House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (28 page)

Other Systems

During the buildup and maneuvering preceding the Havenite Wars, the Star Kingdom constructed a number of military bases in both uninhabited and member systems of the Manticoran Alliance. In addition, a number of star systems liberated from the People’s Republic of Haven were occupied, some changing hands several times during the course of the conflicts.

Hancock and Grendelsbane bases are the most notable for their size and importance, though many smaller bases were also established along the front. These bases provide support structure and repair and resupply points as well as a nodal concentration of forces. Other bases, such as Sun-Yat, were captured Havenite forward bases, repurposed for Manticoran use.

Aside from purely military bases in uninhabited star systems, a number of other systems have their own unique treaty arrangements with Manticore, despite not being formal members of the Alliance. Marsh is one such system, with a Manticoran fleet base established originally to keep an eye on the Silesian Confederacy and Anderman Empire.

History

The original colony expedition to Manticore departed Old Earth on October 24, 775 PD, aboard the sublight hibernation ship Jason bound for the Manticore Binary System. Manticore, which lies approximately 512 light-years from Earth, was first confirmed to have planets in 562 PD by the astronomer Sir Frederick Clarke. Its distance was such that the voyage would take 640 years (just over 384 subjective years allowing for relativistic effects), requiring that each colonist be waked from cryosleep for exercise seven times. Accordingly, the colonists were investing about four and a half years of their lives and all their money in the voyage.

Sixty percent of the colonists were Western Europeans, with most of the remainder drawn from the North American Federation, the Caribbean, and a very small minority of ethnic Ukrainians. The total expedition consisted of ninety-three thousand adults and thirty-two thousand minor children.

The “rights” to the system had been purchased at auction from the survey firm of Franchot et Fils, Paris, France, Old Earth. FF, as the firm was known, had an excellent reputation, and its survey ship Suffren had made the same voyage in just twenty years. Suffren’s crew had done FF’s usual professional job, although all data was accompanied by the caution that it would be 650 years out of date when the colonists arrived. FF sold its rights in the Manticore System to the Manticore Colony, Ltd., (MC) for approximately 5.75 billion EuroDollars. As part of the transfer of rights, FF expunged all data on the system from its memory banks, transferring the information to the Solarian International Data Bank’s maximum security files. This was a standard safeguard to protect MC against the occupation of the planet by later expeditions with faster ships, as it was already apparent that advances in hyper travel might well make such protection necessary. It was also recognized that there was no way to guarantee that faster, more capable hyperships would not beat the colonists to Manticore anyway. Accordingly, Roger Winton, President and CEO of MC (who had already been elected Planetary Administrator) opted to establish the Manticore Colony Trust of Zurich (MCT).

The MCT’s purpose was to invest all capital remaining to the MC after mounting the expedition (something under one billion EuroDollars) and use the accrued interest to watch over the colonists’ rights to their new home. It was a wise precaution.

Landing and Early History

1416–1453 PD

When Jason finally arrived in the Manticore System on March 21, 1416 PD, her crew discovered a modest settlement on the planet Manticore, staffed by MCT personnel who also manned the four small Earth-built frigates that protected the system against claim-jumpers. Indeed, so well had the Trust done in the last six centuries, that Manticore found itself with a very favorable bank balance on Old Terra, and the frigates became the first units of the Manticoran System Navy. Moreover, the small MCT presence on Manticore included data banks and carefully selected and trained instructors assigned to update the colonists on the technical advances of the last six centuries. This last was a feature even Winton had not anticipated and he had very good reason to be pleased with his own decisions and the diligence, foresight, and imagination with which he and a succession of MCT managers had discharged their duties.

Two centuries later, the MCT funds on Old Terra provided the initial capitalization of the Royal Bank of Manticore, and it has been argued that the initial experience with the MCT had a great deal to do with the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s farsighted enlightened self-interest where management of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction is concerned. Despite occasional detours, the Star Kingdom has always had a tradition of long-term, forward-looking economic and fiscal policies. The MCT remains in existence even today, managing Manticoran economic and governmental affairs on Old Terra, although it is no longer the financial mega-giant it once was.

