A

A

A

A

A

A short but brutal early conflict over Luna's southern polar deposits of Helium-3, sparked by an illegal occupation of corporate mining sites by the lunar surface forces of the Shanghai Cooperative Economic Regional Alignment (SCERA) bloc. It featured the first ever orbit to surface assault by infantry onto another celestial body when Marines of the United American Continental Federation assaulted SCERA occupied mining sites. It was also the first major space engagement in human history as the Lunar fleets of both SCERA and the UACF exchanged fire. The fighting concluded with a ceasefire and the evacuation of SCERA personnel from the Southern Lunar Polar Region. This would be the first of three major conflicts over Luna and it's resources during the 2100s.

A collaborative effort between private entities from both the UACF and EFEC, it is a modular compact fusion reactor design utilizing electromagnetic and gravitic containment and compression methods with direct thermoelectric and radio-electro power systems. It goes online successfully to serve as a central power plant at the Earth-Moon L1 Point. A high efficiency propulsion configuration is later tested in August of the same year. This lead in technological capability however is soon lapsed by less capable but still near copies provided by state and corporate espionage to the rival blocs.

A

Dysomnia, the tiny body orbiting the dwarf planet Eris is discovered to be an extra-solar body, further examination finds a mineral not found anywhere else in the solar system. Upon testing it is found to have various miraculous properties including room temperature super conductivity. The expedition, being a consortium of different factions, sends samples to the various powers of the Solar System and more research is commissioned. The mineral is later named for the rock hopper who first extracted a sample, Callenite for Marvis Henry Callen, a citizen of the UACF's Jovian colonies.

An off and on conflict over the settlement and exploitation of Saturn’s largest moon. The petrochemicals that soak its surface and atmosphere are valuable for countless industrial applications throughout the solar system. As a result those that dwell within its gravity well have often found themselves at odds with one another, the conflict fanned by the larger entities to gain greater footholds on the cold moon’s surface. Either driven by an urge for finality or simply bluster, the larger corporate entities had taken a more direct hand in the more recent brush up of the conflict. Calling in more and more of their assets until finally the powers that be themselves stepped in, unwilling to stand down. Finally the war spilled beyond Titan’s and ultimately Saturn’s gravity well as official military forces became involved and began striking their opposite number’s assets and then finally industry.

The successful testing of a callenite based FTL drive.

It didn’t take things long to spiral, an errant guided weapon, a nuclear warhead too close to a habitat. Accidents leading to escalation leading to more targets being hit as nearly a century of military industrial progress and lethality was expended against the targets it was created to destroy. From Mercury to Pluto infrastructure was hit, habitats and cities destroyed by atomic, kinetic, or even chemical attacks. Even Earth wasn’t spared, its surface ravaged by nuclear and kinetic bombardment, the final nail for its biosphere being a redirected resource satellite impacting mainland Asia. In all it would take a month for the strikes and counterstrikes to conclude, arsenals expended or destroyed, or simply abandoned in case a counterstroke was on the way. Those minding them realizing the war was already over.

In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today. - Herman Kahn

Of the thirty billion that inhabited the solar system in the previous year only twelve million remain alive, most were killed either directly by strikes or by the consequence of living in the artificial environment of space and terrestrial habitats as life support systems failed or consumable resources stopped arriving. Earth by now nothing more than a brown and gray marble as it entered a new ice age brought on by man. Those that remained gathered wherever there was fuel, air, or resources to survive. One of those places was the remote FTL research facility, who on the eve of the war had a breakthrough and tested their first prototype drive. Still slow by the scheme of galactic distances it nonetheless gave humanity a bridge to the stars when they most needed it.

Hello. Is anybody there? Anybody at all? - Joe Huxley, The Day After

It was a rather simple and AI derived equation, either the disparate remains of the various blocs could cooperate or the species would die. Something which in the past had acted as a powerful motivator for all kinds to simply tuck aside previous issues and prejudices in the name of common survival and this time was no different. A modest fleet of survivors had collected out at the edge of Sol, all around the experimental FTL facility as the consortium of interests that ran it more or less laid out what they’d need to save all of humanity or rather the scraps of it.

Those who couldn’t contribute to the effort were put into cryogenic storage for the duration and those that could soon found themselves working non-stop. Picking over the remains of human civilization for anything that could be useful toward the creation of several arks. Built from jerry rigged and closed Island-3 space colony cylinders the effort took years but soon enough to carry humanity to a new home had been fabricated from the corpse of Sol. With final checks, hopes, and dreams, the improvised craft departed, their primitive warp type FTL drives ensuring a long slow journey toward what mankind hoped would be a cluster of habitable worlds far below the galactic elliptic.

Named for the astronomer that discovered the region during a freak gravitational lensing event, it had been assumed that it had simply been a freak of nature. An unusual set of circumstances during stellar formation that allowed numerous hospitable terrestrial worlds to form out of the ether. This assumption ended the moment the fleet arrived in the center of the region.

The colony fleet’s ‘up’ crew discovered would soon be identified as a Relic Translight Gate, one of many pieces of technology the named aliens seemingly left behind. As humanity slowly spun back up into a waking state and spread out into their new home certain realities were discovered.

The first being that this place was built, all of the worlds terraformed to a specific specification that was perfect for their creators and oddly enough humanity. Linking this cache of habitable systems where the gates, who's technology, seemingly imbued with Callenite in such a way that is still beyond human understanding, allows for rapid travel across the lightyears to the next gate. Even with centuries of study mankind can only manage a pale imitation of the technology. Other caches of technology encountered as humanity colonized their new home included working and practical plasma based shielding, more effective super-luminal communications, and several leaps in materials science.