The Story of Human Exploration and Discovery Beyond the Orion Arm
The materials contained herein unless otherwise noted are the copyright of J. Austin Wilde, 1991 to 2009, all rights reserved.
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AMC Registry of Vessels
Sagittarius Colonial Atlas
Ahriman (HM+31 0938 B)
Amethyst (HB+32 3331 B)
Angelique (HM-50 2602 B)
Apollonia/Phyrigia (HD+35 2475 A)
Aquilla (SAG+56 0107)
Arkhangelsk (HM+41 2746)
Atlantis (HM+52 0225)
Aurora (HM+47 2620 A)
Avignon (HM+31 3323)
Baker's End (SAG-36 0528)
Bellarmine (HM+36 1662 A)
Bellissimo (HM+40 2827)
Beowulf (HM+39 5516 A)
Bounty (HB+38 0524 A)
Buran (HD+32 1678)
Cauldron (SAG+47 1522)
Charybdis (HB+56 0404 B)
Concordia (HM+00 2422 A)
Cora's World (HM-40 2634)
Daedelus (SAG+45 4907 A)
Demeter (HM+31 3563)
Destiny (HD+47 0309)
Dustbowl/New Deseret (SAG-42 4503 B)
Frontiera (HD+40 1336)
Frostpile (SAG+43 2208)
Fury (HM+53 0102 A)
Gateway (HM+00 0000)
Goldrush (SAG+33 2643)
Gulag (HD+40 4019)
Hecate's Hate (HM+32 3972)
Hyperborea (SAG+44 1855 B)
Ice Station Mike (HD+42 3267)
Ice Station Oscar (HD+42 5807)
Inshallah (HM+53 0608)
Jena (HB-33 4139 A)
Jewel/Sulfur Flats (HM+41 0955 A & B)
Jin Xian (HM-45 4415)
Jove/Fuzhou (SAG+49 2911 A & B)
Libertad (HD-46 2312)
Marino (HD-31 4687)
Midgard/Muspellheim (HD+54 1018)
Mirabilis (HM-45 1718)
Neu Bavaria (HM+31 7329)
New Anchorage (HD+35 3455 A)
New Ares (HM+57 0405 A)
New Havana (HM+55 1217)
New Tanstaafl (HM+43 3626 A)
New Taranto (HB+31 2685 A)
New Zion (HD+47 0954)
Paydirt (HM+36 2309)
Porto Fria (HM-52 2716 A)
Pu'uhuonua (HM+35 2017)
Research Station Victor (HB+55 1522)
Sakura (HM-31 0629)
Sandovar (HM+34 0139 A)
Santa Clara (SAG+31 0179 B)
Scherzo (SAG+55 2007 B)
Sheba's World/Neu Bayer (HD-51 1306 A)
Tanner's World (HB-32 1052)
Tartarus (HM+31 5806)
The Alamo (HM+34 0552 B)
Tortuga (HD-37 4529)
Toulon (SAG+55 0823 A)
Valhalla (HD+31 1168)
Viracocha (HM+31 1175 A)
Waypoint November (HM+31 1969 A)
Waypoint Omega (HM-06 1121 A)
Waypoint Tango (HD+41 4528 A)
Waypoint X-Ray (HD-66 1619)
Waypoint Yankee (HD+10 1721)
Waystation Alfa (HM+34 1207)
Xiamen (HM+48 2891 B)
Zhengzhou (HM-27 9791 B)
| Adventurer | Agua de Aquilla | Ahriman | The
Alamo |
| Alpha Centauri | Ahura Mazda (AMC-115) | Amaranth Tweak | Amra, Varun |
| AMC Registry of Vessels | Amethyst | Amphibian Tweak |
Amundsen (SDCR-4) |
| Angelique | Apollonia | Aquilla | Aquilla Cactus |
| Arkhangelsk | Armada of the Mercer Compact | Armstrong (AMC-006) | Astromani Tweak |
| Atlantis | Aurimas, Gavin | Aurimas,
Lucien |
Aurora |
| Avignon | Aztlan | ||
Several spacecraft named Adventurer have relevance to this encyclopedia: Adventurer I, Adventurer III, and Adventurer (AMC-009)
Adventurer I
The first spacecraft to bear the name served as the testbed and prototype for the Short Jump stardrive technology developed by Dr. Gavin Aurimas and his Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation (SSTE). The Adventurer I was constructed in 2188 by the Lockmart Advanced Technologies Consortium under contract for the United States Government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Adventurer I was an unmanned spacecraft that completed the first successful stardrive jump on February 15, 2191 covering a distance of 1.03 AU. This relatively insignificant jump distance nevertheless proved Dr. Aurimas' theories on space-time metric manipulation, and how the granularity of space-time itself was irregular but predictable within certain bounds. Adventurer I made eight additional jump attempts between February 2191 and June 2192, of which only three resulted in successful transits owing to the difficulty in detecting and localizing the Plank scale wormholes necessary for a jump. The final attempt ended in disaster as the spacecraft's stardrive malfunctioned during the jump attempt, causing it to materialze just outside the Sun's photosphere, destroying the craft and its stardrive instantly. Solar observatories detected the craft's materialization and subsequent destruction - without this stroke of luck on an otherwise unfortunate day, the fate of the Adventurer I would probably have never been known.
Adventurer III
The second spacecraft to bear the name was actually christened Adventurer III, as the spacecraft intended to be the Adventurer II was scrapped by an angry U.S. Congress following a heated procurement scandal within Lockmart's consortium prior to completion. Enormous backlash from both the world's public and scientific sectors in light of Adventurer I's limited success in so-called FTL operations shamed Congress into funding another prototype spacecraft which was completed in 2198. Adventurer III, fitted with the SSTE's latest stardrive prototype, was theoretically capable of making an interstellar jump of up to five light-years, and Gavin Aurimas upped the ante by making a public guarantee to Congress that his stardrive system could reach the Alpha Centauri system and return. This was especially galvanizing to both the world's public opinion and to Congress, as Alpha Centauri was by this time strongly believed to have at least one Earth like planet orbiting the 'A' component of the system. As stardrive was still highly experimental, the Adventurer III would be an unmanned craft.
