History of the Galaxy II

[capnq]

Almost half a month passed before Milsu Sutre returned to the mysterious airlock. It had taken that long to get the Masters' skycity floating level again, and would have taken even longer if one of the salvage engineers hadn't thought of opening some of the buoyancy cells on the higher side, rather than repairing them all on the low side. The city had sunk another third of a kilometer, but the salvage workers could move around much more easily.

The Masters' city had not turned out to be the treasure trove that had been expected. There were surprisingly few artifacts left to claim; apparently the Masters had taken almost everything with them when they abandoned the city. Heavy equipment and other things that were too large to move had mostly corroded away as Jalwu's atmosphere leaked into the dome. The buildings had held up better than anything else, apparently built from materials that the atmosphere didn't affect much. Many of the investors in the salvage rights had resold them to cut their losses, and the remaining speculators were expecting smaller profits from selling settlement rights after the dome was repaired. Sutre had kept the rights to the shipyard section for himself, and hoped to eventually restore it to working order. The partially completed ship would probably have to be removed first, and he wasn't going to do that until he'd seen the inside.

He'd come better prepared this time, carrying an extra hydrogen tank so he could explore longer, and a cutting torch in case the airlock door had corroded shut. The manual release handle that he'd found Last time had already become discolored now that it was exposed. He grasped the handle with both hands and put all his weight into turning it. It moved more easily than he'd expected, and he could hear the clank of the latches disengaging even through his environment suit.

Sutre pushed against the inner door, and it swung open. He stepped through the opening and found himself in a corridor with an oddly low ceiling, less than three times his height. Perhaps it had been some kind of maintenance tunnel, but then why would it have an exterior airlock, rather than access doors from the interior? There was a door that nearly reached the ceiling opposite the airlock, and he could see similar doors on the inner wall in both directions. The door in front of him had a manual latch just above eye-level, like any normal door. It opened easily when he tried it.

Behind the door, Sutre found a rather small room with two notable features. Set into the wall was something that looked like an antique flat display screen, with an archaic data entry panel below it. In front of the screen was something that looked a little bit like a table, but with a long bent section sticking up almost vertically from one edge. The strange table was fixed to the floor, but he found that the horizontal surface pivoted. He could read most of the characters on the data entry keys, but some were marked with other symbols that meant nothing to him. There were obvious access panels on the wall to either side of the display, so Sutre opened both of them, but what was inside was barely recognizable as electronics components. He wondered whether it was possible that millenia-old circuits could still work, if he found a way to connect them to a power supply.

[capnq]

The electrician that Milsu Sutre had hired found a recognizable power coupling in the Masters' unfinished ship fairly quickly. They'd hooked up a portable generator, and were about to test it for the first time. Sutre stood in front of the antique display screen with a camera, hoping to record anything that might appear when the power came on. The metallic hull of the ship blocked their environment suit radios, so he had turned on the camera as soon as he entered the room, while the electrician bounced around to the generator to start it. He zoomed in the camera so that the screen filled the viewfinder, then waited for some sign that the power was flowing.

Power: active
Initiating start sequence: TARS Node-25
WARNING: input voltage 48.746% below optimal - compensating...
Initiating memory check
WARNING: memory faults in 70.143E6 sectors - compensating...
Memory check complete
Initiating systems check
WARNING: life support system - offline
WARNING: primary processing unit - offline
WARNING: primary manuever control system - offline
WARNING: secondary manuever control system - offline
WARNING: astrogation system - offline
WARNING: external communication system - offline
WARNING: system faults in 3 internal communication stations
WARNING: 183 internal communication stations - offline
WARNING: system faults in 3 external optical sensors
WARNING: 20 external optical sensors - offline
WARNING: system faults in 8 internal optical sensors
WARNING: 376 internal optical sensors - offline
WARNING: 2 engines - offline
WARNING: 4 primary reaction mass tanks - offline
WARNING: 4 secondary reaction mass tanks - offline
WARNING: system faults in 6 attitude thrusters
WARNING: 8 attitude thrusters - offline
WARNING: 4 tertiary reaction mass tanks - empty
WARNING: 4 tertiary reaction mass tanks - offline
WARNING: 4 passive defense systems - offline
WARNING: 6 active defense systems - offline
WARNING: targeting system - offline
WARNING: fire control system - offline

The ancient text had filled the screen and was scrolling faster than Sutre could read it. The electronics were still working! Well, some of them, anyway. The warnings that he'd managed to read had gotten progressively more cryptic, but it was obvious that a lot of things weren't functional; many of the items reported must not even have been installed before construction had stopped.

