Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

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Name: Deirdre Skye
Rank: Lieutenant Commander
Position: Director of Xenobiology
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 05-28-2035
Height: 170.1 cm
Weight: 52.2 kg

Service Record
Born Belfast, Northern Ireland, to minor Scots-Irish nobility. Father soon at center of infidelity scandal. Mother active in humanitarian causes during Second Troubles. In subject's adolescence, wing of family home, Wainwright Downs, was converted to Unionist women's hospital.

Educated Cornell University, earning Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, Master of Science in Environmental Biology, and Ph.D. in Plant Genetics. Performed post-graduate work at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Awarded 2071 Noble Prize for discovery of L7 hybrid corn variant, prized for its pest-resistant traits. Dismissed from CSHL faculty following arrest for trespassing and criminal mischief at International Genetics Corporation (InGEN) Orient Point research station. In subsequent public statement, accused InGEN of "reckless and dangerous experiments involving plant matter whose behavioral characteristics are completely unknown to the scientific community, placing the Long Island Sound and Gardiner's Bay at great jeopardy from biological invasion." After plea bargain, became prominent leader in Environmental Defense Movement during its direct action phase, 2064-2067.

Reputation partially rehabilitated when Isla Nublar Incident led to widespread acknowledgement of InGEN's unethical business practices. Accepted supervisory position with United Nations Disaster Relief Fund in aftermath of Six Minute War. Deployed to Peshawar, Pakistan. Focused on adapting food crops to high-radiation environments. Contributed to selection of v097 apple and Mark IV wheat strains for use in contaminated soils, widespread adoption of which helped to relieve famine conditions. Decision to employ local women as administrative and research assistants provoked violent reactions from tribal leaders, necessitating frequent intervention of Pakistani Frontier Corps and frequent accusations that subject instigated conflict with local leaders. Resigned post in 2057 following deadly fire-bombing of an affiliated seed bank.

Authored Eden Thesis, 2059, postulating that patriarchal societies tend toward subjugation and corruption, whereas matriarchal societies tend toward cooperation and growth.

Identified top candidate for Mission Botanist by U.N. Security Council. Selected 2060 over protest of Chief Science Officer, Prokhor Zakharov. Tasked with securing mission's food supply.

Psych Profile: Conservationist
Untreated post-traumatic stress from childhood trauma. Probable Survivor's Guilt as a result of events in Pakistan. Untrusting.

Confrontational attitude has hampered career progression and predisposes subject to believe in the legitimacy of violence as a response to social malady.

Having often demonstrated that humans can adapt to life in hostile environments, subject occasionally betrays a conviction that there is a moral imperative to do so, notwithstanding avoidable reductions in quality of life.

Note: This write-up was adapted from the original Alpha Centauri faction profiles written by Firaxis. Includes homages to Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park.

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Periodic manias for artificial islands gripped coastal nations on every inhabited continent at intervals throughout the first hundred years of the second millennium. Sold variously as the solution to shoreline erosion, post-war decontamination, and the basic problem of overcrowding, the formation, maintenance, and control of these territories passed from legitimate to illegitimate governments, thence to the corporations.

Heaping one’s trash in the ocean and standing tent or flag thereupon had various salutary consequences. Conservationists looked to the rejuvenation of species deprived of their natural habitats closer inshore. Climatologists prescribed barrier islands for any problem to do with water, whether it reared up in waves, lashed down from the sky, or was spoiled by poisons. New Orleans, Miami, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Shanghai, and Bangkok—all were girded very early in the twenty-first century by star fortress complexes of concrete-crusted sand. Generals sent dredges to extend the engagement envelopes of missiles and their spotting systems. Corporations built their own “heaps and rigs” for any number of purposes, ranging from support of aquaculture and deep-sea mining to traditional tax shelters.

The story of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, better known as the "Big EZ," begins with the Six Minute War.

