Terraforming: techniques whereby an extrasolar planet is rendered more habitable for humans and/or other Terran life. Prior to the discovery of the Alderson Drive (q.v.), terraforming referred primarily to hypothetical projects to render planets such as Mars and Venus inhabitable. While technically practical, the discovery of worlds with oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres and carbon-based life cycles has made such endeavors non-cost-effective. Habitable planets have proven to be relatively common, and the basic similarities in their biologies—e.g. the prevalence of close analogs to DNA—has given considerable support to the 'panspermia' hypothesis that the basic building-blocks of life are introduced from space, where complex hydrocarbons and amino acids are formed spontaneously. Differences in detail, for example the "handedness" of sugars or, less seriously, the presence or absence of various vitamins, pose severe problems to human colonization. A random introduction of Earth bacteria, plant life and simple animals is an excellent trial indicator of the suitability of a roughly Earthlike world for human settlement.
As a general rule, the less advanced the ecology, the easier the introduction of Terran forms will be. On Tanith (q.v.), which contrary to surface appearances is in a post-Miocene, post-mammalian stage of evolutionary progress, only intensive protection by man allows any Terran plant or animal life to survive at all. The native species are simply more efficient. Most oxygen-atmosphere planets are less formidable, and selective introduction of higher animals is possible once the native ecosystems are disorganized by human activities. Most favorable of all are worlds like Meiji (q.v.), Xanadu (q.v.), or Churchill (q.v.), where the native ecologies are notably simpler than the Terran; here the introduced forms, with some simple genetic engineering to compensate for factors such as differences in length of year, often replace the local life-forms spontaneously.
An extreme example is Sparta, (q.v.), where the relative youth of the planet and the great rapidity of continental formation and subsidence meant that the local ecology had barely begun to colonize the landmasses at all. Faced with an entire planet of virgin ecological niches, the introduced plants and animals exploded across the continent, completely replacing the meager native species (analogs of mosses, lichens and ferns, with some amphibious insects) almost overnight. In turn, the introduced species have engaged in complex and fluctuating interactions as plant-herbivore-predator associations are worked out to fit the patterns of a world never quite like Earth. A stable ecology may take millennia to form. . . .
"Excellent," Dion Croser said, lighting his pipe. Thank god the geneticists got the gunk out of tobacco, he thought absently. Greatest aid to concentration ever invented. "Excellent work." He was a tall man, 180 centimeters, rangily athletic; his face was mostly Anglo-aquiline, and the eyes were blue. Their slant and the high cheekbones were a legacy from a California-nisei mother, but Croser was Sparta-born, the second generation after the Founding. "Particularly getting someone inside the Legion's Intelligence service.
"Not a high-ranking source; and our contacts through the Royalist secret service indicate the double agent may be under suspicion already. We are developing plans to replace this agent, and to extract maximum asset-value in the meantime."
The man sitting across from him in his study did not look much like Kenjiro Murasaki, head of Special Tasks Inc., of New Osaka; more like an American of mestizo background, if anything. But then, he had seen Murasaki in his own persona only once—if that. A knight of ghosts and shadows indeed, Croser thought. Mercenary technoninja, an ironic ally for the Non-Citizen's Liberation Front. Politics made strange bedfellows, and Bronson's money even stranger ones.
"Still, we've gained valuable information already," he said aloud.
Kenjiro made an expansive gesture; even his body-language had changed with the disguise. "Largely a confirmation of material from other sources, Capital Prime," he said. "We are still working on cracking the control codes for the computers of the Legion itself; even that will be of limited utility, since they are ROM-programmed. Best to proceed very cautiously, very cautiously indeed. Our probes have positively identified CoDominium Intelligence security and counter viral systems, Fleet HQ level. Excellent work, if unsubtle; BuInt has been keeping many of the people they 'disappeared' over the past century working in their own research institutes."
"Certainly," Croser said. "Well, Earth Prime was right, they are working hand-in-glove with Lermontov. Damn the CD anyway."
Once the Democratic Republic's established, I have to get a priority effort going on computers. We can't depend on foreigners. He glanced up, into the mask of North American affability that Murasaki was wearing. And I'm uneasy at the extent I depend on this one already, he mused. Meijians had a reputation for fanatic loyalty to their employers. But Bronson—Earth Prime—is the employer here, and what does the Senator really want?
Murasaki inclined his head. "Even so, Earth Prime is not without influence on the CoDominium. More may come of that. As for now, Capital Prime, I would recommend certain selective assassinations."
Croser frowned. "I thought you'd started on the regional governments?"
"Yes. I was referring to key personnel in the upper structures of the enemy."
"Not the kings, I hope?" That would be a little too much, at this point. For that matter, he intended to exile rather than execute them, after he won.