The electrician bounced through the door behind him. "Anything happening?" he asked.

"It's incredible! Look at that display! It's running some kind of diagnostic."

"Wow! The Masters sure knew how to build things to Last!" the electrician laughed. "I really expected that all we'd get would be a few sparks and some smoke."

"You didn't mention that when I hired you."

"I almost didn't take the job, but I figured that you might still have some luck left over from finding this place."

"Sure looks like it. All by itself, this could make up for not finding many other artifacts in the city."

[ October 19, 2002, 19:11: Message edited by: capnq ]

[geoschmo]

2402.7

The Hive had been busy. In under three years it had used the Warp points it found to expand its reach in search for the warp point creators, or at least signs of other intelligent life forms. It had used the network of stellar phenomena to visit twelve different star systems already. And had planted permanent settlements in half of those. In fact, in its curiosity and single minded purpose had nearly run out of resources on the planets in the home system with which to build and maintain the Hive ships.

It had developed logistical techniques with which to return resources from the colonies in other systems to the home planet to keep the construction facilities turning out more Hive ships. But this infrastructure took time to develop for each system, and the Hive was impatient.

Rather than face the shutdown of the Construction yard on the host Homeworld, the Hive decided to attempt to extract resources from the asteroids and several uncolonizable planets in the home system. The attempt was not entirely successful.

The Hive was able to build a remote mining ship easily enough, but its technology in that area was not very well developed at the time. The ships it could build were too small to put more than one automated remote mining array on, and because of the complexity of the extraction process, only one mining ship could be assigned to any particular planet or group of asteroids.

The Hive quickly realized the amount of resources it was extracting were not sufficient to even make the effort worthwhile except of a very short period of time. After four months on station the mining ship was returned to the Homeworld and mothballed until the Hive could decide on another purpose for it.

The host in charge of monitoring orbital traffic was watching its computerized displays when an alarm softly chirped. The telemetry link to the mothballed mining ship had been lost. Standard mothball procedures had been followed. Once the final shutdown crew had debarked the ship had been towed to a high stable orbit and left. The only systems left functioning were the guidance systems and enough retro rockets to allow the ship station keeping. This process was handled almost completely by computer, and the telemetry link to the planet was normally only a formality.

The Hive searched for debris, and found none. The only anomalous readings at all were some gravitational fluctuations in the Last reported position of the ship. And these subsided over the next few minutes until they were completely gone. The ship had disappeared as neatly as if it had never existed.

The Hive assigned a few host scientists to explore the evidence and develop a theory about what had happened, and then went on about its tasks. The ship was of minor importance after all.

Meanwhile, onboard the mothballed ship....

Error 610: Orbital position incorrect. Begin correction subroutine

Error 1200: Unable to process Last command. Positional telemetry signal lost. Reacquire positional telemetry signal

Error 750: Unable to comply with Last command. No carrier. Run downlink system diagnostic.

Return 0: Downlink system diagnostic ok.

Return to subroutine 750. Reacquire positional telemetry signal.

Error 750: Unable to comply with Last command. No carrier. Run backup subroutine. Stellar position check.

Error 1550: Data outside of expected range. Stellar position does not match with Last known position. Crosscheck with stellar cartography database and recheck position.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Working.

Stellar position determined. Present location Mirach Star system.

Primary Command: Reestablish previous orbital position. Bearing known, calculate distance to previous position:

Working.

Distance calculated. Distance to previous position 3169248453331200.7 Km.

Analysis: Main Propulsion system offline. Insufficient reaction propulsion to reacquire previous position.

Secondary command: Contact Orbital command for assistance. Begin automated broadcast to orbital command. Request maintenance team to reengage Main Propulsion system. Repeat message until acknowledged.

Estimated time for Orbital command receipt of maintenance request: 314 years, 6 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes, 41 seconds.

