The Blade That Waited In the autumn of 1571, during the third year of the Genki era, the warlord Oda Nobunaga stood on the scorched slope of Mount Hiei, watching Enryaku-ji burn. The great temple complex—seat of Tendai Buddhism for eight…
The Albedo Line
The Albedo Line In 2048 the stratosphere above the Pacific was no longer natural. Every 72 hours, a fleet of 28 high-altitude tanker drones lifted off from six island bases—Guam, Palau, Kiribati, Hawaii, Easter Island, and the Galápagos. Each drone carried…
The Burn Window
The Burn Window The nuclear thermal rocket Icarus Dawn left Earth-Moon L1 on 17 April 2064 at 03:42 UTC. She was a 420-tonne dry-mass transfer vehicle designed for one purpose: deliver 48 tonnes of payload to Mars surface in a single…