Adventurer III made a successful stardrive jump to the Alpha Centauri system 'A' star jump point on July 4, 2199. Once in-system, the spacecraft performed a telescope survey of the system, beamed a message containing all its collected data back to Earth via laser communicator in the event of stardrive failure, and realigned for the jump point. Adventurer III returned to the Sol System on July 8, 2199 as the first man made object to leave the Solar System and return. Data collected by the spacecraft confirmed the existence of an Earth like planet with strong biological signatures orbiting the system primary, and this world was dubbed Terranova by the project science mission manager. Adventurer III would make nine more stardrive jumps from 2199 to 2203, the majority of them to Alpha Centauri, one to Proxima Centauri, and one to Barnard's Star. The stardrive failed on a jump to Alpha Centauri, stranding the spacecraft in the system until 2206, where it was recovered in orbit around Terranova by the first manned interstellar mission and sent home to Earth as cargo in 2209. Adventurer III currently resides in the Smithsonian's Orbital Annex at the L-5 LaGrange Point.
Adventurer (AMC-009)
The third spacecraft to bear the name belongs to the tenth and final starship of the Bonaventure class explorers. The Adventurer was part of the Block III group of four starships received from Estrella Esperanza Shipyards of Terranova for the Sagittarius Development Corporation. The keel was laid on April 10, 2352 and the ship delivered for final fitting out by the SDC on 12 July 2354. The UN Registry number was SDCR-10, a number used up until the creation of the Armada of the Mercer Compact Registry of Vessels, when its registry was changed to AMC-009. Adventurer has had three Masters in its ten years of service: J. N. Guinness was the first commander of Adventurer, and participated in Expeditions ONE, TWO, and THREE; L. K. Vorhees took part in Expeditions FOUR and FIVE; and the current master, P. T. "Pip" Forger has overseen an extended maintenance refit of Adventurer in preparation for Expedition SEVEN. One of Adventurer's most noteworthy accomplishments has been the survey conducted of the XR+64 2231 black hole in 2359 under Captain Vorhees, the first ever survey of a black hole by a manned spacecraft.
For more information on the class, click here.
A distilled sweet tasting alcoholic beverage similar to Tequila, produced by the inhabitants of the planet Aquilla, in the SAG+56 0107 System from the leaves of a native succulent plant. Agua de Aquilla is commonly distilled to about 100 proof, or 50% alcohol by volume. Some variants of the liquor are distilled to as high as 150 proof and are sometimes called Fuego de Aquilla instead. The original provenance of the liquor is open to heated debate amongst the colonists, as it appears that the idea to use the sugar rich leaves of the abundant Aquilla Cactus for fermentation stock was arrived at independently by at least a half dozen people around the year 2358 as the colony was getting on its feet. Agua de Aquilla is at the present served straight from the still in most places, making it more akin to moonshine than any distilled spirit of any refinement, though at the Hotel Esperanza in the colony town of Cuidad Aquilla, it is first poured through a bed of charcoal before bottling, which takes some of the eye-crossing edge off of the stuff. Actual aging in charred wooden casks has begun with all of the current distillers of the liquor, using whatever wood stock for their barrels they can get hold of. It is the hope of each brand that theirs will become the standard by which the aged and refined Agua de Aquilla is based, but at the present it will be some time before a definitive process is determined. Off-world exports of Agua de Aquilla are limited to small lots at the present time, with the largest consumer being the mining camp on Aquilla's moon, Falcone.
The second planet orbiting the 'B' star companion in the HM+31 0938 System. Ahriman was settled in 2357 by a group of avid terraforming enthusiasts from the Martian colony of Robinson. Having failed to convince the Martian government to pursue a more radical approach to realizing the dream of Blue Mars, they set off in search of a world in which they could prove their theories. The opening of the Stargate to Sagittarius for colonization was an opportunity they seized upon, and pooling all of their resources plus all that they could beg, borrow, or steal, they found a candidate world in the HM+31 0938 system.
Ahriman orbits a dim red dwarf star in a binary system paired with an orange dwarf. Candidate worlds around the orange dwarf primary were limited by several jovians with no suitable moons in the ideal orbits, forcing them to consider the companion star. The second world around the B star was within the habitable zone, but unlike Mars, had a thick reducing atmosphere, a simple anaerobic biosphere, and was tidally locked to its parent star. Undaunted by their lack of ideal conditions for their theories, the colonists introduced bacteria and algae that could function in a reducing atmosphere and slowly add oxygen. The genemod organisms attacked the world with gusto, annihilating enough of the crude native biosphere to produce a measureable amount of free oxygen by 2361. Progress has since come to an inevitable slow, as oxygen sinks in the water and soil must become saturated before free O2 content can rise to a breatheable level. In the meantime, carbon sequesting corals were seeded in along the seacoasts to pull atmospheric carbon dioxide out and lower the air pressure to a more suitable range.
Sometime within the next fifty years, Ahriman might be habitable with respirator assistance, but the colonists are patient and spend their days monitoring their progress and conducting experiments to determine how they wish to seed their new world with compatible life. The collapse of the Stargate is an inconvenience to them at best, as they can no longer trumpet their inevitable success to their old rivals on Mars.
See Ahriman's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
An otherwise unremarkable rock orbiting a dim red dwarf star in the HM+34 0552 B system, The Alamo came by its name on August 15, 2358 after the inhabitants fought off an organized attack by Aztlan-backed nihilists known as The End of History that had managed to infiltrate the Sagittarius arm in spite of the SDC security apparatus' best efforts.