[Unknown_Enemy]

TYREAN HISTORY : PART 2 introduction

2402.8

Monthly entry of Commander Ostaliat's Diary

“Tonight we shall pray by the lights of past dramas”
That sentence was in a book. I do not remember which one. But fiction has blurred into reality. As I do not remember the story, I will stick to reality.
Tonight we shall pray.
Tonight, the light generated by our dying homeworld, 6 centuries ago is about to reach us.
Tonight we will witness the death of 7 billion Tyreans.
Tonight we will witness the death of a small, overpopulated and polluted world.
Our world.
But I will not pray. I have lost faith 2 years ago.
I was then a rising star in his Holiness Space Research Institute, a trusted Inquisitor, but when two of my own children started showing advanced signs of the New Death, I have lost faith.
I have lost faith in God.
I have lost faith in the Churches.
Then the AI Consensus proposed me the leading position of the Magellan Contact Project.
Nearly 200 shuttles/tugs/service craft working around two central ships. One is the population ship, the second is nothing more than a supply cargo, the biggest our technology could afford. 34 millions people waiting in stasis, while a crew of 14000 attend to the daily life tasks. Our mission was to find the originator of the hyperwave signals that we detect on a regular basis and establish a science mission not too far from them. The signal we detected was just the random distortions created by two or more unknown hyperwave devices linked together. This is no radio. You have to build the two devices together, so when you separate them, they will stay in resonance. Then if you apply a particular magnetic field to one part of the device, the second part will share the same reactions whatever the distance separating them. Thus enabling instantaneous communication. Each colony ship is sent with an hyperwave device, so when they settle down, they can start building the fusion power facilities needed to operate it. In less than one year, they get a permanent and instantaneous comlink to Tyran Secondis. Until that point, there are no contacts between out-system colonies and the homeworld.
We have such a device. But we do not intend to settle down as long as we have supplies left.
The Magellan Fleet is now 600 lights years away from the place of our birth.
We left our world 14 months ago.
The equations that gave our fleet's bearing have proven false. The xeno are nowhere our science teams told us they should be. We never had sufficient supplies to come back.
No return.
We will never see again the place of our birth. And I don't care about it.
No comeback.
I had long conversations with some AI that are on board with us. They intend to help us building a new society, in which the Churches will not rule our life. Religious faith will be separated from political power. Their analysis is that when our homeworld's technology will enable it to reach us again, our sin will be irrelevant. I did not really understand that Last part, just enough to get that we won't be punished for what we will set up. This is why we are cruising at full speed toward the center of the galaxy. To get out of reach of Tyrean's near future.

We are The Damned.

[ October 22, 2002, 18:27: Message edited by: Unknown_Enemy ]

[capnq]

The maiden voyage of the _Speculation_ had been more successful than even the most optimistic projections. Before it set course to return to Eifra for refuelling, it had visited nine systems and found eleven colonizable worlds, five of which had breathable atmospheres. The Eifralo Conglomerate now had subsidiaries on eight worlds in three systems, with three colonizers in transit to two more systems. Pilda Shipyards had added an orbital facility to increase production, and the Masters' ancient construction yard on Jalwu had been refurbished far enough to start operations, as well. Work was in progress on two new colonizers, plus a prototype for a new scout design. The _Investment_ would be sturdy enough to handle the stress of a sixth engine, and would have an even longer range than its smaller predecessor.

Things were going so well that Cunsi Davdi rarely had time to think about Talro. When she had left on the _Consumer Confidence_ nearly three years ago, he had missed her terribly, but as the months wore on without any reply to the Messages and gifts he sent her, he had tried less and less often. He hadn't yet given up on the relationship entirely, but in the few idle moments when her memory resurfaced, it mostly just bothered Davdi to realize how long it had been since he'd Last thought of her.

This was one of those idle moments, as Davdi waited for Soctu Timho to arrive for the appointment he'd requested. Timho had been maddeningly vague about why he needed to talk to him, saying only that it was about the research on the semi-functional computer system that had turned out to be the biggest discovery in the Masters' abandoned city.

When Timho finally bounced into his office, Davdi was shocked at his pale, puffy-eyed appearance. "By the Masters, Soctu, are you all right? You look like death warmed over!"

Timho waved off the question with the bulky envelope he was carrying. "It's just fatigue; I haven't slept at all in the Last three days."

"What's the problem? Feel free to squat, if it helps."

"Thanks, I think I will," Timho replied, sinking into the folded-knee position in which Eifralo relaxed. "The problem is what we've been finding out from the analysis of Node-25. That's what the Masters' computer calls itself."

"'Calls itself'? You say that as if it were a person."

"In a way, it is. It's an artificially intelligent expert system. The fellows who managed to activate it nearly jumped out of their skins when it started talking to them."

"I can imagine! It's amazing that it works at all after so many millenia."

