Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[MysticWind]

Chassis: Truck

Well, sunspot, I got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is a major fungal bloom took out 300 clicks of the road between here and there. The good news is the Crawler Don't Stop. We're going over the red stuff. The worms, well, they will not like that one bit, so the kids stay in the panic box, and everyone else carries a flame gun. You fought worms before? Good, good. And it don't look like you got your eyes chewed out, neither. Ok, sunspot, grab a flamer and a bench. And, whatever happens, whatever the worms make you see, you do not get off the Crawler while we're crossing the red. Cause, like I told you, sunspot, the Crawler Don't Stop.

The truck was a workhorse that spanned the stars, forming a major component of the Unity motor pool. Ranging from electric ultralights, to gasoline-powered pickups and utes, to diesel tractor units with semi-trailers, trucks were used primarily for supply transport. On Planet as on Earth, trucks brought unrefined mineral ore from mines to smelters, harvested crops from farming settlements to residential cores, factory-built waste fission batteries and fuel cells to newly-founded bases, and perhaps most crucially, water from treatment plants to any and all colonists. Beyond necessities, trucks brought salvage from Unity wreck sites to reclamation crews, battlefield rubble to the recycling tanks, and commodities- the lifeblood of trade pacts- between factions.

Modified for the alien high-grav terrain but not always for the atmosphere, many of these vehicles proved to be reliable, if dangerous, mainstays of the colonization effort. Just as most pilots of speeders or Terraformer Transports always carried a breather mask, or wore full-on envirosuits at all times, Chironian truckers were prepared to deal with cab breach. Especially since many of their rides were simply Earth originals hastily-converted for interplanetary travel. Yet the factions used them just the same. While far smaller than prime movers, pickers, formers, rigs, and their own successor, the supply crawler, trucks proved to be more versatile, cost-effective, and abundant.

The original Leyland-Toyota Kingsman, popularly known as the Unity Lorry, became the standard cargo truck of Planet

A panoply of vehicle manufacturers supplied trucks for the mission, but none as many as automobile giant Leyland-Toyota. Along with Chiron-compatible Startrain tractor-trailers, compact Hilux pickups, and miniature kei trucks, the Anglo-Japanese manufacturer built the Kingsman, a semiautomated extraterrestrial environment heavy hauler with a capacity of nearly 50 metric tons. Like Unity Rovers, it was equipped with a radiothermal generator- supposedly much cleaner than the microreactors of the Soviet-produced junked armored cars- and all-wheel drive. The service console contained an Oya-class (親) autodriver that could navigate around obstacles and over difficult terrain, rated for traveling thousands of kilometers without operator input. Indeed, many behind the wheel of a Kingsman were more overseers than drivers. For its durability and quality engineering, not to mention its ubiquity, the truck was widely referred to as the Unity Lorry.

As provider of mechanical expertise and a wide range of trucks, up-armored buses, agricultural machinery, Rovers, Land Cruisers, robotic laborers, vans, and even atmospheric processors, Leyland-Toyota was one of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri’s twelve Prime Contractors. However, neither Leyland, Lancashire nor Toyota, Aichi deigned to purchase a billet, and so there were few loyalist employees on Chiron to refound the company. As with many major brands, multiple succession claims arose, usually arguing on behalf of an ex-executive or another as the legitimate commanding officer. The leading pretender was once director of operations at Ashok Leyland who rebuilt the South Asian division in the aftermath of the Six-Minute War, chosen as figurehead for a NoxCo rights resurrection project (a practice often derided as “patent necromancy”). A rival company-in-exile was based in the Chiron Cartel, a group of high-ranking engineers who had defected to, and then travelled to Alpha Centauri as employees of, Foden Trucks. But due to the proliferation of Leyland-Toyota machines, factions built custom copycats, from the Emporium’s militarized Laager variants courtesy of Imperial Logistics and Materiel to the Data Angels’ open source Toyland versions by the Download A Car campaign. As L-T designs became universally adopted, ownership claims were rendered moot.

