History Literature / ThePentagonWar

* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}: Mars is home to two Solar states, named Mars and North Mars. In the early history of TheVerse, the two territories grew to each others' borders and had a war, until Earth intervened and subjugated ''both'' of them.

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: In the first social exchange program between humans and Centaurians, both species caught a deadly bacterial disease from the other. If it had happened on Earth, instead of just an isolated community on Mars, it could have decimated the human population.
** For the most part, this trope is averted, though. Neither species' food has any nutritional value for the other, Centaurians need to drink salt water rather than fresh water, and although Centaurians have DNA, they don't use the same genetic code humans do.

* NoTranshumanismAllowed

-->The knick-knacks on display inside it were fascinating enough to behold, but then Torra noticed what made it truly precious. The stand itself wasn't made of metal or stone or plastic or glass, but ''wood''. ''Real'' wood. From a real tree.

* OurWormholesAreDifferent: Hyper holes are flat, permanent 200-meter circular holes in space that lead, through an infinitely thin layer of hyperspace, to a parallel space in which time and matter have no meaning. They are created by the detonation of a hyper bomb. If two hyper bombs are pointed directly at one another and set off at the same time, the two holes they create are "linked" -- anything entering one hole travels through parallel space infinitely fast and immediately exits the other. Light, electromagnetic interactions, etc., travel through a "hyper link" just like matter does, so if you look at one linked hyper hole you're basically seeing the view from the other. You could stand in the middle of a hyper hole link, straddling it, and not even be aware that you're in 2 places at once.
** Just be careful not to stick anything across the outer circular boundary of one of these hyper holes. Any material that crosses the plane inside the boundary instantly comes out of the other hyper hole; any material that crosses the plane outside the boundary doesn't. If your arm were sticking out past the boundary when you entered the hole, you'd be in the new star system but your arm would be back in the old star system. Not a pretty sight.
* OperatorIncompatibility / UnusualUserInterface: Workstations designed for Centaurian use will have 360-degree video displays, surround keyboards, and pedals that accept input from the biological wheels in the user's feet -- but will never, ever have a 3-D display.
* PerfectPacifistPeople: Human-Centaurians think of themselves as this, but in reality they're more like religious zealots.

* ThemeNaming: In the original 1980 40-page short story, the attack on Human-Centauri by the ''Santa Maria'' happened at the same time as two other spacecraft attacked the same system. The names of the other two attacking spacecraft? ''[[UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus Nina]]'' and ''[[UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus Pinta]]''.

* ArtificialGravity: The asteroids in the Human-Centauri Habitat Ring are too small to have significant surface gravity. Instead, they build giant centrifuges deep underground to live in, which rotate at either 0.8''g'' for Centaurian comfort or 1.0''g'' for human comfort. (To be fair, 1.0''g'' for humans is mostly a matter of preventing muscle degradation. Most humans would enjoy living at 0.8''g''.)

** Torra Zorra, being a Centaurian, says "clans and chaos."

* SpaceCossacks: The first colonists at Human-Centauri were sort of like this, although they formed a real nation rather than just a RagTagBandOfMisfits.

* Music/JohannSebastianBach: While waiting in line for the Sirius/Human-Centauri hyper hole, James Carter plays [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/Pentagon/Wir%20Eilen.mid "Wir Eilen Mit Schwachen"]] from Cantata #78 to pass the time.

* StunGun: The stundart pistol is standard military issue. It fires a tiny self-contained Taser, whose voltage can be set for human or Centaurian physiology. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, it isn't always harmless.]]

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: It would be firmly in the "One Big Lie" category, were it not for that pesky [[spoiler:zero drive]].
** And the [[spoiler:[[OurGhostsAreDifferent ghost]]]].

There's no ArtificialGravity (other than via rotation or engine thrust), no [[TractorBeam tractor beams]] (mostly), no [[FTLTravel warp drive]], no inertialess drive, no InertialDampening, no ReactionlessDrive, and ''certainly'' no [[TeleportersAndTransporters transporters]]. With the exception of the technology behind the fusion reactors, there's not a single item used in the space battles that couldn't be realistically designed with known science today. Space is ''[[AvertedTrope not]]'' [[SpaceIsAnOcean an ocean]]. The spacecraft all have accurate delta-v budgets given the nature and quantity of their fusion fuel. It takes ''time'' to go from a standing start to 1% of the speed of light.[[note]]Three-and-a-half days, if you accelerate at 1''g''.[[/note]] Engagements are fought at ranges of thousands, and even millions, of kilometers. Even the Bussard ramscoop technology on the true starships takes the realistic density of the interstellar medium into account, and pays at least token homage to the drag problem.

* ExplosiveDecompression: In the sense of rapid pressure loss, not bodies unrealistically blowing up.

* FrickinLaserBeams: On high-speed starships, ultraviolet lasers are used to ionize the material directly in front of the spacecraft, allowing the craft's magnetic/electrostatic fields to either draw the material into the Bussard scoop or deflect it out of the way, thereby preventing the material from slamming into the hull. High-energy UV lasers are used to send messages across interstellar distances, and sometimes across mere interplanetary distances as well. Finally, actual high-intensity lasers are occasionally used for point defense or as anti-spacecraft weapons, though their inherent inefficiency means they overheat quickly.

Here's a link to the [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/Pentagon/Pentagon1.html first chapter]]. Note: As of April 2019, '''only the first twelve chapters are complete''', and the rest consist of partially-filled-in snippets.

Here's a link to the [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/Pentagon/Pentagon1.html first chapter]]. Note: As of April 2018, '''only the first ten chapters are complete''', and the rest consist of partially-filled-in snippets.

* MagneticWeapons: Slug launchers, such as the common E-43 mass driver, are basically reusable railguns or coilguns.

* HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt: The author's notes reckon history by years "A.C.", where 1 A.C. is the year of first contact with the Alpha-Centaurians.

In the years that followed, a [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/pentgame hex-map-based war game]] grew out of it, as did an entire [[http://www.stellar-database.com astronomy website]] to answer the question "how far is it from star X to star Y?". And in September of 2009, nearly 30 years after writing the first draft, the story was turned into a novel.

* ThrustGravity: On manned spacecraft, the "thrust floor" is clearly marked with arrows. While underway, thrust is usually constant. Unmanned spacecraft can accelerate at over 100''g'' for minutes or even hours at a time, which would turn any stowaways into pancakes.

* AllThereInTheManual: The author's notes are online [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/stories/Pentagon_war_history.html here]].

Here's a link to the [[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/Pentagon/Pentagon1.html first chapter]].

* RingWorldPlanet: Averted. The author originally wanted Human-Centauri to consist of 5 enormous "planetary plates" that would one day be joined together and extended to form a {{ringworld}}. He abandoned the idea, though, when he finally admitted that no real-world materials could be strong enough to build such structures. Instead, the heavy brown dwarf that was ignited to become Human-Centauri's sun was surrounded by a debris ring, and the five largest asteroids in this belt became their homes. It's still called the Habitat Ring, though.