This update is delayed, but I’d done a little writing on Battle School, PriPro and a Space Arc short over the past few days. Under quota, but it’s at least worth mentioning. The reason these notices have been delayed is because things have been a little hectic of late. Things should settle down in the next couple days. No idea what I’m going to work on in the near future. I know I said I was going to work on TTWC2, but I haven’t managed it yet. I really need to do the work before I’m all but ready to conk out. Believe it or not, it actually takes a bit of focus to write on a novel. Well, we’ll see what comes. Stay tuned.

I deliberately kept the Empyrean cloaked in mystery in Tico2, but now I can reveal a little more of the background. We start with Project New Moon, a program to build massive artificial moons as habitats for the Orbitals. Potentially, these units could be used as forward colonies when the Ringe-Wahl Act expired and the Union could legally expand beyond the bounds of the solar system. Five were planned initially, but only three of them were completed. (Lydia Han was born on one of these, Selene 04.) By some means, the AI calling itself the Shekinah was embedded in Selene 03’s central computer and seized control of all systems. Whether the Shekinah was seriously deluded into a genuine God complex or if it was all part of some experimental routine in its programming is uncertain. Nehema seemed to believe her sister was genuinely insane, but she isn’t the most honest broker of information. From the time the Shekinah took over Selene 03, the Age of Vilon began. The history of the Empyrean is divided into ages named after the levels of Heaven, which is also used as the name for Selene 03 itself.

The Age of Vilon lasted from 089 to 101. It was a period of violence and disorder as the Shekinah sought to impose Empyrean society on a largely unwilling populace. Obviously, the Shekinah won out in the end and the hold-outs against its authority were purged. This led into the Age of Rakia, which lasted from 101 to 109. During this time, there was a massive baby boom in a bid to raise the population to the desired standard of 144,000 people and the initial buildup of the Empyrean fleet. You might be asking how all this was accomplished. Artificial gestation accounted for a large number of births (and in the larger game, this was intended to replace old-fashioned methods of procreation), while a number of blacksites were appropriated to fuel the Empyrean war engine. As the Empyrean society began to settle, the Age of Rakia gave way to the Age of Shehakim. During this period, the Empyrean fleets started ranging and had their first encounters with the Union, which the Shekinah dubbed Amalek. Were it not for Nehema’s intervention in the Battle of Selene 03, the Union forces would have likely been defeated and the Empyrean would have entered the Age of Zebul, in which the the outer colonies would have been targeted for conquest and integrated into the Empyrean. The culmination of the Shekinah’s plan would be the Age of Arabot, in which all Union space would be under the Shekinah’s control. I’m actually considering an If Arc story with that very scenario.

Now, as for Empyrean society itself, it is based around a corrupted version Judaism with elements of the Kabbalah and any pragmatic adaptations to suit the Shekinah’s purposes. The people are divided into Twelve Tribes of 12,000 each and ranked according to the angelic hierarchy found in the Zohar. The common citizens are the Ishim and then there are the military ranks: the Bene Elohim, the Elohim, the Elim, the Hashmalim, and the Ophanim. The Hayyoth are priest-magistrates, 30 per tribe. There are seven Seraphim heading up each of the seven fleets and then the three supreme commanders of the military, the Erelim, and finally the twelve princes heading each of the Twelve Tribes, the Malachim. Among the Ishim, certain men of their numbers are named rulers of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. Similarly, in the military, among the Bene Elohim are rulers of tens, but it’s Elohim that act as rulers of fifties, Elim as rulers of hundred, and Hashmalim as rulers of thousands. (The military being the military, ranks are more explicit.) This means that life is strictly regimented for civilians as it is for the military, with all duties and responsibilities given religious significance. By the Age of Shehakim, Empyrean society was pretty well settled and anyone who dissented with official doctrine and policy either kept it to themselves or were quickly dispatched as heretics.

I think we’ll leave things here and save any more in-depth treatment for future posts. Hopefully this has shed a little light on the mysterious Empyrean. We’ll see what inspiration strikes me for the next commentary post. Stay tuned.

Since I’m winding things down with the Tico series, let’s spend a little time talking about its embarrassing origins. I made a reference to my painfully derivative era when I was a middle schooler in my post about the utility of creative larceny. After the completion of Mesozoic World, my Jurassic Park rip-off, I started in on a sci-fi that would rip off not only Star Wars but Star Trek as well. (How’s that for resolving the fandom rivalry? A malformed amalgamation birthed in the mind of 12-year-old.) The name of this creation was Galactic Strife. (It was some time before I came to realize that raiding the thesaurus did not in fact constitute originality.) I don’t actually have the original documentation, so trying to remember the details is difficult over 20 years later. I know at very least Matt Harold and Ibrahim Mfume got their origins here. (Mfume was originally a white guy named Abner Sanford, believe it or not.)

