those, and they did except for the very first time when the War had most of them away fighting in the core. We don't have what it takes. What takes to fight this.

We haven't seen any action since my daughter's death yesterday. Shortly after she died Ken was able to take out the stationary emplacement with his hunting rifle, and killed the leader and two of the Istrika before the rest beat it out of there. I told him two years ago when he bought that thing for the price of a small car that he was a complete idiot. I regret ever saying that to him now.

He tells me he killed the one who killed my daughter. I don't know if he's saying that just to try and give me some small solace, or he really did. It doesn't really matter now. I've spent the last two days cursing Copernicus, but now I know he was right. We don't have a chance out here. Our success has the men in very high spirits and they think we're getting out of this, but Green and I know the truth. This building may be a defender's dream (who would've thought that about a theater), but we're almost out of ammunition, and realistically, what keeps showing up with probing attacks? Our guys? No. It just keeps being aliens, over and over.

I'm going to do my damnedest to try and figure a way out of this, but either they're going to take notice of these scouting parties having problems with our location and come flatten us with something heavy, or these constant probes are going to run us out of ammo and those sadistic monsters are going to burst in here and spear us to death.

<2437.3.4.1905> If anyone's reading this, I'm dead.

Just as I thought, they got tired of throwing a squad or less at a time at us to probe us and they showed up in force. I'd say between three and four squads, mostly Istrika, each squad led by two of the big head honchos. They had some kind of vehicle, I can't describe it really, I only caught a glimpse of it, but it fired something at us and blew the front facade of the building right off. They flooded in and took out all but Green, Bill, Ken, Jimmy, and myself before we could even fall back from the lobby.

They showed up right after dusk. We had planned to wait until about eight, a little under an hour from now, and use a pair of Kerellan Motorworks Sprinters that were in the parking garage and drive like bats out of hell and try to make it to Grus City under cover of darkness. We don't know if it's still there and Copernicus hasn't said word one to us in 24 hours, but we figured it was worth a shot and better than dying here.

Anyway, we fell back from the lobby fast as we could, Ken caught a shot from one of the lizards' carbines right through the middle of his back... just punched a hole in him and continued on through the wall. Green told us to run and he'd hold them off, and we weren't about to stop and debate it. I looked back at him as we ran... he just held that corner and sprayed every last bit of ammunition he had for that submachine gun; fired it until the barrel was glowing. Then he did it. Dropped his weapon the moment he ran out of ammo, pulled out his pistol and calmly blew his own brains all over the wall.

I guess he decided what happened to Celeste wasn't how he was going out. I think that was the most horrifying thing I've seen yet, though I can't say I blame him.

These two Istrika came out of one of the theaters firing at us like no tomorrow only moments after that. When I looked back at Green I guess I had slowed down a bit, because Bill and Jimmy were way ahead and now the aliens were between us. Last I saw of Bill and Jimmy they were bolting out the rear exit to try for the parking garage. God, I hope they made it.

As for me, I couldn't go forward, couldn't go back... I ran through the staff door and locked it behind me, then up the stairs to the third floor and locked that one too. Heavy metal doors, since this is where they keep all the cash, and the datacubes with the new releases.

They're already at the second of the two doors, and the wall is starting to crack from them hitting it, so I guess that's it.

I've got one round left.

Figures.

Past Snippets

Feb 03 2009 - The Future History of Infantry Equipment

Last known interstellar communication of Administrator Pereira. Sent February 27, 2437. Recovered March 6, 2437 from destroyed Colonial Administration building in Grus City.

... .. .

---

From: Admn Dominic Pereira <coladmin@t1gruis.colonialadmin.gov> To: Juan Pereira <juanp1010@terranet.com> Sent: February 27, 2437 13:21 UT Subject: Re: gift and paper I'm writing

Juanito! So good of you to write me.

I am terribly sorry to hear my Christmas present arrived late. I sent it last May but you know how shipping can be when your package is moving more than ten parsecs. It's why I usually buy from an Earth-based retailer remotely and have them ship it to you, though that was of course impossible in this case.

I am overjoyed, however, to hear you like it so much! I'm very proud of the decision you've made, and you're very welcome for the gift. Wear it with pride once you enlist after graduation, and remember every day that it saw your Uncle Dom all the way through Basic, OTS, through the War, and on to better things out here on the Rim. Best of luck to you and if you ever need any help or advice on anything at all, just write to me.

Regarding the paper you are doing for your military history class, yes, I can provide some basic insights regarding modern infantry. Being in logistics after the end of the war, I dealt with this specific topic almost daily and know its past well, so you came to the right source. If you would like more detail directly from me, simply write me back, but in the meantime I will try to answer as best I can based on the questions you asked and work my answers into the overall explanation so you have context. It will probably be easiest and make the most sense if I just start from the beginning.

As far as the main focus of your paper, the division in the classification of infantry forces and the history of it, yes, you are correct. As you should already know, heavy infantry began its largest decline during the Hundred Years' War. Heavily armored knights, both mounted and unmounted, no longer ruled the battlefield as they had for centuries. The sheer power and range of English archers with their famed longbows cut down the French knights in their tracks whenever they were present at a battle. Even though England eventually lost the war for other reasons, they were frequently able to inflict utterly devastating losses on the French with amazingly lopsided casualty ratios that secured them a place alongside the Greeks against the Persians under Darius and later Xerxes, the Romans under Caesar in Gaul, the Germans against the Russians in the mid-20th century, the Americans under Schwarzkopf in Mesopotamia at the end of the 20th, and the ISE against the Eridanusians a couple of decades ago.

Heavy infantry no longer had a place in combat, and was largely a dead concept after gunpowder weaponry and specifically man-portable firearms arrived on the scene in force and rendered heavy infantry and even armor altogether completely obsolete. The concept of "heavy infantry" made a comeback at various times in various forms, the most famous of which was infantry units that included armored vehicles being classified as "heavy infantry" in the 1900s. Light infantry with armored vehicles is not heavy infantry, though, as I'm sure your teacher would agree.

Heavy infantry did make a comeback, as anyone could see from its usage in the Interstellar War. As far as how we got there, you can trace it to multiple points, but the best would be World War 2. Though little came of it, several of the major powers experimented with ways to protect their infantry from firearms and shrapnel. Saving their men's lives was obviously a motivator in and of itself, but as we've seen ourselves, the ability of infantry forces to shrug off hits and keep fighting is an outstanding force multiplier that can change the tide of an entire conflict.

