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I know its been sometime, and I don't know if you remember my last post, but the video I created from the screenplay I had written, is now posted on Vimeo. Go check it out and see how it compares with what you imagined from reading the screenplay. here is the link: http://vimeo.com/10654390

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“In actual terms of damage and loss, the Third World War was probably the most devastating of any war in the history of mankind. Many historians have pointed to the First World War for parallels including the extreme nationalism felt by many countries, harbored resentment and ancient grudges held, as well as the system so alliances and treaties making nations that would never have found a reason to fight each other, bomb each other’s cities. The main sides incorporated into the war are many. Asian Ultranationalists, Western Separatists for both the Americas, and Europe, the U.N. and its coalition of vassal countries. Ultimately, the incredibly financial burdens facing many of the belligerents as well as a looming global energy crisis, allowed the U.N. to strike hard and fast, using both technology developed by internal scientists as well as an intelligent military plan cooperating with cunning diplomacy allowed the U.N. to win the war, and finish uniting the planet.” – A Brief History of the World
June 28th, 2157, 0023 Local Time
Satellite Command Control Room, ICOM, Bejing, China
“Someone please tell me what I’m seeing here. This doesn’t look anything like any of the Dominion ships,” Newton asked with a slight hint of anger in his voice. The ships had passed well within the visual range of several satellites. They were several AU out from the planet now.
The Secretary General had about fifteen minutes after he had finished his speech and left came right back and held another press conference before the reporters had even had time to pick their belongings up and leave.
About a hour ago, Newton had also sent Roxanna and Zamani to Tokyo about an hour’s flight away to consult with several scientists at the University of Tokyo at Shimizu. They had released information from the signal to several prestigious universities around the world. Tokyo happened to have been searching specifically at the technology supposedly held by the Dominion and they had said they had just encountered a breakthrough in their tests that they had been half-hazardly conducting. Normally they would just set up a conference between Tokyo and there, but the information was classified, and Newton needed every electronic resource he had there working for something. So the next best thing was to send personnel over.
Right now he was watching the distorted images of the approaching objects. No, spacecraft, they were definitely spacecraft. But he had looked at images of Dominion style ships. They were very geometrically balanced with no discernable front or back. They had the smoothness and tones of machines that were very well built, almost looking like an aerodynamical animal such as a dolphin. While he had less than adequate resolution on these images, it was obvious that if there was one thing these crafts were not, it was well-built. They looked more like a ramshackle object that was about as aerodynamic as a sailboat on fire.
“I’m searching the database captain, but none of the craft that the Dominion shows looks remotely like this,” one analyst said while scrolling through numerous images.
“What about other non-integrated species. Do they mention anything about any sorts of species that are capable of faster-than-light travel or even abnormally fast space travel?” Newton asked.
“I don’t know. The database they gave us isn’t exactly the Encyclopedia Britannica to Outer Space,” the exasperated analyst said while cycling through images faster and faster.
“Colonel, if I may?” Saranya asked as she walked up to the Colonel.
“Go ahead, Warrant.” He responded, watching the screen as images flashed by.
“Major Garcia mentioned that the Dominion assimilated planets. But they don’t do it at an alarmingly fast rate. They’ve only grabbed sixty-two races in the last 300,000 years. It seems like they’re waiting for civilizations to mature before they grab them”
“Warrant, make your point,” Newton growled.
“My point is, all their technology is regular, it’s standard. They weren’t able to advance far enough to develop their own space ships, because they were assimilated into the Dominion. If that is the case, then any ship that doesn’t look like a Dominion ship must not be a Dominion ship.
An awkward pause entered the room. They had been too busy searching about Dominion vessels, quite sure that was the explanation for their problems that they had never stopped to consider any outside reasons.
“But how can these ships not be Dominion. They said that they had assimilated every culture before they had gotten to a significant space-faring stage.” Major Dubois asked, walking across the main observation deck at the back of the room.
“Maybe because they existed before the Dominion did?” Newton said outloud.
“Sir, if they existed before the Dominion did, why wouldn’t the Dominion assimilate them as soon as possible. What is their story?” Saranya asked Newton.
Newton started to answer, but his attention was turned to the massive wall-monitor behind Saranya. The crafts were coming on their closest approach to a satellite yet. Being only 100,000 kilometers away gave the satellite an impressive visual feed. The crafts were horseshoe shaped, and given the dimensions the satellite was reporting maybe a kilometer long or smaller. They had a clunky box-like look to them. There didn’t appear to be windows anywhere on the craft, or for that matter, any openings.
By count there were almost 3 dozen of them, each moving within about 50,000 kilometers between each other. One was about to pass the satellite by almost 20,000 kilometers away. The massive ships continued their silent, but swift journey. First the craft came into sight from the feed, then they were almost on top of the satellite, then the feed from the satellite came to a stop.
“What was that?” Newton blinked several times before asking. “Did they just ram our satellite?”
“I’ll bring up the feed from DSS-63,” One lieutenant said.
This satellite was roughly another 4,000,000 kilometers away from the site but they were still able to see the ships quite clearly. Being too small to resolve on the satellite there was no sign of the disappeared satellite. Again the craft approached as the playback ran. However it soon became obvious that it hadn’t been rammed. Quite clearly they were able to see a light from the closest ship streak across the sky and collide with the satellite causing it to explode in a bright spherical explosion.
Newton’s cigarette fell from his mouth. “Someone just shot my satellite!”
June 28th, 2157, 0254 Tokyo Time
Shimuzu Pyramid, Tokyo, Japan
Newton had sent the five of them over to Tokyo to get the inputs and details from several theoretical physicists. What they hadn’t been counting on was that the physicists hadn’t been entirely ready for them to show up. They had been expecting that newton would contact them through the regular means of communication rather than sending some of his adjutants as well as several troops.
Zamani and Roxanna had come expecting to get details immediately and be able to get back to ICOM within two hours. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. The scientists had wanted to double check their note as well as solicit the opinions of several of their colleagues. In the meantime they were waiting, watching their hopes of being able to get back to Bejing in a reasonable amount of time vanish with every passing moment.
The officers and the enlisted had separated themselves into two separate groups. Zamani and Roxana on one side and the three soldiers on the other. Zamani suddenly realized that he really didn’t even know any of the lower ranked enlisted troops. He spent so much of his time dealing with highly ranked officers that he rarely if ever saw to an enlisted person, much less talked to one. However they both had things in common right now. Free time and no way of spending it.
Zamani went ahead and walked over to the other three soldiers. They immediately took notice of him. As he walked over he quickly studied their ranks and committed them to memory. Corporal Whitney Murchison. Corporal Hào Song. Private Wĕi Guo. He had never met any of them, but they seemed to know who he was. Zamani was well enough known in the group, but had generally seemed fairly aloof. They didn’t seem to know how to respond.
“So whats the news?” Zamani asked them.
