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Known Worlds
By Violet Leigh
By 2340, the human race has spread throughout the galaxy and settled approximately 50 star systems, collectively called the "Known Worlds." The Confed Republic governs the major colonies and several alien races of the Known Worlds. It patrols borders, protects the people of the republic, and keeps an eye out for alien races that have less than friendly intentions.
This isn't Disneyland. There are the sheep, and there are the wolves. You're the sheep dog. You nip at the heels of straying sheep, and tear the throats from the predators. Your team consists of highly trained operatives. The four of you work for the Confed. You serve and protect—but not in the friendly kind of way. You squelch rebellions propagated by enemies of the Republic … with extreme prejudice. And, you're good at it.
 A squad like none other.
Science Fiction
Long ago, in the twenty-first century, they dreamt of worlds like this and called them science fiction; now, only three centuries later, what they imagined is coming true. Humans live in space colonies, on planets so distant from Earth that it takes a whole lifetime to travel there. Aliens exist, and they're marrying our daughters. Fact is, indeed, stranger than fiction.
Furthermore, fact is more hazardous than fiction. Rumors abound of an unfriendly alien race that has begun, in small steps, to attack outlying areas of the Confed Republic. You know that if the rumors are true, you and your team have dibs on the front-line action—because you're the best. You have to be to survive.
Special Operatives
You're special, and you don't let anyone forget it. Confed bigwigs moved you out of regular forces because you were too idealistic, too smart, or too good to mingle with the common enlisted. They've trained you hard. They took your DNA so they could clone you if you died … again. It doesn't matter how many times you die, they always bring you back. You're valuable property. They've even chipped you with your own memories, so you remember every excruciating moment of every excruciating death. There's more than one reason you've become so tough.
Nice guns.
There are perks, too. You get all the big guns, the toys that go boom and mean it. Confed suits may drop you on planets and abandon you to the dogs—yeah, it happens—but at least they send you in with enough ammo to drop a moon.
And, you get great pals. The soldiers on your team are your family. You've known them through numerous incarnations. Cloning or no cloning, you hate like hell to see one of them gutted. You watch each others' backs. One thing you learn when you die over and over is that it's a lot more pleasant to stay alive.
Secret Missions
Nobody knows about you outside of the Confed higher ranks. The Confed has many secrets, of which you're one. If the Confed wants you to maintain a cloak of secrecy, you maintain it. You've heard too many stories of operatives who blew their covers, purposefully or not. Coincidentally, their very next assignments usually ended up being suicide missions.
Things are heatin' up.
When they send you on a mission, you go in without rank, without insignia. You ride in unmarked ships. The Confed doesn't announce your arrival to anyone, including the local governing body or militia. You're on your own, but you play the game by Confed rules.
Bottom line: You just want to make it out of the "meat grinder" alive—one more time—and help your team do the same. You'll do whatever it takes, including using extreme brute force. Your forté, after all, is brute force.
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