THE COMPANY WARS

  C. J. Cherryh

  THE ORIGIN OF STAIONERS AND MERCHANTERS

  In the early twenty-first century, starprobes went out, launched by Sol Station, which diring the interval of the starprobes' travel, became a great economic power in Earth's politics.

  Sol Station, a self contained orbiting "multifactory," pulled in metals, minerals, and ice from the asteroids, abandoning the practice of lofting anything up from Earth's gravity well. Since the majority of industrial cost on Earth was either in fighting gravity (lifing and transporting heavy objects) or heating things up and cooling them down (smelting and refrigeration), once a spacestation achieved the machinery to separate and smelt metals by solar power (thus becoming a "multifactory," a combination of industries all locked together in the production of goods for export to Earth (medicines, electrical power, scientific data, and processes) and for its own consumption (machinery, construction materials, oxygen from ice, and foodstuffs (from orbiting fishtanks and farms operating at industrial pace thanks to total environment control possible in such facilities.)

  The result was a station capable of replicating itself endlessly at little expense; and a balance of trade which made investment and experimentation possible.

  Hence, the robot starprobes which reported several stars much like the Sun, lacking habitable planets but potentially rich in metals and ice.

  The theory of cryogenic suspension in sublight starflight was rejected. After all, Sol Station and the one traveling scientific station which had already been in orbit about Venus and Mars and now ventured the turbulent gravity well of Jupiter, proved that there was little difference between a working solar station and a ship.

  So the first startship was modular, and while it would take years under light speed to reach the chosen star, there was no reason for the people aboard not to carry on life much as it was carried on in huge Sol Station. When it reached its destination, its payload, containing manufacturing units, would go into orbit in some rich and stable area of the designated starsystem, while the engine module would break free after assisting in this process and return to Sol Station.

  It proved hardly more expensive in effort to make the mission multistage, that is, to colonize several starsystems in the same vector by using several engines and compartments and shedding each into deceleration at the time appropriate for each star. So if one part of the mission failed, another might succeed, and if anything went wrong with one engine, they had the capacity to continue on the others, or to return should it become necessary.

  As it happened, all three stages worked without a hitch, and Earth had three functioning starstations. They had no ambition at all to land on a planet. Planets were too expensive at this stage, too wasteful of energy in getting up and down; mankind had decided that starstations (of which Sol Station was one) were more productive for small populations than planets were.

  The voyaging starships never lost touch with Sol Station, and continually transmitted the data the scientists and tehcnicians in the colony mission were developing enroute. Life aboard went on in a mundane fashion, under the one gravity produced by acceleration; and when decelerated and parked in orbit, each starstation began a continual dataflow to Sol Station, and to each other, and to ships in passage. The result of this close community of scientists at work in new environments, as well as the research and development necessary for the guidance systems and engines for the mission, was a technological acceleration for Earth, a period of great prosperity and wild speculation as new discoveries multiplied.

  The engine modules had a small crew compartment: they were designed to move greater mass than their own -- to push, in other words. Their crews had the harder life, since they were few in number and had to give up their associations with the colonists, who would live normal Stationer-style lives, hardly different than they would have lived on Sol Station. The engine-modules might have been robotized, but it was felt, first of all, that the chance of failure would be less with crewed modules, in such long voyages; and secondly that the occasional contact of human beings who had seen Earth would serve to keep the colonies from becoming too different in their isolation; the chance for instance, that a colony would grow completely alienated from Earth and shut off its contacts had occurred to Sol Station. So the primary reason for crewed ships was a psychological one.

  The small crews must pass years together, and must have as normal a life as possible. Families happened, in spite of mild official discouragement, and when the first ship returned to Earth, they were offered a chance to stay. They refused, having spent too long at this to give up what to them had become a way of life. Crews grew larger (as did crew quarters) as second-generation crew took husbands and wives. Children ran and played throughout the ships, did small maintenance, and grew into crew work with the passing years, children whose lives were measured in calls at this and that starstation.

  This was the origin of the merchanters and the stationers, whose lives became vastly different one from the other, but who were linked together in mutual necessity.

  The arrivial of any ship in those early days was occasion for holiday.

  Trade began, conducted without substance (of data by commmunications net) and with (of goods and parts carried by the ships).

  What did the merchanters get out of the exchange? The improvement and care of their ships, which were their homes. Their food. Their whole lifestyle. And the freedom which began to be their whole way of life. A merchanter "family" was tightknit, even developing an accent unique to a particular ship: everyone aboard seemed to be a cousin or aunt or uncle.

  Stationers got the same sort of thing -- but their populations were larger. They liked their security, the benefits their trade brought in.

  Starstations expanded, built new modules and boosted them by ship to stars as near to them as Barnard's Star and Alpha Centauri are to Sol; and Sol had to get news of some of these stations secondhand, because of their distances.

  There were nine such starstations -- ten, counting Sol.

