Twilight’s Indianapolis had far more gunfights between competing gangs than the real life one, but that is the nature of entertainment programs. They did not exaggerate the effectiveness of Twilight’s crew though. They’d been schooled fighting the Mexican drug cartels, and Indy’s gangs were rank amateurs next to those foes. So Twilight smashed every gang that got in their way with a ruthlessness learned in Mexico. The season finale took place in downtown Indy where over a hundred thousand gamers had once congregated. The final battle between the horde of gang members and Twilight’s crew never happened in real life. But it made for amazing entertainment on the screens of America and beyond.
The fabricators we used before The War were far more limited than the ones we have now. They could make spare parts while on extended deployments, but larger hull segments or structural members were simply too expensive and time consuming to fabricate. We built our ships the same way we had for centuries, one metal beam at a time assembled in construction yards by skilled men, women, or machines. Recycling the vast bulk of older ships was not economically feasible, and so we retired them to other duties. Boneyards. Reserve fleets. Cargo carriers. Ignoble ends for brave warships to suffer.
Hal’s home in Silicon Valley is a technological wizard’s dream come true. Gleaming white towers with golden runes engraved in them surround the estate and protect it from unwished weather or hackers. Peaceful gardens full of every flower imaginable surround the gleaming white house. Inside is a technological wonderland. Every room is a holosuite, and she has the best full dive computer interfaces I’d yet seen the first time I visited. I’d surfed the nets before but one trip in that house made me realize just how cheap the commercial sets my family had were. I truly felt like I was a program inside a computer matrix spread out as far as the eye could see. It was real shiny.
The Indianapolis shown in Twilight season four had no surviving local government and gangs ruled the streets. Trained by a life on the mean streets, the strongmen had broken the city police, driven them out of the city entirely, and then proceeded to divvy up the spoils. The city was divided between those regions too poor to resist the gangs and those areas rich enough to pay the gangs to leave them alone. The network did a superb job of showing the dichotomy of the two cities that were often separated by a single street. Twilight’s brand new Mustang GTs cruised past well-lit mansions surrounded by walls and guards, and straight into Third World hellholes lit only by trashcan fires. It brought the plight of Indy to the screens of a recovering nation.
Staggered by the extraordinary mobility of Western Alliance designs during skirmishes in the outer colonies, the Chinese Army ordered a new cavalry mech competition. The submitted designs were underwhelming and the general in charge locked the chief designers inside a secure facility and informed them they would give him a design in three days or play a rousing game of Russian Roulette with an AK-955. A prototype concept that would become the Iron Rider cavalry mech convinced the general to send them home with a bonus and a reminder to remain silent. War was coming after all, and the Chinese planned to surprise their American foes. They did.
The Martian Affair on Amazon
Forge of War on Amazon
The Audacious Affair on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
The Family Affair on Amazon
The Thunderbird Affair on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon
The Gemini Affair on Amazon