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Seen from the far end of the approach lane, Parallax Red looked like the rough
beginnings of a space hab someone intended to finish one day. But Kane knew
that was an optical illusion, due mainly to the haphazard erector set quality
as seen from a distance and lit up with exterior lights.
Parallax Red was based on the old Stanford Torus design, built with
pre-stressed concrete, reinforced by vanadium-steel bulkheads and cables. The
structure was two kilometers in overall diameter, with a mass of more than ten
million tons.
All around the rim of the surrounding wheel he saw patrol ships docked in
their berths. They were smaller than the
Sabre, little more than wedges with curves and three kinds of engine array.
At one time the Ranger ships were the cornerstone
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JAMES AXLER
Outer Darkness
149
of the Commonwealth defense network. The thousands of satellites and nuclear
platforms protected only a tiny sector of the solar system. Although the
Commonwealth maintained a fleet of thirty, that was half of what it had been
when Kane first joined the corps. More and more resources were devoted to
building huge battlewagons like the
Infinitor.
It bothered Kane sometimes to consider how militarized humans' venture into
space was, but he knew that there would have been no human presence in space
at all without military objectives. But according to the history he had been
taught, the initial choice made two centuries ago had not been humanity's.
Sitting in the comm-con and watching
Parallax Red swell larger on the screen, Kane thought it must have been
simpler in the old days when the United States governed only one part of Earth
and its struggles were restricted to other Terran nations.
But that had ended on January 20, 2001, when a genocidal atomic hellstorm was
barely averted. From that day sprang a united world and, within a decade, the
Sol Commonwealth. But events had moved
9
for more than fifty years toward the day the face of the Earth would vanish
beneath soaring fireballs. It was the final component of an agreement, a pact
made at the end of World War II. In actuality, the agreement went far, far
back, dating thousands of years before the Nazis came to power.
Secret societies that flourished in Germany before the rise of the Nazi party,
such as the Thule and the
Vril, were in contact with the Archons, whom they referred to as their "secret
chiefs." Their goals were identical with those of the Third Reich the unifi-
cation of the world under their control, with all non-essential and
nonproductive humans eliminated.
With the help of their "chiefs," the Nazis enjoyed great technical advances,
including the prototype of the aircraft known as a flying saucer. However,
despite their superior technology and their analytical intellects, the Archons
were not invincible or omniscient, as Hitler found out. World War n meant not
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just the defeat of the Third Reich, but a defeat of the Archons, as well.
Nevertheless, they had taken measures to ensure the defeat was only temporary.
The Allied forces came across secret research projects based on technology
that shouldn't even have existed, much less worked. Though many of the secret
weapons were only in the theoretical stage of development, some were
dangerously near completion and could have reversed the war's outcome.
The Allied powers, primarily the American military, adopted the research as
well as many of the scientists, and constructed underground bases to further
the experiments. The umbrella designation was known as the Totality Concept
and was classified "Above Top Secret." It was known only to a few very
high-ranking military officers and politicians. Few of the presidents who held
office during its existence were ever aware of its full ramifications.
Two presidents who became aware were Dwight D. Eisenhower and his successor,
John F. Kennedy.
Eisenhower learned about the existence of the Archons shortly after an
accident in the sands of the New
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