Shiva Winters
​The World of the Forgotten Children Series
The War
​​​ The war takes place before the events of The Sixth Line of Defense, but the events still resonate in the society that follows the end of that conflict, and it still echoes for many of the characters found inside the story.
Humanity has achieved it's first steps in becoming a true interstellar race, society, and community. With the advent of faster than light locomotion, hyperspace travel, humans have spread beyond the confines of Earth and begun to colonize the worlds and solar systems of the nearest arm of the galaxy. In order to link those distant worlds together and insure that the peaceful society that gave birth to this new community of many worlds remained so, they established the unified government of the colonial Alliance. But despite this attempt to once and for all, end the wars found throughout all of human history, a new conflict is begun by the least likely of sources.
The innocuous and little thought of Corporations by which all the marvels of the this new modern age have been brought about, begin to stir up a population sick of political in-fighting, through economic manipulation and a campaign of propoganda. Believing that they can create a new government based on consumerism rather than commonly held beliefs, the Corporations lead humanity into the first war of the new age of space travel.
Though the government of the Alliance has the advantages in man-power and a standing military force, the Corporations have the advantages of technology and fanaticism. The war rages for decades and the Alliance government is found all too often on the losing side, even in victory. Deprived of both their main source of supplies and the technological advantage, the tide of the war threatens to turn against the Alliance, and in that desperation a plan is born to use their one remaining strength to bring an end to the war, people.
The black listed project goes by many code-names and its' funding is hidden behind many guises, but the goals of the 'Series' projects is simple, to alter the very nature of humanity through genetic manipulation and an enforced evolution. And the unthinkable happens, they succeed. The war goes on and the Series experiments begin to evolve, bringing the realm that was once science fiction into a reality already torn by war. With Series 2 humanities untapped potential becomes clear, as telepathy, empathy, and telekinesis begin to emerge from the volunteers to undergo the experiments.
Even as the tides of war begin to turn towards the Alliance's favor a new and dangerous idea is proposed to end that war once and for all, the potential to create living, breathing weapons without the burdens of morals. Series 5 creates super-powerful soldiers wielding abilities that can surpass the technological deficit, and whose humanity has been removed making them remorseless killers who feel no pain. The war quickly ends, but the Series experiments do not.
Scandal at War's End
​​​ The Series Projects are hidden behind a wall of secrets and budgetary black-line items, all throughout their inception and the war efforts. After the war ends, all the altered humans re-born of Series projects are put into cryogenic suspension and hidden from the eyes of the world. Until a dedicated member of the media discovers the hidden clues of keeping vast numbers of people hidden away.
The truth is uncovered and the scandal breaks across the Alliance as the so called 'Lilith experiments' becomes public knowledge. With the foundations of the government already cracked and left unstable by the scars of the war, the Alliance is forced to try and contain the political fall-out.
Partly to silence the critics, and partly to prove 'good faith' the first of the Reclamation efforts is begun, trying to reintegrate the changed members of the known series into a society unwilling and not ready to accept them. Their are some who suspect that the Reclamation effort was meant to hide something more sinister and dangerous than even the madness of Series 4 or the cold dispassionate death personified by Series 5. And those people were right all along..
But the scandal forces the military to bury the facts, and hide away the truth from the world, and the children of Series Six are left to be forgotten.
The Books of the Forgotten Children Series

​​​Book One: The Sixth Line of Defense
Book Two: The Sixth Movement
~Coming Sometime
Book Three: The Sixth Strike
​
The 'Lilith Experiments'
​​​ The Lilith Experiments as they later became known, were the means by which the Alliance ended the war and restored peace to a society threatening to fall apart. The 'Series Projects' as they were known in the ranks of the military took a volunteer force of soldiers and citizens and tried to make them better, stronger, smarter, and faster. Pushing the boundaries of human limits through genetic manipulation.
​
Series One: Was the initial testing and experimentation phase. It was proven a success and Series Two was begun soon afterward.
Series Two: Was focused on creating the analysts, strategists and code breakers could allow superior numbers overcome superior technology. It was with this series that the first extra-sensory gifts began to appear, a potential of humanity unknown until this time.
Series Three: Was focused on exploiting the potential of extra-sensory gifts and expanding the limits of human evolution. As knowledge and the identification of favorable genetic sequences was recognized and the next stage of the project was begun.
Series Four: Was planned to push extra-sensory gifts to their limits and create living weapons, but a flaw in the methodology causes the loss of lives and the abandonment of the Series.
Series Five: With the war still waging and the Series projects in jeopardy, all the collected knowledge of the previous series is re-evaluated. The scientist succeed in creating the first living weapons. Through a violent process of exposure, drugs, and psychological conditioning, Series 5 is stripped of their humanity making them the perfect killing machines.

With an unfeeling army of super-powered humans, the war ends quickly and violently as the Corporations are unable to find an advantage to reverse the tide of the war a second time. Soon enough the forces of Series 5 are pounding at the doors to their strongholds. And though the war ends and Order is is restored, the lingering fear and paranoia that the people behind the losing side will slink into the shadows and wait to continue the war in the decades to come, does not fade. Fearing another war, this time with genetically altered soldiers facing off on both sides, the government does not end the Series experiments.

Series Six: With Series Six, the lessons of the previous series are applied to creating a force without equal. No longer working with volunteers, the children of Series Six are designed gene by gene to become the perfect weapons of the next war.
Series 6.3: Combining the genetic advantages of 'proven models' in an illegal experiment, clones of Series Six members are combined with animal DNA in an attempt to breed a more refined killing machine.
The Worlds of the Alliance
​​​ The Colonial Alliance came about more out of a need than any real plan, when man first set out into the stars, it was in the plodding pace of vast sublight colony ships that took many years reach the new home worlds of the colonists they carried. It wasn't until much later that first hyperspace communication and then hyperspace travel were discovered, bringing about a new age of interstellar travel close at hand. The idea of the 'Alliance' came about out of a common enough need to regulate trade, communication, and give over sight to interstellar concerns, such as piracy and the establishment of a common currency. The newly formed colonial parliment was and at times continues to be a derisive hotbed of contention, broken alliances, and bickering in-fighting. With each senator elected by one of the far flung colonies, many of which were established by ancestors who came from fringes elements of a fracturing society, politics inside the parliment can often rattle sabers across the stars.
The parliment was just finding its' footing when the Corporations made their bid to take everything over, but rather than fracturing that contentious lot, the fire of war forges that government into something 'whole' for the first time. The war is brutal, bloody, and left many worlds and many distant peoples stained and scarred, but from it comes a renewed sense of a togetherness. While descension, as it is so rooted into human nature, remains high among the colonies and a reunited humanity, the government of the Colonial Alliance has seemingly established itself as an authority, governing a race and civilization now spreading further out into the stars. But like all things meant to establish law and order over a vast number of people, who all too often have differing views, even the smallest of voices can unsettle the pillars on which that civilization has been built upon.
Humanities' History in Space
​​​ Despite the slow start, the troubled history, and all the other things that often get in the way of the dreamers from the past, humanity has become an established space faring race. They have discovered that the skies that had once beckoned to their land-bound ancestors is a place filled with other worlds and other skies. And that just as their ancestors sometimes hoped they discovered that are also other intelligent races in the universe. Most are listed as 'unfriendly', as being intolerant to other species, especially humanity, but as interstellar distances begin to shrink, the web that humanity has cast out among the stars begins to touch the webs cast by others.
~S.W.