Chapter 3

In the three years since humans have had access to Terra, most nations and many individuals have claimed their piece of the pie.

Things didn’t happen fast since it was anywhere between eighty to ninety days of travel for a round trip to Terra for most ships. For many nations, this wasn’t cheap, and for a lot of people, it wasn’t affordable.

One of the oddest things that happens when a new ship enters orbit around the planet is that a map appears on its navigation screens. If a section of a large content, a smaller continent or an island group had been claimed, it would appear on the map with its new name and the name of the nation, group or person attached.

There was a lot of debate in the beginning on how the continents would be divided as the people who had hurried off to claim them found they couldn’t land on an area that was claimed by another and tried to claim it, too.

Australia copped some flack when people realised, they had claimed the first continent. It wasn’t one of the largest ones, but it was prime Real Estate as far as weather and resources went.

Since Australia hadn’t sent a ship, they wondered, too. However, they had no issue with saying that it was a gift to them from Queen Lee since she was an Australian and the first one on the planet. This caused some consternation as Lee had said they could claim the planet as they wished.

As it was supposed to be first come first served, it was pointed out that since she had landed first, then she could claim some of the lands, so Lee hadn’t lied to them. She just wouldn’t let a small nation, or a single person claim a large continent for themselves.

Since Earth had two hundred-odd nations, then the six large continents would have to play host to more than one nation or group, as would the smaller ones.

Further confusion was added when several nations claimed a continent under the Charter agreement for their group that Lee had put together for Harmony. This was highlighted when the continent Lee had claimed for Australia was found to let other nations in the Australasian group claim part of that continent.

The Australasian Committee (AAC) that had been assembled for the group got endorsements from the nations involved, and they happily agreed that this was fine by them. The people who didn’t fit well in Anzac on Harmony could go to Australasia on Terra. The Russians, the African group, the Asian group and the East European group also went this way.

Queen Lee was amused that, for some unfathomable reason, these groups assumed that because they had little trouble claiming a continent on Terra for the group of Nations she had put together for Harmony, then they also had to follow the Charter she had set for Harmony.

She was further amused when a growing number of these Nations started using the Charter to fix some of the problems in their own countries back on Earth. They cited that it made commerce easier with their two sister Nations on the other planets and inside their new group of trading partners.

She didn’t complain, and neither did the other nations involved when it simplified a lot of monetary and regulation issues.

Unfortunately, one thing that didn’t change was the criminal element.

Once the population on Terra started to grow, the crims just decided that they had new territories to set up in. Many of the nations were scrambling to find people willing to act as law officers in their budding colonies.

Wrongly, a lot of them had simply expected UNSEC to provide them with protection. UNSEC was supposed to protect space, not countries. UNSEC, in turn, was having difficulties getting countries to provide them with manpower.

This just made life for space pirates, smugglers and black marketeers even easier, as most of the new outposts were widely spread out on the new planet and relied on spaceships to bring colonists and resources. Overland and sea travel were still in their infancy.

The spaceships were vulnerable, as they mostly used the beaconed space lane that had been established to get to Terra. Even orbiting Terra or her moons had its own problems, as the system was poorly protected and covered a larger area than Earth’s space.

Lee didn’t have the same problems on Harmony because she was happily finding magical people to do this job, and the new settlements were better organised and policed. The sort of people she encouraged to come to Harmony were of a different mindset. The criminal element found they couldn’t get away with much on one of Lee’s planets.

Terra, however, belonged to Earth as far as Lee was concerned, and it was their job to control their people, not hers. UNSEC was also finding that while troops were happy to be assigned to ships that patrolled Delta Pavonis, they were not so happy to be sent to the Gillian system. It had been named after Lee since she found it, and that was her maiden name.

Lee had recommended that UNSEC set up a space station on the small moon that orbited very close to Terra. It had been named Amps, and the other two moons had somehow acquired the names Volts and Ohms.

From the planet, they all looked near the same size, but Ohms was the largest at about three quarters the diameter of our Moon. It orbited at close to four hundred giga-metres from the planet.

Amps only had about four percent of Earth’s gravity (0.04g), and it was landlocked like our moon with an approximate ten-day rotation. However, by putting up relay towers with space monitoring systems and a dome that could house ten thousand people, Amps quickly became the first stop for all spaceships.