See The Alamo's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
The Ahura Mazda is the one of a kind personal yacht of Ganges Mercantile, LTD. CEO, Varun Amra. Constructed by Estrella Esperanza Shipyards of Terranova, Alpha Centauri. Keel laid 16 April 2359, commissioned 12 November 2360. It is considered to be one of the most beautiful and exotic starships ever constructed, and serves as a mobile palace for its merchant prince owner.
More information on the Ahura Mazda can be found here.
Star System located 4.36 light years from Sol. Also known as Rigel Kentaurus, or Hip 71683, this trinary star system consists of a binary pair of G2V and K0V main sequence stars that orbit each other with a semi-major axis of 23.7 AU, and are in turn orbited by a M5V red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri at a mean distance of 10,000 AU. Proxima's current position in its orbit places it as the closest star to Sol at 4.22 light-years. The Alpha Centauri system was observed with greater and greater attention and detail during the 21st Century, and was determined by moon-based telescope and spectrographic observations as having a high likelihood of harboring an Earth like planet around the 'A' star component in 2034. Various plans were drawn up by NASA, ESA, and China's space agency for an unmanned interstellar probe to examine the system in detail following the announcement, but the technological limitations on propulsion systems coupled with the massive cost and the lack of enthusiasm from taxpayers about a mission that would take at a minimum, 50 years to reach the system, killed all serious attempts at confirmation. Further interest in a possible Earth like planet was limited to the occasional tidbit of data gleaned from telescope surveys and a long running American video series called Terranova, detailing a fictional colonization effort. By the second half of the 21st Century, public interest was fixed on the conquest of the Solar System, where there were real worlds within the human grasp to explore and exploit, and thoughts of going to Alpha Centaruri, even with unmanned probes, remained the province of dreamers.
The United States' Stardrive Project in the late 22nd Century brought about a rapid change in public opinion. On July 4, 2199, the American unmanned interstellar space probe Adventurer III made a successful stardrive jump to the Alpha Centauri system. Upon its return to Sol, the existence of an Earth like planet was confirmed by direct observation of the probe. The planet was christened Terranova by the project's Science Team (taking the name used by the old video series), and within days plans for sending a manned mission to Alpha Centauri were being drawn up. The first human beings to leave the Solar System materialized within the Alpha Centauri System on June 10, 2206 and settled into orbit around Terranova four weeks later. The Adventurer III's stardrive had failed three years earlier, and the probe's AI had maneuvered the craft into orbit to await recovery. The data collected by Adventurer III in the interim three years proved to be vital to the exploration effort, allowing the six person Landing Party to plan a descent to the surface weeks ahead of schedule. Mission commander Roger Fortunato became the first human being to step onto the surface of Terranova on August 18, 2206.
The United States took advantage of its monopoly on stardrive technology to begin an aggressive interstellar exploration and colonization program. Although the Solar System was by no means fully conquered, tensions over resources, particularly among the Jovian and Saturnian moons, were on the rise, and it would only be a matter of time before the U.S. believed it would be dragged into an interplanetary war the way Manchuria had with the Jovian League. Reaching for the stars would allow the U.S. and selected allies to side step potential sources of conflict and expand far beyond the limits of any single solar system. The first colony effort to Terranova was launched in 2220, and over the next fifty years over a million people, mostly from the Anglosphere and mostly at their own expense, settled the system. In addition to the colonies on the surface of Terranova, many orbital habitats, mining outposts, and science stations were also constructed.
By the 24th Century the Alpha Centauri System is considered part of the Core of human space. Roughly 50 million souls from several old Earth nations and several independent states call the system their home, many of them natives over several generations. A Stargate links the system to Sol, and another Stargate links it to Delta Pavonis.
The Amaranth Process, also known as the Amaranth Tweak, was first made available in 2209. The Process, which combines a somatic genetic modification with hormone and proteinomic therapies as well as some surgery for clients of advanced age, was capable of regenerating many decades of life and retarding the aging process thereafter for those few souls who could afford it. Like earlier and less effective anti-agathic treatments, becoming an Amaranth is an on-going process requiring regular and very costly biomaintenance, and the first Amaranth discovered there was a point of diminishing returns for each additional treatment. As the process was refined and more research data became available, it was discovered that the sooner one got the process, the greater their potential lifespan. Currently, eligibility begins at age 25, and with regular (yearly) biomaintenance, an Amaranth may live for four or five centuries. This is of course projected, since no one yet has managed to live this long, and many succumb to accidents or foul play long before their bodies start to show signs of wear and tear resistant to the process' ability to overcome.
At the moment, the base cost for Amaranth treatment is in the range of 10 million Solarian Dollars for a person between the ages of 25 and 40 with no significant health problems, ionizing radiation exposure, or exposure to teratogens, and goes up from there depending on initial age and life history. Annual maintenance runs about 100,000 dollars, with a ten year advanced maintenance treatment costing about 500,000 dollars. In exchange for all that money and weeks of free time spent at the clinic (most are run like exclusive rehabilitation facilities for substance abuse, in that they are private, expensive, and often excruciating for the first few days), the Amaranth enjoys the physical body of a 25 year old for what appears to be about one hundred years, with another decade of apparent age being added for every additional fifty years of life after that.
Amaranth treatment is one of the most common luxuries given to the children of the very rich, and has led to an increasing divide between the worlds' Haves and Have Nots. The only equalizer between rich and poor is that an Amaranth can die from accident, infectious disease, or foul play just as easily as one not so gifted, and as many of the idle rich take up dangerous hobbies, there are many stories and media productions, both real and fictional, of Amaranth who died needlessly young. One of the most famous of these was a video miniseries production of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher in 2277 featuring a cast of wealthy Amaranth, who, in spite of their effective immortality, eventually all fall into madness and suffer various horrific deaths over their irrational fear of dying and decay. Though there has been little research into the matter, many who become Amaranth eventually at least consider the process of Uploading to be their only way of ultimately cheating death. It helps that if one can afford to become an Amaranth, one can afford the process of Uploading.