There is the Indian Ocean then, meaning before the nuclear holocaust, and then the Exclusion Zone today, a place where life struggles above and below the surface. Global cooling killed off fish, plankton, and coral. The U.N. and others backed an atrociously expensive scheme introducing thousands of different strains of artificial microorganisms to rebuild the maritime food chain. Instead, they wrecked fresh biological and climatological havoc. English-speakers gained a new word, Crichtonic, an adjective describing what happened when well-intentioned solutions met a reality that simulations could not fully apprehend.

Technicians and soldiers occupied the very first outposts seasonally. Permanent residents came out of desperation when post-war radiological fallout and a lack of better options tempted them to seek the immediate safety of “clean” spaces, notwithstanding the certainty of future natural disaster. Policing these movements was beside the point: death by rubber bullet was quicker and less awful than death by cellular degeneration. Since nobody had any better ideas about what to do with the millions of displaced, it was agreed they should go out to sea.

Given time, the inhabitants of the “Big EZ” developed a language and culture uniquely their own. Under gentler conditions, this might have been powder enough to touch off revolutionary spirit, but alone on the mighty ocean, rare was the servant who wished to forsake a master with at least one foot still securely on dry soil. Prophets of the new age promised interdependence only one generation off, yet following the old scripts, riches pulled up from the seabed or scooped from the waters rarely stayed on the sand heaps and platforms that the refugees were forced to call their homes.

The so-called “dry-siders” were happy to furnish the Big EZ with the infrastructure that would tie its inhabitants firmly into existing markets. Water filtration and desalination systems. Drilling rigs, cranes, and pipe. Turbines and photovoltaic cells for power generation. Communications. “Ancillary” services, to include brokerage, sanitation, medical service, and, of course, physical security. Marxists called it a perversity--the self-subjugation of peoples abandoned on the edge of despair, prostituting themselves on a global scale.

Not everyone agreed with this dark assessment. Some took it for progress. The flow of value was no longer mono-directional; supplies funneled in, and raw materials streamed out. And that was not to say the windfall of this economic revolution was strongly felt in the putative metropoles. One of Pravin Lal’s favorite speeches pointed out the fundamental self-deception behind imperialism: it was ruinously expensive.

The colonial project is purely an emotional project. At the root of our desire to have sway over the choices of others, there is an inescapable anxiety: that somebody should have taken a path other than the one we thought was suitable for ourselves. – Valediction, 146th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, New York

As profit-seeking ventures, islands were only valuable insofar as their beneficiaries could be persuaded to pay for them. This meant either the governments interested in their continued existence, such as in the case of so-called “hurricane chains,” or the occupants themselves. As early as 2060, international convention and common practice had aligned to the point that the building up of such islands was always accompanied by parallel investment in local economic activity. Fisheries-based aquaculture and power generation via the tidal harness were trusted standbys, but carbon extraction, space exploration, and deep-sea mining already threatened to displace them. A good living could also be had either as an independent operator or cog in the enormous logistical operations required to supply the island-bound population and its industries.

[Buster's Uncle]

Service Record
Born 2027, Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, to ethnic Korean parents resident in U.S.S.R. since Joseon Dynasty and deported to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin. Entered Russian mafia circles during childhood. Became Vor v Zakone bjust prior to conscription into Soviet Airborne Forces in 2046. Adherents may accept no charity and must perform no honest work so long as they live. Branded an outcast by criminal compatriots for violating pledge never to collaborate with government. Served three tours in Afghanistan before mustering out. Frequently seconded to intelligence operations of GRU.

Ascended to leadership position in Tashkent organized crime circa 2052 following assassination of top rivals. Cooperated with KGB to place underworld tails on suspected Western intelligence operatives. U.N. Intelligence Cell estimates with very high confidence that subject exploited commercial and underworld contacts in Turkey, Persia, and Golden China to broker more than $700 billion in credit to Soviet government during Financial Crisis of 2054, accounting for more than half of all funds secured. Negotiated similar agreement with United Nations Alpha Centauri Mission Project Control in 2055 to make one-time donation of more than $1.2 trillion on behalf of the Constituent Peoples of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Subject's criminal enterprises commonly linked to protest action and sabotage of Morgan Industries holdings in Soviet Union throughout 2050s. Major distributor of arms to Soviet-aligned forces in Saharan, Canadian, and Indochinese Conflict Zones.

