Bounty

"Ten thousand islands and not one of them higher than a man. The lagoons are green to the horizon. Name it for what it is."Mahesh Pillai, survey report of the UNS Grissom on Cirban II, 2315

Bounty is the second planet of the Cirban system, an ocean world of shallow warm seas and ten thousand coral islands at the far edge of the Binami sector. The Office of Settlement settled it on 24 April 2324 with 100,000 colonists from the Caribbean, who named their city Toussaint. Toussaint became the Ciriban Gulf's commercial capital, a port on stilts and pontoons where Voor alloys and Landfall rice shared the same warehouses. By 2428 Bounty held 360 million people and was the largest world of the Sectors and the fourth largest in the Republic.

The Red Khanate besieged Bounty from January 2429 to May 2430. The Republic evacuated 30 million people, the largest evacuation in human history. General Alerio Biohó's Bounty Defence Zone held Toussaint for sixteen months before its last position fell at Roric's Plaza on 18 May 2430, and the Khan burned the city. The Retribution Fleet found 30 million survivors in 2450. Bounty rebuilt itself, and in 2510 it had 110 million people.

Name

The Office named the world Bounty on the strength of the Grissom's report, before anyone had landed. The colonists' ship carried the name, and the colonists gave its name to no city. They named their capital Toussaint, after the leader of the Haitian Revolution.

Description

Bounty is a world of shallow ocean. Its seas rarely run deeper than a few hundred metres, and its land is coral: atolls, reef islands and lagoons, none of them high. The largest island, which the colonists call Grande Terre, is 140 kilometres long and nowhere more than 30 metres above the sea. The climate is warm and humid at every latitude the colonists settled.

The native life is marine. The lagoons are rich in photosynthetic mats and filter-feeding colonies. The colonists' aquaculture, seeded with Maweer stock and farmed with Voor-licensed ocean techniques, produced rare aquatic crops that the Voor paid more for than anything else the federation sold them.

Geography

The colonists divide the islands into four groups:

• Grande Terre and its lee, the largest island and the two hundred islands sheltered behind it, where Toussaint stands.
• The Leeward Chains, long lines of reef islands running east of Grande Terre, the heart of the aquaculture.
• The Windward Arc, a crescent of high reefs in the south, exposed to the storm season and settled last.
• The Outer Banks, scattered atolls across the open ocean, most of them unsettled before 2400.

Climate

Bounty has no winter. Its year has a calm season and a storm season. The storms rise over the deep water to the west and cross the island chains in the planet's late summer, and Toussaint's pontoon districts were built to ride them. Storm walls of Voor alloy were raised across the lagoon's mouth in 2331.

Life

The lagoons hold the planet's richest life: photosynthetic mats, reef-building colonies and filter-feeders in the shallows, and drifting kelp-like rafts in the open sea that the colonists call sargasse. Bounty has no land animals larger than a crab. The Maweer stock that the colonists seeded from 2325 was a set of aquatic crops the Maweer had bred on their own worlds, and the Institute's biologists have never established where they came from.

Toussaint

The UNS Bounty landed at a lagoon on the lee of the largest island. Toussaint was a port before it was a town. The Exchange's warehouses came down from orbit to its lagoon in 2325, and by 2328 it was a city of 600,000, built on stilts and pontoons in the style of the Caribbean as the Program had rebuilt it. By 2428 it had 40 million people and covered the largest island and the two hundred islands of its lee, joined by causeways and pontoon districts.

Toussaint held the Sector Council's chamber, the Binami Fleet's headquarters, the Corps' Sector command and the yards at Toussaint's orbital. At its centre was Roric's Plaza, the square before the Sector Council's chamber, with the Council's tower and the Exchange building on its other sides. In orbit was Bijou Nan Syèl La, a trade station of 400 docks built between 2352 and 2360.

Districts

• Lagon, the old port on the lagoon where the UNS Bounty landed, with the Exchange's warehouses and the Sector Council's chamber on Roric's Plaza.
• The pontoons, the floating districts of the lee, joined by causeways and moved in the storm season.
• Bienvenu, the district of the fuel terminal and the fleet's supply docks, where General Biohó was killed on 3 March 2430 when the terminal's silos ignited under his command post.
• Cap-Rouge, on Grande Terre's northern point, the Corps' Sector command and the Navy's ground station.

Bijou Nan Syèl La

Bijou Nan Syèl La, Haitian Creole for "the jewel of the sky", was built in Bounty's orbit between 2352 and 2360 to replace the Exchange's old station at the Pillai radius. It had 400 docks, 3,000 kilometres of corridor and warehouse decks the size of towns, and held the bonded warehouses of a century's trade. In 2429 it was evacuated and turned into a trap for the Khan's landing parties, and its last command was destroyed on 9 April 2429. Its hull was cut up for scrap in the 2460s, and a single dock ring was kept in orbit as a memorial.

History

Founding

The founding region was argued for two years. The Office's rule wanted a people who knew atolls. The Chamber's Caribbean delegations, whose islands the Densification Scheme had drowned a century earlier and the Program had rebuilt on stilts, wanted the world. The quota was shared. The United States' Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands supplied a third, and the Pacific Union's and Brazil's Antillean associates, Haiti, Jamaica and the Lesser Antilles, the rest. The UNS Bounty's 100,000 colonists landed on 24 April 2324.

