History:

1996: Marine Lieutenant Flynn Taggart retired from the Earth's Marine Corps, having earned a victory and honor higher than there was a medal or reward for. He was the most decorated and famous soldier ever to come from the Corps. During the year or so that followed, thousands of new applicants wanted to get in and the Corps became, in effect, another Military, fully independent of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and such.

1997: The United Aerospace Corporation drops the hat and goes out of business, leaving its facilities abandoned on Mars. Attempts to colonize Mars have ceased.

1998: Construction begins on the first major outlet into Deep Space: Skywheel station. Its design, based on a theory by NASA scientist Colin Thorne, resembles a large wheel rotating around a central hub. The force of the station turning keeps it in place, making sure it does not stray from its orbit. The central hub consists of the power station, and six large tubes, forming the "spokes" of the giant wheel, travel outward to the circular area of the station, resembling the "tire," or outer edge of the wheel. This is where the facilities, living quarters, and space docking stations are.

Each segment of wheel is powered by the sun; as it spins it powers a different area. Although the power collected by each segment lasts long enough for the entire rotation of the station, it goes down gradually. This results in something of an artificial "day" and "night" shift. Temperatures can be adjusted throughout the station. It is possible for humans to live their entire lives on the station and never actually see the surface of the Earth. However, no civilians are allowed to stay on the station. Because excitement is high during construction period, costs are no object and the station is finished in a year and a half.

1999: Skywheel station’s advanced radar and deep space scope systems begin to pick up strange moving stars: points of distant light in the sky that move erratically, jetting quickly from one place to another.

2000: A meteor shower comes dangerously close to earth; it misses the planet but some debris collides into Skywheel, knocking it off its orbit onto a course that will send it, over the course of years, spinning into space. This is where the story begins.