Stories, and the ability to tell them, are one of the many things that make us human. Our imaginations drive us to do things we don’t yet know how to do. Our wishes make us grow, our growth makes us learn, and our learning makes us realize just how little we really know. And it is stories that make our imaginations run wild, or wishes expand, and bring us the knowledge we crave. Please, never deprive our children of the stories that made us who we are. Human.
When the Peloran made Contact, we used rocket ships. Orbital elevators were our only cheap way into space. We had no control of gravity the way we do now. Then the Peloran Battle Squadron flashed into existence before our very eyes, deep inside our hyperspace limit, and their gravtech battleship maneuvered more easily than one of our fighters. They could have wiped us out in a day and we wouldn’t have scratched their hulls. Thank God they were here to help us.
My President pushed a treaty through the re-elected Senate that made the Cowboys a shared unit, where we provided the personnel, and the Peloran provided technological support and operational command. There are those in the military high command who never forgave her for placing Americans under foreign command, permanently, by treaty. And they never forgot those like me who embraced it. None of us ever got another promotion, in twenty years of War.
I really like Arkadia. Open skies as far as the eye can see, literally, are only one thing going for it. There are handfuls of planetoids, mostly man-made that pass for cities, and smaller moonlets and asteroids scattered throughout the ring. You can live anywhere you want. The gases that make up the ring aren’t exactly Earth-normal atmosphere, but humans can breath there just fine. Gravity is the tricky bit, but that is what gravity generators are for.
The Yosemite Yards were built in high geosynchronous orbit near the Panama City Orbital Elevator. All of our major shipyards were up there back then for security reasons. Nobody wanted an American shipyard flying over Chinese airspace for obvious reasons. The consolidated complex allowed a single heavy security force to keep corporate and government raiders at bay. Everything changed after Contact.
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