teriel; patrols
contiguous space and keeps the Logistics Depot
and UIPS citizens and property self-sufficient and
safe from disease, harassment and harm;

Install on the Logistics Depot and at the Terminals
Construction Sites independent communications,
cargo, living organism teleport centers, each
capable of receiving and dispatching authorized
cargoes, passengers, dispatches and communications
via conventional, spunnel, and specified
non-conventional channels.

##

The Terminals Construction Site is the focal point
of UIPS operations. The Construction Site's mission
is to research, design, fabricate, test, assemble
and, ultimately, launch, position at destinations
and operate, monitor and maintain the Slingshot
Extractor and Collector terminals en route and
at their destinations.

##

The planning did not anticipate the dissolution
of the United Planetary System, the creation of
independent and estranged Regions in their place,
and a hostile government on Pluto.

Military forces had been non-existent for more than
fifteen hundred years when the colonies of the Outer
Region seceded from the United Planetary System.
Weapons of mass destruction had had no purpose
since the birth of the first World Federation in
the fourth century of the Interplanetary Era.

In place of an organized military, the succeeding
World Federation had created an Interplanetary
Constabulary to protect lives and property,
investigate crimes, control traffic, and maintain
general order. Their charter extended to all
planets, satellites, colonies, outposts, stations,
and all places throughout the void into which
humankind had ventured.

The mission of the Constabulary remained unchanged
during political reorganizations within the first
World Federation and its successors. Its agents
ranged the Solar System, and performed their duties
quietly and efficiently. Few dared challenge their
authority. When challenges did occur, they were
not for long.

War, and the effects of war on people and things
were forgotten.

It was inconceivable, in those times, that the
region beyond the Asteroids would become
politically and culturally alienated from the
unified community that humankind had created to
guide them into the future. History, the citizens
of the world concluded, had demonstrated the
impotence of the ancient, long-discarded array
of adversarial nation-states and come-by-chance
leaders to govern an intellectually advanced