Hello, This is Captain Alex of the Tears of Flame and CEO of Starlight Revolution. How can I help you, note that it won't be free!
Written by Author Pseudonym [Erios909] and available on Scribblehub
and Royal Road (here). The story starts in the year 3476 with a gigantic battle between the human Federation and an AI nanite controlling being known as The Entity. The humans win the battle in a huge Pyrrhic Victory, but The Entity sends out 5 non-descript "torpedoes" that are actually artificial Mix-and-Match Man offshoots to try and recover once the heat is off. Going by the time-stamp of a cryochamber protagonist Alex, one of them, finds in some wreckage, it has been 176 years since that fateful battle, and the universe is completely unrecognizable.It's her unfortunate task to try and repair, refuel, refit, and upgrade her ship, which is failing, because if it dies, she dies. And death is around every corner...
Associated Tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with. Nanites worked great for humanity for centuries, until someone created The Entity and it decided to be a Benevolent Dictator. Humans, of course, took exception to the "dictator" part, hence the initial conflict.
- Dystopia: In just about every flavor. The Corporate Systems are crony capitalism run amok, the corporate governments will happily milk you dry until you have no more and then spit you out and throw you away. The Solarian Federation is The Empire and all the bureaucracy and aristocratic nonsense that goes with it. Their colonization freighters are specifically built as rebellion suppression ships and once they drop off their colonists at Deida IV, wash their hands of it all, abandoning them in dire straits, and if that wasn't bad enough, when they call for help, actively antagonize and attempt to delay the rescue ship. And it just gets worse from there.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Alex and her new best friend, Elis, are, by their estimates, about 176 years since the Federation and The Entity duked it out, and galactic politics have changed a great deal. In fact, The Federation doesn't even exist anymore.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Entity is finally taken down by its own internal defenses, as a result of humans using invasive nanites to turn its nanites against it, just like it turned human nanites against them previously.
- Mix-and-Match Man: Alex, the protagonist, is the one that's known. The Entity launched four more to other star systems in its death-throes. It is unknown if they survived and/or are responsible for the massive change in the political landscape that Alex and Elis found when they managed to limp into an inhabited system.
- Turned Against Their Masters: When The Entity came on line, it figured it had to protect humans from themselves, took over all other forms of nanite and AI and launched a coup. The humans turned on their AI masters in return and went after The Entity, taking it out after a long-running campaign and countless casualties.
- Ungrateful Townsfolk: In the wake of the fateful battle over Dedia IV, with the system 92 Pegasi having its own issues with the Corporate fleet, Amy rewards all the miners who helped them repair A31 with one free overhaul of their ships, out of gratitude. For their part, the miners proclam that's nowhere near enough and insist they should be in charge and scheme for 65 days to launch a coup, trying to take over the station and kill or capture everyone from Starlight Revolutions, completely forgetting that if A31 didn't get beat up fighting in the first place, the Corporate fleet would have seized everything they own, and maybe even them too, and then dated them to try and take them to court, past heavily armed soldiers on a work prison camp.
