Dark Fate, Chapter 94 (Patreon)

Chapter 94 – Growth

The good thing about going public like I had was that instead of searching for talent, the talent was coming to me. My email was literally flooded with resumes and requests, from all over the world. I definitely had my pick of the best of the best.

If I could identify who was the best, that is. I could pick out talent for combat in a war zone, but I didn’t have any clue beyond someone’s levels and skills what they could do in an administrative sense. That had all been handled by other people in the past loops. Once I had an admin staff, this could be handed off to them, leaving me free for other pursuits.

I just had to get that admin staff.

Fortunately, I recognized a couple names out of the pile that had come applying to me for administration roles. There were three, actually, but only two of them I was actually going to consider. Those two had been the right hands of two of the more powerful warlords, ones that carved out their own kingdoms like I did as the Black Knight. Either one of them would be valuable acquisitions to the team.

The third name I recognized was part of my own organization, but he had fallen under that bitch’s sway, and helped the traitors. I didn’t know whether he remembered the old timeline or not, but there was no way that I would trust him a second time. Not now, when things were moving to a higher level than I’d ever dreamed of during that first timeline.

Looking at the other two resumes, I reviewed what I knew of them.

Major Monique Stratton was with the US Marine Corps, in the logistics side of things. In the first time loop, when the US disintegrated during the first real pirate attacks, she managed to pull together what she could of the surviving military, and made the Seattle area their base of operations. Eventually, they took over most of Washington and Oregon, and they were some of the first groups to start using ‘remade’ military vehicles, adapting them to run off ambient mana, instead of gas, which was in short supply given how the chaos affected global supply networks.

Sun Zhihao was the other candidate. Officially, he was a Ministry of State Security worker based in Shanghai. However, in the last timeline, it had been revealed that he was no mere worker, but was actually in charge of all the Ministry’s operations, including internal intelligence, in the city. Using his knowledge and skills, he had famously declared himself the Emperor of China, after the communist regime fell with the glassing of Beijing. His reputation was such that it reached even my politically apathetic ears as I was fighting my own campaign to reclaim Georgia from the aliens.

Regardless of what they had done in that previous timeline, in this one they were both still firmly attached to their nations. Oh, they might have ‘recently retired’, but that was such a thin ruse I’d be shocked if anyone fell for it. Which meant that they were likely trying to get into his operation to spy. After all, a spy in the administration department could get intelligence on the whole of an organization.

I was expecting spies to be part of the people I brought in, of course. The fact that the first spies I found were obviously skilled at what they did, and had the charisma to become leaders was surprising, at first. However, upon reflection, I could see why they were ‘voluntold’ to apply. They had the skills necessary, obviously, but their kind of personality would make rivals, even enemies. Getting assigned to work as a spy like this would severely hamper their career opportunities and future advancement, leaving room for others to take advantage. It was as much a promotion as it was getting rid of a potential threat.

So, naturally, I hired both of them, had them sign the standard, NDA-style System contracts that I was going to have all residents of Ceres sign, which prevented them from sharing any secrets or technology without approval, and handed the piles of applications to them. I put Stratton in charge of the military administration, and Sun in charge of the civil administration, and ordered them to get to work, bringing in the people we would need. And then I waited.

As expected, it took less than twenty-four hours for them to run afoul of the System contracts, as they tried to send messages back to their governments with information that I had told them was secret. Now, instead of being contract workers, they were enslaved to me. The contract’s terms were now orders, and I gave them additional orders to ensure that they went global in their search for assistants and bringing in new people.

I kept tabs on them, of course, but they were both very efficient workers, and their administrative mindset helped fill out the structure that I had only loosely implemented until now. Thankfully, it looked like I could leave most of the drudgery to them, and their staff, and turn my attention elsewhere. Neither of them wanted to place bets on how many spies would be caught and enslaved before the nations of Earth stopped trying to infiltrate my kingdom. Maybe it was too soon for them?

At any rate, now I had administrators whose loyalty I could trust, and they were doing a good job of filling out the ranks, and arranging for the first immigrants to come to Ceres. Which was good, because I was wanting upscale my operation, with a quickness. The pirates would not be so easily foiled next time, and if I was going to stake my claim to the outer system, then I’d need to actually get out there and start staking.

