The Story Behind Kara. A World Building Info Dump.
Long before I wrote Renegade on Kara, I wrote a very different story about the universe of Kara, and about a high-tech decadent human society finding it. That story eventually ended up with the title Kara Discovered after I tried quite a few other titles. But during its third draft, I abandoned that project and used it for my world building of my next story. I wrote, over and over and over, the story Renegade on Kara, which when I started that project was supposed to be book one of a trilogy, The Dragon Empire of Kara, set more than a thousand years after man has started his own colonies there. But that first draft of Renegade turned into a trilogy itself on its third rewrite, as I had packed too many events into it.
Here is part of that world building that when into creating Kara
By the time of Kara Discovered, Humankind has spread across three different universes. Life is not all that common, one system in less than a thousand, and intelligent life very, very rare even on those. The most advanced non-human civilization of the three universes found is stuck in the early copper age and has been stuck there for thousands of years. Most are just hunter-gatherers. All such planets are banned from human occupation or contact.
On Earth, they eliminated war long before they got FTL by jumping universes, so no true army exists. They do have the Fraternal Order of the Legion on earth and the first five colonies created. It is a foundation that both; gives violent men, so called misfits, a place to get focus and discipline; while keeping alive the ideas and traditions of being a soldier, in the belief that one day man will again have war and need real soldiers. The Legion pays for itself by Trust that owns stocks and land; and taking on security jobs to set up colonies on the most dangerous worlds. They are slightly better than robots and cost the same for that job. No other human security company comes anywhere near as good, even with the same equipment. (I have some short stories on that creation, I’ll publish eventually.)
Most other universes have laws of physics that preclude matter existing. Discovering a second universe where matter could exist and organic chemistry worked, allowed for FTL. You jumped to the second universe, then back to this one in a different place. Earth had colonized five places with slow boats before its discovery, and FTL was discovered, by a colony not on Earth. It was a bit complicated and took time, because of the slight differences in the laws of physics meant that computers designed to work in one universe didn’t work in the other, and ones that could work both were bulky and less efficient in either. A thousand years passed before a third universe was discovered, and that one required computers and other equipment of a slightly different design from the other two. This all resulted in the first universe getting most of the colonies built there, with a few to universe two, and very few in the third.
Then, nearly 1500 years after that, they discovered the fourth universe. But that universe was clearly an artificial creation. It had one planet with an infinite radius, and its gravity coefficient calculated to give that planet a surface area gravity of .85 g. The math built in the physics of a pointless light source; it had no sun. All universes decay and new ones are constantly being created. Besides being infinite in diameter, it was many, many orders of magnitude older than the math said a universe could exist for. But the math also said, organic chemistry would work there, if not any of their technology.
An infinite surface area meant there would be infinitely more uninhabited parts than inhabited ones. It also meant that there would be an infinite distance between any two gates opened there. You could not close a gate and ever hope to re-open to that same spot. There would always be an infinite amount of distance between those two, even if you could target it. But you could not even do that. The builders had taken steps to prevent targeting from another universe. All that added up to, if you closed a gate, you were never going to be able to retrieve the people or equipment.
Yet it might be possible to find the builder, or what is left of them. The same thing that prevented targeting also indicated there was a likelihood of following the path of a previously opened gate to Kara putting you in that general area. The odds were between one and a thousand, and one in a million that any gate you opened would go to where one had been opened before. The Council on earth decided to massively expand that University of Armstrong research station that had found the fourth universe. They were to find a habitable area, if they could.
The Armstrong University Lab Station was massively expanded, and renamed Armstrong Gate Station. They built a brand-new portal machine, one that could open hundreds of times in a day, but could be kept open indefinitely. And unlike their research machine that only opened pinhole size portals, this one opened portals large enough that instrument, and people could cross. They named that type of portal a gate. The search began and the Legion, and their expendable misfits, were hired.
That is where the story Kara Discovered begins with the Legion and its men trained to kill in a society that penalizes people that study violence getting ready to enter Kara. I am rewriting that story in an episode format and putting it up for free. If you would like to read it for free, click the site that best suits you.