Whitney was the first one to pipe up. She knew who Zamani was. She had passed him numerous times in the hallways and corridors of ICOM, but he never seemed in the mood for speaking, almost as if he didn’t think enlisted had anything to say. “How’s the form yourself, sir. We feel like you officers aren’t giving us our fare due.”
Zamani was slightly caught off guard. He got the distinct impression that Roxanna was laughing at him behind his back. “I guess you have a fair point. What is it that you were curious about, Corporal?”
“Well, Sec-Gen has been playing the part of a chancer, acting like they know everything that is going on. But their head is up in you-know-where. What exactly are we looking at?” Whitney asked.
“Alright, the colonel just reported to us a confirmation that the incoming objects shot a satellite out of the sky. Furthermore he says he has good reason to think that they have shot several other non-affiliated satellites as well,” Zamani explained.
“What does that mean for us?”
“It means we’re in trouble. If this is the Dominion on the warpath towards us, we’re screwed. We haven’t exactly broadcast their military capabilities because of the sheer amount of panic it would cause. If they wanted to destroy us, they could do it without any matter of difficulty.” Roxanna added, having walked up to join them.
Zamani held up his hand in a stop motion. “We still don’t know for a fact if this is even the Dominion. We can’t find any links between our friends coming over for a visit and the Dominion. We’re here because the scientists inside are analyzing the weapons that were fired at our satellites.”
“Sir, I got that, but I’m not thick. Why are we here specifically? Can’t we just get their opinions sent to us back at Intelligence Command?”
“Because they’re trying to keep this very tight lipped. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Sec-Gen activated the entire military and reserves two days ago. The entire army, navy, airforce is getting mobilized all over the planet. I don’t know of any times in history since the U.N. finished the Global takeover that the military has been in such a state of readiness. They don’t want a lot of this information out because it would be more detrimental than helpful to people.” Zamani explained.
“Sir, if I may, that sounds like a load of crock. Don’t people deserve to know so that they can prepare if the worst should happen?” Whitney asked.
“Of course they do. But remember this. You may be a smart person, but if you get a mass of people together, mob mentality takes over. Some people may already be preparing themselves in a paranoid fit from the Sec-Gen conference earlier. You ultimately need to know if it’s better to panic, run, and get caught out in the open, or to be caught unawares, but be hopefully better off. That is ultimately what it would come down to.”
“Sir, that’s right with you, and all, but it just feels wrong.”
Zamani shrugged. He couldn’t change things. “Even in war, the people on the winning side still die. That can’t be helped. It happened during World War 2, During the Middle East Campaigns, and mostly during the Third World War.”
Zamani let the words sink in. He looked out over the city. Located on one of the original compartments in the pyramid, they were able to get a remarkable view of the city proper. Arcologies, massive self-sustaining cities in their own right, towered over the smaller buildings. Only 50 years ago had the first arcology, the one they were standing in, had been completed. Now he could see easily three dozen of them from his vantage point. Humans had stopped sprawling outwards and started expanding into the sky. Several of these mega structures even now housed over a million people, and rose greater than 2 kilometers into the sky.
This city was the symbol of a growing Earth power. Housing 100,000,000 people within its small confines, Tokyo had become the main power structure for the rest of the world. The U.N. had relocated here after their takeover a century previously. The rest of the world was already beginning to mimic the structure of Tokyo, and more and more arcologies were finished every year.
Zamani turned to talk to Whitney once more, but he felt the buzz from his earpiece indicating an incoming call. He switched it on to receive the call and listened for what could have been no longer than 15 seconds. He switched it off and said. “We need to get out of here. Right now.” Walking towards one of the exit elevators, they picked up the pace. He was moving fast, and it looked like he was trying to retain his composure rather than breaking and running. He pointed at Roxanna. “Rox, call the Takama base, tell them to expect us..”
“I’m going to need a reason, Zam” she replied, while searching for the appropriate number on her hand-computer.
“There isn’t time. There isn’t time,” Zamani mumbled, his composure now starting to break.
“What the hell is going on, Warrant?!” Whitney asked, becoming impatient. She had already pulled out her Baldwin ME-7 rifle, and was nervously pawing at the safety.
“That was ICOM, they said they found something about these guys. Bad news guys all around. The Dominion call them Marauders. They ransack rocky worlds for resources, destroy civilizations to steal technology. They’re some kind of religious zealot species. They worship the end of the universe and their ultimate goal is to cause it faster,” Zamani explained in hushed tones once they had reached the elevator. Roxanna was currently in the process of calling Building Control.
“Why was this so hard to find? It sounds like something the big powerful Dominion would be concerned about them,” Corporal Song asked.
“Because they are supposed to be extinct. The Dominion put out some extermination order on them millennia ago, and was supposed to have destroyed them in their entirety. Evidently not. They said they’d send me more data, but in the mean time, we have to get out of the city. They are undoubtedly hostile.”
“What about everyone in the city? They can’t just stay in the city!” Whitney asked.
“They’re going to have to. Where are they going to go? Can you imagine trying to evacuate 100 million people in less than an hour? It is impossible. They are safer in doors than they are out in the open. Those arcologies are a lot harder to destroy than you’d think.”
The elevator had reached the bottom, and already the evacuation alarms had gone off. This would normally be a problem in some buildings, but in arcologies they were specifically designed for ease of movement. The entire building could be evacuated in 30 minutes. The elevator had already reached the bottom floor of the building, and the five soldiers had spilled out onto the street below.
Zamani knew where they had to get to first. A soldier without directions was generally about as useful as a glass window on a space station. They grabbed a taxi to take them back to the Takama Military Base roughly 45 kilometers away. Even given the state of arcologies and the cleaning up of civilization, there was always traffic to deal with. Luckily the taxi was automated and computer controlled, so it was able to drive by itself. Zamani grabbed the captain’s chair, and the rest piled in after him.
The Taxi took off at an astonishing speed that would have made any normal driver nervous to travel at. Suddenly a blinking light went on the car dashboard. Zamani knew exactly what it was.
“Well that sells it.” He said as the car pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. The light was the emergency activation signal. It was installed on every non-governmental car on the planet. When emergency services needed priority, they would broadcast a signal to the vehicles in the area that would force the vehicle to stop, pull over, and get out of the way for the emergency vehicles that was generally speeding by at several hundred kilometers an hour. It appeared that someone had activated the signal possibly in panic. Now virtually the entire Tokyo area was no doubt stalled in traffic with no one able to get their vehicles running.
“Someone just made a big goddamn mistake! Zamani yelled in anger, “Rox, can you get us going?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been keeping up with my mechanical expertise recently. Kind of hasn’t come into necessity in the past,” she said as she ripped the dashboard of the car, looking for an override.
“Here, let me, “ Whitney said, as she leaned forward and began fingering and messig with various wires in the car, looking for the right one.
“Um, people…” Private Guo stuttered.
“What is it, private?!” Zamani lashed angrily, turning to face Guo. The young private was pointing at something outside. Zamani followed his hand, and his eyes widened when they connected with what the private was pointing at. The Marauders had come.

Chapter 3!

Chapter 3
“It was once said that if there was a World War Three, it would be fought with nukes. If there was a World War Four, it would be fought with sticks and rocks. We must consider ourselves fortunate that during the Third World War, nuclear bombs were not used. Not because of any sorts of honor among the combatants, but because of shear destructive power. Nuclear Research had accelerated to such a degree during the mid 21st century that any one modern nuclear weapon was too effective. The blast could damage neighboring allies, or in the cases of some European or Asian countries, the blast could end up having repercussions that came all the way into the country that set it off in the first place. It seems that the greatest savior of mankind was the arms race itself. If we had not improved on the weapons, and dismantled the older models, then we could have very well found ourselves sitting in the ruins of society.” – Professor B.R. Sandersen, lecture on the Third World War.
June 27th, 2157, 1630 Local Time
The Office of Colonel Jonathon Quincy Newton, ICOM, Bejing, China
Newton had called his command staff together again. It had been over 24 hours since the signal had arrived. More and more had been decoded. The truth of the Universe had almost in its entirety been laid bare to them. They now watched the wall-monitor as the Secretary-General made the announcement. Newton had wanted to keep the knowledge a secret for a while long but others in ICOM had disagreed. They felt that a controlled dispersal of knowledge at this time was safe to give out.
Newton had still disagreed. Didn’t they realize the implications this would have on society? The biological implications proving evolution a fact once and for all. The physical applications of the existence of faster-than-light travel. The engineering implications of architecture of orbital cities. The place where the earthquake would hit hardest, Newton had no doubt, was religion. How would they cope with this knowledge? Would the religions collapse, or go with it. No doubt the latter, as Newton himself was a religious man, but he still knew that there would be earth-shaking consequences to this action.
The staff stood in silence as the Secretary-General began his explanation on the TV, using the grace and prose that his speechwriters had written for him. As he went on, Newton realized something about Salieri. His body language, his voice, his tone. They all pointed to the identity of a man whose only concern was for his legacy. Newton realized that Salieri didn’t put much account into the actual implications of this knowledge, only the implications for himself. Secretary-General Costantino Salieri, the one who was there when the aliens made contact.
Salieri’s term was almost up, and it was doubtful that the aliens would show up anytime soon. Why prepare them for all this, and then show up when no one was ready.
They were still sitting there watching as Salieri dropped possibly the biggest bomb ever uttered in the history of the planet. We are not alone. The crowd broke out into a frenzy. Reporters jumped to their feet with questions completely overshouting Salieri even through the microphone. It was going down about the way one could expect. Newton was about to turn the monitor off when someone rapped on the door in a very non-reverent way. Newton, annoyed by the interruption made a gesture at Zamani to open the door, which he did.
Outside was one of the Senior Lieutenants over the government observational intelligence group. They used satellites. Watching the planet, watching the stars. The man was obviously panicked about something. Probably found some disturbing alien custom while sorting through the data. Newton wasn’t surprised to find that something alien had been discovered about aliens. Major Dubois went over to speak with the nervous Lieutenant.
The conversation was quite and short, but Dubois paused for a moment after a few words from the Lieutenant. After a few seconds he turned to Newton. “Permission to be excused, sir?”
Newton, now more than slightly confused answered, “Granted, but this better be good.”
Without another word, Dubois slipped out of a door. Majors Dubois and Garcia were the second and third in command behind Newton. They were fanatically loyal to him, supposedly having even gone to West Point with one another some decades back. They never spoke of their relationships with each other, but it was obvious that if Newton only had to trust two people on their words, it would be either Garcia or Dubois.
They continued watching the pandemonium on the monitor. By some miracle, the Secretary-General had managed to retain some semblance of order amongst the reporters, and now was at least able to be heard above them. He continued through with his speech as if nothing had happened, but he rushed through it slightly faster. He began detailing a few of the more significant finds while downplaying the less significant or the more threatening.
Dubois burst back into the room less than a minute after he had left. He looked at newton and nodded at him. “Sir, it appears we have a problem.”
Newton got up and followed Dubois out of the room. Garcia, Zamani, Roxanna and Saranya followed him out. All of them were thinking to themselves what it was that intelligence had found this time. They came into the main control room for Global Satellite Intellengence Command. A massive wall-screen dominated the far side of the wall. It showed a full-3 dimensional version of the planet as well as the location of all the satellites around it. A lot of the budgeting into the Sat-Com had been designed more recently. Numerous powerful automated satellites numbering in the hundreds orbited the sun at a wide range of intervals. They had been placed there not for some hope of watching for e-ts, but instead to watch out of meteorites in the region. This system kept track of several thousand solar bodies, each one capable of extinguishing life on the planet. It was also a very boring job. For anything to come close to the Earth was rare, and for something to actually hit it was even rarer. The majority of Sat-Com’s operations were directed planetside.
The planetside satellites could resolve a person in their back-yard picking flows in real time. However numerous government protocols prevented Sat-Com from doing activities such as that and instead kept them focused on watching for the occasional rebel faction or disgruntled insurgency. Even those were rare. However it seemed that Sat-Com’s long range satellites had picked something up.
The wall-monitor quickly switched to a location roughly 15 AU up-orbit from the Earth. Several objects were shown quite clearly moving in a pattern that left no suggestions to their destination. The display also showed several data-facts about the unidentified objects. Current readings showed that they were on a direct course for Earth and would arrive within 12 hours.
The Lieutenant was explaining to Colonel Newton, “They appeared about 3 minutes ago out of nowhere. Previous scans in that area, and even extending beyond that area back about 3 more AU, show there is nothing there. They are traveling at almost an AU every hour. It’s too fast even for an asteroid or for a meteor.”
“Well it seems that our friends may be showing up a bit sooner than we had thought before. How soon until they are in visual range?” Newton asked.
“At their current rate of travel, and with the current satellite locations, it won’t be for at least six hours.”
“Well keep an eye on it in the meantime. I need to contact MCOM as well as the Secretary-General. Things may be rushing out of our hands a little faster than I expected.” Newton walked off back to his office to place several more calls.
Saranya and Zamani walked off to go work on facilitating more discussions between the Colonel as well as the Generals in MCOM. Roxanna staid back, watching the display. It was still a relatively simple view. The satellites were watching for objects in the same way early planet hunters did. A simple eclipse of an object, a dimness in a star’s luminosity revealed things orbiting it. All there was on the screen was a representation of the solar system, and a box where the rough estimate of the objects were. Roxanna suddenly noticed something that perhaps others had missed.
“Lieutenant, could you turn the star-scape on for me?” She asked, as the Lieutenant who had brought them here was hunched over his desk writing things down.
He paused, but then did what he was asked. The stellar background appeared on the screen, covering up most of the background. It was far more stars than could be seen anywhere on the planet. In fact since Emmanuel Tam’s invention of the power-caster, seeing stars was more difficult than it ever had been. Broadcasting wireless power over the planet had the habit of generating powerful auroras everywhere covering much of the sky. All of these images were from high quality orbital satellites.
“Where did yesterday’s signal come from? Where was its original origin?”
she asked, looking at the monitor with an inquisitive look, one hand resting on her chin, the other folded across her chest.
“The analysts still haven’t figured out the planar location, but it came out of the constellation of Sagitarrius. The specific coordinates are…” he started, reading off a sheet of paper.
“Yeah yeah, I don’t care. What constellation are these objects coming from?” she asked, slightly distracted by plans formulating in her head.
The Lieutenant looked again at his charts. He stopped and then entered several commands into the main console. The wall monitor lighted up with activity again. The magnitude of the starscape dimmed, and the known constellations appeared on the screen again. A dot with a pulsing line appeared from another constellation. That had to be Sagittarius. The pulsing line started at an unspecified point and led to the Earth. The new objects were located roughly 60 degrees counter-clockwise from Sagitarrius. That constellation looked like a lbunch of random sticks tied together. Roxanna had no idea what it was, and asked the Lieutenant.
“That is Aquarius. It’s said that when the Vernal equinox occurs in Aquarius the planet will enter the age of freedom, technology and secularism.”
Roxanna stayed silent. New Age information wasn’t her concern. There was something about this that didn’t add up. She had remained suspicious of the intent of any e-t’s regardless of what they claimed, and thusly didn’t trust what everyone else took for granted. If they had sent a message from roughly the center of the galaxy, why are they showing up coming in at a perpendicular angle? It was almost as if… She paused. It was nothing. If they were really a galaxy spanning empire then no doubt they had fleets spread out anywhere. She shrugged it off and didn’t think about it for about 6 hours.

