-Altar of Scales, second edition of Book 1 in The Descendant Saga pending release
Tight Beam Volume 17 June 2025
Hello all, I have good news! Paperwork for Nerd Smith Consolidated LLC went through and was accepted by the state. (Finally) We’ve been moving forward with “purpose and intent” ever since. Nerd Smith Consolidated, and I made color palettes, decided on fonts, made some emblems, worked on branding styles. I mean, if you’re here reading this, you can see the website has been completely overhauled. We’ve made a ton of progress on the back end, designing and preparing tons of content to release in the first 30 days after our sci-fi book release. Tons of work was done for SEO purposes, and we’re still chugging away at what’s left to do. Hopefully that makes the site much more discoverable in your search engine of choice. We even did some work on my long neglected author website.
Nerd Smith Consolidated told me not to post this yet, to save the timeline for after release, but this is my last chance to post anything, to get more hype before the book release, please share this with anyone you know who can read and ask them to subscribe too, because the next issue of Tight Beam, will be a publishing announcement. If you haven’t already, please subscribe while you can.
With all that being said, we’re finally ready for release. Nerd Smith Consolidated (will be referred to as NS-C in the future) and I still have to get copyright protection, purchase our ISBNs and format the manuscript for the E-Book and the paperback. (Don’t worry, we’re still doing audio book too, but that will be released at a later date as we don’t want to rush it. It’s been so long in coming already I’d rather delay and deliver the best form of our art that we can.) I’m not sure how long that will take, hours, days? NS-C is a separate entity, not just me now, after all. It could be days, a week. We don’t have a specific date picked for our new sci-fi novel, other than as soon as possible. It’s waited too long for its day in the sun and I can’t wait to share it with the world again. Since this is our first release, we’re only going to publish our epic science fiction series through KDP (Amazon). We don’t want to rely on them solely, but they’re the largest market share, and that will be easiest while we figure out how to do this. Hopefully, as we figure out what we do and don’t like, what to do and not do, we’ll be able to release the second book on a wider array of platforms for those who don’t trust the Amazon mega store.
Work continues on the audio book. There’s one chapter left to edit, and then one we’re going to re record, and by necessity edit that too. Hopefully, the audio book release is not far behind. The best thing you can do to help, because I’m sure you’re all eager readers, is to share this with your fellow readers who might also be interested in my Orson Scott Card meets Tom Clancy brand of classic sci-fi, or military sci-fi, whatever you want to call it, there are too many sub genres to know which title to use. I don’t think of it as a space opera book, just a good book. If somehow you’re here reading this and aren’t subscribed to the newsletter, then please add your email to the subscription list, that’ll be the best way to stay notified. Because like I said, I’m not 100% sure when the release will be, only that it will be soon. It might only be a couple of days, or even a week, if all goes according to plan. But there will definitely be a special issue of tight beam to announce the public release of our long awaited sci-fi novel Altar of Scales. That way, you can be the first to get it, the first to leave a review, and secure your own place in the legacy of our sci-fi book series. NS-C and I might be indies for now, but we don’t want to be forever. Our Indie sci-fi book launch, with book two available soon about to no longer be a dream, we hope we can grow, and not always be an indie. And that this gritty sci-fi drama gets enough support for our indie publishing, that the book, the publisher, our audience, our fandom and all of nerd-dom together can grow into something bigger and better.
Now normally this is the part where I give a free short story, from my backlog of old content. But not this time. This time I have something even better. Not only is my back log of random short stories getting a little thin, and I’d like to save some for later, but because of the pending book release, I figured this would be the best time for a good old lore drop. Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers, but there is a sharp juxtaposition between the environment of the first book and the second book and to help reduce the shock factor, this will explain the context of the situation. And to all those people who weren’t cool enough to read the newsletter before getting the book, well geeze, you’re in for a wild ride.
The Events of Altar of Scales take place in the year 2459. But, before we go forward in time to cover the story, we must go back in time, to set the stage, on how we got to 2459, because I am, after all, a nerd, and love a good lore dump.
-The first note on my time line starts in 1991 with the collapse of the soviet union.
