Part 2
From the last years of the 23rd
century, the Solar
Republic first
flourished, then became increasingly decadent until power was seized by Emperor
Vasili Upchenko, in 2320, who disbanded ISPaG and instituted his own secret
police instead.
2320-2380 The Vasilid Emperors
Vasili 2320-2342 able and unscrupulous
Grigori 2342-2344 his son, a buffoon
Vasilica 2344-2370 Grigori’s
sister, probably assassinated her brother, able and ruthless
Dmitri 2370-2380 Vasilica’s son, unable to sire children and
left the empire to his chief minister, Jie Lee
2370 The unified partical theory proven [Sponsored by Emperess
Vasilica, who lived just long enough to see the announcement.] This permits the manipulation of quarks, and
the quark-drive is postulated, in which ships may be converted to emulate
quarks, to jump out of, and back into normal space. Theories are postulated that several energy
levels, ie jump distances, might be possible.
2380 -2410
The Lee Emperors
Jie Lee 2380-2409 a clever man,
who threw the imperial resources into developing quark drive, leading to a
working model by the end of his reign.
Ming Lee, 2409 - 2410 his son, a
megalomaniac who doesn’t care about anything but pleasure and turning the
resources of the empire to that end.
2400 the misjumping quark ship from an alien nation arrives near
Mars gives the final answers to cracking the problem, though the alien ship is
three times more powerful than the human ship prototypes, which have managed to
reach Barnard’s star and back but have had the odd problem on return hitherto.
The aliens, all dead, are
superficially leonine in appearance, and are dubbed the Leonids. Their star maps enable scientists to
postulate where they come from, though the language is too alien to read.
2410 Ming Lee is assassinated by a courtier, Courtney Liang, who promptly declares a
republic. Liang is elected as president
and is then arrested and tried for murder.
Nobody wants a Liang dynasty, and re-elections are held, won by Ngaire
Potter, an unknown New Zealander, who wins on the grounds that nobody has heard
of her so she is inoffensive. Potter
moves to Mars and endorses the growth of exploration to relieve overcrowded
earth, where the forcible cessation of wars has resulted in a high population.
The big corporations have a lot
of say in the running of things, which Potter tries to curtail, but when shown
that manufactured evidence could get her impeached for crimes she has not
committed, she bitterly capitulates and settles down to do what good she can.
The big 5 corps at this point
are:
Hondasaki
Maccola
SDE [the name behind the acronym
has been forgotten]
Duvallier Ag
Energy Solutions.
2410-2460 with the boost of the alien ship, the Republic grows to
cover several star systems. No amount of
experimentation will, however, permit the passage of messages from one place to
another using quark technology; only the quark ships, which take an average of
150 hours to travel, regardless of the distance[within the maximum distance the
drive permitted. Quark-2 is twice the
distance of Quark 1, but takes as long to cover, and any quark drive can jump
smaller distances than their maximum but it still takes 150 hours]. Speed of communication is the same as the
speed of travel, as in the days of sailing ships.
Other technologies are pursued;
genetic engineering is used to uplift big cats to full sentience, and trained
as ambassadors, in the hopes of making the Leonid aliens more comfortable; and
wolf/husky crosses are uplifted and trained as warriors in case embassies
fail. A scouting service is set up,
officially the Pioneers, but more often known as Exclacol, being the arm to
explore, classify and colonise.
Having prepared to meet aliens,
the first live aliens met are the ‘wrong’ ones. The Exclacol ship responsible, the ‘Laura
Ingalls’ met up with a race quickly dubbed the ‘Gecks’ since intership
communication showed faces that loosely resembled Earth geckos, at least to
people who had never set foot on Earth.
These aliens called them selves the Duwab, and had a translator program
that allowed some basic communication by showing pictures and asking for words
for them. Hasty communication became
necessary, since this group of Duwab were fugitives, fleeing the Leonids, whose
slave-race the Duwab were. David Ionescu,
the captain of the Laura Ingalls invited them aboard his ship, when it became
apparent that the so-called ‘Gecks’ more nearly resembled the extinct
caelophysis than geckos, but by then the
crew were too used to calling them Gecks, and the name stuck.
The Duwab acted as bureaucrats
for the Leonids, whose name for themselves was Hawraa. The half dozen Duwab begged asylum, which was
granted, as the Hawraa ship burst out of quarkspace and opened fire without any
attempt to assess the situation or open negotiations. It was held later in a court of enquiry that
Captain Ionescu had no choice but to fight back with all means at his disposal.
The means at his disposal turned
out to be the smaller ship the Duwab had brought, which was damaged in any case,
as they had been hit by Hawraa weaponry at the previous quark exit, and were
lucky not to have misquarked.
Captain Ionescu, who was a very
fine computer hacker, managed to persuade the Duwabs’ ship remotely to ram the
Hawraa pursuit craft. The Hawraa had
much superior weaponry, but the human crew had better computing skills.
Nevertheless, the Hawraa ship limped away, and war became inevitable. System defences were strengthened, including
redesigning the instruments for lighting gas giants. One of the Duwab volunteered to take a ship
back as the Hawraa could not tell one
Duwab from another, and spread word to his fellows that they had an ally. Having their bureacracy against the Hawraa
was the real reason the Solar forces overcame them.
2541 after 80 odd years of desultory fighting, peace is declared,
as the Hawraa are forced to sue for peace.
Part of the conditions of surrender is that the Duwab should be freed to
pursue their own lives. Their home world
was overrun by Hawraa, and even though the treaty handed it back to them, it
was inside Hawraa territory. The Duwab
were happy to relocate to various parts of what the Hawraa called the Human
Empire, offering their services as bureaucrats.
They refused to stand for office, however, since they did not understand
leadership. As a species they are
intensely co-operative with those working for the good of the Nest, but do not
require direction to give their best efforts.
As a direct result of the Duwab
gaining independence, the uplifted canines used as troops, usually known as
Lupes, also petitioned for independence
on the grounds that if not granted it, they were a slave race and humans no
better than Hawraa. This was
unanswerable, and they were given their own colony and help to expand. They call themselves the Rauf.
The uplifted felines did not see
why they should have to have a colony world and run their own affairs when life
in the Solar Sphere was comfortable and civilised, so long as they might have
full equal rights with humans. Individuals
have no problems with taking office, and some have done so. They had been known as the Feles, and kept
the name as there was no point changing it. They bristle and spit if called to
their face what some people think of them as, the Kittehs.
It was the Duwab named Lebweffun
who suggested that with a number of different races, and an increasing number
of systems, it made sense to change the
name of the Solar Republic to the Republic of Minds,
the closest she could get to a name covering those of sentience that did not
offend too many people.
The Hawraa still call it the
Human Empire.