Chapter One: Twilight on a Nameless Shore

The cry of the gulls is the first thing I remember.

Their raucous chatter filled my ears for I know not how long, fading in and out as I rose from the darkness of unconsciousness.

As I drifted nearer to wakefulness, other sounds reached my ears, competing with the gulls for my dazed attention. There was the roaring of the surf, a long low sort of mumble that rose to a rowdy cheer as unseen waves broke on an unknown coast, and then faded once more to a dark grumbling as the sea receded. There was wind as well, a dirge keening somewhere in the invisible sky. Rain, also, slapping like a thousand tiny hands against the earth, and against my cold, wet clothing, and against my skin—

I opened my eyes.

It is a common enough thing to hear from persons who have sailed near to death only to find themselves living once more, that opening one’s eyes after such an experience is at once painful and wonderful—the lancing sunlight is as much a fiery shaft to the eyes as it is a welcome embrace of living light.

It was not so for me.

I opened my eyes, and the world was dark, almost too dark to see.

I blinked, and the separate sounds of gulls and surf and wind and rain, as one, fused into a coherent whole.

I was lying facedown on the shore.

Groaning, I rolled over onto my back, and stared up at the sky. It was a dark, moody sky, not at all welcoming to a man who by any account had no business being alive. There were no discernable clouds, the heavens were a solid, unending sheet of gray as far as I could see—which, admittedly, was only as far as my eyes could rove about in their sockets. One endless track of blank nothing, but thunder still rolled somewhere above and beyond the somber ceiling, threatening worse to come. Gulls wheeled above me. Not the mischievous white birds that roam the docks of London, York, and every other seaport of the isle like toothless, airborne jackals, but black gulls, dark as midnight. And their croaking, it seemed to me, sounded more akin to the bleak calls of old ravens than the airy speech of good, English gulls.

Suddenly, their wheeling, revolving flight seemed a bit too much like the patient waiting of vultures.

Groaning again, I sat up. My head swam, in more motion than the sea before me, but I remained upright, if only to dissuade the dark birds—I was no longer even sure they were gulls . . . but what vulture haunts the coast?—from becoming overly eager. I was alive, and I intended to remain that way.

When my vision had ceased spinning like the fins of a gyrocopter, I began to cast my gaze about, up and down the long, empty shore.

At my feet—swirling all around and over my lower half, really—lay the sea, dark and hungry and waiting. At my back, a jungle crouched, a black umbra in an already shadowed day. To my left and right—the sun being hid, I could not have told in which direction I was looking—the beach ran on, uninterrupted, until, to my left, it was lost in a gray curtain of rain, and on my right, it turned about an invisible corner of this nameless land, and disappeared behind the angled trunks of the jungle.

The beach, as far as I could see, was devoid of any sort of life. I was alone.

The swirling foam and gray water of the sea was cold as ice, and as soon as I was able, I stood, caked sand and mud spattering the ground as it fell from my trembling body. On the whole, I seemed to be fine. My coat and half of my shirt had been lost somehow, and a brilliant yellow and purple bruise was spreading up the side of my stomach and across my ribs—otherwise, I was uninjured.

Somehow I had kept my boots; mud and seawater was leaking from them, running in thin rivulets back down to the sea.

Raising my eyes from my feet, I lifted a palm to shade them, and stared out over the sea. Beyond the low, breaking waves, perhaps a half-mile or so, a line of jagged rocks poked their black heads above the white foam, running like a line of rotted teeth parallel to the shore. Beyond them, the sea and the wind and the rain merged into a seamless globe of unrelieved gray.

Unrelieved that is, except for directly before me where, caught on the distant line of jagged rocks, a large, dark shape bobbed in the endless surge. I recognized the shape, and my eyes went wide as memory—broken with too many holes and splinters to number, but memory nonetheless—flooded back into me, taking the place of the seawater, which felt like it was draining out of every pore of my body and flooding through my boots.

For the first time, I spoke:

“My name,” I said, “is Isaac Hawthorne.”

Memory proved to be a two-edged sword, for with memory came sorrow; but more than sorrow, fear. I fell too my knees and doubled over, clawing at the mud beneath me, coughing and sobbing, my own tears mingling with the dark waters of the sea. I was alone, and perhaps more than alone. To find oneself solitary on a strange shore is bad enough—but to wrestle with the knowledge that the home and country you have known and loved for all the long years of your life has passed into fire and ash is far worse.

Indeed, I was alone.

But the knowledge that one has been left friendless in an evil world bestows a power on a man, a will to survive, to continue living though all seems lost. As I knelt there on the shore, gazing through tear-blurred eyes at the shattered wreckage of the vessel that had carried aboard it the last few, fragile lives of my broken world, I felt this power course through my limbs, urging me back to my feet.

I was an Englishman, and though future generations—should there be any—will sorely curse the hubris of English curiosity, they will never doubt the British will to survive. And if indeed I hoped to survive, there was work to be done.

The rain, rather than relenting, was increasing, and the gray sky gave no indication that relief from the storm would come anytime soon. I needed shelter; but upon eyeing the foreboding wall of vegetation behind me I realized that what I needed more than shelter was supplies. Food, tools, weapons—without these I couldn’t hope to survive. And so I turned again to the wreckage that was caught on the rocks, just offshore.

HMS Integrity had fled two months earlier from England’s blighted coast, a single leaf blown before the hurricane. Its desperate journey, harried by the relentless beasts that had consumed my native land, had ended here—her body gutted and the few poor souls she had carried lost at sea. For a moment, my eyes filled with all that remained of my lost country—despair took me again, and I wondered if my friends who hadn’t escaped the Integrity’s fall to earth were the lucky ones.

But fate deals the cards she will, and I had not drowned. Nor, despite the fears that gnawed at me constantly, did I intend to starve.

It was a matter of only a few short minutes to search the thick scrub that crowded between the trees along the edge of jungle and find a fallen branch large enough to support me in the water. Leaving my boots, ruined shirt, and trousers in a pile well up on the beach away from the water’s edge, I waded out into the gray surf and thrust myself through the first, breaking waves, pushing the branch ahead of me.

Having spent my childhood in the Lake Country of Northern England, I was a strong swimmer; but the fathomless might of the sea was beyond me, and were it not for the support of the branch, I doubtless would have drowned then and there. The dark waves swung around me, spinning me down into deep troughs—where I lost site of the shore and the far rocks on which the Integrity was caught—and then tossing me high on the crests of hills of water. Salty spray blinded me, and the harsh voice of the sea filled my ears.

It seemed I swam for hours, gasping for air between the leaden rollers that swept over me, struggling to keep the branch in my grasp. Almost, I despaired of reaching the rocks and the ship; but then, as one last wave lifted me up in its vast palm, I saw the rocks marching across my way, and the Integrity near at hand. Shouting for joy, I urged my legs to beat faster, working against the water’s backward flow.

Near the rocks, the rolling waves mounted suddenly, piling up in white pillars and columns of foam that beat against the black granite with gray fists and white fingers. The boiling rapids first pushed me back, away from the ship, then—with a mighty surge and a roar of water and wind like a thousand voices—forced me forward, flinging me towards the rocks like a stone cast from a sling.

Frantically, I cast the branch aside, for it hindered now, rather than helped, dragging me wherever the water would. Plunging backwards, I stroked through the rushing deep, fighting the waves that raced towards the deadly rocks and the waiting ship. With an explosive shout the surge smashed into the rock and began to subside. Only then did I turn and make for the rock and the ship once more.

