[b]Kaichang, Silver Pagoda[/b]

The doors opened with a soft breath, letting loose a breath of cool air and subtle lavender. In walked the Executive Officer of Kaichang, Mobuntui Hou. Accompanies by a wing of identical youthful servants in black. Lefen alongside him.

Both men were dressed in deep burgundy half-robes. Long tails trailed off behind them, opening to reveal solid-color black dress pants, trimmed in yellow and white and stripped at the seem like old-world military uniforms. The suits were distinguishing in both the ancient form that had returned, and the modernity of the mix of satin and heavy polyesters. Embroidered on the chest and arms were emblazoned dragons, horned like wildebeest, and maned like lions. And like the dragons, several layers of raised collars guarded their heads.

Walking into the assembly room, the table of Directors turned to look. Raising in respect for their highest officer as he took the table.

The room was as open to the outside as it was closed. Heavy plated, armored windows provided an open portal to the world outside. Letting in the light and the sights of Kaichang's crater as it wrapped gently and distantly around. The flitting dots of cruising vehicles flashed through the air, muted by the room's insulation. 

What dominated the chamber much like the pure white light that glowed from the solid ceiling above them was a dull humming silence. Subtle notes danced in the air as the readout holograms flickered between diagrams and charts of the city's hour-to-hour operations. Where in Hou's home it was the economic status, here it was more operational: departures and arrivals that minute (always constant), traffic among the AI corridors that ran spokes through the crater, water status reports, and electrical production and consumption (as well as the hearty reserves). The deliverance of information was cold and calculated, it removed any argument as to its meaning. It showed itself bare and naked in the black and white of numbers and bars and graphs.

“Mr. Mobuntui, sir.” a young man said, standing at the side of his chair as his cohorts sat down, “How are you today?”

“I am fine, Cao Mi.” Hou replied, having taken his seat, “I was told you have a proposal you'd like to make to the Board, and myself.”

“I do.” Cao Mi bowed. He was one of a growing few. The mixing of race had not come – or come nearly as heavy – to his kin as it had the rest of them in this past generation. Through some grace – or lack there of – in his parents he had remained a pure bred Chinese. He was agile in his physique, and smart. His narrow eyes were bright with the sharp nature of a young man.

“Have you looked at the mine reports for the Kaichang mines?” he asked. The soft white lights shining off his bald head. If he had maybe cut his eyebrows, he would blend in with the servants who had taken their spaces on the walls. If considerably longer lived than they.

“Yes. By this date it would have produced eighty million four hundred thousand seventy metric tons of raw iron and bauxite.” Mobuntui said exactly, “And with the ships we've scrapped since setting down on this planet the refined ingots puts the city's total steel and aluminum production at about one-hundred eighty million metric tons of final metals, giving the city a hard asset credit security of nine-hundred billion. This of course not counting into the payment of upkeep and wages and equipment, which puts the security value lower sense we can only store so much of it. But it still effects our end of the day value.

“Yes, Mr. Cao, I read the reports. Are you suggesting that we should buy a starship?”

“Do you remember the original geologic surveys?” Cao asked respectfully.

“It's been twenty to thirty years since I have.” Hou said, “What are you implying?”

“I'm implying we're reaching our local critical mass, your honor.” said Cao, “The initial data we received on ore-scouting the planet and surveying the geology of the crater when it was just a research outpost suggested a possible metal yield of approximately a hundred fifty million tons of metal in the cave and vein networks around the crater. Granted at the time the geologists could not pierce or survey for deposits that might have sunken to the bottom of the ground water reserves under the rock, but all intents and purposes I believe it'll be best for the city if we circumvent the danger of reaching our peak output, which at this rate we'll no doubt reach in five to ten years. Wouldn't you agree?”

“I suppose I should.” Mobuntui Hou smiled, if mostly as a formality, “Just to keep the ball rolling.”

