Bern Orbital (FI)

The largest habitat in Sol space, the bern Orbital is a megaproject and the jeweled crown of Earthforce.

Bern Orbital

Bern Orbital is the largest settlement in the Terran Orbital Zone and the centerpiece of Earthforce power. Constructed as an open-sky ring habitat at the Earth–Moon L1 near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), it remains one of the few structures to have survived the Fall and the Kessler years largely intact. Its immense size, deliberate legal status, and symbolic ties to the Swiss city of Bern make it both a practical headquarters and a political compromise. Today it houses tens of millions, sustains a complex economy, and serves as both capital and fortress of Earth’s offworld presence.

Physical Description

The Orbital consists of two counter-rotating graphene hoops, each 103 km from the centerline. Each is a 10 km wide living band, suspended by tensioned cables and shielded by sidewalls. At 0.9 g surface gravity, rim speed is ~0.95 km/s and the sky appears to spin once every 11.3 minutes, drifting the stars at ~0.5°/s.

The ring uses curtain membranes every 200–500 m in the sidewalls and pop-up plates/nets in the floor. They drop in seconds to fence off only the breach zone, slowing airflow so crews can patch. Small leaks are covered by make-up gas; medium tears trigger local membranes; only freak, multi-hundred-meter failures risk wider effects.

Because the orbital’s scale height is ~10.6 km, weather stratifies naturally: winds, clouds, and even lee vortices form behind mountains. Terrain is exaggerated — peaks and valleys far higher than in Switzerland itself — yet controlled to prevent dangerous storms. The result is a convincing small world under open sky, but one where engineering discipline sets firm limits on wind speed, rainfall, and temperature.

Power and Heat Management

Before the Fall, Bern Orbital drew most of its power from a heliostat swarm and large arrays of sun-tracking panels, with compact fusion plants as reserve. The Kessler cascade destroyed the mirror fleet, and the ring had to survive on fusion alone for decades. Tugs provided temporary power and heat rejection while the infrastructure was rebuilt.

Traditional radiators were abandoned in favor of laser cooling. Waste heat from reactors and life support is converted into coherent light beams and vented in narrow cones aligned with tug exhaust or service corridors. This keeps the sky clear of radiator wings and reduces thermal signature. There is enough redundance that complete collapse would only happen along with apocalyptic damage; the system did survive the Fall.

Today Bern Orbital runs on multiple gigawatts of fusion, with sun-tracking panels used for auxiliary and emergency lighting. The heliostat swarm is being rebuilt, and when complete will again allow full control of day/night cycles and seasonal variation. At present the weather is pleasant but feels somewhat artificial to environmental connoisseurs.

Light and Seasons

Day and season inside the Orbital are artificial. Heliostats redirect sunlight into the habitat to simulate a 24-hour cycle, while panels on the ring provide local dawn/dusk effects. Seasons are created by tilting mirror angles over the course of the year. The natural 12-minute star drift is ignored for daily life, though communities sometimes hold “sky spin festivals” to mark it.

Control of light is the prerogative of the Shade Guild, a cross-chamber Earthforce bureau. The Guild is a sought-after posting, a comfortable career path dominated by the children of insiders, yet it is also politically powerful: whoever controls the light schedule can punish, reward, or negotiate with entire districts. An invitation to a Guild social function is to die for!

Orbit and Station-Keeping

Bern Orbital resides in an Earth–Moon L1 NRHO, offering constant line-of-sight to both Earth and Moon and avoiding Earth’s shadow. Relay satellites guarantee communications; outages are rare and remembered mostly from the chaos immediately after the Fall.

Station-keeping uses electric thruster farms mounted on booms, never firing toward the habitat or its mirrors. Large corrections are handled by dedicated tugs. Spin stability is maintained through trim masses and reaction wheels, while “spin-quakes” are damped by mass shifters distributed through the spines.

Law and Jurisdiction

Legally, Bern Orbital is part of the City of Bern, Switzerland. This status was chosen to confer Earth residence and neutrality, avoiding disputes between larger powers. In practice, law is divided:

**Dexter Ring** follows Swiss civil law, applied by colonial courts staffed largely by unambitious or semi-retired officials.
**Sinister Ring** is under continuous operational law, effectively martial law, though enforcement is often lax after two centuries of peace.
Earthforce service members and facilities remain under Senate protocols.

