Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) by Aer-ki Jyr Read Free Book Online

that those maturia were starting to produce graduates.
    They weren’t in vast numbers, for the Veliquesh
prisoners weren’t mating in isolation and the handful that were in the
transitional colony weren’t adding all that many. That meant Brad had a limited
window of opportunity to get a Star Force Protovic civilization set up and
functioning before they ran out of younglings to grow it from. He had
specifically said that none of the transitional Protovic would be allowed to join
in the early stages, for he wanted to form it out of those who had known
nothing but Star Force maturia, but intended to open it up to them a few
decades down the road once the tone of the civilization had been set.
    That meant he had a lot of green personnel to work
with, so he’d recruited a variety of individuals from across Star Force to
assist him in forming the core of the new civilization. Few of them were
Protovic, but rather a mix of Calavari, Kiritak, Human, Bsidd, and Elarioni,
for this world did have a large ocean on it and Brad wanted to get the aquatics
division started right away. There were around 1200 of them in total, meaning
that aside from the construction crews building the colony everything was going
to have to be staffed by the maturia graduates and overseen by the ‘elders.’
    That wasn’t the most preferred situation, but given
that Brad didn’t have a native population to babysit and he was able to start
from scratch he felt it was a good place to start. Wisdom took time to build,
and the more hands-on activity these younglings could get, the faster they
would learn…though he was having a transitional support team in place to
actually run the startup colony during the integration of the younglings.
Things like food prep and maintenance weren’t something you wanted to hand them
right off their first day, but the support team would cycle out gradually and
within a year or two be fully replaced by locals.
    When Brad’s jumpship arrived he took a dropship down
to the half-built colony with his elite staff and got to work right away
setting up the necessary programs needed for when the younglings started to
arrive a month later. A lot of that planning had already been done, but it
wasn’t until they actually got on site that they were able to get a feel for
the place and set up shop. There was a full sanctum in place for Brad’s use, so
he intended to stay planetside for the foreseeable future rather than living
out of a jumpship.
    When he got to the surface he essentially staked his
claim and started micromanaging everything in order to make sure things were in
order for when the first batch of 5,000 younglings arrived. He’s specified that
number and would have exactly that amount coming in every month for the first
year while the balance would be moved into other locations within Star Force to
await their turn. Nearly all of them wanted to come to Brad’s new addition to
the empire, for they’d been hearing of it throughout their maturia training,
but the trailblazer knew he couldn’t overload the limited infrastructure and
staff with too much new blood, hence a staggered approach was used.
    He spent a lot of personal time with that first 5,000.
So much so that he eventually knew them all by name. He pushed them hard in
training, got them acquainted with limited but essential duties, then relied on
them to carry them out when the next batch came in and he saw to their
indoctrination into the new order…save it wasn’t all that new for them, for all
they’d ever known was Star Force. The few wrinkles that Brad put into the
Protovic civilization took some getting used to and developed over time, but
after that first year the trailblazer felt he had a sufficient core of
personnel to open up the immigration doors and allow an additional 10,000 per
week.
    The Star Force engineers gave him plenty of
infrastructure to use and kept right on building as he incorporated more and
more Protovic younglings into his new