Building Victoria: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic: Aeon 14 (The Intrepid Saga Book 3)

by M. D. Cooper

  Nano, (nanoprobes, nanobots, etc…) – Refers to very small technology or robots. Something that is nanoscopic in size is one thousand times smaller than something that is microscopic in size.

  Noctus – The name given for the lower caste of the Sirius system. The Noctus operate the mining platforms and refineries surrounding Sirius (Sirius A).

  Pico, (picotech, picobots, etc…) – Refers to technology on a pico-scale—one thousand times smaller than nanotech.

  After a series of accidents that nearly consumed an entire dwarf world, picotech research was banned in the Sol system.

  Platoon – A military unit consisting of roughly 30 soldiers. In the TSF a standard Marine platoon has three squads, a staff sergeant (often a gunnery sergeant if it is a weapons platoon) and a second lieutenant as the platoon commander.

  Railgun – Railguns fire physical rounds, usually small pellets at speeds up to 10 kilometers per second by pushing the round through the barrel via a magnetic field. The concept is similar to that of a maglev train, but to move a smaller object much faster. Railguns were first conceived of in 1918 and the first actual magnetic particle accelerator was built in 1950. Originally railguns were massive, sometimes kilometers in size. By the twenty-second century reliable versions as small as a conventional rifle had been created.

  Larger versions take the form of orbital railgun platforms which can fire sabot rounds or grapeshot at speeds over a hundred-thousand kilometers per second.

  Ramscoop – A type of starship fuel collection system and engine. They are sometimes also referred to as Bussard ramscoops or ramjets. Ramscoops were considered impractical due to the scarcity of interstellar hydrogen until electrostatic scoops were created that can capture atoms at a much more distant range and funnel them into a starship’s engine.

  Shorts – Because the Noctus live in lower gravity, they are quite tall. In contrast, the Lumins are a more standard human height (averaging just under two meters). As a result, the Noctus derogatively refer to them as Shorts.

  Stasis – Early stasis systems were invented in the year 2541 as a method of ‘cryogenically’ freezing organic matter without using extreme cold (or lack of energy) to do so. The effect is similar in that all atomic motion is ceased, but not by the removal of energy by gradual cooling, but by removing the ability of the surrounding space to accept that energy and motion. There are varying degrees of effectiveness of stasis systems. The FGT and other groups posess the ability to put entire planets in stasis, while other groups only have the technology to put small items, such as people, into stasis. Personal stasis is often still referred to as cryostasis, though there is no cryogenic process involved.

  SOC (Security Operations Center) – This is both the command organization for security on the Intrepid as well as the physical location on the ship where the offices of the SOC are located. The command organization has over two hundred humans and AIs working in the organization to oversee the security of the ship. Physical security departments, both internal and dockside do not operate directly out of the SOC, but have their own divisional locations within the ship.

  Solar mass – A solar mass is an object with the mass of the Sol Star (Earth’s sun) as of the year 2103.

  SolGov – An abbreviation for Solar Government, SolGov was originally analogous to the early Earth U.N. It was the guiding governing body for the Sol system and interfaced with all of the many local governments across multiple worlds.

  After the creation of the Sol Space Federation and the dissolution of the Solar Government, the term is still used to refer to the current government.

  Sol Space Federation (SSF) – Formed in 3301, the Sol Space Federation became a true federal government for the entire Sol system. Unlike SolGov it has full legal authority over its constituent regional powers. The primary member states of the SSF are: The Terran Hegemony, the Mars Protectorate, the Jovian Combine, and the Scattered Worlds.

  Squad – In the TSF Marines a squad consists of three fireteams. Headed up by a sergeant, the squad consist of 13 soldiers. Each squad within a platoon has a number, and each fireteam has a number. Thus, one/one refers to the first fireteam in the first squad in the platoon.

