Author's note-Ok I'm sorry for the long wait I'm waiting for a new laptop, had some writers block, the usual stuff. I would just like to thank you for reading this...thing... up to this point, i love reading your review and seeing what you think. Anyway, I'm still working on where I want to take the story at this point but it never seems to turn out the way I want it to so I thought I'd put up some background material on Humanity in my alternate universe.
Colonies-For reference, when I say "colony" I don't mean entire planets, I'm referring to sections of the planet controlled by individual factions. Human colonies can be roughly divided into "national colonies" and "private colonies". Private colonies are any colony not controlled by a government, for example, corporations, other large organizations, or private individuals who are wealthy enough. Private colonies tend to have a definitive goal, for example a corporation owns a colony in order to mine resources, or a conservation group owns a colony in order to use it as a massive wildlife preserve. National colonies on the other hand are directly administered by a government. The vast majority of these are part of Earth based nations, but there are a few of the oldest colonies that have gained independence. National colonies primarily serve as population dumps for the overcrowded old colonies and Earth. While specific policies vary, as a rule, all national colonies are expected to be completely self sufficient within one to five years. At which point the colony is expected to support itself and begin to produce something for the parent nation. There are also a large number of penal colonies, generally located on lifeless moons or other inhospitable locations.
Population-Almost immediately after the discovery of the Charon relay, a race to colonize the most territory began. In order to colonize more territory, nations need more people. This led to the creation of massive tax incentives for having children in almost every country across the Earth. And when you crunch the numbers for human population growth I came up with 500 couples each have 4 kids. That's 2,000, assuming they are fifty/fifty male/female, that's 1,000 couples and each of them have 4 kids, that's 4,000 kids. They make 2,000 couples, that's 8,000 kids, and so on. I know I didn't account for deaths and what not but still. And the numbers get scary when you multiply them by a couple billion.
Economics-Despite the expansion, the various Human economies are beginning to collapse under their own weight. Having seen near exponential growth in the stock markets since the advent of interstellar flight, it was only a matter of time before a crash occurred. While experience allowed the stock brokers and government to soften the blow, by 2093 the biggest Human economies are all in a steady downward slide, with rising unemployment, inflation, and no end in sight.
Wars-Almost as soon as the first colonies became self sufficient, some people believed that they should be independent of Earth based governments. Since then, there have been riots, protest, terrorist attacks, insurgencies, and full scale wars over colonial secession. In addition, there have been dozens of proxy wars between the great powers at the farthest corners of human space, fought over valuable element zero reserves or other natural resources.
Human Military Starships-Human space combat doctrine is radically different from the rest of the galaxy. The first difference is the vast carriers that are a carryover from the wet navies. But the other two primary differences are spawned for the scarcity of element zero in human space. While human navies do use ships that have Dreadnought scale weaponry, these ships are little more than a flying gun with engines and shields, designed to be a "sniper ship" meant to disable enemy ships at extreme range. The majority of Human capital ships are battle ships that are designed to get in close with the enemy with the intent to board the enemy ships. There are two reasons for this. First, it makes the battleships cheaper because they no longer need element zero for the massive main gun. And second, because a ship, with its element zero core in particular, are far too valuable to waste by blowing it up. Therefore, Human navies have devised hundreds of different ways to board enemy ships in space, boarding torpedoes, ramming, grappling hooks that pull the two ships together. To protect themselves from these attacks, Human ships are very solidly built, over engineered in every conceivable way in order to withstand constant bombardment without shields and regular collisions. Because of this, the loss of atmosphere is very common in combat, to the point that everyone is required to wear a space suit at all times during combat, and some ships are even designed to evacuate the atmosphere of the outer decks, only keeping the sleeping quarters and food storage pressurized. The threat of boarding has also affected the layout of the ships. Human ships are always cramped and utilitarian in design, think the inside of an aircraft carrier. A combination of narrow passage ways blind turns, and other built in features favor the defenders.
Human Technology-Human technology has advanced at a slightly different angle compared to the rest of the galaxy. They don't have omni-tools and use ballistic weapons as the basis of all their weapons, with little need to change. The two primary areas where Humanity has pulled forward of the rest of the galaxy is in the area of orbital construction and terraforming. Over almost every major human colony, there is at least one space station, generally cylindrical or resembling a miniature Citadel, spinning to provide gravity, and pointed away from the planet. These space stations are linked to the ground with a "space elevator" which is actually a very small, very crude mass relay that is used to launch containers to the orbiting space station. Inside, they are unloaded, reloaded, and then dropped back down, guided by mass effect fields to land in a specific location, either a lake, or in a cushion of mass effect fields. This technology allows for humans to build massive constructs in orbit relatively cheaply cutting out the need for shuttle craft completely. Similar technology is used in Titan ships, allowing them to support a remote colony until the native transportation infrastructure can be built, or resupply a garrison across the system nearly instantaneously, or it can be turned on a planet, giving a Titan near planet cracking abilities. Terraforming is the other technology in which Humanity has advanced ahead of the rest of the galaxy. They experience they gained for the successful Mars terraformation, and the Venus terraformation which is still in progress, have given Humans the skills and technology to bring other semi hospitable worlds up to human standards within a decade or less.