Scandalous pieces of the puzzle fell into place about the first settlers of Stanton.
After receiving a hint that there was more than just old walls behind the ruined settlements in Stanton, I investigated almost all of them. I found artifacts and medals, signs on the walls and more questions than answers. But no clear evidence of who had built the settlements and what had become of the inhabitants. I needed someone who could help me solve the mystery, someone who knew about history.
I contacted the Scientific Union, and the organization’s archaeologist was willing to meet me on the planet ArcCorp. He called himself Alaska and was, how shall I put it… a scientist. A guy with blond hair, a high forehead, bushy eyebrows, sideburns and a goatee on his chin. And somehow he seemed a little confused. We were standing at the kiosk opposite the G-LOC bar and wanted to buy something to drink. Alaska rummaged aimlessly in his many pockets.
“Yes, wait a minute…I’ll have it in a minute…so where’s….”
“Alaska, you can pay with the Mobiglas,” I tried to speed things up.
“Yeah…I know…but I…ah, I’ve got it now.”
After we had the drinks, we went into the hangar to my White Rabbit. In the lounge, I had spread out my finds on the chessboard. Alaska was particularly interested in a small artifact.
“Well, this is very interesting.”
He picked up the glowing yellow artifact and looked at it.
“I’d like to examine it more closely.”
“Sure, no problem,” I replied. “But what’s that other stuff? Those weird medals?”
“That? Yes, those are medals from the Tevarin War. And a badge from the 6th Platoon of the UEE Navy. But I can’t place these artifacts. Can I take one of them back to my Carrack and examine it there?”
“Yes, sure,” I replied somewhat uncertainly.
“Very well. The Carrack is in orbit. We can fly up with my Piscis.”
After I had put on my armor, we went to Alaska’s hangar. There he also swapped his civilian clothes for armor. Finally, we flew into orbit around the planet ArcCorp and landed in the Carrack hangar. It was a sublime feeling to be on board a Carrack again. Memories of the crew came flooding back.
Suddenly Alaska searched around in his pockets again and said,
“Oh crap. I think I put the artifact in my jacket pocket. And it’s still in the hangar on the planet. I’ll fly back down and get it. Make yourself comfortable until then. My friend Zwiebus is on the bridge. You can keep him company, but don’t be surprised, he doesn’t talk much, actually nothing at all.”
Shaking my head, I walked to the bridge. Alaska really was a confused scientist. But Zwiebus was even stranger. He sat in the pilot’s chair and didn’t say a word. After enjoying the view on the upper bridge, I sat down in the captain’s quarters and passed the time with alcoholic drinks from the minibar.
When Alaska returned, he examined the artifact with some equipment in a dark room of the Carrack. Clueless as to what he was doing, I watched.
At some point, he said quietly and thoughtfully.
“The artifacts are 1600 to 1700 years old. The analyzer says that 75% of them are from the Tevarin. Where did you get the artifacts?”
“From old ruined settlements here in the Stanton system,” I replied.
Alaska stroked his beard and said.
“Either the original settlers brought them with them or the Tevarin were here before.” After a short pause, he continued. “Or the settlers had trade relations with the Tevarin.”
Alaska looked at me with a worried face.
“Which settlers?” I asked excitedly.
“Before the megacorporations were in Stanton,” Alaska began, ”the UEE military had a base on the Providence platform of the gas giant now called Crusader. At the same time, humans had established settlements in the Stanton system. But that was never official. When the planets were privatized and sold to the megacorporations, the UEE ignored the settlers. That’s why it’s not officially talked about today. Because if the settlers had been there officially, there would have been no legal basis for selling the planets.”
My head started to rattle. What the hell was this shit? Free settlers were actually here before the megacorporations and were ignored by the UEE? Why was the UEE doing this? The answer was obvious, it was about money. What did freedom matter?
“I’d like to have a look at one of the old settlements,” said Alaska.
“No problem. There’s one on the moon of Wala that I haven’t looked at yet,” I replied.
At that moment, the door opened. Zwiebus came in.
“Zwiebus,” said Alaska. “We have to go to Wala. Zero will tell you exactly where.”
Zwiebus growled something unintelligible and then went out again. The guy was a real oddball.
