It all began in the early 21st century. When the great jump began. The tech was finally available to head to Mars and the race was on. At the time there were several nation states, CCP, Rus, Indo, and to a lesser degree the old US Republic, but the biggest players were the industrialists. There were many, but only two rose to amass enough power to ignore any nation, and in fact owned a few here and there, Bezos and Elon.

In ‘21 Elon launched the first Starship, and Bezos was not just angry, but sought revenge, ego played a lot into the events that followed. Bezos’ efforts left him in LEO, while Elon moved on to the Moon in ‘23 and then Mars in ‘25, all this while launching normal payloads to orbit three times a day, Bezos could barely do one orbital per week. The nation states were watching, the US was complicit when it came to Elon, again Bezos was angered, maybe rightfully but hey, gotta fly right?

Elon had a vision from the beginning and he was seeing it play out now, over a hundred Starships in his fleet, with weekly transits to Mars, yes I know it takes six months, but the Starship ran every two weeks. He had plenty, and more being built and launched every day. While other players had simple, basic Mars structures, Elon was digging in, building an advanced base, fuel generation plants and the basics for self sustenance. No one really knew what his goal was, at first.

At this point, most of the players had established colonies and production facilities on Luna. Amazon had a meager presence there due to the fact they had to hitch a ride on Elon’s Starships, painful, ironic, but cost effective, for now. CCP had been very active and had basing, launch and production facilities, and had expanded enough to make a visible presence on Luna, just look up. It was about this time when Bezos was approached by a certain agent, from the CCP.

The CCP had a base on the Far side and no one really knew what they did there initially, but some sharp Earthers with old fashioned optics (I’m a fan) noticed anomalies leaving Luna and striking ‘Roids in the belt, after some spectrography it was determined to be tungsten rods thrown at high velocity and high accuracy, what the hell were they doing?  When the ISC got involved the CCP said it was just long range analysis of potential ‘roids, which was a clever, if useless idea, but the ISC bought it all, I imagine for a price. Everyone knew what danger a weapon like that posed anywhere in the system, and it needed to be countered.

 

 The Risk

Elon had well over 200 Starships operating at this point, with self containing fueling at LEO, the Lagrange points, Luna, and a wanderer he discovered cis-Mars, he calls it Olga, go figure.

The offer was simple: get on board, fly for six months, land, and work your life away,  building a future.It may not work, and there is no return, families and the poor encouraged, tuition available. He had over a billion applications, so he started moving people to what began to be called The New Start. It was a sight, 250 people, by now three times a week headed to Mars to maybe save Humanity, or die trying, a noble pursuit indeed.

By ‘28 Bezos was ready, Elon already landed over 150k and Nikola City was thriving, and better still, independent, so when the first Starship went down everyone was shocked. What could have happened? Meteoroids have struck many Starships, with no issue, this was different. At first it was thought to be a one off but when the next one hit at eleven cycles, we wondered, so did the people going to Mars, enough that they began to call it The Risk, and Elon needed an answer or the project was doomed. The issue wasn’t the projectiles but where did they come from? And better still, who operated them? Answer that and you can respond, until then, The Risk.

After a bit of Kompromat, Bezos became the main cover for all the CCP activities, they paid for his cis-Lunar ships and basically owned Amazon at this point, but Bezos would have his revenge. He was gaining domination in cis-Lunar and reaching out towards Mars, and eventually Elon, and thanks to the CCP, the Uighur transfer program was well under way, they had over 100k workers at the Amazon Luna facility, and more on the way every day, they tend to die over there easily, Luna you know.

 

REDACTED

Emerald Au was a Nobel winner in ‘25 for her work on Mass drivers , so Elon brought her onboard, mostly so no one else could get her, and she happens to be the premiere Scientist in her field, so he gave her a great budget and room to play,

“Em, may I call you Em?”

“Of course.”

“As you know, I’m Elon, how’s your work?”

“Boring, but we get by”

“We?”

“My crew, we work together, or not at all.”

“I like that, and your current project?”

“Linear object acceleration using Xray bursts, sir.”

“Never call me ‘sir’ again, I am Elon.”

“Right, Elon.”

“Ha! So,I want to go on offense, Bezos is fucking up our shit and having fun doing it, this needs to stop, any ideas?”

“Sure, but what’s the deal?”

“Deal?”

“I don’t need to work for you, Elon.”

“No, but you are a stockholder. C’mon, step up to the next level. It’ll be fun, I promise. Stop!” Elon held his hands up. “Yes you get your crew, why change a good thing?”

“Fine, our work was anticipated as soon as we saw tungsten rods, and we can zero their base, BTW don’t worry about plasma, we have lots of tungsten and can throw it all day long, sir!”

 

One week later….

As in the days of sail, the first shot was high, the next low, but the third made it all the way to the dark side, and devastated the railgun there, the next month was smooth running, Mars Colony was over 300k by now and doing well, then of course Bezos pulled more shit, He Blew Olga out of the sky. Talk about cutting your own throat, it had become the gateway to Mars, without it, it was a 14 month journey, why? No matter, the ship increased speed to 10g constant, and they were there in two days…Two days of analyzing the wreckage, picking up the few survivors, and sending a lot of bodies into the Sun, so say we All.

 A way was needed, a way to make them show their hand, so they threw some decoys at them, they got the poles, and devastated them, but there were more to be found.

Of Course the CCP/Amazon would move on Mars, what’s a space opera without a good old Martian shootout? Anyway, Mars knew what was coming and blockaded the entire sphere of influence, so again, it was fish in a barrel for the Martians, seventy-five percent of the Amazon fleet was wiped in the span of an hour, and the rest scattered.

 So much for the communist collusion that Bezos took up, and the free Market took him down, in a day. The Dawn of Elon was upon us, easy transport and comms, and we still had Prime! And until Something Big came from somewhere else, We were good, until then….

to be continued…