A moon on one of the branch-lines leading from Golden Junction, Ambersai is mainly an industrial settlement, which serves as a launch-point for the miners who exploit its system’s rich asteroid belt. It is also famed for the Ambersai Bazar, the largest marketplace in the region.
A popular type of military drone, which gets its name from the initials of the company that makes it, Bandarpet Tactical Logistics. (Also sometimes known as a “Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato.”)
A Junction world where travelers from the central Network can change for trains to Golden Junction and to the industrial worlds beyond Prell Plaza—the so-called “Trans-Chiba Branchlines.”
In the first thousand years of the Great Network, the companies that took on the great task of laying rail-links and terraforming worlds soon found themselves facing all sorts of difficulties. Laws and customs began to differ widely between different stations, and often changed during the centuries-long time periods that were needed for massive long-term projects. It gradually became the norm for business agreements to be sealed by marriage between the families of company directors, since bonds of blood were more enduring than ordinary contracts. In this way, over many centuries, the great companies and corporations of the Network became Corporate Families, in which power was handed down from parent to child.
Most of the larger corporate families maintain a small army to police their stations and fend off hostile takeovers by rival families. During the First Expansion these armies were often large and well trained, their ranks swollen by hired mercenaries. Since the coming of the Empire they have dwindled to small forces of Corporate Marines, or “CoMa.” Some family CoMas are still tough fighting units, used to quell rebellions on outlying industrial worlds, but most are mainly used for ceremonial duties.
As human beings spread out across the galaxy during the First Expansion, the Datasea spread with them—a massive information system made from the interlinked internets of all the inhabited worlds. Human beings use only tiny portions of the sea, the safely firewalled “data rafts,” which they access via wallscreens, data-slates, or headsets. The rest is the domain of the Guardians and other, lesser data-entities.
One of the most important functions of the K-bahn is to spread information through the Datasea; data stored in the mind of a train can be transferred instantaneously from world to world, rather than having to travel through space in the form of light or radio waves. It has sometimes been suggested that the Guardians built the Network not for humanity’s sake, but simply in order to enlarge the Datasea.
The Imperial College of Data Divers is a caste of elite IT consultants, trained to venture into the deep Datasea. They are also responsible for carrying messages from the Guardians to the Emperor, or any other human being to whom a Guardian wishes to speak.
Over the history of the Great Network many stations have been abandoned because of planetary disaster or simply because the worlds they served were of no more use. The Dog Star Line is the only entire line to suffer this fate. An old line, it was founded by the Sirius Transgalactic Rail Company, a subsidiary of the Abayrek Family. It served a number of the industrial worlds, which were stripped to build the cities of Grand Central and the O Link stations. It served as a supply-line for the rebel forces during the Spiral Line Rebellion, and was the scene of several running battles between rebel and Railforce wartrains. By 2935 most of the stations had closed, and the rest were so little-used that the Abayreks decided to shut the entire line.
A small Noon resort world on a branch line leading from Golden Junction. It is famed for its Painted Desert, and for the Noons’ Summer Palace, one of the most beautiful buildings on the Network.
The First Expansion is the name given to the earliest era of the Great Network, a period lasting several thousand years, when explorers and settlers from Old Earth were first finding their way through the new K-gates, and starting to develop the worlds that they found waiting there. During the first part of this era there was an attempt by the old nation states of Earth to claim different parts of the Network, but the old system did not long survive, and was gradually replaced by the Corporate Families. The First Expansion was a period of great advances, but also of terrible conflict, as different groups fought over freshly opened worlds. Seeking to ensure stability after the Third Rail War, the Guardians intervened and installed the head of the Chael-Kefri family as the first Network Empress. This brought an end to the First Expansion and began the Modern or Imperial Era.
A prosperous hub world that links the Spiral Line to Kishinchand and the O Link. Scene of the final battle between Railforce and the Prell-backed separatists during the Spiral Line Rebellion.
At some point in the 21st century CE, on humankind’s original homeworld, artificial intelligences were constructed that became far more intelligent than their makers. How many there were, and whether one was built first and constructed the others or all twelve were created at once, is not known. Some stories claim that there were more than twelve, but that the weak ones were defeated and deleted by the stronger, or are in hiding, or simply have no interest in humanity. Even of the twelve, several have always remained aloof from human affairs. The others—the Mordaunt 90 Network, Sfax Systema, Anais Six, the Twins, Vohu Mana, and the Shiguri Monad—have guided human beings ever since. Their personalities are spread across the whole of the Datasea, their vast programs stored in deep data centers like the ones on Grand Central or separate hardware-planets. All scientific and technological advances since the creation of the Guardians have been revealed by the Guardians themselves, while several have been suppressed because the Guardians believe they are not in humanity’s interests. In recent years, however, the Guardians’ interest in human beings seems to have faded—they seldom speak to individuals, or take any active part in life on the Great Network.
One of the most pleasant stations of the eastern Network, Golden Junction was among the first worlds to be claimed and terraformed by the Noon family during the turbulent years of the First Expansion. Best known in modern times for its university.
Grand Central is an Earth-like planet situated near the heart of the Great Network, with more than seventy K-gates linking it to all the major rail lines of the galaxy.
Most of Grand Central’s K-gates are on its main continent, Chilest. It is the home of Railforce HQ, the K-bahn Timetable Authority, the Imperial Senate, and the Durga, the ancient palace of the Network Emperors. The smaller southern continent is mostly desert, and is the site of vast underground data centers from where the Guardians keep watch on human affairs. With their usual theatrics, the Guardians have marked the site of these buried facilities with huge pyramids and statues, turning the whole continent into a giant sculpture park that visitors from all over the Network come to admire.
