Colony.



Socially it is a group of people who have broken or will break from an already established society.

Politically is an entity presided over if not directly funded by a state or province.

Economically it is an thing which strives for independence.

Colonists.



Socially they are the firmament.

Politically they foremost.

Economically they are fundamental.

Throughout the history of man and his relentless exploration, his dauntless expeditions in to the unknown there have been countless colonies spread among the stars on planets near and far. Over time some thrived and rose to eminence becoming the now well know metropolis' of the galaxy while others failed to achieve independence.

The Colonies.

In the galaxy today there still existed many but when spoken the phrase tended to put one in mind of that region of space that had long ago been the chief area of human expansion. Today known commonly as the Imperial Center Oversector, it had in past years been called by a number of names but had always included important worlds like Balmorra, Fondor, and Commonor just to name a few. This rough sphere sat between Inner Rim and Core worlds and had seen the species of the known galaxy explore the deepest in to it but, in the parlance of the common day, any person mistaking the occupants of this region for colonists could be forgiven his ignorance in this time of stagnated human expansion.

Still there remained those few true colonies that even now struggled to find their place in a rapidly shrinking galaxy. The people of Gestalt were among those who remained dedicated to their own expansion but, generally isolationist as they tended to be, had relegated their own colonial expansion to their own star-system and neighboring space.

They had successfully established three sizable colonies of note and continued to develop within their star system at an alarming rate. Gestalt I, the first of their projects, had blossomed in to something spectacular which every man, woman, and child could be proud of. It was the center of their society, a planet named for its people, and host to the single largest settlement within the colonies themselves. If Gestalt I had been the body of their manifestation then the Seven Cities Area was their heart, their soul.

Beyond their homeworld the people of Gestalt had constructed a great many wonders among which stood David Colony and The Ring. Respectively the core of their culture, the source of their enlightenment and the single largest contributor of raw assets these two colonies stood separate from one another but inexorably interdependent on each other.

And then there were the various others...

Scattered throughout their territory were handfuls of smaller, less notable elements that themselves were integral parts of the greater whole. These included the military garrison and trade junction located at the terminus of the Kashan-Gestalt route, as well as those similar installments located at the edge of the system near the single jump-point that connected them to the rest of the galaxy by way of the Corellian Trade Spine and the Hydian Way. Also included were Camp Mar-Veil and Lucerne Academy; both dedicated to the military tradition and large enough to warrant mentions of their own. One could not forget, in a verbal tour of the Colonies, to mention the monstrous constructs of Far-Point Colony and New Kashan as doing so would discount a sizable economic investment of the Colonial peoples and were themselves ever emerging as key locations both physically and socially.

In their short history the people of the Gestalt Colonies had come a long way. They had spread themselves throughout their territory, they had constructed great triumphs and accomplished many great feats on the road to...

... on the road.

And that defined a part of the Gestalt ambition which was not popular among the people but had become the pervasive factor none-the-less. They raced headlong towards a fate they knew not themselves though the hoped that as time wore on it would be theirs to shape.

So far, they had been right.


*

Now...

He was the man responsible.

When it came right down to it, brass tax and bare bones, he was the one who had to answer for it, for everything.

The buck, as they said, stopped here.

It stopped with Lance Shipwright, Vice Commodore of the Gestalt Colonies.

This was all his fault.


*


Six Months Earlier...

An article in the days paper read;

Science Directorate Discovers New Planet
By Jean Deau

It was confirmed today by the Science Directorate that they have discovered a new planetary body on the extreme edge of our star-system beyond the cloud of celestial debris spacers call the Oort cloud which are common to most primary star-systems. The Science Directorate is a joint body composed of members of the civilian science authorities based on David Colony and the military deep-system Research & Development arm responsible for all extra-planetary phenomenon and were the first official body to make contact with the planet.

The planet is being called Lancia. Lancia is a small planet not capable of supporting life. It is a planet of extreme cold due to the fact that the Oort cloud in tandem with its extreme distance from Gestalt mean it gets almost no light. Lancia is an environmentally foreboding planet but it is extremely rich in anthracrite and quadranium…(cont/edited)

The Colonization Commission has already approached the Office of Minister Ramos to approve plans to establish a mining colony there as soon as possible. It is very likely that the Commission will receive approval within the week…(cont/edited)


Three Months Earlier...

