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their freedoms via the
SolarWeb, were anything but free.
    The Nyett Zhong was born on distant Sedna
beyond Pluto. The revolution became official when shipyards on
Pluto were overrun by resistance soldiers before being bombed out
of existence. Nyett Zhong guerillas commandeered eighteen
long-range cruisers, all in various states of disrepair, and
disappeared back towards the Inner Solar System, converting them
into rag-tag warships along the way. That’s when the resistance got
its teeth.
    Nobody had ever fought a full-scale guerilla
war in space before then—at least not one against as well-organized
a force as the Nyett Zhong. Oligarchy warships were not permitted
closer than thirty million kilometers to non-Garky planets; and
civilian travel, while still permitted between Garky and non-Garky
governments, became increasingly sparse over the following decades,
to the point that today it was only a fraction of what it once was.
The Solar System was bitterly divided and teetering on the brink of
annihilation.
    Jameson Chance, Random’s father, was born
and bred an Oligarchist, a label he wore proudly for decades. But
when Random became a teenager, General Chance had a change of
heart. It wasn’t fast, that change, but by the time Random was
ready to leave home (Garseld, on Mons Olympus’ south slope), his
father was being held for suspicion of providing non-Garky
governments with vital information regarding Oligarchy plans, ship
deployments, and weapons upgrades.
    The court martial was a farce, put on only
to give the impression of fairness. When Random’s mother came
forward to admit that it was she who turned her husband in, Random
was crushed.
    He was there at his father’s execution. On
that day his mother was at an ultra-swanky spa over Enceladus, and
reportedly threw a party when word arrived that General Jameson
Samson Chance had been incinerated.
    His father had willed him a generous living,
one his mother contested. Surprisingly, the Garky court sided with
Random, who to that point had shown no rebellious or traitorous
tendencies. She appealed, and lost again. Their relationship, never
a close one (he had, for all intents and purposes, been raised by
nannies), was irreparably damaged. When she died in a spaceliner
disaster less than an Earth-year later, Random didn’t attend her
funeral. A plaque to her memory was in some mausoleum on Mars. He
had never visited it.
    Jameson Chance’s will included
something quite odd: a brand new, top of the line,
Benito-manufactured RV. Random picked it up on Miranda with the
intention of selling it immediately. But it was clear that The Pompatus of Love ,
which he christened it not long after, was anything but an ordinary
recreational space vehicle.
    The fuselage, computer mainframe, and
subsystems were state of the art military grade, for one, capable
of self-upgrades via the latest in software and nanotech.
Navigational and gravitational controls were made for attack craft,
but tailored perfectly and unobtrusively: it would take a team of
highly trained engineers days to figure out what was what.
Communications were standard for luxury boats—but had redundancy
systems that rivaled colony starships. The engines were
hyperefficient and deceptively powerful; life support and solar
batteries could keep him breathing for decades; shielding was the
finest solar-derived nanotech in existence; and the food and waste
recycling processors could go indefinitely provided he wasn’t more
than one hundred AU from Sol.
    His father had bought him an RV that, if not
able to outrun or outfight an enemy, could survive a full-on
assault. All engineered and expertly hidden.
    Random hated his father when he was a boy.
Jameson Chance was just like his wife: a sniffing, bigoted elitist.
But by the time he was executed, they had become as close as a
father and son could be. And so instead of selling this utterly
unique craft, he decided to call it home and make a new life for
himself. It was