Backup

Backup Colony

   Backup is a TNO (Trans-Neptune Object) out in Earthat's "Oort Cloud", that huge volume of space where objects are considered part of THIS solar system simply because they are marginally closer to it than they are to THAT solar system.  In Backup's case, the TNO is a Mars-sized planetoid two light-months out from Sol.  It is where no sane Sa'arm will ever look, and it's cold enough that even if they notice it they won't be interested.  It's frozen solid, of course.  The place should be pretty safe even if the Sa'arm do end up with Earth.
   How cold is it?  The colonists had to heat their domes up 100° C just to keep the oxygen in their air from condensing.  Keeping the water in the air from condensing?  That took another 200° C.

The Colony

   The Confederacy installation known as "Backup" is a hidden colony.  The AIs that run the Confederacy know all about it, but it is not on any of DECO's lists. It never gets a Kilo with 1024 new families, it has no one in TEG looking for colonists with special skills for it.  No Sa'arm warship will ever follow a helpless unarmed colony transport, desperately fleeing for safety, to it.  No human knows about it except for those humans actually involved with it.
   Some colonies are set up to do research and development.  Others are military bases.  Still others are "breeder" colonies; their part of the war is to produce as many Sponsors as they can as fast as they can.  Backup serves one purpose: to rescue, protect, and nurture as much of Earth's ecology as possible.  We hope that the CN and CMC can keep the Sa'arm away from Earth, but if we fail we'll lose everything on the planet.  Better to create habitats for different ecological zones and move some of Earth's flora and fauna to them BEFORE the Sa'arm invade.

The Shipyard

   Backup gets its ships by building them.  Saturn Naval Shipyard has it listed as one of its outlying assembly areas, and curious managers are quietly conditioned to be less curious.  Backup's 'Yard builds one or two of every new design that comes out.  If the colony itself can use them, it keeps them.  Otherwise, it turns the new ships over to Saturn to be distributed just like all the other ships it builds.
   Backup does keep an emergency stash of ships, in case of need.  That started out as just a couple Auroras so they could evacuate if needed, but the stash is slowly gaining 'fleet' status.  It was pointed out after the third and fourth Battles of Earthat that this group of new ships could well have made a difference in those battles, but soon afterward it was realized that none of them would have been there.  Central Command would have sent them to the colonies like they did most of the other ships built at Earthat.

The Ecosystem Bubbles

   The First Command has:

We've built some pretty big greenhouses and get great crops from our annuals, but our orchards are just now beginning to pay us back for all the work we've put into them. We've got just about any kind of fruit you could want except for bananas; they can't figure out why those don't grow right. They tell me we'll have pecans soon if they can keep the squirrel population under control, but don't expect anything from the vineyard for at least another twenty years. 

We also have an assortment of different ecosystems in isolated bubbles so that they can't cross-pollinate or invade each other. Just from the US we have, let's see, farms from Iowa, Connecticut, Oregon, and Georgia, a Texas longhorn ranch, and strips of coastline-plus-water from Maine, Florida, California, and Hawaii, slices from both the Okefenokee and the Great Dismal swamps, and a New York City slum (because someone carefully unnamed here -not me- thought that even the rats deserved better than being eaten by the Sa'arm). We do not have any redwood trees, although they're on our list. We are working on an inland river bubble, I think the Ohio. 

We have done the same with ecosystems from all over Earth. We aren't trying to discriminate; anywhere that anyone wants goes on the list and we do it as soon as we can get the source materials. A couple of the Express's pods have been modified to be independently mobile, and they have several individual compartments with their own external hatches. Every time the Express goes back for supplies a stealthed tender takes it around everywhere on the list and collects a few cubic meters of forest floor or mudflats or seawater or whatever. We've tried to import enough land, soil, plants, and animals to make each bubble self-sufficient. That's what takes the most manpower here, trying to keep track of all the ecosystems and what each needs to be balanced. 

Yes, cetaceans are on the list. No, we don't have any yet. Well, we have a couple of manatees from Florida, but none of the smarter ones like dolphins or the bigger ones like whales. We don't have any of the deep-ocean life, either. We want them, but both transport and ecosphere will have to be pretty big. We're working on it. The biologists say that the manatees aren't really cetaceans, anyway, they are part of some other order. No one else cares. We still want a few more, because they are still endangered by us humans even if we do beat the Swarm. 

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))