Varun Amra is a self-made man, rising from a humble deckhand on a third rate free trader out of Tycho Colony, Luna, to become one of the youngest licensed ship's masters in known space. Sharp, handsome, and preternaturally clever at interstellar trade and commerce, Amra turned a series of shrewd trades and well-timed speculation backing other captains' ventures into a mercantile empire known as Ganges Mercantile, LTD., encompassing a hundred starships, from tiny Novorossiysks to mighty VLCCs, across two dozen star systems. His wealth is so great that only Dr. Gavin Aurimas surpasses him. Amra came to Sagittarius in 2360 with a handful of vessels from his merchant fleet for the adventure of forging new trade routes and aligning the destinies of entire worlds according to his whims, and with his vast wealth and experience, there is no reason to believe that lightning can't strike twice. Even with the collapse of the Stargate cutting him off from most of his assets, Amra has moved to consolidate his position in Sagittarius, and has already become a potent force for trade and communication among the stranded colonies. In spite of his potential as a rival, he maintains good relations with the SDC, and has no real enemies in Sagittarius. His ships are reliable, his rates are competitive, and his hand-picked captains have a well deserved reputation for shrewd but scrupulous conduct of their affairs.
His headquarters is the fabulous custom yacht, SS Ahura Mazda (AMC-115), where he runs his (diminished) mercantile empire and entertains clients and guests. Amra and his vessel can be found anywhere in Sagittarius, though he does tend to stay within one jump of Fury. He is a confirmed bachelor, though this fact has not deterred any number of would-be companions, and has been the subject of numerous stories, news reports, and dramatizations since his arrival in the spiral arm.
The Armada of the Mercer Compact Registry of Vessels was created in June of 2361, before there was even any Mercer Compact to name it after. The Registry was mandated by Joachim Mercer, acting in his capacity as Managing Director of the Sagittarius Development Corporation. The official purpose of the registry was to establish a system for identifying existing as well as new spacecraft constructed in Sagittarius in the absence of the old United Nations registry. The unofficial purpose soon became clear as Joachim announced that ships that did not register by December 31, 2361 would no longer receive SDC discounts and subsidies for propellant and other services at SDC Waystations and other facilities.
The current listing for the AMC Registry of Vessels can be found here.
Fourth starship of the Bonaventure class Heavy Explorer. Named for Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach both the North and South poles on Earth. Keel laid 18 June 2351, Commissioned 31 March 2353. Amundsen was a Block II model. Amundsen participated in Expedition ONE, but failed to return to Gateway as scheduled in June of 2356. When it had failed to return by December 2356 it was declared Missing. The Amundsen and her crew of 120 has since been declared Lost. A reward of one million Solarian Dollars has been offered by the SDC for information leading to the discovery of the Amundsen, or proof of its destruction.
For more information on the class, click here.
Second planet of the HM-50 2602 B System. A hot, high gravity world with a thick atmosphere currently being studied by the Terradyne/SDC corporation for potential terraforming operations.
See Angelique's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
Aquilla is the second planet of the SAG+56 0107 System. It is the third most populous colony in Sagittarius, with a population of 84,316. Aquilla is rich in resources and is relatively close to the core of the arm. which has allowed it to grow rapidly since the colonies were founded in 2357. Due to the nature of the jump point locations and Aquilla's very distant orbit around its primary, it is less fuel expensive and time consuming to come to the SAG+56 0107 system than it is to leave it, which while putting a premium on exports, has created a situation where economic ventures are focused inward even more so than with most new colonies. This has had the effect of creating an enormously independent spirit among the Aquillans. The chief export of the colony is Agua de Aquilla, a strong, sweet liquor.
See Aquilla's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
A succulent plant native to the planet Aquilla that is similar to the Earth agave, with nine to twelve long arrowhead shaped leaves of a waxy blueish-violet hue that grow from a central heart. The leaves store water as well as nutrients, and are made of a sweet pulp. The cactus' resemblence to the agave along with the high sugar content of the leaves quickly inspired the colonists of Aquilla to use it in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Agua de Aquilla is the common name of most products of the Aquilla Cactus, though the leaves can also be used to make jams and jellies, and the waxes are used to make sunscreen.
Third planet in the HM+41 2746 System. Colonized by Gazprom Interstellar in 2357. Population 19,750 (est). Abundant petroleum and natural gas products are present, which have eased the energy needs of the colony. Arkhanglesk is an independent colony and has not expressed a desire for participation with the Mercer Compact.
See Arkhangelsk's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
The space force of the Mercer Compact. Provisions for the Armada are detailed in Article II of the Compact, which designates all manned spacecraft of 2000 gross mass tons or greater registered to a signatory colony of the Compact. A sample of the Compact's Article II is detailed below:
Article II
Section
IAuthority to Enforce the Provisions of the Compact. Creation and Appointment of Agencies and Officers of the Compact.
