The Phoenix Project (63 page)

Epilogue

    
Fires burned in space around Pluto as its Alliance outpost fell to
Coalition forces. The major base at Saturn continued to voice its discord with
heavy plasma beams despite its shields giving out under enemy fire. Two Alliance frigates near
the asteroid belt past Mars fired a few last torpedoes at a Coalition destroyer
before jumping to FTL and some level of freedom beyond civilized space.
Stations and ships were no more than wreckage around Mars as Coalition warships
began to land troops around the few Alliance
colonies there. They were gratified to find the populations surrender
unconditionally with the knowledge of what the Alliance government had supposedly done.

    
Battles across the solar system and across
the rest of the Colonized Sphere began to fade out as Alliance ships were either destroyed or
surrounded by enemy ships.

    
Long plumes of smoke could be seen across
much of Asia as fires burned out of control
and coastal areas were beginning to see daylight again now that the waters
began to recede. Africa and Europe were dotted
with cities that had crumbled under the wave and began to show the first signs
of life once people began to dig themselves out of the wreckage.

    
South Americans found little that had
survived the blast, and what few survivors remained began to look for others.
Many hoped to find family members and friends that had become separated in the
chaos. Many would be disappointed.

    
North America
was more fortunate than one would have expected. Cities had been reduced to
piles of rubble, but there were towns and villages that had survived the
danger. While some forests had been flattened there were others that stood with
relatively little damage.

    
At the epicenter of the blast wave, the
dome that had housed the particle warhead was nothing more than a large
blackened hole. The structures connecting it to the other two domes had much of
their structure flayed away. Long metal supports climbed into the sky standing
as the reminders of the complexes that had once existed between the domes. The
habitat dome had collapsed and was scarcely a shadow of itself, while only the
first few floors of the Command dome had survived the destruction.

    
The bridge that connected Black Hills Island
to the adjacent one a mile away was the first in a series that eventually
reached the mainland. It was partially collapsed with the right hand lane
having fallen into the ocean, but one side had weathered the storm acting as a
tenuous connection to the remains of civilization.

    
Beyond the bridge of the small island a
large clump of evergreen trees stood in the cool morning as a cloud of fog
rolled in off the American
Sea. At the foot of the
bridge, dew accumulated on the pink petals of a wild rose that had lived
despite the terrible blast that had swept across the wet beach.

    
A single footprint was in the soft mud
below it.

Terminology

Alliance
—
General term used for the Alliance of Nations founded in 2098 as the
successor to the North American Treaty Organization.

Alliance
Senate —
Main branch of the Alliance Government. As of 2299
there are nine hundred and eighty—seven elected Senators.

Alliance
Prime Ministers —
The heads of the Alliance Government. The office has
five elected representatives sharing equal power.

Battle Group —
A standard
formation of ships in the Twenty—third century. Alliance battle groups are comprised of forty
warships and are composed of one carrier and three cruisers, in addition to
several destroyers and frigates

Coalition —
General term
used for the Coalition of Provinces founded in 2087 as the successor to the
short lived Nation’s Council.

Council of Twelve —
Governing body of the Coalition comprised of Twelve members appointed
by the Prime Counsel who is elected to the position by MERA members.