Crossing Ginnungagap

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Asgard;

Class M planet, orbiting the G-type star , in the interior of the Yggdrasil Cluster.

First Landing, 2342 O.R.

When colonists had first begun settling Jotunheim, the crew of the starship Sleipnir had assumed a superior position in the hierarchy of command. There was, originally, no objection to this from those who had slept their long sleep while the crew, in turns of duty one year (Old Reckoning) long, had remained awake and performed prodigies of labor to preserve their lives. All were grateful to them, and it seemed right and proper that the crew should take a leading part in the difficult task of forging a civilization on an unknown world.

The Crew insisted on shipboard discipline; and, while there was only one base camp where humans could learn of their new homes intricate wonders and seemingly endless dangers, the colonists were more than willing to comply.

However, as they grew more comfortable with the planet, and their settlements spread further and further afield, there seemed less reason for the Crew, who remained either aboard ship (where they felt most at home), or at the Main Base, to exercise such tight controls. The Crew wished to restrict the expansion of settlements to a radius of a days travel by aircar from the Base. The colonists, however, seeing an entire world stretching out before them, and believing that lots of room makes for good neighbors, were claiming vast tracts of land for their individual farms. They saw no problem with this - after all, there was always more room just over the horizon.

After twenty years had passed, a generation was nearing maturity who had never been aboard the ship, and knew nothing of Earth, aside from tales from their elders. They saw themselves as native Jotuns, and felt that the restrictions on further expansion were designed to keep them within easy reach of the crews controlling technology. They chafed under what they felt was the Crews arrogance, and, unlike their parents, felt little gratitude towards them.

They were not far wrong. The Crew had also birthed a second generation, and these children grew up expecting obedience as their right. Raised in their parents paramilitary traditions, succeeding to positions of command by birth and not ability, they began to crowd the children of the colonists out of their society. The best a colonist's child could look forward to was the inheiritance from his parents, or perhaps, if they were subservient enough, a job at the Main Base that Crewmembers found 'beneath' themselves.

Eventually, this second generation of colonists began disregarding the arbitrary limits on their freedom of movement, and moved into areas proscribed for settlement. At first, this movement was performed in secret, younger sons and daughters leaving their homes in small family groups, to homestead in areas beyond the auspices of the crew at the Main Base. Later, however, after drawing nothing but protests from the crew, these groups began leaving openly, and in larger numbers. The further they settled from the center of control, the less willing they became to heed any protests.

After a period of ten years of increasing dispersal of the younger colonists, and increasing defiance of what the Crew saw as lawful commands, a crisis was reached at a recently-established communal farm more than a thousand miles from the Main Base. A second generation Crewman, flying patrol over a proscribed area, noticed a large structure under construction. Landing his aircar, he demanded an explanation from the inhabitants. These, however, were unwilling to comply with his orders to demolish their half-built homes and return to a controlled area. Tempers flared; it was uncertain, afterward, who threw the first punch, or how the violence escalated so rapidly (the survivors accounts were garbled and contradictory), but the result was the young officer dead, along with four of the illegal settlers, including a child of three.

The Crew immediately declared the entire planet to be under martial law, and ordered all those living outside the limits of lawful settlement to return to areas under their direct control; their orders were enforced by armed patrols. More violent incidents occurred, with both sides suffering further deaths. When the great majority of the original colonists vowed to support the rebels, by armed force of their own, if necessary, the Crew sealed the Main Base, cutting off all technological support to those outside. Their thinking was to strangle the rebellious movement by denying them those necessary, high-tech items they believed that only the bases factories could supply.

Unfortunately, they had miscalculated; many of the colonists were skilled in high-tech trades themselves, and had appropriated equipment from the base over the years (they had, after all, been selected for intelligence, not tractability); enough home workshops had been set up that the colonists were able to supply most of what they needed themselves. This included the advanced weaponry, or innovative versions of it, the Crew had deemed they alone possessed.

An insurrection against the Crew began, quickly growing in strength and spread over the entire area outside the Main Base and its immediate environs. Military expeditions sent out by the Crew soon found themselves in the same situation the British had, facing the Boers, several centuries before; well-trained, superbly equipped, competently led, and completely outmanouvered. Aircars were damaged or destroyed by simple yet effective handheld missles, smaller forces were destroyed or captured, larger ones were led in circles, refused battle and harassed (following the simple dictum, Enemy advances, we retreat; enemy stands, we harass; enemy retreats, we advance).

Following a series of crippling defeats, the Crew found themselves besieged in the Main Base. The rebels, knowing that by cutting off all supply of foodstuffs to the base, they could avoid damaging what was the most advanced manufacturing center on the planet, settled in for a long siege.

Each day for ten days, the rebels attempted to negotiate the surrender of the trapped Crew, but the commanders of the Crew sent no word, neither defiant nor suppliant. On the eleventh day, they received their answer; every shuttle on the base lifted off, as quickly as they could be prepared and launched. Realizing that the Crew was abandoning the planet to return to the ship, the Jotuns made a desperate effort to breach the bases automated defenses and stop the exodus, certain that most if not all of the sophisticated technology the Crew possessed was being taken with them. In this they were correct; but reached the spaceport just as the last shuttle lifted off.

A quick search of the base revealed that the Crew had destroyed what they could not remove. And less than twenty four hours later, the engines of the Sleipnir flared into life, after more than thirty years of quiescence, and she departed orbit, and Jotunheim, forever. She was last seen on a heading that would take her into the center of the Yggdrasil Cluster at high velocities.

The Crew thought thus to take their revenge on those they had begun to see as subjects, a people who owed them service and obedience for their long labors on their behalf. But their actions merely forced the Jotuns to become self-reliant,innovative, and leery of centralized authority.

As for the Crew, they searched among the clustered stars of the interior of Yggdrasil, until, after almost forty years, they found a world circling a friendly yellow star, that seemed to have been made for them.

Although this new world had plant life in abundance, from pseudolichens to redwood-analogues, it had evolved no higher lifeforms more advanced than a large, harmless, winged insectoid. Rich in untapped mineral wealth, in its fertile soil carefully gene-tailored earthlife flourished, and food animals grew fat on it. It seemed a paradise after the chill gloom of Jotunheim, so they named it Asgard. Its gravity was so close to Standard as to make the difference negligible, and the radiation it received from its sun was almost Earth-normal.

It possessed two moons, the larger a carbon-silicon sphere only slightly smaller than Luna, and the other a nickel-iron irregular rock, obviously a captured asteroid. The former they named Valhall, and it became their primary military facility and headquarters; the latter, where their heavy industry was founded, they named Alfheim.

In 2342 they made landfall on the surface, and the foundations of the Asgardian Empire were laid.