An Oral History of the Pandoran Conflict: C2

FOX. PROVINCE OF KANIEN.

[During the war the city of Fox, formerly known as Firebase Foxtrot, was one of the largest forts garrisoned by Guardia Paramilitaries. At its height, the base was home to a whole regiment of armed forces, as well as a few thousand civilian contractors, miners, loggers, and other support staff. Today, it is the second biggest city on the continent, nestled close to the Fox River among the forests and trades constantly with the nearby Irwahken tribes and villages. I meet Roland Jefferies in his office. Formerly an administrator, Roland was one of the 'old breed': one of the human settlers who were previously members of the original Hells Gate colony. When asked why he decided to return given the chance, he replies, 'Fresh air doesn't come cheap back on Earth.']

In order to understand why exactly humanity came to Pandora in the first place, you really need to understand the situation back home on Earth.

[Jefferies fiddles with his desktop console for a moment. Shortly afterwards, a holo of planet Earth appears in front of us.]

Earth, population: nine billion, is on its last legs. Increasingly heavily urbanized, our dear old Earth is starting to run out the natural resources needed to sustain its population. Fossil fuels are beginning to run dry, space is at a premium, standards of living have, if anything, fallen and the gap between the rich and poor is now wider than ever. The situation was pretty grim for the planet. It wasn't that we needed raw materials; we could get that easily from mining asteroids and moons. People needed to find new sources of fuel and energy in order to keep the great cities from plunging into anarchy. So the various corporations and governments began to look to the stars for the answers. I'm not going to bore you too heavily with the details and scientific technobabble, but once we found a feasible means of reaching other solar systems there was just enough political and financial willpower to send a ship to Alpha Centauri.

And to Pandora.

[Nods] Indeed. You can read up the early histories of those brave pioneering scientists and their adventures with the natives on Pandora in any library today. Such tales… Stuff of legend my friend. If only our next visits were as beneficial to all…

[He sighs.]

Regardless, those pioneers eventually made it back home, many of them in body bags unfortunately. The tales they shared with the rest of us enraptured nations across the globe. But the people funding the expedition weren't interested in adventure. No, they cared only about one discovery in particular.

[He begins to rifle through his desk]

They only cared… about this.

[He comes up holding a small rock in his hands. It has a light metallic sheen to it. He lets go of it for a moment and it does not immediately drop straight down. He holds it in his fingers again.]

Unobtainium.

[He scowls] How green are you? Nobody ever calls it that anymore. I've heard words like Pandoran Gold, or Magnium, or Floating Rock being used or whatever, but nobody uses Unobtainium anymore. Most of the people I've met call it Pandorum. And why the hell not? It's easier to say and it's not as ridiculous sounding as 'Unobtainium'. I know whoever was naming it was referring to that old mining engineer term for a material that cannot be found anywhere naturally, but come on!

Anyways, this little rock, found in great quantities across Pandora is basically the Holy Grail for every engineer and corporation back on Earth. I'm not a big science guy or anything, but to the uninitiated, here's the gist of it.

Pandorum is what we call a natural super-conductor. Most metals, like copper or aluminium can conduct electricity, but they are limited by resistance. This means that the electrical energy is lost as heat that dissipates from the wire. It's basic high school science. What's unique about Pandorum is that it conducts electricity with absolutely no resistance at all. It can carry a charge across great distances without it being lost over time. This also gives it its unique magnetic properties. Notice how it floats? It has such a strong magnetic field it is actually repelled from the very ground. This allows for the incredible natural phenomena that we all know and love about Pandora, like the Hallelujah Mountains and stuff.

More importantly to us humans, this makes Pandorum absolutely perfect for creating some of the most advanced technologies available to man. Matter-antimatter generators. Interstellar travel. Superluminal communications, Maglev trains, all of these technologies are now possible thanks to Pandorum. By practically becoming the answer to all of the most critical technological inventions required for the continued maintenance and construction of Earth's cities this little rock that I'm holding in my hands became pretty much the most valuable natural resource in the history of man, not to mention becoming the new backbone of the Earth economy. You wouldn't believe the market prices a kilo of this used to fetch. Especially later in the war, when the material become even more scarce on Earth.

[He puts the rock back into his desk.]

As soon as the corporations realised that they had found the answer to all of their problems, they practically trampled over each other in order to mount an expedition to Pandora. But only one managed to secure a monopoly to the planet.

The Resources Development Administration.

Or RDA for short. Although they weren't that big at the time, Pandora has made them the biggest Mega-corp in the world. They're the ones who created the big maglev transit system back on Earth, allowing for journeys of thousands of kilometres just to go to work. Now after taking the huge risk of bank-rolling the expeditions to Pandora, they now own every bit of Pandorum, they have pharmaceutical and scientific divisions bolstered by the stuff they bring in from Pandora and they commanded whole PMCs to their name. Not bad for something that started up from a bunch of Silicon Valley eggheads working out of a garage back in the 2000's.

