A month later.

Proxima Centauri b was a hub of activity. The initial construction phase of the exploration base had been completed, but the building continued, though the base was already home to a hundred-odd researchers and two reinforced companies of marines. There was also a constant flow of technicians directing the ongoing construction.

But just because the construction was still ongoing, that didnt mean the base wasnt operational. It was, actually, though just at a minimum level; the ongoing expansion was more for creature comforts and wants, rather than needs. Everything the researchers needed was there, it was only luxuries that were missing.

Well, most of the scientists considered their labs to be rather luxurious. After all, up until a few years ago, they were relying on prying research grants out of donors and benefactors of all sorts, and those grants practically never covered all of the equipment and other assorted materials required to properly carry out their experiments.

Thus, things like comfortable beds, appealing housing, and so on were what they were doing without. It was an odd reversal of expectations for the teams assigned to the semi-operational research base; they were living like peasants but their workspaces were outfitted such that they could only be compared to an emperors court.

Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of END had been spent on research equipment, while the researchers themselves were bleary-eyed and could only catch naps by hot bunking on cots that had been stuffed everywhere. They could only consider themselves lucky if an empty cot tucked away in a maintenance closet somewhere just happened to come open as they were stumbling off to catch a few minutes of rest while waiting for their hardware to run tests on samples that were coming in like floodwaters.

They understood their situation very well. They were on a planet where the only known advanced multi-cellular life form was demonstrably hostile to them and occupied almost 90% of the planet itself. And until the protostellar forges were complete and they could build modular housing units for them to live in, they would just have to put up with the terrible conditions they were limited to and pray that Murphy didnt come to make a housecall, as he often did.

Inside the main building, a group of researchers were huddled around a screen that was displaying the results of their most recent experiment.

These bacteria are a gold mine. The xenobiologists back home will go bonkers when we get back with the samples and research results, one of them said with a low whistle as he stared at the data displayed on the screen.

It was common knowledge back on Earth that there were trillions of microbial species on the planet, with more than 99.999% of them having gone undiscovered. That had been changing with the opening of Research City, though, and new single-cellular life forms had been being added to the Akashic Record on a nearly daily basis since then. So the percentage of undiscovered species had been rapidly falling, primarily thanks to the injection of imperial technology and standards in research equipment and education, respectively.

Microbiologists had been multiplying almost as fast as the species they studied, now that they had access to all the equipment they neededregardless of how expensive it may bealong with unlimited access to samples, materials, and so on. Virtual labs had been proving the concept of the empires stance on the technology, and very few people were still grumbling about it.

But the problem on Proxima Centauri was a lack of resources. Specifically, human resources. There simply werent enough xenobiologists in the entire task force to handle the sheer number of discovered microbes, accurate virtual recreations or otherwise. There were perhaps one or two thousand xenobiologists in the fleet, but they had already discovered millions of different species.

Lets log the results and move on. Were already behind, and have to work faster if we dont want to be called up to the brass to explain why were lagging, the team lead ordered. Leading research teams was as difficult as herding cats to begin with, but leading research teams that were focused on actual alien life forms was somehow even more impossible than that!

A susurration of disappointed sighs and whispered complaints followed the order, but the researchers dutifully logged the results into their local copy of the Akashic Record and put the samples into tagged stasis chambers, where they would remain until the task force returned to the Sol system.

But their job on the ground was limited. They were there specifically and solely to collect samples, scan them into the Akashic Record, and note anything obvious that jumped out at them. Other researchers would be assigned the studies once the initial sorting had been done. That said, if pressed, the scientists in Research Base New New South Wales would grudgingly admit that they didnt envy the decisions that Dr. Standing Bear would have to make when doling out the most promising research to various teams in the task force.

(Ed note: New New South Wales isnt an error. One of the states in Australia is New South Wales, and we thought it would be amusing, or at least *I* thought it would be amusing, to use NSW as the name of the research base on New Australia by tacking on an extra New to the beginning.)

It had to be said that, in comparison to the wealth of information about Earth, the overall number of discoveries being made on Proxima Centauri b wasnt even a drop in the bucket by comparison. However, humanity had been learning about their home planet for millennia, so the process was far more gradual than the research taking place in the Proxima Centauri system.

Add to that the advanced technologies in play in the labs of Research Base New New South Wales and the highly motivated and extremely well-educated researchers of Task Force Proxima and it was understandable that discoveries were coming in faster and in higher numbers than the relatively low number of researchers were capable of handling.

Research in the Terran Empire was a far different beast than it had been through much of the rest of human history; it was a perfect storm of education, equipment, resources, and motivation. But that said, it was considered a good problem to have. After all, the samples and data wouldnt be going anywhere and there was no real rush to dig in and begin deep dives on any of the material that was being generated by the alien planet.

Thus, the same thing was taking place in labs devoted to all of the research specialties in Task Force Proxima, or at least those that housed teams on the surface. They were all there to collect, log, and tag samples, and every single man and woman in those brain trusts were falling behind thanks to the wealth of information being discovered.

Names would soon begin being etched into history books, but it wouldnt be any of theirs. Theirs was the effort, while others would claim the glory in the end.