I have been working on a story called "The Stellar War".
It is the year 2069 and mankind has inhabited the moon and Earth's orbit. All the nations of the Earth have been dissolved and there now exist two superpowers once more; the Federation of Terra Firma, and the Lunar Empire. The two nations are heavily reliant on eachother for resources, with the Federation supplying agricultural goods, and the Empire supplying industrial goods. A war over resources is sparked and the Empire invades earth and conquers it in under two months, killing civilians and soldiers alike. The Federation is forced to flee to space. After several months of biding their time, the Federation launches a massive counterattack, drives the Empire form the Earth, and pushes them back to the area around the moon. The Federation crushes the Empire and seizes every arms corporation that supplied them. By the war's end, over 7.5 billion soldiers and civilians are dead.
The way war is waged has changed considerably. Two new classes of weapons dominate the battlefield: the smaller HT or "Humanoid Tank" (resembling the Armored Shrikes from Blue Gender), and HHT, or "Heavy Humanoid Tank" (not quite to the point of being Mobile Suits but getting there). These weapons come in many shapes, makes, and sizes.
The story feature amny main characters:
- Marcus Jaden (Federation)- An 18 year old civilian who is rescued by a Federation SF group and ends up joining the military to get back at the Empire.
- Alicia Hughes (Federation)- A beautiful, blood-red haired member of the Federation SF team that recues Marcus. Pilots an HT and is a highly skilled pilot. Is the subject of Marcus's infatuation.
- Allen Shores (Federation)- A young college graduate with a troubled past who is drafted into the Federation's Draft Corps. Is placed in command of battle weary platoon.
- John Faraway (Federation)- An ace HHT pilot who too is placed in command of a battle weary HHT platoon. Is one of the more hateable characters of the story.
- Reylena Brass (Empire)- A red-eyed woman who is one of the many results of an experiment to create the perfect pilot for HHTs. Her perceptual abilities far surpass that of any normal person. Flies a custom Imperial HHT.
The plot is a series of interwoven strory lines. The book occurs in chronological order and jumps around from character to character, chronicling what they do, how they contribute to the war, and how their paths cross from time to time (kind of like Pulp Fiction).
The story starts when Marcus is rescued by Alicia and her platoon, dragged around for the next week and leaves with the last of the federal troops on Earth. During the meantime he becomes infatuated with Alicia, who is too caught up with being a soldier to notice his affections. This changes when Marcus puts himself in harm's way and stabbed while trying to protect her. Alicia then realizes Marcus's affections and seeks his attention. Unfortunately Marcus goes on the war path and joins the Federation's SF in order to get revenge for the deaths of all of the innocent civilians the Empire killed. Marcus and Alicia are assigned to the same unit and fight together for the rest of the war. As the story progresses Marcus is consumed with anger and revenge, while Alicia attempts to reel him back in. In the end Alicia succeeds in her attempts after making Marcus realize what he has become. The two survive the war and disappear.
Allen Shores comes in halfway through the book a month after the Federation launches their counterattack. After being drafted into the Draft Corps. (similar to the Gallian Militia) he is placed in command of a what is left of a platoon. Through the use of strategy and logic he and his platoon acheive the impossible. As the story unfolds the reader begins to see Allen become more mentally unstable as the members of his platoon die in the most horrific of ways. With the death of his sister (who is John Faraway's mechanic) Allen goes crazy and finishes the war in a mental ward.
John Faraway arrives on Earth the same time as Allen, and too is placed in command of a battle weary humanoid platoon. As the story progresses, John is placed in the thick of some of the biggest battles of the war. The more he fights, the more he comes to see the enemy less as monsters but more as people, and that the side he fights for is just as corrupt as his enemy. Towards the end of the book he comes face to face with Reylena Brass when she and her battalion are sent on a suicide mission to retake Berlin during the Imperial retreat. John resigns from the Federation after the battle at Berlin and searches for the POW camp where Reylena is being kept. He succeeds and is there to take her away after the wars ends.
Reylena Brass is intorduced early on in the story and is the commander of the Empire's 14th Humanoid Battlaion. She is the right hand commander of the Empire's supreme general, whom she sees as her father. Reylena goes through the story blind to the fact she is being used as a puppet by him. Near the end of the story the general sends her and her forces on a suicide mission. Reylena encounters John Faraway. When the general is killed retreating from Earth, her and her forces surrender to avoid further casualties. She is then taken to a forced labor camp. She is found by John in the end of the book.
The theme of my book is that the line between good and evil becomes blurred when boths sides are equally corrupt. This too unfolds as the story progresses. The Federation for one slowly begins to take control of weapons industry, and by the end of the war has seized every arms adn vehicle manufacturer. In the end of the book the reader finds out that the Federation used the war as a way to make a profit for the predicted uprisings that would inevitably occur. The epilogue tells of how the Federation moved humanity back to Earth ten years after the war, and had made the world into something similar to what you see in Armored Core 4, where huge mega corporations (all under government control) act as government and where business becomes politics. The corporations have also turned Earth into one gigatic battelfield.
I am playing with the idea of a sequel set in the world dictated in the epilogue of the first novel. John and Reylena have spent the last ten years gathering weapons and men all around the world. John then publicly delares war on all of the corporations under the banner of a rebel group called the "Earth Reunification Front".
Since I am stil working on the novel, any of this could change at any time.