Convoy of Unity Lorries in twin tail formation shuttling goods and supplies over the Sunny Mesa

During the early colonial period, the relative speed of the cargo truck made it the preferred motor transportation for bulk delivery, alongside atomic locomotive-powered speedtrains and rail-converted rovers. Even later trucks were fielded as they were nimbler and smarter than their low-track crawler descendents. Not until the vast mag tube Planetary Transit System did their use decline. Autodriver semiautonomy, increased later to virtually full independence with Robot Cluster Control facilities, enabled massed caravans with minimal personnel. As trade routes formalized, onsite human presence could be reduced to a single crew at the head of a convoy, even three- driver, co-driver riding shotgun, and backup gunner. As valuable as their payloads were, the drive to ship more goods to more destinations in less time outweighed security considerations. Speeder escorts could be better deployed elsewhere. “Convoyers” who rode lead lorry faced a lonesome time in the empty wilderness.

A convoy captain calls Warm Welcome Traffic Control over Centauri CB. Unlike commlinks, truck radio frequencies actually increased range during higher sunspot activity

Convoyers fit uneasily into base life. Many possessed a pronounced yearning for lost Earth- some even shaky psych profiles with uncertain prognoses- and so were assigned to the solitude of truck convoying. Ironically, extended time in the lonely wild was usually salutary, leaving drivers softly melancholy yet with a certain zest for life. Psych chaplains suggested that fresh air- so to speak- away from cramped and claustrophobic colonies was the secret to improved mood, prosocial behavior. Many convoyers became devotees to the lifestyle, opting to take off on unscheduled jaunts between shipments, weaving between fungal patch and tower. Some who finished their contracts or tours went as far as to purchase their own lorries, becoming independent truckers repairing sensor installations, inspecting weather stations, assisting scientific surveys, making small time courier runs. These nomads were nicknamed “road smacers,” romanticized by basers as enviably loose and free, reminiscent of the cowboys of the American Wild West. They were said to live by the rules of the road, forging allegiances that went beyond factions.

For all of the supposed kinship among convoyers (also likened to the Pony Express) their livelihood had all the struggle, danger, violence for the frontier, but little of the camaraderie- at least not between trucks. While there did exist a rudimentary code of honor among convoy life, it was often a luxury in the face of attacks by smacer bandits, Irredeemable Holnists, Darwin Raiders, even lunatic Muckers. A particularly nasty tactic by the more duplicitous factions was to feign distress over the radio, luring overly magnanimous and credulous crews into traps off the road. Many convoy captains refused to heed pleas for help. And even when meeting a fellow convoyer from the same faction under true colors, there was no telling if its drivers might not have gone wormmad.

Notes

Opening quote is from this /tg/ post. Fun idea from that thread: “A civilization of truckers, for example - forever on the road, driving enormous landships that might as well be mobile cities, transporting goods in raw materials in mass quantity, using their vessels' enormous bulk to breach even the thickest fungus.”

Leyland-Toyota was the original name for the Company from Alien, as proposed by concept artist and designer Ron Cobb, who wanted to “imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers”- but obviously the movie could not use British Leyland and Toyota’s actual monikers. For an extensive origin story of W-Y, see this history on Alien Explorations. For an attempt to come up with how an actual L-T could have arisen, perhaps by preventing the earlier merger that formed BLMC, check out this thread on the Alternate History forums, namely post #7. To prevent having too many preexisting megacorps running around Planet, I made it so Leyland-Toyota only supplies the mission, and not outright joins it.

(‘)Formers are formally called Terraformer Transports in the GURPS Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri sourcebook, pg. 112.

According to the SMAC Flavor.txt, the Supply Transport module has a capacity of 2575 mt (metric tons?), which is a hundred times that of a modern day semi-truck’s load.

Unity Rover details also from GURPS, pg. 110.

Oya is a Japanese way of speaking of one’s parents, and a nod to MU/TH/UR 6000 from Alien and FAR/TH/UR 2600 from Alien Resurrection.

Warm Welcome is located in a polar region, not unlike Antarctica Traffic Control from Alien.

High frequency band radio communications, including CB and ham radio, are indeed enhanced by greater solar activity.

The idea of wandering drivers on an alien planet is actually inspired by the Rovers subculture from the Outpost Mars RPG setting by Paul Elliott.

Image Credits

Mercedes-Benz Unimog is Red Mars conceptual art by William Bennett- his work has to be seen to be believed

Space truck is from the Outpost instruction manual, page 48

Space trucks is from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny as a unit type. Here is a short story about one.

Space trucker is Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas from Alien

Previous posts

Prime movers

Chassis: Crawlers

Pickers

Soviet fission-powered armored cars

Trains