I remember the next project better, a supernatural thriller borrowing a lot of from the vibe of Aliens called The Phantom Tower. While I never actually wrote anything for Galactic Strife, I did write The Phantom Tower, though there is no extant copy and the preliminary sketches and notes were all destroyed. In this story, a joint task force of Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Marines were tasked with investigating this skyscraper subject to bizarre occurrences. (I think the supernatural angle ended up being a fake-out to act as a distraction while a coup was launched to overthrow the US government. It was just a touch convoluted.) Jack Grisson and Ally O’Connor got their origins here as Marines in the task force and I believe Jeff Wallace was part of the technical support crew as a reworking of the Dennis Nedry expy Dennis Johnson from Mesozoic World. Miranda showed up as a Space Marine in the sequel, which tried to rehabilitate some ideas from Mesozoic World in space, blending elements of DOOM and the lesser known FPS Blake Stone (which happened to be on the shareware CD I made so much use of). No actual writing was done on the sequel, I don’t think, and though I think I wanted to have a third book, I’m pretty sure no major work went into it.

Though all the materials related to Galactic Strife and the Phantom Tower series were destroyed beforehand, I wound up recycling some of the characters when I began work on what would grow into the Ticonderoga series after completing the initial conceptual work for Knight of Gladius (or Warriors of Swordtree as it was known back then, circa ’95, I believe). However, I think I’ll save a discussion of Version 1 of the series for another time. You know, unlike the KoG series, which is now in its seventh version, there are only four versions of the Tico series, possibly because I’ve only been through the thing once. Will it see ten years of changes like KoG has? Who knows? Stay tuned.

I wrapped up the one Space Arc short I hadn’t quite finished the day before, but that didn’t amount to much, so I then found myself working on Everyday Magic. Perhaps if I could get at least a ten-chapter headstart, I might alternate between EM and Junker Jorg. Then again, it may be better to focus on finishing one serial run rather than having two Cross Arc stories running at the same time. I’ll think about it. Stay tuned.

I finished another Space Arc short and made good headway on yet another.  I don’t know if I’ll be sticking to the Space Arc throughout the week or not. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I pretty well wrapped up Chapter 28 of Tico4, which means the book is pretty well taken care of, but I’m going to do a read-through first before making a formal announcement of its completion. I also completed two shorts set after the events of the story, which I’ll likely put out shortly after serialization of Tico4 wraps in September. I’ll probably divide the remainder of my time on a few more shorts and the read-through of Tico4. After that, I’ll start turning my attention to Junker Jorg so I’ll have a good head-start when serialization begins. Might try to move “The Case of the Striped Leopard” along too. Stay tuned.

I really let myself get wrapped up in review fever and neglected the writing that should be my primary focus. I pretty well made up for the lost time, though, finishing Chapter 31 of Tico4 and making good headway in the final section of Chapter 28. I should be able to effectively wrap the book in one more sitting. That’ll make Tico4 my ninth completed novel. I may go ahead and work on some Space Arc shorts after that so that the Space Arc won’t be completely neglected once I start moving forward with Cross Arc stories. Stay tuned.

To speak on a meta level, one of the key reasons space fighters feature so prominently in the Ticonderoga series is due to the strong influence of the Wing Commander series on the story. Also, the stakes don’t feel quite as high for remote drone operators as for pilots physically in the cockpit. Also, the deep impression in the popular consciousness of the heroic dogfighting of the two world wars have been perpetuated through major works of science fiction and will continue to be a staple even as technology seems to be bringing the classic concept of dogfighting more and more into obsolescence. However, rather than simply handwave all this, I do try to make some in-universe justification for it all, which I will explain below.

Before the start of the Sheol War, superlight spacecraft (under 50m in length and 300t in weight) were mostly limited to unmanned drones and the occasional custom curiosity. A large part of the reason for this was because the Schauer Fusion Propulsion System, which was the cornerstone of all space travel, could not safely be downscaled any further. At that time, space operations mostly fell under the Navy’s jurisdiction and the prevailing notion was that in any combat situation, the typical patrol escort was the smallest type spacecraft that would be needed. However, even before the Sheolites were identified as such, their small maneuverable craft were proving quite effective. While some in the Navy advocated warships with denser weapons arrays to deliver an impenetrable wall of interlocking fire, the risk of collateral damage was seen as too great, though the fifth generation warships developed during the war were much more heavily armed than their predecessors. Both the Air Force and Naval Aviation saw an opportunity to seize a larger role in the coming conflict and argued in favor of fighting fire with fire with superlight spacecraft.

The superlights would not have been possible without the development of the of the SFPS Mk.VId, a downscaled version of the SFPS previously thought impossible. Though much improved over previous attempts to downscale the SFPS design, the VId was nevertheless unstable and the containment could easily be broke with relatively little damage. Safety systems were put in place to shut down the reactor upon taking damage, but this did not always work and when it did, the superlight was left dead in the water and easy prey for the enemy.

While G-diffuser systems were installed to make the cockpit survivable for a human pilot, the theoretical limits of human reaction time were strained even at the reduced engagement velocity of 100kps. Given these and other concerns, there were many voices who argued against manned superlights, instead advocating either fully independent combat AIs or at least remote operators. The use of independent AI was always politically untenable in the Earth Union. For whatever flaws a human being may have, there is at least clearer accountability in the event something goes wrong. (A discussion on the complex debate on the role of AI in Earth Union society is best saved for another time.) While remote operators at least kept a human in the loop, there were concerns that the connection could be severed or even hijacked by the enemy. (Later review would confirm that the detractors overestimated the Sheolites’ electronic warfare capabilities.) In the end, the advocates of manned superlights won out.