Muscles straining, I fought against the receding waters, pulling myself closer and closer to my goal. My breath was labored, and my limbs felt as though they would fall from their sockets. Gasping, I sunk under the waves, my strength failing, only to claw my way up again. With a final, almost gentle sigh, the water lifted me up, and deposited me on the rough, slanting face of the black rocks, like some dead and slimy weed dislodged from the deep mud by the power of the sea.

For a long moment, I could only lay against the rock, chest heaving, legs and arms twitching and jerking with exhaustion. Above me, in the gathering darkness, I could hear the ship groaning and creaking as its shattered timbers flexed against the unyielding stone. What little daylight that remained was dying fast, and so—though every fiber of my body screamed in protest—I was soon forcing myself up the slick, pitted surface of the rock, using the barnacles and tough muscles that clung to the stone for handholds.

The Integrity had rolled as it fell from the sky, and it had struck the rocks on its starboard side. As luck saw fit, there was a porthole within my reach, its glass pane shattered and lost, when I had ascended to the base of the ship. Quickly, I pulled myself up into the dead and dark hull.

The ship pitched gently beneath my feet as I stood astride the porthole, the movement accompanied by sharp cracks and the resonant pings of bending pipework. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw that the once-orderly vessel had been thrown into chaos. Packages and crates, bundles tied with cord—all that we the crew had managed to save from our broken country before fleeing into the night, was heaped, scattered, and piled across the whole length of the ship. The thin, moveable bulkheads that divided the inner ship into different rooms and quarters, had been shattered by the flying cargo, and to my right, gray light streamed in from the gaping whole that yawned where the front of the vessel had been torn away.

Stepping carefully, I began picking my way through the madness, turning over crates and boxes, rummaging through the sodden contents. It was exhausting—and disgusting—work. The ancient tomes, rolls of parchments, and hundreds of books of history, law, and science that had been crammed into the spare corners of the ship had disintegrated in the sea water, melting into a sticky, oil-coated sludge that sloshed noisily around my ankles. Water dripped from the cracked and broken hull above my head.

In a shattered leather traveling case I found a pyromantine lighter, its soladine crystal still functioning. Fashioning a make-shift carrying bag out of a torn bit of canvas, I stowed the lighter, and continued my search.

I quickly added a good—if wet—pair of leather to the sack, followed by a short knife and three lumocite glowbulbs. From a wooden crate that had somehow been spared any damage, I retrieved two woolen shirts and a pair of trousers that looked to be too long for my legs. Beneath the clothing, I found a great treasure: no less than two dozen spare soladine crystals, stored in a thick, glass bottle sealed with wax.

After this discovery, my progress slowed. A tailor’s leather script floated past me at one point, and I added it to my sack’s growing trove. After digging through a pile of heavy canvas and thick rope, I discovered a broken barrel of apples . . . some of the meager food supply we had managed to collect before our departure.

The light was almost gone when I found the armory closet at the far end of the ship. The tall cabinet had been built into the wall of the ship, and so been spared the tumbling suffered by the rest of the cargo. The closet was, of course, locked—our ships commander, Captain Giles had kept the key round his neck—but a bit of copper piping I managed to rip from the wall served well enough as a lever to pop the lock.

I collected, as quickly as possible, half a dozen weapons from the armory. There was a naval sword of good Kentish steel, complete with sheath and belt, and two pyromantine daggers. The soladine crystals in the dagger hilts had been shattered, but it would be a simple matter to replace them once I reached the shore. There was a small keg of black powder that had—miraculously—remained sealed during the crash. I slipped it and two matchlock pistols into the sack with the bladed weapons. Finally, with the last bit of light slipping from the ship, I retrieved an old ray rifle from the rack and slung it over my shoulder.

I was just turning away from the cabinet, when I noticed that a smaller cupboard had been built into the upper right-hand corner of the closet. It too was locked, so—curiosity overpowering my better judgment—I retrieved my makeshift lever and popped the smaller door open. To my growing astonishment and joy, I found a Sensing Cap. With trembling hands, I pulled the odd-looking assembly of brass, crystal and leather, from its shelf and turned it over. A cursory examination was enough to show that the lenses, levers, vacuum tubes, and soladine crystals were in good order.

Issued only to the elite dragoons and spies of Her Majesty’s Imperial forces, Sensing Caps were a rare wonder—a priceless treasure for one in my circumstances.

Grinning in the darkness—no fear of night now!—I pulled the helm over my head, tightened the buckles in back, and adjusted the brass cups over my ears. Instantly, the roar of the sea and the moan of the ship were muted. I could hear the faint hum of the audiocrite crystals, pulsing in their housings. Fumbling around behind my ear, I found the brass knob that controlled the volume of the crystals, and turned it clockwise. The sound of ocean and ship returned, amplified and sharpened, so that I could sense both the direction and the distance of even the faintest of sounds.

Next, I began to toggle with the rows of small levers that were positioned on either side of my head, just in front of my ears. Flipping through the spring-loaded switches one-by-one, I cycled through the multitude of different lenses. Finally, I found one set of lenses—rounded slivers of nocturnite—that washed my field of vision with a pale, violet light, so that the whole ship was revealed to me, as if the sun itself were shining into the ruined hull of the Integrity.

My task done—and more successfully than I could have hoped—I secured my sack of supplies and made for the porthole.

Ten yards back from the broken hole, I found the remains of a barrel—the bottom half, to be precise. Struck by sudden inspiration, I righted the barrel and stowed my supplies inside. Casting about, I quickly found enough pieces of cord and rope to fashion a whole rope some twenty yards long. Going back to the armory, I retrieved my makeshift lever, which I then wedged down into the barrel until it bit into the wood at both its ends, making a crude handle of sorts. Tying one of the rope to my barrel-basket, I then lowered it through the porthole and down towards the sea. When the barrel hung a mere yard or so above the sea—which, in my absence, seemed to have calmed somewhat, though the rain had grown in violence—I looped my end of the rope round a broken truss and secured it. Then I too, dropped through the porthole and left the Integrity forever.

Illusions of Control: Chapter 2

I changed the intro paragraph. I thought it flowed into it a lot better. My main concern is of course, character development as well as dialogue. I've always felt those as being my main weakpoints, so if you have any tips or ideas to improve it, go ahead.The latter section I also feel as missing something. Again tips are very much appreciated.


Chapter 2
“The original intentions of the Star God leadership was to build the Dominion up as fast as it could. This was necessary to create the power structure as well as the large population to weed out the experienced and the motivated. Within 1000 cycles of the Establishment, they had already assimilated the Celestials, the Behemoths, the Chancellors, the Templars, and the Imperators. These five species formed the backbone that generated the known Dominion societal structure known today. After the Dominion had these five races relatively entrenched within the Dominion, the Radiant Patriarch deemed it unnecessary to move with such vigor in the foreseeable future. The Dominion then entered what was known as the Entitlement Pact, which specifically stated that once researchers had deemed a planets inhabitants sufficiently advanced to no longer be a threat to themselves, the Dominion would assimilate them into the main body of the Dominion. This has since been the case in all but a few exceptions where external guidance and aid was needed to prevent a global extinction.” – Foundations, a Brief Excerpt

Corporal Whitney Murchison was one of the building security guards, specifically stationed with the 645th Military Intelligence Brigade. She had scored high enough to get into this unique branch of the military that conducted almost the majority of its business behind closed doors and at computer consoles, but not high enough to actually be a senior analyst, junior analyst or much else. For the moment she just made sure that people didn’t try to physically steal secrets, and to make sure some of the personnel didn’t rob the vending machines.

