[cooloneinca 2224]

In 2430 we began to spread across the stars. The search for another world like our own, or indeed another people like us, spurred the early explorers to direct their lightships in every direction. 1.8 light years could be covered in a day, and a single month of travel could carry a lightship over fifty light years. However, travel was haphazard at best. Sensors were useless in the FTL vortex, and natural gravity wells or interference from the FTL vortexes of other vessels had to be studiously avoided, or the gravity distortion would shear vessels into pieces. FTL jumps had to be planned and calculated, and the sophisticated computer systems aboard light ships took into account every imaginable variable to safely guide a lightship to its intended destination. Of the dozens of lightships built in those first 20 years, many were lost without trace.

By 2450 mankind had set foot on several dozen planets outside our solar system and had traveled as far as 130 light years from Earth. The first Near Earth World, often called an NE World or simply a NEW System, was discovered in the year 2452. This new world was the first planet that had all the components necessary to support human life, unaided by machinery. The first explorers expected to meet intelligent alien life forms, but none were found. The planet was called Terra Nova, or "New Earth", and was often called New Terra by its inhabitants in the years to come. By 2462, twenty years later, fusion reactors, prefab structures, and a thousand humans occupied Terra Nova. The world was rather drab compared to Earth, with endless grasslands and steppes in the temperate regions, ice caps, and broad oceans in between. Vegetation was sparse and the trees were short, ugly affairs compared with the towering trees on Earth. However, there was plenty of space, a resource Earth had long since exhausted. The animals on Terra Nova were very varied however, from massive whales to small rodents, and every imaginable insect. Terra Nova was a xenobiologist's dreams come true.

The quest for a new Near Earth World started about two minutes after the first human set foot on Terra Nova, or so historians say. As we spread out across the systems nearest Earth, we soon realized that Near Earth planets would be hard to come by. After we discovered Terra Nova in 2452, the ISA began commissioning larger and longer-range lightships. The second NE World was discovered in 2459, and this one much closer to Earth! The UNGA voted to call this new planet Gallia Nova, due to the French sponsorship of the research project responsible for discovering the world. This new world was only 39 light years away, less than half the distance to Terra Nova. The ISA realized that our point and miss method of exploration was too sporadic and random to effectively map our surrounding space, and so a program to build a planetary detector was instated. The search for a sensory device to locate NEW Systems took fifty years, and by that time we had already uncovered three more worlds.

The planet Utopia, the third human colony, was discovered in 2464. Utopia was anything but utopian, being rather similar to Terra Nova in that it was flat and featureless, but the climate was less temperate. The ground was hard and flash floods rolled continuously over the plains, and nearly four fifths of the surface was covered in broiling oceans. Scientists believed Utopia was going through the after effects of a global thaw following an ice age, and most settlements had to be located in the mountain regions around the warmer equatorial belt and at the southern pole.

The nation-state of the United Kingdom was granted a charter in 2460 to seek out and establish a colony beyond the 100 light year barrier (the distance a ship could nominally travel without refueling, refurbishing, and replacing its exhausted GPD). After four years of searching, the team discovered a lush world 112 light-years coreward, and called it Britannia. This was the fourth NE World, and the most beautiful. While Terra Nova was mostly flat and featureless and Gallia Nova cold and mountainous, Britannia was lush and green. Vast tropical forests dotted the equatorial regions, towering pines covered the rolling hills in the temperate regions, and great oceans rolled between the five continents. Following the landing of settlers and researchers on Britannia in 2466, twenty years followed before another world was discovered. Finally, nearly eight months out from Earth, a licensed Terra Nova commercial vessel that had gone off course detected a new planet. The wayward Novans landed on a desert world with three moons in 2487, and decided to call the world Ithaca, after the home city of Ulysses, as they too were far from home and adrift.



Note: Colonial Government:

The United Nations Global Alliance was a representative body composed of delegations from the 180 member nation-states of Earth. On Earth, each nation still retained sovereignty within its borders. It was decided, however, that the UNGA alone would rule on legal matters that concerned offworld issues. A special court under the UNGA, called the Colonial Affairs Office, headquartered on Earth, handled all disputes and matters of importance that didn't fall under the authority of the individual colonial governments. These governments were councils elected by the citizens of the colony, under the leadership of a colonial magistrate, called a governor. The Lunar colonies were the only exception, the inhabitants being considered citizens of their respective member nation, and not considered citizens of a separate political entity.

