One Big Happy Family (No Planetfall)

[MysticWind]

Inspired by scenarios where the faction leaders must work together (a GalCiv II LP, “Dawn comes on the Sunset Sea” one-shot, “Aeon Natum Engel” reference), here's an expanded version of the A House United setting where the Unity narrowly avoids disaster and arrives at Planet undivided.

SMAC: One Big Happy Family

United Landing

No one's entirely sure how it all went down: blackbox fragments sifted from the central datacore indicated anomalous network activity shortly before a micrometeorite struck the Bussard ramjet scoop, grievously damaging the great ship and sending shockwaves rattling through its immense superstructure. Mere moments prior to impact, this unexpected data burst accompanied mysterious minute adjustments to the Unity's bearing and course.

Had the cosmic pebble nicknamed "Hydra" hit the ship at its original location, an entire cryobay might have been lost, as well as untold damage to the fusion drive. It is unknown what person or entity made this change; the captain and the astrogator were both in cryosleep, and the master computer itself did not detect Hydra until after impact.

Officers and critical crew were woken as per protocol. The Chief Science Officer quickly surmised that while the exterior damage was extensive, it was repairable, failing to jeopardize the ship's deceleration towards Chiron. But time was of the essence while the Unity bled at 11% c, threatening further deterioration as electrical systems shorted and the hull was on the verge of breaking. This war room was interrupted by the arrival of a U.N. Security Force lieutenant and over four dozen security officers, escorted by a platoon of peacekeepers.

When asked why this large assortment of fighting men and women had been roused for a noncombat emergency, the Force Commander of the peacekeepers was at a loss for words, replying that the platoon had awoken shortly after impact. Perhaps it was yet another glitch caused by the micrometeor. They had only finished arming and armoring themselves when they had spotted the horde of red-clad security officers heading for the command center, and decided to intervene. Nodding, the captain next turned to this seemingly random detachment of reds and asked what their business was on the bridge, never mind why they, too, had awoken out of turn.

Thinking quickly, the lieutenant offered her officers as a labour battalion to assist with the repairs. Along with the blue berets, they dashed across the vessel, sealing breaches and fixing broken wiring under close supervision of the science team and engineering. Thus was born the legacy of the Spartan Work Corps, whose exploits during Landing would make their leader a hero throughout the colonies.

The long sleep

Now it has been seven decades since mankind arrived at Planet. The original 108,000 passengers disembarked the Unity in staggered batches, gradually awakening from cryo to avoid overwhelming the mission's meager supplies. Some hibernated aboard the ship in orbit, watched over by the same "shippies" who performed orbital scans, supporting those settling groundside. Semi-decadal rotations ensured that no one slept through too many events. But refreezing always came with its share of medical risks, potentially producing profound damage to body and mind. And there was always rumor of corruption that expedited the passage of some to Chiron ahead of others, allowing them to stake out an earlier, greater claim to the new society.

Such gossip obscures how truly difficult life on Planet is. Unbreathable air, nitrate-poisoned water, poor alumina-rich soil, and dangerously hostile wildlife all make settlement an unenviable endeavor. Awakened colonists struggled to assemble rudimentary shelter and to scratch subsistence agriculture amidst frequent mindworm incursions. While the Chief Botanist's relocated hydroponics bays provided a source of fresh produce, many of the Earth exiles yearned for the common foodstuffs and confectionaries of their lost planet. They often went back to landing pods and jostled awake those who had been brought down to Chiron still sleeping, forcing them to tame the land while they returned to blissful hibernation, despite the risks.

But the years started coming and they don't stop coming, and under the watchful eyes of their venerable leader, the settlements grew. From the initial landfall at Unity City, more and more bases sprouted like xenofungus fields across Planet. After the first mission decades of simple survival, research in bio-engineering have paved the road to genetic treatments extending the lifespan of the colonists to greater and greater lengths. If they managed to survive the mindworm attacks and spore storms, that is.