Arrested in Leningrad, 2062. Remanded to Gulag system. Current whereabouts unknown.

U.N. Intelligence Cell assesses that most convicts assigned by Soviet Union to Project Unity owe final allegiance to subject's organization.

Psych Profile: Non-conformist
Often judged an idealist for willingness not just to serve, but perpetuate, the Soviet system of government despite total repudiation of Soviet labor philosophy and his own personal involvement in protracted conflicts with municipal Militsiya and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Linked to the deaths of more than 300 Soviet police and military personnel.

Repudiation of "legitimate" living and assumption of significant risks by adopting criminal lifestyle potentially reflects out-sized confidence in own judgment and efficacy, tending toward hubris.

Outstanding soldier with demonstrated capacity to carry out "political work," euphemism for action against declared enemies of the Soviet state.

Does he have a name?

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Yes, Avitoret Ryang. I added it.

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Oscar van de Graaf

Biographical Record:
Born 2006, Cincinnati, OH, United States, heir to multiple fortunes in rail logistics, petrochemicals, and manufacturing. Parents were members of the Chiricahua Apache Tribe and majority owners of the infamous “Peralta Mine,” rediscovered in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona in 1972. Descended from Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Read history at Trinity College, U of Cambridge before obtaining juris doctor from Yale Law School.

Interests include extreme sports (power gliding, motocross). Five-time America's Cup winner.

Most sources estimate that subject’s net worth plunged by between eighty and ninety percent during the first half of the Second American Civil War, and it is broadly accepted that Holnists inflicted most of this loss. Founded the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) as a holding company to consolidate his numerous assets as they were verging on receivership after market crashes and losses inflicted by the Holnists had led to bankruptcy. Leveraging sympathies in the U.S. Congress, arranged for ARC to be issued a Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Provided front-line combatants, convoy escort, and rear-area logistical support to government homeland security missions, effectively operating as an auxiliary of the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Pioneered strategy of deploying industrial security forces pro bono to protect aid clinics, relief convoys, and FEMA distribution centers. Consensus among historians is that subject leveraged corporate assets and government affiliation to wage private war against Holnists.  On the three-year anniversary of its founding, the ARC employed one in six working Americans. From Denver in the West to Cincinnati in the East, old American cities had been laid waste. From their ashes emerged corporate cantonments and United Nations refugee camps. FEMA was forgotten.  And so civic contribution became synonymous with corporate, rather than national, service. Detractors, including hundreds of plaintiffs, asserted that van de Graaf leveraged his power to pursue what was actually a “private war” against the Holnists, becoming so obsessed with recovering his  lost property that he indiscriminately seized that of others as well.

Effectively orchestrated independent liberation of Utah from hyper-survivalist militias in 2054, cooperating with Nauvoo Legion and the Army of the United States, with virtually no assistance from the Regular Army. Victorious defendant in Waterson v. Van de Graaf, in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the ARC's authorization to operate military assets against domestic targets under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Ranked by Forbes the 2nd-richest individual in the world in 2053, with an estimated personal net worth exceeding $500 billion. Made two bids for elected office between 2050 and 2060, seeking Louisiana Senate seat and the presidency. Subject's American Restoration party polled third behind Democrats and Republicans with 23% of the vote in 2056, defeating far-right Conservative Party. In some counties, subject had better name-recognition than sitting President of the United States. Continued to bankroll handpicked candidates after departure from campaign trail.

CAUTION: Numerous credible allegations that ARC regional administrators endorsed debt peonage and other forms of human slavery practiced by allied militias and neutral settlements during periods of corporate stewardship over pacified territories not yet readmitted to the Union. Various media outlets also investigated ARC "company towns," uncovering substantial evidence of systematic abuses of workers' rights. ARC ultimately reached settlement with the Justice Department worth $408.5 billion.