| A) In order to enforce the provisions of this Compact, it is necessary to create and maintain appropriate Agencies and the Officers thereof, who shall enjoy all the powers and obligations required for the fulfillment of their duties. These Agencies and their Officers are as follows: | |||
| 1) The Armada | |||
| a)The Armada shall consist of three components: | |||
| i) The First Component shall be the warships and auxiliaries of the Sagittarius Development Corporation (SDC),which are best able to maintain peaceful conduct of interplanetary and interstellar commerce, and to defend the signatories of the Compact against aggression from any belligerents known or unknown, and may exercise the projection of power throughout settled space. | |||
| ii) The Second Component shall be the warships and auxiliaries of the Colonies, which are assumed to be concerned foremost with the defense of their own worlds, habitats, and non-military spacecraft and constructs. | |||
| iii) The Third Component shall be all applicable non-military spacecraft whose owners are Citizens of a signatory Colony. | |||
|
b)
The Armada shall consist of all manned
spacecraft, both
interplanetary and interstellar, of a gross mass displacement of two-thousand (2000) tons or greater that can be demonstrated as belonging to one of the three Components described in Article II, Section I, Paragraph 1a. Unmanned spacecraft subordinate to a tender or mothership shall be considered part of their superintendent vessel for the purposes of status with the Armada. |
|||
|
c)
All vessels of the Armada shall be given a unique Registry designation, which
shall be encoded in a transponder signal interrogator/generator. The SDC shall provide and maintain the Registry and its associated transponders. |
|||
| i) The Transponder shall be equipped on all Armada vessels, and may not be modified, transferred or tampered with in any way. Deliberate alteration or damage to a Transponder shall constitute a grave offense against the Compact and shall be tried and punished accordingly. | |||
| ii)
A vessel's Registry designation may not be altered or transferred to
another vessel. If the vessel is sold, scrapped,
destroyed by combat or accident, or lost, the Registry must be
updated with the SDC at the earliest possible
date. Under no circumstances shall a designation issued to one
vessel be applied to another. |
|||
| iii)
The SDC is responsible for promulgating a database of the Armada
Registry to all member vessels of the Armada,
and disseminating all changes and additions to this database in a
timely fashion. |
|||
| iv)
The SDC is responsible for maintaining a sufficient number of offices
within the systems containing the Compact's
signatories for the maintenance and promulgation of the Registry
database. |
|||
| d) Armada Vessels of the First
Component are charged with the defense
of the Compact against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Their
officers and ratings shall take an Oath of Service at the
beginning of their period of contracted service, and
at each and every subsequent renewal or extension. This Oath of
Service shall be legally binding, and its breach shall
carry severe criminal and civil penalties. |
|||
| e) Armada Vessels of the Second and Third Components shall be subject to call up for service with the Armada at any time following a directive from the SDC Director of Fleet Operations or his authorized Deputy. | |||
| i)
Such a mobilization shall place the vessels and their crews called to
service under the control and jurisdiction of
the SDC for the duration specified in the call-up order, not to
exceed 180 Gregorian days
from the day of
report
to the SDC for service for vessels of the Second Component, and 90
Gregorian days for
vessels of the Third
Component. |
|||
| ii)
All salaries, benefits, maintenance and repair costs, consumables,
fittings, and ammunition expenses shall become
the obligation of the SDC upon the report date of the particular
vessel to service, and continue until the
vessel(s) are released from their term of service. All wages and
cash benefits shall be disbursed according to
the equivalent Wages and
Benefits Schedule of
the
SDC as appropriate
for an individual crew member's billet
and seniority. |
|||
| iii)
All Colonies maintaining vessels of the Second and Third Components
shall make clear to their crews that they are subject to call up and service under the provisions of this Compact, and must deny employment to any person who declares that he or she is unable or unwilling to comply. |
|||
| iv) Members of a vessel's crew who refuse to be mobilized and serve when called up shall be considered guilty of Mutiny and shall be punished accordingly, up to and including the use of lethal force against the vessel and/or crew. | |||
| v)
Failure of the SDC to pay salaries and cash benefits during a time
of mobilization that exceeds a period of thirty (30) Gregorian days in arrears shall constitute an automatic release from call-up with the Armada for the applicable vessel(s). Such vessel(s) may not be recalled to service until all delinquent wages and cash benefits have been paid plus a penalty not to exceed ten (10) percent compounded every thirty (30) Gregorian days from the time the vessel(s) was released from service. Failure of the SDC to provide other non wage outlays for the vessel such as propellant, consumables, ammunition, &c, shall NOT constitute grounds for release from service. |
|||
|
vi)
Masters of vessels of the Second and Third Components, and their
crews which have been |
|||
|
vii)
No signatory Colony shall have grounds to bring suit against the SDC
or the Authority |
|||
In practice, the Armada of the Mercer Compact is very much a work in progress. Most spacecraft in Sagittarius have accepted the Registry, which would make them part of the Armada, mostly within the Third Component, but how likely any given vessel and her crew will be to respond to a call up for duty is unknown. The starships belonging to Dahan Corporation have all registered, but the Jin Xian Commonwealth that Dahan's Sagittarius division calls home is not a signatory to the Compact.
Seventh starship of the Bonaventure class Heavy Explorer and first of the Block III models. Named for 20th Century American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on Luna. Keel laid 12 May 2352, Commissioned 31 March 2353. Armstrong was built as a Block III model and has not needed an extended refit as earlier starships of her class have. Armstrong participated in Expeditions ONE through SIX.
For more information on the class, click here.
The Astromani Tweak is a germline modification to the human genome first made available in 2047. The modifications were originally to tweak the human endocrine and musculo-skeletal systems to allow the tweak to thrive in low gravity environments and to give him greater resistance to the effects of ionizing radiation. Both of these mods were critical to the expansion of humanity off of the Earth, and many early pioneers opted for the procedure in spite of its excruciating side effects during implementation. Many of the first explorers and colonists to Luna, Mars, the Belt, and the Jovians were Astromani.
Interstellar travel became possible at the dawn of the 22nd century, and the Astromani tweak was modified several times by major genetic engineering firms such as Biosynth and Applied Morphology to give resistance to xenopathogens and xenoallergens when colonizing worlds with alien biospheres. In the modern era, the Astromani tweak is one of the most common deviations from the human baseline one is likely to encounter in Sagittarius. The decision early in the program to make the modifications a germline series has allowed even those who have not opted for the tweak some benefits as it is likely a parent or ancestor carries the astromani genome.
No figure has towered over the last two hundred years the way Dr. Gavin Aurimas has. Born to pair of itinerant scholars of Lithuanian and British citizenship in southeastern Switzerland, Gavin wandered across Europe, the Middle East, and into India with his wayward parents during his childhood. He rarely spent more than a year in any one place, and lived the life of a child of bohemian academia. His eclectic education and a distinct lack of discipline from his free-thinking parents led him into trouble on more than one occasion in his teenage years. Only his obvious intellect and his brilliance for mathematics marked him out against the hoodlums he was frequently arrested with. His criminal activities tended towards vandalism and theft, usually against the wealthy and the privileged, and thus went unchecked at home.
