Chapter 7: Saturn System

“This is horrible,” Wilda exclaimed as she frowned at her tablet.

“What are you reading?” Lorena asked as she lowered her own tablet. Jason was relaxing in the garden inside the first ring of the Imperial Yacht Empress Olivia, named after his mother. The frigate-sized private yacht was a few days away from the jump gate that would take them into the Saturn system.

“History” Wilda said. “Listen to this. ’When humans first arrived in the cluster, they were floating along in a giant hollowed-out asteroid. Details were not clear except that they had some kind of ‘suspended animation’ system, tanks filled with some synthetic organic liquid with the whole body dumped in the liquid and the temperature lowered to just above freezing point. It worked but not perfectly. It is estimated that close to twenty percent of humans could not be reanimated. It is unclear if they died during the transit to the cluster or if they died during the reanimation process.’ I read elsewhere that there were originally twenty thousand people on that ship. Twenty percent would be four thousand people who died while in this suspended animation tanks.”

“Unless they mean twenty thousand survived,” Jason said as he studied the last of thirteen formal certificates the emperor handed him to hand over to the sole viscount and twelve members of the Saturn council of barons. “Then it means the original number was twenty-five thousand, and five thousand died. I also think your sources are a bit off, there were a lot more people than twenty thousand.” Then he handed them to Lin who was sitting next to him.

Each certificate had the heraldic emblem of the empire on it, was addressed to a particular nobleman, signed by the emperor and the chairman of the imperial council, and was meant to be put on display. They all had the same message, roughly translated as; the person handing you this is the son of the emperor, your new duke, and will be the next emperor, listen to him and be kind to him, or else. The certificates had different, more flowery legal wording, but the meaning was the same.

Besides the certificates addressed to the council of barons on Saturn, the emperor also gave Jason a wooden box and warned him to keep it safe and locked up, to be used at his discretion and when it was warranted. The box contained new, unused and inactivate medallions, complete with new ribbon colors, should Jason ever be in the position to create a new noble title. There was only one ducal medallion but six medallions for viscounts and twelve for barons. Then there were six more, for future knights. The medallions for knights gave him an idea.

“That’s even worse,” Lorena replied. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Okay, why did they call this system the Saturn system and why is the Pleiades Prime system called after the entire cluster?” Jade asked. For a change she was not in her hover chair but sitting on the lawn leaning back against Jason.

“They called their home planet ‘earth’ which means ground,” Jason said. “There are references to the planet being called ‘Terra’ which is just earth in some ancient language.”

“I guess the Pleiades Prime system is our home system,” Lisa said. “Instead of calling it ‘home’, they called it after the cluster.” She was out of uniform, way out of uniform, which resulted in the other males onboard the Empress Olivia keeping away from Jason’s group of scantily dressed women. “I know there is a gas giant back in the old earth system that has rings similar to the gas giant in the Saturn system. I heard they called the system after that gas giant because of that.”

“A planet called Saturn?” Jade muttered.

“That system is called the Sol system, which means sun,” Jason said. “There are eight planets in the Sol system and each has a name, similar to here except they used the names of fake deities to name the planets, except for their home planet which didn’t really have a name.”

“Similar to how we call each occupied system after some historic astronomy explorer,” Lisa added.

“Well, most of them,” Jason said. “Both Saturn and Ceres are called after planetary objects orbiting Sol and got their names from some imaginary earth gods. Cassini, Herschel, Cornell, and Kepler are all named after astronomers from Sol’s ancient history. Others like Bova and Glamor got their names from regular people, at least I think they were regular people. The imperial houses are named after stellar constellations visible from Sol. About half of those constellations are still recognizable from here.”

“I only know about House Taurus and the houses on Glamor,” Jade said. “What other imperial houses are there?”

“Each of the houses on Glamor and on Arcadia are named after a constellation,” Wilda said. “Other than Taurus, I don’t know about any imperial houses not in those restricted systems.”

“House Gemini runs the cluster-wide banking system, and House Dorado is responsible for the space elevator technology,” Jason said. “House Andromeda is also located on Secundus,”

“Gemini!” Wilda repeated. “Duh, how could I forget about them, they are everywhere. What does Andromeda do?”