The road to the revival of heavy infantry saw its most serious beginning near the end of the American-Vietnamese War, in which the American forces began to seriously invest in and research ways to protect their infantry from shrapnel and other high speed debris, resulting in things such as the original "flak jackets." The extremely rapid pace of technological advancement and development of new materials that would begin in the late 1970s, accelerate in the 1980s, and continue clear through the next century combined with these earlier efforts to revolutionize how infantry are outfitted. By the turn of the millennium, only 30 years later, Allied forces were already beginning to field the first armor capable of actually stopping not just shrapnel, but full power bullets. Within another ten years usage was widespread, and forces such as those fielded by US and UK, which were usually at the technological forefront, were able to make armor capable of stopping large bore ammunition, and take multiple hits no less. Our records indicate they were able to make these available to almost all of their ground forces.

This created another limitation that persists to this day: weight. For example, take an American support gunner from the 2010s. You could spray him in the chest with a submachine gun and the best you would likely achieve without specially-made ammunition was knocking him down and giving him a few bruises. This came at a cost, as while he was far more dangerous and survivable than an unarmored enemy, he also could not pursue that enemy far without vehicle support, giving his enemy the ability to engage and disengage at will. When facing conventional forces on the line of battle, this barely mattered, but when facing unconventional forces in rough terrain, it posed a severe limitation. This led to everything from individual soldiers not wearing their armor to militaries of the day fielding special operations forces with lighter or no armor and high mobility to counter threats.

I'm sure you can see the split beginning again here, as situations mirrored those seen in ancient times where specific situations warranted completely different infantry types. To use the Greeks as an example, consider the Greek hoplites, particularly those fielded by the Spartans and the Athenians. They could tear the stuffing out of all challengers and each other, but they were not nearly as effective on rough, broken terrain, nor could they pursue a quick, lightly equipped enemy. As a result, the Greeks usually fielded various types of rangers, skirmishers, and light infantry to back up the hoplites, protect their flanks, counter other light infantry in rough terrain, and pursue quick enemies. This developed into an ever-evolving science that lasted for two millennia before its 600 year hiatus.

So, weight. Even though this proved to be a limiting factor, the beginnings of a solution were already on the drawing boards at the turn of the millennium, and usable prototypes were already being fielded in the 2010s. Can you guess? Powered armor. If only soldiers could have a giant power cord connecting them to their bases, we believe Allied militaries could have fielded fully functional powered infantry armor as early as 2012. The main limitation was in materials and portable power sources. The revolution in battery technology seen in the 2010s and 2020s changed this state of affairs, and in the 2030s the United States Army fielded the world's first combat unit consisting of fully armored, powered infantry, followed quickly by several Allied militaries who either licensed the American design or developed their own. The weight issue was largely solved.

Note that, as we can see today, this didn't mean light infantry disappeared. Cost and supportability consideration will always be with us. They were there at the beginning, and continue to be now. Nevertheless, as this unit and subsequent ones were fielded, the strengths and weaknesses of fielding these infantry units quickly became apparent, and rather than the mess of trying to make light infantry function in multiple and completely different jobs as we saw in the 2010s, "heavy infantry" again emerged as a separate classification, and the regular infantry that existed in the 600 year gap once again became "light infantry." Separate unit types with different training regimens, deployment doctrines, support structures, and missions. So you can put that down for when the divide officially occurred: the 2030s.

Initially it started out pretty light in weight, just enough for decent protection plus gear, but by 2100 powered armor had evolved to the point where heavy infantry were practically walking tanks; about the same mobility and expense, too. Needless to say, while this made them highly effective against light targets, it severely restricted the ability to field them through both cost and the sheer number of parts they chewed through during regular operations. Light infantry still ruled the battlefield (though by then augmented heavily with cybernetic troops and support as well). Through the 2100s it appeared heavy infantry was on the decline, as advances in materials allowed light infantry a degree of protection analogous to the very first power armored troops for reasonable expense, and 2100s powered infantry armor was sickeningly expensive and of only limited utility. In fact, by 2150 heavy infantry could still rule a conventional battlefield (what few of those existed anymore after the emergence of the superstates and the relative stability they brought), but the limited utility and cost had relegated them to the arsenals of the Coalition of Free States, Northern Federation, and the Republic of China.

Right about then it came roaring back. As tensions in Sol grew, back then when Sol was still the only system we had, a controversial and expensive program by the Coalition to modernize their Marine forces was greenlit. Part of the program involved unifying the best of their spacesuits with powered armor, something that was put to the test soon after as the Coalition's Marines deployed in their first heavy offworld actions on Mars.

You probably remember how that went from your history classes: The Consortium declared independence from any and all Terran authority and effectively took over $23 trillion (in modern CSD) worth of infrastructure, $11 trillion of which belonged to Coalition members, mainly the US, Britain, and Japan; and another $7 trillion of which belonged to the Chinese, who heavily backed the Coalition's military response both politically and financially. We all know how that went; to this day everyone from Mars still sports that characteristic British-American hybrid accent, and the term "Mars Federal Colony" that once referred only to the northern 40% of the planet, is now synonymous with Mars itself.

A lesser known effect is it brought heavy infantry investment and development back to the forefront, where it's remained for the past couple hundred years. Then, as now, we largely saw light forces consisting of light infantry, vehicles, cybernetic additions, and so forth on the one hand, and heavy forces consisting of heavy infantry, armored vehicles, and their related support units. Things have seesawed since then as technology and materials sciences continue their advance, and one extremely curious development that occurred as humanity spread out much further through the stars was spaceborne Marine forces' move away from heavy infantry and back toward light infantry, while ground-based armies once again began picking up on the use of heavy infantry in frontline units. And, this is where we are today.

One major thing you might touch on is the fact that since the War, there has been an emphasis by the Coalition, the Unified Powers, and the Kerellans to attempt to find a workable go-between for their Marine forces. A sort of "medium infantry." Something that offers more protection, standardization, and capabilities than the plethora of light infantry ensembles, but much less weight so that a soldier isn't left immobile if his power fails (always serious concern with heavy infantry), and is easier to maintain in the field as well as less expensive both in initial outlay and total lifetime cost. Something that can be vacuum enabled quickly, but otherwise is still usable on a world's surface without either cooking or freezing the infantryman in the event he doesn't have power. A solid solution to that quest has been the iconic "Mifpa" set, or MFPA, for Marine Forces Powered Armor, which has wholly displaced both light and heavy infantry setups in the Marine forces of the aforementioned Core States.

