In those days, Sol System’s unending war continued a conflict whose deprivations were restricted by treaty to off-Earth locations. War is good business and many grew rich. War is also wasteful of materials and, even more importantly, experienced spacers. Veteran spacers had become a valuable and scarce commodity.

A spacer’s training takes years to master and it is costly. Earth’s leaders found a solution in history; they called it ‘impressment’ but, it was little more than a recruitment by force of any colonial starship crew.

Initially, the star colonies were little touched by Sol System’s distant wars. Their merchant fleets possessed an abundance of both scarce materials and veteran spacer talent. Soon the warships of Earth began to intercept, board, and confiscate cargo and crews from any defenseless colonial merchant starship they desired. The colonies found themselves on a path to certain destruction. How could the fledgling military of the colonies hope to stop the might of Earth?

One tiny colony decided to resist but they had a problem. Merchant spacers were not warriors and the tools of war are expensive, complex, and require a commander with an aggressive temperament and high intelligence.

It was then that, seemingly from out of nowhere, Jankin Decatur appeared.

What followed was an age that so tried the soul of humankind as to have nearly brought Homo sapiens to an end.

Let me take you to the early days of Earth's first star colony located around distant Tau Ceti. Kraken, a beautiful ringed sister of Earth with minor differences such as a higher oxygen level, uniformly warmer oceans, and a biosphere that made Earth resemble a barren desert. Colonists came here, prospered, and life was challenging but good. Meanwhile, Earth grew more civilized; they found an acceptable solution to war. After all, nobody really wanted to get rid of war, it was simply too profitable. So by treaty, negotiated politics were allowed only upon the home world while conflict, the profitable side of politics, was restricted to the off-world remainder of Sol System.

It wasn’t long before the powers of Earth discovered that war was resource-intensive. Warfare took its toll on highly-trained spacers whose talents were growing scarce. History provided a solution called ‘impressment’ by politicians. The lower classes called it ‘kidnapping’.

2170 C.E. - Quantum Zero- Prequel to the Jankin Decatur SeriesKraken Colony in the Tau Ceti system; An illegal, prototype starship is confronted by a NAU pocket frigate at the edge of Kraken’s rings, an area they call the Serpent Swarm. This technology promises to save a distant colony ignored by their motherland back in Sol System. They next hurtle they face will be to find a way to keep it hidden from Earth's strict colonial dominance.

2173 C.E. - Quantum Surge- Book I of Jankin Decatur Series

The colonists of Kraken are caught in the middle of Earth’s wars and will not survive unless they learn to defend themselves. Their first Warbird is a converted merchant starship that is sent out to defend the colony on the treacherous gravitic ether of the universe with Captain Jankin Decatur at the helm.

2180 C.E. - A Quantum of Uncertainty- Book II of Jankin Decatur SeriesWar lingers on. Kraken citizens are split in their loyalty. Hostile acts against the colony by a desperate motherland are rising.

Jankin Decatur takes a desperate mission of peace to Earth to appeal to the NAU Senate on what may be their final hope for survival.

Admiral Bastian’s words echoed across the huge construction quay, “In this facility you see the latest warship design by Doctor Humphrey. He’s a bit of a military historian and calls that miracle of science sitting there a frigate. I believe it is much more.”

Though it retained the overall energy-conserving shape of a slightly flattened sphere, there was nothing soft or mundane in this warbird’s appearance. Like a great frigate bird, its surface was of long sharp ridges to reduce gravitic wave distortion and therefore detection. Humphrey’s brilliance developed a gravitic wavelength algorithm that precisely calculated the ship’s long-to-short axis diameter ratio, finely adjusting it to optimize linkage to the great gravity waves of deep space. A novel concept allowing the warbird to achieve greater velocities than any other known starship.

Even deactivated and sitting placid on the dock, the ship was difficult to focus upon because of its electromagnetic adsorbing surface.