Hometown

Towards the end of the previous century, the pioneers from New Mars found this moon in orbit around a gas giant which itself orbited a Sol class star. The space lane out from human territory was following a dimensional twist down the spiral arm towards galactic center, and it came close enough to this system to make for a good drop point. On the edge of the stellar gravity well a ship could transition safely enough to hard physics and glide on to the moon's traffic control net. Before they established any details like traffic control, they had to get the basic infrastructure up and running. The first thing you do is probe the moon geology to find a stable point, and then you insert a chunk of neutron star as a gravity anchor, so you can build up a unity field to give you one gee on the surface, and hold down the air bubble.

The good folk who did all this work had floated a government loan, and were determined to pay it off as quick as they could, for the sake of their children and grandchildren. Being from New Mars, they came from a culture where their own ancestors had done this kind of thing themselves, they were just following an established pattern of colonial success. When somebody asked them what name Lane Authority should put on the star chart for their new settlement, they said that since this was going to be their home town from now on, why not just call it that: Hometown.

The years went by and the human swarm kept pushing down the arm, traffic kept dropping off the Lane and swinging down to Hometown as a rest stop, repair facility, grocery store, beer bar, entertainment center, whatever would sell, whatever travelers buy. After fifty years the loan was paid off, and Hometown was a full-fledged Local Government Entity of the Confederation. The dark energy feed off the Lane provided the data link that kept them in sync with the rest of humanity, they ran their clocks on Greenwich Mean Time, just like everybody else, their environmental systems pumped out day and night and the four seasons and more or less random weather just like on New Mars, or on ten thousand other gravity tap air bubble settlements.

Central-Standard Lines entered into an agreement with Hometown Council, and built a direct connection station right above the bubble, so that now regular scheduled flights are available from Hometown to anywhere Central-Standard serves; lay-overs and restrictions may apply. The transit and room taxes from this arrangement provide a hefty chunk of the Entity annual budget. Taxes on water export are another income source; ships always seem to want more water. And the fuel facility has been another good profit-point; the Lines offering stable contracts. There is a decent amount of in-system production of minerals and petrochemicals, so local hard-space ships are always coming and going, paying taxes and fees.

It's all big enough now that there are four high schools and a college, a large sports-complex, a vibrant downtown night life on the weekends, and many of the usual civic and social organizations and societies common to the human culture. And of course over the years there has been the usual festering growth of an unsavory underworld and an ever increasing mass of lost generation bored rebellious youth; folks who do not appreciate as they should the sterling values their forefathers have sacrificed so much for to build up in their Hometown.