The Confederation Handbook (11 page)

Economy

Avon’s economy has
benefited enormously from the Confederation presence. Planetary
service industries support the Assembly compound and the embassies.
The asteroid settlement industry stations are heavily (though not
exclusively) involved with Confederation fleet contracts. As a
consequence, the starship manufacturing capability among the local
asteroid settlements is almost as advanced as Earth’s and the
Kulu Kingdom’s.

There are fifteen asteroid
settlements in orbit around the planet (including Trafalgar), and
eighty-four independent settlements in the asteroid belt. The
asteroid settlement population is 15,000,000.

The safety provided by
basing the 1st Fleet in this system means that piracy has become
essentially nonexistent, which in conjunction with the large influx
of starships on government business has helped establish Avon as a
substantial port in its own right.

He3Mining

There is a large Edenist
presence in the Avon system, orbiting Ocymum. There are twelve
cloudscoops mining the gas giants, providing fuel for the copious
starship traffic as well as the rest of the system’s industrial
facilities.

The cloudscoops are tended
by twenty-five bitek habitats, which possess a considerable number of
attendant industrial stations. Many joint commercial enterprises have
been formed with the Adamist asteroid settlements, and Avon
companies. The Edenist population is 45,000,000.

Trafalgar is a stony-iron asteroid, approximately the shape of a
peanut, 11km long, and 4.5km at its widest. There are three
cylindrical chambers hollowed into it, each 3.5km long and 1.5km in
radius. All of these support numerous caverns. It has two large
spherical counter-rotating spaceports, and three docking ridge ledges
at each end for voidhawks and blackhawks. The asteroid has no
attendant industrial stations like ordinary asteroid settlements.

Legally, the asteroid is
Confederation territory and the First Admiral is its governor,
responsible for all civil and military aspects of its operation.
There is no internal industry or economy, all supplies coming from
the Avon system, although there are protein vats which can support
the population in an emergency.

Trafalgar is home to the
Navy Academy, which trains all career officers. It also houses the
principal Marine training barracks.

Its population is 80 percent
transient. There are many civilian employees providing basic
engineering and administrative services, and a small entertainments
and leisure activities trade flourishes, mainly restaurants and clubs
for off-duty personnel. These establishments are usually Avon company
franchises. For long-term leave, naval personnel normally visit the
planet itself.

The civilian contract worker
population is 125,000, and the naval personnel 190,000 (including 1st
Fleet crews).

Lalonde is a terracompatible
planet 319 light-years from Earth. Colonization is open to both
humans and Tyrathca.

There are five solid planets
and five gas giants. The star is a G7 type. There is one asteroid
belt.

The solid planets:

The asteroid belt orbits
between 372m and 485m km from the star.

There are five gas giants.

Physical
Data

The planet has a rotation
period of 26 hours 19 minutes, and a year of 295 days. Gravity is
0.91 standard. There is a 7° axial tilt which, combined with its
proximity to the star, gives Lalonde a hot climate. The equatorial
zone is uninhabitable by humans, and sub-tropical climate extends to
the polar regions. There are no ice caps. The one (northern) polar
continent, Wyman, has a slightly cooler climate, but is subject to
severe storms when the cool air and arid hot air fronts clash.
Humidity is high right across the planet.

There are three moons. The
innermost, Rennison, is airless, 1,300km in diameter, with an orbital
altitude of 275,000km, giving it a period of fifteen days. It has
been heavily cratered, and possesses a grey-brown regolith. The
second innermost, Beriana, is 900km in diameter, with an orbital
altitude of 397,000km, giving it a period of twenty-nine days. It has
a few large craters, and is a dull yellow in color. The outermost
moon, Diranol, is 4,800km in diameter, with an orbital altitude of
520,000km, giving it a period of thirty-five days. It is very similar
to Mars, with an iron oxide regolith, and a thin carbon dioxide
atmosphere.

