Sky's Edge

Sky's Edge (originally named Journey's End) was a planet orbiting the star 61 Cygni A. The ecology of Sky's Edge was superficially Earth-like, as it included recognisable plants and animals such as the hamadryad, but it was known to be metabolically incompatible with Earth flora and fauna, causing fatal anaphylactic shock in any creature or person who tried to consume it.

Before the invention of lighthugger ships, a flotilla of five generation ships (Santiago, Brazilia, Islamabad, Palestine and Baghdad) travelling at eight percent of light speed was deployed from Earth to the 61 Cygni system, each with 150 waking crew and just under one thousand cryogenically-frozen colonists (known to the crew of the Santiago as momios, as a Spanish-based calque of the word mummies). During the course of the journey, Sky Haussmann, as captain of the Santiago, alienated the other ships by jettisoning most of his frozen passengers. This reduced the mass of the Santiago and gave it an edge over the other ships, allowing it to decelerate harder and arrive at Journey's End first. The colonists of the Santiago claimed the most desirable land, which was in the southern part of "The Peninsula". A few months later, the two other surviving ships arrived, with those colonists settling in the North. These settlers began referring to the planet as "Sky's Edge" rather than "Journey's End", as a mockery and reminder of Sky Haussmann's actions to gain an edge over the other colonists. Their hostilities against the South escalated into war, and Sky was eventually crucified by his former crew for his crimes (although in actuality, he had a stand-in crucified, whilst he escaped).

Sky's Edge was relatively backwards compared to most other human-settled worlds, as it possessed little in the way of high technology, and few could afford things such as the immortality treatments readily available elsewhere in colonised space. The perpetual war raging on Sky's Edge was the reason for this: the planet exported little except a few biological products harvested from its extensive jungles, due to its industries being devoted to the war. Trading ships only stopped by about once a decade, usually after being snubbed by traders in more lucrative markets such as the Yellowstone-Sol or Fand-Yellowstone-Grand Teton routes. The people of Sky's Edge rarely bought anything but weapons from the Ultra traders.

Only Nueva Valparaiso remained relatively unscathed by the perpetual conflict, because it was the site of a space elevator and deemed by both sides too valuable to target -- incidentally, the anchorpoint terminal accepted Australs, the currency of the Southerns.

Unfortunately, the entire elevator was destroyed by a seemingly rogue nuke -- an event later found to have been orchestrated by Argent Reivich during the arms trader Cahuella's attempt to leave the planet.

The war apparently lasted until not long before the human population of Sky's Edge was destroyed by the Inhibitors, sometime in the decades before 2727.

Settlements

• Nueva Santiago (oldest city)
• Nueva Valparaiso (near the equator)
  • Nueva Valparaiso Space Elevator
• Nueva Iquique
• Reptile House (Cahuella's residence in the wilderness)

Nueva Santiago, Nueva Valparaiso and Nueva Iqique are noted to be well-fortified even in the early days of colonisation, due to the crew of the Santiago fearing retalliation for tricking and cheating the rest of the Flotilla in order to arrive at the planet faster.

Appearances

• Chasm City (2001) - one of the main settings
• The Inhibitor trilogy
  • Revelation Space (2000) - mentioned
• Galactic North short story anthology (2006)
  • Nightingale - mentioned and part of the backstory

Notes

• First mentioned in Revelation Space as the home of Ana Khouri, the planet's history is described in greater detail in the book Chasm City.
• In the Revelation Space universe, Sky's Edge is the only planet to be settled via generation ship.
• The short story "Nightingale" reveals that the centuries-long war finally came to an end, several decades after the events of Chasm City.