Jack of Harts

The South American Union first ventured to unwanted stars. San Pedro, San Mateo, and San Marcus orbited dim or distant stars that took years for their hyperdrives to reach. The Big Three targeted stars they could reach and exploit far quicker and left those systems alone. And Union colony ships moving to San Lucas and San Juan required long transits through systems owned by other nations. The Union spent the better part of a century colonizing and investing in those five colony worlds, efforts that mostly resulted in backwater vanity projects that would never affect interstellar politics. Most of the colonists were rugged types that enjoyed backwaters, but they were far from returning the investments poured into them. The Union Council was not amused.

The South American Union and all its colonies are rather more rough and tumble than most other nations. For one thing, it should be no surprise that they are rabidly anti-Communist given their history. The Communists killed far too many South Americans for them to forget. They don’t even trust the milder Socialists that have taken over some parts of North America, and South America will join no alliance that accepts them. Wherever they go, every colony maintains honor guard helicopters maintained specifically to deal with Communists, and those helicopters fly in every national independence celebration. They even shoot showers of confetti, to the cheering amusement of children everywhere. Converting bad Communists into good Communists is fun for the whole family.

The twin fires of drug cartels and Communist movements burned South America after the Second Great Depression brought down the Western World. The drug cartels saw the chance to rule on their own terms without any of the last vestiges of American power stopping them, while the Communists did what the Communists always do once their glorious revolutions are complete. They killed everyone who wasn’t a good Communist. Millions died in a few short years, but the nations that formed the South American Union fought back against both the drug cartels and the Communists. And they took a lesson from previous wars against both. People had to see the dead. So the helicopters flew over South America and the drug dealers and the Communists did not have wings to follow.