by Brian Smith
Ashburn, Michael: Barsoom Traders / USNR
Ayers, Cheryl: U.S. Navy
Ford, James: U.S. Navy
Harper, Colin: Aberdeen Astronautics
Hutton, Diane: Deputy United States Marshal
Kusaka, Shiguro: Federov Propulsion Associates
McClain, Aaron: U.S. Marine Corps
Supporting Players
Barsoom Traders
Azuma, Taro: Master’s mate, Dejah Thoris
Denisovich, Sasha: Chief Engineer, Dejah Thoris
Donato, Miraz: Ship’s Physician’s Asst, Thuvia
Hansen, Jen: Load master, Banth One (Thuvia)
Jackson, Gina: First Officer, Thuvia
Sandoval, Zach: Third Officer, Thuvia
Sommers, Jerry: Ship’s Purser, Dejah Thoris / Thuvia
Viera, Carlos: Second Officer, Thuvia
Xiang, Ming: Master, Dejah Thoris
Yosh: Load master, Zitidar One (Dejah Thoris)
Board of Trustees, Crandall Foundation
Campbell, William: CEO, Aberdeen Astronautics
Drayson, Carter: Chairman, Crandall Foundation
Federov, Dmitri: CEO, Federov Propulsion
Forester, Tyrell: CEO, Barsoom Traders
Vasquez, Maria: President, Chryse Planitia University
U.S. Navy Personnel
VADM Wright: Commander, U.S. 4th Fleet
RADM Costello: Commander, TF50
CAPT Frieder: Commander, DESRON 44
LCDR Keith: Commander, USS Reuben James
LTJG Gordon: Operations Officer, USS Reuben James
LTJG Yoon: Deck Dept Head, USS Reuben James
ENS Ferrell: ALSS Division, USS Reuben James
ENS Tanner: Astrogation Division, USS Reuben James
CW2 Albrecht: Copilot, Dogstar One
WO1 Hagen, Derek: Pilot, USS Reuben James
WO1 Santos: Pilot, USS Reuben James
CTC Eckert: Cyber Warfare Tech, USS Reuben James
HMC Keibler: Corpsman, USS Reuben James
MMC Hogan: Machinist’s Mate, USS Reuben James
QMC Sandler: Quartermaster, USS Reuben James
GM1 Galloway: Gunner’s Mate, USS Reuben James
CT2 Sims: Cyber Warfare Tech, USS Reuben James
QM2 Reed: Quartermaster, USS Reuben James
GM3 Castagna: Gunner’s Mate, USS Reuben James
SN Parnell: Gunner’s Mate, USS Reuben James
U.S. Marine Corps Personnel
LTCOL Anderson: Commander, USS Ranger MAG
MAJ Khatri: Deputy Commander, USS Ranger MAG
CAPT Reynolds: Commander VMF-52 Bulldogs
CAPT Roberts: Commander, USS Ranger MARDET
1LT Cardon: Executive Officer, VMF-52 Bulldogs
2LT Hess: Pilot, VMF-52 Bulldogs
2LT Recinto: Pilot, VMF-52 Bulldogs
2LT Devereaux: Pilot, VMF-52 Bulldogs
SSGT Vargas: MARDET, USS Reuben James
HM2 Griggs, USN: MARDET Corpsman
CPL Danvers: MARDET, USS Reuben James
CPL Dawson: MARDET, USS Reuben James
LCPL Suzuki: MARDET, USS Reuben James
Trans-Oceanic Alliance Military Personnel
RADM Sir Edward Branch, RN: Commander, TF 50.5
CAPT Winters, RN: Commander, HMS Vanguard
CAPT Kondo, JN: Commander, JTS Akizuki
CAPT Uemura, JNCommander, JTS Murasame
Miscellaneous Players
Borodin, Eleyna: Chief Astronomer, GOI
Bujold, Haley: Chairman, Green Mars Society
Chandraskar, Dhir: Chief Engineer, Melinda Crandall
Crawford, Donelle: Owner/proprietor, Lucky’s
Crawford, Jack: Owner/proprietor, Lucky’s
Draper, Paul: Deputy U.S. Marshal, assigned to Mars
Kusaka, Hanako: Sister of Kusaka Shiguro
Kusaka, Mariko: Sister of Kusaka Shiguro
Kusaka, Yoshi: Brother of Kusaka Shiguro
Rogan, Gabriel: Leader, Mars Independence Movement
Shu, Tian: Chief Administrator, Janus Station
Speck, Pieter: Officer, Mars Independence Movement
Takeshi, Rico: Security Division, Aberdeen Astronautics
Tottori, Miko: VP, Federov-Kusaka Technologies
Wei, Shanzou: Flight Officer, Melinda Crandall
Appendix B
The Defense Reorganization Act of 2047
The Western Pacific War of 2026–2027 saw the first use of technologies that presaged a complete paradigm shift in the military operations of the future. The war between China and the United States was a naval war, but with important battles fought in two new realms: outer space and cyberspace. Although space-based systems had been part and parcel of military operations for years, this was the first conflict in which extensive fighting took place in space as the belligerents tried to destroy the communications, ISR, and combat-networking satellites of the other. Naval units proved particularly vulnerable to emergent technologies such as space-based firing platforms. Hypersonic “smart” weaponry controlled by networked AI processors could exchange data, adapt (literally) on the fly, and cooperatively engage opposing units without human participation. The striking range of shore-based weapons expanded until entire continental coastlines became “forts” from which warships had to maintain standoffs at distances of hundreds of kilometers in order to prevent being overcome by bee-hive-networked swarms of long-range AI-controlled missiles.
In the years immediately following the war, the technology curve continued to trend toward vertical. LENR (cold-fusion) power gave unmanned drones the endurance to provide continuous surveillance of Earth’s oceans, both on the surface and below. In conjunction with networked orbital platforms and shore-based missile batteries with global striking range, the ability of traditional naval units to conceal and defend themselves on (and below) the oceans effectively vanished.
At the same time, space ventures were burgeoning. The first fusion torchship flew in the year 2044, and 2045 later came to be known as the Year of the Big Lift, the start of large-scale human expansion into cislunar space and the solar system. The “future” decisively overtook the U.S. defense establishment; it was high time for commensurate infrastructural changes. A review of all U.S. treaties and alliances, and the structure of the Defense Department, was ordered in 2027, at the end of the Western Pacific War; several outdated treaties and alliances were reworked or discarded during this time, and new ones established. An extensive critical study of the defense establishment conducted during the 2030s looked at future needs balanced against emerging technologies and cost. The result was the Defense Reorganization Act of 2047—the biggest change in the defense establishment since the end of World War II.
The problems that needed solving were significant. A century after the 1947 act of the same name, U.S. military leaders realized that the major unfortunate consequence of that earlier act was bureaucratic bloat. Establishing the U.S. Air Force effectively re-created in parallel the upper-echelon administrative overhead of the Army. In the years to come, the Army would re-develop an aviation arm of its own to carry out those mission areas gradually abdicated by the Air Force. The Navy’s bureaucracy expanded, as well, until by 2020 the Navy had more admirals than ships. Too many jobs that could be done by civilians were being done by military personnel, and jobs that realistically needed to be done by service personnel were being handled by civilian contractors at tremendous expense. Procurement of new equipment and weapons systems was a broken process, taking far too much time from RFP to production, driving costs beyond affordability. Career paths for personnel at all levels were clogged with ancillary requirements that degraded proficiency in core military skills and war-fighting capability. By 2045, even the need for, and viability of, having a navy was being called into question.
The beginning of the torchship era put such issues to rest.
One of the longest-running debates in the U.S. defense establishment was over the control of space
-based assets. Who should exercise this control? The Navy, or the Air Force, or should it be a joint effort? Should the Army play a significant role? Cases could be made for all arguments. Air Force involvement in space began as an outgrowth of the strategic ICBM mission, while the Navy’s interests in space centered largely on satellites used for ISR, GPS, and communications. While both Air Force and Navy personnel participated in the pioneering era of manned spaceflight, the Navy could claim almost every milestone: the first American in space, the first American to orbit Earth, the first and last man on the moon during the Apollo era, the first untethered spacewalk, the first manned space-shuttle mission—all carried out by then– or former naval aviators. When it was time to organize the service branch that would take on the mantle for space-based defense, the Navy got the call.
It was a logical choice. Many analogies could to be drawn between a torchship and an oceangoing surface ship or a submarine. Torchships were treated as “ships,” after all, with a captain and crew and near-identical organizational guidelines. They derived their power from onboard nuclear-fusion plants and nuclear reactors, and their crews, like those of submarines, operated in a similarly claustrophobic, hostile environment, something the Navy had long experience with. Given that oceangoing naval forces were going the way of the dinosaur, having the Navy take over space-based defense was also a practical evolutionary step. The U.S. Navy was technically older than the nation itself, and provision for the Navy and its maintenance was mandated in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. The Navy was the principal combatant of the last major war the country had fought, and, frankly, most Americans couldn’t imagine being without a navy.
