I tried a couple of times to turn this into a novel, but I'm not yet a military SF author like David Drake or David Weber.
By 2290 Anno Domini, it was almost universally acknowledged that that world was in splendid shape. Universities spoke once again of theology as the queen of sciences, and logic was revered. Private labs were financed as a point of pride by rich men, or by investors looking to make very big money. The New Reformation in art was producing works that were adored the world wide. Private charity had taken the place of governmental interference and coercion so that the smaller governments were known for their incorruptible officers and agents. Christianity flowered worldwide, and under its benevolent guidance, religious toleration was enforced and the sciences charged ahead.
Humanity stretched from the research labs on Titan to the power taps on Mercury.
And it had been this way for over a hundred years. The last time the world had seen this much peace and prosperity, the British Navy had ruled the seas. Nowadays, it was Americans in powered armor battle suits who stood behind their apparently unarmed young captains who guided things.
But it was rare for such to be needed as the system ran quite well.
But, as always, there were problems. One blessing or bane was longetivity research. The human lifespan for useful work was reaching a hundred fifty years. This made for subtle, and experienced leaders in all sorts of fields, and young, impatient workers who wanted to get out on their own, and do their own thing.
There were various solutions to this. Some of the olders ones took up hobbies, and others moved their competitions into more subtle things that if you were below a hundred you might not even notice. But it was not enough. Others began to trickle through the insanely expensisve jump gate found out at the Titan research lab.
A problem was spotted and a solution offered.
They knew they lived in a Golden Age. But they also knew that such ages never last. Perhaps there was a way to extend it. Take some of the best and the brightest, and offer them a chance to do good work, in the future.
Cryonics had been discovered.
The Torchthrower Project took several hundred top-notch individuals, and froze them, and put them in a starship which waited in deep space with a patient AI to listen to reports sent to it, and to the radio signals streaming between the stars. It might take hundreds of years, but eventually a colony world would be well on its way to a collapse. Then the Torchthrower starship would fly to that world, wake its small army, and send them into battle.
The grunts are young, eager, cooperative and they wear the giant power armor.
The captains are a bit older, more seasoned, and they are cybernetic.
The command rank are still fewer, and they tend to have direct access to satellite weaponry. "Sat One, foe is 100 yards to my right. Vaporize him." A hundred miles up, Sat One fires a hundred megawatt laser into the atmosphere and flash steams the target.
The top leader is the visionary, the Bearer of the Sacred Fire, the oldest by far, and a hard as rock man. He is more like Moses or Elijah than some nice grandpa.
The generations of soldier types are based on Generations Theory with the grunts being Civics, the captains Reactives, and the leader a Visionary. I'm not sure how to slot in the staff guys....
It's an interesting concept; but given that it would be at least a few hundred years before these guys would be called into action, how could they have superior firepower in that future scenario--and why would those who put them in this position expect that they would? The natural expectation of the world you describe would be that the future would be better and brighter, but that even when it falls from its moral and visionary heights it will still have more advanced technology. Thus it might happen that the future world will not have the sort of weaponry the Torchthrower Project can pack, but it would be surprising if the Torchthrower organizers anticipated that.
Thoughts?
--M. J. Young
Off the top of my head:
1: Black Tech - The things they develop and never actually tell you about. Kinda like how people think they've had Cold Fusion for years but the oil companies pay a fortune to keep it from being developed because they would be ruined if energy were free. In this case, they develop weapons technology years ahead of its time and freeze it along with the Torchthrowers. By the time they wake up, this stuff might be common knowledge, but it's only 20 years out of date rather than 300 (rather like waking up in today's world with a Lee-Enfield rifle as opposed to waking up in today's world armed with a crossbow).
2: Adaptive AI - They freeze the Torchthrowers naked, but the AI that monitors them also keeps abreast of the latest in milspec tech and has the capacity to replicate it.
3: Scroungers - The Torchthrowers are uber-badass, but they know their tech will be obsolete by then, so instead of being masters of outdated tech, they're masters of working without technology. The kind of people who drop behind enemy lines to steal enemy equipment, sabotage anything they can get their hands on, and generally make a menace of themselves without having to carry any baggage.
I've read a number of SF novels that had a kind of Age of Exploration, and then the general tech level collapsed along with the general trust (I suppose they're talking about an Interstellar Depression of decades or centuries in length), or the further you got from Earth the lower the tech got, or colonies being deliberately formed with low tech, or 'we brought cows cause they reproduce themself not like factories'.
One notable example is 'Firefly'.
However, either these examples don't apply that well, or I didn't find them wholly convincing.
I could for a 'our industrial base is smaller,a nd we don't really know so much what we're doing at best, and now that we're messing things up its really getting bad.'
Now, the people expect a better and better world, but the Torchthrower Project is a planning for the day when things start to get worse and worse. The idea is...All Golden Ages End.
Another solution is that the Lords Temporal let people leave through the jumpgate, but not with certain technologies.
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All quite cool, O7.
I think my favorite is 'scroungers' because that shows that the people on the planet that were being oppressed had the ability to throw off their oppressors if they had put some thought into it.
As to the scroungers, its kind of like Green Berets. They are supposed to drop into an area, and train teh locals to resist their oppressors.
As to the other two, the Lords Temporal of Earth could send a pulse burst of info every year to each Torchthrower ship spread out over several thousand lightyears. This has the latest tech downloads. And then a hundred fifty years ago, they stopped sending downloads....da, da, dum....
Some of these downloads could be definite black tech. As teh society grows more fragile, the rulers begin to hold back more tech, not trusting their society to respond well. This gives the Torch's a further edge.
Earth drops out of interstellar society, and a general disintegration occurs.
There are tertiary colonies, that is colonies that were seeded by colonies that were seeded by Earth. Such tertiary colonies are most likely to have had a tech collapse.
I've read a number of SF novels that had a kind of Age of Exploration, and then the general tech level collapsed along with the general trust (I suppose they're talking about an Interstellar Depression of decades or centuries in length)
Like in the foundation trilogy?