-The second note is the final flight of the Space shuttle in 2011. (This is the main factor to why neither of the main belligerents in the story are the United States, because when I started writing this, the U.S. Gov had no independent method to get astronauts into space. It was done either privately, or on a foreign nation’s lift vehicles.)
-I have in the year 2077 the European Union Collapses. (No, that was not an intentional reference to the game Cyberpunk 2077. I wrote this plot in mid 2017 and world events that have transpired since then had not factored into it. I have changed from my original timeline.)
-After the collapse of the EU and general anarchy across Europe, the United States tries to help and in 2078 has a massive market crash, worse than the great depression, basically immobilizing the country. (You know growing national debt and all that, it’s an even bigger problem now than it was in 2017 when I wrote this plot, but that is neither here, nor there.)
-With the United States to economically weak to do anything, and Europe devolving into chaos, in 2080, Russia provides aid. Moving in troops, workers and equipment, and without firing a shot, gains administrative control over the majority of the European continent.
-With the United States effectively out of the way, and Russia expanding its influence, gaining control of Europe’s mineral and labor resources, and already having vast petroleum reserves, Russia becomes the world’s superpower, and China with their own ambitions isn’t cool with that. So they start their own expansion. Without The United States providing hardware backing, South Korean can’t stand against North Korea with China’s backing, and a now communist, unified Korea joins China in 2081. (Again this plot was made up in 2017 before the current conflicts like with Ukraine and Taiwan, but I guess this is the point where china would make their move on Taiwan too.)
-This starts a second cold war, now between Russia, their satellite states and China and their satellite states. Because of the expansion and aggression from China. Japan and Australia team up, along with the many islands like the Philippines, that lay in between them to stand against China. But now without The united states navy and fighter jets, they just don’t have enough manpower and, in a war from 2085 to 2087, they battle over control of the Pacific. A battle Japan and Australia loose. In the same time frame, Russian marched further south from Europe into norther Africa and the middle east. Seeking resources to feed the starving, desperate European continent, and no long playing nice like the first time the soviet union invaded the middle east in the 80s, this time, they’re there for the land, not the people and it turns into a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
-By 2090 both new super powers have expanded as far as they easily can, leaving India trapped between them, and South America forgotten, the southern hemisphere not under control of the Russian Federation or the Chinese super state now known as the AACR (Asian Australian Collective republic, because Australia earned some concessions, not going down easily etc.) Those other countries like India and south America are forced into wild anarchy, and starvation, cannibalism runs rampant, and the two communist superpowers indifferent to the plight of man, look over the piles of dead as they eye each other and the cold war, really sets in.
-In 2097 after more than a decade of complete lawlessness, drug lords, cannibalism, the desperate Indian people strike out, over land, into the Russian occupied middle east, and Chinese occupied Asia, and while they are an easily contained threat, the Russian and Chinese soldiers bump elbows a little and some shots are exchanged, and it escalates into a battle, and the battle escalates into nuclear war. Phone calls are made, last-minute deals done with a handshake and missiles are destroyed in flight. The warheads don’t detonate, and the world is saved from another ice age. But things remain extremely tense. China exterminates the bulk of the Indian population, leaving them with a couple of their largest cities intact, but hemmed in, much like North American Indian reservations. Russian forces keep pushing south, taking the rest of the African continent as there’s no military might that can stand in their way, and the need to be more powerful than their Chinese counterparts leads them to ruthless action against anyone who does not immediately and fully comply. These two communist powers recolonize and re-divide the world between themselves. Leaving the American continents largely alone to fester with their own problems. Everyone’s hands are full.
-In the 2100-2150 time frame, things have settled, the world has a lot fewer people in it now, and the two superpowers settle in for a long, hard jawed, white knuckled cold war. After 40 or 50 years of rampant destruction and human loss, things have stagnated. Pollution has increased as China and Russia have done whatever they needed to build more ships and jets to threaten each other with. Many resources are running out. The batteries for the drone swarms have used up much of the world’s Lithium for example. As resources dwindle and each super power looks to get the upper hand over the other, they look to the starts for resources and so begins, the second space race.
