Hello, my name is Jack

by on November 10, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

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.

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Arkadia

by on November 9, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

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.

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Hello, my name is Charles

by on November 8, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

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.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on November 7, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

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.

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Arkadia

by on November 6, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

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.

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