Colony at the crossroads

Now, as the final landing pods arrive at Earthrise Base, the last of the original passengers have awakened to join Centauri society. But not all is well with humanity's remnants. Even as the Mission Leader moves towards retirement, his captaincy finally going down with the ship (too large to land and its useful parts stripped and brought down to the colonies, the UNS Unity is due for a controlled crash into an uninhabited corner of Planet), the mission's future moves into an uncertain direction. His subordinates vie for control, each bringing their own idiosyncratic worldview to the Unity diaspora. Outside the base walls, the xenofauna swarm restlessly, upset at the human presence offending their ecosystems. And the stars above glitter with strange and alien movements…

[MysticWind]

The old king


John Garland
Current Rank: Mission Leader
Unity Position: Captain
Origin Country: United States
Party: None

The near-universally revered captain of the Unity steered the colonies' ship of state throughout its rough and tumble decades. From the founding of the first base to the erection of the first 'former farm to sifting through the grisly aftermath of the first encounter with mindworms, he has always been at the frontlines of his people, with his people. Garland has won reelection in every race since the Planetary colonial government was founded, even if his margins grow smaller and smaller. (The challenger in second place? Undecided.)

Now that civilization feels a little bigger and the frontier a little farther away, he yearns to pass the mantle, but increasingly is at a loss to whom. Some of the loudest and most popular voices speak with rhetoric that discomforts him. Those who have aligned with his views the most closely, may not be strong enough to shout down those voices. He may yet be tempted to stay on until the principles of the U.N. Charter can be secured.

Garland grows more and more tired. He was always the first to insist he be given longevity treatments the last, yet he received them just the same. Clinically he is a spry fifty, but his spirit feels the weight of the mission years and his age is over thrice that. Part of him yearns to take the closest of his people and wander into the desert, away from petty political games and power struggles. His heart calls for freedom, yet his sense of duty compels him continue, one way or another…

[MysticWind]

The seven sovereigns

The Once and Future Heir


Pravin Lal
Current Rank: Director-General of Chiron Health Organization
Unity Position: Chief of Surgery
Origin Country: India
Party: Unity

The head of medical emergency response, Lal ably and compassionately directed the various physician teams to care for the wounded during Landing. Upon the settlement of Planet, he championed the creation of a vast and responsive health system able to  serve all colonists, especially in the event of disaster and danger. Lal's tireless work in the field camps and incessant lobbying at the Colonial Council produced a planetary health service overseen by the CHO, ensuring universal coverage of each citizen. While the bureaucracy involved has grown rapidly, it remains a vital institution even as the general population begins to take it for granted.

Long considered the protege and natural successor to the current Mission Leader, in recent years Lal has faced more skepticism towards this higher aspiration.  While most candidates can speak few ill words about his service, they are also quick to backhandedly state that if they were to be elected to the supreme office, they would gladly keep him on as director of CHO, respectfully subordinating him. His crusading image has fallen as citizens grow tired of his insistence on overstepping the bounds of his office to weigh in on far-flung issues from guaranteeing the free flow of information to the regulation of cybernetic modifications. Of playing politics and excusing it as humanitarianism. Of weaponizing red tape against his ideological opponents. The fact is, all of Lal's talk of human rights has marked him as an irritating do-gooder to more hard-nosed voters, and as easy prey for rivals who consider him a naive sap. Not to mention, many are eager for a change and do not want the simple continuation of Garland's policies, the bureaucratic relic of the dinosaur U.N. and its establishmentarian Unity Party.

But there is another side to Lal, one that manifests in late-night Council sessions and last-minute deals brewed from pints of blood and sweat. The Lal who was there to care for the screaming psychotics wormborne by the Summer of the Super-Boil of M.Y. 2113. The Lal who put down his public pacifist persona and marched into the DeepKinz drone riots in M.Y. 2159 and told the bloodmaster that her strikers could either come to the negotiating table, or the Colonial Peacekeepers would come pouring in after him, preventing CHO rapid relief teams from healing the wounded. The Lal who, while a fervent believer in the greater good and the liberal virtues, is ready for any showdown to protect democracy.

[MysticWind]

The Caudillo Who Could Be


Corazon Santiago
Current Rank: Leonidas of the Spartan Coalition (formerly Spartan Work Corps), Colonel of Colonial Scouts special unit Sparta’s Speartip (ret.)
Unity Position: Security team Lieutenant
Origin Country: Puerto Rico
Party: Sparta Molon Labe

Known for decades as the woman who might have been generalissimo, Santiago was originally a minor security functionary aboard the Unity. Destined to play orderly to those afflicted with space madness before descent to Planet, or bouncer to the disorderly starshine drunks in the depressing skeleton bases of the early colonies, she defied destiny by organizing her own cadre of U.N. Security Force officers in some unspecified past. Apparently awoken by chance during the bumpy Landing, her team within the security team greatly assisted the ship’s engineers and cosmonaut corps during repairs, becoming some of the first heroes of the mission.