Mars was the first colony to follow the colonial government system. The Martian General Assembly was a legislative body established in 2310. By that time several thousand colonists from dozens of Earth nations were settled around the original landing site and subsequent "capital" city. Massive domes allowed further settlers to breathe fresh air and walk about on the planet without EVA suits, and anti-grav technology later allowed artificial gravity flooring, permitting people to live normal, healthy lives on Mars.

The colonial governments on Mars and other subsequent worlds were answerable directly to the Colonial Affairs Office on Earth. The colonial governments ruled on legal matters within their own court systems, had their own law enforcement, and collected their own internal taxes. However, the laws were written by the UNGA for each colony to follow, and the colonies that shipped goods to Earth or other worlds were taxed. This was no surprise to the colonists, and for nearly two centuries the system worked fine.

The new sensor developed in the early 2500s was called GUARD, or Graviton Ultra-Amplification and Resonance Detection. The GUARD device allowed scientists and explorers to remotely detect the presence of significant gravitic Distortions at a range up to 5 light years away. The GUARD system was initially very primitive, and was only useful for detecting relatively large planets such as Red Dwarfs and Gas Giants. But the GUARD system was refined continuously for ten years, and was soon able to detect the difference between a barren world and a world with vast expanses of surface water, a sure sign of a NE World. This refined GUARD system was dubbed the GUARD Navigation System. By 2520 the GUARD Navigation System was standard issue aboard the first ISA Deep Explorer Vessels, giant spacecraft developed by the ISA to detect, explore, chart, and colonize NE Worlds. GUARD could only be used in normal space, so the Explorer had to jump short distances and power up the GUARD Nav, change course, and as such track down objects that could be NE Systems.

Lightships became larger, and soon massive interplanetary vessels were moving between Earth and Terra Nova delivering goods, resources and colonists to and fro. In less than fifty years a sprawling metropolis surrounded the original landing site, and hundreds of homesteads dotted the landscape. In the years to come, Terra Nova would quickly become the developmental epicenter of human life, with towering skyscrapers and extensive spaceports. Britannia and Gallia Nova followed suit, and in the years to come the burden of twenty billion people on Earth began to ease as people moved from the chaotic, sprawling cities of Earth to the natural, rugged splendor of the frontier worlds.
People were moving to and from the colonies on a regular basis in the early 2500s. Dozens of commercial passenger ships traveled along the established "space lanes", paths determined to be safe to travel at FTL speed between worlds. The cost of travel to another world by 2510 was approximately five thousand GU's, or about one month's wages for the normal working person. It was therefore conceivable for the average Earth citizen to visit relatives on Gallia Nova once a year if need be, and it was practical for businesses to send representatives to other worlds and for goods to be cost effectively traded between colonies.

By 2550 two hundred and fifty thousand people were living on Terra Nova, less than four billion on Mars, nearly one hundred thousand on Gallia Nova and sixty thousand on Britannia. The climate on Utopia discouraged civilians from settling en masse, as rainfall was constant and salt water covered most of the surface. Only on the vast mountain ranges and chilly poles did settlements start to appear, and these were mostly industrial and science centers. Perhaps six thousand people in all inhabited Utopia at this time. Ithaca, however, was a vast desert world with three moons, two the size of Luna and one half the size. It took a full year for a ship to travel to Ithaca and back from Earth, however, and by 2550 only a few thousand had begun to explore the planets deserts, equatorial jungles, and temperate polar regions. The planet's two vast oceans, each on opposite sides of the planet, were found to be teeming with life, and fishing became popular with the colonists for both leisure and as an industry.

It was these colonists that first became disgruntled with foreign rule. Most of them were Terra Novans, the children of the first Novans that set foot on the planet sixty years previously. These early settlers soon fell in love with Ithaca, and brought many of their relatives to live there. On Earth, news of the bountiful oceans and year round pleasant seasons attracted tourist and adventure seekers, curious at life so far from civilization. Ithaca was soon a major tourist attraction, its climate similar to that of Nevada, and indeed many described it as "an entire planet of Southern California". The islands off the coasts were both tropical and beautiful.

On Terra Nova, the people fondly thought of Ithaca as "their world". Ithaca was also closer to Terra Nova than Earth, as it was only 120 light years from Terra Nova, and vessels bound for Ithaca from Earth had to stop at Terra Nova for refueling. The thought of "mainland" Earthlings traveling to a "Novan planet" and using their homeworld of Terra Nova as a fuel stop became a source of angst for Terra Novans, who by this time had begun calling themselves "New Terrans".

