Casually strolling toward the front of the class, Professor Ssoriad called to Ariela, "Please come down from the rafters and take your seat. I prefer not to crane my neck when I am speaking." A soft wave of giggles swept over the classroom as Ariela executed a mid-air somersault and swooped down to her assigned perch. As the class and unit title lit up in holoprojection, the professor turned to face his students and drummed his claws on the lectern. "I realize that most of you regard post-Interdict Human history as the least exciting possible subject in the galaxy, even behind the unit on the Orion Transcension that we just completed." Seeing mostly tacit agreement, he glanced down at Ythistra, one of the students in the front row, and one of his personal favorites - the kind of bright student who loved learning and was a delight to teach. As she caught his gaze with her bright, kind eyes, narrowed to happy little ruby slits glowing with interest and enthusiasm, she briefly assumed the face of a famous human officer of the early post-Interdict era, and winked - long human lashes and smooth human eyelid shuttering one of her warm, brown human eyes for just an instant - before resuming her natural form of semi-corporeal darkness inside her cloak. The professor smiled - a barely visible shifting of the blue-green scales around the corners of his mouth - and continued to the class at large, "Nevertheless, if you can bring yourselves to pay at least a modicum of attention, I think you will find yourselves surprised. The actions of humankind in this period, led by their simply-named Ruling Body Of 22, not only carry dull and pedantic lessons that still apply to us today even as they precipitated the shape of the modern galaxy - they are also occasionally ridiculous enough to be good for a laugh or three."
Most of the class looked on mistrustfully as Professor Ssoriad initiated the lesson's first holosequence, but his eyes found Ythistra again, and she was beaming.
"As two or three of you might reluctantly remember from previous units, once the hyperspace interdictor field began to waver and collapse, apparently by Orion design, finally failing altogether precisely in the year Post-Transcension 2300, every sentient species in the galaxy was scrambling to prepare colony and scout ships and their first hyperspacial factories. Outnumbered and outproduced by every other species, the Humans were further crippled by their politically-driven science program, which caused the vast majority of research projects to fall by the wayside while a single politically-charged program alone received funding. Nevertheless, they managed to assemble three ships, which as you can see above proceeded toward the galactic east. The green star nearest Sol was in some ways a more attractive option than the red star they planned as their first colony, but it was believed at the time that a refueling base further from home would be of greater value, opening more of the galaxy to the prototype Scouts already completed and the Discovery scouts about to roll off the assembly lines to follow them. In any case, it was hoped that one of the first Discoveries built could visit that green star moments before the formation of the red star's colony, while the Scouts continued east to scout in that direction as quickly as possible ... humanly." The professor smiled slightly. "Sadly, the Houston Space Command Center was so eager for those eastern reports, they completely forgot to actually
send any Discoveries to the green star until it was clearly too late for this plan, thus delaying human progress considerably."
"We've re-entered Realspace; trans-spacial communicators should now be working again. Do you read me, Houston?"
"Loud and clear, Colony One. It's good to hear your voice again."
"Looks like we made the wrong call, Houston. Our scans are all coming back flat negative for metallics."
"Copy that, Captain. Are you sure they're functioning correctly?"
"Affirmative. We dropped a probe to the ocean floor alongside one of the islands and our scans read it perfectly. Even dropped a burrower to see if the soil was interfering. The only accessible metals are the ones we're bringing in. The planet's mostly water, frankly. Samples all return as non-poisonous however, and there's an oxygen atmosphere, with enough islands dotting the surface to support agri for 70 million people. If I may say so, sir ... it looks beautiful down there."
"Understood. Stand by for your orders."
...
"All right, Captain, we're going to ask you to touch down and form a colony. Long-term, the absence of metals will be a problem, but better to get that fuel base up and get our first extra-solar colony started now than wait for years in transit. That planet should be fine for agriculture and early research anyway. We're calling the star system Vulcan. May you live long and prosper."
"Thank you, Houston. Preparing for planetfall now. Speaking privately, I think you made the right decision here. Lieutenant Rissa Shale has been asking the crew for help designing bikinis for her off days on the beaches, and if we couldn't land on this island paradise, I might have had a mutiny on my hands."
"Let's keep the tone serious, Captain. We ... wait, Lieutenant Shale? *Ahem* Well, on a completely unrelated note, please ask your ship's holographer to send back trimensional images of your officers during their liesure time on the surface for ... um ... publicity reasons."
Ssural, a Sakkra student in the first row, blinking in confusion, asked, "Professor? What's a bikini?"