A notable side effect of the emergence of the impeller drive and Warshawski sail was the emergence of both interstellar piracy and warfare. The region in which Manticore was settled had few close neighbors, and the colony government used some of their bank balance to purchase a squadron of Solarian-built destroyers, and hire the personnel to crew them.

It was well that they had that foresight. Less than two decades later, the nascent Manticore System Navy fought its first battle against advanced units of the Free Brotherhood, a wandering band of nomads and raiders that had begun migrating through the galaxy aboard a fleet of huge hyper transports accompanied by a veritable horde of light warships. Although no match for a well-organized multi-star imperium, the Free Brotherhood had wreaked havoc with many single-system polities and made the error of thinking it could do the same thing to Manticore.

The first battle occurred in the uninhabited Megan System, 8.4 light-years from Manticore, when two Manticoran frigates on a survey mission were attacked by advance scouts for the Brotherhood. MSNS Triumph was destroyed with all hands, but her gallant resistance bought time for the badly damaged MSNS Defiant to escape back to Manticore. When an aroused Manticore proved to be a much tougher customer than their normal victims, the Brotherhood moved towards the Haven Sector in search of easier prey.

The Plague Years

1464–1496 PD

The initial bid for Manticore had been so high for two reasons. One was that the G0/G2 binary was highly unusual—indeed, unique—in having no less than three planets suitable for human life. The second was that Manticore and Sphinx, the two habitable planets orbiting the G0 stellar component, were extremely Earth-like. Although each had its own unique biosphere, survey reports indicated that terrestrial life forms would find it unusually easy to adapt, and so it proved. Terran food crops did well and while the local flora and fauna could not provide all essential dietary elements, much of it was digestible by terrestrial life forms. Thus, terraforming requirements were extraordinarily modest, consisting of little more than the need to seed food crops and selected terrestrial grasses to support imported herbivores. Unfortunately, that very ease of adaptation had a darker side and Manticore proved one of the very few extra-terrestrial systems to possess microorganisms which could prey on humans.

The culprit was a pathogen—or, rather, a small family of pathogens—that were similar to human coronaviruses and had been missed by the original survey team. Some virologists argue that it was not, in fact, missed but evolved in the six centuries between the initial survey and the arrival of the colonists. Whatever the truth of the matter, the pathogen, when it combined with human coronaviruses, was deadly, producing a condition analogous to simultaneous virulent influenza and pneumonia in its victims. Worse, it proved resistant to all existing medical technology and over thirty years were to pass before a successful vaccine was found.

In those three decades, almost sixty percent of the original colonists died. Their Manticore-born children fared better against the disease, experiencing a generally less severe manifestation of it. Without the cushion provided by the MCT funds on Old Earth and the evolution of the Warshawski sail hypership, the entire expedition would almost certainly have come to grief.

The Plague was initially restricted to Manticore itself. Colonization of Sphinx continued but under rigorously applied quarantine conditions as a “fallback” position for the colony as a whole. Sphinx was seen as a “citadel” from which the star system might be resettled, should worse come to worst, after the Plague was finally defeated. Unfortunately, the quarantine procedures failed, and in 1463 PD, the Plague “jumped” to Sphinx with equally catastrophic consequences for the colonists living there.

Founding of the Star Kingdom

1471–1542 PD

Under the circumstances, the colony found itself in urgent need of additional homesteaders. These were recruited from Old Earth, another process made much easier by the existence of the MCT, but the original colonists, concerned about retaining control of their own colony, adopted a radically new constitution before opening their doors to immigration.

Roger Winton had been reelected continuously to the post of Planetary Administrator and served superbly throughout the early settlement period and the Plague crisis. He was now an elderly man whose wife and two Terran-born sons had died of the Plague but he remained vigorous and his Manticore-born daughter Elizabeth showed promise at least equal to his. At fifty-three, she was President of the Board of Directors, making her effectively vice-president of the colony, and one of the young colony’s preeminent jurists. Because she had a large and thriving brood of second-generation Manticoran children and her family had served so outstandingly, a convention of colony shareholders converted the Corporation’s elective board into a constitutional monarchy and crowned Roger Winton King Roger I of Manticore on August 1, 1471 PD.

