Jack of Harts

61 Ursae Majoris is a G8V star which lies four lightyears off the Asgard hyperspace route. That makes it extremely easy to travel to, and it was the target of a major bidding war for international colonization rights. A consortium of South American nations won the rights and named their new possession San Lucas. Their colony ship arrived in 2178, a mere four years after Asgard’s expedition made landfall, and it became one of South America’s jewels in the stars. It also became the first world we met alien intelligent creatures on, though we did not know that until some decades after the Peloran made Contact with us. The experience caused us to change the way we explored, colonized, and studied planets in the future.

One major change brought about by The War was the unification of humanity’s hyperspace runs. The Chinese controlled many of the best routes through the stars, including their lock on nearly all those that ran near the Hyades Cluster. We fought them for control of those routes for years, seeking to open their worlds to invasion at need, and to shorten our own supply lines to the Hyades Front. And our transport companies soon began taking advantage of these routes on their own, using them to reduce travel times to distant markets. The entire economic map of humanity changed because of the military advances we made against the Chinese. And that changed everything about how we lived and expanded after War’s End.