The Taro scout mech was part of the Army 2300 Project, designed to revolutionize America’s ground forces and ready them for the next century. It gave us a fighting chance when The War came upon us all. While one of the smallest mechs used in combat, it is fast, sports superior sensors and targeting equipment, and can jam or hack most enemy systems. It’s armor can blend into the environment, and limited flight capability allows it to clear small buildings and most terrain features. What many consider the most revolutionary aspect of the Taro though is the modular weapons mount that allows it to interface with weapons built by any of the great powers. This capability made the Taro a difficult mech to fight, as the enemy rarely new what exactly it was going to face even if it was lucky enough to detect an incoming Taro before it or distant artillery opened fire on their position.
We built our colony ships long and slender due to the required length of the hyperdrives. The long ships served the dual purposes of making the rides smoother and allowing more framework to hang the colonization packages onto. Colony ships were a mass of habitation modules, hibernation chambers, control rooms, cargo bays, and the hundreds of other systems required to setup a new colony cut off from home by years or even decades of travel. Even the girders that held everything together had a purpose. They formed the skeleton of a new space station after the colonization packages detached and dropped towards the new home of humanity. And then the hyperdrive core set sail for Earth where the crew would report the successful colonization of a new world and begin preparing to take the next colony mission away.
The one thing I’ve always remembered about Los Angeles is just how hot and dry it is. Not that it’s really all that hot. The ocean actually moderates the temperatures a lot if you’re looking at weather service records. But it feels hot. The sun’s almost always out. And it beats down so much harder. And they just don’t have rainy days down there like we do in Minnesota. But on the plus side, almost every day is a good day to go to the beach. By my standards at least. And the teenage me fell in love more times than I can count the first time I caught sight of the sunbathing at El Porto Beach. I love LA dress codes.
The original Dixie and Twilight series spanned a decade of time, and you can see America change in them. They always welcomed new people from anywhere, and sported Californians working with New Yorkers and the Texans that made up the bulk of the team. They showed American individuals working as a team even as they showed the American States withdrawing from their neighbors to look out for themselves. And they showed some of the places where law and order broke down entirely. I think that’s why those series are so popular even now. We saw the apocalypse of America through them. And then we saw it come back to life. We can watch the end of America that was and the rebirth of what we have now.
Hyperdrive technology required an overhaul in our entire spaceship design philosophy. We built ships short and stubby to make them easy to move throughout our solar system. And to be harder to hit in combat. But the longer we could build our hyperdrives, the smoother the cut into hyperspace became. And so our starships became long and narrow with habitation and cargo sections built around hyperdrive cores that stretched longer and longer as time went on. Dedicated hyper-warships were built shorter to compete with real warships, and accepted the rougher rides in hyperspace for combat utility. The colony ships were where we stretched our manufacturing processes as far as we could go.
Forge of War on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon