-Altar of Scales, second edition of Book 1 in The Descendant Saga pending release
Tight Beam, Volume 17, June 2025
Hello all, I have good news! Paperwork for Nerd Smith Consolidated LLC went through and was accepted by the state. (Finally) We’ve been moving forward with “purpose and intent” ever since. If you’re here reading this, you can see the website has been completely overhauled. We’ve made a ton of progress on the back end to be ready for our sci-fi book release.
Nerd Smith Consolidated told me not to post this yet, to save the timeline for after release, but this is my last chance to post anything, before the book release. Please share this with anyone you know who can read and ask them to subscribe too, because the next issue of Tight Beam, will be a publishing announcement. If you haven’t already, please subscribe while you can.
With all that being said, Nerd Smith Consolidated ( Referred to as NS-C in the future) still have to get copyright protection, purchase our ISBNs and format the manuscript for the E-Book and the paperback. (Don’t worry, we’re still doing audiobooks too.) We don’t have a specific date picked for our new sci-fi novel, other than as soon as possible. It’s waited too long for its day in the sun and I can’t wait to share it with the world again.
Work continues on the audio book, its release is not going to be far behind the text formats. The best thing you can do to help, because I’m sure you’re all eager readers, is to share this with your fellow readers who might also be interested in my “Orson Scott-Card meets Tom Clancy” brand of classic sci-fi/ military sci-fi. If somehow you’re here reading this and aren’t subscribed to the newsletter, then please add your email to the subscription list. That’ll be the best way to stay notified. There will be a special issue of Tight Beam to announce the public release of our long awaited Space Opera, Altar of Scales. That way, you can be the first to get it, the first to leave a review, and secure your own place in the legacy of our sci-fi book series. So our gritty sci-fi drama gets enough support and momentum our second book “Cave in the Sky” can release soon too.
Normally this is the part where I give a free short story, from my backlog of extra content. But not this time. This time I have something even better, a good old lore dump. Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers, but there is a sharp juxtaposition between the environment of the first book and the second book. To help reduce the shock factor, this time line will explain the context of the situation. And to all those people who weren’t cool enough to read the newsletter before getting the book, well geeze, you’re in for a wild ride.
The Events of Altar of Scales take place in the year 2459. But, before we go forward in time to cover the story, we must go back in time, to set the stage on how we got to 2459. Because I am, after all a nerd.
-The first entry on the time line is 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
-The second entry is the final flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011. (This is the main factor as to why the United States is not a faction in the story. Because when I started writing this, the U.S. government had no independent method to get astronauts into space. It was done either privately, or on a foreign nation’s lift vehicles.)
-In the year 2077 the European Union Collapses. (No, that was not an intentional reference to the game Cyberpunk 2077. I wrote this plot in mid 2017 and world events that have transpired since then had not factored into it.)
-After the collapse of the EU and general anarchy across Europe, the United States tried to help and in 2078 there was a massive market crash, worse than the great depression, basically immobilizing the country. (It’s an even bigger problem now than it was in 2017 when I wrote this plot, but the growing national debt weights on my mind.)
-With the United States too economically weak to help, Europe devolves into chaos. In 2080, Russia provides “aid”, by moving in troops, workers and equipment. Without firing a shot, gaining administrative control over the majority of the European continent.
-With the United States effectively out of the way, and Russia expanding its influence, gaining control of Europe’s mineral and labor resources, and already having vast petroleum reserves of their own, Russia becomes the world’s leading superpower. China with their own ambitions isn’t cool with that, and starts their own expansion. Without The United States providing hardware backing, South Korea can’t stand against the Chinese backed North Korean onslaught. And a now unified, communist Korea joins China in 2081. (Again this plot was made up in 2017 before the current conflicts like with Ukraine and Taiwan, but I guess this is the point where China would make their move on Taiwan too.)
-This starts a second cold war, now between Russia, their satellite states and China with their satellite states. Because of the expansion and aggression from China. Japan and Australia team up, along with the many islands like the Philippines, that lay in between them to stand against China. But now without the United States navy and fighter jets, they just don’t have enough manpower. In a war from 2085 to 2087, they battle over control of the Pacific. A battle Japan and Australia eventually lose. In the same time frame, Russian forces marched farther south from Europe into northern Africa and the Middle East, seeking resources to feed the starving, desperate European continent. They are no long playing nice like the first time the Soviet Union invaded the Middle East in the 1980’s. This time, they’re there for the land, not the people and it turns into a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
-By 2090 both new super powers have expanded as far as they easily can, leaving India trapped between them, and South America forgotten. The southern hemisphere not under control of the Russian lead European Federation (EF) or the Chinese super state now known Asian Australian Collective Republic (AACR). (Australia earned some concessions for not going down easily in the war of 85–87.) The other countries including India and South America are fall into wild anarchy. Starvation and cannibalism run rampant. The two communist superpowers, indifferent to the plight of man, look over the piles of dead as they eye each other and the cold war really sets in.