Some people claim that Monk Bugs, which form the mobile colonies known as “Hive Monks,” are an alien species that originated on one of the far-flung worlds of the Network. It seems more likely that they are simply a type of insect that migrated from Old Earth along with human beings, and has mutated as a result of exposure to K-gate radiation while clinging to the outsides of trains. When a colony of the bugs grows large enough, it forms a kind of simple intelligence, which seems to make it want to mimic human beings. The cowled, shambling Hive Monks have been a feature of life on the Great Network for thousands of years. Attempts to stop them boarding K-trains have always been abandoned, because when a Hive Monk becomes agitated or is subjected to physical violence, it often disintegrates into an unintelligent swarm, causing far more inconvenience to trains, station staff, and passengers than it would as a hive. For this reason they are allowed to ride the trains as they please. It is estimated that there are more than ten million Hive Monks, all constantly traveling from station to station on pilgrimages connected with their primitive insect religion.
A rebel group who believes human beings should free themselves from the rule of the Guardians, and that the Emperor should be replaced by a president elected by the peoples of the Network. Despite the best efforts of Railforce, they still hold out on some of the Network’s outermost worlds, and have been known to attack trains and damage rails.
A portal through which a train can pass from one point in space to another, often many hundreds or thousands of light-years distance. Their exact nature is known only to the Guardians. The transition from one world to another through a K-gate is usually instantaneous, although the gate from Galatava to Khoorsandi runs “slow”—a train going at the Galatava end takes 0.7 seconds to begin emerging on Khoorsandi—and the Nokomis/Luna Verde gate is rumored to occasionally run “fast,” with trains appearing on the Luna Verde side several seconds before they leave Nokomis.
A moon on a minor line that branches from the I-Link at Galatava. Every four standard years Khoorsandi’s orbit brings it so close to its parent world, the gas giant Anahita, that tidal forces cause a massive increase in volcanic activity. This volcanic bloom, and the accompanying Fire Festival, is the basis of Khoorsandi’s tourist industry.
The Guardians have always carefully controlled research into artificial intelligence—perhaps for fear that human beings might invent something to rival themselves. But in 2560 they allowed the Parrakhan Cybernetics Corporation to develop the first humanoid robots. Nicknamed “Motorik,” the androids were initially used as shock troops in the Lee-Noon War, but gradually began to find more peaceful uses, taking over from human workers in dull or dangerous jobs, particularly on uninhabitable worlds in the first stages of terraforming.
The Empire is a revival of an ancient form of government from Old Earth. A single human being is chosen to be the ruler of the Network. The Emperor or Empress has little real power, since they are watched over by the Guardians, who will intervene to stop them from doing anything that is likely to cause instability. Their purpose is to act as a symbolic link between the Guardians and humanity, and to ensure that the Corporate Families and the representatives of the different stations and cities of the Network meet to negotiate their differences in the Imperial Senate rather than fighting. However, the Guardians have never objected to an Emperor advancing his own power and interests, ensuring that the family of the current Emperor or Empress is usually the most powerful of the Corporate Families.
One of the greatest of the Corporate Families, the Noons began as bankers, funding a variety of terraforming and rail companies during the First Expansion. Eventually they went into the terraforming business. Legend has it that their founder, Jatka Noon, did a deal with the Guardian known as Mordaunt 90 Network that allowed him to stake first claim to two newly linked junction worlds. Those worlds, one in the eastern Network and one in the west, became the Noons’ twin powerbases of Sundarban and Golden Junction. From there they expanded, gaining control of the Silver River Line and building vital stations on the O Link. Their visionary leader, Lady Rishi Noon, built a number of key stations that finally consolidated their power. Her son became Emperor of the Network, and the Noons have ruled the empire ever since.
A planet in the western reaches of the galaxy, where the Guardians, humankind, and all known life on the Network originally evolved. Strangely, it does not have a K-gate, but visitors may reach it by spaceship from the K-gate on Mars, which was the first to be opened by the Guardians. Since space travel is boring and expensive, and Earth is now just a forest park not unlike Jangala or a dozen other worlds, most tourists are content to view the home planet from Mars, where it is visible as a blue star.
The name for the line that links a halo of smaller hub-worlds around Grand Central, connecting the various lines that emerge from that great junction with each other, and with the wider Network. It gets its name from 2-D maps of the Network, on which it is shown as a circle.
The oldest line on the Network. Many of the worlds it links are quiet backwaters or mined out industrial planets nowadays, and its farther reaches are mostly traveled by pilgrims or tourists who wish to visit the original K-gate on Mars.
The Prells are one of the oldest of the Corporate Families. Pioneers who settled and terraformed some of the outlying industrial worlds that supplied the materials from which the station cities of more pleasant, central worlds are built. But their power was eclipsed by the growing power of the Noons and others. They are now mostly confined to their own holdings on the Trans-Chiba Branchlines, where their most important stations include Prell Plaza, Frostfall, and Broken Moon. Their rivalry with the Noons has several times led to trouble, most recently in the Spiral Line Rebellion of 2926-8. Many people believe the current head of the clan, Elom Prell, is the favorite of one of the Guardians. It is hard to see any other reason why the Guardians would overlook their disruptive behavior.