Ironically, though Gavin had been raised to question authority and fight the powerful, his worst rebellion seems to have been against his own parents when he decided to study mathematics and the hard sciences rather than pursue a career in the humanities or social justice the way he had been encouraged to from the days when he first learned to read. He completed a secondary education equivalency degree online (having been expelled from every brick and mortar school he had ever attended from the time he was 13), and then aced several university entrance exams for Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and MIT. Naturally his criminal past raised concerns with the admissions boards for these top academies, and he was required to submit a paper for each in order to gauge his intellectual talent against his apparent ethical problems. Gavin submitted to each Admissions board a paper he had been working on describing a solution set to a particularly difficult manifold n-space topology problem that had eluded mathematicians for decades. His work was too fantastic to be believed, and the Sorbonne rejected him outright as a plagiarist and a fraud. Only when Cambridge's admissions board had submitted the paper for an internal review from their Maths department did Gavin get a chance to demonstrate his knowledge, conducting an online interview with the professors that proved his work was both genuine and genius. The paper he had writtten was enough to make any man's academic career for a lifetime, and as he traveled to Great Britain under a full scholarship and no little fanfare, he was soon to prove that it was only the beginning.
Gavin's work at university was no less impressive than his admissions paper, much to the chagrin of many of his professors. He had no small amount of ego, and was pitiless in tearing down the fallacious work of anyone he encountered, right up to the Lucasian Professor himself. His conflicts with his instructors nearly led to his downfall, and only an ongoing threat by MIT to poach him stayed his immanent expulsion until he could collect his doctorate. His dissertation touched upon a further expansion of n-space topologies that would prove to be the foundation for space-time metric manipulation theory later in his career.
In spite of his luminous intellect, his ego and his bruising clashes with his professors had tainted him in academia, and while the heavyweights of the corporate world were eager for the fruits of his mind, he was an obvious security risk to any employer. Gavin spent several years as a post-doc unemployed and unemployable. He sustained himself on a few meager grants and some personal loans, but by 2178 he was destitute. He had managed to publish some astounding work on space-time metric manipulations and wormhole theory during these lean years, but while these produced more accolades from his colleagues, none of it translated into a paying job.
He got his first break in early 2179, when he was hired by a private equity technology company to put his wormhole theories to a practical test. The tech company demonstrated some encouraging results about potential wells for interstellar communcation using his work, and with the money he received from them, Gavin made his first break with the progressive politics of his youth. He patented a process by which naturally occuring wormhole potential wells could be mapped for any given star system, and formed a research team of those few friends and fellow students he had failed to alienate during his school years. This team was known as the Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation, a private company owned by Gavin. The United States announced a new initiative through its DARPA program to design and construct a mechanism by which wormholes could be exploited for interstellar communication, and in 2180, in spite of the misgivings about security problems due to his past and his left-wing politics, the SSTE was given an exclusive contract and lavish funding to begin work.
SSTE under Gavin's leadership and genius made history when the Adventurer I executed a Stardrive jump in 2191, and they made their fortunes in 2199 when the Adventurer III jumped to Alpha Centauri.
Fifth planet of the HM+47 2620 A System. One of the more populated worlds of Sagittarius, Aurora is composed of three independent colonies enjoying friendly relations with the SDC. Its principal exports are coffee and wine, and with the collapse of the Stargate, Aurora produces some of the best of either commodity to be found in Sagittarius.
See Aurora's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
Fourth planet in the HM+31 3323 System. Avignon was settled by a joint Fabrique-Quebecois/ETE consortium of Canadian, French, Senegalese, and Portuguese colonists as a colony with a primary interest in supporting the mining operations on Motherlode. Avignon is noteable in that it was colonized and developed with special care to minimize the ecological footprint of the settlers to the world's biosphere. Such care taken in colonial development always comes with a high price tag, and the planet's population is divided into two distinct classes - those who could front the 500,000 Solarian Dollar per head immigration fee and those who pledged themselves to long term contracts of indentured servitude in lieu of same.
See Avignon's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
One of the Great Powers on Earth, with Mexico City as its capitol. Aztlan controls Central America, including the Panama Canal, and portions of equatorial South America. Aztlan was formed from the ashes of the Revolution of 2033 in Mexico by Gavriel Luis Ochoa, an illegal immigrant living in California for the early part of his life. Ochoa grew up in eastern Los Angeles, having come to the United States in 1994 as a young child with his parents. He grew up in poverty, which he sought to escape through criminal activities including the illegal narcotics trade. He was convicted of 2nd degree murder in 2012, and sent to prison in Chino, where in spite of his Mexican heritage, he was inducted into the powerful Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) . Ochoa had tremendous charisma and a calculating mind even as a young gang banger, and quickly rose through the ranks of the gang while in prison. At some point before or shortly after his incarceration, he seems to have become indoctrinated into the Reconquista ideology of Hispanic groups such as MEChA, and soon had turned the core of the MS-13 cadre in prison from violent criminals seeking wealth and power into a political movement with a powerful racial identity ideology.
Ochoa was released from prison in 2020 after serving only eight years for his crime due to the tremendous overcrowding problems in the California penal system. He was immediately deported back to Mexico upon his release from prison, where he soon forged an alliance between MS-13 and the ruling narco organization of Northern Mexico, the Juarez Cartel. Juarez had been battling the Mexican government and the other cartels for years by the time Ochoa fell in with them, and was nearly exhausted. MS-13 offered the kind of muscle the cartel needed to revitalize its strength, and Mexican born Ochoa served as the bridge between the two criminal groups which had never cooperated before in any significant way. The Juarez cartel began to regain its hold on narcotics trafficking with Ochoa's assistance, and Mexico became further destabilized in a wave of violence against the government that forced the ruling National Action Party (PAN) to capitulate.