The tides produced by these
three moons, especially when in conjunction, are very powerful, and
low-lying coastal areas are regularly flooded, leading to the
extensive evolution of saltwater-resistant plants.

One-fifth of Lalonde’s surface is land, and there are six
continents: Sarell (equatorial), Wyman (polar), Amarisk (northern,
the largest), Clopton, Knape, and Mosedale.

Only Amarisk is inhabited.
It covers an area of 6m km2, with fold mountains—the Puttack
range, in the east, leading down to savannahs in the west. The
largest river, the Juliffe, is 1,900km long, with a tributary network
rivaling Earth’s Amazon. The capital city is Durringham
(population 175,000), situated at the mouth of the Juliffe, on its
northern bank (the river being 12km wide there). The planetary
population is 12,000,000 including 850,000 Tyrathca.

History

Lalonde was discovered in
2576, and opened for colonization in 2582. After the scoutship which
discovered it put the settlement rights up for sale, they were bought
by a venture company which went on to form the Lalonde Development
Company. The LDC attracted enough funding to mount a biological
survey, which was completed in 2578, clearing the biosphere for human
colonization. At this point the LDC was floated on the O’Neill
Halo stock exchange, looking for full start-up fund investment.
Shares were optioned by the following companies:

12 percent Lithcoine
astronautics, registered in the O’Neill Halo.

10 percent Miconia
industrial, registered in the O’Neill Halo.

8 percent Forvoit mining,
registered on Avon.

15 percent Sandering Civil
Engineering, registered on New California.

7 percent Nares industries,
registered on Argonne.

5 percent the Jovian Bank.

2 percent the Royal Kulu
Bank.

10 percent the Tyrathca
government central economic council.

31 percent held by various
trusts, banks, and individuals, with no such holding exceeding 1
percent.

Lalonde is officially a
EuroChristian ethnic world, and Christian missions are granted land
by the Development Corporation governor. Although open to all people
who fall within its ethnic stream, the LDC recommends that immigrants
should have geneering that enables them to withstand the strong UV
light of the sun. The Tyrathca immigrants are all farmers,
cultivating the rygar crop (see Vegetation,
page
157
).

With so many stage-one
planets currently open for immigration, the Lalonde Development
Corporation had a lot of trouble attracting funding for start-up.
Without Tyrathca support it is unlikely the project would have got
off the ground for several decades more. (There are over twenty-five
terracompatible planets that have passed their biological clearance
review by the Confederation Xenobiological Hazard Assessment Board,
and are waiting colony start-up funds from the owners of their
settlement rights.)

It is rare for a planet to
be opened on a budget quite as small as that which the Lalonde
Development Corporation has available. However, it has achieved most
of the criteria required for successful colonization, though the
standard of living for its population is generally lower than
equivalent planets.

The Lalonde Development
Corporation is responsible for law enforcement and civil
administration until 2670, or when the population reaches 75,000,000
whichever comes first. Town councils (for towns with a population
over 7,500) with the authority to pass local bylaws will be permitted
from 2625 onwards; county councils after 2635; state councils after
2650. Until then, towns and counties are run by company managers who
are only obliged to “consultâ€

Norfolk is a terracompatible
planet 247 light-years from Earth. An English-pastoral-ethnic world,
it was discovered in 2207, and opened for colonization in 2213. It is
unusual in that the star system is a binary.

There are two stars, six
solid planets, no gas giants, and a considerable number of asteroids.
The primary star is Duke, a K2 type (cooler than Sol). The secondary
star is Duchess, an M5 type (red dwarf). Duchess orbits around Duke
at a distance of 372m km, giving it an orbital period of 1,425 days,
or approximately four (Earth) years.

Four of the solid planets
are in orbit around Duke.

The remaining two solid
planets are in orbit around Duchess. They also form a binary of their
own, the separation distance being 570,000km.

The main asteroid belt
orbits between 45m and 72m miles (72m and 114m km) from Duke. There
is a smaller belt orbiting between 28m and 32m miles (45m and 51m km)
from Duchess. There are secondary belts between all the planets
orbiting Duke, and a large number of rocks which exchange stars every
few centuries. In addition, there is a large quantity of comets and
small, pebble-sized particles loose in the system.

