I start performing my citizenry duty today. I’ll be judging people guilty or not guilty should I be chosen out of the jury pool.
All those who know me may now begin quaking in fear for the future of our country. 😉
The rest of you…watch the news…if there’s a crazy jurist in Minnesota, it might be me…
🙂
New Earth politics was in a state of flux while we were assembling the Wolfenheim Project, and Megan took a rather prominent position in that flux. Old Man Callahan had been one of Landing City’s leading figures since the New Earth colony landed, in a non-leading role. The Hurst Family had decided it was time to retire him. He did not appreciate the retirement plan. So in exchange for the supplies we needed to make Wolfenheim work, Megan led a small group of cybers in support of Callahan. They were very professional. They were very effective. The police called her Ms. Megan. She called them by their first names. They declined to fully investigate any noise complaints she was involved with, and everybody lived happily ever after. Except the Hurst agents. They didn’t live at all, and the Hursts finally stopped sending them a few months before we left the system. I loved watching Megan in action. From a distance. A very long distance.
Jackie White enjoyed dancing. If you ask me about her, that’s really the first thought that comes to mind. She grew up catering to tourists wanting to hear Hawaiian music and see Hawaiian dancing. Cooking wild hogs beneath the beach sands was normal to her way of life. Juggling flaming brands and placing flower necklaces on visitors was just part of the scenery of her youth. That and the elevator rising far above Palmyra that brought them down from orbit. I asked her what it was like to grow up there. She told me it was magical. They were no more than a few thousand of her best friends and worst enemies on a postage stamp island in the middle of thousands of kilometers of empty ocean, serving guests who had traveled lightyears to live a few days of the “natural Hawaiian life.” She said it prepared her for life on a starship better than anything else she could think of.
The greatest problem the Branan thought they had to surpass was the fact that the stars they wanted to colonize were simply so far away. The true problem was that they were actually far too close to each other. Hyperspace is affected and built by our physical universe. Our gravity holds it together. From a star to a grain of sand, every piece of our universe affects hyperspace. Betelgeuse is a massive supergiant star, and the effect it has on hyperspace is magnitudes beyond our tiny little sun. And the five companion stars it has captured simply magnify the inconsistencies for lightyears in every direction. The Branan truly did try to find hyperspace. Generations of their best scientists searched for centuries. But Betelgeuse’s chaotic nature and its effects on hyperspace stymied their best efforts. They never knew it was their home that denied them. And in one of the universe’s greater practical jokes, they chose to colonize systems with multiple stars, gas giants, and dozens of planets that further churned hyperspace to a froth. It took Albion knowledge to navigate hyperspace through their stars, and the Albion took their knowledge when they left.
I first met Megan before she joined the Wolfenheim Project. Sorta. She had a different name back then. Different partner, different hair. And unlike most American fighter cybers, she had a physical body. A robotic avatar. She had a new one built when she joined Wolfenheim with an appearance subtly different enough to confuse standard scanners. But it was still her, and she still liked to carry enough firearms to overthrow a third world government. And thanks to a certain incident in which she was nearly destroyed that news accounts did not accurately depict, she tended to disregard New Earth laws when it came to carrying those firearms. It might surprise you to know that she was on excellent terms with the local police despite this. Or maybe because of it. They were very respectful when they met her while she was working. One might almost say diffident. That might be due to the odd jobs she sometimes performed for Old Man Callahan.
Forge of War on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon