[geoschmo]

[Ok, for those of you that have been keeping up with this thread, this isn't a new post. I combined a couple of my Posts, and moved this one up to get all our entires in the right order. Sorry for the inconvienence]

Year 2403.0

Admiral Grandow read the battle reports. The Norak distress call had come too late. The Sallegan ships could not get there in time to save their new allies ship, but they had destroyed the bug ship that had attacked it. As a result of the incident, the Norak had declared war on the Hive promised military aid in the fight with the bugs.

This was the first glimpse of hope in the long war, and Grandow hoped it wouldn’t be the Last. He knew there would be much pain before it was over, but the combined force of the Continuum and the Republic had to be too much for the Hive eventually. As long as no one else got involved on the other side, that is.

Since Grandow had accepted the Admiralty, he had been chained to a desk. He didn’t like not being on his ship in the think of things, but he had to acknowledge that he could do more for the defense of his people from here. His new perspective caused him to reevaluate some things and a question had started forming in the back of his mind.

How could there be so many races in such a relatively small area of space? Surely the entire universe wasn’t this heavily populated? And if so, why did it seem that all the races had achieved space flight so close together. Grandow was not a scientist, but he was well educated, and had a good grasp of the principles for a layman. It didn’t make sense.

Six races now, in this little corner of the galaxy. All with roughly the same level of technological advancement, all in systems connected together by these wormholes. The probabilities against it were staggering. Grandow was starting to take more serious consideration to the wild theories that had been thrown around since the detection of the “Alien Cities” on the two gas giants in Narcisston.

None of the races the Sallegans had met yet had the technology to build habitations on those types of worlds. Or if they did they had not told us. We on the other hand had not told them of the artifacts buried in the deep layers of those planets. Some things you didn’t talk about, even with your allies.

He had sent out scouts to the system to the west of Narcisston. A system called Cephredi. The Sallegans were very surprised to discover the system to be the home system of yet another race, the Zynarra Holdings. After discussions with them, and with the Cue Cappa, it became apparent that the Zynarra simply did not have any interest in exploring beyond the warp points. That is why the Sallegans had not known of their existence till now.

They were apparently just as advanced as the rest of the races. Possibly more so in some areas, as the initial scans showed ships in the 300Kt range, fully half again as large as the Aleppa class frigate the Sallegans relied on so heavily for defense.

The Cephredi system had four rock planets with oxygen atmospheres. Four of them! Two were larger than the Sallegan homeworld. The Republic began intensive negotiations with the Zynarra to obtain colonization rights to these worlds. Grandow was not interested in having another enemy, but his people needed those worlds if they were going to win the battle against the Hive. And the Zynarra had no use for them as they evolved on a harsh ice planet. These planets were much too warm for them to live on, even with protective domes.

Scans had detected similar structures to the mysterious “Alien Cities” on one of the planets in Cephredi. This was of particular interest to the Admiral. Even though it was buried under centuries of sediment, the planet itself was hospitable enough to get a team of scientists and archeologists down there, if the Zynarra would permit it. Perhaps this would be the key that would unlock this mystery for Grandow. The possibility was almost enough to take his mind off the war. Almost.

[ 18 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]