-In 2208, earth has mostly recovered, much of the world has stabilized. South American a forgotten mad max style jungle waste land of petty warlords, the no longer United States of America fall to unregulated free market corporate rule, the various companies, monopolies and conglomerates vie for power and sell tech and skilled labor to the highest bidder without moral quandary, the remaining Indian population is similarly huddled around a few wealthy business tycoons and exists more as a company, than a government. Russian and Chinese flags have been planted all over the solar system as various celestial bodies are claimed for one faction or the other. Populations and technologies are sustained by water mined from comments, minerals scoured out of asteroids. People expand to colonies on mars, and a sprawling network of space station over Venus and between the moons of the gas giants. But in the summer of 2208, A Hungarian mathematician proves a theory about parallel dimensions, new fields of physics are formed and studied.
-Its crude, but by 2230 the Russians have developed this interdenominational physics into a functional, repeatable, probably safe space ship engine. And humans leave our solar for the first time, bound for Alpha Centauri.
-In 2232 the earth’s supply of crude oil runs dry, it’s all been mined out, pumped into tanks processed and used for the engines of industry before being pumped as smog back into the air. The AACR is not far behind the Russian Federation in deciphering this interdimensional math and they create their own space ship drive engines. Soon they two, now interstellar super powers are claiming planers and resources, colonizing every chunk of rock they can find in the nearest star systems.
-By the 2250s, humans aren’t just going to other solar systems to mine and harvest resources, they start sending ships, to establish civilian colonies, and interstellar travel becomes more than soldiers staring at each other between the celestial bodies. In 2253 Only the third ever Russian Federation Civilian colonization ship ever sent out, The RFS Stalingrad is aimed at the farthest way yet targeted exo-planet, known as Kepler 452 B, renamed as Langok. The Hungarian word for fire. The ship is never heard from again.
–2275 the anarchistic, corporate states of the world that aren’t incorporated into the Russian Federation or the AACR form their own coalition government as United systems around earth or USAE. The corporate powers, while they may not hold the land or resources that the other two interstellar nations hold, they control most of the technology and its continued development. For while the RF and AACR were busy struggling not to kill each other, and expand to every clump of rock or ice with measurable gravity, they didn’t develop much more technology on their own. They’re busy being the producers, not the developers. They bought the designs from the minds of the engineers from the North American continent, places that used to be things like Raytheon, IBM, or Lockheed that now form the backbone of the USAE. Now they too reach out into the stars, but with so many celestial bodies already claimed by one government or the other, they start building new ones, and Oniel cylinders spring up, around most major objects in the home system, and their Lagrange points.
-Time goes on and by 2300 both the RF and the AACR, while maintaining their land holdings on earth, have otherwise largely abandoned the home solar system, focused solely now on reaching the most stars, planting their flag in the most chunks of rock as this century long cold war and space race becomes a way of life, people forget why they hate the other, beyond that, they have always hated them, and they are other, and the war says cold, but tense as more ships are built, more planets found, more colonies and space stations established. The USAE starts building a Dyson swarm in the home system. But the USAE continues developing technologies, and they find a way to create and manipulate worm holes into what they market as “massless tunnels” creating a new, cheaper, safer, faster, routine way to cover the huge distances between the stars.
–2400’s By the next century these massless tunnels have been built by the USAE and (and leased to the RF and AACR where appropriate) all over the galaxy. With humanity spreading up and down the entire Perseus arm of the milky way. The RF and AACR are forever trapped in their proverbial dick measuring contest, based on who owns how many celestial bodies. Civilian colonies and travel become more widespread, and now only the military ships are still fitted with the older, more dangerous inter dimensional drive engines, so they can operate independently of the tunnels, even if they almost never use them, anyway.
-This leads us to the year 2459, where the events of the first book in The Descendant Saga series take place. The ship RFS Stalingrad, arrived at its destination, it was just a late arrival, and because it was outside the expected normal window, it was presumed lost, forgotten to all but the digital text books of human history, but the ship arrived on Langok, and now for nearly two centuries, the people of that colony ship have struggled to survive. This is where our tale begins. Come Meet ZostaMax as we follow his journey through the stars, and watch his eyes be opened to all the things man is, that he never knew…
Chace Randolph 
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