Her eyes shining innocently, Ythistra raised her hand - well, her glove - and when called upon, answered with a look that mocked naivete to its roots, "It's an atoll in the Pacific Ocean of Sol 3, where the Human people conducted many of their earliest nuclear weapons tests." She momentarily assumed Lieutenant Rissa Shale's hypnotically beautiful visage, and gave Ssural the lieutenant's trademark thumbs-up grin.
"Very good," Professor Ssoriad answered, with a little smirk betraying his deadpan voice. "I see you remember your Sol system history."
Returning to the holodisplay, Ssoriad explained, "When a Discovery finally managed to reach it in 2305, the green star of Stalaz forever changed the course of Human history. Colonizing Vulcan turned out to have been their best course after all, but the barren world of Stalaz 2, uninhabitable with then-current human technology, contained such enormous mineral riches that high-level planetology research became priority one back on Sol 3. By 2306, when the possibility of
Controlled Barren Environment research was first recognized, every ounce of the empire's productivity was bent on its discovery, even at the expense of infrastructure development and invaluable improvements envisioned for the humans' ecological restoration techniques. Indeed, factory construction on Sol 3 would not resume for years, as even with adequate Barren-specific research labs assembled, and research funding therefore reduced to a sane and sustainable (though steadily increasing) rate, the human home system only turned its remaining efforts to the assembly of a new modular ship, to carry a barren-ready colony base across the stars ... once the technology for such a base could be devised, at least...."
Ariela twittered to herself and rolled her eyes. "Typical Humans. Start building a ship before they even know how to finish it!"
Ssural chuckled uncertainly, then leaned over to whisper to Ythistra, "Say ... what does 'modular' mean?"
With a pitying glance at both of them, Ssoriad continued, "Here we see the galaxy as the Humans knew it in the year 2311, with a Scout or Discovery in orbit above every star within 6 parsecs of Vulcan or Sol, three years after their first encounter with another species. The Discovery and Sakkra Scout that met in the Kronos system were unable to establish conventional communications, but the Scout departed for a debriefing in Sakkra space - as those of you who failed to sleep through unit three may vaguely recall, it was the Sakkra people's first contact too - while the Discovery remained to examine the poor world of Kronos IV and retain a presence in the system, where it was hoped that further attempts at communication might yet succeed. This hope would not prove vain, as we shall see. In the meantime, a network of 4-parsec paths had been discovered between the habitable stars of the southern galaxy, already establishing the post-Stalaz phase of human colonization strategy. This was cinched by the huge, fertile world of Toranor 2 in 2311, a world which led Commander Swain of the Discovery 8 to utter the immortal words, 'Holy cow.'"
Ssural quaveringly raised his claw, and glancing at him, the professor explained, "A female four-legged domesticated ruminant native to Sol 3," leaving Ssural precisely nowhere.
"With holes in it," Skyler added helpfully.
With a mostly-futile attempt to direct the class' mirthful attention back to the holodisplay, Professor Ssoriad continued, "Controlled Barren bases finally became a reality in 2319, at reported odds of '17%' - human scientists acknowledged only half the actual chances of a breakthrough each year, as was their universal habit for political reasons, and considering the amount of time it had been maturing with chances growing every year, the overall liklihood of research completing by the time it did was actually around 80%. By a fortunate coincidence, the modular ship being built at Sol was also ready to be fitted with its barren base the same year that the prototype was ready, so that the first and only Apollo 1.0 colony ship ever built at Sol could be completed in 2320."
A brief review about human mythology, the Humans' first visit to their homeworld's lone moon, and that moon's utility as a testing ground for the Humans' barren-world colonial life-support systems was required before Professor Ssoriad could continue, "A vital need remained for ecological restoration, but it was delayed once more, this time in favor of
ImprovedTerraforming +20 technology. Sadly, funding for even this project could not yet commence, as the political tide, responding to Operation Stalaz and the 4-parsec paths among the stars, urged that Propulsion research begin instead, which beginning in 2320 would focus on developing
Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4) rather than deuterium. At the same time, the human imperial tax rate climbed to unprecedented levels. These taxes would cost the humans over 40 BC in production over the two years in which they continued, but the result was no less than 6 extra factories soon completed on Stalaz, each generating an average of 1.5 BC per year toward still more factories. Anyone who has taken Professor Yeep-eep's economics class has already had the power of compound interest pounded into their skulls quite thoroughly, and the process of Stalaz's development was further helped along by the immediate emigration of no less than 38 million colonists from Sol 3 - and by further reserves garnered from the scrapping of humankind's old Scout ships soon thereafter, as those starships were replaced with Discoveries. The Human 'Operation Stalaz' was well underway, and the race was on with the Sakkra to claim the stars that - at first unbeknownst to either - both races already considered their own."
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Next: Space Race
