The Confederation Handbook (5 page)

Most types of climate exist
in the habitats orbiting Jupiter, although Alaskan or Siberian
winters are not easily simulated because of the thermal-flow problems
this would create inside the shell. A Mediterranean-style climate is
the most popular, followed by temperate or tropical. Several
temperature habitats grown in the last 150 years have included an
atmospheric vapor dispersion system supposed to create occasional
snowfalls, though this has met with only moderate success. Eight
Jupiter-orbiting habitats are dedicated nature reserves for rare
original-genotype Earth animals, plants, and insects (for whales see
Atlantis,
page 53
), with many
species reconstructed from stored genetic samples taken in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. One of the most
successful reconstructions has been the mammoth cloned from frozen
samples found in Siberia.

Bitek is unable to
accommodate every requirement, especially moving systems which are
subject to constant abrasive use, and in particular transport
mechanisms. Lifts are installed in all the starscrapers after they
have been grown, and large tunnels are included in the internal polyp
land-contour layer for the maglev trains. Cars and powered bikes are
also used in the cavern, but only by service crews and medical
emergency personnel. Cycling is popular, as is microlight flying and
horse riding.

As one end of the habitat is
devoted to the maw, spaceship activity is concentrated entirely
around the other end. On all post-2220 habitats, the endcap has a
series of broad projecting ledges for voidhawks to land on. These
rings are studded with pedestals which contain nutrient-fluid
transfer mechanisms for the bitek starships; fluid-production organs
are found in the endcap walls.

All Adamist starships and
reaction-drive craft use a counter-rotating spaceport (none of them
can perform the kind of swoop maneuver necessary to use a ledge),
which extends out from the habitat axis on a long spindle. These are
the same as spaceports on settled asteroids, though larger in scale,
and can be any shape, from simple extensions of the spindle to discs,
globes, and starfish grids. The only thing they have in common is
that they are joined to the habitat by a rotating seal at the axis.

As with Confederation
planets and asteroid settlements, starships are not allowed to emerge
within 100,000km of a habitat, and they have designated emergence
zones. In Jupiter’s case, starships are effectively banished
from emerging inside Europa’s orbit. After emergence, docking
authorization and flight-vector management is handled by the habitat
personality, which is linked into strategic-defense platforms via
bitek processor chips.

All industrial stations are
maintained within the same orbit as the habitats, which simplifies
the job of the strategic-defense platforms. Because Jupiter’s
gravity field makes emergence impossible closer than 100,000km, the
He3cloudscoops are relatively safe from direct attack by emerging
starships; nevertheless, they are protected by beam weapons mounted
on the anchor asteroid. In addition to strategic-defense platforms,
there are fifty armed voidhawks on permanent patrol above Jupiter.
This situation is repeated, though on a much smaller scale, around
every Edenist habitat throughout the Confederation.

A slight misnomer, as
voidhawks are rarely based at Saturn. The 268 habitats in orbit
around Saturn serve as an industrial center, nursery, crew-training
academy and retirement home for the hundred families. They orbit
300,000km above Saturn, just outside the rings, and deploy the same
kind of magnetosphere pick-up cables used by Jupiter-orbiting
habitats. The most visible external difference is the lack of
starscrapers; instead people live in polyp residences inside the
cavern. As a consequence, their population is lower than inside their
habitats, with 500,000 residents maximum.

The industrial stations based at Saturn are primarily involved in
astroengineering; in constructing and maintaining the voidhawk
life-support quarters and cargo bay, as well as building ancillary
craft such as ground-to-orbit flyers. There is also a considerable
armaments division, providing combat wasps for voidhawks on duty with
the Confederation Navy and for habitat defense duties.

Saturn is not the only gas
giant whose rings provide suitable nesting grounds for voidhawks.
Both Corellstal and Bagarasnin have ring systems which are used by
Edenists to propagate voidhawks, though Saturn still produces the
majority of these ships.

Thus are named the original
commercial enterprises involved with developing voidhawks, and the
term now refers to both the voidhawk and human branches of the
endeavor. On its human side each family is basically a loosely tied
merchant house trading as it pleases, with He3contracts distributed
on an equal basis. Their combined fleet strength is currently in
excess of 400,000 voidhawks.

Originally there were only a
hundred different types of voidhawk—one each per family. But
genetic refinement by Saturn’s bitek laboratories as well as
crossbreeding has improved the species considerably. New improvements
are still being made, with most of the research focusing on how to
extend the life of the patterning cells and therefore the overall
lifespan.

The humans of the hundred families have undergone extensive geneering
to adapt their bodies for prolonged periods of spaceflight. Although
they don’t have to endure the kind of free-fall exposure
experienced by Adamist starship crews, they have nonetheless followed
similar lines of physiological development, and given themselves
physiques resistant to atrophy and organ decay, capable of
withstanding high-gee acceleration, and immunity to zero-gee
sickness. They do not suffer from spatial disorientation, although
like all humans they prefer a visual horizon; and they have a high
level of radiation cancer immunity.

After a voidhawk matures,
the family will fund construction of its mechanical systems, which
the captain will pay off, typically, in ten to fifteen years. There
is no formal requirement to serve in the Confederation Navy, though
most captains chose to serve at least one tour of duty, lasting seven
years.

Voidhawk crews are
traditionally chosen from Saturn’s indigenous population,
though not exclusively.