You mentioned finishing your paper with a look at where the future of infantry might lead, so you could perhaps extrapolate where you think MFPA might lead us. Will it just be another addition, will it be a dead end that disappears, or will we go full circle back to a single standardized infantry type once again? Also check the November 2436 issue of Popular Robotics, the article entitled Tech Union's AEGIS Program: Reality or Myth? The Future of Powered Infantry. If your teacher doesn't frown on the use of speculative information, I can't recommend it highly enough as I think the writer was genuinely onto a coming trend.

Finally, you asked what we have here on Tau1 Gruis II. I can tell you for sure there's no heavy infantry here, or anywhere on the Rim except at the occasional starbase for emergency response. Though heavy infantry's equipment is no longer as prohibitively expensive or restrictively bulky to a fault like it used to be, that doesn't mean it isn't still expensive to field and of limited effectiveness to a colony. To give you an idea of the cost, consider this: the expenditure of training, maintaining, and otherwise paying for the entire Colonial Guard infantry force here as well as the Ground component of the 74th MEU is about the same as it would take to field a single battalion of heavy infantry. As you can probably guess, that offers the such a limited return when your largest threat is Rim marauders that it's not worth having unless you're trying to counter a specific, significant, conventional threat.

As with most of the Colonial Guard, the infantry are light infantry, and since this is a Coalition-funded colony, their branch of AWSC Colonial Administration outfits the Guards here with the Coalition-standard TrooperTech ensemble from Draco Techsystems with Cyberhead's Rifleman helmets. Great capability for absolutely minimal cost so that we can afford to outfit all the Guardsmen and women here and our people don't get stuck fighting marauders in their coveralls as happened back when the colony was sacked in 2432, just before Colonial Administration assigned me here. The Marines of course outfit themselves per CMC guidelines, and use MFPA.

If you want to find out specific information on this equipment, I recommend just doing some searching on the Terran Planetary Network. You can probably get access to more secure sources than SolarNet has by sticking to the TPN specifically, and you didn't hear it from me, but if you can get access to the pirate sites running on ColonialNet Mars, you might be able to dig a few things up on AEGIS.

I hope that overview gave you some answers to those questions; I think I touched on everything you asked about, and if you need more specifics. then that information will get you on the right track to knowing what to look for next.

Give my sister Carmen, your mother, my love, and I hope to see you for Christmas 2440. Maybe I'll have another surprise for you, this time to deliver in person. I'm going to be on Earth from summer 2439 to summer 2440. It hasn't been officially announced yet, but Colonial Administration is giving me a two year leave starting February 2439 while they assess progress toward replacing the Administrator government with an elected Colonial Governor maybe by 2450 if the colony continues doing as well as it has been. Tau1 Gruis II sure is progressing fast, isn't it? Hard to believe I've been here for just under five years and already we might be as few as thirteen from an elected government. You should try and get stationed out here if you can, you'd love life in a booming colony!

Take care of yourself, Juan.

Dominic S. Pereira AWSC Colonial Administration, American Mandate CA-USA-T1G2-GCHQ (8)245-667 (Local) coladmin@t1gruis.colonialadmin.gov

_____________ The information contained in this message may be confidential and may also contain privileged government information. The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.

Jan 19 2009 - Radio Signal Alpha Papa 3

Radio Signal Alpha Papa 3

Aug 24 2008 - Lt. Carroway's Letter

From packet 121 recovered from wreckage of Colonial Guard headquarters, Grus City Found in personal files of Lieutenant Miranda E. Carroway, Colonial Guard Scanned into database 3 March 2437 at 1302 UT

---

16 Feb 2437

I know I haven't written anything in a while, so I suppose a good update is in order.

So, I've been here about two days. Hyperspace lag still hasn't worn off. The Colonial Guard re-assigned me to the Tau1 Gruis II colony, Grus City specifically. Can't tell anyone where I've gone, can't tell anyone where I am... supposedly I'm here because they need someone from the Core that they can trust, with experience and a level head, because there are sensitive things going to be happening here sometime soon. Oookay? Sensitive? Here? At the tail end of nowhere? And how exactly am I supposed to have any effect on some secret thing when I don't even know what or where it is? Not to mention what the heck does being from the Core Systems have to do with anything? Oh well. I suppose I'll find out. Until this super secret thing happens, I'm the "Colonial Guard Liaison." Whatever that is.

I think they may have misjudged me on the level head part though. I'm still having the weird dreams almost every other night. The doctor on the destroyer that dropped me and a few others off said there was nothing wrong with me and gave me some sedatives, but this is just too strange. Maybe it's due to spending too much time in a place with freaky hours. 42 hour days may agree with some people, but not me... the dreams started shortly before I left my previous assignment at Sapphire. I thought some downtime on Earth would help, but I guess not. At least this place has 22 hour days, relatively close to Earth normal. Maybe the doc was right, I just need to get back on a normal light and dark cycle and my subconscious will straighten up. I'd hate to think I'm going nuts!

But enough about me. This place is pretty interesting, despite the whole secret mission, sensitive events, blah blah. I've heard the rumors that they found some alien stuff out here. I've been doing some checking around, and things do seem a little off when it comes to this planet. For one, we've got a full fledged military fort here, staffed with Coalition Marines and Aerospace Force jocks, not Colonial Guardsmen, with enough weapons and equipment to start a small war. You only see that out here on the Rim when there's no starbase around and there's a high marauder threat, and yet this is the closest colony to Starbase 107. They're only about 2 weeks away, making a planetside fort pretty redundant unless they're protecting something special. Especially since marauder activity in this sector is (supposedly) non-existent. The proportion of people with science backgrounds to other colonists is pretty high as well, and they haven't let anyone non-government put any satellites in orbit. Not to mention airspace is pretty tightly controlled, particularly up near the atmosphere processors in the north. The more I look, the more stuff doesn't add up.

There's this lady named Crystal at reception at the Colonial Administration building who sounded like she's been here a long time when I first talked to her upon arrival. I think I'll see if I can ask her about some of this stuff the next time I have a chance and see if I can dig any further into this mystery. She was pretty talkative... maybe she can tell me something about what's going on here.

Aug 23 2008 - Mike Harrison's Journal #128

JOURNAL ENTRY #128 1715 2/10/37

There are going to be some changes around here, both in the colony and in my personal life. Far as what affects you, my future readers, is you'll noticed that letterhead bullshit is gone. After 127 of those things, having to come up with some crap to write at regular intervals to make some triple-PhD eggheaded idiot in some office happy I had just about had it. Well, no, that's not right. I hadn't just about had it. I had had it. Mike Harrison will be led around by the nose by the most pointless, useless, most undeserving of existence collection of fools in the whole UT conglomerate no more.