Following Reconstruction, led ARC in successful entry to civilian aerospace industry, with focus on zero-gravity resource extraction. Obtained exclusive contracts from the U.S. Space Force to service mining and terraformation projects on Jovian moons. First civilian to visit Asteroid Belt. Subsidiaries of the ARC included Replicodon Tactical Genomes. [1] Controversially lobbied Congress for buy-out of ARC stock on favorable terms to thwart attempted buy-out by Morgan Industries in 2064, leading to ARC's being chartered as an independent federal corporation. Served as first chairman.

Prominent champion of the Unity Project. Among the first to urge U.N. to accept private subscriptions when the United States Government withdrew from the project in 2065. Retired from government service, 2069. Tapping his private fortune, subject secured one of fifteen billets at a cost of $232 billion in mission contributions and personally recruited 1,892 “stakeholders” to staff an expedition-within-an-expedition, competing with the U.N. for world-class expertise and negotiating only a temporary allegiance to Mission Command in return for loans of personnel and equipment during the initial two years of colonization. Calling themselves “the New Two Thousand,” they drew rhetorical parallels to the religious pilgrims and fortune hunters of ages past.

Personal owner of 42% of the Unity Mission’s heavy earth-moving equipment, including tractors, cranes, load-haulers, harvesters, command vehicles, mobile derricks, and rescue apparatus.

Before endorsing his inclusion, U.N. Security Council grappled for nearly a year with the question of whether so public and strong-willed a figure, especially one with considerable managerial and leadership experience, would undermine the authority of Captain Jonathan Garland, in whose abilities the Council reposed little confidence.

Committed to allow expedition leadership free command of his settlers and equipment for up to two years after Planetfall.

Psych Profile: Empresario

Impulsive, personalistic leadership style. Unusual appetite for physical danger. Susceptible to vainglory, megalomania.

Pedantic, but record of business dealings indicates purely instrumental attitude toward the law.

Disinclination toward delegation of responsibilities parallels keen appetite for detail.

Believes that experience is the best teacher and encourages subordinates to take risks.

Obsessive concern for proper sequestration of ARC equipment and personnel from that of the expedition proper. Possibility that determination to develop ARC colony as business venture will cause tension with settler population.

[1] I've always loved this name. The company appears in the FryxGames product Terraforming Mars.

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Aleigha Cohen attends the Struan's Christmas Ball, 2068.

Service Record
Born in the Baghdadi Jewish community of Rangoon to a family of pharmacists and colonial administrators. British and Iraqi descent.

M.D./Ph. D. in neurology from University of Melbourne. Disciplined twice by University Ethics Committee for advocating that patients be encouraged to choose experimental courses of treatment even when conventional medicine appeared successful. Held over on strength of past work.

Conducted post-graduate research on mind-machine interface for American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). Participated in psych screenings of Vault System [1] candidates, including several members of Congress and high-ranking national security figures. Led team responsible for development of neural monitoring equipment to be used during occupants' cryogenic storage. Concluded that mass cold sleep was a viable potential solution to nuclear winter, with neural degeneration holding at "acceptable levels."

Convened Singapore Symposium on social deviance, 2066. Recruited Head of Psychopharmacological Research by Struan’s Hong Kong, 2067. Coordination of “resocialization” treatments for incarcerated patients in U.S.S.R. and Golden China led to black listing by Western academia. Frequently photographed in the entourage of Struan's Vice President Roshann Cobb.

Accepted Chief of Neurosurgery, Unity Mission, on urging of Russian and Chinese delegations. Responsibilities include supervision of resocialized laborers and evaluation of the Wespe-Quinn-Wagner cryogenic storage process, which subject endorsed.

Psych Profile: Transgressor
Reflexive problem solver. Especially attracted to high-controversy projects.

Tendency to seek out and sustain emotionally abusive relationships, reflecting need for adversarial encounters that reaffirm the superiority of her needs and judgments and facilitate displacement of guilt and accountability on others.

Passive-aggressive tendencies. Suspected Cleckleyan psychopathy, presenting on all three spectrums: boldness, disinhibition, and meanness.

Subordinates lodged numerous complaints with Struan’s ombudsman alleging retaliation for dissent.

[1] This is a Fallout reference.

