--a primer for the ill-informed
--posted 276-2389 by Jack of All Tirades
(note -- comments are disabled here: this section is strictly fyi. Forums for discussing conspiracy theories and laments for Terra have been set up elsewhere. JoAT)
Throughout the twenty-first century, Earth's "Great Powers" competed to develop the Solar System, although not always without conflict, civilized as they claimed to be. Luna, Mars, the Belt, then onward to the Outer System, they brought barren worlds to life. And then brought death to them anew. Some things, it seemed, would never change.
On the homeworld, the Great Powers pursued endless debates in the United Nations, seldom reaching meaningful agreements, or holding to those they entered into. The U.N. had little power over its member nations, and the largest among them, the Great Powers, understood this. Off-world, however, everything was different. The space-faring nations needed the U.N. to resolve disputes in their settlements off-world. There were far fewer players, the field was nearly level, and the stakes were very high, so a diplomatic body like the U.N. was absolutely vital, and much more viable in space.
So as much as the U.N. grew ever more weak and ineffectual on old Terra, it came to play an all-important role in mankind's expansion into the Solar system, and beyond. By the middle of the 22nd century, U.N. treaties governed exploration, settlement and trade among space-faring nations throughout the entire Solar system. When the first experimental starship set out for Proxima Centauri in 2165, it did so not under the authority of one of the "Great Powers", but rather as a joint venture of all signatories to the Interstellar Exploration Treaty. The Ad Astra was a U.N. vessel, not registered to any single space-faring nation.
The Ad Astra's mission was to explore Sol's nearest stellar neighbor, and demonstrate the new diametric drive. Upon its arrival at Proxima, though, everything changed, and the Ad Astra's crew were given a new mission. The Keepers had been waiting for them, and charged them, as Terra's ambassadors, with bringing their homeworld into the galactic economy. The Keepers sold them FTL technology, on credit, and gave them a warning to use it well, for humanity would not be safe, confined to a single world.
Upon returning to Terra, the mission commander turned over all the Ad Astra's data to the U.N. The General Assembly resolved that, as the debt of paying for FTL technology had been assumed in the name of the entire U.N. membership, the U.N. would maintain control of it. And so the first century of mankind's travels among the stars was entirely under control of the U.N.
Trade missions contacted more alien races, and space colonies were founded near their settlements. Trading with technologically advanced species had unforeseen economic impacts, however, and Terra suffered from a trade imbalance, at first. The U.N. InterStellar Tariff Arbitration Regime was enacted to control interstellar trade, even as the U.N. fell farther and farther behind on its payments to the Keepers for the Proxima drive. Meanwhile, the U.N. colonies chafed under the new trade restrictions, and their alien trading partners called less frequently as human ports became less profitable. And no one could break the U.N. monopoly on FTL travel, because they had wisely forbidden any farther contact with the Keepers.
Until, nearly a century after the Ad Astra's return from Proxima, a much smaller vessel with a similar drive left U.N. space altogether with four crew in hibernation. Fifteen years later, the crew of the General James Doolittle contacted the Keepers at Groombridge 34B, explained why the U.N. payments were behind, and purchased the FTL drive for Terran Interstellar Operations, a non-profit corporation based in Phoenix, Arizona. They assured the Keepers TIO would avoid the UN's mistakes, and pay off its debt quickly. Doolittle was too small to return home; the crew transmitted technical data on the FTL drive back to Terra via a "QED" quantum-entangled device, acquired from the Fluorians. Then they went into hibernation, to wait for the first of their company's new FTL ships to pick them up and return them home to a hero's welcome. Some years later, the promised rescue ship arrived, and found no trace of the Doolittle or its crew. The Keepers had nothing to say on the matter.