Anyway, they were the lucky ones who got to set up their own little mining operation here on Pandora. It was a most costly enterprise, in terms of blood and treasure, and when I mean blood, I mean it. A lot of people died trying to set up the first colony at Hell's Gate. Lot of lessons were learned the hard way in those days. Anyways we finally managed to start digging out the good stuff and ship it all back to Earth. Big endeavour… but lots of money. Those were big boom times for the company. Profits were rising. Costs and casualty figures were dropping. There was only one problem remaining. And it didn't take kindly to machines digging up land.

When our operation went into full swing, we rarely gave the natives much in the way of thought. We figured that if we tried to stay the hell out of each other's way, there wouldn't be any problems. Of course, there was always going to be friction. Every now and then a convoy, or a mining truck would get hammered by arrows, maybe a recon team of grunts would shoot at some hunter who they thought was stalking them, but as far as the company was concerned, they were just another occupational hazard. Like man-eating flora and fauna, or radiation.

Then things started to get nasty. Our original mine was started to run low on ore, so we started to look for new sources. Turns out, it happened to sit right underneath the Hometree of native tribe; the Omaticaya. The guys at the top didn't care. We wanted that source. And we were damned if a bunch of treehuggers were going to keep us from it.

Couldn't you have looked for a different source?

It was the biggest source in the region. We certainly wouldn't spend another dozen billion dollars or so to pay for extra shipping costs to another dig site, or to fund another base like Hells Gate. Our bosses figured they could barter with them… trade goods or services for the land. But it wasn't happening. Say what you will about Sully, but he was right about one thing: we had nothing to offer for them. They were prosperous enough to not need any food. They didn't need to replace their horses or banshees with trucks or choppers. They didn't suffer from any Earth diseases, so there was no need for medicine. And finally, they were already at peace with the other tribes, so we couldn't offer them guns for their land. We didn't have anything worthwhile to bring to the table. More importantly even if we did, they certainly didn't trust us enough to make such a deal. Between the skirmishes we had, and the horrible debacle at that school, trust was at an all-time low. So when push came to shove…

[Silence.]

About the Hometree… people are right. There was no excuse for the attack. Oh I know Selfridge and all the other big executives back on Earth trumpet their reasons. "We had no choice!", "It was a pre-emptive strike, which would have saved hundreds of human lives!" or "It was retaliation for years of harassment from tribal brigands!" Whatever… it's all bullshit. Sure we asked nicely first, but that's little consolation for the fact we went and bulldozered a tribe off their land and killed scores of them just so we could get at the rocks that they were living on top of. There were no treaties. No demands. No provocation. We really had no right to do what we did.

I was working at central ops when the whole mess was going on. I could see the whole thing play out on the central holo-table, even real-time footage of the whole tree coming down. Most of the people there with me viewed the whole thing with some kind of forced detachment. Kinda creepy really. Me, I just felt dread. Not for the tribesmen running away, but because it set a new precedent you know? Like what's not to stop us from doing the same thing again to another tribe that got in the way? Hell, we probably could've kept doing it indefinitely if someone didn't intervene.

Jake Sully.

The Legend himself. He was the one who…

[Pauses.]

Ah what the hell… we've all heard this story a million times now. Awesome white dude from planet Earth decides to join forces with the na'vi, gets in touch with his inner native, defeats the evil corporation in the big epic fight and lives happily ever after with his new hot wife. You know how it goes. [Grumbles to himself.]

Well… you sound…

[Cocks his eye right at me.] You're talking to one of the losers of that fight. I've got too much pride in me to heap praises on him. Even after all this time. [Sighs.] Shows what you get when you hire army screw-ups like Quaritch to run your show.

Anyway, the impossible happened, and our asses got kicked right back to Earth. The whole mining program was stopped right in its tracks. Every ship still in space headed home. And when the news of our loss reached Earth… Well…that was the moment when everyone collectively lost their shit.

Like I said earlier, Pandorum was the new lifeblood of the Earth economy, the new oil, or coal or whatever. So when news reached home that there wouldn't be any more of the stuff powering our or whatever, people panicked. The price shot through the roof. It was such shock that the panic created a damn economic recession right then and there. Jobs were cut, food lines went around the corner. By the time I had finally arrived back home, there were riots in the streets. and even though supply of the stuff had vanished into smoke, demand for Pandorum was still high as ever and rising. Earth NEEDED Pandorum.

There wasn't much rest for us when we got back. Right after we got back, the RDA spent the next ten years or so preparing the groundwork for another excursion. Except this time, it wasn't to start up one little base in the middle of nowhere. This was a full-blown invasion. Something that would keep us on Pandora for as long as we wanted. The question was now no longer how or should, but when.