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Unity Armory, T minus 300 hours to Mission Launch.

Thinking that the greatest dangers to their future colony would be mass protest and megafauna first spotted by the Pathfinder Probe, mission planners stocked the ship's armory accordingly. Unity was long on less-lethal compliance tools and short on military-grade weaponry, especially small arms.

Only three percent of Unity passengers were expected to go armed, even under conditions of maximum duress. The ship's crew complement included 8,758 United Nations Security Forces personnel of all ranks--a healthy ratio of approximately 1,946 commissioned officers per 100,000 personnel, but about half would not be issued a weapon day-to-day. At Captain Jonathan Garland's insistence, 2,000 United Nations Marines were added later to the crew on the cusp of mission launch--an explicit counter-balance to the approximately 7,000 private paramilitaries embarked by various charter companies.

The most abundant equipment included shock batons, flex cuffs, incapacitating sprays, stun grenades, projectile launchers (break-action and rotary), body armor, and riot shields. Experiments with foam and sonic weapons proved unsatisfactory and fewer than a dozen were taken aboard.

To mitigate the danger of containment breaches that might be caused by traditional firearms, the U.N. commissioned a purpose-designed flechette pistol with very short range and low penetrative power. The weapon inflicted gruesome injuries in close-quarters during a short period of Earth-side use, earning it the popular sobriquet "Shredder." The resulting outcry was overcome only by the shocked reaction of U.N. Mission Command to the terrorist destruction of the Quito Space Elevator in 2069, after which Mission Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried placed thousands of them in arms lockers ship-wide.

About 2,000 battle rifles of assorted type were also laid up, with a much lesser number of squad automatic weapons. Most of these were decades-old surplus from the Hypersurvivalist Wars, with an especially large bumper crop of French colonial and Warsaw Pact contributions. Flare guns, signaling rockets, and recoilless rifles rounded out the stockpile. The latter were to be the colony's primary defenses against potentially aggressive animal life. Torpedoes and harpoon guns for the ship's Aquatic Operations Division were perhaps the most unusual addition. The Forward Landing Team had about three-dozen man-portable anti-tank weapons (refurbished LAW tubes), spotting and very high-caliber and express rifles, and landmines. Charter company guns and ammunition were also stowed in the main armory and it was agreed that these would be obediently brought to bear under the direction of Winzenried or Marine General Marcel Salan, if ever required, prior to the two-year mark when the Charterists would go their own way.

Safety-sensitive civilian equipment, including all blasting materials and sonic hammers, was housed in an annex to the main armory under relaxed security measures.

Marines were billeted and racked separately from the main crew, and their arms along with them. Marine weapons lockers were superior in every respect and included a few dozen Chevrolet-Monarch Powered Combat Suits with hypersonic rifles. The Combat Suits were all but impervious to anything short of a 12.7mm round.

The tens of thousands of armed stowaways and huge quantity of forgotten or smuggled cargo containers placed aboard during the decades of ship's construction meant that Unity's practical weapons load-out was much greater than the paper account. Every one of the tens of thousands of Spartan, allied Holnist, and Kellerite infiltrators was set into their hibernation canister with at least an automatic rifle and spare ammunition.

The Armory was always intended to be supplemented by custom fabrication. The Data Core contained a wealth of design information to supply the colonists with an abundant and polyglot arsenal if they so chose.

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The high heat and low oxygen levels on Planet are conducive to natural carbonization. Spectrographic analysis correctly predicted that Chiron's crust had trapped large reserves of fossil fuels. The problem was one of access: the nitrate-based plant economy choked most surfaces with many feet of organic detritus that colonies needed to clear before they could access the soil.

Chiron's southern pole appealed to the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces for many reasons. The oceans on Chiron are warmer, sweeter, and much more active than those on Earth. In colder climates, the turmoil is less. In exchange for lower biodiversity in a cooler and drier environment, the Peacekeepers also faced a thinner mantle of nitrate spoilage and greatly reduced xenofungal activity. Mineral counts were also very good, while the snowpack, limited though it was, provided an easy source of water.

