Vivid Stars Online

David followed me through the village slowly, taking his time to get the lay of the land. I was happy to let him, having a little knowledge of the area could only help in the initial discussions with the mayor.

“You weren’t kidding about how much water you have on hand,” he said, craning his neck to look at the lake between houses. “You’ll never have to worry about running out, even if you get a drought like the southern provinces.”

He paused at one point to rummage in his bag before pulling out a small set of binoculars. Putting them to his eyes, he looked out over the plains. “The land looks plenty fertile as well. That grass is awfully long, and I can see other plants sticking up here and there.”

“I’ll still check the soil,” he continued as we turned and made our way through the town hall doors. “But I doubt it’s going to be an issue. Not like I’m expecting the Psi energy to be.”

“That’s good,” I agreed as the mayor’s assistant lead us up to her office. “The Psi problem is likely going to be hard enough with nothing else complicating it,” I finished as I knocked on the Mayor’s door.

She bade us enter, and I was quick to introduce her to David. As he had promised, he began acting more formally after that. While I could tell it was a charade, it was good enough for him to fit in without suspicion.

“So,” I started once we were all seated at the mayor’s desk. “Now that we have someone who actually knows what they're doing,” I said, gesturing toward David. “I think it’s time to set some plans in motion.”

“That would be good,” Mayor Kosfeld responded with a nod. “I’ve been putting out the word to farmers down south, as you asked, and have had some success. But they want proof that it’s going to work, most everyone I’ve talked to has heard that farming always fails up here.”

“And that’s why I’m here,” David cut in with a smile, before gesturing toward the projector built into her desk. “Do you mind? I have a few ideas to show you both.”

Nodding, the mayor granted him access, and he began fiddling with his watch. “While we can’t be one hundred percent sure about why the previous farming attempts here failed,” he started, as a hologram began forming.

“I am reasonably confident that it is because of the greater levels of background Psi energy that exist this far north. I couldn’t get any exact numbers but I’ve found multiple sources that claim it’s between two and four times as strong as in the capital.”

“That’s more than enough of a difference to cause problems in native flora,” he continued, gesturing toward the hologram. It showed a long list of plants, around three-quarters of which were crossed out.

“While no one has done any actual studies on this, I could cross-reference the list of plants native to the capital province with the ones that have been found within Psionic hotspots, areas with much higher background energy.”

“It’s far from conclusive because of the many other factors being involved but it’s at least a good clue to our current issue. You can see here only a fraction of the native plants have been found within areas of heightened Psi energy.”

“Given that many of our food plants are the standard cross-planetary kind,” he continued with a shrug. “It would stand to reason that they would fare just as badly as many of the native ones, if not worse.”

“Interesting,” I said with a nod, leaning forward to look over the list. “That’s a good lead, even if it’s not proof, as you say. What do you think the next step is?”

“Running our own tests,” he said with a determined nod, before moving the slide over. The new image displayed the design for a heated greenhouse with a detailed listing of materials and an estimated cost.

“Since it is closing in on winter, we’re not going to get a crop grown in time, not with how badly it snows here. So I plan to use the time before spring to test which plants will grow well here.”

“I want to run several simultaneous tests in different greenhouses. The first would be a control with no changes to the usual environment except for heating. The second would be one using glass coated with a substance designed to keep out Psi energy.”

He flicked to a second slide, showing another greenhouse with odd glazing on it. A glance at the materials list showed numerous beast cores, enough that I assumed they were used in making the coating.

“The third test I want to do I haven’t quite figured out yet,” he said with a deep frown. “But ideally I want to have a third greenhouse that actually has a higher energy rating than on the outside.”

“Could we just throw a bunch of beast cores in?” I responded with a shrug. “If you glazed it with the same shielding as the second one, it should hold the extra energy inside.”

“I had considered that, but while Beast cores radiate energy, it has been shown to have a mutative effect on lifeforms around them. Anything approaching sapience seems to be resistant, but plants will be affected.”

“It's not even in a reproducible way,” he sighed, shaking his head in frustration. “When it was first discovered, some universities tried to grow super plants with them but you get a different outcome each time so it’s not viable.”

"So we need power, but not from cores," I mused with a frown before a lightbulb went off. I held up a hand for them to wait while I rummaged through the pack I’d set down on entry.

“What about these?” I asked, holding up one of the carefully wrapped organs I got from the Dire Tentacle Beast. As I’d hoped, it still pulsed with power days later and had barely degraded at all.

I explained what I had in more detail, to which David began nodding excitedly. “That could work, particularly if we can make them into fertilizer or something. We don’t see a lot of things like that because people rarely bring Beast corpses back.”

“Yeah, it’s a right pain,” I said, my mind flashing back to trying to get the wyvern corpse here. “And you can’t even eat them, so I see why people wouldn’t bother. It’s not like you’d even notice if the organs were useful without a Psion either.”