I decided to stop writing, tell Health & Well Being to piss off, and I got a relay call through to United Terraformers' Vice President of Personnel. Boy I gave him an earful. Gist of it was I'm not a puppet, and therefore HWB can get their collective hand out of my ass and let me do my job, or I quit as soon as I hang up with him. No two months notice to find a new overseer, nothing. Just I quit, and make use of an obscure clause under the Articles of Colonization treaty where they have to pay me all my retirement, even if I just up and quit.

Do you know how much retirement a 40-year company veteran gets? Do you have any idea how much that gets multiplied when more than 25 years have been spent as a terraformation overseer? Probably not, but trust me, United Terraformers doesn't want me to leave until I'm 110 at least, as they already have much too much cash sunk in me to have me leave now. The VP hemmed and hawed a little, not wanting to overrule one of his own departments, but when we got to the money part, he saw it from my point of view (funny how that works).

I can now wipe my ass without shaking hands with United Terraformers for the first time in three years.

Now, I know what you're thinking: (Actually, on that note, I read over some of my old entries this afternoon and noticed I use that line a lot more than I realized... perhaps that should be the title of my memiors. "Now, I Know What You're Thinking" by Mike Harrison. I just mentioned it to my wife and she started laughing, agreeing that I overuse it even in speech, so hey, maybe I will!)

Where was I? Oh yeah. Now, I know what you're thinking: Mike, now that you're free of this stupid journal business, why the hell are we still hearing from you? Because after three weeks I actually started to miss the damn thing and the moments of clarity it gives me to insult fools and expound on the obvious in writing without destroying personal and business relationships in the process (or at least not till I publish this thing... HA!). Can you believe that? I guess there's something to that saying after all. "Work isn't work if it's something you want to do" or something along those lines.

I decided I'm going to see this thing through to 200 after all, writing not on someone else's deadline, but when I want to, and then publish it. Who knows, this is only 128... maybe before I hit 200 something really interesting will happen. Maybe we'll make like the 20th century's world wars and in a few decades the Interstellar War will be known as Interstellar War 1. Lord knows I should've written my way through the ISW, even if I wasn't involved in the actual fighting. I was watching CHVN last night and there was this interview with some pimply-faced kid millionaire. His story? The Sapphirites never even saw the War enter their system, yet this fine arts twerp at one of their universities happened to keep a regular journal of his life on Sapphire during the war, combine it with pictures and news clippings from Sapphire's news sources and his thoughts on them, and sold it as "Interstellar War: An Outsider's View" last year. Bastard has made an absolute mint!

Speaking of the 20th century, I bet I just made myself dead in the eyes of the Naturalist readers who still live there with my comment on working for UT until 110. What's that I hear? "Mike, I live on this really small colony," you say to me, "where I never watch HV or read and I don't know what Naturalists are. Is that a fancy name for nudists?" First, no, it's not. Second, prepare for enlightenment, young one.

You know when you go for your regular medical check-ups, and they check your hormone levels, cell production, self-repair capacity, and so on to make sure everything's operating in tip top shape, and fix it if it isn't? Or the DNA repair process and blood vessel cleaning you do every few years that are as nothing to you as getting a teeth cleaning? Or if you have a catastrophic organ failure, you can simply clone one from your own tissue and replace it? You may not realize it, but those are all descendants of the mid-21st century biotech revolution and emergence of personalized medicine, with parts also descended from what we recovered from Vanir's remains after they were defeated in the early 22nd century. Without these checkups and maintenance, 140-160 years old is not retirement age, it's "I've been pushing up daisies for decades" age. And you better have planned for your funeral and written a will long before you reach 180. We're overall very healthy folks today, but even so, our unaided life expectancy is only around 100 years. Or, basically, you carve off a little under half of your lifespan. Remember that when you talk to your great (times X) grandfather who was born in the late 2200s. He's only still here because of modern medicine.

Few are fully aware of that, however, as it's all so widespread and normal now. But there are people who are disgusted by these processes and by you, and view you as non-human/altered-human rather than "pure" human because of it. These are the Naturalists. They eschew use of certain medical advances despite these advances being hundreds of years old, because either God wants them that way or they feel polluted if they're not "pure" human (pure by their definition). People in the Core are acutely aware of them as they are many, but people out in the colonies are generally unfamiliar with them as most of them congregate in colonies that are fully Naturalist. They range anywhere from people who just aren't interested in medicine helping them live a fuller life but otherwise don't give a damn, to the hardcore fanatics who think anyone who's ever had a DNA repair or gene therapy to remove a harmful defect needs to be sterilized and go to great pains to maintain "pure" family trees of "pure" human ancestry and will only marry those who definitely don't have an "altered" human ancestor.

Come on. I can understand and even agree with eugenics laws, cloning laws, bans on illicit cybernetic enhancements, and all that. To see some of the sick things people did with their designer babies for a laugh way back when is just disgusting. Those things have brought us wars and other horrors we really don't need to repeat. But simple maintenance and therapy to remove potentially fatal defects? Give me a damn break. If that counts as altered human, then I'm an altered human. I have European ancestry and the multitude of plagues that swept the continent wiped out everybody who didn't have or develop the immunities or self-repair abilities my ancestors did. Oh no, better avoid me, I'm not a pure strain human! Natural selection has altered my genetic code! Asinine.

And then you have the religiously-motivated ones. Don't take this the wrong way, as while I'm not a praying man myself, I've got absolutely nothing against people who are. When you've been as many places and seen as many things as I have, you learn not to get your underwear in a knot over someone else's personal beliefs. But can you show me where in your particular holy text it says, "Thou shalt not look after thy health or forestall the Angel of Death, for it is sinful"? No? Then I don't want to hear ever again that I'm a genetic abomination or that I'm practicing evil. If you want to die at 90 or 100 because of some imagined commandment, that's your business. I hope I live to be 200.

Or how about the ones who pretend cloning your own organs for replacement qualifies as running afoul of human cloning laws (it doesn't), or think it should, yet believe 20th century-style organ transplants are okay. I suppose you want the organ harvesting trade, which has been dead for centuries thanks to organ cloning, to come back?

It all just goes to prove another thing I always say: modern medicine may have cured the common cold, but it'll never cure stupid.

I think I'll end it there, before I alienate any more of my potential reader base and detract from my future income. Say what you want about money, but it's the only force I know that imparts wisdom from the future!

I never did tell you about about Beta Colony on the other side of the planet, which I semi-promised in entry 125. Remind me to give them a damn good thrashing in entry 129 or 130.

