The affairs of Cape Colony were just that, the affairs of Cape Colony. Her Majesty the Queen and that is to say the British Empire in General was quick to forget the might Cape which in ages past had filled the coffers of the Empire almost as much as the Indian Subcontinent. Now in the age of Machines and Space Flight, the Cape was to fulfill another of the Empire’s needs, the need for expansion.
The Lord Governor Arthur Sebastian Gram was a very particular man, a creature of habit if you will. He spent every second of every god given day in much the same way. The real politics of his position was quite lost on him, an Ambitious Aristocrat’s third son. The intricacies of dealing with the vast native tribes that were only just recently pacified (again) was beyond his most clumsy mind. The sheer will power it would take to bend the knees of the Boers to the Queen were far beyond him in both mind and body and the simple determination that was required of him by Her Majesty’s Government was simple not within him.
Thankfully, it was within Sir General Samson Stephen Lewis. Lewis was a little known man, a son of a wealthy Jewish Banker, Samson was an oddity. A Jewish soldier who did his job remarkably well was quite an anomaly in the British Army. His handsome square features and attention to detail themselves were quite un-Jewish. His hatred of self indulgence or shows of wealth doomed him to be alienated from his Father’s Family. He was in reality not a Jew, born to a Mother who had been taken by raiding Boers, he was a fine mixture of British and Boer with a Jewish adoptive father.
He spoke English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Swahili, German, French and even a bit of Spanish. He was a self made military man who at an early age alienated his obviously estranged father. He had as a boy of ten spit upon his “father’s” dream of him becoming a merchant in London proper and instead joined the Regulars just in time for the Second Great War.
He had fought in a South African Regiment as the British Empire made sport of the German War Machine. Personally engaging and killing over four Huns, Samson was earmarked for success when he personally forced an enemy redoubt. Knighted at the age of forty, he had gone on to put down the latest of the Zulu uprisings and fought a descendant of the Mighty Shaka in single combat. He had secured the position of senior Military Commander for the Cape Colony Garrison through a mixture of political finesse, charisma and of course a large amount of readily used capital.
As Senior Military Commander he handled the running of the Colony in almost every instance. Diplomatic functions from the British homeland or the local Savages met with him before the Governor. Industrialists or Merchants spoke to him before the Lord Governor. Plans for improvements or ideas for projects were approved by himself and the Lord Governor. Even the Queen’s occasional correspondence to her various Governors (when taxes were raised or something important took place) was read by first Samson and then Arthur.
There was no questioning who was in charge of the Cape. Which is why the recent activity of the multiple million strong Boer Party led by a Peter Gerben was reviewed by Sir General Samson Lewis. It seems the Boers were once again (not surprisingly) unhappy with Anglo rule. Sentiments had for the last few centuries been much the same as they were back in the early 20th century. The Boers craved the freedom they had had back in the good ole days it seemed.
Left to their own devices, the Boers had multiplied and grown into a multi million strong ethnicity in the Cape. Concentrated in the Eastern regions of what once was the Orange Freestate and the Transvaal, they had always grumbled but never acted. It seemed this Peter Gerben was going to change that. Talks were heard of civilians pooling vast sums of capital, capital that went out to buy Freight Space Craft or in one instance a decommissioned South African Produced Cruiser. Police had of course investigated these instances and when it was determined that the groups of people were average, well to do Boers nothing was thought of it.
With the rise of Peter however and his firebrand Boer Nationalist Preaching it was very clear that something fishy was afoot. Samson quickly ordered the Cape Colony Garrison to come to high alert and kindly suggested (ordered) the local Military Commander, Colonel Locke, to alert his own forces. With the military machine cranking the Police were commissioned to watch these strangely active Boers.
Life continued much the same as it had before in the Cape. People lived and died, Kafirs were subjugated by the Boer imposed laws regarding race. The old campaigners who settled in Africa sipped tea or spirits at the corner pub and spoke of the Empire in “their day”. For a change the national Rugby team even performed well again a strong team from Delhi.
In the shadows though, a group of some five million Boers worked to prepare for a new Trek. The greatest Trek of the Boer people, the Trek that would lead them off of this damned British Earth and into the stars. Secretly, the Gerbens family which had surprisingly large Capital Reserves had payed a team of shady characters to find a virgin system for the Boer Race to inhabit.
The Mercenaries had searched high and low, finally coming to find a system that the Gerbens dubbed, “Afrika.”
The Afrika system was five worlds, three habitable with one gas giant and one ice world. A healthy sun sat in the center, providing warmth to the remarkably African Planets. Surveyor Drones showed footage of vast grasslands with might predators, deep forests with hidden waterfalls, and plentiful minerals and domestic grains. The air was breathable only on the three habitable planets and at that a tad high in Oxygen content, comparable to being atop the Alps.
