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 He3 cloudscoops 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.
Voidhawk Base Habitats
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.
The Hundred Families
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 He3 contracts 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 Atlantis Islands
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.
Economy
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: Starships and Weapons
The starships fall into three distinct categories: voidhawks, blackhawks and Adamist starships.
Voidhawks
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 “angle” the distortion in order to direct the wormhole’s vector and thus produce a terminus at the required point in space.
Propulsion
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.
Operating Parameters
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 transla
te 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.
Structure
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
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.
Voidhawks used in Confederation Navy service courier duty have additional fusion generators fitted in their cargo bays to supplement their range, charging the patterning cells directly, although power from this source still requires time to be distributed correctly throughout the patterning cells—twenty minutes per swallow. With or without additional power sources, voidhawks can easily out-perform Adamist starships in most combat situations. Their only real challenge comes from blackhawks.
Reproduction
Artificial production of voidhawk eggs is now very rare, as very few refinements are being incorporated. The Saturn habitat geneticists are working primarily on methods to increase the gravitational counter-acceleration force which voidhawks generate around the crew quarters in order to give them a higher acceleration in normal space, and on extending their life expectancy. If successful, batches of eggs incorporating these improvements will be developed, and these new traits will gradually feed into the main flock. Otherwise, reproduction now follows the cycle originally designed into the species.
Voidhawks only reproduce once. Each craft has eight to twelve eggs stored in its central section, which are hatched in the hours preceding its death. All voidhawks know when their patterning cells are faltering, and they return to Saturn to die. The first act of germination is to load a human zygote into the egg, which includes a womb analogue and hematopoiesis organs. This zygote is always the offspring of the captain and his or her mate(s); the twelve zygotes can be produced at any time, and are stored in zero-tau, waiting for egg germination. After this act the voidhawk is abandoned by its crew, and it flies down towards Saturn. It then absorbs a large quantity of energy from the planet’s radiation field, which is used to energize the eggs inside.
The mating flight through the innermost rings which follows involves other voidhawks—as many as are available at Saturn—following the dying craft, and downloading their compositional paradigms (the software equivalents of DNA) via affinity. The paradigms are incorporated into the eggs, and used to format the cellular structure of the new voidhawks. As only the most agile voidhawks can catch up with a craft on its mating flight, this ensures that the breed is strengthened each time. Once every egg has been energized and loaded with a paradigm, they are ejected into orbit, and the parent voidhawk falls into the planet’s atmosphere to burn up.
The egg which is left behind begins life as a two-section unit: the infant voidhawk and a nutrient-production segment. This segment is what supports the voidhawk during the eighteen years required for it to reach maturity. It has organic conductor cables similar to those of a habitat to generate energy, and the weak magnetic field it produces gathers in the planet’s ring particles for digestion. Its organs convert this ice and carbon dust into usable proteins that then feed the growing voidhawk. They also support the infant captain for the first twelve months of gestation, allowing an exceptionally strong love bond to be established between the two. After this first year, the infant is removed and taken back to the habitat.
A voidhawk lives for its captain, and although it will accept flight instructions from other Edenists it will only do so if it perceives these instructions to be in the captain’s interest. Voidhawk maturity is achieved at eighteen years, at which time its mechanical systems are fitted, and it begins service. Voidhawk affinity range is the greatest in the Edenist genealogy, typically reaching 30AU. Life expectancy is 110 years.
Blackhawks
Bitek starships were initially derived from voidhawks by Rubra, the owner of Valisk, to be used by his company Magellanic Itg as its transport fleet. Several were sold to Adamists outside Rubra’s family line, and some were allegedly constructed by quasi-legal biotechnology companies across the Confederation. Origins are notoriously hard to pin down, though Tropicana’s involvement in their development is widely acknowledged. Although undoubtedly originating from voidhawk stock (see Valisk, page 208), blackhawks come in a variety of shapes, though there is unlikely to be any truth in the rumor that xenoc games have been spliced into the eggs at some time.
The commonest blackhawk profile is an onion shape, although lozenges, spheres, tapering cylinders and even rings have been seen. One of the reasons for this divergence (or evolution) from the voidhawk norm is alterations spliced in to give the blackhawks an improved combat performance. Although nominally listed as independent traders, blackhawk captains pick up their major income by hiring themselves out as mercenaries, certainly in their early flight years.
Blackhawks have a much larger swallow range than their cousins, typically twenty light-years, allowing them to jump easily out of navy voidhawk interception range— although they can only store enough energy to perform six to eight of these jumps sequentially. They can also maneuver with high agility, but like voidhawks they are not able to protect their crew from continuous acceleration above 3–4 gees. However, most blackhawk crewmembers have nanonic-boosted bodies specifically designed for high-gee resistance, allowing typical combat speeds of 10–15 gees to be sustained over long periods.
Blackhawks use the five independent habitats as bases for their mating flights, and the eggs are sold to the highest bidder. The blackhawk captains do not have the affinity gene, and instead use neuron symbionts to bond with the ships—essentially duplicating the strong bond that exists between voidhawks and their captains; although, given that blackhawk captains will be much older when the process starts, this puts a somewhat different slant on the relationship in that the blackhawk is heavily influenced by its captain’s personality. Blackhawk captains tend to stay in the base habitat while the blackhawk matures.
> Blackhawk life expectancy is around seventy-five years. The exact numbers of blackhawks in the Confederation is unknown, but there are probably around 10,000 currently operating; the exact figure is difficult to determine because their registration is frequently changed, and some fly with false CAB certificates.
Adamist Starships
Over 1,000,000 ZTT (zero temporal transit) starships are currently in service. They use solid-state jump nodes to generate a wormhole by distorting space directly around the ship. Nodes are energized from onboard fusion generators and then discharged into the patterning circuitry, which creates the distortion by focusing energy density until it becomes infinite. The nodes are arranged in a spherical lattice around the hull, a geometry which creates the wormhole interstice around the ship. In order to function correctly, the distortion must be perfectly symmetrical, so that the force it exerts on the starship is completely balanced. If the nodes are not positioned equidistantly, or the discharge is not simultaneous, then the resulting asymmetrical distortion will rip the ship apart in a spectacularly violent fashion.
The compression effect of imploding infinite-density loci is often powerful enough to initiate fusion within the ship’s atoms. This is also the reason why starships cannot jump when they are inside a planet’s (or star’s) gravity field; a strong gravitational gradient will warp the distortion field into instability. The nodes always have a small error-compensation ability built in so that the inevitable minute discrepancies in geometry and discharge timing do not pose any danger, and ensure that a node failure in deep space is survivable, by allowing a starship to complete its voyage with one or two defunct units.