Colony
The different races on the planet could agree on one central tenet of colonization. Life is a forge.
The bellows are the ebb and flow of hardship, the hammer is adversity and the tongs are hunger. The coals are the planet surface. The forge of life makes men and women into hardened steel or withers them to ash.
It was the 634th planet to be colonized by humans. It was the thirtieth for the Clairnedds, the fifty-first for the Sharkans, and somewhere in the millions for the Koranders. It was one of the only marbles to be colonized by all four races.
They all realized that any kind of warfare would be a waste of resources at this point. There would be time enough for that when their borders nestled up against one another.
They picked points equidistant from each other along the equator and started excavating.
Pressurized camps spread slowly out along the surface, dotting the nightside of the blue planet with two or three clusters of colonist lights.
Tubes of atmosphere connected the small number of buildings in each lonely colony, like in the hamster mazes that the human children were given. Terraforming entire atmospheres was a costly enterprise and uncommon. This was to be a refueling and repair stop, not a pleasure planet.
It would be generations before the four races would run into each other. They didn’t even communicate with each other. They just waited and watched for the inevitable conflict.
These were the peaceful years.
tags
The bellows are the ebb and flow of hardship, the hammer is adversity and the tongs are hunger. The coals are the planet surface. The forge of life makes men and women into hardened steel or withers them to ash.
It was the 634th planet to be colonized by humans. It was the thirtieth for the Clairnedds, the fifty-first for the Sharkans, and somewhere in the millions for the Koranders. It was one of the only marbles to be colonized by all four races.
They all realized that any kind of warfare would be a waste of resources at this point. There would be time enough for that when their borders nestled up against one another.
They picked points equidistant from each other along the equator and started excavating.
Pressurized camps spread slowly out along the surface, dotting the nightside of the blue planet with two or three clusters of colonist lights.
Tubes of atmosphere connected the small number of buildings in each lonely colony, like in the hamster mazes that the human children were given. Terraforming entire atmospheres was a costly enterprise and uncommon. This was to be a refueling and repair stop, not a pleasure planet.
It would be generations before the four races would run into each other. They didn’t even communicate with each other. They just waited and watched for the inevitable conflict.
These were the peaceful years.
tags