"No." Murasaki spread his hands. "David I is a very competent administrator and economist, but is emotionally incapable of adjusting to harsh conflict. We would not wish him replaced. As for Alexander—" a thin smile "—he is still too popular and trusted, among many non-Citizens as well. Removal would be counterproductive. His judgment is still uncertain" —the news of the viral psychopoisoning of the King had come out some time ago— "and Prince Lysander is alarmingly capable, and has a wide following among the young. A heroic soldier-king is not our need at this point. No, I was referring to technical personnel; the Royalist government's mobilization is proving alarmingly effective."
"Agreed," Croser sighed, rubbing thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose. I wonder if the fear aroused by Alexander's poisoning was worth the anger? "Try to be a little less sloppy than you were with the Arrnstrongs, won't you?"
He had felt a little sick, when the pictures came in. Oh, Senator Steven Armstrong was a bull-headed reactionary of the worst sort—typical new-money greed and pushiness—but Alicia had been charming. It was a pity about the children, as well. Wife, children and hard-won ship all destroyed in an afternoon; it was no wonder the man had gone crazy.
Murasaki's bow was slightly out of the character he was playing. "Still, Capital Prime, Armstrong's Secret Citizen's Army has been of immense value to us," he pointed out.
"Feh," Croser said, using a pipe cleaner to tamp down the tobacco. "Mad dogs, the lot of them, even if they are throwing more and more of the non-Citizens our way."
Two more bombings this week, one of a group of transportees just off the shuttle and heading for the CoDo enclave, the other of a meeting of the new Migrant Farmworker's Union, the first all-non-Citizen labor organization. Armstrong's group was mad with fear and hate, but their actions might as well have been dictated from Movement headquarters.
"We'll have to dispose of them all, first thing after we take over," he said. Actually, there are an uncomfortable number of people to be disposed of. I should take some time to think about this; granted you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, no point in beheading the chicken. He could not govern Sparta without some of the old ruling class. "Still, they help our recruiting considerably. Beautiful symmetry." He grinned. "'See, the Royalists have their extremists too, and they can't control them any more than the NCLF can the Helots.' By the way," he added, reminded. "Field Prime says that she needs more of your people if they're going to get things rolling again after the Dales campaign."
The Meijian bowed again. "We sacrificed a number of assets," he said judiciously. "But an early breaking of the myth of Citizen invincibility is some compensation. Granted that the Royalists held the field, we demonstrated that our troops could fight the Royal Army."
"Well, the dice rolled that way. Could have been much better, could have been much worse." Sitting by the receiver during those crucial hours had aged him a year. Unbelievable exultation, when it looked like the mercenaries and the Royal forces had walked into a trap, then the savage disappointment of seeing it close on his own people instead. The combat experience of Falkenberg's people had been enough to offset Murasaki's penetration of the Royalist intelligence computers.
"My next political move," he went on, "is a direct assault on the legitimacy of the Royalist government. Best to get it done before they proscribe the NCLF and me, personally; that's coming, although we'll fight to delay it. Here's how the open and clandestine wings can help—"
"Don't you have to be at the meeting, Lynn?" Melissa von Alderheim said.
"No, they've put it off until tomorrow," Prince Lysander replied to his fiancee; loudly, as the noise from the factory floor was fairly heavy, even up here in the control booth. "They've brought in some political analyst from Earth that Falkenberg's people think will get to the bottom of our problems; he'll be addressing the War Cabinet."
This was the new von Alderheim works, barely a decade old and on a greenfleld site on the southeastern fringe of the city, with its own dock on Constitution Bay. From this station they could see out over the huge machine-littered concrete bay of Assembly Hall Three. The vehicles were moving down the length of it on wheeled pallets guided by the central Works computer, stopping at each team station while groups of overalled machinists swarmed around it. Overhead trolleys lowered sheets and components, welding torches flashed, pneumatic tools shrilled. The air was full of a low electric hum, the smell of ozone and oil and hot metal.
All like something out of a historical documentary on the First Industrial Revolution, Lysander thought wryly. Something to be proud of, nonetheless. Most worlds had a thin scattering of modern equipment over a mass of hand-tools. He extended an arm around Melissa's waist as she came to stand beside him; she was wearing overalls too, but the contents were very pleasant.
"Lynn!" she said, in mock protest, as his hand wandered slightly. "Not here!"
"We've got to stop meeting like this, then," he said, straight-faced. "People will begin to suspect, if we keep traveling to the same factories." They had been friends from childhood, their eventual marriage an understood thing. Lately it had been something he looked forward to more and more. Melissa's not just smart and pretty, she's a real friend, and someone who wants the same things I do.
