My name is Horacius Moreau

My name is Horacius Moreau.  Most people just call me Moreau.  Would-be friends call me Ace, but that's always felt awkward.  Not that I have low self-esteem - I'm actually very good at what I do.  I'm just not the pilot jock the name "Ace" feels like.

I was born in La Paz, New Lhasa's capital.  "Capital".  Heh - feels important when put this way.  But it's hardly more than a village among a handful of villages on a remote colony.  Most people wrongly think New Lhasa is now a big and important planet because of its historic importance, but frankly it's as insignificant as it ever was.  Mostly a conservative nest of backward peasants (sorry Mom).

When New Lhasa was settled, in 2162, travel was mostly restricted to the 5% temperate zone close to the world's equatorial line.  The rest was too cold and rocky.  Terraforming, at its debut, was a very long process.  My grand-parents knew they wouldn't breath fresh air for pretty much of their lives.  But there was no hurry.

It wasn't before 2173 that the USFP started showing an authentic interest for New Lhasa.  An artificial satellite had been discovered.  Its origin was unknown, and it was still emitting.  Everybody was excited.  Scientific teams all the way from Earth came to break it apart and analyse it.  That's probably what alerted the Kraliens that someone had made it to New Lhasa.  Their planet.

Their claim for the small world was in a way justified - it had been almost 100 years since they had discovered the beautiful world: decent gravity, thick atmosphere, perfect for terraforming... It was almost ready for colonization.  Then we came and initiated our own terraforming process.  The rest is history.  The 2175 attack, the following war... Books call it a border dispute.  Obviously, they weren't raise on a planet that quickly became the first TSN outpost.

And that is where and when and how I was born.  My father was a wreckless scout pilot who would probably have left my mother weeks after his deployment ended, hadn't he died in a skirmish with the Ks.  My mother was the only local scientist who was assigned to the study of the New Lhasa Kralien satellite.  She's since become something of a notoriety in the field of alien studies, specialized in K technology.