THE STORY
 

The twenty-seventh century: humanity's expansion across the stars has been chugging along for centuries, fueled by the mysterious, monolithic Travel Gates that dot the stars.  Scattered by wars and other accidents of history, we've taken root and grown in different places all over the Galaxy, each new growth possessed of its own politics, culture, belief system, and technology -- some comfortably familiar, others almost incomprehensibly bizarre.  No one pocket of humanity knows what's become of all the others; the species, for all intents and purposes, is permanently fragmented.   But things are changing.  Slowly, tentatively, a few of the cultures are beginning to scour the void looking for the rest of the race -- some for conquest, some for trade, and some for technology.  Interesting things tend to happen when two of them meet.  The Terran Authority -- Sol and its surrounding systems -- is no exception.  Scant years after (barely) winning a war against the hardened, fanatical Nesters, the Authority has ordered its fleets into the waiting dark, drawn by the lure of knowledge and profit.  Slowly and painfully, a Galactic civilization is struggling to be born, its shape to be determined by whichever of the many factions achieves dominance.

 

THE CAST
 

Doctor Xtian ("Christian") Singh   Even more unlikely than a pair of Gnostic Jains naming their son "Christian" is the thought of this unassuming, sheltered naif -- who attended medical school through the antique holopticon in the family tool shed -- becoming chief medical officer of the Galactic.  But through a series of happy (?) accidents and dumb luck, that's exactly what's happened.  Conservative and traditional, he nevertheless finds himself smitten by the libertine Dr. Sorenson and hopelessly entranced by the exotic cultures he encounters on his travels.  As much as anything else, Terminus will be about the good doctor's metamorphosis into something much more than he once was -- and the toll that will be exacted on him because of it.   PIC   Captain Alex Kirchoff   Ten years ago, Alex Kirchoff became inadvertently responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of helpless Nester refugees.  He promptly suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the next few years in an institution on Mars; now, ostensibly cured, he's been coerced back into the saddle by the enigmatic Ser Kloster.  Cold, remote, and with a disturbing penchant for mortification, Kirchoff is the anti-telegenic starship captain.   Jonn Morgan   A naval engineer, Morgan's served on the Galactic in one capacity or another since its first shakedown cruise in the sixties.  Grandson of 21st-century cryonics mogul Mohammed M. Morgan, Jonn is a "triple person" -- three genetically identical bodies who pool their memories every 24 hours to maintain one unified persona.  With so much spare time on his hands, the sensitive Morgan has become a master at both engineering and art, handling both disciplines with almost preternatural skill and discipline.  He is the calm Zen center around which the other chaos of the ship revolves -- lucky him.   PIC   Commander Perri Noriega   Handily wins the title of "most normal character on board."  Ser Noriega manages to be a disciplined and competent commander despite her easygoing demeanor and relative youth (a callow 35).  Her job consists of running interference between the oddball captain and the demanding crew, a vocation which would drive most people up a tree.  Perri is neither sheltered nor naive; regardless, she's in for a hell of a learning experience -- whether good or bad remains to be seen.   Major Takahami Suriko   A native of one of the higher-G planets, the middleaged Major Takahami -- the Galactic's Commander of Marines -- is built much like a five-foot-high tank, only somewhat more charming and exceptionally deadlier.  A hardened veteran of the war against the Nesters, she's blunt and isn't known for suffering fools gladly.   PIC   Dr. Lisa Sorenson   A native of the planet Saraq, the eighty-year-old Doctor Sorenson is one of the world's primary exports: a Savant, a superintelligent person who can master countless disciplines with ease.  As one of the Authority's leading scientists and engineers, Sorenson is a woman of incredible wealth and privelege; so valuable, in fact, that she's one of the few recipients of the fabled Randall-Kurtz geriatric treatment, which keeps her body looking and acting like that of a 30-year-old.  The only catch: as is typical with the savantry, Sorenson has quite the appetite for sex, drugs, and other distractions, which have become only more entrenched with age.  Even fucked-up on fifty different chemicals, though, she remains the most scintillatingly beautiful and brilliant person on the Galactic, a white-hot dot of intense all-consuming intellect.   Bennett  The biggest enigma of all, this white-clad man-mountain seems to have no apparent reason for being on the Galactic -- though he and Captain Kirchoff definitely have some sort of shared past, he obviously belongs to no one but himself.  As Dr. Singh soon discovers, Ser Bennett is not altogether human, though exactly what he is isn't clear.  What is clear is that Bennett, with his unbelievably rigid code of ethics, is a man on a mission: though he refuses to speak of his travels, he seems to be known across the galaxy and those who do know him defer to him with awe.   PIC