Something was up, that the higher-ups didn’t seem to eager to talk about. Since she was lower in the chain of command, such information was generally given out on a need to know basis and it was obvious that Whitney didn’t need to know. She had joined the Military at the youngest age she could. An orphan born to parents who still followed some radical beliefs back in the United Kingdom, they had both gotten themselves blown up for some long forgotten and ultimately pointless grudge.

As she walked down the halls on her routine patrols, she ate a chocolate bar. She had ultimately hoped for something a little better than a routine duty down the halls where greater people walked past without giving her a moment’s notice. It seemed that that was the way things went when it came to the military. You started out as a nobody, and had to work hard to become a somebody. Even then you were expected to sacrifice everything for the planet and that any one individual was unimportant. Well, maybe except some people, like Secretary General Salieri for one.

It only went to prove the point that army life wasn’t anything like it was in the movies or even in most books. She recalled a quote that said life in the police or in the military was long hours punctuated by brief periods of adrenaline soaked terror. She certainly hadn’t had any of the latter. After being assigned to this unit and moving out of Dublin, she had gotten assigned here. Certainly the military took care of their own, the pay was quite good, the benefits were great, and she enjoyed the looks that people gave her as she walked down the street but it still felt empty. Whitney wanted desperately to actually do something. Prove her value; find something to make her life worth it. It certainly wasn’t happening here at any rate.

The Office of Colonel Jonathon Quincy Newton, ICOM, Bejing, China
Newton had called a meeting of his command staff up to his office after Luna had eaten that candy bar. As Zamani arrived, he immediately noticed there was an air of what seemed to be near-panic. Something bad must be going on, that much was
painfully obvious, if it was enough to frighten Newton. The three adjutants, Colonel Newton himself as well as his three ranking Majors were crammed into the office.

Newton sat back down on his chair and leaned back, lighting another herbal cigarette as he popped his neck. He then looked back at the various personnel in the room. “It appears that we are not alone, people.”

A hush fell over the group that lasted for too long, and almost began to feel awkward. Zamani finally spoke. “What have we found?”

One of the officers, Major Garcia stated, “The signal itself is odd. We can’t determine where it came from. It shows as originated from over 50,000 light-years away, all the way to originating from the planetary surface.”

Saranya, with a puzzled look on her face asked, “Perhaps it is a faster-than-light signal? Because it moves instantaneously it crosses every point from the origin to the destination all at once, and has one residual original across all the points?”
Major Garcia shrugged. “I don’t know, anything is probable at this point. It doesn’t matter where it came from at the moment. What matters what’s in it.” He nodded toward one of the majors.

Major Dubois explained, bringing up a wall monitor. “The signal isn’t just a message. It’s a database. Images, sounds, music, tons of things. Over 45 terabytes of data so far. We’re still analyzing what it completely contains. Of what it does contain, includes DNA, it includes images. It all works on our software, it’s like it’s been tailor made for us to receive, except it can’t be. From what we’ve seen, and we have every reason to belive this, the signal wasn’t directed at us, it was just directed in our direction.”

Major Garcia continued on from what Major Jekyll was saying, “Satellites outside of our solar system picked up this signal. It raises the question whether someone has lousy aim, or if someone is just sending us a form letter. I’d have to agree with the latter.”

“Why is that, Major? “ Newton asked, with a hint of skepticism in his eye.

“Because of a lack of anything specifying us in particular sir. It’s just data. We may have happened on it by just chance.” The Major scanned through the files and started bringing up different images. Impossible images. Planets covered by lights. Massive spaceships holding orbit above planets. And the aliens. Not just one but, several, even dozens it looked like. Zamani watched a clip of a gargantuan alien walk across a distant planetary city. It looked like the unholy union of a gorilla and a centaur. He got the impression that it could wrestle an African elephant and win. Garcia changed to another video showing a city in space. It was possibly the largest city he had ever seen, far larger than Tokyo, which was a city of over 100 million people. Garcia, with his point satisfied, turned the monitor off.

“Currently we’re delving into more of the message. They seem to have some sort of intelligence built into the signal itself. Whatever it is, when it arrived here, it first infected the system. It wasn’t dangerous, it seems like it was looking for a standard to write with, then it started converting files onto our computers, as well as translating documents into English. So far, we’ve also found things that may be of some concern.”

Newton paused for a second and then motioned for Pérez to go on with what he had been explaining.

“If these files are too be believed, and again, I have every reason to believe that they should be, these aliens are hyper-advanced. The files show that they encompass an empire.. no.. not an empire, I don’t think I know what I’d call it. It’s a system of government that goes around taking planets and adding them into their main government.”

“So we’re talking about planetary conquerors?” Zamani asked, becoming partially concerned.

“No, see that’s the issue. It isn’t like an empire as we know it. They come to planets, and the planets joyfully submit to them. Maybe they show their hand, but I don’t think so. I think that they after a manner, bribe them.”

“How do they bribe them? Technology?” Roxanna asked, looking curiously at the Major.

“After a manner. The data shows that these guys have existed for over 300,000 years. What’s more, is their founders, and the majority of their population is still alive after that time. They have technology to basically make you immortal, to make you invulnerable as well.”

“How can they do that? I thought that it was proven to be impossible to completely stop the aging process.”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t expand further. Maybe it’s because if we figured it out, we wouldn’t readily ally with them. But that’s what they offer. It also says their society follows a meritocracy. The best are the ones who are in charge.”

“Wait, you said their populace is still alive after 300,000 years?” Newton asked.
“Yes sir. Their statistics show 63 different species. Almost 2 trillion sentients, spanning 423 different planets.”

Another pause went through the room. Everyone could see the elephant in the room, but no one wanted to mention it, until finally Roxanna broke the silence.
“If they showed up here tomorrow and told us to join them, we’d stand no chance of fighting them, of resisting them. We’d be screwed.”

Major Garcia nodded in agreement with Roxanna, but then took a more somber look. “See, that’s the problem. They know we’re here. We’re a relatively advanced civilization. In another century we’ll be out among the stars. They will be here before then.”

“Well then let’s hope they show up early. I’d rather not miss out of immortality,” Roxanna said a little too excited.

“Let’s not be too impetuous, Warrant. Remember that we’re loyal to the UN and to Earth. We’ll not align with the first alien race that shows up demanding compliance,” Newton scolded, “I need to consult with the rest of the Peacekeepers Command, not to mention the Secretary General. I’d prefer to see this before we believe it. Majors, unless you have anything else to supplement us with, I need you figuring out what else you can find. Military strength, politics, notable figures, transportation. The sort of things that I need to know.”

Officer’s Club, ICOM, Beijing, China

Technically they were off duty, but at a time like this, the U.N. needed everyone working as hard as they possibly could. The entire command staff had been informed of the issues, as well as the secretary general. The entire issue was now covered by an information blackout. All the data and everyone who knew about it had to stay in the premises, no exception.

Luckily, Zamani, Saranya and Roxanna had managed to sneak away from an hour break away from all the hectic life in the actual base. The amount of information they were uncovering was staggering. It was as if the resume of an ancient culture had shown up and had left its entire history along with it. The majority of the files were incredibly high quality clips and images from this group.