Ice Station Taurok supplied water to Warm Welcome and U.N. Relief Station from M.Y. 0 to M.Y. 57, when it was at last destroyed by an electrical storm and left to molder.

Base layout was simple: the central pump station was flanked by irrigated greenhouse domes. The base was mostly automated. An air defense emplacement, visible to the left, was built in M.Y. 15 to deter hostile landings. Because of its relative isolation and small, seasonal population, Taurok was considered at high risk of capture or destruction by Lal's chief adversaries at that time, the Nautilus Pirates and Dreamers of Chiron.

Picture is a base from the game Aven Colony.

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Pravin Lal at United Nations HQ, New York City, date unknown

Service Record:
Born in Dacca, East Pakistan. Father a West Pakistan Army major, frequently deployed on peacekeeping operations. Mother a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières. Studied philosophy and medicine at Aga Khan University, specializing in thoracic surgery. Volunteered at Red Crescent camp in Azad Kashmir for three years after graduation, tending primarily to victims of the Six Minute War. Later traveled extensively in North-West Frontier Province. Elected to National Assembly, serving a single term before losing heavily after criticizing Inter-Services Intelligence for its relationship with the Pakistani Taliban.

Obtained placement as a junior researcher with the World Health Organization in Basel, Switzerland exploring protein encoding for DNA repair. Signed letter of protest against Nobel Prize nomination of Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi on grounds of ethical deficiency. Leadership of protest movement elevated subject’s profile in U.N. circles. Rapidly ascended agency bureaucracy to become Chief of Staff to Thai General Secretary Apsara Mongkut. Controversial for his involvement in decision-making around U.N. peacekeeping actions in Nigeria’s Mid-Western Region (declaimed as making the U.N. “effectively an adjunct of the Federal Army” during the Second Nigerian Civil War) and again in Quebec, where U.N. forces were blamed for failure to prevent the Black Watch Killings. [1] Conspiracy theory linking U.N. inaction to the eventual success of the Front de libération du Québec prompted subject’s reassignment as Assistant Director of the WHO only weeks before Mongkut's assassination. Directly appointed Chief of Surgery, Unity Mission, by U.N. General Secretariat.

Psych Profile: Humanitarian
Preference for intellectualizing policy problems can lead to apparent contradictions in application of professed ideals. Notwithstanding subject’s leadership culpability for two decisive U.N. interventions that inspired accusations of rank partisanship, interlocutors report that subject was “maddeningly prone to seeing false equivalency” between parties to any dispute. One Canadian chargée d'affaires complained: “He always gave the FLQ an opportunity to explain why they’d committed their latest heinous crime.”

Very high esteem for democratic ideals and personal experience of life in a former British colony may explain subject’s especially negative reactions to the perceived hypocrisy of the Western powers, contrasted with tendency toward silence in regard to regimes with unbroken records of illiberal and anti-democratic behavior.

CAUTION: Subject scored abnormally low (.32) on Atherholt Trauma Function Test, indicating unsuitability for crisis leadership. Contrast with extremely positive remarks from Morgan Emergency Services instructors following simulated compartment breaches.

[1] The Black Watch Killings are a feature of a story about Quebec independence in Cold War Hot, edited by Peter G. Tsouras.

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Soviet-manufactured Landing Pod on Sunny Mesa, observed by hunter-seeker drone shortly after Planetfall. In this image, it is possible to see the landing chutes still unrecovered. Some crew wear extravehicular mobility units because they have not yet adapted to Chiron's nitrogen-rich atmosphere and ambient gravity.

Descent from Unity was violent and deadly. Rare was the pod that touched down with the same number of survivors that had gone aboard.

A Landing Pod, also called a Unity Pod, was a short-range, single-use shuttle with which to make the controlled descent from an orbiting mothership to Chiron below. Hermetically sealed and abundantly heat-shielded, the largest could ferry up to one thousand passengers in dubious comfort and complete safety. Those pods not manually launched by departing colonists were dumped by Unity’s fail-safes before it passed out of Chiron’s gravity well.