  They were: Alpha Base and Beta Base, Bryant's Star, Glory, Venture, Galileo, Olympus, Thule, and Eldorado.

  The next starstation was sent to Pell's Star. And that star had a planet which had life, which had a sapient species, which had agriculture and the kind of luxuries which Earth had been supplying.

  PELL'S STAR AND DOWNBELOW

  Scientists flocked to Pell. Everyone wanted to be in on the find. Meanwhile, word of the discovery traveled at lightspeed back to Earth.

  By the number of years it took that lightspeed message to get to Earth and for Earth to debate the matter and send another message the same number of lightyears distance back, trying to adjust the trade patterns to accommodate the new discovery, it was too late. Some starstations had shut down and emigrated because goods were reaching their trading partners from Pell, not Earth, and they were suddenly in a backwater area, out of the future line along which goods would flow.

  Pell not only succeeded as a starstation, it was being overloaded by immigrants and sent out new colonies to Viking and Mariner; and Mariner, having discovered by telescope a planeted star near it, colonized Cyteen, which had another agricultural world.

  THE BREAK WITH EARTH

  Earth just did not cope with these changes fast enough. The value of its goods plummetted. It suffered an economic crisis and there began to be an outcry that the starstations and the merchanters ought to be taxed to support Earth, who after all, started the space program.

  Now in one way the original decision to have manned ships paid off; some merchanters had maintained enough contact with Earth to be somewhat loyal to the Earth Company, but few stations were loyal enough to want to pay a tax. Earth was able to enforce the tax, at least, at first.

  There was some shooting. Merchanters who would serve Earth were armed.

  A great many people who did not like this trend left the nine starstations which began to be called the Hinder Stars.

  They went to Pell or further.

  But then... then a scientist at Cyteen discovered a principle that made possible Faster Than Light travel: an FTL ship.

  During the passage of a lightspeed message to Earth that such a discovery might be possible, an FTL ship was launched from Cyteen and had time to tour almost every starstation in far space.

  THE COMPANY WARS

  Had it not been for the tax, Earth could have been in the center of things again. But Cyteen was hostile to Earth.

  And Cyteen had two things: a discovery in the biology of the planet Cyteen had given them rejuv, a drug that could hold off old age for up to fifty years. Earth wanted it. Badly. Cyteen also had FTL. And that, Earth got, thanks to Pell, which got the secret and spread it.

  The shooting then became serious. Some merchanters went to Cyteen and Cyteen declared its independence of the Earth Company.

  Earth built fifty superFTL carriers to batter Cyteen to its knees. It named the ships after the nations of Earth.

  But Cyteen, older than Earth in the matter of building FTL ships, matched their fleet.

  The one thing Earth had was a majority of merchanters on Earth's side, and this included some very good starpilots who wrote new chapters in FTL operation, and who outflew and outfought Cyteen equipment, which was generally a few years more advanced than Earth's.

  In FTL technology Cyteen had a slight edge, mostly because of a handful of physicists who were still at work on improvements.

  In actual operating skill, the loyalists had

the edge, and their ships were good enough, if not the latest.

  MERCHANTER OPERATIONS DURING THE WAR

  Merchanters had once been the warships: a few of the old sublights had been converted to FTL; many of the modern merchanters were launched by Pell, Earth, or Cyteen as new ships, crewed by spinoffs of older merchanter families. But the lifestyle changed radically because of FTL.

  The voyages of years now ammounted to weeks spent in space.

  While merchanters still looked for mates outside their ships, the difference in lifestyle of merchanters and stationers had gotten so extreme that merchanter/stationer marriages were unlikely. Merchanters associated with merchanters, and were confined to the docks at the ninth level of the rim of each wheel-like station. Along one side would be the tending machinery and access ramps of ships in dock; along the other side (in the Green and White sides of the wheel) were bars, restaurants, and hotels (called sleepovers) for spaces. On the dockside of Blue Section (which is always administrative) are the customs office, the spacer banks, security headquarters, and in short, all the nerve centers of the docks. Only military ships of ships with special clearance get to dock in a station's blue dock, and only stationers with special clearance get to live in the eight levels above, many of which have sensitive offices. Station Central is the uppermost of the blue levels.

  White contains many shops that serve spacers; the levels above have shops that serve stationers, and residences of shopkeepers and medical folk. The uppermost level of white had the security detention area and police headquarters; the level just below has the medical facilities, the hospitals, and so on.

  Green section on the stationer levels contains general residences, restaurants, and shops for stationers.

  Red section on the docks is for insystem haulers coming in with ores and other industrial goods: it contains much of the manufacturing. This also tends to socially separate insystem spacers from FTL spacers, who do mix without fighting, but without great enthusiasm either: FTL merchanters are clannish and occasionally dangerous, tending to enforce their own law, particularly on Green dock, which is their territory.

  There is little residence (but some) in red sector. Its docks have shops and manufacturers' offices and some station offices which apply exclusively to the insystem ships.

