With a name like “Children of a Dead Earth”, it’s hard not to expect a title without a good dose of nightmare reaction mass.
Unmarked spoilers ahead!
- Earth has its entire biosphere utterly destroyed in a global war by having its polar ice caps coated in ash, causing them to absorb sunlight and melt, killing millions of people in the process and wiping coastal nations off the map. The opposing nation responds in kind by throwing an entire asteroid into the ocean, triggering apocalyptic earthquakes across the planet and creating a crater so large that it floods with seawater, throwing off the planet’s axial tilt and killing billions in the ensuing famines. Orbiting skyhooks are able to literally catapult millions of survivors (and millions more who suffocated along the way) across the Solar System, with new nations cropping up across various celestial bodies. But even then, it’s too late: Earth has become a second Venus with all traces of civilization completely obliterated.
- The Free Republic knows all too well that war crimes will be committed by their own people in their war against the United Solar Trade Alliance. But instead of trying to minimize the humanitarian costs at all, they simply acknowledge the fact that it’s inevitable and plan on sweeping their crimes under the rug to keep their populace docile while they scour the Solar System clean of their USTA rivals.
- The reason for all this bloodshed? Because the USTA placed an embargo on fissile material that would have prevented the Free Republic from producing new ships and thereby dooming numerous colonies to die of starvation.
- Humanity’s greed has not stopped with the Earth’s destruction in the slightest. And an internal memo from the Free Republic says that as long as people have their jewelry, entertainment, porn and creature comforts, they won’t functionally care about the people who have to suffer in order to make their cushy lifestyles possible.
- Because kids take up less air and mass than adults, orphans are forced to collect water ice from Saturn’s rings. If their spacesuits get punctured, their dead bodies just get blown out the airlock to save on reaction mass.
- Factories and farms on both Ganymede and Sol’s L5 colonies respectively have their workers toil in brutal sweatshop conditions, enslaved to their debts.
- Worst of all, sex slaves are trafficked from across the Solar System to Europa, forced into pornography and prostitution for the benefit of their customers’ illegal desires.
- The horrible sound of air rushing out of a canister when your adversary makes a well-placed shot, letting you know that your entire crew just got sucked out into the vacuum of space.
- Coupled with the dull metallic groaning when your ship is under fire.
- And the rapid, tinny beeping when missiles are closing in on your ship, which will have you emptying the ammo of your decoy launcher in no-time.
