The Pilots of Borealis - Softcover

Pump one tenth body weight in each fist for as long as the arms can stand it, pushing on wings the size of a pterodactyl's. Do that under a pressurized dome at one atmosphere sea level, but subject to one sixth gravity on the Moon. Now contend with a swarm of chiseled, fearless, superbly trained flyers, buffeting the air space around you like peregrine falcons. This was the sport of piloting. After helium-3, it was one of the first things that entered anyone's mind when Borealis was mentioned. It was helium-3 that powered humanity’s far-flung civilization, feeding fusion reactors from the Alliances on Earth, to the Terran Ring, Mars, the Jovian colonies, and all the way out to even distant Titan. The supply, scooped up from the surface of the Moon, had once seemed limitless. That was a long time ago, though. Borealis, the glittering, fabulously rich city astride the lunar North Pole, had amassed centuries of unimaginable wealth harvesting it. She was the first to realize that those innocent days of ostensibly boundless supplies were now over. The helium-3 was running out, and the energy crisis was real. Even memories of the horrific and seemingly endless planet-wide devastation spawned by the four Petroleum Wars wasn't enough to counter this new unquenchable demand, triggering a ruthless contest. Those powers determined to dominate the remaining supplies of He3 would discover through the indomitable spirit of an Earth-born, war-weary mercenary turned piloting enthusiast, that the most powerful force in the Solar System wasn’t mined on the lunar surface, but was instead found so much closer to home. Science writer David Nabhan ("Earthquake Prediction: Answers in Plain Sight," 2012; Forecasting the Catastrophe", 2010; "Predicting the Next Great Quake", 1996) crafts the intelligent foundation on which an incredibly fast-moving, highly literate, and thoroughly unpredictable view of the future is built, one that is "astounding, sublime, terrifying, and more than anything...plausible."