Troy Rising: Difference between revisions

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[[Next Sunday A.D.]], an alien race known as the Grtul extend their [[Portal Network]] into Earth's solar system. It is the [[Dawn of an Era]].

Two years later, [[NASA]] has just completed preliminary studies to the studies necessary to begin preliminary design phase of the bid phase on a potential ship to reach, but not enter, the "Gudrum Ring". (Cost: $976 million dollars.)

A year after that, Earth pretty much gets fifty years of [[I Want My Jetpack|space development]] [[Laser-Guided Karma|karma]] all at once. A single Horvath ship comes through the gate. It destroys Mexico City, Shanghai and Cairo in a single attack. (They were warning shots - the most noticeable constructed features on the planet.) Ultimatum: Surrender all stockpiles of precious metals or they continue shooting. Have more for them to take next year or they continue shooting. The Horvath are pirates without galactic representation, but the dominant powers can no more afford to interfere than NATO could send troops to aid a third-world country no-one in the West has heard of. Earth is on its own.

Down-and-out computer tech Tyler Vernon (A somewhat thinly disguised [[Expy]] for [[Schlock Mercenary|Howard Tayler]]) is barely making ends meet when Glatun traders discover that he once wrote ''TradeHard'', an award-winning [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|hard sci-fi]] [[Web Comic]]. A short meeting later, he has discovered one alien race [[Alien Catnip|finds maple syrup irresistible]]. After some well-executed hustling, [[Fiction 500|he's richer than everyone else on Earth put together.]] But given that he's a plucky Southern boy, he has big dreams...

* [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot]]: Argus, the AI in charge of the [[Wave Motion Gun|SAPL]], which uses solar-orbit mirrors to focus large amounts of sunlight, starts getting OCD about the small gravitational interactions between the mirrors and things like ships, asteroids, and planets. Vernon quickly recognizes the danger signs and disconnects him before he does anything drastic; it's speculated that soon after the point where he's stripped of control, he would have started accidentally incinerating tug ships. The unmanned ones, of course. At first.

* [[Alien Catnip]]: Maple syrup is, to several species of the aliens, an addictive beverage with effects similar to that of alcohol on humans. Tyler Vernon milks this for all it's worth, and builds his own empire on it.

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[[Category:Military Science Fiction]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]