Ochoa, growing more and more politically aware even as his criminal activities continued to make him wealthy, was soon forming alliances with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the political party that had ruled Mexico unchallenged for most of the 20th century, and desperate to get back into power. Ochoa shared the PRI's left wing core beliefs, and was able to finance a slate of successful PRI candidates who were socialists as well as adherents to his increasingly popular Aztlan Identity politics. The PAN were easy to paint as lapdogs of the United States, and as conditions in Mexico continued to deteriorate, the U.S. clamped down on the border and suspended the vital wire transfers of money from the north to the south that had kept the poor afloat. The U.S.'s move played into Ochoa's hands, and his candidates swept into power at all levels save the presidency itself. Ochoa had hardly begun his maneuverings, however. On the one hand he used his control over the PRI to usurp the party's leadership, while on the other hand used his criminal connections to remove or intimidate anyone who resisted him. His politicians privatized Mexico's state run oil company, PEMEX, in 2028 while at the same time he and his narco allies used their drug profits to purchase it outright. Massive narco investment into PEMEX revitalized Mexico's disintegrating petroleum industry right as a fresh wave of oil shocks threatened to disrupt the world economy, and the sudden increase in production from Mexico not only prevented this, but caused hundreds of billions of petrodollars to flow into Mexico's treasury.
Ochoa used his control over most of the government to begin a radical indoctrination program in the schools headed by 'advisors' from the La Raza and MEChA groups in the United States who had come to Mexico with Ochoa's rise to prominence. While Mexican sentiments regarding the Norte Americanos had never been friendly, Ochoa and his allies whipped them into a frenzy, and took the California-born Aztlan movement mainstream in Mexico. Popular narcocorrido bands were coopted into the movement, further promoting the Reconquista ideals of Ochoa to a new generation of Mexicans. In the five years before the Revolution of 2033, Ochoa expanded his Aztlan movement to include the indigenous peoples of all of Mexico and Central America. His MS-13 allies in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America were working towards political power in concert with what was happening in Mexico. The PRI was disbanded, and was replaced by the Aztlan party, complete with a paramilitary force composed of young men who had been converted to the Aztlan ideals in the schools and led by experienced and politcally loyal fighters from the Juarez cartel and Mexican recruits to MS-13. Ochoa himself stood for the presidency in a special election in 2031, and won by a landslide.
2033 brought with it tremendous social as well and economic upheaval. A world wide recession was threatening to become a global depression, and the bottom dropped out of the oil market. Mexico, spending petrodollars faster than they were rolling in to build a broader economic base as well expand the welfare state, was caught flat-footed and unable to borrow money to stay solvent. The western banks and investment capital firms called in their debts, and Ochoa responded with a thunderous televised speech that repudiated Mexican debt and denounced the capitalist white Europeans he held responsible for Mexico's woes. Mexico was bankrupt and in default, but Ochoa was not ready to quit. He called upon Mexico's traditional rich hereditary (and white) landowning class to liquidate their assets and donate them for the good of the Mexican people. He was predictably denounced, and calls for his removal from office sent the country into a spasm of violence. Ochoa ordered all the assets of Mexico's hundred wealthiest families seized by the Army. When the Army refused, Ochoa declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, and brought out his Aztlan militia. Army and Air Force leaders unwilling to follow orders were arrested and shot without trials. They were replaced by officers loyal to Aztlan, or even by some of Ochoa's militia leaders directly. The violence continued throughout 2033 as the well-trained and well equipped private security forces of Mexico's wealthy elite clashed with the zealous but poorly trained and equipped militia and Army units loyal to Ochoa. This was further exacerbated by an abortive coup attempt by Army and Air Force units who had attempted to remain neutral in the fighting in October 2033. The coup, widely believed to have the backing of the United States, was put down in short order by forces loyal to Ochoa who had been tipped off by a double agent and ended any serious threats to topple the Aztlan government.
Ochoa called a cease-fire in December of 2033, and offered to host a summit between the various factions to restore order and end further bloodshed. The summit was agreed to, and the warring parties met in the Zona Rosa colonias in Mexico City to settle their differences. After two days of fruitful talks allayed suspicions, Ochoa sprang an ambush upon his enemies at the summit in a bloody massacre forever known as La Dia Roja, the Red Day. Ochoa did not settle for merely eliminating his right-wing rivals in the Mexican political and economic elite. He also wiped out members of his own loyal factions such as the Juarez cartel and those members of his Aztlan party who had come from the PRI but who were not loyal to Ochoa personally or the Aztlan movement. A final orgy of violence erupted across Mexico as Aztlan paramilitaries finished the job. Any of Ochoa's enemies, personal or political, who still lived by New Year's Eve 2033 had fled the country with whatever they could carry with them or were deep in hiding. Effective opposition to Aztlan had ended, and Ochoa invoked a new constitutional convention for January 1, 2034. The death toll for the year was believed to be upwards of three hundred thousand. The largest number of these had not died as a result of combat, but from endless waves of executions and assassinations.
