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part of our education. When the Earth’s fossil fuels had begun to run out in the first half of the century, nuclear power had stepped in as the primary energy source – barely. Anti nuke protests slowed down the build up to an effective nuclear grid so much that the grid didn’t really come on line until after the oil crisis of 2035 was in full swing.
    A lot of protests and a few small wars later, things settled down, and the small lunar colony became a key part of the Earth’s energy supply. People hadn’t even been sure there was uranium on the moon until 2009, but it turned out there was, and quite a lot of it. That first colony was wholly owned by a US corporation. A few other countries tried to get small operations started, but the strong base already in place at the colony plus the expense of setting up a new one resulted in a resurgence of the failing American hegemony.
    In retrospect, of course, war over the moon was inevitable. Too much power – literally – in the hands of one nation. When it finally happened, things stayed on Earth for the first bit. Most spacefaring nations had a small official Navy in space, but it was pretty toothless. So the fighting stayed in the atmosphere. Until it didn’t. The APAC Alliance headed by China was losing the fight and decided to take the fighting back to the source. They loaded a set of nukes onto a ship and hit the lunar colony, which was more of a city by then. Over a hundred thousand people were either instantly vaporized or died in the decompression, explosions, and shock waves after the blasts. Then they took the remaining nukes and got ready to launch them at the United States.
    One US Navy captain was in space when this all happened, and his ship was near enough to watch as friends and some of his family were obliterated on Luna. He managed to disable the engines of the Chinese ship, personally board it and seize the vessel. Then he refit the engines enough to get back to Earth. He programmed the ship’s computer to go back home, broadcasting a faked message about damage taken during the attack.
    He sent it back and remotely detonated all the remaining missiles above one of the largest spaceports on Earth, a few miles outside Beijing. While missile defense systems would have stopped most of the damage from any nuclear missile launch, there was no defense against a ship they thought was their own. The damage was incalculable.
    That pretty much ended the war in one shot. No one had the stomach for more destruction after that, and the loss of the Lunar Colony threatened everyone’s energy supply. No energy, no heat, no transport, no modern farming techniques – with a net result of mass starvation. It almost reached that point, but collectively the governments of the Earth got together and built a new mining colony again. And they all signed the Lunar Accord, an historic treaty.
    The Treaty was signed by every nation on Earth – by force and threat of force, the major powers got everyone on board. It barred for all time any weapon capable of being used to damage any ship, station, colony, or planetary structure from space. No more armed spacecraft. No weapons platforms on satellites or space stations. No armaments at the new Lunar city, or on the colonies which would spring up on Mars or around the larger asteroids. No weapons in space – ever. The resources in space were too vital to ever risk losing them again to a military action. On pain of mandatory death sentence to all involved if anyone tried to violate the Accord. An international commission was created to ensure all space faring nations remained in compliance.
    The officer who had basically ended the war single-handedly was billed as a hero. His side had won, so he was accorded a great deal of respect for someone who had blown up one of the largest cities on the planet. Big parades, promotion to admiral, and a nice desk job as far from possible action as they could dump someone of that rank. But he