“Space exploration,” Jason said. “They send out the ships with jump gates and they also colonize new habitable planets.”

Commander Wilson made a point of inviting Jason to the bridge when it was time to transit the Saturn jump gate. Jason had the idea that Commander Wilson would want Jason to drag Wanda along, since he was planning on marrying her. Jason felt sneaky so he invited Wanda but didn’t wait for her and snagged Ana, Lin’s mother and a Saturn native, to go with him to the bridge. Lin obviously tagged along like she always did. The disappointed look on Gill’s face when Jason and his two women but no Wanda, floated onto the bridge nearly caused Jason to give the game away but then Wanda floated in and Gill’s face made a drastic transformation. Then both Gill and Wanda blushed when they found Jason smirking at them.

As usual, transitioning into any system was totally unspectacular. While jump gates formed a series of connecting points to other systems, there were redundant links. From the Saturn jump gate, one could get to Ceres, and then via an empty system to Cornell or Grendel, or another empty system. The second empty system had jump gates to Bova or Buford. From Cornell one could jump via a third empty system back to Pleiades Prime or to Arcadia or Cassini.

“The Ceres system is twice as far from Pleiades Prime as the Saturn system but it’s quicker to get to Ceres Prime than to Saturn Prime,” Gill responded to a question Jason asked about travel times. “This jump gate, and the Ceres jump gate are within hours of each other while the Saturn moon is about three weeks away, as compared to two weeks to Ceres Prime from that jump gate.”

“Well, unless somebody changes my mind for me, I do not plan to visit Ceres,” Jason said. “When we leave here, the next stop will be Grendel.”

“Via the Ceres jump gate and a few more,” Gill added with a smirk.

The gas giant was relatively huge and was orbiting the medium-sized yellow star sort of in the middle of the Goldilocks zone. From up close, the gas giant was rather spectacular looking, with the surface covered in eternal clouds in weird formations, and the even more spectacular ring system around the gas giant.

There was one other planet in the system which was totally frozen so the original explorers would have ignored that system but then they discovered a sizable moon orbiting the gas giant, a moon three quarters the size of Secundus and with 0.8G gravity, and a partially breathable atmosphere and a simple plant life consisting of fungus and algae, but no animals or insects. This huge moon was far outside the ring system.

While the view of the gas giant was spectacular, the moon didn’t really look like a moon. From space it was difficult to determine size so as they approached the moon it looked like a regular planet with no visible oceans. There were no visible features other than a blotchy brown/green surface.

“They have a space elevator?” Erin asked in surprise as the Empress Olivia started orbiting the moon. Everybody else on the bridge was trying to see more of the huge and utterly spectacular gas giant overhead when a regular double wheel space station came into view around the curvature of the moon. What caught Erin’s eye was the reflection of a space elevator cable connected to the middle of a kilometer-long central shaft, with the two rotating wheels on either side of the cable and the central shaft at right angles to the cable.

“It is actually the first space elevator ever built,” Ana explained as she used Jason to anchor herself. “When they wanted to try and use the anti-gravity crystals to support a cable, they first experimented here since the geosynchronous orbit of the moon is only twelve thousand kilometers from the surface, as compared to the thirty thousand kilometers of Secundus. We would never have been able to pay for a space elevator otherwise.”

While she was talking, she moved even closer to Jason until he found her plastered against him, and her face inches from his. Then she gave him a quick kiss on the lips before moving a bit away. He glanced at her in confusion, but she pretended as if the event never happened. She was not shy either.

Jason was not quite sure about Ana. She was his office manager for his imperial council office on Secundus, and he had already claimed her daughter, Lin, as his concubine, mostly because he liked both but more importantly because Lin sneaked into his bed one night. He discovered she was a virgin, so he kept her. He never discussed any kind of relationship with Ana, who was twenty years older than him and was the lover of the previous duke of Saturn, who had died two years earlier and left no heirs.