  T3 (Tritium) – T3 (3H) is an isotope of hydrogen where the nucleus of the atom is made up of one proton and two neutrons as opposed to just a single proton and no neutrons in regular hydrogen (protium). T3 is radioactive and has a half-life of 12.32 years. It decays into Helium-3 through this process.

  TSF – The Terran Space Force was originally the space force of the Terran Hegemony, but after the formation of the Sol Space Federation, the Terran Hegemony used its position of pre-eminence to make its military the federal military. Over the years elements of different national and regional militaries merged into the TSF, bringing new elements and a mix of organizational structures to the military.

  The space force is a mix of naval and army disciplines. It consists of sailors, Marines, pilots, and the regular army.

  v – Represented as a lower case v in italics, this symbol stands for velocity. If a ship is increasing its speed it will be said that it is increasing v.

  Vector – Vectors used are spatial vectors. Vector refers to both direction and rate of travel (speed or magnitude). Vector can be changed (direction) and increased (speed or magnitude).

  PLACES

  Alpha Centauri – A 3-star system, Alpha Centauri contains two yellow stars (originally known as simply A and B, but named Prima and Yogi after colonization) and a red dwarf known as Proxima which is the closet star to Sol.

  Albion – The third planet in the Kapteyn’s Star system, Albion is a terrestrial world that masses over that of seven Earths. It completes its orbit of Kapteyn’s Star once every 121.5 days at an average orbital distance of 0.31AU. It has an orbital eccentricity of 0.23, which sometimes makes it the second planet in the Kapteyn’s Star system.

  The world spends much of its time outside the Kapteyn’s Star system’s habitable zone and does not have liquid water on its surface. Also, due to its mass, it is a high-g world with an average surface gravity of 2.1g.

  Albion is orbited by twelve moons.

  Anne – The solitary moon of Victoria. Anne is a carbon and silicate moon with no atmosphere or liquids. It is tidally locked to Victoria.

  Brilliance Station – Orbital station over Incandus, the capital of the Sirius system.

  Callisto – This moon is the 2nd largest orbiting Jupiter and is the third largest moon in the Sol system (following Ganymede and Triton). Its circumference is over 15,000 kilometers, compared to Luna’s (Earth’s moon) circumference of just under 11,000 kilometers, although before both moons were terraformed it was only half as dense as Luna.

  In 3122 construction of the Callisto Orbital Habitat began around Callisto, a project which turned Callisto into the home of 3 trillion humans over the following millennia. By the year 3718 the mass of the orbital habitat greatly outweighed the mass of Callisto itself and the moon was anchored to the Cho. Because of this the Cho is now often referred to as a semi-orbital habitat.

  During the construction of the Cho, there came a point where the multiple concentric rings obscured all view of space from the surface of Callisto. Ultimately the surface of the moon was reduced from a terraformed world to little more than a waste processing system for the orbital habitat. It is no longer considered a habitable world and no humans live there.

  Cruithne (3735 Cruithne) – This asteroid, named after an early people of Ireland, was discovered in 1986. It is a unique asteroid which is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth. This means, that with rare exception it is always on the same side of Sol as Earth and is spends half its time accelerating toward Earth, and the other half of its time accelerating away from earth.

  From an Earth-bound perspective that makes Cruithne appear as though it is orbiting Earth, and when it was first discovered it was thought to be Earth’s second moon.

  Originally a 5 kilometer asteroid, Cruithne quickly became a signifi
cant trading hub because of its ability to function as a useful cargo slingshot platform to OuterSol. Cruithne is not a part of any planetary government, nor does it fall under the jurisdiction of the Terran Hegemony. It is, however, subject to the Sol Space Federation.

  High Terra – As the second planetary ring created, (completed in 2519), High Terra is more elegant than the M1R, though Earth’s planetary ring has slightly less habitable space than its Marsian counterpart. The ring also houses the city of Raleigh, which is the capital of both Earth and the Terran hegemony.