Half an hour later, Alaska and I landed on the moon of Wala with the Piscis. Zwiebus stayed in orbit with the Carrack. In total darkness, we approached the remains of the buildings on foot. A few lights were burning near the old walls. I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I would have preferred to approach in the safety of a rover and shoot away anything that got in our way. But Alaska had insisted on proceeding quietly, unnoticed and without the use of weapons. Nevertheless, I drew my assault rifle for safety. I had come across Nine Tails too often in the old settlements.
The dim lighting in the settlement, the darkness and the haze in the thin atmosphere of the Wala moon created a ghostly atmosphere. We wandered like ghosts between the remains of the walls. Alaska was fully in his archaeological element. He was far too careless as he ran from wall to wall, from building to building, taking a close look at everything. Suddenly I lost sight of him. I heard him talking on the radio, or was he just thinking out loud?
“The construction method doesn’t suit a space-faring society. A space-faring society doesn’t build stone structures. Were they perhaps abandoned? By Tevarin? Maybe to mine resources?”
“Or they were dropped off here to leave everything behind and lead a simple, free life,” I replied.
“I don’t think so. Just look around you. Nobody settles here voluntarily. It’s far too hostile on the moon.”
“Some people like it,” I tried to defend my thoughts. My people lived in the desert, which was also a hostile place. Lost in thought, I leaned against a wall. I thought about the moon of Daymar. A hostile desert, but a beautiful place nonetheless. And despite the adverse conditions, plants grew there and there were outposts. I was still flying through the Daymar desert in my mind’s eye when a figure suddenly appeared out of the haze in front of me. I screamed out loud in shock. The figure flinched. I heard Alaska on the radio.
“What’s going on?”
Then I recognized his yellow backpack.
“Nothing. I didn’t recognize you at first. Let’s go before any more uninvited guests turn up. I’m sorry we didn’t find anything here.”
“Yes, okay. But it was still interesting. And you say the other ruined settlements were built in the same style?”
“Yes,” I mumbled thoughtfully to myself.
A little later, we were standing in the mess hall on board the Carrack. Alaska came up with more theories.
“I suspect that the settlements didn’t just fall into disrepair over time. I’ve seen scorch marks. Maybe they were destroyed on purpose. Maybe even bombed.”
I looked at Alaska in horror. Bombs on the free peoples to make room for profit. That was a scandal. I shouted angrily.
“This must be made public!”
Alaska replied calmly and thoughtfully.
“The privatization of Stanton is a hot potato. If the settlers had trade relations or other exchange contact with the Tevarin, then privatization would be illegal. If so, that would be one reason why the UEE is keeping the lid on the settlers. Talking about it is a big danger. They might not just wipe that away with a hand, they might wipe it away with a sword. The UEE will cut your head off.”
Maybe Alaska was right. If all this was true, then this was even bigger than the killer satellite scandal. But there had to be something to it. There was every indication that there were settlers in the Stanton system before the megacorporations appeared. You couldn’t just sweep that under the carpet. It had to come to light. A special report, no, a special paper was needed. Where was Brubacker anyway? Where was the damn editor when he was needed?
Zwiebus came into the mess hall and growled something. I looked questioningly at Alaska.
“Zwiebus is a bit of a strange guy,” Alaska explained. “But he’s there when you need help. He claims to be a Neanderthal and to have been frozen in the ice.”
“What the hell is a Neanderthal?”
Alaska explained it to me. I thought of Brubacker and smiled. He also claimed to be 700 years old and to have slept in a cryocapsule. Somehow I had a lot to do with ancient history. And I had to hand it to Alaska. As confused as he seemed to me at first, he knew a hell of a lot, he was a walking encyclopaedia.
“Zero, I want to do some more research. Please be careful with the information you’ve gathered so far,” Alaska said in parting.
*
A few days later, I received a message from Alaska.
Hi Zero, here are the preliminary results of my research at the Arccorp Historical Institute. Please let me know if you can do anything with them. The whole thing is politically explosive, I can tell you that right now.
For free science! Ad Astra! alaska_seadeleare
Attached was a six-page letter. I began to skim through it. My hands began to tremble more and more.