-- Mike

Jan 17 2008 - Mike Harrison's Journal #127

OVERSEER MIKE HARRISON TAU1 GRUIS TERRAFORMATION COMPANY A UNITED TERRAFORMERS SUBSIDIARY

JOURNAL ENTRY #127 1550 1/17/37

Yes, I know it's been more than two weeks. I know because Health & Well Being reminded me I'm terribly overdue for my bi-weekly exercise in sanity. Because, you know, it's not like the Overseer would have better things to do than BS with himself in a journal, right? Right. (Sanity exercises, that's a joke. Where do these people come up with this crap? If HWB would get out of my hair, I guarantee 50% of my stress would vanish overnight.)

Here we go, then.

We finally heard back from FLEETCOM today. As you can see we didn't get invaded as I feared, but things aren't anywhere near satisfactory. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like everyone else is taking this in stride and with no more than a thought of, "huh, that's weird."

The Fleet's destroyers returned to Starbase 107 towing the remains of the HMS Hermes. Or, half of it, at least. They didn't find evidence of anyone else in the system. The Hermes had been attacked by someone, or something. Destroyed even, but only half of it was still there. Yes, you read right, only half; from the center of the ship all the way aft was completely missing. And I don't mean blown up and scattered around the vicinity in the form of debris, I mean gone. The Fleet combed the system. No debris. No trails leading out. Nothing.

Someone attacked and defeated the HMS Hermes, then somehow cleanly removed the rear half of the ship and made off with it without leaving a single trace. The captain and most of the crew were found dead and crystalized in the decompressed vacuum filling the front half of the Hermes. I'm told they're still trying to recover data on the last moments of the Hermes, but it was damaged so badly it's a wonder it was even partially holding together.

In any case, it's resting safely in a pen at Starbase 107 now, so if there's something left to find, they'll find it.

Now see, this is what worries me. The Fleet is just playing this by ear, investigating what they can, and not saying much. They're sending a destroyer (yes, ONE), the USS John Paul Jones, to keep an eye on the Tau1 Gruis system until further determinations are made. Because, you know, obviously scouts just get attacked, destroyed, and then cleanly dissected and half-stolen regularly and there's always a logical reason for it (just in case you're an idiot, that was sarcasm).

Even Dom agrees with me on this, that's not the work of marauders. Those Singularity maniacs are probably setting up shop out here. They're the only ones who do weird shit like that. The Fleet should post at least a DESRON out here for the time being; Dom even wants to go further, he put in a formal request for a CRUDESRON. Looks like all we get is the lone John Paul Jones, though. Great.

I suppose we should be happy to get even that. Despite the war being over for years, the AWSC still refuses to actively defend colonies beyond the Minors (we're on the Rim, obviously, much further than most Minor Colonies). Sucks to be an independent if you're out this far... fortunately, we're Coalition-funded (and investment-matched by the Colonial Administration) and settled mostly by colonists originating from their nation-states and planets, so they pay attention to us. The fact that we're the most profitable colony on the Rim doesn't hurt either, but you'd think they could spare more than one destroyer for that, right?

Sometimes being a colonial isn't all it's cracked up to be. I suppose that's the price you pay for freedom though, right? Ah freedom. You know what, going back to the idea of publishing these for retirement income, let me tell you a little bit about that.

I'm from Sapphire in Sigma Draconis, and I every time I head home to the Core, I hear the same kind of crap from people who live there, especially from Kaitlyn's family (if you want to find real grade A morons, never look further than your in-laws). How it must be nice to be completely free from all rules and regulations. To live by the skin of your teeth in log cabins in a frontier fantasy. What do they think this is, 1700s Appalachia?

Yes, let me tell you a little bit about freedom. You enjoy more of it in the Core. Well, that's not 100% true, independent colonies are far freer, but who wants to risk starving if the crops fail or a food shipment doesn't make it, or being killed because you have no official defense beyond what your tiny company could scrounge up? I'm getting off on a tangent again, aren't I?

Being a colonist isn't completely about freedom in officially sponsored colonies. Freedom of speech, religion, movement, basic rights and all that business is generally better out here than most Core states. Firearms regulations are probably the biggest difference; that is, we have almost none, and those we have are not what you'd expect.

To elaborate, with a few notable exceptions like the CFS' members, most Core states have penalties and restrictions regarding firearms ownership and possession, even outright banning. Out here, you get penalties if you aren't armed. Colonial Administration guidelines recommend that every household be in possession of at least one military-grade rifle and at least six hundred rounds of ammunition. Often the underwriters of colonies mandate more than that. Can be quite a shocker to sheltered people from a lot of Core Worlds and Major Colonies, but out here we can't concern ourselves with philosophy. If a colony is attacked, we need every able-bodied adult to be able to respond, and that's just how it is.

We do give up some freedoms, though, and you don't hear about those much in the literature and advertisements enticing people to the frontier life. For example, on many newly-formed colonies, we literally have bans on any form of birth control unless it can be demonstrated to be medically necessary. The first thing a colony needs to become profitable is for the population to grow rapidly to fill the jobs in the planned economy, so that the switchover to a free economy can be made at the earliest possible opportunity and investment from outside the joint-stock company and/or Colonial Administration can be attracted. Keeping the birth rate down does not go hand in hand with that.

We also don't usually have any representative government. While the various Euro-style parliamentary democracies and Romanoamerican republics you find in the Core are generally a boon for the enormous populations and diverse desires of their constituents, they just don't work too well out here. While they certainly work better than some of the little tinpot dictator-run independents, a democratic small colony has been shown to be four to five times more likely to fail than a planned colony run by established Colonial Administration guidelines. At the end of the day, major companies and governments are what fund the majority of colonies, and they don't want their investment wasted. That's not to say colonists don't have any say; part of the Colonial Administration system recommends town hall setups for the colonists, with elected community leaders to establish and maintain contact with the Administrator to advise him of the desires, needs, and concerns of the colonists. In the end, though, his word is the law until the prosperity level and population level are self-sustaining.

There are different standards set for every world based on specific conditions, but that's generally once the population reaches four to ten million and is steadily growing, has had at least one year of profitability without a planned economy, and is not experiencing any form of unrest or conflict. Once that's attained, Colonial Administration withdraws the Administrator and the colonists can elect a Colonial Governor. Birth control laws are repealed with the successful election of a Governor.