Resplendent in their finery stood the powers that be.

Upon the podium were the most important members of the Gestalt leadership; Lance Shipwright stood to the center of the assembly while Colonial Mister Ramos stood to his immediate left leaving the ominous military figure, Admiral Mar-Veil, looming off to his right. The High Cardinal was present and as usual surrounded by a cadre of his highest advisors, followers of The Way of David. Even the heroes of the Colonies had been called to attendance and Captain d'Foose stood foremost among them.

The Parliamentary Estate stood behind them a monument to their way of life decorated for the days proceedings in a brilliant display of dazzling lights, streamers and holographic imagery. Its green gardens and flat yards were the perfect setting. A band played, arrayed before the podium, and their music seemed to rise and fall with the roaring adulation of the multitudes present for the ceremony.

From upon high the Spires of the Seven Cities looked down upon them and in their shadows the people gathered.

"Today we celebrate a new beginning," the Vice Commodore rose his voice above the din (had it amplified and recorded for posterity) and called for quiet. His request was well met and so he went on, "today we celebrate the foundation of a new Colony and welcome the birth of our new brothers and the creation of their new frontier; Lancia!"

And the people cheered.

To think...

... it had all started so well.

Five Months ago…

For the people of Gestalt colonization had become a way of life. It was a standard against which they judged everything from quality of life to spiritual clarity. They had refined it to an art.

Francois DuPont was a master of the art of colonization. He had overseen the establishment of the Ring Colony and previous to that had been employed as a department manager for the Gestalt I project; even the newest colonies at Far-Point and New Kashan had been touched by him, the latter a project of architectural ventures had been responsible for.

The media described him as ‘bon vivant’ – a person of refined social tastes – and made of him a celebrity, an appellation he rarely objects to. When he uttered a fiat of praise of condemnation he did so with the authority of the new elite, the nouveau riche, the likes of who rose to greater eminence with each passing day as the economy of the Colonies continued to expand and offer them new opportunities to attain status through wealth.

He, a lithe man of looming height and sunken features, evoked an uncomfortable sort of respect in others. In his uniform blue jumpsuit complete with its myriad identification tags and pockets brimming with utilities of various descriptions he was naught but the perfect picture of the creepy janitorial assistant working in any of a million elementary schools of education throughout the galaxy. His shock of white hair rimming an orbit of bald, polished skull did nothing to ease the impression.

There was little doubt of his selection to head-up the Lancia Colony project, most everyone had suspected as much when the Science Directorate first confirmed their intention to begin colonization efforts, so when the word had come down supported and endorsed by the Colonial Defense Force and the Colonial Government that supervision of the project would be his responsibility no one had been all that surprised. Regardless and in an effort to appease the vanity of man and his need for visual recognition of these things a celebration was held in DuPont’s honor which the Vice Commodore himself attended. Even the High Cardinal, already on-planet for other business, had made an appearance and blessed the effort.

The road to colonization would be short, he had declared, and that his obligations to the project would be completed within six months. Apparently determined to hold true to his word the first colonists had been dispatched within a week of his statement along with the supplies required to begin construction of the first temporary dwellings. It was a glorified mining facility that they were constructing but it did have some very unique demands upon it that would require new and innovative techniques in the long run though for now, in the short term, the old methods would be sufficient.

The first buildings erected were pre-fabricated, multi-story units that had been constructed in space and hauled across the system before being landed (no easy task) on the planets surface on foundation pillars that had been installed from orbit by large units akin to old farm implements used to force posts in to the soil. In truth the buildings themselves were self-contained habitats complete with green-friendly areas and various other fundamental inclusions like air, water, and facilities. A dozen of them had already been completed and these were arranged in two lines parallel to one another. Not far beyond the area being laid aside for development a giant ring had been laid down with the outlines of a dome-shaped skeleton taking shape. Everything was moving ahead with amazing speed.

Within a year they would break ground on the first quarry of which they planned to construct dozens.

Francois DuPont looked down upon this from his orbital shuttle and smiled. It made him look like an angry ghoul so he tended not to allow it of himself but for these rare moments left alone to his own contemplation.

