Alcyone has five stars. The blue giants, Aa and Ab, have fancy scientific names. The locals call them Ace and Deuce. The white dwarfs, B and C, our astronomically huge mines of star stuff, we call Buck and Cash. And then there’s Alcyone D. It’s a little hotter than our sun, and it’s in a pretty screwed up neighborhood. Most of the planets are long gone, but the three survivors are all habitable. Lots of people live under the never-ending light of Dixie.
The Holidays are an amazing time. Humanity has celebrated during them for thousands of years, from the old Winter Solstice observed by many cultures, to the Jewish Hanukkah. The rise of Christianity brought Christmas and Boxing Day, and the Romans brought us New Years when they changed the traditional calendars to begin in January. So many cultures and religions celebrate something during the Holiday Season that is easy to find a reason to celebrate.
While we spread out towards the Pleiades and the Chinese emphasized the Hyades, most of the Russian Post-Contact expansion drove straight up, from an Earth perspective, towards the Polaris Sector. They were out of our way and free to fortify as they saw fit in the corridor to that region. They did so well that our fleets never generated a major penetration of the sector during the entire War.
Cowboy Three. Where do I start? Charles obviously. Edward Hurst originally. We called him Woodchuck, and it was not a compliment. He radiated Rich White Boy like a fraking limo on Martin Luther King Boulevard. He was not one of us. He didn’t complain, took his lumps, and proved himself when The Colonel bought the farm. He earned Chief and Cowboy One. Then the Peloran named him Wolf. I guess it stuck. He and Dorothy did good by us. Way better than I woulda.
The Alcyone star system is composed of a yellow star and two white dwarfs orbiting two blue giants. The two white stars lost their battle with gravity thousands of years ago and shed much of their mass into gaseous clouds surrounding them. Full of heavy metals and the remains of shattered planets, those nebulas are better refueling stations than even the giants. And the star system’s manufacturing centers send miners there too. It is a very rich star system.
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