The Colonial Administration oversees and implements the Colonial Guard, as well. While the Guard most people are familiar with are the professional military and part-time weekend warriors who are the most visible face of the Colonial Guard, they extend further on most colonies. In between the founding of the colony and the election of the Colonial Governor, every able-bodied adult colonist, male or female, must undergo six weeks of basic military training and take a two-day refresher course once a year. It's a lot lighter both physically and mentally than the training for actual military, but it does teach them to fight, work together, and learn basic survival and strategy skills that can be useful in the harsh environments found on new worlds. In addition, 25% of the adult male population must submit to a four month Guard Reserve training course that goes far more in-depth than basic training and equips them to fight better, smarter, and to lead their fellow colonists should the need arise. These are usually volunteers, but if the numbers fall short, the Administrator is authorized to conscript colonists to fill out the ranks. Upon completion of the course, these men are placed in the Colonial Guard Reserve. They attend drills for one week per year and keep a uniform and combat gear in their closets, but are otherwise normal colonists. The Guard calls on the reserve in case of a crisis or conflict requiring more manpower than the local Guard contingent can provide.

I'll note that the above applies to colonists, not terraformers, nor visitors or "residents"; employees of terraforming companies are exempt from colonial laws and obligations except for those governing public order. It does, however, apply to colonists hired locally by terraforming companies. People with resident status are still citizens of wherever they hail, and like terraformers, are subject only to laws governing public order. Neither residents nor terraformers are entitled to dividends from colonial profits, nor are they eligible for land and resource grants like colonists are, nor are they eligible for financial aid in starting and growing private ventures like colonists. So there is a tradeoff.

There are exceptions to all rules and it gets a lot more complicated the further you dig, but that should give you a general feel for some of the key differences. You gain a lot on the frontier, but you can also lose some of what you're accustomed to. That said, there's always a lot to be gained with almost every colony world, so no matter the costs, you never run short of people willing to become colonists in order to get themselves a stake in a new world's future.

Well, that went on a lot longer than I expected. Kaitlyn is home and wants to eat out, so I'll continue in the next entry.

-- Mike

Dec 20 2007 - Jason Stark's Email

From: Jason Stark (thecapn@isvhammerhead.isnserv.org) To: Jacqueline Winters (jcwinters@tu-triton.nep) Sent: October 21, 2436 23:08 UT Subject: Re: Our daughter

Jackie,

In response to your query, no, I'm afraid not. I can't get access to the colonist manifest on the expedition even though we're part of the escort for two-thirds of the way. I'm sure you're familiar with privacy regulations in your line of work. They apply out here too. Only the individual command staff know who's on each ship, and only Colonial Administration knows who's on all of the ships. Well, the underwritten ones anyway.

Also, no, I still haven't heard from her at all. The last time I talked to Lisa is still that day when she was sixteen. I understand the frustration with never getting anything from her but mail, but at least you get that. You may have passed along my information, but she's never bothered to say hello to me.

If you hear from her again, tell her I still love her and miss her. I wasn't thinking while talking to Neylon (the ex-SWAC pilot I hired as the weapons officer) yesterday and let it slip I have a daughter, and we ended up talking about her for a while. Got me missing her, you know? I'd love to talk to her, just find out what's been going on in her life all these years. Find out what's important to her, what kind of person she's become.

I'm afraid this is the last time we'll be communicating for a while. We're shipping out in about six hours, and to keep the cost of supplies down we're going to sleep the whole crew except for Pawel and a skeleton crew in engineering, and all but the five Tech Union passengers. Sleep list includes me. I can't say where we're going, but being the Sol Liaison I'm sure you can find out where in Grus the Tech Union is sending us if you dig. More interesting than where we're going, though, is what we're carrying, and what the Tech Union is paying us for this run. This project of theirs must be really important.

While we're on the subject of the Tech Union, how are you doing on Triton? Sol Liaison for the Tech Union has to be a demanding post, but I'll bet the pay is fantastic. What made them select someone from United Terraformers to represent them in Sol? Seems an unlikely choice, but I know you're up to it. Speaking of which, yes, I'd love to meet up with you for a day or so and catch up next time I'm in Sol, thanks for the invite. It's been a while. We'll probably stop there late next year after we get back. XO Zimmer wants to see family in Germany, and I'm sure the whole crew could do with some good, long shore leave on Earth after nearly a year round trip.

Anyway, I better wrap this up and double check that the ship's all buttoned up so we can get under way.

Miss you.

Jason Stark, Captain Independent Space Vessel Hammerhead (N-W-184767ZG) thecapn@isvhammerhead.isnserv.org _______________ This message was sent through the Independent Starship Network Service: Connecting independent spacers with their families for over ninety years. No matter what the distance, ISN Serv puts your loved ones only photon away.

Dec 14 2007 - Purged Message

DHH&7277------****xm;;s in the ˜°‡?Î?au Ceti system. zzz_%*ithin thirty short years of its discovery, humanity had expanded beyond the confines of these three systems and begun a rapid expansion all the way out to fifteen light years distant from Sol, with survey missions reaching as far as twenty-five light years.

Fueled by the discovery of a handful of easily colonized worlds and the promise of virtually unlimited resources, the resource-starved, overpopulated nation-states in control of Sol began a rapid colonization effort. Whereas only the best and brightest were originally sent due to the enormous time and expense of the sublight missions to Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, the Centauri trinary, and Barnard's Star, the FTL race to the frontier attracted anyone and everyone willing to hitch a ride on a colony vesse&%%S%

9*&V^JJmsmtition from the *&@^^#nnnajhSGG^& over Tau Ceti *&&NNNuh!opened a race to settle in Epsilon Eridani and thus resulted in the total control of Minerva and over half of Eridanus. Homesteaders hailing from the United States of America and United Kingdom claimed *&@^^$$r5676& over &^%$!NN!&^%%@*&rean in Lalande 21185 to settle the red-light bathed world of Kerella, the future hub of scientific development for the Allied Worlds.

Befo@#I&&%&^^a

<Corrupted>

• &@#IUcnb#*@&YT%*@fgm n$npsilon Indi were exceptionally well-funded and oddly attracted a wide variety of )*&^%^@%*(# to the (*&($@^@%$opulation of over thirty million by $*(&#%^

By 2395 $%*uman-controlled space spanned nearly seven hundred fifty worlds in various stages of terraforming, with extraterrestrial populations running the gamut between the four billion people on the core world of Eridanus and two hundred people at the 79 Ceti research outpost at the edge of settled space. Due to sustained rapid colonization Earth's population has shrunk to early 21st century levels, a much more manageable 6.1 billion. Although the standard of living on Earth is several orders of magnitude above where it was just three centuries prior due to the effects of the very thesis of this paper; that in today's civilization, all roads lead to Sol.

<Spurious interrupt>

This terminal has been disabled remotely by a security subroutine of Copernicus. Please contact Colonial Administration if you believe this action to be in error. Unauthorized activity has been logged.

