Interlude
23 February, 2075, Shuttle 11, USSS Harriet Tubman, Cape Canaveral, Florida
The first major colonization ship had been built, unsurprisingly, in the United States. Also, unsurprisingly, it had been built by private firms to government specifications. While the European Union was still struggling to apportion widget production between England, Scotland, France, and Germany, and struggling with how much of it to have done in China to make up for the inflated wages demanded by European trade unions (which was another way of saying how much would eventually show up in government revenues, of course, given Europe's confiscatory levels of taxation), America simply acted.
Curiously, no one in the EU screamed, "Unilateralism." They had their reasons for wanting America to be first with practical, large scale, colonization capability.
"Large scale," in this case, meant twenty-five thousand colonists in cryogenic suspension or "deep sleep." Future ships would be larger, approximately twice as large, but—give the imperialist, revanchionist, capitalist, war-mongering, fascist American beasts their due— twenty-five thousand was a nice start. Besides, since the ship was going to be available for lease long before any Euro ship could be expected to be, the bureaucrats who ran the EU had every expectation that it could be, and would be, used to eliminate some of their excess and unwanted population.
Oliver Rogers' flintlock was safely stowed with the baggage. There were better weapons available for those leaving Earth, but none that he could be sure of feeding with ammunition or keeping in repair, on the new world. His animals—one bull, three heifers, two horses, five goats, seven sheep, half a dozen domesticated turkeys, two dozen chickens and a rooster, and two hundred and fourteen embryos, not counting eggs—had already gone up and been put under. Spare arms were up there too, for when his sons grew to manhood.
Rogers' three wives, two of them officially unofficial, and eleven children would go up with him. Perhaps more importantly, from the point of view of the charity that had paid for Rogers' rather extended family's extended trip, along with all those goats and chickens and whatnot would go an eventual fifteen conservative voters (more, really, as all three wives were quite young and very fertile). It was a bargain, from some points of view, even counting shipping their minimal household goods from Idaho to Florida.
"Oh, God, I'm scared, Ollie," said wife number one, Gertrude, as she leaned against her shared husband's arm. "I've never even flown before and now—"
"I know, Gertie," Rogers said, "I know. It's not easy to pick up and leave our roots. But our ancestors have been doing just that for four hundred years or more. A lot more if you count how they got to Europe in the first place, before they came here. It's worked out well enough, so far. And God will watch over his own."
"They used to say that God watches out for fools, drunkards and the United States, too," Gertie objected. "But he's turned his back on the USA."
"And so are we," said Rogers. "Especially since the Senate ratified the Gag Treaty and the President signed it. That was when the United States turned its back on us."
Whatever Gertie was about to say in reply was drowned out by the scream of Shuttle 11 coming in for a landing to board the colonists and take them to a new world and a new life.