WHAT IS THE SOLSTICE.

It was largely thanks to the Solstices designers that I even had the right opportunities for my plan to reach fruition, she was a rock. The original merchant-men that had ploughed the space routes between planets were massive and monstrous feats of metallurgy, the largest of them could take 60 years to build, economically only the greatest of the corporations could afford to create them and many of those same organisations went bankrupt because of them. The Asterio class were the solution, the press labelled it the second stone age, fortunes were made in the search for the right kind of asteroids, it’s principal was simple, find rock, take factory to rock, hollow out rock, fill up rock with the kit needed, and finally give rock engines and boosters. Needless to say they got bigger and bigger and could never land on a planet. If you consider that the meteorite that helped me kill of the dinosaurs was I believe the size of a horse, then imagine the chaos any Asterio could cause. There were many initial problems that had to be overcome and they were never destined to be popular, however the rocks worked and they were pure spaceships. Surrounding the solar system was the asteroid chain known simply as The Kiuper Belt, every conceivable type of substance was there for the taking, eventually the Asterio class was going to be replaced by the Arctic’s, massive ships made from solid frozen liquids. There were already several in use operationally before my little intervention brought the whole thing to a standstill. Picture a speeding and spinning baked potato, that was O’Grady’s home.
The strangest part of it was the environmental impact of the Asterio class. On the Earth were so many endangered species and in those space ships was a sanctuary, like many corporate decisions it was a bit of PR fluff to start with, yet when the spacers unified into there own recognisable culture, it was clearly written into their declaration of independence, to continue to protect all species. In her aquatic belly were Spinner Dolphins, Cod, even a small schools of Tuna, Sting rays and Cuttle fish. In her three hydroponic parks were Fox’s, Aberdeen Angus cattle, Pythons, Butterflies, Amazonian Frogs, Field Mice, Rough lemur’s, Ducks and the very last colony of European Red Squirrels. Kego was on particularly good terms with the lemurs, he found them infinitely fascinating, occasionally you can even see him pretending to be one, so I decided to leave them alone, It wasn’t compassion that made me do this, his happiness wasn’t important to me, but if I induced a nervous breakdown with my little lesson then what use would he be.