We spent the first decade of our exploration to the stars moving around the Alpha Centauri double star system. Between the Alliance, the Russians, and the Chinese, we started five major colonies on four habitable worlds, in addition to over a dozen scientific outposts. Alpha Centauri became our gateway to the stars, a trial run for the technologies that would take us further than most of us ever dreamed.
I flew off a lot of ships during The War. Some were older than The War, some where newly built for it. One wasn’t even a warship at all when it all started. After Hyades, I the cybers built me a scout ship so we could search for the enemy. They built a lot of them for a lot of us. The ships stayed with us after it all ended. Most of them are still with us. I made my ship my home. She’s a good ship and a good friend. We’ve been…everywhere together.
After Contact, Peloran technologies let us go faster, farther, and cheaper. And we did. The Greeks had sent a colony mission out to a system on the inner edge of The Wall a year before. With Peloran help, they sent another ship to the world they named Elysium, the Greek afterlife for heroes. The second ship arrived before the primary colonists, which surprised them greatly. They woke up to a new universe of possibilities, one where we were not alone.
The War forged our partnerships as nothing else could have. It was horrible, and we lost so many friends, but those of us who came out of it knew whom we could trust with our lives. We have stayed in contact ever since, no matter how far we have traveled. We have fought together, laughed together, and drunk together. We are always there for each other in times of need, and we always will be. It is what the Cowboys do.
The first hyperspace engines were painfully slow by modern standards, achieving barely over four times the speed of light. The trip from Earth to Alpha Centauri took a year. While short compared to the later Pre-Contact Colonization Missions, let alone the Vulcan Missions to The Wall, NASA’s Centauri Missions were our first tentative steps into the galaxy. And like our flights to Luna or Mars, it was scientists who were the first to live on New Earth.
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