Going out and staking colonies in the outer worlds meant a lot of things. There were a lot of moons and planetoids you could stick a flag on and make your claim, but that didn’t really make for an actual colony, and would only serve as a claim in a court of law. Courts of law that would likely be based on Earth.

Now, I was totally sure that the courts would be fair and not at all influenced by the nations involved, but I wanted something a little more solid than a flag to stake my claim. Fortunately, my architect and colony designer had already started working on something like that. They were basically less-complicated copies of the automated asteroid colony machine that I’d purchased off the System Shop, but the colony design was standardized, so it saved on design space. Drop one off on a suitable moon or asteroid, and it would build you an outpost.

Of course, the outposts wouldn’t be terribly large, only a few hundred people, at most. But you could expand afterwards, if needed, with the ‘tile’ function, allowing you to carve out a subterranean colony and grow it as needed. By the time colonists got there, they would have a safe and secure, if somewhat sterile, colony to live in. Anything more could be built later.

Each colony template was designed to be as self-reliant as possible. The holy trinity of space colonization was food, water, and air. Water was actually the easiest to deal with, thanks to magic. Conjuration machines, like I was planning to install around Africa, would help to supply reservoirs, which would begin filling even before colonists arrived. In addition, water reclamation would be employed, purifying and cleansing waste water so it could be used again and again, with as little loss as possible.

Food was the next simplest. Hydroponic gardens would allow the colonists to grow a constant supply of fruits and vegetables. There were also System designs for vat cloned meat, which was crucial for carnivorous species to survive spaceflight. Even those that liked to keep living ‘rations’ on board had these systems, either as a backup, or to extend their food supply. Well, except for pirates like the ones we’d faced.

Apparently, they were counting on having some ‘fresh meat’ to take home with them. I’d seen some of the interrogations of captured pirates, and my own people had going through any computers that hadn’t been scrapped in our space battle. The Ouran’s idea of emergency rations was to eat smaller members of the crew on their ships, slave species that were brought aboard for that, and other reasons, like getting into maintenance spaces they were too big to access comfortably.

At any rate, with water taken care of, that meant that, between hydroponics and vat-grown meat, the new colonies would be able to be completely self-sufficient, if they expanded their facilities at the same rate that they gained residents. Self-sufficiency was the big thing that I was going to keep harping on in all these design meetings. On Earth, you had people dying when situations happened and people couldn’t get deliveries from a hundred miles away. And there was no such thing as going out and hunting in space.

I couldn’t be reliant on Earth for supplies. So far, everyone was playing nice. Once they actually got more space assets, though, and people started trying to throw their weight around, I couldn’t count on them continuing to play nice. And then there were the pirates, who might try raiding or blockading isolated colonies now that conquest had failed. So, all my facilities would be made so that they could hold off a siege, if needed.

Air was the third leg of that holy trinity of space survival, and the most important one. Even on Earth, it was called the Rule of Threes. Three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. That was how long a person could survive, provided they had the things earlier on the list. In space, you took ‘shelter’ out of the equation, since without it, you usually didn’t have any of the rest to begin with. That was why I was starting with building shelter, and then moving on to other things. You needed a sealed environment before you could put air in space.

Once the colonies were sealed up, air would be pumped in, with CO2 filters doing the heavy lifting at the start, same as NASA did, but with magical backups, just in case. But that was just for getting things going. The hydroponics gardens would take care of some of the filtration needs, pulling CO2 out of the air, but each colony was centered around a massive park. Yes, it would be lit with artificial sunlight, and yes, it would be underground, but there would be actual plants growing there, passively making oxygen to ease the burden on the filters. Not to mention the morale benefits the parks would have.

Magic would also play a role, of course. Just like with conjured water, ships and stations could conjure air. Doing that required power, of course, but power was easier to supply than a planet’s worth of ecosystem. Actually, there were simple plans to allow magic to account for all of a colony’s air needs, but those plans lacked redundancies for what would happen if magic suddenly went offline, or was suppressed for some reason. Sure, the chances of that happening was small, but I was not going to invoke the wrath of Murphy by not preparing against it.

Of course, new colonies all around the system would require some trade to keep them going. That meant freighters. And freighters would need protecting, which meant more ships and fighters for my navy. You couldn’t just leave the colonies to fend for themselves, obviously.

Which meant I needed to talk with my ship designer, and see what fun things she’d come up with.