Fragments of colonial history

Of the seven colony ships that left Old Earth in 2328, six ships reach Alpha Centauri and begin colonising Alpha Centauri Ac, called "LS1" in NASA parlance and "Earth-2" by the general public.

The planet fall of the lead ship took place on 23.10.2390, the remaining five ships made the planet fall two weeks later, each three days apart.

With the Planet Fall, the so-called "Mars Protocols" were implemented, which were originally developed by NASA for the colonisation of Mars, but were adapted for α Cen Ac. These envisaged that the mother colonies emerging from the colony ships would spread out over the habitable areas of the planet and spread out via daughter colonies and outposts only a few years after establishment, in order to lay the foundations for colonisation by further ships, which were to follow in several waves, each after 20 years.

The news of life on Earth-2 was not new, for probes preceding colonisation had already indicated the existence of higher life. But to the surprise of the colonists, these extraterrestrial aliens included not only animals, but also a humanoid life form not at all dissimilar to prehistoric human ancestors, living in a hunter-gatherer culture. Although the scientists of the colony agreed on the name "Centauro Sapiens", they were usually colloquially referred to as "Centihumans".

After 20 PF (2410 CE) the second colonisation wave had brought new colonists to Earth-2 with two ships, in December 40 PF (2430 CE) the last colonists from Old Earth arrived in a single colony ship.

Due to the changing political situation on Old Earth and the huge cost of the colonisation programme, NASA had shifted its priorities to (Earth)Moon and Mars and suspended further colonisation ships to Alpha Centauri until further notice.

However, since the living conditions on Earth-2 had proven to be almost ideal and the colonies were not dependent on support from Old Earth, the colonists took note of this news with some regret but predominantly indifference.

In the last decades, the exploration of Earth-2 and especially of the "Centihumans" had made amazing progress. Not only had it been discovered that the genes of the alien fauna were not only similar in structure to those known from the animal world of Old Earth, but also that the genome of the Centauro Sapiens was so similar to that of humans that an uplift on the genetic level had already begun in order to obtain useful workers through improved "Centihumans", which were dubbed "Neocents".

In the 113th year after Planet Fall, contact with NASA broke down and communication between Old Earth and Earth-2 ceased altogether. The colonists could not conclusively determine whether the break in contact was due to disturbances in their own telemetry - fluctuations in the energy supply had already been observed time and again since Planet Fall and had intensified for several years - or whether it had to do with the developments on Old Earth - the NASA news had been reporting wars and a crumbling of the New League of Nations for years.

In the first century of colonisation, the original six colonies with their daughter colonies and outposts had slowly but surely evolved into small nations that still celebrated their common ancestry but felt more a sense of belonging to their own colony.

The colonies slowly differed not only in their everyday culture, but also increasingly in their attitudes towards the Centihumans and their genetically modified relatives, the "Neohumans", who were already visually indistinguishable from the colonists. In the past decades, different political-ideological groupings had formed in the colonies, which influenced the fate of the individual colonies in different compositions. For the "traditionalists", the break-off of contact with Old Earth was a catastrophe that led to the splintering into fanatical groups that almost religiously worshipped mementos from Old Earth and the traditions and manners they had brought with them.

In the years after 113 PF, the unity of the colonies crumbled and the importance of Colony One, which by now was almost only called "Central", declined sharply. For the next 30 years, there was a kind of Cold War between the six colonies, with hot periods every now and then.