The only actual planet colonized by Edenists is Atlantis, which is
completely oceanic, there being no land mass at all. The inhabitants
live on floating bitek islands of polyp, 2km in diameter, typically
supporting three major accommodation towers, various civic buildings,
and a central park. Six hundred and fifty such islands have been
grown so far, each capable of supporting a population of 6,000, and
they are a derivative of the original orbital habitat technology.
They do not have food-synthesis glands other than for purifying
water, but given the abundance of food in the surrounding ocean such
a system would be completely irrelevant. They are not equipped with
any form of propulsion, and simply drift where the current takes
them. However, if one island were to be caught in the polar region
for too long, the inhabitants would use tugs to tow it out into a
current which would take it back into a warmer climate.

Energy is provided from a
combination of systems. One is photosynthesis, where every external
surface is covered in a layer of photosynthetic cells, helping to
supply the essential organs with nutrients, although this is very
much a secondary system. Another is organic thermal-exchange cables,
which dangle below the island as it drifts along, exploiting the
temperature difference between the surface and bottom of the ocean to
generate an electric current; this energy is mainly used by the
mechanical and electronic systems in the accommodation towers. The
main supply of chemicals for the organs to synthesize comes via large
external gills that ingest plankton. These provide enough raw
material to sustain the island’s polyp structure, and maintain
its growth.

The small amount of industry on these islands is almost solely
concerned with shipbuilding. There is a respectable tourist trade,
split fifty-fifty between Adamists and Edenists, both of whom seem to
find the prospect of a planetary ocean exceptionally challenging.
Many come to view the whales, which were introduced into the ocean in
2420. Several luxury cruise ships sail a random course between the
floating islands, and many keen sailors hire yachts to circumnavigate
the globe.

However, the original reason
for establishing the islands is the fishing industry; Atlantis fish
and seaweed are delicacies recognized throughout the Confederation,
and the planet has eight orbiting stations to cope with visiting
trader starships. Each island has several family fishing fleets, and
runs surface-to-orbit cargo flyers. After 250 years, it is estimated
that only 25 percent of the indigenous aquatic species has been
categorized.

Three

The starships fall into
three distinct categories: voidhawks, blackhawks and Adamist
starships.

Used exclusively by Edenists, voidhawks are living bitek starships
grown around a vast array of energy-patterning cells that can focus
energy density until it approaches infinity, distorting local space
to such a degree that a wormhole will open through which it can
transit. Because the wormhole opens ahead of the voidhawk’s
track (rather than around it, as with Adamist starships) this
maneuver is called the swallow. Transit down a wormhole takes several
seconds, and the maximum external range is fifteen light-years. A
voidhawk is instinctively aware of its spatial location in relation
to star positions, and knows how to “angleâ€

Acceleration through normal
space is achieved by generating a distortion zone below the threshold
necessary to open a wormhole, so allowing the ship to ride a
distortion wave. Gravity in the crew quarters is generated by a
secondary manipulation of this distortion, and it can be produced
even when the ship is not under acceleration. There is no theoretical
limit to the acceleration a voidhawk can achieve in normal space.
But, in practical terms, generating a simultaneous
counter-acceleration force for the crew is extremely difficult above
3 gees. As voidhawk crew have been geneered to withstand high-gee
acceleration for a considerable time, 6 gees is the standard
acceleration for emergency or combat flying, although brief periods
of very high gees (10–15) are endurable.

No voidhawk can operate from a planetary surface; gravitational force
exerts too strong an influence on space for the distortion field to
retain its integrity. Although able to orbit planets, a voidhawk’s
ability to generate a distortion field is severely limited in
proportion to altitude, with a typical
lower
limit of 100km
above a terracompatible planet; nor can it create a wormhole within
2,000km of a standard-sized terracompatible planet (Adamist starships
cannot translate within 5,000km), or 100,000km of a Jovian-size gas
giant (Adamist starships 175,000km).

The distortion effect can be
used to prevent an Adamist starship from translating, by setting up
interference patterns in the distortion field which the Adamist
starship’s jump nodes generate. A voidhawk can project a
distortion zone powerful enough to prevent an Adamist starship’s
translation, from a distance of 100,000km in clear space. The jump
distortion signature of any Adamist ship within a voidhawk’s
detection range can be read, allowing the voidhawk to follow and
intercept. It is these two functions which make voidhawks an
essential component of the Confederation Navy.

Voidhawks are typically
lenticular in shape, 120m in diameter and 30m wide at the center.
Upper and lower surfaces have an indented groove 10m wide, 5m deep,
with a circumference of 60m in diameter, into which its mechanical
systems are fitted. The crew quarters form a toroid equipped with
cabins, lounges, a gym, a medical center, and the hangar deck for an
atmospheric flyer and small atmospheric craft and an MSV; it has its
own fusion power supply (triplicated) with fuel-storage tanks, and
reserves of oxygen, nitrogen, and water; the life-support systems are
bitek organs. The under groove is fitted with cargo-pod and/or
combat-wasp cradles.

Internally a voidhawk is a
solid mass of cells; by volume 20 percent of these cells is given
over to digestive functions (voidhawks consume a hydrocarbon nutrient
fluid available from all habitats and most asteroids), neural
activity, sensors, nutrient circulation, and reproduction. The
remaining 80 percent is energy-patterning cells, which generate the
spatial distortion field. Once a voidhawk reaches maturity these
energy-patterning cells decay at a rate which cannot be matched by
regeneration, and it is this decay which dictates the lifetime of a
voidhawk.

Power generation is yet
another function of the distortion field, which acts as a lens for
cosmic radiation. The patterning cells store their own energy, and
can absorb the electromagnetic waves directly. A voidhawk is
constantly absorbing energy, and can sustain acceleration through
normal space indefinitely, as it expends less energy to generate the
distortion than it absorbs from the distortion. However, generating a
wormhole requires a large quantity of energy. It takes five hours to
accumulate enough energy for one swallow, and the cells can only
store enough for at most twelve consecutive swallows, depending on
the length of the wormholes generated.