"It certainly is. According to its own diagnostics, more than a sixth of its memory banks have failed, but there was enough redundancy and unallocated space for it to still function somewhat, and even partially repair itself. But most of the systems it was supposed to manage weren't ever installed."

"What was it supposed to do?"

Timho took a long, slow breath before he replied, seemingly searching for words. "It was designed to enhance a starship crew's actions in certain situations, and sometimes even take over the ship's systems itself if necessary."

"So it was some kind of safety system? For emergency response?"

"No, that wasn't its function. Not exactly."

Davdi was getting a bit exasperated at Timho's vagueness. "Well, then, what did it do?"

"Node-25 is something of an idiot-savant; it's very good at what it does, but has almost no knowledge outside its intended task. Just understanding the archaic language forms it uses, and training it to understand modern idiom, took over a month. We're still working out concepts from the Masters' day that modern Eifral doesn't even have words for. One of the first things we had to do was convince Node-25 that it wasn't a 'prisoner-of-war'."

"What on Eifra is a 'prisoner-of-war'? The Corporate Wars ended over two centuries ago!"

"That's what's been keeping me from sleeping. Apparently, the Masters were not the only intelligent species of their day, and they were in the midst of an interstellar war when Node-25 was built. Node-25's purpose was to optimize its crew's performance in ship-to-ship combat, in conjunction with similar systems on other ships. And the Masters' war was far more violent than anything in our recorded history. When we activated Node-25, its initial assumption was that we had salvaged it after its ship had been destroyed in battle."

-----

After reading the lengthy sealed report that Timho had brought, Davdi could understand why the doctor was unable to sleep. The Eifralo had been at peace since the Conglomerate was formed in the Ultimate Merger, which ended the historical period now known as the Corporate Wars. Historians debated whether the planetary government had allowed the corporations to run out of control, or the corporations had merely been more efficient at exploiting the government's failures, but the end result was that all government functions were eventually privatized. The Corporate "Wars" had mostly involved proxy fights, industrial espionage, and the occasional armed skirmish between corporate security forces. The heaviest casualties had occurred during employee riots after their jobs were eliminated in hostile takeovers.

The Masters' war had been orders of magnitude worse. Node-25's memory banks contained numerous records of battles with scores of spacecraft on each side, throwing projectiles and energy bLasts at each other, killing thousands of crewmen in a single engagement. Even more horrific were a handful of records of besieged planets where millions died under orbital bombardments. To Node-25, these nightmares were just a database for it to analyze, to maximize the Masters' fleets' effectiveness.

The most disturbing thing of all was that Node-25 had no idea whether the Masters were winning the conflict. It was only programmed to understand battle tactics, not the overall strategic situation. It seemed unlikely that the Masters had ultimately lost, simply because the Eifralo were still here, but Node-25 had no record of the fate of either the Masters or their enemies. The possibility that these unknown enemies were still out there somewhere was what was keeping Timho awake at night. Node-25 couldn't even tell them what the Masters' enemies had looked like; it could only identify their ship designs. That was also why it initially thought it had been captured; the salvage workers who'd activated it didn't match its template for recognizing the Masters.

That was something more pleasant to contemplate. Node-25 said that on average, the Masters were more than twice as tall as the Eifralo, but much slimmer, and pale-skinned. The height difference explained a lot about Eifral architecture; the original skycities had been scaled to fit the Masters, and the Eifalo had merely copied the designs. Their strangest feature was that they only had two legs, with both knees bending in the same direction. That explained the purpose of the odd tables found in various places around the Masters' ship; they relaxed by folding their thighs across the horizontal surface, while leaning their torso against the upright panel. Davdi wondered how the Masters told the sexes apart with only two legs.

Which brought Talro back to mind again. With her gone, his social life had been reduced to little more than Retla's dinner invitations, which turned into informal business meetings as often as not. Davdi had let his responsibilities as CEO fill the void Talro left, and now Node-25's revelations had raised the stakes. The Conglomerate had to prepare for the possibility that the Eifralo would discover hostile aliens someday, and Davdi had no idea where to start.