  High Victoria – The station at the top of Victoria’s space elevator is named High Victoria after Earth’s ring. The initial station was completed only eleven years after the Hyperion accords.

  Ignitus – Name of the innermost planet orbiting Sirius (Sirius A). This world was originally named Vishnu, but after the Luminescent Society gained control of the Sirius system, it was renamed.

  InnerSol – This is the common name for the both the region of the inner solar system as well as the political groups that comprise that region. The boundary for InnerSol is nominally the main asteroid belt, but this is somewhat nebulous because some worlds within the belt are considered part of InnerSol (such as Ceres) while other sections, such as the Trojan asteroids are part of the Jovian Combine and thus in OuterSol.

  Jovian Combine – The JC encapsulates all worlds in OuterSol—most notably Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and all their satellites. After the construction of the Cho, Jovian space began an upward rise toward not only housing the majority of all the humans in the galaxy, but also becoming the center or commerce and culture. In the year 4123 InnerSol and the Terran dominated SolGov was facing a regional government that was effectively more powerful than the federal government.

  Jupiter – The largest planet in the Sol System, Jupiter has more mass than all the other planets combined.

  In 2644 a process of heating up Jupiter was initiated. Targeted impacts of KBOs (Kuiper belt objects) caused pressure waves in the planet’s hydrogen clouds. These waves triggered fusion in deuterium rich layers of Jupiter. This process has not made Jupiter a brown dwarf, or a star of any kind, it is just a much hotter planet, providing warmth and energy for the worlds nearby.

  This process has been refined over the years and now the warming effect is generated by accumulating and igniting pools of Helium3 within Jupiter.

  Kapteyn’s Star – This star is 12.8 light-years from Sol and has the second highest relative motion to Sol of all the stars in the human sphere. Kapteyn’s is estimated to be over ten billion years old and was formed in a dwarf galaxy outside the Milky Way. Unlike most stars it has a polar orbit around the galactic core and also orbits the galaxy retrograde. It spends most of its time above or below the disk of the galaxy.

  Because of its age, Kapteyn’s has fewer heavy elements and has a more bluish tint than most red dwarfs. It also has 32% of Sol’s mass and 7% of its luminosity.

  Kapteyn’s is orbited by two major planets and seven larger dwarf worlds. It has also picked up hundreds of small worlds and asteroids during its journeys through the cosmos.

  Its planets (in nominal order) are:

  · Victoria (major planet)

  · Alexandria

  · Albion (major planet)

  · Athens

  · Sparta

  · Knossos

  · Perseus (location of the gamma site research facility)

  · Troy

  · Tarsis

  Kap, The – The name the crew of the Intrepid calls “Kapteyn’s Star”. Similar to “the Sun”.

  Landfall – The capital of the Victoria colony. At the time of the Battle of Victoria the city had a population of two million.

  LHS 1565 / GJ 1061 – Named “Estrella de la Muerte” by the crew of the Intrepid as it passed through the system, this star is a small red dwarf 12 light-years from Sol. With a diameter not much larger than Jupiter’s it has roughly 11% the mass of Sol and 1% its luminosity. No significant planetary objects exist in the system which only possesses a few asteroid belts.

  Lucent (Sirius B) – The second star in the Sirius system, formerly known as Sirius B. This white-dwarf remnant has a strong magnetic shield which protects the worlds and habitats there from the harsh radiation of Sirius A.

  Luminescent Space – The region of space surrounding Lucent, the second star in the Sirius system. This space is largely restricted only to members of Luminescent Society.

  Mars Inner Shipyards (MIS) – After the MCEE was constructed, which made it possible to dock at a station further out from Mars and have materials transported down the gravity well, the Mars Inner Shipyards were constructed. Because high-tech manufacturing was occurring on the M1R as well, it became a better location for shipbuilding than the MOS and through the latter half of the fourth millennia and beginning of the fifth it overtook the MOS as InnerSol’s premier shipyard.

