The Guardsman: Honor of The Fallen (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798280490871)

Humanity has moved far beyond Earth, but not beyond our own virtues or failings.

Alone in the galaxy, as the only sentient life, humanity's corporate factions contest ownership of solar systems, resource-yielding planets, and precious habitable planets strung like gems through the vast black void. Ruthlessly efficient star-spanning Mega-Corporations have supplanted national governments as ruling bodies in the hundreds of thousands of solar systems Humanity populates.

The last vestiges of not-for-profit governance exist only on old Earth, in the form of the Terraforming Commission. They hold an ironclad monopoly on the creation of new worlds, through multiple strictly enforced terraforming technology patents. Newly terraformed worlds are parceled out by the Commission to Mega-Corporations. Terraforming Commission dogma is well entrenched despite thousands of years of war between Mega Corporations warring over the worlds they produce. The Terraforming Commission remains inert in its policies that establish guidelines and rules of conduct for the galaxy.

The incessant politics, maneuvering, lobbying, and bribes by Corporate Empires and the Terraforming Commission sparked the 'Genesis Wars' dozens of centuries before.

Any provocation could plunge the Mega-Corporation Empires into war, from security and population pressures to base greed and the acquisition of power.

For uncounted generations, the small but shrewd Chroynos family built and grew their holdings, through wise investments, prudent mergers, and ruthless cunning. . . Until three generations ago, in a stunning hostile takeover, Chroynos toppled the faltering mega-corporation they were under and claimed an Empire.

With it, they claimed everything that goes with the mantle of 'Empire'. They are harried by innumerable external threats. They were embattled with neighbors after over a hundred years of warfare that had finally cooled to a tense cold war.

The core of their success is their super-elite nanobot-enhanced Guardsmen. The black and gold Chroynos Imperial Guardsmen are the much-imitated envy of every Empire for light centuries around their borders.

The Chroynos Guardsmen maintained an unassailable position for military prowess and as moral paragons until one of their elite ranks fell to disgrace publicly.

He was stripped of every asset they could find. He was stripped of both his given and family names. As a result of his crime, he was unworthy of pity, compassion, or forgiveness.

In a Galaxy where your personal honor was tied to the name your family earned to have no name was a death sentence. . . He was branded as 'John Smith'.