…
The official date for the discovery of Stanton is the mention of the Stanton system by the nav jumper Toshi Aaron in the year 2851. admits that Aaron Stanton may have discovered the system some time before the mention to the Uee. discovered the system. But since in the same year the Uee established its first official military presence first official military resence in orbit around Crusader, this date is considered the official date of discovery. A scoundrel who thinks evil of it…
There are no official mentions of any colonization of Stanton prior to the “discovery / mention”.
That’s all that’s in the officially accessible historical documents of the UEE…
“So far so good,” I thought to myself. The UEE is hiding everything. But what about the settlements? I read on. Then came the really interesting part. Alaska had found partly unreadable data records from an amateur scientist called “The Astro Historian” on a remote server of the historical archive. In the letter, Alaska had summarized and commented on Astro Historian’s statements. It was unbelievable what it said.
A.H. claims that some artifacts (including building materials) in the abandoned settlements in Stanton can be dated back to the year 2384. So long before the official “discovery” of Stanton…..
…the system had been home to many people, possibly those who wanted to live outside the control of the UEE, these were not a handful of settlers, but each individual planet had a functioning society with tens of thousands of members….
….These were described by official sources as prospectors, survivalists and squatters. squatters, notably not pirates or outlaws, but still implying that they did not belong there, even though they existed prior to the UEE’s knowledge of the system. What is also strongly implied is that Toshi was one of those settlers who for some reason turned on his fellow humans and passed the information on to the UEE…
…Assuming it is true that there was a functioning society BEFORE the “discovery” by Aaron, the UEE should never have privatized the planets and moons of Stanton, even under the law of the time – which was still from the Messer era! The ludicrous economic power, the entire trade, is therefore based on a lie by the UEE! It is therefore clear that such assumptions should only be made with great caution…
…Even the many completely destroyed buildings of the abandoned outposts scattered throughout the system do not tell the story of abandonment, but of destruction…
…It is important to consider the possibility that there may be an unknown period of time between the possible sale of the jump data by Aaron to the Uee and the official naming of Stanton by the Uee…
…A.H. speculates that the Uee wanted to change the situation in their favor with a Bengal Carrier during this “interim period”. This at least explains the massive damage to the settlements. A.H. cites a magazine called “Jump Point” as his source. I have never read of such a publication in any of Stanton’s archives…
…In A.H.’s disjointed data from the Arccorper archive, there is mention of the loss of a UEE Navy cruiser “Caroway”. I was unable to extract exact dates from A.H.’s sources. This “colonialist” behavior of the Uee continued even after the official naming of Stanton by the Uee. Thus, A.H. places the “Flyssa Incident” of 2826 at least thematically in this series of punitive actions by the Uee Navy.
Furthermore, Alaska reaffirmed his view that the construction of the settlements would not correspond to a space-faring society. He further suggested that these buildings were constructed by humans who had been abandoned. And since I had found the Tevarin artifacts in the settlements, he suspected that space-faring Tevarin were there.
But that no longer interested me. Instead, I was horrified by what I learned about the early settlers and how the UEE treated them. And it fitted into the picture. My people, too, had already experienced a punitive action by the Empire. In 2571, the UEE Navy sent the Bengal Carrier “UEES Olympus” into the Nul system to the planet Ashana to pursue so-called criminals. The wreckage of the Bengal Carrier is still on the planet today and is home to my people and a thriving black market.
In the final paragraph of his letter, Alaska summed up the enormity of the scandal.
At the end of these disturbing thoughts on the abandoned settlements, we are left with the idea that the UEE used massive means to try to prevent the existence of a settlement in colonization of Stanton even before the official mention of Stanton by the Uee. concealed. If there was a structured connection between the settlements incl. communication and trade between the settlements (…which the Tevarin artifacts suggest), there was a society worthy of protection under UEE law (Fair Chance Act – ratified in 2795 ). existed. This makes the takeover of Stanton by the megacorps invalid because it is illegal.
I sat in the sleeping quarters of my White Rabbit with shaky hands, not knowing what to do. I stared blankly at the letter from Alaska on the big screen in front of me. Should I delete everything and keep quiet? Then I looked at my T-shirt. It had a picture of a head with a plaster over its mouth that said UEE. “Never Silent” was written underneath.
No, I was not allowed to remain silent. I had to stand up for the free peoples and the truth.
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Video about the first settlers