The Phoedrus Elevator

The first brave tentacles of human expansion into Space are happening: Humankind has begun mining asteroids and colonizing the planets of the Deccan system. Many people back on Earth are unhappy about this as they wallow in post-economic collapse but Tom Kelly, a salesman for the Dexter Company, is pressing on. His company has developed the first working Space Elevator and if Earth will not buy it, another planet will.

Tom has a secret that he has dragged along with him over the years: while still a teenager on a windswept farm in the West of Ireland, he had taken the blame for a murder committed by his older brother, Matty. Tom adored his brother and so while Matty went on join the US Marines, Tom went to juvenile prison.

Forsaken by his family, forgotten by all, Tom serves his time. On his eighteenth birthday, he enlists in the Irish Army, which ends up being the best thing that ever happened to him. He has an aptitude for engineering and catches a break: he is seconded to the United Nations Space Agency, (UNSA) and suddenly one day he is lashed to a rocket and blasted up into Inner Space.
UNSA trains him as a rigger and then as a tug pilot. But Deep Space is where he wants to go. After his term is done he ships out for Decca, a distant mining planet, where he hopes to make his fortune.

Dismayed by the corruption and violence he finds on Decca, Tom becomes a one-man vigilante group. An UNSA investigator discovers this and forces Tom to work undercover to bring the corrupt station administrator to justice. After a near-fatal beating and in danger of his life, Tom returns to Earth.

As he struggles to re-acclimatize after years away, he once again tries to engage his brother, his family. Matty promises to make the truth known to them. It has been long enough, he agrees. But events conspire, the truth does not become known and Tom’s family once again refuses to believe.

And so, through the years, Tom claws his way to success in the corporate world. Once again, he returns to Space, this time to close a massive deal, the first Space Elevator, on the planet of Phoedrus. On the long journey out he finds a way to make the truth about his father’s murder known, amid a massive space disaster and a looming confrontation with a new species.