In The Beginning Gail Daley (best books to read all time TXT) 📖

steamboat," Chloe intervened. "I was wondering if I could leave Silver here with you while we are gone."

"Is Silver the gruella tricorn you brought with you?" inquired Bethany. "Of course, you can leave him here. I promise I'll take good care of him for you. It's the least we can do since you'll be traveling with Gran."

Giselle looked at the young women around her. "Together, you are stronger than you are apart," she reminded them. "Never forget that"

"To teamwork," Bethany said, raising her teacup. She was joined by five others clicking together.

When Katrina hesitated, Jeanne hugged her. "This is for you too," she told her daughter. "You will be the third generation."

A History Of St. Antoni

BY NECESSITY, ST. ANTONI, like most of the other illegally opened worlds, survived by developing technology not dependent upon massive amounts of electrical power to operate, although someone had brought through a copy of the Tesla theory and experiments were being done to build a machine.

At the time of this story, much of St. Antoni was using technology based on steam engines. Unlike engines of their mother planet which had used coal to create steam, St. Antoni's steam engines were based on the use of Bluestones, providing a clean burning fuel that did not pollute the environment. Settlers who could afford them had steam operated generators for their homes and businesses. Steamboats plied the waterways, and a newly built railroad system ran Steam engine trains between the large cities. Settlers were spreading out over the single continent where the original gateway had opened, and ships were exploring the seas.

When the technology to locate and open gates to other worlds was discovered on earth in the late 21st century, access to this knowledge was tightly guarded by government and industry hoping to exploit the vast resources on these new worlds. The Portal Settlement Act made it a crime to open a gate or emigrate through a portal to any world not released for settlement by the United Earth Government. The fact that it took relatively little energy to power up a gate made taking advantage of these new worlds doubly attractive to government and industry. To ensure the legal outposts thrived, Settlers on Earth's approved colonies received the best in technology and supplies available. The sanctioned colonies also had the militaries of earth to prevent anarchy.

Despite government's tight control, the knowledge that it was possible to open a doorway to other worlds couldn’t be kept secret. The Portal technology was leaked, and unregulated gates popped up like fleas on a dog in summer. These Colonies came to be called "the Forbidden Colonies". Of which St. Antoni was one of many. Immigrants who reached St. Antoni were desperate to escape earth. St. Antoni was named for an early settler's fondness for a little jingle that goes like this: "St. Antoni, please look around—something is lost and must be found." Being a maverick at heart, he changed the spelling of Saint Anthony in the original rhyme to suit himself.

Immigrants who snuck in through illegal Portals only had the supplies and technology they could carry to build their new life on a new world. They depended on their wits, ingenuity and sheer cussedness to defend themselves against the alien plants and bizarre animals found on the new worlds. But they came because of man's lust to explore and because they wanted freedom and adventure. Unlike citizens of officially recognized colonies, who had the powerful earth government and industry to help them build homes and plant crops for food, immigrants to the forbidden colonies like St. Antoni had to do the same under very primitive conditions With intelligence, courage, and determination, they built a new society on a new world. In the first two hundred years they created a civilization as different from that of earth as Mars is from Venus. City states were controlled by powerful families or groups, and the outlying ranches and mines outside them were held together like medieval baronies by guns and guts.

The new citizens of St. Antoni found themselves dumped on a primitive world; there was no law to protect the new colonists from each other and for a time anarchy and lawlessness ruled. In due course and after many bloody battles, a system of government loosely based on what had been used in the mining districts and cattle associations popular in the early nineteenth century, with a smattering of that found in feudal medieval societies. These regulations were enforced by Peacekeepers inside the City States.

Each of the Seven City States was run by a single family or a group of individuals who seized power during periods of civil disturbance. While most of the ruling families gave lip service to electing councils with representatives to make major decisions, somehow it always happened that those elected were related to or owed allegiance to the family who held the power in that state. Regulations passed by these councils were enforced inside areas claimed by each City State.

A similar set of laws, based on those passed by each City State, held sway inside the smaller towns around them. These laws were enforced by locally elected sheriffs and passed by town councils. Outlying ranches and mines, much like the feudal barons in earth history, kept their own armed retainers to ensure the safety of the workers and families living on or around them.

A loose agreement between the City States authorized roving marshals to track down lawbreakers in the wilderness areas between them. Although theoretically independent of control by any one City State, District Marshals were paid out of tithes collected by the city nearest them.

But the St. Antonoians new civilization had a flaw: a man or woman could commit crimes in one City state flee to another and be safe from pursuit.  To combat this flaw, the Enforcers were created to supplement the District Marshals. Only this group of brave men and women, an elite law enforcement agency commissioned by the combined city states, dares to