An Into to Colonial Kraken – ‘Quantum Surge’

Philip Nolen April 4, 2022

Kraken Colony

& the Coming Rebellion

It was a twin sister of Earth. A second home. Oh, there were minor differences such as a higher oxygen level, uniformly warmer oceans, and a biosphere that made Earth resemble a barren desert. The planet only lacked a native species with true intelligence, and that was a good thing if you were a colonist. The colonists named it Kraken; they came here, prospered, and life was challenging but good.

Meanwhile, Earth grew more civilized. How? Well, they’d found an acceptable solution to war. After all, nobody really wanted to get rid of war, it was simply too profitable. So by treaty, negotiated politics were allowed only upon the homeworld while conflict, the profitable side of politics, was restricted to the off-world remainder of Sol System. This agreement kept Earth both safe and prosperous while the dependent colonies of Sol System were held controlled and powerless to object.

It wasn’t long before the powers of Earth discovered that war was resource-intensive. Energy and other natural resources were not problems for a star-faring society. No, warfare took its toll on highly-trained spacers whose talents were growing scarce. After all, skill sets needed for work and warfare in space could not be created overnight.

History provided a solution called ‘impressment’ by politicians. The lower classes called it ‘kidnapping’.

With impressment, it became profitable to capture rather than eliminate your enemy. Staff level officers were held until exchanged or ransomed. Spacers faced a more sinister fate. They either agreed to join the war fleet or they were incarcerated in gulag-style camps on Earth’s moon and Mars. Civilians remained simple collateral damage although a few were worthy of impressment. Eventually, impressment practices spread from military targeting to include the stopping and abduction of merchant shipping.

Kraken was a colony of the North American Union. The invention of the slipdrive and stasis field allowed Kraken’s merchants to cheaply transport and sell many luxury items to all sides of the conflict. Their profitable neutrality soon came to an end as the merchant fleet found itself targeted by all sides of the conflict. Waylaying and impressment spread from Sol System to the various star colonies with captures brazenly occurring inside Kraken’s orbital sphere.

Kraken was now taking steps to defend itself. They found a good candidate in Captain Jankin Decatur who fled Earth to join Kraken’s merchant fleet years ago. He accepted their offer and set off to provide their merchants with an armed escort that was little more than a converted container ship. Decatur’s escort duty quickly transformed into a rescue mission that would take his little warbird back to a gulag prison on Mars in Sol System. Decatur expected to encounter resistance in a star system where no friends existed. What they exposed in the midst of battle would change everything.