“Thank you.” Cai bowed. Leaning back from his chair he hovered his hand over the table in the center of the room. Sensors and eyes detected his hand, and threw into the air a holographic keyboard he typed on. Ultimately changing the nature of the projection over the table from municipal readouts to a local map of the southern-most designated Human Safe Zone. A neon marker showed the location of the city, nestled in the forested bosom of the mountains and hills of the northern Maipu mountain face.

“I doubt what I am to suggest is necessarily the most original of all suggestions,” Cai began as he stepped away from the table, “but I'm fronting it if only because of the dire situation we're climbing towards. Though we were no doubt destined to come upon it sooner or later.

“But we should, with urgency, seek out our property claims not only within the safe-zone, but outside of it.” Cai added.

“I've heard the proposition eight times over a span of about ten years each.” one of the men at the table argued. Hou Tsaing, one of the oldest directors to remain in service. Where others had retired to pass the position to their sons or died, he had kept on going.

He was well old enough to remember with clarity Earth, and its destruction by the Listeners. Though he spoke little of it himself. His very body did much of the talking to him, and was perhaps the reason why he had not simply died, and kept going with an unnatural vitality.

Scorched and burned over, doctors had repaired and replaced much of him with machines. Injuries and scars inflicted on him by the very final minutes of Earth had given him implants the body over. He was at this point a cyborg. An ancient, brooding cyborg.

Both his arms were no longer flesh and bone and instead egg-shell white fiberglass and graphite-black metal and carbon alloy. The smoothness of the finish was surreal and mystifying. It was the same on his feet and legs, though those were covered by flowing formal dress.

His face was heavily wrinkled and mired deeply by the biological process of aging. But his eyes were still alert. But they were different. They were exact, if too much. Looking at them one could tell they were off. There was a uneasy unnaturalness in them that only got stronger when he looked at you. Into you. And for the implants concerning his head, those were the only stand outs in his face. If he had not his collars and he turned his head one may point out the solid-black chord of carbon fiber and fiberglass that built up his new spine, but for all the moments of the day he walked he kept that hidden.

“I have not once heard this same proposal on a regular basis.” he said, his voice as Asian as you could get here. One of the last people to have not lost the dialect in several generations of cultural diffusal, “I assume that you will spell it differently.

“How will we get the materials then? March our own security forces into the jungles to lay down a flag, and hold at bay the other interests? I think you a fool if you say this!”

“Not at all.” Cao Mi smiled, deflecting aside his elder's aggressiveness with a shroud of learned confidence.

“Then speak.” Tsiang invited, opening his arms as he leaned deeper into his chair, “Let me know you're not a fool to the 'how'. Too many have dashed their dreams on not knowing that much. They speak to us like a bureaucrat from home petitioning for office. Too much what, not enough how.”

Cao Mi bowed, pointing to the map as several new lights lit up across the map. Showing the safe zone borders, and the numerous factions that laid claim to it. “At this point it would be best assumed that many of our land claims in The Zone are under the territory of a number of independent groups holding defacto control of our rights. We may be able to simply march them off, but we too clearly lack the service men required to effectively do so.

“So for the first case in my proposal I delegate we move to broadening existing locations with the small factions and city-states in the marked areas.” he added, as red boxes lit up within the safe zone, “Our position from Kaigchan centralizes us in relation to the bulk of all our mining claims within a range of about a million kilometers. The furthest mineral field we should have property to for surveying and mining is site KC-173, where at about nine-million kilometers away sets it alone and in the middle of the so-called Kingdom of New Kotayk.

“The rest I would guess are in small-scale agricultural communes and city-states much like ours. We have a few small faction-states within the area, but none we don't already do banking for.

“I propose for these parties we offer better interest deals for mining rights on these locations, or sweeten the deal with a prophet-sharing motive. We will of course need to ensure we maintain a minimum profit on the mines of seventy-five percent their output value to make the ventures worth our time and energy.

“If they don't comply, we'll need to deal with them later or simply outspend them so much we may move in unconventionally and under the table to acquire their governments.” Cai added, “The ultimate method of acquisition should not lie in us taking the territory by force and we instead should find softer methods for territorial acquisition if the case need be, not limited to annexation by any number of means.”

