The Hyades Cluster

by on September 28, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

One thing to understand about the Hyades Cluster during The War is that there were no uninhabited systems. It is a common myth amongst most people that there are thousands of systems were nobody goes just within a few hundred lightyears of Earth. That is less true than people think, but also partially accurate. Most systems are inhabited by probeswarms and the relatively small industrial bases they generate. They have long kept watch over our flanks, so it is more accurate to say that there are thousands of systems near Earth where no biological human lives. This was not the case in the Hyades. Every single system, every star no matter how minor, had people there. They were watching for us. Waiting for us. Ready to send word of intruders at a moment’s notice. It was impossible to penetrate the Hyades Cluster without being discovered. That is why we did not try.

 Comment 

Sunnydale

by on September 27, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Frostydale is a debatably-habitable frozen ball of rock nearly four times as far away from Sunnydale as Earth is from the Sun. She’s significantly larger than Earth, but has a much thinner atmosphere at sea level. Those seas are frozen solid over the vast majority of the planetary surface, though the balmy tropics of the equatorial zones at least keep them in a liquid state most of the time. Now I’ve swum in Minnesota lakes in spring, right after the ice melts, and I may have even done a Polar Bear Plunge a time or two in my life, so I find those equatorial seashores to be rather refreshing. I bit like coming home, you might say. But my conscience requires that I warn anybody from warmer States like California or Florida against enjoying them. You will not enjoy them, and you will probably freeze off various body parts that you dearly do not want to lose.

 Comment 

Weylan

by on September 26, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The Weylan are one of the younger Races of Humanity. The Albion began working on them after perfecting the Peloran supersoldier. They’d long wanted a humanoid airborne soldier, as their failed work with the Branan shows, and the Peloran project had taught them much about how to program brains. So they began work on what would become the Weylan, using the Peloran as the base genetic model. They hoped that would result in an impressive upgrade to the basic Peloran model and spurred the new project on with an impressive amount of resources. The first and most important hurdle they had to pass was being able to program a human brain to easily control six limbs. That was a not-insignificant task, but the Albion had a plan, an impressive amount of experience with tweaking the human genome, and one very strong inspiration. War was coming, and they needed every weapon they could create.

 Comment 

Angel Flight

by on September 25, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

“Break,” Jack ordered and pulled the controls to the left. Thrusters flared and the formation of Avengers exploded into a chaotic mess of individually maneuvering fighters. Or so the complicated maneuver was designed to look to outside eyes. In reality it was a complex plan designed by the collective intellect of seven cybernetic intelligences, randomized by six Marine fighter pilots, and thrown into the teeth of the enemy missiles by seventy-two Avenger-class starfighters. The AIs inhabiting the Shang missiles never saw it coming.

The Avengers scattered, spinning to sweep over two hundred gravitic cannons across the missile swarm. Over a hundred missile batteries spat their vengeance as fast as they could reload and over five hundred lasers sent coherent beams of deadly light through the exhaust gases filling space. Missiles died by the scores, by the hundreds, but nothing could stop the missile swarm from engulfing them.

Everywhere Jack looked he saw and felt missiles, exhaust, explosions, and death. There was no safe place to be but he let his mind go blank and just moved whenever he got the urge to move. He had a lot of urges to move and his hands twitched on the stick and throttle. Missiles exploded all around them and a warning light alerted him to the near hits clawing at their deflection grid. Another display came up, showing armor damage on the port wing. An Avenger ahead of him exploded and another missile flew by close enough he could have stepped onto it if he’d wanted to.

Angel Flight is available at the following platforms:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
iTunes
Kobo
Smashwords

 Comment 

Cheyenne Mountain

by on September 24, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Cheyenne Mountain is generally considered to be a quadruple star system. Two giant stars orbit a common center of gravity, and each of them has their own companion star. There are other stars in the area, of course. The Hyades Cluster’s core is rather crowded when looked at from the perspective of the outside galaxy. But most scientists agree that those four stars are the system. There are planets and asteroid belts and other detris left behind by the creation of a star system in there as well. That is where most of the people live. But the reason people live there is far more important to humanity. It’s appropriate that we ended The War there. Because The War started there as well. The first shots were fired at Earth, yes, but it was at The Heart of the Hyades Cluster that the Shang and the Chinese chose to fire those shots.

 Comment