The Martial Unity

Indeed, Rui found himself agreeing with the essence of what she espoused. It was one of the reasons that he was so bullish on space expansion at such an exaggeratedly high pace.

They had the population. They had the human resources. There existed the material resources within their reach.

Then why couldn’t they use them to conquer the world at a high pace? Well, converting those raw material resources into warships and spaceships was very difficult. They had limited ship-building capacity aboard the Panamic Space Organization. They could build a certain number of ships every year, and even if they expanded that capacity every year, it would be extremely difficult.

That was a major bottleneck.

On top of that, conquering and colonizing stars required three things nominally:

Security.

Settlement.

Extraction.

Each of these required its own infrastructure built in those star systems, which also required time. The omni-ships, for instance, were built with minor spacecraft building capacities. Building a shipyard would take a long time, and it wasn’t something that could be done in a short amount of time. Thus, the conversion of raw resources into the infrastructure needed for traveling to, conquering, and colonizing planets was the ultimate bottleneck. Unless this hurdle could be overcome, conquering ten thousand stars would require a century.

“It all comes down to interests and incentives, Your Majesty,” she spoke with a sagely tone of voice. “Ultimately, everybody is driven by interests and incentives. Even a Martial Transcendent like yourself is driven by incentives and interests despite having reached a veritable height in Martial power yourself. Not even you are free from this rule.”

She raised a finger. “There is a tremendous amount of capital and money in this world. There is a tremendous amount of production capacity in the world. If even half of this was diverted towards the creation of warships, spaceships, and the innovation of technologies to help overcome the shortage of production capacity.”

Rui’s ethereal eyes lit up with a hint of enthusiasm. Indeed, he had to admit that her words made sense. If he could somehow magically dedicate half of all capital, production, and manufacturing capacity to creating infrastructure for space travel, then they could multiply their production rate of spaceships astronomically.

But of course, he couldn’t force half of all people in the world to spend all that money and capital towards the cause of interstellar expansion. He had the power to force them and get away with it if he really wanted to, but that would be disastrous, and it would ruin everything he had built.

After all, he had expressly become Emperor without wanting to become a tyrannical dictator, and he had liberalized the Panama Continent for normal people, even if he had clamped down on the Martial World.

“You don’t need to force anybody, Your Majesty,” the Shepherd continued knowingly, almost reading his mind. “As I said, interests and incentives. There is a very easy way to incentivize people who possess the ability to astronomically improve our production rate and expansion rate.”

Rui directed a knowing gaze at her. “…Allowing them to own the fruits of their investments and efforts, I assume?”

She nodded with a smile. “Correct. If you allow individuals to own real estate in space, to own mining fields in other worlds, if you allow people to own entire worlds for their own rule, own entire stars for their control to harness energy from and sell in the free market!”

Her words made everybody in the room feel queasy. None of them liked the idea of private individuals gaining that much power and authority in the cosmos. Everybody in the room knew exactly what kind of people would rush to get their hands on these opportunities. They were greedy assholes who didn’t care about anything except for money and power.

Or, they were conquerors with a pent-up lust for conquest.

Rui also understood this, clearly. His expression was one of conflicted considerations.

Essentially, they were selling power, wealth, and control over ten thousand star systems in the future in exchange for an accelerated rate of expansion through the cosmos.

The question was whether it was worth it.

“If we give them these territories, won’t we be ceding all control and rights to them?” Rui raised an eyebrow. “What if they declare a cessation from the Gaian Alliance and more Gaian Civilization as a whole?”

That was indeed the worry. If the Gaian Alliance chose a slow nationalized expansion where the state did all the work, then they would be able to maintain absolute control over space.

However, if they chose to privatize space conquest, then you would end up with conqueror-tycoons who would possess their own armies, their own land, and their own authority over conquered territories.

What was to stop them from seceding from Gaian Civilization?

She smiled at him with sincere respect. “You, Your Majesty.”

Her tone grew more confident.

“You, alone, are enough to deter any thoughts of treachery.”

Rui’s ethereal eyes sharpened as he pondered her words. Indeed, he understood what she meant.

Rui was, in many ways, the absolute hegemon of Gaian Civilization; he just didn’t exercise his power over Gaian civilization in that manner. But he was a Martial Transcendent; he was the Emperor of Kandria. He was the Supreme Commander of Panama.

And he controlled the negatron reserves of Gaia.

That meant that his leverage over human civilization was tremendous. If he truly wanted to enforce something, not a single person could defy him. However, that was precisely why he was so careful about applying this leverage. He hadn’t really done any hard policies beyond the Void Order regime, and even that offered nations an opt-out option.

“Even if private conquerors and investors own private property in the cosmos, it doesn’t necessarily have to be absolute,” she remarked. “Let me remind you that even in Gaia, buying private property does not give people an absolutist claim to a piece of land. If I fail to pay back a loan, that land can be seized as compensation. If I commit crimes within that piece of land, it could even be seized from me depending on the situation. If I find certain resources in that land, I’m not entitled to own them. The state is. Thus, private ownership of land is not necessarily absolute, and the same will be true for ownership of land in outer space under the system that I have in mind.”