In the meanwhile, Terran Interstellar Operations succeeded in breaking the U.N. monopoly on interstellar trade and colonization, and in paying off their debt to the Keepers sooner than expected. When their patent expired, TIO made the design "public domain" and everything changed, yet again. Now, everybody was competing with the U.N. traders, and UNISTAR couldn't control them all. New colonies sprang up almost every year, farther and farther out. The farthest colonies went the distance for a reason -- they wanted to be left alone, and there were so many, nobody could keep track of them all. Most of them were successful, unlike the old core colonies, still muddling along under the "guidance" of UNISTAR.
A century later, UNISTAR was still struggling to catch up when Terra ceased to exist.
The attack had been a long time coming -- it apparently originated at Spica, and traveled for over 200 years at nearly .99C. Thousands of relativistic weapons swept across the system in a matter of hours, moving too swiftly for anyone to see them coming, to try escaping, or to warn anyone else what was happening. When they struck the homeworld, the surface of Terra became a molten holocaust, and the oceans boiled away into the tortured skies. Every settlement on Luna, Mars, and the Galilean moons met much the same fate, on a lesser scale. Colonies on smaller moons and asteroids simply shattered, vaporized instantly by the impact. In the final hours of the attack, on the fringe of Sol's oort cloud, the last comet-herders were just beginning to figure out something was wrong as they went off the air, one by one. And then it was over. There were no survivors.
That's the news from the "rescue" ships returning from Sol system now, three months later. Not all of them come back, though. Whoever, or whatever, destroyed our home system left some nasty surprises behind. UNISTAR is talking about quarantining the system, and they've declared martial law in the core colonies "until the situation stabilizes," whatever that means.
Stability isn't coming anytime soon, though. Rumors are flying faster than the bombs that hit Terra. Nobody knows who launched that strike, but everyone has their favorite theory. Of course lots of people assume it was the "berserkers" even if they've never seen one. Others figure the Keepers got fed up with the U.N. falling behind on their payments for the Proxima drive. Naturally, U.N. supporters blame T.I.O for ruining their perfectly conceived economic plans for mankind. (And we all know things were going so well before T.I.O. came along, right?) So even if T.I.O. isn't to blame, it's convenient to deflect blame away from UNISTAR. Other schools of thought would have us blame the Jovians, the Titans, or even a lost human colony that wanted to make sure it would never be found. That last bit's so crazy it makes me wonder about our species, actually. Maybe whoever did this finally figured out how screwed up we are.
The rumor mill, it seems, is on the verge of a critical overload: what's left of the UNISTAR bureaucracy at Proxima is supposed to be talking about re-uniting all the outer colonies "for the safety of humanity's future." There's also a lot of talk about a UN scout ship that found a planet with an oxygen atmosphere, with intelligent natives, no less. And of course, they were hostile. Nobody knows where it is, or even if it's real -- sounds a little too convenient, finding something like that just when Terra gets wiped out. Here's the worst part; the ship's whole crew was on Terra for debriefing (wait for it...) when the bombs hit! Conspiracy theorists are some sick people. Don't get me started.
And I urge everyone NOT to take this bait. It smells like UNISTAR disinformation to me -- a ploy to send every ship in the outer colonies on a wild goose chase into the middle of nowhere, searching for a planet that isn't there, while they consolidate what's left of their Navy. Forget about who destroyed old Terra; forget about finding a new homeworld. The only rumor with the sweet stench of truth lingering about it is this UNISTAR re-unification business. They're coming to the outer colonies, in force, and we must be ready for them. If we don't want to end up living like those poor suffering bastards in the core colonies, we're going to have to fight.
Or we could run. By some estimates, we lost 200 billion in one day already; wasting more lives fighting against our own people (even UNISTAR) would be tragically pointless. There are already more lost colonies in the outer territories than they'll ever find, and yet more uninhabited systems where would-be settlers could hide from them. We could very well leave them behind forever -- and they'd never find us. But then, of course, everyone we leave behind gets to enjoy UNISTAR's brilliant plans for their future well-being.
It's a hard decision. Welcome to the real world. Check your conscience at the door.
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