Now that the plan to go forward with manned superlights was going forward, both the crafts themselves and the warships to carry them were being developed alongside the training of the pilots who would fly them. For instance, both Leia Han and Stalinslav Zhukov (who you would better know as Pride of the Seven Deadly Sins) were among the first midshipmen to be trained as pilots for spaceborne carrier operations. In addition, pilots from the terrestrial aviation communities and the pilots of light spacecraft adapted their skills to operate the new superlights. Casualty rates in training were high and even higher in combat, but those who survived helped refine the warfighting doctrine for superlights. Combined with technological advancement, the second generation of pilots (represented by people like Matt and Lydia) were able to gain an advantage over the Sheolites and by the third generation that emerged by the war’s end, clear superiority on the Union side was established.

Following the postwar drawdown of forces, the expense of manned superlights became harder to justify in the changing political climate and worsening economic situation. By the time of the War of the Colonies, the Union had almost completely shifted to remote operators and only when rebel forces succeeded in realizing the concerns of the opponents of remote operators did manned superlights make a resurgence, but by that point it was a race against time to relearn what had already been well-established forty years earlier.

And that should do it for now. There are a number of technological brawls in Union military history and perhaps I’ll get into another in the near future. For my next commentary post, I may talk a little on the embarrassing origins of the Ticonderoga series and some of the early weirdness that was cut before the story saw the light of day. Stay tuned.

I managed to get Chapter 30 of Tico4 mostly finished and made a little progress on Chapter 31 as well. There was also a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials. Trying to detail over 170 years of military technology is no mean task and I still have a lot of gaps to fill.

Now I turn my attention to the Trident War series. I need to do a full read-through/edit of TTWC1 and finish the appendices in time for the update. Stay tuned.

I was doing a lot of work in the peripheral materials about the Earth Union’s powered armor technology and thought I’d share some of that with you. As most of you know, powered exoskeletons have been in development for a while and we may well see field deployment in the next ten or twenty years. There are of course a number of issues to consider, but we’re not going to go too far in depth with that.

By the start of the Earth Union, the original LightSuit S saw limited deployment among heavy weapons operators, combat engineers, construction engineers and materiel transporters. For those of you who have seen Edge of Tomorrow, imagine the Jacket technology scaled down a bit and with a little more armor. Things like mobility and battery life were the primary concerns which kept them from being general issue for combat arms. Subsequent versions improved on the design with modest gains, but the version of the LightSuit without the exoskeletal frame became the standard even though that was not the original plan.

The name LightSuit came from the fact that it was a much lighter and less bulky design than competitors, but there were always plans for larger scale units, but this did not gain much traction (or funding) until the government saw a spike in research funding in the 80s. This research would prove fortuitous because a number of the projects that went into development would prove invaluable in the arms race that kicked off with the start of the Sheol War.

The MediSuit was designed to be self-contained and deployable in all environments. The Mark 15 Heavy Duty EVA Suit developed in the wake of the Lunar Revolt represented the basic template, only the MediSuit was designed specifically for combat roles. One of the first assignments of a young Donovan Graves (future Commandant of the Marine Corps and Hero of the Union) was to serve as a test operator for the MediSuit prototype. The successes of the Mark 0 prototype let to the development of the Mark 1 production model, which began service in April of 100, less than a year after the official declaration of war by the Sheol Empire. The first MEU to fully integrate Mobile Armor saw action the following year with then-Colonel Graves as its commander.

As with the LightSuit before it, the MediSuit’s design went back and forth between the competing goals of strength and mobility. Low-gravity environments made weight less of a concern, but the heavier the armor, the less the mobility in more closed environments. The Mark 3 unit fielded in 108 was the lightest version ever made, but that light armor when added to its glitchy sensors left it widely reviled. The Mark 5 that followed was perhaps an overcompensation, but there were a number of Marines who favored its thick shell and improved load-bearing capacity. The Mark 6 is what you’ll recognize from the story. The 41st MEU on the Ticonderoga was the first unit to use them. Though they had significantly lighter armor than the Mark 5, this was offset by the built-in shield projectors, though their use had to be limited or else the power cells would be used up much more quickly.

The HeavySuit doesn’t show up in the main storyline until late in Tico4. The reason for this is that the things are too big to be practical in most applications. They are more than twice the size of a MediSuit, so they can’t fit in ships or inside buildings. They did, however, prove useful as force multipliers on orbital defense platforms. The ground operations in Mars provided another opportunity for HeavySuits to shine, but for the most part, they’re seen as a waste of money, mostly useful for propaganda and PSYOPS purposes.

We’ll stop here because I don’t want to get too much into the postwar years until I start in on the War of the Colonies Cycle. Hopefully you’ve found this illuminating. Maybe I’ll get into superlight doctrine next time. Stay tuned.