Physical
Data

Gravity is 0.87 standard,
axial inclination 1.7°. Orbital rotation around Duke takes 452
days, however its year is 659 days (see climate, below). Planetary
rotation is 23 hours 43 minutes.

Atmosphere is 77 percent
nitrogen, 22 percent oxygen, 1 percent carbon dioxide, resulting in
air which feels heavy. New arrivals find it moderately difficult to
breathe, acclimatization taking several days.

Just over 40 percent of the surface is land. There are no continents
in the normal sense, and very little tectonic activity. Most of the
land mass is made up of large islands, 40,000 to 60,000 square miles
(100,000 to 150,000km2) each; the rest comprises small archipelago
chains in the seas between the islands. There are few mountain
ranges. Because of this geographical structure, the open-water areas
are not large enough to qualify as oceans, so there are only “seas.â€

Weeping Rose

The most famous plant in the
entire Confederation is a rambling bush which produces yellow-gold
blooms 25cm in diameter, with a thick ruff of petals around an
onion-shaped carpel pod. At midsummer the flower always droops over,
so that when it is fully open it faces towards the ground. As the
seeds ripen, the pod exudes a fluid which is collected and fermented
in wooden casks for a year, then bottled. Only after the new-year
crop is safely in will the previous year’s vintage be released.

The pods exude (weep) all
their fluid within just thirty-six hours, leaving a dry carpel which
then splits open to throw out the seeds. The Weeping Rose is usually
cultivated on a wire, and pruned to a height of 3m. A mature
(third-year) plant will produce up to twenty-five flowers. The fluid
is collected in waxed paper funnels positioned round each plant, and
an experienced grower will always be able to tell exactly when the
flowers are about to weep.

Grass-analogue

This is remarkably
Earth-like, except that its leaves are tubular and produce minute
white flowers throughout the summer. The flowers can only be
triggered by a double-star spectrum.

Trees

There are a number of
evergreen species, resembling the terrestrial pine. Their leaves are
also usually dark and narrow, although much thicker. There are no
cones, as they reproduce by spores. All the islands contain extensive
forest areas.

Earth crops

Wheat, barley, oats, potato,
maize, and most other Earth-originated vegetables have been geneered
for use on Norfolk. The grains are capable of producing two harvests
during the superior conjunction season, though a degree of care must
be taken in storing them during the long winter. There are no
aboriginal grain plants. Other terrestrial plants such as trees and
canes have proved difficult to modify for the double-star spectrum
and the particularly long year.

Animals

Evolution has produced
surprisingly few land animals. There are some fish, though again the
variety is lower than usual. Mammals are two-gender quadruped
marsupials with an ordinary biochemistry. All have thick shaggy fur,
and considerable subcutaneous fat to survive the long winters.
Hibernation is common.

Hax

This wolf-analogue is a small (1.2m long), feral beast, a warren
dweller. Its hind legs are powerful, enabling it to bound along in
long leaps. Its typical litter is three pups, and it hunts in packs.
The hax is not intelligent enough to be domesticated, and they often
attack humans, especially during winter when food is scarce. Local
hax hunts with hounds are well established, and provide farmers with
sport during the winter months. Most inhabited areas have been
cleared of them, but where woodland and moors provide cover they can
still be a problem in even the longest-settled areas.

Snakerat

This rodent, with small legs
and a long sinuous body, is similar to a ferret and has a mildly
poisonous bite.

Nyvan is a terracompatible
planet fifty-eight light-years from Earth. It was settled in 2134,
early in the Great Dispersal, and as such was one of the last planets
to receive immigrants under Govcentral’s equal ethnic
representation policy. Initial development was funded entirely by
Govcentral and until the Land Liberation conflict in 2257 it was
referred to (by its inhabitants) as the Last Imperial Colony.