People were so concerned over what was contained and what it meant that no one was really spending any significant amount of time wondering and postulating about what exactly that meant. Mankind was standing at the crossroads into the future. The rest of Earth’s history would be written from what they would do now, but not too many people seemed too concerned about it.

“It’s all so much, in so little amount of time, isn’t it?” Roxanna said, holding her golden head in her hands. She massaged her scalp trying to seethe the tempest of a headache that was raging from all the computer work. “Why now? Is it just coincidence or something else?”

“These aliens, they’re so far beyond us, it almost seems unimaginable. The majority of their species has been around since before the Egyptians… the Sumerians. I don’t think there is any coincidences with how they work. Their writings, their music, their histories, it’s all so methodical and precise. No mistakes, no jobs done by half,” Saranya said, while relaxing back in a chair and staring off into space.

They all had ordered some sort of drink or another. Alcohol was prohibited on the actual headquarters. It had almost been banned planetwide back during the Institution during the turn of the century, but the rise of automated driving systems shut it down. They had all ordered some sort of caffeinated beverage that tasted fairly good.

“I guess we’re going to miss the good old days, where humans were the only force in the galaxy and everything seemed so simple,” Roxanna asked looking forward.

“Since when was anything simple in this life?” Saranya asked and then took a long sip from her drink.

“Well since some of us weren’t born to the best friends of Emmanuel Tam, I’d imagine that things weren’t too complicated for you,” Roxanna added with a teasing smirk.

Saranya leaned back in her chair and rested her arms behind her head. “I didn’t choose that. But having the luxury of parents who knew to fund the right friend paid off I guess.”

They continued drinking and talking with each other for several more minutes. However all at once their watches beeped. They were needed back on duty immediately. It seemed that there was no rest for the wicked or for anyone else at this time.

Wrinkles in Time and Space

Ok, I know this is two in a row for me--sorry. So, this is a bit of backstory (worldbuilding, if you'll forgive me the phrase) that I've been working on for a sci-fi thingy floating around in my head. I posted it on my other blog (click on my picture in the upper left hand corner and you can check that blog out) but I thought I'd drop it here so you can take a looksie at it.

Here she be:
___________________________________________________________________________

Date: 357.01 ESD
Author: Lt. Alexander Cherkesov, FIA
To: Fleet Media Distribution Command (FMDC)
Subject: Information Packet regarding ISI-1 (Enigma)
Authorization: Interim Congress (IM) and Rear Admiral James Turner (UFMCOM)

The discovery of ISI-1 (Imperial Security Issue 1) or Enigma as those associated with the project termed the alien spacecraft, will surely be noted in the future as the genesis of Earth's nearly total destruction and the beginning of humanity's struggle for survival. However, in the grand scheme of a galactic history millions of years old, the discovery of ISI-1 is nothing more than the light dusting of snow on an iceberg hundreds of meters thick. The complex plans and chaotic chances that shaped the the emergence of the so-called '10,000' would fill more books than the former Library of Congress in Old Washington ever held. This brief essay will only attempt a general outline of the creation of the 10,000 and the long path that brought them to the icy margins of our solar system.

After the Battle of Graemarijii, only 3.5 petabytes of data were salvaged from the ruined Blade Ship that had been escorting the former Grand Imperial Fleet. For obvious reasons, the data could not be analyzed until sometime later, after the Battle of Nezpael XIII, when the Interim Congress of the United Fleet of Mankind created the Fleet Intelligence Agency (FIA). Using data collected from the Blade Ship and military installations on Graemarijii and Nezpael XIII, the FIA managed to piece together a tiny (~20 gigabyte) data collection concerning the 10,000 and their pre-Earth history. This brief outline is an extremely abbreviated summary of the Official Historical Report 1 that was submitted to the Interim Congress on 348.01 ESD.

All reliable records obtained from the Blade Ship and the military installations on Graemarijii and Nexpael XIII indicate that 540 Ma ±15 Ma, or roughly around the time the fossil record began on Earth, a revolution began that overthrew a pangalactic empire that had ruled nearly 95% of the galaxy. The revolution was headed by a mysterious race referred to only as the Architects, who--after achieving victory--took over the rule of the galaxy they had just freed. All of our records from this extremely remote age come from the Architects themselves (a purge of all non-Architect data seems to have taken place roughly 15 years after they had pulled down the former empire), and nowhere in those records is the name of their former rulers mentioned. Additionally, it is unclear whether the previous rulers practiced a harsh and violent, or a more enlightened form imperialism. It is even possible, according to some FIA analysts, that the previous empire had been some type of republic or democratic-analog. Nor do the scant data indicate whether or not the Architects were tyrants or popularly elected leaders. The tone and changing content of the preserved records do suggest that while the original government headed by the Architects was an open organization made up of thousands of different species, as time progressed, the government became closed to all but the Architects, who became the exclusive overseers of the galaxy.

Best estimates by the FIA suggest the Architects ruled their empire--albeit, a steadily diminishing empire--for nearly 100 million years. The records collected by the FIA cover only .5%, or 5,000 years of that time-span (in Old Earth dates, the period of the Architect's rule spanned from the middle of the Cambrian Period to sometime near the end of the Ordovician Period). And the 5,000 years of history the FIA has managed to reconstruct are not continuous. 80% of the records have to do with a low-level bureaucratic squabble between to interior government departments that somehow lasted 2,000 years. Yet, as luck would have it, the largest continuous record deals directly with the history of the 10,000; or rather, their creation.

Two thousand years before the Architect Empire collapsed, a single-star system with an O-class white giant at its heart was converted into a research facility. The seven terrestrial planets and fifteen Neptune-sized gas giants that orbited the star were decomposed down to the nano-scale and then rebuilt into nine laboratory worlds and an energy-collecting array reminiscent of a Dyson Swarm. The nine planets were equidistant from their star, and orbited along 9 different routes, all of which described an orbital sphere around the sun. The research system was staffed exclusively by Architects--an oddity even at so late a date in their empire.

For 1900 years the Architect scientists labored in secret, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. At the time, even priority communications were restricted to tight-beam bursts to currier ships that jumped to within 100 AUs of the system, recorded the scientists' communications, and then jumped away again. Additionally, records indicate that no less than seven civilizations whose homesystems were within 20 light-years of the research system were forcibly transplanted to new colony worlds, or--in the case of one species that refused to be moved--eradicated. The Architects kept such tight control of the research project that it is only through piecing together later events that we know the research system was in any way connected with the 10,000.

In the end, the lengths to which the Architects went to cover up their project proved futile. The scientists at the research system found that--cut off from their families and leaders for so long--their priorities and the aims of their government no longer aligned. A revolution ignited in the research system. The arriving government currier ships were destroyed, and the scientists converted their lab-worlds into vast military production lines. Desperate to maintain control of a project it had invested two millennia in, the Architect Empire dispatched an entire fleet to quell the researchers. The fleet jumped into the system and split into a dozen task forces. In less than twenty-four hours, the Dyson Swarm had been knocked off-line, and 8 of the 9 lab-worlds were effectively shut down.

The most fierce resistance, however, was concentrated around a single world, where the shoddy, rag-tag fleet the researchers had scraped together was huddled, waiting to engage the Architect fleet. The revolutionary fleet was destroyed, to a being, during fierce sub-orbital fighting over the next 48-hours. Then, with their fleet gone, the dirt-side scientists played their last card: a kit-bashed planet-buster that cracked the lab-world into a billion pieces. The titanic explosion killed the surviving scientists and destroyed 95% of the Architect fleet. In the ensuing chaos, a single starship that had been idling in the darkness of inter-system space, powered up its systems and rushed towards the edge of the system.