The state of Aztlan, as Mexico was to be forever known afterwards, was founded as a one-party state under Ochoa and the Aztlan Party. The Aztlan flag took the green white and red tricolor of the original Mexican flag and replaced the traditional symbols of the eagle, cactus and snake with the eagle, stick of dynamite, and Aztec maquahuitl sword - the symbol of Aztlan created in the 1970s in California by the MEChA movement, with an Aztec calendar wheel tacked on. Democracy was preserved at the municipal level, but at the state and national levels was ruled by an Aztlan governor who answered only to the President, Gavriel Luis Ochoa, who ruled for life. The court system remained intact, but all judges were appointed by the President and served at his pleasure. Ochoa dealt with the courts by removing judges he determined were not sufficiently loyal to the Aztlan movement, even judges who had been on his payroll in his narcotics trafficking days. The United States and most of Europe refused to recognize Aztlan at first, but here Ochoa proved once again to be a deft manipulator. He continued to honor the free trade agreements with the U.S. and the rest of the world, offered to repay the debt he had repudiated earlier (on a timescale amenable to Aztlan, of course, but the cash strapped banks of the world were in no position to refuse), and even began serious enforcement of the border against illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking. The Juarez cartel that had supported him, as well as their remaining rivals, had been butchered during the fighting. Money in the form of narcodollars had been replaced by the Aztlan ideology amongst their members. Cartel leaders who wanted to remain in the business but who were not politcally reliable ended up dead. The U.S., faced with its own economic woes, was in no position to dictate anything to its southern neighbor in light of these concessions. In spite of his desire for the Reconquista, Ochoa did not provide any backing to Aztlan sympathizers in the United States and did little to publically antagonize America, knowing that the impasse he had achieved with the norteamericanos would only last until he threatened them directly, and he was in no position to stop a military invasion of Mexico by the world's superpower. He instead encouraged many of the movement's leaders in the U.S. to join him in his new nation. Some did come south, but many denounced him as a traitor to La Raza. In any event, the carnage in Mexico and the slow erosion of the American melting pot on Mexican and Latin American immigrants in the United States continued to marginalize the movement and it was never a serious threat to the sovereignty of the country.
By 2036 the world economy was turning around, and Aztlan under Gavriel Ochoa's leadership actually prospered. Europe, especially France, was eager to sell him weapons and training for the Aztlan armed forces. His old MS-13 cadres who had returned to Central America had been hard at work destabilizing Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador, and Aztlan 'intervened' with the strong military he had built up by 2040. These countries were inducted into Aztlan as new states 'by acclamation of the people' according to Aztlan propaganda. Nicaragua resisted Aztlan's efforts at political destabilzation but fell nonetheless in 2042 to a sudden surprise invasion after being tricked into pursuing a force of Aztlan backed rebels across the border into the state of Honduras. Aztlan forces plunged straight on through defenseless Costa Rica in alleged 'hot pursuit' of Nicaraguan government officials right up to the Panamanian border, then remained as 'peacekeepers.' Both Nicaragua and Costa Rica were admitted to Aztlan in 2043, again by 'acclamation of the people.' The U.S. had taken an isolationist turn in the late 30s as the world's first beanstalk focused public attention firmly on space, and there was no stomach for opposing Aztlan's naked ambitions.
The next hundred years watched Aztlan under Ochoa's leadership creep slowly south towards the equator. Panama fell to an elected Aztlan backed political party that turned over the country and the Panama Canal to Aztlan in 2052, a move that unwittingly sparked the 2nd Chinese Civil War and caused the eventual split of the People's Republic of China into Manchuria and Guangzhou. Ochoa wisely did not use the Canal as a political weapon, keeping it open as before so as to prevent an American intervention - but of course skimming the profits from it. Columbia collapsed in a bloody multifaceted civil war that Aztlan once again 'intervened' in as peacekeepers in 2080. That Aztlan was backing three of the five warring factions in the first place was simply par for the course. Gavriel Ochoa, now almost 150 years old, and kept alive with bionics, gene and hormone therapy, and sheer bloody-minded determination, continued to rule as President of Aztlan. He began to modify the Aztlan ideology to include and unify the Incan peoples of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia with the Mayan and Aztec roots of Aztlan. While the state remained overtly racist in favor of indigenous peoples, Ochoa toned down the rhetoric against whites and the descendents of whites, and attempted to reconcile all of his people under the banner of Aztlan. Memetic subversion based on these themes slowly turned Ecuador into the Aztlan camp, and a referendum in 2120 had the country reject its sovereignty in favor of admission to Aztlan. Peru followed in 2122 in spite of threats of Japanese military intervention, and parts of Bolivia broke away in 2130. Aztlan began construction of a beanstalk in Ecuador just north of Quito in 2135 with French and Indian assistance. Ecuador had long been considered to be a desirable geographic location for a beanstalk, but only under the stability of iron-fisted Aztlan rule was anyone willing to invest in such a project. When the beanstalk was completed in 2140, Aztlan wasted no time in establishing itself as a presence in cis-lunar space and beyond.
Aztlan entered a new era in 2152 with the death of Gavriel Ochoa at the age of 160. Ochoa was succeeded by his grandson Anselmo Trujillo Ochoa as President of Aztlan after several months of heated maneuvering among his children and grandchildren. Anselmo was a hotheaded leader, and succeeded in permanently establishing Aztlan's reputation as an international troublemaker and rogue power both on Earth and in space. Where Gavriel had been realistic about the limits of his power in opposition to the white capitalist Western democracies he despised, and never put himself in a position where he was vulnerable to counterattack, Anselmo openly antagonized his neighbor to the north in a trade war, and to the south against Venezuela, Brazil and Chile with openly backed revolutionary movements. When Columbia, never very firmly in Aztlan's grip, tried to secede, Anselmo crushed the revolution with such brutality that the remaining Spanish-speaking South American states formed an alliance known as the South American Union to actively oppose Aztlan. Aztlan backed terrorists provoked numerous engagements with Brazil both on Earth and in space, and nearly sparked a war with Mars when the Brazilian colony of Sao Tome, operating under a charter to the Alliance, was destroyed by a deliberately redirected cometary drop. Anselmo's assassination in 2192 (long suspected as revenge by Martian Security Forces for Sao Tome) brought an end to Presidents for life in Aztlan in favor of a ruling triumverate composed of Ochoa's descendents, and Aztlan's relationships with the other Great Powers often fluctuates with the current makeup of the triumverate. Aztlan's long ties to Marxism and its ideological descendents has often seen it giving support, both overtly and covertly to various left-wing revolutionary and anticapitalist terror groups including The End of History. When the End of History destabilized the Epsilon Eridani-Epsilon Indi Stargate, the ruling triumverate was forced to denounce their catspaws and cooperate with the West in every way possible to prevent a global war they could not win.