The trade and the war

Bounty's food and Toussaint's freight, traded for Theia's metals and Chalna's grain, made the two Gulf sectors the federation's second-largest internal commerce by 2330. The trade ban of 2328 halved Toussaint's Exchange traffic, and halved it again in 2330. Fleet Admiral Sean Santiago, who held Media in 2334, was a Toussaint man of Bounty's first generation. The Binami Fleet was based at Toussaint's orbital from 2330 through the Voor War.

The Sectors

Bounty's representatives led the Sectorite bloc in the Chamber from its formation in the 2350s, on a programme of autonomy for the Gulf's worlds and defence of its frontier. The Sectors' councils met at Toussaint on 14 March 2378, in the first month after the pickets were defunded, to demand the frontier's defence. The Sector Council at Toussaint, formed from that meeting, spoke for the Binami sector's worlds to the Republic for the next fifty years.

The Rearmament Acts of the 2420s enlarged the yards at Toussaint's orbital and built the Ciriban-class carriers, of which one was named Bounty. When the Red Khanate came through Haedius in 2428, Toussaint held the Sector Council's chamber, the Binami Fleet's headquarters and the Corps' Sector command.

The siege, 2428 to 2430

After the Battles of Haedius in September 2428, Bounty was the first world in the Khan's path. The Sector Council appointed General Alerio Biohó, a Toussaint-born Marine retired since 2419, to command the Bounty Defence Zone on 12 September 2428. He built a force of 150,000 from the troops who had come out of Haedius, the Sector defence force, the militia and 40,000 volunteers from the city. The Republic's evacuation moved 30 million people from September 2428 to January 2429.

The Khan's fleet arrived on 20 January 2429 with 260 monoliths. His troops fought for Bijou Nan Syèl La's corridors until 9 April. Ten cohorts landed around Toussaint from 14 March 2429. In April the Khan burned the island chains that resisted and destroyed the aquaculture from orbit, so that the planet could not feed the city. Toussaint held for over a year. Its last 4,000 defenders held Roric's Plaza on 17 May 2430. The chamber fell at noon on 18 May and the Exchange building at 1700. The Khan burned what was left of Toussaint on 20 May 2430. This is described in the Siege of Bounty.

Liberation

The Retribution Fleet destroyed the last monoliths in Bounty's orbit on 14 and 15 May 2450. The 20th Marine Division, raised from Bounty's evacuees, landed on 16 May, twenty years after Roric's Plaza. It found 30 million people alive, in the burned island chains and in the tunnels under Toussaint's ruin, and 2,000 of Biohó's Butchers. The Sector Council returned to Toussaint on 1 June 2450 and sat in the shell of the Exchange building, where the last position had fallen.

Rebuilding

Bounty was rebuilt by its own people, with the Reconstruction Commission's grants following them. It received 40 million returned from the Khanate's yards and camps. The Council voted in 2461 to leave the centre of Toussaint as it was: Roric's Plaza, the Council's chamber, the Exchange building's shell and the fuel terminal. The aquaculture was re-seeded with Maweer stock from 2465 under the Maweer's first licence since 2328. In 2510 Toussaint had 12 million people and Bounty 110 million.

Economy

Bounty's economy was aquaculture and trade. Its lagoon farms, seeded with Maweer stock and worked with Voor-licensed ocean techniques, fed the Exchange's trade and grew the rare aquatic crops that the Voor paid more for than anything else the federation sold them. The best known were reef-pearl, a lagoon fruit the Voor ate fresh, and sargasse flour, which fed the Saolea and Binami Fleets through the Voor War. Toussaint was the Gulf's port: Voor alloys and Landfall rice in the same warehouses, and from 2330 the Binami Fleet's supply. The yards at Toussaint's orbital, enlarged under the Rearmament Acts, built hulls for the Republic's Navy in the 2420s.

The Khan destroyed the aquaculture from orbit in April 2429. It was re-seeded from 2465 under the Maweer's first licence since 2328.

Government

Bounty entered the federation as a territory with its own council. It became an area of the Republic on the population test in 2361. The Sector Council, the elected government of the Binami sector's worlds, sat at Toussaint. It sat at Procyon from 2441 to 2450, returned to Toussaint's ruin on 1 June 2450 and met in the shell of the Exchange building for ten years. Bounty's representatives in the Chamber voted with the Sectors through the First Republic.

Demographics

Culture

Bounty's culture is the Caribbean's as the founders carried it: Haitian Creole, English and Spanish on the docks, the stilt-and-pontoon city, and a carnival the city has kept since 2325. The Council keeps 18 May as the day of the Plaza, when the names of the Defence Zone's dead are read from the Exchange building's shell. Toussaint's dome over the Plaza is one of the Republic's three national memorials, with the Tharsis tunnels and the base of the Lianhua Cliffs on Landfall.

Bounty's music is the Caribbean's, carried and changed: kompa and calypso played on instruments built from Voor alloy, which give the steel bands of Toussaint a ring no Earth band has. Its food is lagoon food, reef-pearl and sargasse cooked with Landfall rice. Its sport is boat racing across the lee in the calm season.

The 23rd Rapid Orbital Deployment Regiment, which fought at Toussaint in 2429 and 2430, was raised again from Bounty's survivors and given the name the Fevarians had given Biohó's defenders: Biohó's Butchers. It parades on Roric's Plaza on 18 May.

BOOK SOURCES

1. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind"
2. Solar Eternal, Part VIII, §8.3 "The Binami and Saolea Sectors"
3. Solar Eternal, Part XII, §12.2 "Paradise Lost: The Burning of Bounty"
4. Solar Eternal, Part XIV, §14.1 "The Reclamation of the Binami and Saolea Sectors"
5. Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.5 "The Burned Worlds"