Mixed cases are resolved by joint courts, but in practice Earthforce wields authority.

Dexter Ring

Dexter, the “right bank,” houses Earthforce headquarters, the three chambers, and associated bureaucracies. Population is ~15 million permanent residents and another five million transients. Prestige housing and tourism resorts occupy the surface; infrastructure and agriculture run underground.

Architecture emphasizes display: Baroque, Gothic, and neoclassical facades dominate official buildings, while rural villages and towns recreate historical Swiss and European styles. Agriculture is mostly hydroponic, supplemented by pastoral herding on the surface. “Under the carpet” is the phrase used to describe how utilities, recycling, and industrial functions are buried out of sight.

Dexter is both capital and resort. Its exaggerated mountains attract tourism, and unlike in Switzerland, these peaks are open to mass recreation. Earthforce institutions, museums, and cultural centers are part of the same landscape, creating a hybrid of government city and vacation destination.

Sinister Ring

Sinister, the “left bank,” is Earthforce’s logistics and training hub. Permanent population is ~1 million, but numbers swell by several million during large exercises. The ring is zoned for barracks, parade grounds, training districts, and vast ports. Civilians are almost entirely excluded.

Rumors swirl of secret war fleets or alien embassies hidden on Sinister, but in practice the facilities are prosaic: supply depots, simulator halls, and restricted marshaling yards. The ring is under continuous operational law, and while discipline is often lax, security presence is constant.

Safety and Defense

Bern Orbital survived the Fall because of its size: its atmosphere and soil mass gave it days of tolerance for power loss, enough for fusion plants to restart. Still, safety remains central:

**Micrometeoroid defense**: radar sweeps detect debris; lasers ablate sub-cm fragments; interceptor tugs divert larger objects.
**Compartmentalization**: 2 km bays can shutter in ten seconds. Gas reserves cover days of leakage.
**Rescue operations**: Earthforce’s rescue coordination centers are based here, making Bern Orbital the hub for cislunar emergency response.

Despite this, complacency is a cultural hazard. After centuries of survival, drills are routine and often neglected until a real incident jolts the population back to vigilance.

Factions and Politics

Several guilds and associations dominate Orbital politics:

**Shade Guild** — controls light, day/night, and seasons.
**Ringers** — maintain the spines, mass ledgers, and spin balance.
**Aero-Wardens** — patrol the sidewalls and EVA structures.
**Founders’ Trust vs. Freeholders** — legal battles over deeds and ownership of shifting land.

These groups shape life as much as Earthforce itself. Control of light schedules, mass ledgers, or land claims can make or break fortunes, and intrigue is constant beneath the outward calm of administration.

Culture and Rituals

Culture is varied, with communities recreating aspects of Earth. Festivals mark “season flips” when heliostat angles change. The twelve-minute sky drift inspires both parties and cult rituals. Dexter emphasizes civic pomp and tourism, while Sinister cultivates a martial ethos, though softened by long peace.

Nicknames and local traditions abound. Dexter districts follow a zodiac naming scheme, repeating each sign twice along the ring, while Sinister relies on technical coordinates with informal nicknames from exercises and accidents.

Economy and Logistics

Dexter’s economy is anchored by Earthforce headquarters, education, and tourism. Sinister supports logistics, training, and the maintenance of Earthforce fleets.

Docking facilities are extensive: heavy docks for capital ships, dozens of medium bays, and hundreds of minor tenders. Customs and passenger traffic route through Dexter, while Sinister handles quarantine and military staging. Propellant depots at NRHO supply both chemical (LOX/LH₂) and electric (argon, krypton, xenon) propellants.

Garbage collection is a standing mission: Earthforce’s space-debris bounty administration is based here, with hunters patrolling cislunar space.

Summary

Bern Orbital is more than a station: it is the capital of cislunar space, the headquarters of Earthforce, and a symbol of resilience. Its twin rings—Dexter for politics and tourism, Sinister for logistics and training—mirror the banks of the Aare in Bern itself. Its survival of the Fall, its fusion reconfiguration, and its continuing role as both sanctuary and fortress make it the most powerful settlement in the Terran Orbital Zone.