The last message received from Maxwell ‘Mac’ Carme:
“This damn hydrogen. It fuels our engines, heaters, and coffee pots. Everything we eat or drink is made and shipped in from some other pathetic rock.Thats how the Corporations keep us under contract. For the last fifteen years I’ve been diving into Jupiter, risking my ass to collect it for them. I never could make ends meet without smuggling on the side. I’m too old for those kinds of jobs now. The truth is they own us. Its all most people will ever know.
Listen to me. If you want to be a free man, you need money. And to get money, you need a ship. A hard working man might live long enough to pay off his contract. But they’ve still got you by the balls, you still need them for gas. There’s always a debt to pay. But if you had a means, a way to refine something better, more efficient, for yourself. You’d be set for life. You’d never owe anyone again. What I’m trying to say is, I’m come across some information, I hope you get to it quick, you should know where to look.
Listen Trip, next time you get thrown out an airlock, I won’t be around to save you. I pissed off the wrong people this time, the kind with suits. So I’m leaving you the ship also. After all the times you bailed me out, call us even. I couldn’t, but with that luck of yours, you might be able to pull it off.”
History:
As with the first space race, it was a cold war that spurred countries to colonize the solar system. A new imperialism expanded national borders to colonies throughout the inner system, money was fed into the first Corporations to engineer newer and better space fleets. The politicians resurrected the call of manifest destiny, to explore new worlds in the most literal sense. Surprisingly enough, colonies elsewhere became not only survivable but profitable. Ships of war were built to protect these growing colonies as the way was paved for life throughout the system.
The largest caldera on the planet was located in the western plains of North America. When it suddenly erupted without warning, it was Pompeii on an unimaginable scale. The entire continent was covered in at least 15 feet of deadly volcanic ash. The sky was blacked out. It signaled the collapse of the western hemisphere, and the cold war became world war. The death toll in the following quarter-century is not measured in numbers, but in a percent of the world’s previous population. The surviving percentage is estimated to be somewhere between 15-30 percent. The United Earth Resistance formed to counter the totalitarian Dynasty empire, and was largely crushed. The Corporations, replacing government throughout the solar system, struck the Dynasty from space with hateful vengeance. It was the first and last large scale war in space, the price of orbital combat too costly to consider again. The Dynasty, though in control of the habitable regions of Earth, would never be allowed off the surface.
In the century following, mankind had found a state of normalcy. Mars colonies flourished, and the Corporations dissolved to competition, ever expanding. Civilization now exists largely unchanged on planetoids and moons as far as Jupiter. The Jovian system is rapidly developing after the Gallileo Spaceport was recently completed, facilitating shipments back to the asteroid belt as well as throughout the Jovian inner moon colonies. The massive volcanic refineries of it’s inner moons provide a reliable energy source to process metals on a large scale.
Unfortunately, this Corporate surge into the system has caused friction with prior settlers who have been forcibly displaced. Settlers who have lost their direct sources of materiel have increasingly turned to crime and black marked resources. Piracy or Corporate assets in the region is on the rise, especially in raids from the alleged Trojan asteroid clouds. Armed patrols and This frontier system has proven slow to accept Corporate authority in the region.