Nobody Jumps the Lunar Queue

The messenger was swiftly ordered to proceed directly to Earth, escorted by the picket detachment nearest to her. After signaling an acknowledgement of the order, the small vessel’s VI fell into formation between the two corvettes and behind the destroyer. Once everything was in place, they lit off their gravity drives and began maneuvering through the Oort cloud and the Sol system’s heliopause beyond it.

As it passed through the system, the VI communicated with CENTCOM and received the updated map and access to the system plot, allowing it to see all of the public ships in the system. Almost all of the industry and shipping was distributed along the system ecliptic. Humanity still thought of things along 2d planes, it seemed. But it was unimaginably difficult to overcome hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years of evolution telling the species that ground was ground and sky was sky. Learning that “down” was more loose as a concept than they had imagined would naturally take s