2952-10-16 – Tales from the Service: The Incarnation Home Front, Part 2
This is the remainder of the interview with Naval Intelligence lieutenant Kirsten Reid, whose first portion was posted last week. I have no further comment on this, except to speculate in hindsight that the names of the two worlds we discussed are very similar. Perhaps they are neighboring worlds, or even two planets in the same star system – that would explain the seemingly strange practice of shipping raw materials and food between them. I did not ask this at the time, unfortunately.
D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri – Junior editor and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background.
K.R.R. - Lieutenant Kirsten R. Reid is a Naval Intelligence senior analyst assigned to Seventh Fleet. Recently, she has been at Hausen’s World, the site of Operation HELLESPONT, examining the wealth of Incarnation intelligence left in the supply depot captured there.
[D.L.C.] What about their planets? You say we have some idea of what life is like on them?
[K.R.R.] Some of them, yes. There is one world that seems to be the home of many of troops in the garrison of Hausen’s World which we know most about; its name seems to be Prospero. It is most likely the closest of the Incarnation worlds to Sagittarius Gate but that distinction may be largely academic, a matter of a few tens of light years difference.
[D.L.C.] Let me guess: it has a large, urban population? Heavily urbanized settlements have traditionally been the main source of Ladeonist sentiment in the Reach.
[K.R.R.] We thought so too, and there is at least one major city on the planet’s surface, a fairly sizable metropolis called Kannagh’s Prospect. Strangely, though, analysis of the mail we intercepted suggested the garrison troops were drawn mainly from smaller settlements in the hinterland, not from the city itself. The only mail sender or receiver we can positively say had relations in the city was the second in command of the base.
[D.L.C.] Strange. That would suggest that most of the population-
[K.R.R.] Is distributed throughout the smaller settlements? Possibly, but more likely this garrison was selected specifically from the small communities. We aren’t sure why.
[D.L.C.] Well, at least we must know a lot about life in these smaller towns on the planet.
[K.R.R.] What we know is extensive but leaves gaps. We know that the average size of one of these communities seems to be about three hundred, and that they are by and large young places, with few elderly citizens, for example, and family structure is, despite Ladeonist tendencies in Reach cells, fairly strong.
[D.L.C.] Well, perhaps the Incarnation centralizes elderly citizens in the cities, leading to the disparity.
[K.R.R.] We considered that but it doesn’t really fit the other facts. None of the garrison or the fleet in the system seemed to be sending anything to elderly parents or grandparents in the city for example.
[D.L.C.] What about day to day life in these communities?
[K.R.R.] Civilians in these communities are generally tradesmen focused on the agricultural industry. It seems strange that the industry needs so much labor – after all, references to agricultural automation equipment are fairly common in letters from Prospero to the troops here – so we have to assume this planet is a food exporter to the rest of Incarnation space; it’s the only thing that makes sense for that much of an investment in agriculture. Most likely, that means the city is a concentration of packing facilities intended for turning these products into long-shelf-life items that can be shipped to other worlds, but even this does not make sense. Where are the people sending messages to their relatives who work in factories? Why not also draw troops from these people?
[D.L.C.] Perhaps the factory workers are implanted with specialized equipment that disagrees with the military implants. That doesn’t explain the lack of message traffic between the groups though.
[K.R.R.] That... Almost works, actually. Not quite, but almost. I hadn’t thought of that.
[D.L.C.] What’s the climate of this Prospero like?
[K.R.R.] Prospero seems to swing wildly between long, hot, arid summers, and shorter, brutally cold seasons. That indicates a highly elliptical orbit. Most likely the rainy seasons that make the place such a good farming world are in the narrow “spring” and “fall” between hot and cold, but we don’t have direct sources for this yet. What we do know is that keeping most crops alive requires careful consideration for irrigation and careful management of planting and harvest dates; the farmers of this world often have harvests planned out to the day and hour, a level of precision we’d never need on any world in the Reach. They also seem to use far more genetically altered crops than we use, which probably leads to increasing need for precise harvesting; that sort of artificial organism can be pretty unstable.
