Scarcity (Special Forces: FJ One Book 1) by Adam Vance Read Free Book Online Page B

not possible to ‘overwhelm’ them, Charles. We don’t have, and everyone knows it, enough resources to get everyone to a new home. But we can save more people if we enact a Hastening strategy that lets colonies expand faster, drill and mine and exploit the resources of our new homes, bring those resources home so we can build more ships, so we can get more people off of Earth…”
    It was hard to argue with her logic, from a purely human viewpoint. People had bought into the “Avatar Principle,” that we had more to gain from working with the natives than against them – but only as long as denial was the common reaction to the end of the world.
    Science had come up with one patch after another, buying just a little more time each time. Cures for at least some of the cancers being caused by environmental poisoning; the creation in a lab of the subsistence-nutrition Basic Diet; yet another advance in renewable resource exploitation to keep the lights on one more day.
    It had taken Collapse to finally defeat the Kochists, who had blocked serious investment in renewable energy for over a century. After all, nobody could own the wind or the sun or the waves, and the real money and power was in the control of limited resources.
    But the tipping point had been reached – all the renewable energy in the world couldn’t turn back global warming now, or the rise of the poisoned oceans over the coasts. And denial wasn’t an option anymore.
    On a grim sort of bright side, world population had dropped by two thirds since Collapse, which, brutally but efficiently, had eased the strain on the remaining resources.
    300 miles above the Earth, the transport opened to release the pod bundle, and a shuttle grabbed them for the ride down. As the shuttle descended towards Berlin, he could see the cranes hard at work, dismantling disused skyscrapers so their steel bones, their copper wiring, their pipes and their glass, could be repurposed in the building of arkships.
    The old city still stood, the stone and concrete useless in outer space. They landed inside the gates of Charlottenburg Palace, the home of Department 6C. At first, it had seemed like a good idea, moving the Department into a building of historical importance, sending the message that “Preservation” was what colonization was all about. But as resentment built among those still here against those who got to leave, having someone referred to as “HM” running the operation from a palace became political fodder for the Hasteners.
    The once-magnificent parks and gardens behind the Palace were gone now. The trees had fallen victim to blights, and the water in the lake’s lazy channels had evaporated in a drought, never to be refilled. The desolate space was filled now with VTOL pads and shipping containers full of scrap metal, waiting for transportation to the arkshipyard in orbit.
    Huizhong McAllister came down the steps of the Palace as soon as the tubes were deposited on the ground. She was dressed in her usual sensible but flattering tan suit, which complimented her white hair and sharp green eyes.
    She smiled and shook the Captain’s hand. “Dieter. So good to see you.” Like a seasoned politician, she made the rounds of the rest of the team, inquiring after their families by name, and offering them the hospitality of the Department showers and cafeteria.
    She and the Captain walked the confection-like halls of the Palace, avoiding the workmen stripping the precious gold off of mirror frames and cherubs.
    “So why the urgency?” he asked her.
    “In a minute,” she replied. “What’s your take on Tiamat? Will the colony regroup? How did the Hierarch react?”
    He told her what he thought as they walked towards a more secure area. She had the facts; she wanted his analysis, the information he wouldn’t embed in a transmission that could be intercepted.
    They did their three-factor authentication at an incongruous heavy steel doorway, a portal from the 17 th