Alistair Reynold’s “Chasm City” has a similar back-story. Several colony ships are heading to a new planet, but after generations in space have developed cold-war style hostilities. The captain of one of the ships kills half the cryo-preserved colonists and jettisons their weight so he doesn’t have to slow his ship as soon as the other three. Arriving several weeks before the rest, his colonists get all the best colony landing spots and dominate the planet. He is immediately captured and executed as a war criminal, but generations later people view him with mixed emotions—a bit of a monster, yet one who sacrificed himself in order that his people could win the planet.
Alistair Reynold’s “Chasm City” has a similar back-story. Several colony ships are heading to a new planet, but after generations in space have developed cold-war style hostilities. The captain of one of the ships kills half the cryo-preserved colonists and jettisons their weight so he doesn’t have to slow his ship as soon as the other three. Arriving several weeks before the rest, his colonists get all the best colony landing spots and dominate the planet. He is immediately captured and executed as a war criminal, but generations later people view him with mixed emotions—a bit of a monster, yet one who sacrificed himself in order that his people could win the planet.