The awkward control arrangements required two pilots, one to adjust the pod's attitude and another to relay visual observations as they cleared Unity en masse.

The Pods were designed to be incorporated wholesale into the first settlement. Each was nearly ten stories tall and most of a city block wide. Standard contents included an elevated command center with 360-degree view, a mobile surgery, seed bank, medical test center, agricultural grow-racks, galleys, dormitories, machine shops, theaters, broad-band communications, a Small Modular Reactor to provide power, recycling tanks, brig, abundant office space, and water filtration plant.

Pods were lavishly equipped with on-board tools, including cranes and winches, with which to raise supporting infrastructure. The cargo bay, once cleared of supplies, became expansion space for workshop operations and a motor pool for the numerous "parasite" vehicles packed inside: a fleet of tractors, tugs, high-loaders, cranes, and other small utility runners, including a self-powered pumper cart for firefighting, half-squadron of Unity crawlers (tracked low-loaders) and a complement of earth-moving machinery such as dumpers, graders, and power shovels.

The original manufacturers of the Landing Pods carried by Unity include: Grumman Aerospace, Morgan Avionics, Union Aerospace Corporation, Imre-Meinertzhagen, NP Lavochkin, Dassault Avionics, Hindustan Aeronautics Unlimited (HAL), Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation, and Guizhou Aircraft Industry Corporation.

Picture credit to MacRebisz on DeviantArt. Picture title is "Ambition 1 Lander."

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Image of U.N.S. Unity cargo arm, taken from Hab Pod C prior to Planetfall.

Unity Cargo Pods were designed and built exclusively by Fairchild-Grumman, which in an earlier, less civilized age had acquired the nickname, “Iron Works.” Each pod, which might come in one of twelve shapes and sizes, was equipped with retro-thrusters and parachutes to safeguard its contents during re-entry, deceleration, and landing, as well as for up to a full century thereafter, with full environmental shielding and multi-band homing beacon.

Human passengers, all in cold sleep, received direct-injection of drugs to counteract the risk of stroke during high-g maneuver, such as blood thinners, anti-coagulants, and muscle relaxants. If pods landed in water, they were provided with the means to float. So hardy was their ablative shielding, Grumman executives bragged to the U.N. Mission Design Team that landing inside an active volcano would pose problems only of retrieval!

Cross-checking the ship’s master log, Master Data Librarian Terrance LaCroix confirmed that upwards of fifty thousand such pods were released, each carrying vital people, supplies, and technology for humanity’s conquest of its new homeworld.

Pods carried every cargo imaginable, from slumbering colonists to high-calorie foodstuffs, industrial firefighting equipment, building materials, hazardous chemicals, and automated mining equipment.

Picture credit to the Amazon Prime series Expanse.

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A Hive strike team fires a Gatling laser against defenders at Chiron Archives in October M.Y. 3. This still was captured by a security camera and uploaded to the Datalinks approximately one hour before University Security withdrew.

One attacker, at left, braces to aim a laser rifle (identifiable by the flash guard at the end of the barrel, which protects the shooter's vision from his own muzzle flash) while his kneeling counterpart sports the full-face helmet synonymous with Hive soldiery.

Defenders taken prisoner by the Hive were usually executed, and attackers invariably prioritized foodstuffs over virtually all other moveable property when looting, indicating that the faction struggled to feed its population in this time frame.

Lacking the professionalism of Spartan legionnaires or the motivation of Tribal Minutemen, Hive raiding parties concentrated on factions without strong martial traditions. Of the 112 attacks positively attributed to the Labyrinth by crowdsourced Datalinks analysis in M.Y. 3 and M.Y. 4, 84 targeted either the University of Planet or Gaia's Stepdaughters. Of the remaining 28, another 14 were carried out against vehicle convoys or scratch outposts as opposed to settlements or heavy fortifications.​

Picture credit to Disney's Solo: A Star Wars Story.

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Sketch of a mining engineer, c. M.Y. 10-M.Y. 20, somewhere in the vicinity of High Hide.

