The ADVENTURES of LADYHAWKE

Part One

 Ten things you should know of the time and place you live in.

1. We're well into the future, a good 500 years or so.
2. We're a long way from Earth That Was, which mankind "used up", and the trip took nearly two generations to make.
3. While advanced, as is always the case with predictions of future conditions we're not as far along as we would like to think we would have been after 25 generations.
4. Not that those technological advancements are anything to sneeze at. Terraforming, interplanetary flight, cybernetics, and weaponized lasers are all part of daily life in the Core.
5. There were two dominant cultures to coordinate and make the trip, put simply as Western (American) and Eastern (Chinese).
6. Unlike the Solar System we came from, there are numerous planets and moons to inhabit, granted none of them sustained life or conditions suitable for it, until we terraformed them that is.
7. We have colonized a number of planets and moons surrounding two neighboring stars, in two separate systems.  The ones longest inhabited, in the most prime locations around star number one are called the Core planets.  Further out from them, in less ideal but still very livable orbits are the Border planets, also around star number one.  Step over to the other star, and you have the Rim planets.  Think of the old west for these; minimal vegetation, inhabitation, and development.  Life on the Rim is rough in every way.  Life in the Core is the futuristic variety you'd imagine it to be, clean but controlled.  The Border is somewhere in between, not as clean or as controlled.
8. People existing at the outer edges (Rim) of the governed area (Core and Border), tend not to see a lot of fairness in a distant overlord placing demands on a stressed people.  About 9 years ago, some of those folks (Browncoats), banded together and fought for independence, known as the War for Independence.  About 7 years ago, that bloody war came to its inevitable conclusion, with the core government (Alliance) putting the Independents back into their place, subjugated or dead.
9. A lot of people in the Rim still carry a grudge about this.
10. The Alliance is still a little sensitive about any talk of independence, and certainly resent those that would undermine this idilic society (damn ungracious malcontents) they've worked so hard to create.  Independents (aka BrownCoats) are a bit sensitive too, at least those that haven't accepted the results anyway.  Everybody in the Rim suffered, and blame for the suffering varies from place to place.  The Alliance does have a better PR department after all.