In some ways, the 2047 act resulted in a return to an older style of doing things. Prior to the Defense Reorganization Act of 1947, the U.S. Army was almost entirely responsible for land-based campaigns, while the U.S. Navy was responsible for combat operations at sea. Under the new act their division of responsibility would persist—the Army would assume responsibility for terrestrial defense, while the Navy would exercise jurisdictional control over space beyond Low Earth Orbit. Since one of the principal goals of the 2047 act was to reduce bureaucracy and bloat, the opportunity was taken to streamline the U.S. Armed Forces. Many of the same technologies rendering oceangoing navies obsolete lent themselves to reuniting the missions of the Army and the Air Force. Accordingly, the Air Force was folded back into the Department of the Army. Organizationally, it now fell under the purview of the Army in the same way the Marine Corps fell under that of the Department of the Navy: as a distinct but somewhat subordinate structure. The Marine Corps, as well, lost some of its hard-won independence, becoming smaller, more automated, and more tightly tied to the Navy than it had been in over a century. From an administrative standpoint, the bureaucracy of the defense establishment was cut by over thirty percent practically overnight.
Recruiting, training, and officer accession underwent major revision in all branches of the service. Notably, changes in worldwide education systems led to changes in the service academies. To reduce costs and refocus on core military skills, all service academies went from traditional four-year degree programs to one-year graduate-level “trade” schools aimed at turning qualified enlisted personnel with baccalaureate-equivalent credentials (later universally denoted “Level-Three”) into commissioned officers. Since the 2047 act required all nonmedical officer candidates to complete at least four years of enlisted service, it made the academies’ job of “militarizing” officer candidates somewhat superfluous. The role of warrant officers was expanded in all branches of the armed forces, in some billets replacing commissioned officers (most notably in USN and USAF tactical squadrons). Because of automation advances and reduced manpower requirements, it became common for commissioned officers of a lower rank to fill billets formerly filled by higher-ranking officers. An obvious case in point is Marine Corps combat squadrons such as VMF-52, which normally carried a roster of only six human pilots and was commanded by an O-3. Throughout the defense establishment and the broader military-industrial complex, entire classes of billets relating to programs and hardware acquisitions which were formerly held by general officers were relegated either to field-grade officers or to civilians with prior service. Post-2047, veterans were prohibited by law from taking jobs with defense contractors for a period of five years following their end of active service, to prevent conflicts of interest while still serving on active duty.
The period from 2047 to 2060 saw the initial development and construction of the “modern” spacefaring navy, not just for the U.S. but for other spacefaring nations as well. It was an exciting time marked by rapid innovation, research and development, trial and error. In many ways it mirrored the post-WWII decades of the 1950s and 1960s, when developments of jet aircraft, nuclear-powered ships, and weapons systems like guided missiles transformed the entire technological landscape. U.S.-numbered fleets were named for the orbit they centered on—the 3rd Fleet for Earth’s orbit, the 4th Fleet for Mars and the asteroid belt, and, by the time of the First Interplanetary War, the 5th Fleet, based at Jupiter and covering the entire outer solar system.
The defense reviews leading up to the 2047 act were controversial, parochial, and at times fraught with bitter conflict. Pride and tradition ran strong and deep throughout the entire defense establishment, and no organization wanted to be left holding the proverbial short end of the stick. In the end, the 2047 act produced what it was meant to: leaner, more streamlined armed forces designed to serve a spacefaring nation that had territories ranging from Luna to Jupiter and was heading rapidly for the twenty-second century and the challenges it would bring.
Acknowledgements
A hearty thanks and “Bravo Zulu” to my editor, Anne Ross. This book was my first experience working with a professional editor and she made it pain-free and very educational for me. While gratefully adopting the majority of her editorial inputs, there are certain portions and items I kept unchanged from the original manuscript. As such, any errors within this text are my own.
Nobody completes an undertaking like this without the support of their family and friends. I would like to thank mine for their optimistic encouragement along the way. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my parents and step-parents, who instilled in me an early love of reading and gave me experiences which inspired my imagination. Last but not least, I would like to express my love and thanks to Andrea Smith, my wife of almost thirty years. Her loving support was instrumental in making this work possible.
About the author
Brian J. Smith is a 1990 graduate of the University of Southern California, which he attended on an NROTC scholarship. Upon graduation he was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy and served several years on active duty. He has been a commercial pilot since 2000, currently residing in Boise, Idaho. He can be contacted through Centauri-Evergreen Publishing, at [email protected].