CoDominium

CoDominium is a series of future history novels by American writer Jerry Pournelle.

The point of departure of Pournelle's history is the establishment of the CoDominium (CD), a political alliance and union between the United States of America and a revitalized USSR. This union, achieved in the name of planetary stability, reigns over the Earth for over a hundred years. In that time, it achieves peace of a sort, as well as interstellar colonization, but at the price of a complete halt in both scientific and political evolution.

Corruption and social decay force the CoDominium's BuReloc (Bureau of Relocation) to forcibly transport people from Earth to offworld colonies. This mass expulsion is made possible by the Alderson Drive, a device that allows instantaneous travel across distances of light-years. The starlanes are patrolled by the CoDominium Armed Forces, an elite fighting force created from the French Foreign Legion. The Navy, in particular, recognizes what the politicians and common people of Earth do not: that Earth is headed for disaster, and their primary mission is to remove as many people from Earth as possible before the holocaust.

In due time, the CoDominium crumbles under mounting nationalism worldwide. The governments of both the United States and Soviet Union regain their thirst for world supremacy, while the lesser nations chafe from years of CD oppression. The CD begins to lose support and is forced to reduce the size of the Fleet again and again, despite the best efforts of loyalists like the Blaine family and Grand Admiral Lermontov. As a result, several underdeveloped colony worlds are given their independence, prepared or not. On some of these newly freed planets civilization collapses, resulting in mass deaths.

Disbanded CD Marine units band together into mercenary organizations (for example Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion) and hire themselves out to fight in the former colonies, much as the earlier 'condottieri' of Renaissance Italy. Later, major worlds begin hiring out their national armies, and mercenary work becomes an industry. Eventually, mercenaries become legal in warfare, thanks to the "Laws of War", and are a major factor in colony warfare.

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