The Captain mentioned at dinner two days before they arrived at Ascension Island. "In the Old World, Ascension Island was once called St. Helena - and what we now call "Base Island" was once called Ascension".
The early Union knew that word of their midway replenishing base would inevitably leak out and old maps would show precisely where St. Helena was. However, if we called the island Ascension, then any adversaries maps would lead them over 1,000 km away.
We do have a small fortified base on Base Island, with it's own set of Alexanderson repeaters and a platoon of personnel - about all that the water there will support. But there is no harbor there at all. Landing supplies on the open beach there requires co-operative weather.
This was a simple strategic deception that lasted for almost a century. The permanent residents of Ascension Island still call themselves "Saints", the last residue of their historic name.
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The convoy sited the island by the rising sun and sailed towards the southern coast. One by one, each ship went into Jamestown Bay to a quay, until all six quays were full. The first group disembarked all the passengers and most of their crew. They then pulled out and anchored in the road off the coast, while the second group of ships, with the cargo to be offloaded, pulled in.
The President's Ship pulled into the quay directly underneath Jacob's Ladder. Once 699 steps, a rising sea level shortened the climb to 389 steps while turning the former capital into the best bay on the island.
Kristiana meet the welcoming group of local dignitaries, but declined to take the waiting train (carved in a tunnel with a curving spur to each quay). Instead she took Jacob's Ladder to the top of the mountain, Even 389 steps were still an exhausting climb up as Kristina soon found out. She blamed the weeks on board a cramped ship.
On the way up, as she paused to catch her breath, she saw the one of the two disassembled 88's that they had brought being unloaded. Two more cannons added to the stockpile already in place. One was a rail mounted gun - the other one towed by a tractor or a mule team. Both could move to whichever coast a fleet threatened.
Most of Africa was also Islamic and they had reports that Europe and Africa were growing closer with more trade and more embassies. Benin and that other nation had united by marriage and could become a major African power with a few conquests. As the Union's technology improved so did that of Islam. And then there were the Brazelian and Argent states to worry about.
Without Ascension Island (both of them. she chuckled to herself), radio communication would be spotty and trade would be more difficult. And if they should be turned into pirate bases - that would be a problem !
Yes, it is best to keep these islands in our hands.
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The six day lay-over allowed the small longshore crew on Ascension to refuel the bio-diesel & methanol, offload the cargo for Ascension Island, load water and fresh food (so many tropical fruits she had never tasted before !) for the Grand Convoy. She toured all over this hot little island, spoke at local schools and citizen meetings. She threw the switch "starting" the experimental solar photovoltaic panels they brought with them. The politician in her soul reveled at all of this !
The Saints, as the people called themselves, were different, but still the same - and they were her people. They spoke an odd form of Danish, much more than an Antarctic accent. Quite friendly and just a bit too enthusiastic.
A couple of hundred to a thousand or so Union troops, more and less, had been stationed on Ascension for almost three centuries. They kept busy building things. Fortifications and gun emplacements, railroads and tunnels, buildings and reclaiming wastelands devastated by goats eight centuries before. They even finished the useless air strip that the long gone British had started almost four centuries before - and then placed large rocks all over it. Just in case the Union ever revived long distance aircraft - and it kept the men and women stationed there busy. Everywhere she turned, there was yet another man-made construction.
At first she thought the elaborate carvings in her quarters were special - but she soon found comparable furniture and doors throughout out the island. Imported from Antarctica, this is what many Southerners did during the long winter nights.
Wind turbines, pumped storage and several tinnes of silver zinc batteries supplied the modest energy needs of the island. The all important radio transmission, fans, LED lights (another megalumen in their cargo for Ascension), some refrigeration and motors for pumps to move water and the 1.1 meter gauge railroad were the primary needs for power. No heating required - for reasons that were quite self evident.
She took up the offer to go up in the observation ballon, tethered to a mast on Diana's Peak - the tallest point of the island. A mottled camouflage of whitish blue, light sky blue and very light grey, it typically went up at dawn and down at dusk. If a foreign sail was seen, a motor boat went out to warm it. No foreign ships were allowed into Jamestown harbor - or any Antarctic harbor.
This was only her second time up in a balloon, and this was a breath taking, incrediable vista ! The balloon bobbed and dipped in the winds, and soon she began to regret eating breakfast. Her pilot smiled and said "It always takes new recruits a while to get their air legs".
During the Collapse, before a Union convoy stopped and traded supplies with the stranded and struggling natives, Napoleon's house of exile had been allowed to collapse. A replica had been erected on the site, using what materials they could salvage plus new local wood. She looked though the window that the once legendary Napoleon had looked through, at the same garden he had created.
She regained some of her stamina climbing the innumerable hills and gullies, marveling at the endemic cabbage trees and other tropical trees. She came to like that exotic drink she knew only from history - coffee. Supposedly the coffee grown on Ascension is the mildest and smoothest in the world. "Well - why not start with the best ?" she asked herself.
A truly unique and exotic place in the world - she was glad she would see it again on her return voyage.
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