There were local Humans though it seemed. Great Black men who were armed with spears and knives. Savages who prayed to Pagan gods and danced naked around fires late into the night. Men who had despite the long passage of time refused to move out of the stone age. Men who were ripe for Boer conquest and subjugation.
The hour was growing late for the Treking Boers. Their plans had almost come to completion and all that was still required was a window to launch their impromptu fleet that hung over Sol like ravens over a kill. That opening presented itself on Christmas Eve.
For exactly twenty minutes the Royal Navy ships over South Africa lowered their gaze from the heavens and instead looked to the earth. Mighty sensors were calibrated to stations on the ground and for one brief pause the threat of orbital slaughter was lowered (at least over South Africa). In this twenty minute window, the Treking Boers moved. Hundreds of Civilian craft rose up like a flock of the mightiest birds in existence. Thousands of people left Terra and boarded the prepared Treking Fleet. In all five out of the complete twenty million strong Boer Race fled.
This fleet paused for several days as the Royal Navy watched it with guns locked. Nervous Captains who had heard about the struggles of the Ninth Boer War awaited word from London to end this exodus before it could begin. Surprisingly enough, Sir General Samson, Lord Governor Arthur or even the bloody Queen uttered not a word as the Treking fleet turned and made for the edge of the Sol system.
For in the days since this plan was discovered by the South African Police, Sir General Samson had been scheming. He had been planning a mighty gambit that if successful would see him become more than just the Military Commander of the Cape Colony Garrison but a Planetary Governor or System Viceroy. The British would allow the Boers to land, they would watch as they did the hard work of etching out a Colony for the Crown and then when the moment was right, they would annex the new Boer lands. The Empire would expand and the Boers would do the necessary work, to Samson it was pure genius.
Afrika System
Orange Free Planet
Landing Zone 1
Peter Gerben smiled as his weary feet touched the soil of the new homeland of the Boers for the first time. The sweet, untainted air that blew across the assembled party was like a breath from god urging them to hurry. The thousand people who followed him off of the first landing craft cheered with awe and wonder as they beheld their new home. Grasslands stretched for miles upon miles upon hundreds of miles with mighty mountains that dwarfed even the mighty Himalayas some thousand miles distant and yet visible. Game was in abundance and already eager men had produced their Linear Muskets and shot five or so four legged herbivore creatures.
After a dozen such lander trips, ten thousand Boers had assembled at what was agreed to be the City Center of the new Capital of the Orange Free Planet. Three and a half million Boers were offloaded by weeks end, with the other three and a half million going to the second habitable world which was the New Transvaal Republic. In both locations Boers set about building homesteads with the help of Servitors and Machines acquired via trading with some Kafir Xenos on Pluto.
Wooden houses and walls were erected and within a month primitive civilization was born. The local humans, simply known as Kafirs quickly learned to fear the White Men who carried long spears with no blades. Scores of small skirmishes (one sided massacres) paid for the Boer lands with Blood and already the locals were starting to submit.
There were however mightier Kafirs within the New Transvaal Republic. Termed Novo Zulus these mighty warriors would have done Shaka proud any day. Burning the Boer villages that grew up as fast as they were destroyed, the Novos were only silenced when the Boer colonists payed them a tribute of twenty Boer girls. Their sacrifice was not in vain and soon the Novo Zulu were being shut out by might walls, prefabricated on the Orange Free Planet. The Boers had arrived to colonize two of the worlds, while hungry eyes gazed upon the third.
Declared a “Reserve” planet, the world that had yet to feel the Boer’s step was easily the largest of the three. One mighty continent sat in the middle of a crystal blue ocean and upon it ran the most fearsome of the local Xenos. Orks. These Orks were massive, the kind which only grew upon worlds long forgotten by the Waaagh of some Warboss or another. The Boers knew that through their use of Linear Muskets and their natural superiority as White Men, they would be victorious against these Green Kafirs who dared populate Afrika. Yet for now they would be content with watching.
Sol System
Terra
Pretoria, Cape Colony
Sir General Samson Stephen Lewis paced to and fro in his oak paneled study with his pipe held firmly in his mouth by a white knuckled hand. The time to propose his expedition to the Lord Governor was very clear and despite the incompetence of said Lord Governor he was still nervous. A simple no would ruin years of planning, years of whispers to the Boer community. It would ruin his bid for power pure and simple.
The time quickly approached and even as he entered the Lord Governor’s Office in Pretoria he felt the leaden weight of failure pressing home. Quickly he explained that five million British Subjects had just risen up and left the Empire a month ago, he explained that it was in the best interest of the Empire on a whole to follow them, he explained that the Lord Governor should stop being a twit and see that they both stood to make lots of money from a colonization expedition.
Quickly the local Military and Naval assets were raised and given orders to prepare, the need of the logistical beast to function however meant that it would leave well into the summer, around July. So be it, the British had their expedition and for the moment the Boers had their land, and soon enough the Orks would have their Waagh.