-In 2097 after more than a decade of complete lawlessness, the desperate Indian people strike out, moving overland, into the Russian-occupied Middle East, and Chinese-occupied Asia. While they are an easily contained threat, the Russian and Chinese soldiers bump elbows a little and some shots are exchanged. This escalates into a battle, and the battle escalates into nuclear war. Phone calls are made, last-minute deals are done with a handshake and missiles are destroyed in flight. The warheads don’t detonate, and the world is saved from another ice age. International relations remain extremely tense. China exterminates the bulk of the Indian population, leaving them with a few of their largest cities intact, but hemmed in, much like North American Indian reservations. Russian forces keep pushing south, taking the rest of the African continent as there’s no military might that can stand in their way, and the need to be more powerful than their Chinese counterparts leads them to ruthless action against anyone who does not immediately and fully comply. These two communist powers recolonize and re-divide the world between themselves, leaving the American continents largely alone to fester with their own problems. Everyone’s hands are full.
-In the 2100 – 2150 time frame, things settle. The world has a lot fewer people in it, and the two superpowers settle in for a long, hard-jawed, white-knuckled stand off. After 40 or 50 years of rampant destruction and human loss, expansion stagnates. Pollution increased as the AACR and EF have done whatever they needed to do, build more ships and jets to threaten each other. Many resources are dwindling, the batteries for the drone swarms have used up much of the world’s lithium. As resources dwindle and each super power looks to get the upper hand over the other, their eyes turn to the stars for resources and so begins the second space race.
-In 2208, earth has stabilized. South America is a forgotten waste land of petty warlords and techno barbarians. The no longer United States of America fall to unregulated free market forces and absolute corporate rule. The various companies, monopolies and conglomerates vie for power and sell tech and skilled labor to the highest bidder without moral quandary. The remaining Indian population is similarly huddled around a few wealthy business tycoons and exists more as a company, than a government.
-EF and AACR flags have been planted all over the solar system as various celestial bodies are claimed for one faction or the other. Populations and technologies are sustained by water mined from comets or minerals scoured out of asteroids. People expand to colonies on Mars, and a sprawling network of space stations over Venus and between the moons of the gas giants. But in the summer of 2211, a Hungarian mathematician proves a theory about parallel dimensions, unlocking new fields of physics that the European Federation is eager to study and exploit, as the move the theoretical into the realm of practical.
-It’s crude, but by 2230 the EF has developed this field of inter-dimensional physics into a functional, repeatable, probably safe space ship engine. Humans leave our home solar for the first time, bound for Alpha Centauri.
-In 2232 the earth’s supply of crude oil runs dry because It was all been mined out, pumped into tanks, processed and used for the engines of industry, before being released as smog back into the air. The AACR, not far behind the EF in deciphering the interdimensional math, create their own space ship drive engines. Soon the two, now interstellar super powers are claiming planets and resources, “colonizing” every chunk of rock they can find in the nearest star systems.
-By the 2250’s, humans aren’t just going to other solar systems to mine and harvest resources, they start sending ships, to establish civilian colonies, and interstellar travel becomes more than soldiers staring at each other between the celestial bodies. In 2253, only the third ever EF origin civilian colony ship is sent out, The EFS Stalingrad is aimed at the farthest away exo-planet yet targeted for colonization. Known as Kepler 452 B, renamed as Langok, the Hungarian word for fire. The ship is never heard from again.
–2275 the corporate states of the world that aren’t incorporated into the EF or the AACR form their own coalition government known as United Systems Around Earth or USAE. The corporate powers, while they may not hold the same volume land or resources that the other two interstellar nations hold, control most of the technology and its continued development. While the EF and AACR were busy struggling not to kill each other, and expand to every clump of rock or ice with measurable gravity, they didn’t develop much more technology on their own, too busy with being the producers, not the developers. They bought the designs from the minds of the engineering firms on the North American continent. The companies that used to be defense manufacturers and government contractors that now form the corporate structure, that is the backbone of the USAE. Now they, too, reach out into the stars. With so many celestial bodies already claimed by one government or the other, they start building new ones, and O’Neill cylinders spring up, around most major objects in the home system, and their Lagrange points.
-Time goes on and by 2300 both the EF and the AACR, while maintaining their land holdings on earth, have otherwise largely abandoned the home solar system, focused solely now on reaching the most stars, planting their flag in the most chunks of rock as this century-long cold war and space race becomes a way of life. People forget why they hate the other. Remembering only, they have always hated them, and everyone is an ‘other’. The war stays cold, but tense as more ships are built, more planets found, more colonies and space stations established. The USAE starts building a Dyson swarm in the home system. But the USAE continues developing technologies, and they find a way to create and manipulate worm holes into what they market as “massless tunnels” creating a new, cheaper, safer, faster, routine way to cover the huge distances between the stars.
–2400’s By the next century these massless tunnels have been built by the USAE and leased to the EF and AACR where appropriate, all over the galaxy. With humanity spreading up and down the entire Perseus arm of the Milky Way, the RF and AACR are forever trapped in their proverbial dick measuring contest, based on who owns how many celestial bodies. Civilian colonies and travel become more widespread, and now only the military ships are still fitted with the older, more dangerous but seldom used inter-dimensional drive engines, so they can operate independently of the massless tunnels.
-This leads us to the year 2459, where the events of Altar of Scales the first book in The Descendant Saga takes place. The ship RFS Stalingrad in 2255, arrived at its destination. It was just a late arrival, because it was outside the expected normal window, it was presumed lost, forgotten to all but the digital text books of human history. The ship arrived on Langok, and now for over two centuries, the people of that colony ship struggled to survive. This is where our tale begins. Come meet ZostaMax, as we follow his journey through the stars, and watch his eyes be opened to all the things man is, all the thing he never knew…
The Descendant Saga 