[D.L.C.] That probably explains the Bitter-
[K.R.R.] The Bitter Harvest story? Yes, I remember that one. How someone back in Farthing’s Chain got ahold of Incarnation farming equipment, I’m still not quite sure, but what that story portrays is consistent with what we know, if you factor in increased instability due to a strange environment. I’m still not sure why plants would explode, but that could always be an exaggeration to help hide your source’s real identity.
[D.L.C.] What is the standard of living like there?
[K.R.R.] It’s not too far off what a colonist on one of the outer Coreward Frontier worlds might expect. It’s spartan, but with all the basic comforts met; the central authority maintains very standardized schools and vocational programs in all the communities, so most of these conscripts had plenty of shared experiences even if they grew up scattered across a whole planet. All the communities had shops and meeting houses, but we don’t see many references to taverns or to any sort of hospitality business, suggesting that travel over long distances might be restricted. The government probably maintains checkpoints on the major roads to track movement, but again we have no direct source for that.
[D.L.C.] This isn’t a fresh colony, though – this is a relatively high population planet. Why would people be living like first- or second-generation colonists when obviously they aren’t?
[K.R.R.] I don’t know. None of them seemed to question it; that’s just the lives they lived before they were assigned to military training. And it certainly does not seem to have been a bad upbringing, in the whole. Perhaps by forcing them to live in a simulated colonization environment, the Incarnation is trying to raise them to be tough and not too reliant on creature comforts, which would be good traits for military conscripts needed for garrison and second line duty.
[D.L.C.] Horrific to think that someone might engineer an entire planet to have standardized early life experiences so they are useful for particular tasks. But I will admit the idea sounds very Ladeonist.
[K.R.R.] Unfortunately so. We have much less about other worlds, but this engineering does seem to be a consistent policy. There's one called Paradiso, for example, which seems to be a super-habitable environment like Makaharwa or Håkøya, where we see shared experiences of very different sorts mentioned in their message traffic. Paradiso natives – of which we have only a few examples in the captured traffic – seem to have outdoorsy upbringings, with very small houses but communities spread out through large, jungle-like areas, and forestry being a dominant industry.
[D.L.C.] Forestry? You think they have a planet exporting wood in bulk? What for?
[K.R.R.] No idea. Perhaps it is to build the houses on other worlds like Prospero. After all, we have no indication that Prospero has any trees to speak of, at least not anything native.
[D.L.C.] Shipping building materials and food between planets sounds horrendously inefficient. How does their economy work?
[K.R.R.] We aren’t completely sure, but if they are shipping such raw materials around, it suggests that manufacturing facilities are distributed relatively equally across their worlds, at least across a group of worlds. As to efficiency... Well, we’ve done some simulations, and can’t see how it would be anything but morbidly wasteful.
[D.L.C.] And yet, they field hundreds, of highly advanced warships that put most Reach shipbuilders to shame. They have to have a smaller population than the Confederated Worlds, and with an economy that backwards, it seems impossible.
[K.R.R.] The full economics of the situation are not yet clear. Surely we are missing components of their economic plan that would make it all make sense.
[D.L.C.] Perhaps their warships are stolen?
[K.R.R.] They seem to use similar technology to Grand Journey vessels, but there’s no indication they simply stole the ships, and every indication they’re building them. We do see new ships show up in engagements fairly regularly, as an example. You can always tell the smooth gravitic signature of a ship that’s fresh out of the yards within the last few months from one that’s just been reassigned from elsewhere.
[D.L.C.] Pity. If they were working off a stolen stockpile that would suggest the war would end quickly in our favor.
[K.R.R.] Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. And I am also afraid I’m running out of time for this discussion.
[D.L.C.] I appreciate your coming to discuss this for the audience, Kirsten. Hopefully when you have those missing pieces that explain the strange oddities of Incarnation life, we can sit down and talk about it again. How our foes live is very interesting to me, and I think also to my audience.
[K.R.R.] Duncan, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. And if I am cleared to discuss further developments with the media, I assure you I will be in touch.