Dec 12 2007 - Mike Harrison's Journal #126

OVERSEER MIKE HARRISON TAU1 GRUIS TERRAFORMATION COMPANY A UNITED TERRAFORMERS SUBSIDIARY

JOURNAL ENTRY #126 1820 12/12/36

Has it been two weeks already? Lot of activity the past couple of weeks, made time fly like you've never seen. I'll leave that for #127 though, something much more pressing is on my mind right now.

Hasn't hit the local news or I think even the local Guard yet, but United Terraformers forwarded me a report not two hours ago that the HMS Hermes, a Coalition scout frigate answering to the British High Command's segment of the Fleet, has been declared overdue.

Apparently they were in the Zeta Gruis binary system (a little under three parsecs, or nine light years, from here) running surveys. They failed to check in with Starbase 107 on the 20th of last month, but that's not altogether uncommon. Deep space vessels run for a long time between repair and refit stops, and sometimes stuff breaks, including comm equipment. Nothing to get uptight about. What they do get uptight about, though, is when said vessel was due back the first week of December, and it's now December 12th with still no Hermes and still no contact.

For reference:

Tau1 Gruis --> Zeta Gruis = 9.20 ly or 2.82 pc Tau1 Gruis --> Omicron Gruis = 13.07 ly or 4.01 pc Zeta Gruis --> Omicron Gruis = 11.05 ly or 3.39 pc

The three stars form a nice little scalene triangle.

Scouts like the Hermes use the latest drive technology, so that's about twelve days plus a handful of hours to go from Zeta Gruis to Omicron Gruis. I did some digging in my free time and here's how it comes out:

The HMS Hermes has been surveying certain promising star systems along the Rim for future terraforming, mining, or just plain old scientific interest and cartography. Zeta Gruis was its last stop before heading to Starbase 107 in Omicron Gruis for a two week stay for resupply and R&R before heading way out to Epsilon Gruis, then further along the Rim's outer edge. At last check-in, their schedule put them leaving Zeta Gruis on Friday the 21st of November, or 23rd at the latest. That'd put them at Starbase 107 on December 4th, latest. So they're a week overdue now.

Now, if you can't understand why a vessel disappearing at a location only a week from here is a problem, then you've got your head stuck firmly up your ass. This worries me because if something is already in Zeta Gruis, and it left right now to attack here, and Starbase 107 somehow already knew about it and dispatched help, they'd still arrive five full days later. That's best case; in reality, 107 will send two or three destroyers out to Zeta Gruis to check up on the Hermes before turning any attention here. That means twelve and a half days before we even have a clue what happened; twelve and a half days before they would even make the decision to send a preemptive reinforcement here. If there's an enemy there and they're smart enough to find and destroy the area's FTL relay, then that becomes twenty-five days before we know what happened.

This colony could be under attack tomorrow.

Of course, it may all be nothing and they just had a catastrophic drive failure and the destroyers will pick up the crew and tow the Hermes back to base when they get there in a week and a half. But I didn't get where I am today by hoping for the best and getting caught with my pants down.

I'm going to walk this over to the Colonial Administration building and see what they think. That idiot Pereira should at least put the Guard on alert if he hasn't already. Dom may be a moron when it comes to management, but he does know how to recognize and respond to threats.

-- Mike

Nov 28 2007 - Mike Harrison's Journal #125

OVERSEER MIKE HARRISON TAU1 GRUIS TERRAFORMATION COMPANY A UNITED TERRAFORMERS SUBSIDIARY

JOURNAL ENTRY #125 2045 11/28/36

Ah yes, UT has to stamp their ego text even on my journal entries. What a golden age of individual progress this is.

And my God, number 125 already? This has got to be some kind of milestone. I suppose I should keep going to 200 and then publish these and retire off the proceeds; I'm sure some failures to launch living in their parents' cargo holds who believe the hype that overseeing the terraformation of a colony is an exciting, glam job would snatch it up readily. Note to future editor: delete that line insulting my target audience.

So, what to write this time for my bi-weekly journal. I won't just ramble on like usual since this is a milestone number. Maybe a general history of life, the universe, and everything? Or just a summation of Mike Harrison and the Tau1 Gruis II project that will spare a reader the boredom of sifting through entries 1 through 124? Or just an idiot's guide to the colony.

Hmm. An idiot's guide to the colony.

Why not, I've got some time to kill, and the sawboneses at the company Health & Well Being department still have me on orders to keep writing this thing to keep myself upbeat and organized (ha!).

You know what, why don't I just make this a multi-entry thing while I'm at it? We'll start with some general info and history on this one, and go on to... oh, I don't know, people and places, where to shop, how awesome the Renaissance Pub up in Delphi is, or something of that sort. A word a of warning: my brain tends a little more toward the chaotic side, so if I jump around and my thoughts wander, think of it as character. Because I'm not going to organize the results for you later.

So. History.

For those of you who have been living on an asteroid or in one of those ridiculous ocean floor cities for the past few decades, Tau1 Gruis II is a colony world orbiting a heavy element-rich G0V class yellow dwarf about 33 parsecs from Sol called (surprise) Tau1 Gruis. If you're looking our way from one of the Core Worlds, we're in (surprise again!) the constellation Grus, the crane. We're located around the inner edge of the habitable zone and it can get hot at times, especially in the southern hemisphere. Fortunately the weather patterns, water placement, and axial tilt keep the northern hemisphere relatively cool, and, thanks to the hand of terraforming, even cold at times.

Like a few other newer colonies, our planet actually has several names since the Interstellar Astronomical Union in their infinite wisdom have still failed to decide on an official name. So, I'll just stick with the one I like best and the one everyone universally recognizes: the astrogation designation, Tau1 Gruis II, or TG2 for short. For reference, Tau1 Gruis I is some inhospitable little scorched rock practically inside the star's corona, and Tau1 Gruis III is a massive gas giant with a couple cozy little moons that gets its kicks by disrupting the outer edge of the star's habitable zone. Further out is some other junk that I don't concern myself with.

TG2 and both of TG3's moons had map-sample-flagplant claims done by a CFS scout in 2387 or thereabouts, and about 10 years later United Terraformers got the contract to terraform TG2. TG2 is one of those worlds we really like. The system already has a general balance and friendly demeanor to it, as well as a functioning ecosystem, so all we really have to do is come in and tweak the system to our liking. No adding mass, hauling copious amounts of water, seeding entire hemispheres, or running multi-hundred unit atmosphere processor networks. In other words, this is where the UT employees of the decade get sent to work.