“Well, these will hopefully be enough to test with,” David responded with a shrug. “Though if we get any excellent results with them, you might need to source more.”

I nodded in response but decided to wait to see the results before committing to anything like that. Instead, I turned my attention to the Mayor, who had been quietly paying attention to David’s presentation.

“You mentioned that a small building company moved to the town with you. Do you think they can build these,” I asked with a gesture at the last diagram. While the prices on them were significant, they weren’t too bad when compared with the work on my frigate.

Building them might slow that down a little, but I felt like it would be worth doing to set us up for the next year. If David could find a few good crops for us then the taxes on those would be more than enough to pay off the initial investment.

“They should be able to,” she said after squinting at the diagrams for a couple of minutes. “We’ll have to source a few of the materials from other provinces, but that won’t be an issue as long as we order them in advance.”

“Excellent,” David said, rubbing his hands together easily. “That just leaves the discussion on what we’re going to try and grow. I brought seeds for all the usual staple crops from down south, along with a few of the more rare medicinal plants that usually grow in hotspots.”

“So that just leaves local plants,” he said as he turned toward me. “I’ll need as many samples of the local plants as you can organize, my lord. Even if they're copies of the ones I have, the local varieties may have unseen mutations to help them grow here.”

“Right,” I said with a nod. “That makes sense. For any that grow around the town it should be easy,” I said, looking at the Mayor, who nodded and promised to get some people on it.

“For the rest, I’ll keep an eye out on my travels and ask the other explorers I've hired to do the same thing. I’ve already got a few locations we can send people to as well,” I continued, pulling up the list of valuable materials I’d found on my to the mountain.

“There’s also a moss up in the mountains you might be interested in. It seems to move Psi energy around like a kind of biological circuit which might be useful in your increased energy experiment,” I finished, thinking back on the odd, glowing moss I had encountered.

“Now that is interesting,” he responded, leaning forward. “Something that hasn’t just adapted to survive, but to actually use the altered conditions here. Yes, please bring me some of that as a priority.”

I agreed happily, before launching into a discussion on the various odd plants I’d seen in my travels. Mayor Kosfeld also contributed, having lived in the province her entire life.

After a time that wound down, and I moved on to the last thing I wanted to bring up. “We talked about a few options on the way over here, but can you go into more detail now? What do you think the best way to move forward in the spring is?”

“To begin with? Going old school,” he responded with a wave out the window. “While indoor vertical farming has become the standard, that is usually because of either a lack of space or water as it is more efficient for both.”

“It is, however, more expensive to set up initially and you have no lack of either,” he continued with a laugh. “As much as I’m a fan of the more modern methods, not putting that vast plain of yours to use would be a tragedy.”

“So what I suggested is that we simply clear a large section of land. We want as much as we can realistically manage with the personnel you have available. Then we seed the various plants I’ve identified as potential crops and see what works,” he finished with a shrug.

“There will be differences growing outside compared to in the greenhouses, so I suspect some will still fail. Others will do well, or even thrive, however, and those will be what you want to use from now on.”

“Given the current demand for food, that should make you some significant profits, which you may want to invest into some more significant infrastructure. I’m quite a fan of aquaculture myself, and you could look at using it for sustainable fish farming as well.”

“We could even look at designing a self-contained indoor aquaculture setup,” he continued, excitement clear in his voice. “That you could build in isolated villages that require food shipments. While it would be an expensive initial investment, the fuel savings over time would be well worth it.”

“That sounds like a good start,” I responded. I would likely be hurting for money by spring, so getting the farming operation started with an initially low outlay would be for the best. And as David said, space was the one thing I would probably never be poor in.

“I agree,” the Mayor said with a massive grin on her face. “If you can show good, well-documented results from your greenhouse experiments, then I have quite a few farmers lined up to move.”

“Things are only getting worse down south,” she continued, her face falling into a frown. “And even if the drought is fixed tomorrow, it’s going to be at least a couple of years before all the damage is gone. There’s more than a few people who’d be happy for a new start.”

“Keep looking as well,” I said with a nod toward her. “The more people, the better, even if it means a struggle to house them all. I would rather deal with that issue than not have enough people. And we have enough land to support a lot of them.”

“Understood,” she said, taking a note on her computer. “Your waiver of the land tax is very attractive, so I think we’ll see many people looking to migrate. With your permission, I would like to build extra housing over the winter so that we’re prepared.”

I winced a little at another cost but nodded as I could see her reasoning. We would have to build it eventually, so getting some of it down now would only help to spread the costs out.

“Thank you both,” I said as the conversation wound down. “I’m going to trust the two of you to take the lead on following through with the plan. If you run into problems, then let me know, but otherwise, you're free to handle the day-to-day details.”

They both nodded, and I bid them farewell before walking out. With my plans for expansion underway, it was time to go find my soldiers. I had a caving expedition to plan.