“My 'other methods', what do you mean?” Mobuntui Hou asked.

“Flat out buying them out or maneuvering local leaders we've purchased into position to allow political annexation. So we can incorporate them into our laws either way.

“The accounts we have that are held by any of these factions should give us a monetary edge should they act out of line. We can freeze and acquire their assets whenever we want and if they threaten to cancel or deny us from any promising sites when we produce the results for final surveys to make them reconsider. After which we will be able to stamp them out by force, even if we need to use budget PMCs to make it happen.

“It'll be short term costs but I doubt we'll be slipping from humanity's fortune top-ten any time soon or for long when we make the moves.

“Some of us here may even be able to work around any stonewalling local laws with private investment and property ownership if the case arises. But this should be attached to the case-by-case folder.

“Measures to take advantage of the properties in the larger state of Kotayk will prove more imposing in the long term since they have enough size and power in their own right that even our buying power will make it impossible to over turn them. At this level we will have to become conventional in all regards, and will need to take on a roll that makes us less a competitor – as it could end up being in many areas in the local region – and more a developer. In that area, much of the ore and metals we produced I predict will be sold back to the Kotayk economy than to ours. So when approaching them we will need to wait for the proposals to make the table and really receive and give based on context at the time.

“But should that happen, we could get better deals when the kingdom is at its weakest and they can afford to bend to our own demands. But right now we might just break even.”

“What about the areas we should own outside the Safe Zone?” Lefen asked, “Kaichang's mines are – at least on paper – over double the number have within the area. We've over a hundred or more in the wilderness alone. How do you propose we reach out there without putting ourselves at risk? Or our manpower?”

“That's the harder part, obviously.” Cai admitted humbly. Waving his hand as the map changed again, almost at his will. Now zones outside humanity's safe zone were lit up.

“We have over two-hundred twenty potential mining zones outside the safe-zone, all above a minimum of five thousand square kilometers.

“The closest one we can use as a testing ground to claim initiatives.” the map cut out all the rest of the irrelevant plots to one on the southern side of the mountains as them, “KC-80 is a known forested area equivalent to Earthly boreal forests. Or as much as Brahma can get in its own fashion.

“Among hundreds of hostile or deadly local floral and fauna – mega or otherwise – the region is home to fifty Tkrai tribes as studied and mapped by the Tkrai Advocacy Foundation, most of which hunter-gatherer groups who of late have been in growing conflict with their own growing tribes, and the incursion of Tkrai refugees who fled south in the last fifty years after the refugee incursions from Earth.

“Even with aircraft and heavy weapons we would be only a spit in a bucket if we entered the local conflicts on our own, and the arrival of heavily-armed humans would change the nature of the conflict enough we would in short time have a coalition in place to combat us. And at our state we don't have the capabilities to mount an offensive conflict. Defensive, sure we can.

“I propose that in this local case we adopt a policy of civilizing the natives. We take receptive tribes under our protection and we arm them. And we prepare them.

“Fostering positive relations with intelligent directive – indirect – from the Tkrai Advocacy Foundation should put us on a positive edge with our select tribes as we give them the means to tip the scales of combat and push out – or destroy – local tribes to thin out for us.

“Under the long term our focus should be in maintaining a promise of protection for our groups and guide them to at least a loose decentralized government we can control. As an immature nation, we can make looser deals with them with far-greater gains than what we may our human counter-parts. The only unfortunate circumstance would be the speed at which this happens. We can't expect instant results the same way we can with the weaker sub-states around us. And we will need to groom them well.

“But on the long-term we will be making an industry for ourselves as a hub to produce and dispatch the officers and gear necessary to educate the Tkrai and maintain a human protectorate over their... people.

“Plenty Batmen will die no doubt. But has that not been the course of our own civilization? And as proven by The Listeners the status quo of the galaxy, if not the universe?”