Title: Not Quite Paradise
Pairing: Kurogane/Yuui/Fai
Warnings: Violence, sexual content, crazy.
Summary: AU. In a not-too-distant future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery.

Author's Notes: This fic is being cowritten with Reikah. Chapters will be posted both on my profile and also on her fic journal, which can be found at inmyvortex on Livejournal.

Influences drawn from various space opera dramas, including but not limited to the Vorkosigan Saga, This Alien Shore, Firefly, and Space Usagi.

Part I: EARTH

People argued over what event had truly marked the beginning of humankind's domination over space. Some nostalgics pointed as far back as America's manned landing of the moon or even, a little more realistically, the European Union's exploratory post on Mars. But most pragmatic people agreed that these had been mostly dramatic gimmicks; that the colonization of space hadn't really begun until the first manufacturing yard opened on the Lunar surface, and the first automated mining drones began to return from the Belt. Not until people began to built space vehicles in space, rather than fighting against Earth's gravity well to launch them atop humongous rockets, had the dream of space habitation become a reality.

Only then could the large-scale, self-sufficient stations be built; first on the lunar surface, then the immense, floating fortresses balanced on the LaGrange points in Earth and moon orbit. Terraforming bots were constructed and dispatched to Mars, beginning the centuries-long process of taming the cold planet, but humanity was never that patient; Mars began to sprout sealed domes even faster than Luna had.

But the true age of space colonization came not with ships or stations, but with something much closer to earth: the construction of the massive, ambitious space elevators that eliminated the need for costly rocket boosts forever. For the first time large-scale transportation of materials, plants, animals and supplies into orbit were made possible; for the first time heavy cargoes of raw materials from the mining drones could be safely sent back. Not science but trade kicked the solar habitation effort into high gear, followed quickly by crowds of curious space tourists.

And the space elevators made another dream possible, as well. The vast manufacturing yards turned to an even vaster project: immense colony-ships, bound not for Earth's neighbors but for habitable planets discovered in distant solar systems. Within reach at last, the dream of space colonization lured thousands of adventurers from Earth's surface into orbit for barely more than the cost of a plane ticket. Equipped with their own terraformed ecosystems, with armies of robots guarding thousands of souls in deep hibernation, the colony ships set off for the stars.

It was a one-way trip, of course - the interstellar distances were too vast to ever return, too vast even for communication when a light-speed radio signal could take ten years to make the trip. Once the colony ships were out of sight they were gone forever, people on Earth thought, scattered among the stars to make their own destiny with no way of ever finding them again.

Or at least, so people thought: until one day a woman in Greece woke up to realize that she could hear voices in her head from her cousins who had departed for Proxima Centauri years ago.

Humanity had spent the last century bending and breaking nature to their will and whim; it came to quite a shock to them to discover that nature had made its changes on them, as well.

Perhaps the migration of humans into space was what triggered it, the vast and cold new environment prompting old mechanisms of adaptation to stir themselves. Perhaps it was the unprecedented exposure to radiation that accelerated the mutation cycle of ten billion human souls giving birth to the next generation. Or perhaps the potential had always been there, hidden in old superstitions and derided at myths. Whatever the source, humans were quick the sense the potential, and to seize upon it.

The age of space had begun; the age of psionics followed hard on its heels.

Telepathy was the first talent to be discovered and cultivated. When such vast distances stretched between one human settlement and another that even the speed of light was strained - at best a few minutes or hours, at worst a response time of years - human thought could breach the distances in the blink of an eye. Before long each new colony expedition was fitted with a telepath - or more, if they could spare them - to keep a tenuous thread of contact with the mother planet. Even if no man or ship could cross the vast interstellar distances in time to be of any aid, it made all the difference for the colonists to know that they were not alone.

The next talent that flourished was telekineses, and it did so for unforeseen reasons. Abilities that would have been scorned as worthless in the gravity well of a planet - why sweat and strain to lift a single spoon off a table surface, after all, when you could just walk over and pick it up? - proved invaluable in environments centering around zero-G. As their cousins the 'paths ignored the laws of space and time, the telekinetic scorned the restrictions of momentum; they could move themselves without needing a solid platform to launch from, or any other item they wished without fearing the backlash of momentum.

The potential of the kinetics quickly became apparent. Their unmatchable precision and control in low-gravity environments, combined with the extra force they could add to their strength, made them ideal recruits for the new, close-combat style of melee fighting that the fragile environment of space stations and habitats required; and soon those who had been tools were made into weapons.

Telepaths and telekinetics were highly sought, by private and public enterprises alike; the demand quickly outstripped the supply. Even with science's best efforts to duplicate and boost the genes responsible, the rapidly expanding infrastructure of space travel and habitation required more. Ethics and morals were soon shunted aside in terms of practical considerations, and rumors - well quashed - circulated about kidnappings, coercion and raids on households for suspected telepaths, forced into work in technological servitude.

And there were whispers, rumors too, of a third talent - a diamond so rare and valuable it would make the others look like common pebbles. The genetic mutation, almost unheard of, that would allow human pilots to see and manipulate the folds of space itself - who could turn sideways through the fabric of reality and bring a body or a ship across the fathomless light-years of space in the blink of a human eye. Who could do in an instant what the massive colony-ships had taken hundreds, even thousands of years to do, carrying their sleeping human cargoes to new worlds across the stars.

Teleporters.

It was only a rumor, of course.

~to be continued...