The Office of Settlement was the body of the United Nations of Earth, and then of the Unified Solar Republic, that held sole authority over the survey, claim and settlement of worlds beyond the solar system. The Manifest Pledge's Exploration and Settlement Act of 12 October 2292 created it, so that no member, company or person could claim a star. In fifty years it founded the core worlds of Landfall, Circumstance, Dauntless and Serenity, the garden world of Mardak Vol and the worlds of the Second Wave. Its founding-region rule gave each of them the language, food and calendar of one region of the federation.
The Chartered Worlds Act of 2351 handed new settlement to companies and member states and made the Office the registrar of their charters. It was absorbed into the Ministry of Worlds on 1 January 2365.
Foundation
The Exploration and Settlement Act established the Office under the Ministry of Member Affairs. It funded the Office from the Exploration and Settlement Fund, 4 percent of the federal budget for fifty years. The Office had 40 staff in 2293 and 40,000 in 2305. The fifteen years between were spent learning a trade nobody had practised: moving 100,000 people to a world nobody had lived on, and keeping them alive through a first winter whose length nobody knew.
The Office's first director, Dr Ifeoma Oyelaran, was the daughter of the Unification Works Program's first director and had spent her own career in the Program's transport ledgers. She ran the Office as her mother had run the Program, on lists. Her list for a colony had 4,000 lines.
The founding-region rule
The first line of Oyelaran's list, which she wrote in 2294 and which every colony charter since has carried, was that a colony would take its founding population from one region of the federation, chosen by the Office and confirmed by the Chamber. The colonists would share a language, a diet, a calendar and a set of grandparents. The rule was the Manifest Pledge's, and the Office made it concrete.
For each world the Office designated a region, published a quota and opened a register in that region's cities. Applicants were chosen by lottery, weighted for age, skills and family groups. The Office refused, on the rule, to fill a shortfall from anywhere else. The rule was resented in every region that was not chosen and in every one that was, and it worked. Four core worlds were founded by 2317, and none of them lost its first winter.
Powers
- Survey and claim. The Office claimed every system Exploration Command surveyed, as fast as the couriers brought the reports. The four Voyager-class ships surveyed 800 stars by 2317 and the Office claimed 60 systems.
- Settlement. The Office designated founding regions, ran the registers and built the colonies, using the Recalada-class colony ships of 100,000 colonists each.
- The courier network. By 2317 the Office's courier network ran through 40 stations at the Pillai radius of 40 systems and carried 2,000 messages a year.
- Ancient sites. The Ancient Sites Act of 11 June 2308 gave the Office custody of every non-human artefact found beyond the Sun, and forbade their sale or removal.
- The Binami Order. The Binami Order of 9 September 2315 barred any vessel from approaching within a light minute of the Inari's world without the Office's leave.
- Concessions. The Act's ninth section let the companies bid for resource concessions in any system the Office had surveyed and not settled.
History
The core worlds, 2302 to 2317
The Office founded four core worlds in twelve years, each from one region. Landfall, on Procyon's tepui moon, was founded on 18 June 2305 from Guangdong. Circumstance, at Alpha Centauri, followed on 17 December 2305 from the Federation's Atlantic members. Dauntless, at Yildun, was founded on 3 November 2314 from the Orinoco and Magdalena basins, and Serenity, at Sirius, on 1 July 2317 from Marineris. The four cost the Fund 3.2 trillion credits and 820 colonists dead in their first winters. They took 400,000 people from four regions whose registers had held 30 million applicants.
Mardak Vol, 2309 to 2323
The Gagarin's report of the garden world at Daranma reached Sol on 8 February 2309, and the Office's register for Daranma, which it had not yet opened, received 40 million applications in its first month. The Office claimed Daranma in 2313. In 2318 it designated the founding region in the era's most argued choice, the Central African Confederation, whose President had asked the Chamber whether the garden was for everyone or for the members that had ships. The UNS Legacy landed 100,000 colonists from Lagos, Kinshasa and Kigali at the Harbour on 4 January 2323.
The war and the Second Wave, 2328 to 2348
The Emergency Naval Act of 2328 took the colony money for the fleet, and the Office's registers waited for ten years. Between the fall of the Krakre in 2338 and the Fund's expiry on 12 October 2342 the Office founded eleven worlds, using colony ships the yards had built between battleships. Its director through the wave was Anand Moorthi, the son of the explorer Pranav Moorthi. He ran it on one principle the war had taught: a world one jump from a fleet base could be founded in a year, and a world three jumps from one could not. The wave's worlds clustered on the Grand Armada's courier lines, at Epsilon Eridani, Brink, Derellis and Alpha Centauri. None of them was a garden.
The Third Wave and the end, 2351 to 2365
The Chartered Worlds Act of 2351 allowed a company, a member state or a consortium that surveyed and settled a world to hold its charter for ninety-nine years and settle it with contract labour from anywhere in the Republic. The Office became the registrar of charters. The founding-region rule applied to a chartered world only if its charter holder chose it, and none did. The Office's remnant opposed the Act with the Sectorites, arguing that a world settled by contract labour under a company was a world without a people. The Third Wave founded twenty-nine chartered worlds in fourteen years, more than the Office had founded in fifty.
On 1 January 2365, at the Third Wave's end, the Republic folded the Office into the Ministry of Worlds, the successor of the Ministry of Member Affairs. The Ministry kept the Office's charters, its register of ancient sites and its leave under the Binami Order, and a staff of about 300 under the name of the Settlement Division. The Office's remnant was among the Wardens who opposed the Inari Ascension Movement from the 2350s. Its custody of the ancient sites passed in practice to the Institute of Xenology, and the Binami Order was kept by the Institute's Binami section until 2450.
Legacy
The Office's era ended with the Third Wave. Beyond the Sun in 2365 there were 2 billion people on the sixteen worlds the Office had founded and 12 million on twenty-nine chartered worlds. Every world the Office founded still carries the language, food and calendar of its founding region.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.1 "The Pillai Hyperdrive and the Manifest Pledge"
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 to §7.5
- Solar Eternal, Part X, §10.2 "The Second Wave of Colonisation", §10.4 "The Third Wave of Colonisation" and §10.7 "The Inari Ascension Movement"