  Mars 1 Ring (M1R or MIR) – The first planetary ring’s construction begin in the year 2215 and through a massive effort was completed in 2391. The ring is just over 1600 kilometers wide and wraps around Mars at the planet’s geosynchronous orbital point making it 128,400 kilometers long.

  The ring is not flat like a natural ring (such as Saturn’s) but faces the planet. It does not orbit at a speed to match the surface of Mars, but rotates at a slower speed to provide exactly 1g of gravity on the inside surface. Walls over 100 kilometers high line the inside of the ring and hold in atmosphere. The total surface area of the ring is 205 million kilometers. This is half the surface area of Earth and 72% more area than Earth’s landmass. Considering that M1R has hundreds of levels it contains more than 100 times the surface area of planet Earth.

  The completion of M1R definitively proved that mankind’s future home was in space and not on the surface of worlds. In the year 4123 the population of the M1R had reached over seven hundred billion people.

  Mars Protectorate – is the name for the political entity that encapsulates Mars, its moons, the Mars 1 Ring, and several asteroids in the main asteroid belt.

  MCEE – The Mars Central Elevator Exchange is a secondary orbital ring around the planet Mars, which connects all of the outer habitats and shipyards to the Mars 1 Ring (M1R). Because of the need to keep gravity under 1g, all habitats and shipyards connected to the M1R must orbit Mars at a slower speed than the main ring. As a result, they must connect to it via elevators which can move along the surface of the MCEE. Maglev elevators can then travel from locations such as the Mars Outer Shipyards to the M1R without requiring passengers or cargo to transfer to other transports.

  Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS) – This shipyard was once the premier shipyard in all of the Sol system. Built in 3229, the shipyard’s main structure is over 1000 kilometers in length with thousands of cubic kilometers of equipment and detached service yards surrounding it. The shipyard’s pre-eminence faded as the conditions which made the MIS more economical improved. In 4123 it was still one of the busiest shipyards in the Sol system, but until it won the Intrepid’s contract it had not done a high-profile build in decades.

  New Eden – Known on charts as 82 Eridani, this stellar system was terraformed by the FGT in the late forty-first and early forty-second centuries. The stellar primary is a Sol-like star with two Earth-like planets in orbit.

  “New Eden” also is the name the colonists gave to the first of the two Earth-like worlds in the system.

  Noctilucent Space – This region of the Sirius system is the area around Sirius (Sirius A) where the Noctus people work the Lumin refineries and mining platforms. It is a harsh region filled with radiation from Sirius and navigational hazards from a millennia of mining.

  OuterSol – Is the region of space between the main asteroid belt and the inside of the main Kuiper belt—though this has shifted as political entities shift.

  Perseus – The seventh planet in the Kapteyn’s Star system, Perseus is a cold, ice-world with an average orbital distance of 7AU from its host star. The world is small, but ha
s a higher than average density for the system. Surface gravity is 0.36g.

  Perseus is known as the Gamma site and is where Earnest’s secret picotech research base is located.

  Radius – The seventh moon of the gas giant, Nacreous, which orbits Sirius (Sirius A). This moon is a resort world for Luminescent Society.

  Sol – This is the name of the star which in antiquity was simply referred to as ‘The Sun’. Because humans call the star that lights up their daytime sky ‘the sun’ in every system it became common practice to refer to Sol by its proper name.

  Sol system – The Sol system used to be referred to as the solar system. However, as humans began to first think about, and then actually colonize other stellar systems it became obvious that the term was very Sol-centric. The common usage became to call the systems simply by the name of the star. For example: Tau Ceti system, Alpha Centauri system, etc… Because humankind’s home star is named Sol, the term Sol system came into use.

  Scattered Worlds – is a political entity that contains many of the trans-Neptunian worlds. Its nominal inner border is the main Kuiper belt and its outer border is the Hills Oort cloud. The capital of the Scattered Worlds is Makemake.