He had just returned from Gestalt I where he had delivered a status report, personally, to the board of the Science Directorate. Thoroughly, he had detested it but it had been a necessary evil on the long road ahead and he would doubtlessly find himself repeating the days work many times to come. It was all worth it, he reminded himself.

Currently there were fifteen hundred men and women under his command all of whom were selected for their technical skills as well as their willing intention to bring their families with them to live on Lancia Colony once the primary stages of colonization were complete. Those fifteen hundred men and women would soon double that number. Within sixteen months the first mining facilities would be functional alongside the living facilities required to house the personnel that would be shipped in to work them. The projections indicated that within two-years Lancia Colony would boast a population of almost half a million.

Of course Francois DuPont would be long gone by then. The board would try and get him to stay on, he assumed, but he was done with these prefabricated monstrosities. He hoped to tell them that he intended to change the focus of his career that he wanted to build things which would last. On the New Kashan project he had been responsible for aesthetic architecture and that had changed his mind. He was proud of his accomplishments within the Colonies so far, he knew that he would live on in posterity for his part in laying the ground work for places like Lancia and The Ring, but he wanted more. He wanted art. He wanted the Spires of the Seven Cities Area and the radially concentric avenues, quieter, sleepy walk-ways of David Colony.

Still, for now he would take this for now.

His shuttle arrested upon the firmament of Lancia Colony. Moments later an audible alert confirmed a secure pressure-lock with the dome that he had birthed with. As the two atmospheres equalized he was welcomed by the sterile, plastic tang of the prefabricated structure on the far side of his shuttle wall.

He smiled and thought, there is no place like home…

… sarcastically.

Now...

Jean Deau sat with her head propped in the nook of her palms, elbows planted equidistant from one another atop her desk, and stared out the window of her office in a forlorn, dejected sort of way. If one word could describe her mood at that point, it would have been this; disheveled.

Her career was a mess and because of that so too were the various myriad elements of her life.

Outside life went on blissfully as usual.

She groaned.

Jean Deau was a journalist. She had been a journalist before the Colonies and still was. Like many of the citizens of the many colonies within Gestalt she had migrated here and like many of her peers had her own motivation for coming. The hope for a bright new future called to most, called to those millions displaced or threatened by war, expansionist agendas, and galactic politics. Deau, however, had been drawn by an intense desire to expose the illusion of Utopia, to expose…

… but that was just exactly her problem. She had uncovered nothing, exposed nothing. Why? Because there was nothing to expose, nothing to uncover.

With citizenship came a job suited to her skills; journalist. Only, there was never any need for the sort of investigative journalism that was her trademark so, instead, she wrote agenda pieces, puff pieces, and explored the sociological structure of the Gestalt Colonies through a series of columns in the daily bulletins the content of which had won her the first Colonial Commendation for Journalistic Integrity and a level of celebrity. For a time she had been sated by this and with her ambitions satiated, she grew complacent.

And then it had all come crashing down.

The dawning realization had taken her by surprise.

It had started innocently enough. Assignments were handed out by her department Editor and she had been fed a line, nothing concrete, that the Science Directorate had discovered a new planetary body on the perimeter of the Gestalt star system. Naturally she followed it up but with far less enthusiasm then she may once have met the challenge with. She connected the dots eventually, in truth the story had been much easier to break then those she had done in the past, and it was not until the article was complete that it occurred to her what she had just done.

She spent the night confirming her facts before rushing in to the office in the early AM and presenting it to her Editor.

He had frowned. Deau would never forget that look.

“Jean,” he had said after a long silence, “destroy this. Destroy it and never, ever think on it again. Go home and rewrite the story. Write the story you know you’re supposed to write and forget all about this.”

Then, much to her initial chagrin, he erased the copy. It was a purely symbolic gesture, she knew, but it irked her none the same.

At first she was angry, furious even. In a temper fit only for tectonic movements she stormed out of his office, out of the building and…

… she had frozen. All around her were the sounds of morning, the smells and various senses that went along with that fresh, birth-of-a-new-day mélange had taken her like the gale force of a furious storm and stood her in place unable to move.

For hours she had stood there before, her legs numb, she was forced to seek the comfort of a near by bench. Her soul had been caught up in a debate of morality and destiny, of the hope for a bright future versus the grim, sad truth of reality. Nothing like what she had written had been done in the Colonies since the signing of their charter and she knew that it would destroy everything but to what end? An exposed lie was like a wound removed of its scab.