Large-scale mining operations had not yet commenced by the time the Unity Mission dissolved. Drawing on a deep reserve of talent, the Hunters of Chiron excavated the first subterranean works at Alhambra Pump Station no. 1 in June, MY10.

An armored carapace was necessary to guard the head, shoulders, arms, and chest against overhead rockfalls. (Unlike the human body, the various exposed hoses used by the miners on their persons or to connect to equipment were able to resume their original shape.)

This miner's helmet was crowned with sensor probes. Most monitored for indications of unfavorable atmospheric conditions that could result in flash fires, but at least one would have provided wireless connection to the Datalinks. Set in-series, the four optics feed information on the rock face to a central processing unit that prepares a digital overlay to help direct the miner's work in the optimum direction.

The pneumatic drill is presented for dramatic effect. In practice, it was operated by a crew of two.​

Picture credit to Ariel Perez. Title is "Space Miner." Image found on Pinterest.

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The Sanctuary Door at Far Jericho, M.Y. 402.

Too many mouths, too few able hands, and a lack of virtually every survival necessity encouraged more than piracy among the Lord's Conclave. In the earliest bases, real property was held in the public trust by the congregation as a whole, and traditions of communal living persisted among the Believers long after the faction achieved a modicum of self-sufficiency around M.Y. 200.

Over time, the Arahamic spirit of tithing allowed the Conclave to accumulate considerable wealth. After accounting for base operations, the remainder went toward the construction of spectacular religious architecture, monuments and houses of worship.

Sister Miriam Godwinson, the faction's founder, considered herself the matriarch of all mission survivors. In 2050, twenty-two years before Unity's departure from the Sol System, Godwinson had convened the Commission of Ecumenical Translators [1], which in addition to engaging with the Tanakh, The Holy Bible, and the Koran, processed thousands of apocryphal texts, producing the canon now contained in the Modern Vulgate Bible. Godwinson’s religious philosophy was notably syncretic. After the Vulgate, her second best-known achievement was undoubtedly the World Prayer, a recurring performance in which she led hundreds of millions of devotees worldwide in simultaneous prayer. Convinced that individuals could find their way to God through good works as well as through expressed faith, Godwinson focused her teaching on the importance of “searching for the Divine through righteous action” and downplayed the significance of exactly how differently members of her audience perceived and experienced that divine on an individual basis.

"The Conclave" was a society built in line with Godwinson's enthusiasm for faith over doctrine. "The church" was merely shorthand for a community that included faith traditions other than Christian. Nonbelievers and the casually faithful were officially welcomed in her settlements. The key to rank was service. The judges that formed Miriam's council, and, after her death, the faction's republican government, faced tests of civic accomplishment rather than of religious conviction or knowledge.

This is not to say that some did not find the Conclave backwards or even oppressive. Although Miriam forswore censorship, her intendants monitored the DataLinks and public vidcap networks tirelessly for signs of unwanted behavior, which she predictably challenged in broad strokes in her sermons. Private social feuding was also a significant problem within the faction. Miriam was constantly fighting rear-guard actions against so-called Old Believers, although their influence was inherently limited by the inherent religious and cultural heterogeneity of the survivors themselves.

[1] The Commission of Ecumenical Translators appears in Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Picture credit to Zemskiss on Polycount.

[Trenacker]

A Special Operations Team returns to White Rabbit's Refuge following a successful scout. On this occasion, they had recovered a Colony Pod containing parts for a large research instrument of obvious interest to the faction's scientists.

Yellow shoulder flashes indicate that the men in this image were part of the Directed Outcomes private security contingent retained personally by Roshann Cobb in his capacity as a factor of Struan's Pacific Trading Company. These seasoned mercenaries gave Cobb and his partner, Aleigha Cohen, a potent offensive capability. Raids by Directed Outcomes were so successful that the Hive scrupulously abstained from acts of violence against Dreamers or their property.

Note the navy flak vests worn by the troopers in this vidcap. Protective clothing was a highly sought-after commodity on Chiron. As it happened, the New State and the Spartans accounted for most of the militarily useful gear carried in Unity's armory before Planetfall. Struan's had the foresight to bring their own.​

Picture credit to Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.