Meanwhile, on Ithaca, thousands of Terra Novans were arriving with each transport, though each round trip took a full six months. By 2560, Earthlings, guilty by association with the UNGA and its omnipresent ISA trade officials and interplanetary tax collectors, were being regarded as "snobs" and "elitists" by the Novans. The worrisome friction between Ithacans and Earthlings, and Earthlings and Novans would continue for years to come.

In 2563, a NE planet was discovered midway between Terra Nova and Ithaca. The UNGA Explorer who discovered it named the planet Ambria. Just 13 light years off the major spacelane between Terra Nova and Ithaca, and almost equidistant between them, Ambria was in a perfect position as a waystation between the two worlds. Ambria was a small, rocky world, with sparse vegetation and a thin atmosphere. A narrow band of small asteroids formed a ring around the planet, and it was common for small meteors to fall to the surface, creating small impact creators all across the equatorial regions of the world. However, the rich iron resources and wide expanses of open unforested terrain proved ideal for mining and base building. Though windy and rainy, a human could breathe the somewhat thin atmosphere with ease if great exertion was avoided. However, it wasn't the geography that made the world ideal, it was its location as a waypoint between the Novan worlds.

A major spaceport began construction in orbit of Ambria in 2565. The port was to be second only to the massive construction and orbital fuel depots around Earth itself. Massive sections of the station were built and transported within commercial container ships to the construction site. Most of the workforce was contracted from Terra Novan companies, as it was only a few weeks out from Terra Nova and two months from Earth and Mars. The ISA shipyards were designed to repair and maintain the fleet of commercial and industrial craft that plied to and from Ithaca and Terra Nova. In addition, the ships yards were to be a launch pad for a fleet of ISA Explorers. Dozens of Near Earth worlds, and possible alien cultures, lay only light-years away, and the UNGA, indeed humanity at large, was burning with curiosity.
Twenty five billion people take a lot of feeding, and that's precisely how many mouths existed on Earth and Mars in 2575. Earth was heavily overpopulated, nearly every corner of the world was paved over with concrete, and apartment buildings were on average six stories tall in the country, and far taller in the cities Skyscrapers pierced the sky across the globe, and anti-grav cores allowed buildings several hundred levels tall to be constructed with ease. Earth was, in many respects, a world taken out of a twentieth century science fiction novel, complete with buzzing air cars, hovercraft, speed cycles, and ridiculously expansive cities populated by an overwhelming number of people and vehicles. There simply was nowhere to grow food, and most food was produced in the few remaining rural areas or in vast underground hydroponics facilities. Cloning had long been a reliable method of producing fields of perfect grain and troves of perfect livestock, but these too, needed room, which Earth simply couldn't afford.

The discovery of the terrestrial colonial worlds was quite literally a lifesaver for Earth. Terra Novan soil was prefect for farming, as was Britannia's. The global form of recreation and food gathering on Ithaca became fishing, and in 2575 the Ithacans were shipping cargo holds of fish meat to Earth each month.

It wasn't long before the restive colonials on Terra Nova and Ithaca, who now considered themselves both to be "New Terran" worlds, realized the potential power they could hold over their UNGA rulers who lived three months away. In 2575, therefore, the Terra Nova shipping corporation Super Nova Shipping Corp, decided to stop paying the docking fees and cargo inspection surcharges that the Earth orbital docking platforms exacted from each Super Nova Container ship, and refused to pay the "destination tax" that the Colonial Affairs Office enforced on all interstellar shipping.

The backlash from the UNGA was immediate. The destination tax was for the shipping companies own benefit, as the tax was directly applied to the cost of maintaining the massive orbital docking platforms, refueling stations, dome facilities, and other offworld structures and agencies that were required to maintain the interstellar trade infrastructure. The UNGA gave the Super Nova Shipping Corp. sixty days to reverse its decision. On the sixtieth day, the Colonial Governor of Terra Nova ordered all Novan shipping companies and public trade offices to follow the Super Nova Shipping Corp's example, and stop paying the destination tax and fees that the Colonial Affairs Office collected for "maintenance".