"Forgotten your hotel girl?"
"Yes."
"I don't believe you."
"Melissa—"
"It's all right. It's nice that you say it. And we have our duties." Suddenly she was all business. "I have a surprise for you."
"Pleasant, I hope."
"The war isn't going well."
"Depends on what you mean by well. We're not losing." He waved expressively at the factory. "But we're putting effort into the war that ought to go into building civilization."
"Have you thought of negotiation with—with Croser?"
"Sure," Lysander said. "All he wants is for us to dismantle everything that brought us here. Build a welfare state and all that implies. No thanks. But the worst of it is, I think we're just a sideshow," Lysander said.
"Sideshow?"
"Something like that. The real war is political, and it's being fought in the Grand Senate. If the CoDominium would help us—hell, just stop helping the God damned enemy!—we'd end this damned war and get on with our lives. Including our wedding."
"It's bad, then."
He grimaced. "Bad and getting worse," he said. "The enemy can move faster through the Dales than we can down in the lowlands, and they're starting to stick their heads out again. Nothing decisive, but they're killing ranchers— We've got to move faster and hit harder, or there won't be a ranch standing within a day's ride of the hills come summer."
"Well then, come see the present I've made for you," she said, leading him down another staircase into Bay Six, past a bank of humming fabrication machines. "We made, I helped."
He spared the machines a glance. Smooth man-high shapes, with nothing on the exterior but a console, screen and the ingress and egress ports. Put your metal in one end, program, and any possible shape came out the other, formed by everything from powder-deposition to an ultrasonic beam, untouched by human hands. Earth-made by Hyundai, bought forth or fifth-hand, and still representing an investment so huge that the Finance Ministry had had to handle it. Here they were the tiny heart of the great plant; making machines to make machine tools that human operators could use to do the actual production work. Some day . . . Some day Sparta would have real factories, robot-run.
They went through a big sheet-metal door with two armed company guards. Inside white-coated technicians were working around an armored vehicle, with parts of several more nearby. "Here it is!" Melissa said. "Behold: the Cataphract." She stood to one side and clapped; there were good-natured cheers from the technicians doing the final testing.
"Your Highness, Miss von Alderheim." A bow from the chief engineer.
"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Azziz," Lysander said absently. Suddenly even the woman at his side receded from consciousness for a moment as he looked at the sleek gray-green bulk of the machine before him. "I didn't think you could actually come up with a tank worth building," he said.
"More of a light armored gun system, sir," the engineer demurred; his swarthy face split with the smile of a professional who sees a difficult problem solved. "We're just not up to cermet composites, and no realistic thickness of steel is much use. Miss here did it, on that CAD-CAM machine over at the University."
Melissa made a dismissive gesture. "Just playing with the program," she said, blushing. "Thank Andre Charbonneau."
"Charbonneau?" Lysander said.
He knew the name, a French materials engineer arrested for illegal research and sentenced to transportation by BuInt thirty years ago. The Frenchman had been lucky enough to be sent to Sparta, and had been a fixture of the von Alderheim industrial empire for two decades. The single-crystal iron-chrome alloy he had developed was one of Sparta's few really cutting edge products and a staple export.
The new vehicle was a box about six and a half meters long and three and a quarter wide, no more than two and a half tall, sharply sloped in the front and sides. Suspension was on broad treads with seven road wheels and drive sprockets at the front; the wedge-fronted turret mounted towards the rear of the hull carried along cannon and coaxial machine gun.
"The armor's a sandwich," Azziz said, slapping it affectionately. "Twenty mm of steel, then a layer of interwoven Nemourlon and iron-chrome thread in insulac, then another 20mm of steel. With this on top." He held up a square of some hard glossy material, on a sheet-metal backing. "High-stability explosive. Fire a shaped-charge warhead at it, and it explodes and disrupts the plasma jet. Old Dayan idea."
"From Earth, really," Melissa said, smiling indulgently at the enthusiasm of the men. "But I dug it out of a big load of datadump we bought as part of a job-lot from them with those used shuttles."
Azziz nodded and dropped the plate of explosive casually to the deck of the Cataphract.
"Whole thing is bulkier than cermet, and gives about 75% of the protection for the same weight," he said. "It'll stop most light antitank weapons if they hit on the frontal slope. Thirty tons total weight; the track's woven Charbonneau thread again, with inset tungsten cleats, the suspension's hydrogas units taken from our heavy mining truck, and the engine likewise—seven hundred horse-power turbocharged diesel, top speed of 80 kph and a range of 700 klicks. Three versions, this one with the rapid-fire 76mm gun, one with a 125mm rocket howitzer, beam-guidance, and an infantry fighting-vehicle.
"Nothing but basic four-way stabilization on the weapons and a laser range finder, I'm afraid," he continued, with gathering excitement. "But if we could get modern electronics and sensor kits to upgrade them, I swear there'd be a big export market. Not quite as effective as the stuff North American Motors or Daimlerwerk Friedland AG put out, but a lot cheaper—a fifth the cost, and hell of a damn sight easier to maintain on a nonindustrial planet."
"Toys for the boys," Melissa said. At their surprised glances: "It's just machinery to me, Lynn. I don't get that, ah, sensual satisfaction from it. We've done up a set of duplicate jigs, by the way, for the plant in Olynthos, and we're starting series production immediately. We can—"
Whunnnnng. The explosion seemed to go on forever, vibrating from the pressed-metal internal partitions and off the high ceiling of the plant.
"Where was that, where was that?" Lysander barked, hand clearing the sidearm he was wearing with his undress grays. Nobody was down, nothing burning. But close. The communicator on his belt squawked:
"On the way. Prince!" Harv, with the headquarters reaction squad. Thank God I let him talk me into bringing them, Lysander thought.
The technicians had taken cover; an alarm klaxon was blaring. Melissa had vanished. A moment's panic, before he saw her head emerge from the Cataphract's turret. Smart girl. Probably the safest place in miles. The prince cocked his head; his ears were still ringing, but he knew where those screams were coming from. Azziz was at his side, one hand clutching a piece of steel bar stock.
"Stay back, man," Lysander snapped.
"Stay back, hell," the engineer said, although he did drop behind a little. "I didn't sell everything I owned on Earth and move here to lose it all to convict scum."
They dodged through the door to the next bay. "My God!" Azziz exclaimed in horror.
Lysander did not think the emotion was for the two workers lying on the ground; Harv's reaction squad was there, spreading out to search and giving first aid to the wounded. The object of the engineer's attention was the first of the four Hyundai fabricators. The exterior telltales had gone dead, and one side of the boron-fiber outer sheathing was bulged and blackened.
"Ruined!" he screamed, slapping his hands to his head. "Two million CD credits and a year's shipping time, and it's ruined."
His piece of bar stock clattered to the floor as he rushed over to the machine. Harv rose from beside one of the wounded technicians and went over to a robot trolley stacked with sections of 75mm steel-alloy square beams, bent to examine them and lifted the end of one, then another.
"Think I've found it, sir," he said, saluting. "Quick work, Sergeant," he replied. Harv Middleton, body guard and Phraetrie-brother, would never qualify for a commission, but then he wouldn't want one. All he wanted was to stay close to his Prince.
"Sabotage, Prince. The operator there, he said he and his buddy came round and fed the square steel billets there into the machine every half-hour or so, and saw that the bin of parts moved off."
Lysander walked over and looked at one of the neighboring fabricators. There was a feed-arm that gripped the raw stock, with an automatically adjusting chuck to hold it while the interior mechanisms got a firm grip.
"They had a fresh trolley here. They put the first one in, turned away to check on the finished parts, and just when they walked around behind it blew. Must be something in the steel, sir."
"Probably," the Prince agreed grimly. His sidearm was still in his hand; he slapped it back into the holster with a sense of angry futility. "Cordon it off, until the Milice get here. Don't disturb the site, the forensic experts will want it that way." Probably was the bars, he thought. Which either came from the smelter right here, or down from Olynthos on a barge. The barge, I'd bet; thousands of klicks of opportunity to substitute.
"Sorry to spoil your furlough, Sergeant," he continued.
Harv smiled broadly and tapped the butt of the rifle slung over his shoulder. "We were figuring on doing a night-patrol exercise around your hunting lodge," he said. "To see that you and Miss weren't disturbed, sort of."
"That won't be necessary; we won't be using the cottage," Lysander said flatly "Neither of us will be leaving the Palace."
The NCO's face fell slightly. Lysander forced a smile and clapped him on the shoulder; Harv could be a bit of a trial sometimes, but he was a good man and a Brother.
"Visit your own girlfriend, Sergeant," he said.
"Which one?" Harv said, returning the smile. Then he looked to his men: "Excuse me, sir?"
The officer nodded, turned and walked back through the doors, brushing aside the crowd of frightened technicians and their questions. Melissa was sitting on the side of the Cataphract, waiting.
"Bad?" she said.
"Two men injured," Lysander replied. "One of the Hyundai's is wrecked."
She winced. "That is bad." He explained, and she shook her head ruefully.
"Don't tell me we're going to have to inspect every shipment of raw stock!"
"I'm afraid so," he said. Softly: "I'm afraid it's too risky for us to visit the Theramenes. Personally, the Palace will do me quite well, and to hell with appearances." He held out his hand.