During the ad hoc pioneer days on Planet, Santiago swiftly formalized her comrades into the Sparta Work Corps, her own labour militia, autonomous of upper leadership. Because of the initial professionalism of the mission staff, security often found themselves bereft of serious duties, and so she beat psych-whips into plowshares by joining her Spartans in the taming of the Planet, embedded them in 'former teams to build roads and farms for the fledgling colony. After the discovery of hostile native life, the so-called Spartans put the incessant training she had imposed upon them to good use, fearlessly fighting against mindworm boils with iron will discipline.

A warrior since childhood, Santiago enlisted in the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces (now the Colonial Peacekeepers) against the mindworm menace after the disastrous Massacre of Newt’s Nest in M.Y. 2108. Uptick in wildlife attacks increased danger for exploration. Unpredictable fungal blooms caused xenofungus fields to spring up overnight, further impeding human encroachment. With the planet seemingly at war against the Unity mission, Santiago and many of her S.W.C. traded their policing protection mandate for red-pink armored environment suits and heavy firepower.

Known to be an exemplary battlefield commander, and an excellent tactician with mental tenacity capable of shrugging off waves of mindworms, she rose up the ranks and carved out her own band of diehard followers. “Sparta's Speartip” emerged as an elite frontline wilderness specialist unit honed on extended long range survey and swarm extermination missions, composed of S.W.C. at its core and supplemented by Peacekeepers convinced by Santiago’s teachings. High command, alarmed by her popularity, split off the Speartip and neutrally rebranded it as the Colonial Scouts, Planet’s very first special forces unit.

Even as her popularity skyrocketed thanks to breathless MorganLink coverage and even a Morganwood action blockbuster, Santiago deigned to play power games within the military. Despite the possibility of promotion, she stayed at the top of the Scouts rather than rejoining the Peacekeepers. Some say out of a desire to stay in the field as a colonel rather than as some career-climbing desk jockey, others allege severe differences in opinion with the Force Commander himself. In either case, Santiago has since left the military. She has reorganized the S.W.C. into the Spartan Coalition: no longer just a helping hand wielding a sword and shield for the formers, but also a veterans’ legion, a survivalist school, and a political pressure group.

Declaring that the best defense is an ironclad offense, Santiago has agitated for greater and greater investment in the colonial armed forces. Research lavished on petting mindworms and hugging fungal towers must instead be reallocated towards defense R&D. Development policy must be to expand: only when humanity flexes its muscles against the xeno can our survival be assured. To this end, the Coalition has recently sponsored its own political party for Council elections, with Santiago herself as the unanimous candidate for Mission Leader.

The colonel’s popularity disquiets many in the colony, in light of her fiery rhetoric. Many are concerned that her militarism will not end with wars against nature, but against her fellow man. (The former Chief Botanist’s camp, of course, bristle at the first notion.) Others find her combative nature to be needlessly belligerent, imprudent. Some find the focus on weapons research to be wasteful. Yet others like her former media patron, the CEO of Morgan Industries, find her demands for little psych spending besides generous benefits for veterans to be overly spartan.

Incumbent Mission Leader Garland himself worries about the Spartan phenomenon. His own decade-long investigations, substantiated by invasive details that his former X.O. was all-too-happy to supply him, suggested that the Coalition might have had origins on the late Earth itself, far from being an impromptu emergency workforce as Santiago claimed. But they have made a strong impression upon many of the working class population just the same, never mind upon the fighting men and women. He grasps at ways to take the wind out of the militarists’ sails with conciliatory appeals to common humanity. He wonders if Santiago might be bought with an appointment to Special Representative for Defense. He frets at the thought of asking the Peacekeepers- or even the Colonial Security Bureau- to check the Spartans’ power.

Meanwhile at a training camp just east of Manderley Memorial Base, Santiago looks upon a crop of fresh wilderness graduates and salutes stoically while she beams inwardly. These young warfighters are destined to join in the protection of humanity, perhaps her elite Scouts. Soon she will return to the city to greet crowds of admirers, whose love she cares only to elevate her to supreme commander. At that, she does smile grimly. Survival is at hand!