It was a post he was to enjoy for only three years before his death in one of the secondary outbreaks of the Plague, but his daughter succeeded him as Queen Elizabeth I in a smooth and popular transfer of power. The House of Winton has ruled the Manticore System ever since. Simultaneously, the surviving “First Shareholders” and their descendants, who held title to vast tracts of land, acquired patents of nobility to go with their wealth and the hereditary aristocracy of Manticore was born. (It should be noted that the term “lands,” under the original colonial charter—and, indeed, under current Manticoran law—refers to much more than actual land on the surface of one of the Manticore Binary System’s habitable planets. It also references mineral rights in the system’s asteroid belts, portions of the broadcast spectrum, etc.)

The new wave of immigrants arriving in the wake of the Plague comprised three distinct classes of citizens. Each immigrant received a land rights credit, the value of which precisely equaled the cost of a second-class passenger ticket from his planet of origin to Manticore. Any individual capable of paying his own passage received the full credit upon arrival. Those unable to pay their passages could draw upon MCT for a dollar amount equal to their land rights credit to cover the difference between their own resources and the cost of passage. An immigrant whose resources exceeded the cost of his passage could invest the surplus, paying fifty percent of the “book” price for additional land. The most affluent immigrants thus became “Second Shareholders,” with estates which, in some cases, rivaled those of the original shareholders and entitled them to patents of nobility junior only to those of the existing aristocracy. Those immigrants who were able to retain their base land right or perhaps enlarge upon it slightly became “yeomen,” free landholders with voting rights beginning one Manticoran year (1.73 T-years) after their arrival. Those who completely exhausted their land rights credit to buy passage to Manticore were known as “zero-balance” immigrants and did not become full citizens until such time as they had become well-enough established to pay taxes for five consecutive Manticoran years (8.7 T-years). While all Manticoran subjects were equal in the eyes of the law, whether enfranchised or not, there were distinct social differences between shareholders, yeomen, and zero-balancers. Even today there is greater prestige in claiming a yeoman as a first ancestor than in claiming a zero-balance ancestor. And, of course, direct descent from a full shareholder is considered by many to be the most prestigious of all.

Despite the apparent stratification of the Star Kingdom’s social classes, life was for the most part quiet, peaceful and productive. Nearly every member of society was dedicated to rebuilding the personnel infrastructure laid waste by the Plague. The physical plant was essentially untouched, and the massive holes left in the workforce by the disease allowed and encouraged people to rise to their highest skill levels, thus creating a self-reinforcing meritocracy for the young star nation. This growth in the civilian side of the economy was not matched with growth on the military side, however, as the Star Kingdom attempted to avoid many of the ills of other star nations. Parliament was more willing to spend money on education then on weapons. For many years this was not a problem as the Star Kingdom was able to grow unmolested due to the absence of hostile neighbors. This idyllic state, however, would not last forever.

Birth of the Royal Manticoran Navy

1543–1584 PD

The Navy’s losses to the Plague, especially among shipboard personnel, were even higher than among the population at large and making those losses good was a long, hard task, even with the assisted immigration programs. Moreover, a time of relative peace and concentration on other priorities left the Manticoran public ambivalent, at best, about the Navy, and the first of what would be many bitter debates in Parliament concerning the fate of the post-Plague Navy began.

The Manticoran System Navy’s strength was at its nadir due to lack of personnel when it formally became the Royal Manticoran Navy in 1504 PD. Half of the newly reorganized RMN’s ships were in mothballs, those on active service were severely undermanned, and the Navy had to fight both to demonstrate its relevance and for the funding to train an entirely new core of officers and enlisted personnel.

At the end of the aided immigration period, many of the service’s remaining warships were almost a century old. With no local shipbuilding programs to replace aging units as they were withdrawn from service, a decline in ship strength was inevitable, and the Navy’s total effective strength was less than two dozen ships and falling. Even authorized construction was often delayed, as in the case of the laydown of the new Burgundy class of system defense destroyers originally scheduled for 1536 PD. Given the Navy’s parlous state, Parliament granted the last six Triumph-class battlecruisers (later reclassified as heavy cruisers) a last-minute reprieve by allowing the service to retain them for an additional decade beyond their originally scheduled decommissioning date in light of the Burgundy’s delayed delivery.