[ October 25, 2002, 05:02: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Jmenschenfresser]

Chapter 3--part 1
2403.0

---------
LEON
---------
God, I ****ing hate peasants. Not a thought in their spongey heads. Not a clean pair of underwear among them. Depressing, really. It feels good to be back on a space ship and out of character. Not that I really have one. The Last two months were spent trekking through the wastelands of the new Vellon homeworld keeping an eye on their discoveries. A trek led by some big shot space captain. Crap what a prick he was. Funny thing is, I think he hated it more than I did, if that's possible. The edge on his face as he exited his tent every morning and saw the boundless mud surrounding his tent and the camp never failed to put a smile on my face.

Next assignment's got me sliding along toward Rellan space, with a small stop-over in Spica. My retainers want me to pry into this business with the Invexus Corporation. Must admit, though I am far cooler than any aquatic seafruit, I have a small place, a niche really, in my ego for anthropology. Looking forward to the chance to kick around this new race a little. I've read all the briefings that have come out of the Overlord's press office...the little they allow out and into the public's eye. I suspect those bastards are keeping half the negotiations under wraps in order to maintain some power. Same logic as if you're drinking in a bar before the two or three warring parties enter through the front door, you, by default, get the pleasure to shoot holes in folk without the consequences and blood feuds that tend to make warring no fun. Clan retribution ain't nothing but a euphemism for sore loser, if you ask me.

Supposedly, and this doesn't come from the O'lords press office, the Overlord is negotiating a trade treaty between the tribe heads and the Invexus Corporation. Trade ain't nothing bad in itself, but my employers feel that such a treaty will erode certain anarchical trends which allow them to survive. Economy almost always carries a **** load of laws and consolidation. I know that. Everyone does. It's the reason why local lords refuse to sign anything with their kings or commanders. Reason why they count every peasant-****ing soldier they send to the front...to make sure their responsibilities and property don't get requisitioned on account of some phoney cause. Since the dawn of this whole space thing, half of the tribes have developed a kinda disease where they feel the need for some strong leadership. And you might say, I work for a consortium which doesn't particularly appreciate such a power grab. I mean, ****, fifty years ago, the very thought of someone like an O'lord would have set off another generation of new wars. Times is strange, but I don't give a damn. Only two things happen when times are strange: peasants die and sons of *****es like me have the sudden opportunity to make a **** load of money.

[ October 25, 2002, 18:32: Message edited by: Jmenschenfresser ]

[Dead Meat]

“Caption on the bridge. Time is 06:30 2403.2.” The ships computer called out as Caption John Bentford’s boot landed on T.C.N. George Bass metal deck with a slight thump and walked to his command chair.

“Morning Caption”

“Morning XO,” Commander Turner appeared at his right shoulder as she always did when he came onto the bridge after the night watch. “I trust all went well with the night shift?”

“Yessir, Astro has completed the scans of the system. The scanners can’t penetrate this nebula, but we’ve located the Last warp point and have been able to scan it. Astro says that it’s a normal wrap point, all gravimetric fields are within specs.”

“That’s good; we don’t want to turn into another Lucky Mishap.” Bentford thought back to George Bass sister ship Lucky as he sat in his command chair and went over the reports from the night watch. The Terran Confederation Navy’s first ship, Lucky, was lost with all hands when they tried passing through Sol’s southern most warp point. Little did they know that this warp point was different than the other ones found in the system. The R&D people said that the high gravimetric fields tore the ship apart before anyone knew what was happening.

The Terran Confederation was much different back then. Instead of consisting of the hand full of intra-system tug boats to protect Earth, the T.C.N now had five combat ship with more being built every month. Hard to believe that the Terran Confederation now controls 20 planets in 8 systems. Nope, things we very much different than they where when we left home.

“How long does Astro think it will take us to get back to the nearest re-supply base?”

“About 3 year’s sir, give or take a few months. We received our reply to our message. The Admiralty suggests that we continue our original mission sir, in spite of our lack of fuel.”

“Ah, I see. That would be the ‘…to explore new worlds, and seek out new life...’ part of their dispatch wouldn’t it. Seems to me that we have the beginning of a great holo show doesn’t it commander?”

“My guess sir, is that they are hoping that we will encounter another race and be able to get more fuel. Otherwise it would be too expansive to send out a re-supply fleet to retrieve us.”

“No doubt. But I don’t like the idea of having to beg a new race for fuel when we just meet them. God for bid that their armed and attack us.” Caption Bentford thought for a few moments, thinking about his chooses, “Hmm, very well commander. Well go through this warp point and see where it leads. Perhaps we can find a short cut back home.”

“Yessir. Helm, set course for the warp point at coordinates (0,10). All ahead one third, rig ship for warp.”