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{{book|title=''[[bws: defending-elysium|Defending Elysium]]''|display-title=''{{PAGENAME}}''
|cover=DefendingElysium.jpg
|released=December 18, 2009{{bws ref|annotation-defending-elysium|Annotation – ''Defending Elysium''|date=2009-12-18}}
|word-count=14,
|annotation=annotation-defending-elysium
|setting = [[Cytoverse]]
== Summary ==
The story opens with [[Jason Write]] in his private cabin aboard a shuttle, watching a video playback of a woman thrashing in a hospital bed. He could do nothing for the woman right now, not until he reached [[Evensong]] - an orbital platform hanging between Saturn and Uranus, and the frontier of
As the shuttle begins to dock with the Evensong, his support operative, [[Lanna Write|Lanna]], enters Jason's cabin informing him that his colleagues have been sent on assignment elsewhere and she is the one that will be accompanying him. Lanna has booked Jason in to a hotel under a peculiar alias, suggesting that Jason is actually an agent.▼
▲As the shuttle begins to dock with the Evensong, his support operative, [[Lanna Write|Lanna]], enters Jason's cabin informing him that his colleagues have been sent on assignment elsewhere and she is the one that will be accompanying him. Lanna has booked Jason
As they prepare to depart, Jason notices his control disk being tapped. Sending Lanna a coded request in the form of a question Lanna responds in kind. Someone had managed to tap Jason's control disk. While Lanna could easily install a tap block, Jason doesn't order it. Strolling off the shuttle he steps to one side and apparently searches for his ID while watching the other passengers walk by, knowing the one that tapped his control disk should be there. The report of a murder on the news feed sets Jason into a hurry.▼
▲As they prepare to depart, Jason notices his control disk being tapped. Sending Lanna a coded request in the form of a question, Lanna responds in kind. Someone had managed to tap Jason's control disk. While Lanna could easily install a tap block, Jason doesn't order it. Strolling off the shuttle, he steps to one side and apparently searches for his ID while watching the other passengers walk by, knowing the one that tapped his control disk should be there. The report of a murder on the news feed sets Jason into a
Captain [[Orson Ansed]] of the Evensong police department meets his officer, [[Ken Harris]], outside the scene of a crime in Topside's slums. They find the corpse of a missing [[Varvax]] ambassador inside a cylindrical burner. A newcomer bustles onto the scene that Orson believes is the press at first. Upon seeing the man's silver bell pin on the lapel of his suit, Orson realises his jurisdiction has come to an end with the arrival of a [[Phone Company]] (henceforth, PC) operative. Jason now has authority at the scene.
Using FTL, Jason transports Coln, Denise, and himself to the PC headquarters on Earth, revealing the PC do in fact possess FTL technology, and that they were keeping it from humanity until they were ready. The machine Coln originally thought was the FTL drive is in fact a coffee machine. The real FTL drive is the man - dressed up as a security guard - seated beside it. His mind is the link for millions of FTL transmissions. Lanna rushes into the room and is introduced as Jason's wife.
Jason is contacted by the
In the last moments of Defending Elysium, Jason sits back and tells Lanna to prepare a press release: tell humanity that the Phone Company has finally developed faster-than-light travel, and that it will be released to the public. His last words are a hope for the illusion he'd believed in for so long.
== Main Characters ==
;[[Jason Write]]: Considered to be the top operative of the Phone Company he is a powerful psionic looking for a missing scientist on the Evensong orbital platform.
:His philosophy is that space and their relation with the alien species is some sort of paradise that humanity is working towards. He believes the Varvax have found Elysian by becoming a space-faring race and can't imagine them as anything but peaceful.
;[[Edmund (Cytonic)|Edmund]]: He is a Cytonic like Jason who kidnaps him in order to discover whether Jason really does possess mindblades.
==
=== Organizations ===
;[[Phone Company]]: The PC were the first to make contact with an alien species and had negotiated humanity out of a disaster following the Tenasi incident. The PC had brought FTL communications to humankind.
;[[United Intelligence Bureau]]: The UIB is humankind's (supposedly) largest intelligence agency in the entire solar system. They mistrust the Phone Company because of their apparent shadowy motives.
=== Technology ===
;[[Cytonics]]: A breakthrough in psionic development. Those possessing this technology, such as the Varvax, are able to use an ability called "Sense" to see the world around them with supernatural senses. To Jason, his world is a vibrating kaleidoscope of
;FTL: Faster-than-light travel has been acquired by all species except humankind. The Phone Company possesses this technology but has withheld it from them for so long. The technology is not powered by standard electronics as would be expected, but by cognition. The technology developed from Cytonics.
:It involves Sensing inwards on yourself and removing yourself from normal space, apparently moving through a different dimension to reappear at a different point in normal space light-years away in seconds.
==
{{for|/Covers|a cover gallery of ''Defending Elysium''}}
== Notes ==
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