  Orange section dock is either for FTL or insystemers, depending on need. It has shops, banks, and some restaurants; above are residences.

  The hub has three functions: docking for null-G haulers like oreships which unload their cargoes without gravity, and which will stand off from station during crew liberties. Ore haulers are too big to dock at regular facilities. The hub also has those functions of station lifesupport and power which do not need gravity. And it has a gymnasium and recreational area for null gravity and low gravity sports.

  Merchanter ships come in several classes.

  There are general FTL haulers. Crew lives forward in a wheel-like cylinder that rotates to supply gravity because these ships do not often use regular engines and the force of acceleration is a nuisance, not a help to them. The cargo compartment is behind, in front of the engines. The cargo space may be of several kinds.

  First it may be unheated, in which case contents will freeze in the cold of space. Some goods profit by this.

  Such holds are not pressurized either.

  Or the hold may be heated to various degrees. This is expensive, usually involving lifesupport sufficient to admit a worker without a spacesuit, but in most that do claim heated holds, the temperature is just above freezing. Few goods need balmy temperatures. Very few haulers can handle that kind of thing in bulk.

  Or a ship may take cannisters, some of which have internal regulating systems for heat or air.

  Many ships have one heated hold up front and the rest unheated.

  Also most goods do not require gravity. Most holds are zero-G.

  A very few ships can provide heated holds with gravity, which they get by having one or more holds included in the crew cylinder. This is very expensive transport. Often passengers ride in spare crew cabins (there is not much interstellar passenger traffic at this stage). In rare emergencies, heated one-G holds can be used for passengers.

  Ships can come in all sorts of combinations.

  There are also can-haulers which are nothing but a crew compartment in front and engine at the rear connected by a long bare backbone with clamps that bind up to ten or twelve huge cannisters in place. Canhaulers unload to small pusherships which then shove the cannisters into the null-G dock of station hubs.

  In the normal operation of a merchanter ship, it takes cargo, leaves dock, and spends hours (or in some systems and depending on the power and load -- days) getting to the nadir of the stellar pole far enough out that the jump will not land them in the heart of the star or try to take a planet along. During this time the crew lives normally, annoyed only by the first acceleration that got them going. Normal space engines shut down then and they coast.

  When they get to the nadir jump range they get a navigational fix on a star, do the elaborate calculations to determine exact location, and turn on the generation vanes, the large panels suspended on vanes about the ship like old-fashioned rocket fins -- but these provide the field which takes them into jumpspace, the Between.

  Subjectively, a few minutes pass. Objectively, a week or month of Universal time has passed. This again varies according to power and mass of the ship and load, and yes, a more powerful (or less loaded) ship can overjump a weaker one and arrive first.

  The ship has now been dragged out of hyperspace by the nearest gravity well in the vector it had chosen. Usually these are jump-points, brown dwarf stars of Jupiter-like objects which exist between the greater stars -- too cool to give off much light or radiation, but massive enough to make a considerable pockmock in hyperspace.

  The ship is now traveling about 3/4 to 1/2 lightspeed or about 139,000 miles per second. At this rate, planets and large rocks are dangerous to it. If something went wrong at this speed in our solar system, a ship near Earth might have fourteen minutes to solve its problem before hitting the Sun -- and, of course, it takes enormous energy to turn even a hair, let alone bend a sharp turn to evade something.

  If you use conventional radar, it sends out a pulse and you literally run into its bounced-back return; if you are tracking a high-speed ship moving in a different vector than your own, your pulse may not catch up to it and come back fast enough to do you any good. Remember the fourteen minutes above; and heaven help you if the ship in question is coming your way! More about communications and radar of FTL ships later. For now, suffice it to say it is a good idea to come in only at zenith of the jumppoint and to leave the point only at nadir. This regulates traffic and reduces your chance of running into someone to those of your house getting hit by a meteorite on Earth. Rare, but known to happen. Starships, after all, are not as frequent as automobiles.

  If your instruments are off, of course, you could impact the jump point.

  And any ship moving at in-system speeds looks like it's standing still. They can only hope you'll slow down before you get into the jump point central area.

  How to shed this enormous velocity? Pulse the jump engines, which partially reforms the field and blows off some of your velocity like an invisible drag chute extended into the interface of realspace and hyperspace. You slow down to a crawl.

  Now you pass tamely through the realspace near the Mass, the almost star-like object that makes the gravity well. There may be other ships already here. You can talk to them by com and even, if you wish, stop completely, link airlocks, and exchange goods outside station customs. A lot do. This passage through the jump point can take a leisurely week, if you're having fun. If you're in a hurry you can probably get on through (and be cursed by near traffic) in a day.

  There is, however, a penalty for this, subspace is a harrowing experience and makes one feel awful. Moving through space too rapidly give you no time for your stomach to recover and you will progressively become sicker and worse at navigation. Take your time. It's healthier.

 

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