She had come to the Colonies in the hope that she would be able to expose the lies that made it possible and now, finally, she had the chance to do just that. But could she bring herself to do it? Would she be a better person for it? Would the Colonies be worse off because of it? In this galaxy of dynamic unrest the people of Gestalt had created something… special and unique to them. Could she bring herself to destroy all that?

She made her choice.

She went home and destroyed her story, wrote the story that she knew needed to be written and then got very, very drunk.

That was six months ago.

In her office, looking out the window over the brim of her rum bottle, Jean Deau fingered the edge of a piece of flimsyplast. On its surface ran the words, “It was confirmed today by the Science Directorate that they have discovered a new planetary body…” the substance of which was the story she had chosen to write.

And now thousands of people were dead because of her.

Jean Deau smiled and despite herself, blew a kiss at the star Gestalt. Then, with much calmness, she hefted a heavy looking blaster from the annals of her desk. Without emotion, with stillness alone, she pressed the barrel to her head and inhaled the last breath she would ever take…

“I considered the same once.”

She started, the blaster exploded with a loud bang and whine. The smell of ozone and burnt hair filled the air. Jean Deau blinked, confused but alive, and turned towards the source of the voice. Standing there, a figure draped in a black, straight long-coat, was a man of whom she had often written but never met.

“Your hair is on fire,” said Lance Shipwright evenly. “You almost shot your head off.”

He moved to extinguish the smoking mess on the side of her head. In flinching she had saved her life (from herself) and instead created for herself a new hair-do courtesy of her trusty blaster. Half in shock she did not immediately respond and was indeed incapable of any sensible response. She laughed.

“You could have ruined all of this. You could have ruined me and destroyed the Colonies but you made a choice. You chose the many over the few,” he consoled her. “You should not punish yourself for this.”

“I want you to write another story,” he said. “I want you to tell the tale that will bring everyone back together in light of this tragedy and when you do that, I will tell you the rest and if you still want to punish yourself…”

He smiled.


*


Five Months ago…

“Welcome home,” offered the mechanical voice of 1-LOG. “It is agreeable to see you again Doctor DuPont.”

As Francois DuPont entered the multi-story dome that was his personal home on Lancia he was greeted by the buffeting gusts of disinfectant and other fun chemicals that welcomed all guests upon venturing through the air-locks as well as the teetering, spindly frame of his mechanical assistant.

“Thank you,” replied DuPont pausing to empty the contents of his pockets in to an open faced sphere on a platform near the air-lock. “What news?”

“There is one priority report requiring your immediate attention,” informed the automaton. “There are additionally six personal messages two from your daughter and four updates from the departments.”

At sixty feet tall in its apex the dome inhabited by DuPont was among the largest of the personal dwellings on the surface of Lancia though it was by no means the largest of the various commercial structures that had been erected. It had two full stories while the very peak of the dome was dedicated to various electronic accommodations but possessed no ‘rooms’ divided by doors and walls. Instead the dwelling of Francois DuPot, at least on the lower floor, was one large open space dedicated to his many pursuits and had the look about it of a renaissance work shop though with a decidedly more technologically enhanced atmosphere.

“Alright,” he continued towards one of his experiments checking the dials as he listened, “let’s have the report then shall we?”

“From Tectonics, the Chief geologist reports that unsafe levels of tectonic activity are present across the surface of Lancia. Listening points across the planetoid have recorded an increase of geological activity that seems directly related to the ongoing construction…”

“Bah,” spat DuPont, “what are the details?”

“He suggests an immediate censure on all projects. He advises that until the source of this activity can be determined Colonization efforts have to be put on hold. He further cites a lack of information on Lancia from which to establish a working reference but that…”

“There you have it then,” said DuPont satisfied with his experiment. “How can we act on any rash suggestions when the man says himself that he lacks the information to establish a working reference.”

“Set a meeting for the division chiefs,” he continued, “set it for first thing in the morning. I want to put these notions of disaster to rest. There is nothing to be worried about. It is late and I am going to bed.”

“Yes Doctor,” agreed 1-LOG. Despite being among the most advanced personal assistant androids in the galaxy 1-LOG calculated that he would never fully understand humanity.