I don’t remember the American Presidents of my youth. They didn’t really affect my life. The junior Senator from Colorado did though. When the Shang plastered Washington D.C. with missiles, she stepped up and gave us all an example to follow. I met her, I followed her personal orders, and she earned my unconditional loyalty. She was my President, not simply the President. And that made all the difference.
Of all the worlds I’ve been to, Arkadia is one of the most interesting. It’s not even really a world, properly speaking. A planet that is. It’s part of a binary star system out in the old Albion Sector. The Ennead wiped out the other system before dying, but even they couldn’t wipe out Arkadia. It is a true gas torus wrapped around a star. Some call it a smoke ring. A man could spend a lifetime exploring in those skies and never find an end to them.
People think that space is cold. They are wrong. It can be cold, and in shadow it is so cold that metal can snap. But in direct sunlight, that same metal can melt due to the heat. Of course, that is in a star system. Matters get far more interesting in interstellar nebulas, the various walls, and in the star clusters that dot our territories. We have yet to map all of the mysteries of space, but we have learned one thing. We do not know anything yet.
When the Navy called for companies willing to construct new exploration ships, the Numu Federation of western America quickly answered the call by offering the services of their yard complex. They had been building Yosemite Yard for years to support a planned Numu Colony Mission. In a mere five years they retooled it to begin mass production of a new generation of Navy exploration ships, superior in every way to those produced by any other yard complex.
I really did have a chance to retire after The War. I did retire from the military. But no one really retires from being a Marine. Turns out, it’s the same thing for Cowboys. A lot of us have gone back to our day jobs. Accountants. Engineers. Doctors. And some of us travel, meeting new and interesting people. But you know, wherever we are, when the wolf howls at the door, we howl right back. Of course, our leader did earn the name Wolf.
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