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Things have been going pretty smoothly for the last few weeks. The surface
has been quiet, the solar system has been quiet. Automators are hard at
work, cooling the region that was once known as Eyrenland. It won’t be
instantaneous, but it will be habitable once again someday. They have to
work this fast, because the intense heat is causing the region to grow. Or
at least, that’s what it’s trying to do. The process will help the world
overall recuperate after the damage.
Quiratan is still not the size Eyrenland was, but it’s getting there, and it
won’t even take that long. It’s in a sort of fungal process, spreading
outwards from the graveyard at an incredible rate. It’s not breaking the
laws of physics, but it’s unstoppable. Most of the former Eyrenland farmers
are working these fields now. It doesn’t quite need all of them—they have a
lot of downtime—but they will eventually be spread more thin. Some of the
original Quiratan farmers are not happy. Eyren wasn’t their only produce,
but their others have all been literally taken over. The fungal uquira
network feeds off of the carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and everything else.
It steals their nutrients, and then it consumes the plants themselves. It’s
relentless and indiscriminate, and there is really nothing that anyone can
do about it.
Centuries ago, scientists worked really hard to make Bidan land support the
kind of crops that humans were used to eating, but uquirakind are native to
this world. Jande has been stressing to these people that, if the uquira
want to expropriate the land for themselves, they should kind of be allowed
to do that. That is an important tenet of the Bidan culture, to be good
stewards of the ecology. Humans will always be visitors here, no matter how
many generations are born under this sky.
Speaking of sky, Jande has delegated the farming issue to the new Axiom of
Eggs, Zanele, who has the most experience with it, and he trusts her.
Instead, he has been focusing most of his attention on building out their
orbital defense grid. It’s something they should have had this whole time.
Qishra was great while it still existed, but it was not sentient. It wasn’t
protecting them on purpose. There is plenty of danger in this system,
whether anyone attacks them on purpose or not. They got complacent.
This world was designed for them, and they took that for granted, not
considering the fact that nothing lasts forever, just as the former Axiom of
Safety, Anso Merritt would say.
Anso is out, and Dare Finnian is in. He would not have been Jande’s first
choice, but once Zanele took Eggs and Ersence took Astronomy, he started
reading the agreement more closely, which led it to the original charter.
There was one extra option that Tamerlane didn’t even seem to realize since
he didn’t dig this deep. It was called an Axiom-in-Holding, where the
candidate automatically gets any position that opens up, regardless of the
state of the position beforehand, or even whether it existed. He even got to
name it himself, and chose Axiom of War because he thought it sounded
cooler. Jande has been putting a lot of effort into keeping Dare from going
off the rails. They have been having daily meetings to discuss their
strategy.
“No, no, no,” Jande argues. “That would not help anything. If we add weapons
to our array that only work on ships, we’re asking anyone who comes here to
fear us. It’s still about defense, that’s it. We don’t even know if we truly
have an enemy.”
“Oh, we have an enemy, and I’m the only one who is willing to do what it
takes to stop them,” Dare volleys. “Step to the side. Let me do my job. Keep
your hands clean.”
“Dare, I’ll give you permission—” he begins before the scene suddenly
changes.
“—if you can prove to me what the threat is,” Jande finishes, but Dare isn’t
in front of him anymore to hear it. He looks around. He’s on some kind of
ship now, but he has no idea where. Someone teleported him again.
“Superintendent Jande Ter Avest?” a woman asks. “My name is Sugar Delgado,
and this is my ship. We need your help. The enemy is at the gates.”