Now I know what you're thinking: Mike, if I'm going to be a terraformer, that sounds like the place for me!

Wrong.

On the one hand, it's great, because that makes life relatively easy, and when you shake-n-bake a colony into existence under time and under budget, that just makes all the big names smile. Big names smiling generally means you, or at least your paycheck, start smiling pretty big too. On the other hand, however, it's shit, because you barely get up and running before the colonists and their rugrats start showing up, and Colonial Administration deploys guys like that New Spain goofball Dominic Pereira (who can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground) to run the show and start telling you how to do your job.

And that's not even the bad part: when you're way the hell out like we are, that kind of activity also gets the attention of marauders.

Now I know what you're thinking again: Hey Mike, I'm a Core Worlder know-it-all from an Ivy League who sits comfortably and ignorantly behind the protection of a twenty thousand-ship fleet, and I say marauders are just dime novel plot devices.

Wrong.

Whenever you get outside the easy reach of the long arm of the law, you find people who like existing outside that reach for reasons more nefarious than a preference for being left alone. Even worse, some of them are smart enough to figure out that if they band together, suddenly their operational ceiling rises from spacelane robbery to outright sacking newly founded colonies. It was true on the high seas a little under a millenium ago, and it's still true today.

Right now, we don't really worry about them. We have part of the 74th Marine Expeditionary Unit assigned to the planet, a fully staffed Colonial Guard force, and, failing those, the newly-assembled Starbase 107 is a hop, skip, and a jump away in the Omicron Gruis system.

It wasn't always like that, though. Not too long ago there was this war on between factions comprising 95% of human space, and colonial defense kind of falls by the wayside when things like that happen. We had major attacks by marauders in 2428, 2430, and again in 2432. We lost horribly in 2428; a lot of colonists were killed, and the marauders made off with a rather substantial amount of possessions and equipment, mainly high value terraforming equipment. This wasn't only bad because of the obvious, but also because such success only breeds repeat attacks.

Needless to say, while our governmental benefactors were too busy blasting the Tri-Axis, I was pissed. And if you've ever been around Overseers, you'll know that when we get pissed, that generally means the whole United Terraformers conglomerate gets pissed. Thanks to that fact, we managed to get some heavy equipment deployed here, but it wasn't really enough. They came again in 2430 and we achieved a Pyrrhic victory, and only by a thread at that.

Thankfully, the damn war finally ended, and when the scumbags showed up in force in 2432 to loot the colony again and avenge their previous loss, they met up not with substandard planetary defense guns and tank-driving militia, but with the USS Razorback (BB-75) and its entire Battle Group. Talk about a dramatic reversal! We haven't been bothered since.

Anyway, those are the major highlights I think. Aside from that we've just been building, expanding, and all that good stuff. Things have been going well enough with the terraforming that we were able to take four processors offline last year without any loss in air quality, and we might even be able to scale back the originally 24-processor network to just the APM (Atmosphere Processor - Main) and two APSes (Atmosphere Processor - Secondary) by 2442.

When that happens, I'll be retiring to some tropical waterworld with my wife, and finally the tug of war between me and Dom Pereira can end and he can have his way. Bastard is welcome to it while it lasts; we'll likely be up from the several hundred thousand population we have now to several million by then, which means the Colonial Administration pulls the Administrator and he gets replaced with an elected Colonial Governor. Who can't, by the way, be or have been an Administrator.

Take that, Dom!

I'll go into more detail in the next one. Maybe tell you a bit about those twenty thousand or so renegade Amish over at Beta Colony on the other side of the planet... man, those people are a trip. (They're not really Amish, we just call them that.)

See you in two weeks.

-- Mike

Sep 29 2007 - Dominic Pereira Interview

0436 3/6/37

[ * ] Data is incomplete. Interpolate? [ * ] . . . [ * ] Interpolating [ * ] . [ * ] . . [ * ] . . . [ * ] . . . . [ * ] . . . . . [ * ] Reconstructing [ * ] . [ * ] . . [ * ] . . . [ * ] . . . . [ * ] . . . . . [ * ] Reconstructed file "3.1.37-0320-IV-JPar-ColAdmn" [ * ] 97% certainty of interpolation integrity

CHVN - COLONIAL HOLOVISION NETWORK Your choice for the latest in current events. Subsidized by the Colonial Administration. The AWSC works for you. Localized Tau1 Gruis news made possible by grants from the Coalition of Free States and Sigma Shipwrights.

Transcript of 0320 3/1/37 broadcast - archived 3/2/37 Brief interview of Colonial Administrator Dominic Pereira on early morning newscast Conducted by CHVN Grus affiliate's Julia Parsons

Julia Parsons: Mr. Administrator, can you tell us anything about what's going on right now? People have reported in seeing bright lights descending from the sky followed by explosions. We've had scattered reports that the planetary defense guns have been eliminated, and more rumors of some kind of fighting around Fort Randall. Moreover we filmed multiple flaming objects streaking east to west through the sky south of Grus City. Can you tell us what's happening, sir?

Dominic Pereira (Phone): We're not one hundred percent sure here either, but I can share what I know so far.

JP: Are we being faced with an invasion?

DP: We don't know yet. I can confirm that we have in fact been attacked, an-

JP: By who?

DP: I don't know yet. As I'm sure you've noticed, our communications satellites are unresponsive. There have been unconfirmed reports of an alien in orbit as well as Guard fighters engaging it, but I do not have solid information. My office is not currently in contact with the Guard's commanders, though we are trying to remedy that as quickly as possible.

JP: An alien?

DP: Yes, though I stress that is unconfirmed.

JP: Can you confirm whether or not the planetary defenses are offline?

DP: That I can confirm, our defensive guns have been destroyed by an attack from an unidentified orbital or orbitals. However, there have not been any follow-up attacks that I am aware of, so it is entirely possible the Guard has already eliminated the threat.

JP: Do you have advice for concerned citizens?

DP: Yes, Julia, I do. I would like to request that all colonists stay in their homes, wake their families, retrieve their disaster kits, and be ready to evacuate if necessary. Stay tuned to CHVN and other sources carrying official news until we can update you further. Guardsmen and women should already have been alerted, but in the event you have not, you are required to arm yourselves and report to your designated rally points to await further instruction. In the event of a pressing emergency the override system will be used and updates will be provided by Colonial Administration. Again, I stress that there is every possibility that the threat has already been eliminated by Guard forces in orbit. There is not yet any cause for alarm, so please stay calm.

JP: Mr. Administrator, one more ques-

DP: Sorry Julia, that's all I have time for. Colonial Administration will be in touch.

[ * ] End of File

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