In 2576 the UNGA passed a resolution ordering docks on Earth, Mars, Luna, Britannia, Gallia Nova, Utopia, Ithaca, Ambria, and the dozens of other facilities scattered between, to refuse any Terra Novan cargo vessels permission to dock until they paid the required tax. Knowing that Terra Nova companies couldn't afford to lose shiploads and warehouses full of goods, as even frozen goods cost money to store, the UNGA felt confident the Novas would comply. Indeed, perhaps the Novans would have, as public outrage was great on Earth and Mars, those who had primarily relied on Terra Nova as a food source for sixty years. However, the UNGA overestimated its influence on the Terra Novans, people who had for years been bristling under foreign rule. When the UNGA sent a replacement governor to Terra Nova in June of 2576 (the General Council was a democratically elected government, but the governor, who presided over the council, was appointed by the UNGA itself), he met with an unpleasant surprise. When his landing craft landed at the New Terran Capital Spaceport, he was promptly arrested and jailed.

The Ithacan Planetary Assembly, who now represented nearly seventy thousand Ithacans, voted by unanimous consent to support the Terra Novans. Furthermore, the massive orbital yard complex and manufacturing facilities on Ambria was seized, not by Terra Novans or Ithacans, but by the Ambrians!

On Earth, the UNGA urgently appealed to its colonial brothers and sisters to be reasonable. They then reminded the colonies that the UNGA controlled the ISA, and the ISA controlled the spacelanes. To this, the Terra Novans seized the ISA vessels at Ambria, and vowed to build their own docking stations and their own cargo vessels. The UNGA realized its hand had been forced, and in 2579, with dwindling food supplies and the ISA utterly powerless, the Earth government relented. The destination tax was repealed.
In 2600, humans were living in large numbers on twenty extra-Solar System worlds. Twenty billion lived on Earth, several hundred million on Luna, four billion on Mars, millions on the nearly discovered colonial worlds, and nearly as many were living on the various settlements in domed outposts within 50 light years of Earth. As more worlds were discovered that humans could safely inhabit, the overpopulation burden on Earth slowly began to ease. The production of large lightships allowed regular travel between Earth, Mars, and the new colonies. The population of Terra Nova reached 800 million. By 2602 four generations had been born on Terra Nova soil, and three generations on Gallia Nova and Britannia. By this time the UNGA International Space Agency had a fleet of some fifty lightships of varying sizes capable of traveling as many as 100 light years before refueling, and several hundred smaller lightships operated by various nation-states, commercial enterprises, institutions, and wealthy entrepreneurs were traveling among the human occupied worlds and space as far out as 180 light years from Earth. The ISA kept strict regulations on interplanetary travel. Only the ISA could grant a license to operate a lightship, all travel had to be approved ahead of time, sometimes months in advance, and non-ISA vessels could not travel to any unapproved location. All interstellar craft had to carry an accompanying ISA Observer to make sure that no unauthorized course deviations took place. Piracy was strictly outlawed, and the punishment for such was life in prison.

Lightships became more and more complex. Early GPD utilized an exposed Gravitic Boom, a long metal rod at the bow of the vessel that created the gravitic compression responsible for the wormhole event that allows FTL flight. In the year 2430 the Gravitic Propulsion Drive was reengineered, and the Gravitic Boom was rendered obsolete. Second generation Gravitic Propulsion Drives employed a long magnetic constriction chamber, through which a stream of hyper-accelerated gravitons were propelled from the bow of the vessel.

Lightship design also had started to become more varied. The ISA built long, segmented vessels with an ion drive section at the rear that could be swapped out should the engines become worn or damaged. At the front of an ISA vessel was the GPD housing, and, in a middle section module between the front and rear sections or often mounted above them, an ISA vessel featured a command section. This section contained the crew quarters, computer equipment, EVA craft and landing landing craft, labs, bridge, sensor gear, and so forth. Most nation-state vessels were smaller versions of the ISA colonial and explorer ships. Civilian designs displayed more variation however. Massive cargo vessels featured huge ion drive sections, a long segmented series of cargo modules in the middle, and a GPD section at the front.

It is interesting to note that as of 2600, for the first time in human history, we had not had a major war on Earth or elsewhere for several centuries. A series of nation-state skirmishes on Earth and Mars, and later Terra Nova, dotted the newspapers, but war on a scale seen during the twentieth century was a true thing of the past. Even the brief so called Rebellion of Terra Nova and its supporters in the 2570s took place without a weapon being fired. Mankind simply had no capacity for a bloody war.