Recovering from the Long Night

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

You are assuming the jump-ships get put in mothballs in the first place. That's not necessarily true.

IIRC Asimov (or perhaps Niven) had a short story on these lines.

1.) I'd suspect that over the centuries of life of the Ramshackle Empire a fair number of old vessels were mothballed as system or Imperial navies bought new replacements. Why does the USAF maintain a boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona? Every so often a useful part or even aircraft is recovered.

Here's how you do it -- encase the entire ship in what is essentially a high-tech plastic wrap to protect it from micrometeors and direct heat from the local system's star. (Or, just park it far enough out in space so that the sun's radiant heat is so low it doesn't matter.) I'd assume that the material for gaskets & electronic insulation is sufficiently durable that it can endure long stretches with no heat or moisture or air.

Finally, fill the ship with an inert gas (I'd guess that nitrogen is sufficiently non-reactive that it would qualify & be cheap). If you want to be really careful put in a long-term low-rate-of-decay power source to maintain heat at an adequate level (perhaps over 100 below Celsius) to maintain the various bits of the ship.

Then leave for a few hundred years.

You'd have to recondition the thing anyway but vacuum should be far less damaging than Davis-Monthan's sun and even very limited humidity.

2.) A planet with 10,000 souls is not too likely to have the credits to have an SDB or even an orbital station. I'd suggest the following for defenses.

a.) Have a long distance PESA or even thermograph. Remember that most raiders are converted merchant ships, not military, so would not have much in the way of stealth. Inquire of any entrants into the system as to who they are and what they want and if the answers are at all wonky go to Def Con 2 (ready for all but N-war.) In fact, if you don't know the ship it's not a bad idea to do so.

You'd have to have one passive sensor on each side of the planet -- should be enough unless you have Han Solo run straight down the planet's axis.

Yes, I know that the atmosphere would degrade the sensor -- but you should still have enough warning. (Any ship attempting to land and grab swag & slaves will still have to de-accelerate. You could launch bombs or bioweapons without such de-acceleration but that's not the point of piracy, is it?)

b.) Your active defense would be relic missiles (all you need is to boost into orbit) and lasers, the latter most likely mobile. Use short-range passive sensors, ladar, and a fiber-optic data transfer system so that the laser vehicles can move from point to point and still use the planetary sensors for targeting. All you need is to put some hurt on the ship(s) in orbit so that they get the idea that this is not a soft target and would benefit from raiding someone else. If they do try to land they're a more vulnerable target.

Of course, they can come in low over the horizon. But with mobile defenses the raiders can't be sure that they won't run right in over a multiple laser battery that would open their ship's boat like a can of beans hit by an axe. You'd need short range passive sensors -- put 'em on a barrage balloon 300 feet up and you've got a horizon of c. 20 miles or more -- plenty for short range targeting.

Sure, the bad guys can shoot down your barrage balloons -- but just have the expensive sensors on a few and have lots of decoys. The destruction of this will take time.

c.) If the bad guys clear your planetary defenses they shouldn't find much. Have the local militia with maybe a couple of fighters ready to hit the raiders on the ground. Have a system of underground shelters with hidden entrances/exits so the local population can hide with their valuables. Include periodical "space raid drills" so people can absquatulate quickly. The raiders can collect cattle & waterfowl but I doubt they'd see that as a major haul.

Basically, you raise the cost of a raid and cut way down on the payoff. Word gets around that it's not a good idea raiding Slogg's World as it just ain't worth it.

[dcarson]

Two of the classics for this are by H. Beam Piper.

Space Viking for the raiding side of it, although they trade when it is either the only way or more profitable. With how that can restart a set of planets that had been cut off.

And Cosmic Computer for the recovering side from a partial or early in a collapse.

Both are public domain and are on Gutenberg, Amazon etc.