Jason noticed a pattern. The ship’s imperial call sign was only given when they were about to dock at a space station, like when his shuttle wanted to dock at the Pleiades Prime Habitat, or when they approached the Glamor space station, and now here. He assumed the same when they docked to the Secundus moon. They were directed to dock on the long docking arm, close to the station wheel.

“Your Grace, you can relax,” Ron Bright said after the ship was securely docked. “I want to use a few marines to secure this arm of the station and check out the rest of the station before you disembark.” Jason knew that Ron could be a pain about Jason’s security, but it was far better to just endure it. Ana and Lin decided to go with Ron, to plan for Jason’s household to get down to the ducal palace in the one and only city on the moon.

“It’s true what Ana said, about this system not being able to afford a space elevator if it was not an experiment,” Maggie said as she studied her tablet. “The system has a huge amount of minerals but nearly nothing of gets mined. Most of their income is from farming, small-scale farming.”

“We might have to find out why they don’t mine minerals, and kick some ass,” Jason said. “Unless the people are not interested in buying the stuff.”

Ron and his advance team were back in half an hour, with Lin but minus Ana. Lin reported that Ana had talked to the station manager and then took the elevator down to the moon. Jason was surprised to see Lin wearing a colorful skirt, all in nature colors, that reached her feet. She had a long-sleeved jacket on as well. In her hands was a bundle of clothes.

“Unless you want to start a brand-new dress tradition, I would advise you to wear this, my husband,” Lin said as she gave a rather formal bow as she held the clothes out to Jason.

The bundle contained dark-gray pants made from a heavy woven material, a thinner long sleeve linen shirt, and a heavy coat that wrapped around his body and was tied with a wide linen belt. The coat reached halfway down his thighs with the front overlapping by fifty percent. The coat was decorated in the same earth colors as Lin’s skirt. She also had a sash with the same colors as his Saturn medallion.

“Where did you get this from?” Jason asked as he started changing.

“Mom had it made for you on Secundus after you became the new duke of Saturn,” Lin said. “It’s the traditional clothing worn by all men indigenous to the system. I’m wearing traditional women’s clothing.”

“Do all of us have to wear clothes like this?” Erin asked as Lin helped him wrap the coat and tie the belt.

“No, foreigners can wear what they want,” Lin said. “You are the duke of Saturn, so you get to follow the tradition.” Jason felt a bit awkward being the only one wearing that style, but all his women commented on him looking regal.

With Ron’s approval, Jason’s core family, meaning Erin, Nina, and a selected number of his senior concubines as well as all his body protectors and a squad of marines entered the space station. Since the space elevator was attached to the stationary shaft, Jason wrongly assumed they would just go straight to the elevator station, but Lin guided them down to the outer ring and to a grand foyer where they met with the station manager and his senior staff.

Since all jump gates and space stations belonged to the empire, meaning individual systems didn’t have to pay for the construction of a space station or the jump gate pair, the jump gates and space stations were under the protection and control of the navy and marine corps. The group welcoming Jason and Erin consisted of a navy lieutenant commander and an imperial marine lieutenant.

“Welcome to Saturn, Your Grace,” the lieutenant commander said as he and the marine lieutenant both saluted him. “I am Lieutenant Commander Pierre Bronson. This is the Lieutenant William Bronson, my brother and the commanding officer of the Imperial Marine detachment in the Saturn system.”

“Let me guess,” Jason responded as he shook hands with the two officers. “You two like this system and would like to stay here after your time is up?” The two gave each other a mildly embarrassed look and then nodded at the same time.

“Having reached the rank of lieutenant commander in charge of a space station, I don’t see myself getting promoted anytime soon. This is as high as I can go, and to settle here is actually not bad.” Pierre Bronson said.

“Having a space elevator also means it is quite easy to go home on weekends, Your Grace,” William Bronson added.

“How many marines do you have here, lieutenant?” Jason asked.

“Saturn, the system, is seen as a kind of backwater posting, Your Grace,” William Bronson replied. “I have half a platoon here, all marines who are getting near the end of their ten years’ service. Your arrival just tripled the number of marines in the system.”