"Large scale," in this case, meant twenty-five thousand colonists in cryogenic suspension or "deep sleep." Future ships would be larger, approximately twice as large, but—give the imperialist, revanchionist, capitalist, war-mongering, fascist American beasts their due—twenty-five thousand was a nice start. Besides, since the ship was going to be available for lease long before any Euro ship could be expected to be, the bureaucrats who ran the EU had every expectation that it could be, and would be, used to eliminate some of their excess and unwanted population.
* * *
Oliver Rogers' flintlock was safely stowed with the baggage. There were better weapons available for those leaving Earth, but none that he could be sure of feeding with ammunition or keeping in repair, on the new world. His animals—one bull, three heifers, two horses, five goats, seven sheep, half a dozen domesticated turkeys, two dozen chickens and a rooster, and two hundred and fourteen embryos, not counting eggs—had already gone up and been put under. Spare arms were up there too, for when his sons grew to manhood.
Rogers' three wives, two of them officially unofficial, and eleven children would go up with him. Perhaps more importantly, from the point of view of the charity that had paid for Rogers' rather extended family's extended trip, along with all those goats and chickens and whatnot would go an eventual fifteen conservative voters (more, really, as all three wives were quite young and very fertile). It was a bargain, from some points of view, even counting shipping their minimal household goods from Idaho to Florida.
"Oh, God, I'm scared, Ollie," said wife number one, Gertrude, as she leaned against her shared husband's arm. "I've never even flown before and now—"
"I know, Gertie," Rogers said, "I know. It's not easy to pick up and leave our roots. But our ancestors have been doing just that for four hundred years or more. A lot more if you count how they got to Europe in the first place, before they came here. It's worked out well enough, so far. And God will watch over his own."
"They used to say that God watches out for fools, drunkards and the United States, too," Gertie objected. "But he's turned his back on the USA."
"And so are we," said Rogers. "Especially since the Senate ratified the Gag Treaty and the President signed it. That was when the United States turned its back on us."
Whatever Gertie was about to say in reply was drowned out by the scream of Shuttle 11 coming in for a landing to board the colonists and take them to a new world and a new life.
Chapter Two
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains . . .
—Kipling, The Young British Soldier
24/8/466 AC, Isla Real, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
A solar chimney dominated the island's skyline, rising several hundred meters above its highest elevation, the otherwise unnamed Hill 287. From the base of that chimney, a thick tube of reinforced concrete, ran an extension northward, toward the equator, along the side of the hill. This ended at one of the three largest greenhouses on the planet, the other two also being the foundations for solar chimneys. Fixed mirrors, sighted to reflect the maximum amount of sunlight into the greenhouse with the least expense and for the least effort, sparkled on the hillside.
The greenhouse contained air heated by the local sun. The air escaped along the tube that ran along the ground and up the hill before making its final exit at the top of the chimney. Along the way, the wind thus created turned turbines that produced the electricity needed for the island's twenty-one thousand legionary personnel and their families plus those of the thirteen thousand legionaries deployed to the war. Intended, eventually, to provide electricity almost twice that many, the chimney operated at less than half capacity.
There was probably money to be made in connecting the island's own electrical grid to the larger grid of the host country, the Republic of Balboa. Moreover, there had in the past been murmurings from the mainland about forcing the owners of the island, the Legion del Cid, to do just that. The response of the Legion, having several times the coercive power of the Republic, to the idea of being forced into anything was silence containing a heavy admixture of wry contempt.
Still, in a spirit of "one enemy at a time," the Legion had instead constructed another solar chimney on the mainland, one which it continued to own and the electricity from which it sold. There were plans for a third and fourth, and vague interest in building a fifth through fifteenth, though these would really be more than the largely agrarian Republic needed. Still, one never knew when a couple of extra terawatts might come in handy.
On the other hand, at nearly seven hundred million FSD, Federated States drachma, each, solar chimneys were not cheap. Even with the money saved by running significant portions of the chimney along the ground and up mountains, the cost remained very high. It was especially high in land as individual Balboan landholders parted with their patrimony most reluctantly. After that initial capital investment, however, fairly abundant electricity, in the range of two hundred megawatts per tower, was available more or less continuously for no more than the price of occasionally replaced turbines, and the personnel who oversaw them and kept the jungle at bay.
Contemplating from his office window the vapor cloud at the top of the island's chimney, Patricio Carrera wondered if the effort and expense were worth it. On the other hand, what price is too high to be free of energy blackmail by the Salafis?
Toward that end, the Legion had also funded, and made some profit on, a number of thermal depolymerization plants about the Republic. These took waste—mostly agricultural waste but also human sewage and even old tires—and converted it into oil at a rate of about two and a half to three barrels per ton from the best feedstock. Not every stock was of the best, however. The average yield was much less. Even so, the TDP plants, too, had gone a long way toward getting the Legion's host, Balboa, out from under the Salafi thumb.
And that is always worth doing, Carrera thought with satisfaction. And even if Sada—no Salafi, he—were able to supply us with oil someday, the supply would still be in other's hands. Though, I suppose, with us taking whatever sewage and garbage can be shipped in from some of the larger cities of South Columbia and Colombia del Norte, our supply is still partially not in our own hands.
Carrera, once known as Hennessey, had aged much more than the seven years that had passed since his family's murder in the great terrorist attacks that had begun this war. Hair once black had gone mostly gray. The sun and wind and rain had begun turning his face a tough leathery brown. Only the eyes, a bright and clear blue like the sky on a cloudless summer day, remained youthful, and even those were framed by crows' feet at the corners.
The intercom on his desk buzzed. "Tribune Esterhazy is here, Duque," announced Carrera's aide de camp.
"Send him in," said Carrera, looking up at the heavy, locally manufactured, mahogany door to his office. The door had been ornately hand-carved with military scenes at a factory, the Fabrica Hertzog, a couple of hundred miles up the coast and a bit inland. There was a contract between the Legion and the factory for a certain number of discharged legionaries to be apprenticed there, with the Legion picking up the tab of their training. The door had been made by these apprentices.