Somehow--the surviving records are vague on this point--the ship was damaged before it could clear the debris field that was all that remained of the Dyson Swarm and jump to safety. The jump should have put the starship en route to the relative safety of the galactic core--a section of the galaxy that the Architects had lost control of several million years earlier; however, the damaged ship only made it 400 light-years before before its jump-drives failed and it experienced a catastrophic reversion into real-space.

There the Ship remained--its drive systems destroyed, its computer mind slowly decaying into insanity, and its secret cargo locked in stasis--stranded in deep space 300 light-years from the nearest inhabited system, for 200 million years.

Around the time the first dinosaurs were evolving in Triassic South America, the Ship--and its cargo--was discovered by an amphibian-analog species who called themselves the Yar'eeg. The group of amphibiloids that stumbed onto the Ship were members of an exploratory team--the first ever to leave the Yar'eegs' home system. The exploratory team towed the Ship back to their homeworld--no mean feat, when one considers that the Yar'eeg had yet to develop FTL capabilities. (the data is suspiciously silent regarding the physiology of the Yar'eeg and the nature/location of their system).

It took five centuries for the Yar'eeg to reach their homeworld, but upon arrival, the species immediately opened the Ship, and begun to first study, and then experiment on, the cargo they found within.

Records of the Yar'eeg experiments give us our first glimpse into the nature of the Architect's secret creation--a creation that very likely triggered the end of the Architect Empire, for--after the destruction of the research system--the Architects are never mentioned again.

The surviving Yar'eeg records have been heavily processed by the Great Ones--a blessing for humanity, as it turns out, because the Yar'eeg seem to have communicated primarily by color changes in their skin. The records appear to have been translated some 5,000 years ago by a Great One client-race--possibly the Bo'orami--into a text-based language that the FIA was able to render more or less completely into Standard English.

The Yar'eeg described the cargo they recovered from the Ship as a "quantum node". Apparently, the object wasn't an object at all, but a--for lack of a better word--'kink' in the fabric of the universe, a flaw in the space time continuum that the Architect scientists had somehow managed to isolate and sustain inside a [original = ich'thariim] stasis chamber. The Yar'eeg saw the quantum node as a means of achieving FTL travel, and once they had managed to link into the surviving Architect machinery, all of their efforts were directed at turning the quantum node into some sort of propulsion drive.

2,000 years after the node arrived on the Yar'eeg homeworld, the scientists made a break through: the quantum node was divided. At first, the scientists merely divided the node into two identical nodes that inhabited discrete locations in space. The scientists continued to refine the process, and eventually managed to divide the original node into 10,000 identical nodes. From the information pieced together by the Great Ones, it would seem the Yar'eeg were attempting to produce enough quantum nodes to power thousands of ships. Indeed, there is some indication that they did succeed in integrating a handful of the nodes into propulsion drives . . . thought whether the drives were ever actually tested, and whether the ships powered by those drives were for peaceful or military uses, is unknown.

Shortly after the 10,000 nodes were separated, the Yar'eeg were attacked by a marauding, spacefaring race. The nature of the attackers is unknown, but the end result of the attack was extinction for the Yar'eeg and destruction of their homesystem. Their homeworld was sacked, and the special orbital facility that housed the nodes was carried off by the marauders.

For 7,000 years the marauders carried the nodes with them, positioning it in the center of their fleet and worshiping it like a pagan god. Like the Yar'eeg, the marauders did not possess any methods of FTL travel. Instead, they traveled from one star system to its nearest neighbor, harvesting elements and supplies from uninhabited systems, destroying and plundering the homeworlds of inhabited systems. Dozens of generations passed while the fleet moved between the stars, and all the while, they carried the nodes with them. Little else is known about the marauders; apparently, even the technology that carried them through interstellar space was not their own. How and when they came by it is not known.

After 7,000 years, the marauders could no longer sustain themselves, and their society began to fragment. Intermittent fighting burned through the fleet, destroying one ship after another. As the population fell, vessels were scuttled and abandoned. Eventually, even the propulsion drives guttered out, leaving the fleet powerless and drifting. By the time the fleet drifted into the system it had been aiming for, it had become a veritable tomb--the marauders were dead.

The fleet had, by sheer luck, entered into an inhabited system only 78 lightyears from Earth. The denizens of the binary system were a reef-dwelling species semi-analogous to terrestrial crinoids. Because they communicate by passing complex pheromones through water, the species was never named. FIA has designated the species (now extinct) as Crin-1.

At the time the drifting fleet entered their system, the Crin-1 had barely reached a sentient state. 75% of the fleet burned up in the atmosphere of the Crin-1 homworld as its orbit decayed. The (by that time) ancient Yar'eeg vessel that still housed the nodes somehow settled into a stable orbit, circling above the dark world for hundreds of thousands of years as the Crin-1 continued to develop. When the Crin-1 finally began colonizing the low orbit of their world (a period of time techonologically equivalent to the Earth era called the Space Race), they quickly discovered, and began exploring, the wreckage of the marauder fleet.

The physiology of the Crin-1 forced them to build space habitats that could maintain an inner aqueous environment. The difficulties involved with lifting something as weighty as water into orbit proved a challenge to the Crin-1, and it took them several hundreds of years longer than the average species to develop a truly sytem-wide civilization. But, some 300,000 years after the Yar'eeg vessel had settled into orbit over their world, the Crin-1 were sufficiently advanced to begin experimenting on the vessel, and eventually on the nodes themselves.

Crin-1 technology was completely organic--a rarity in galactic civilization, and another factor in the unusually long time it took them to develop a spacefaring culture--and they altered the nodes in a fundamental way. Apparently, by the time they began studying the nodes, the Crin-1 had also made first contact with an alien race. A hostile, alien race. Naturally, the Crin-1 looked to use the nodes as a weapon and a means of defending themselves.

In some way that not even the Great Ones seem to have understood, the Crin-1 linked the nodes to organic matter. The tissue the nodes were linked to, while wholly non-human, seems to have most resembled, at least in function, placental tissue. While the data is scarce, the FIA assumes the Crin-1s' intent was to create living organisms that somehow incorporated the quantum nodes into their neural network. Recent history has given ample demonstration to why such a creature would be of military interest.

However, war broke out between the Crin-1 and their alien aggressors before whatever process the Crin-1 had begun could be completed. Desperate to protect their research from the aliens, the Crin-1 moved the 'nodanisms' to an organic vessel that functioned both as a transport and a sentient laboratory that could continue the Crin-1s' experiments. The living ship was launched from their system back towards the galactic core--once again at sublight speeds.

Damaged as it fled the system, the Crin-1 vessel drifted through space for roughly 240 million years. The organic drives that powered the ship died after only 1,000 years. The creature-vessel was, however, completely sealed, and though its surface froze over, its critical systems and--more importantly--the storage zone, remained intact and semi-insulated. The nodanisms survived.

8,000 years ago, while mankind was busy inventing the wheel and colonizing the Western Hemisphere, the rest of the galaxy was divided by war. The Great Ones were 2,000 years into their conquest of the galaxy, and the only species that offered any real resistance to the Dark Conquerers were the Cham Nar.

The Cham Nar were an ancient race that had developed a far-flung theocratic society comprising some 10,000 star systems and 15,000 sentient species. At the time the Great Ones began spreading out from Tyrion, the Cham Nar were the dominant species in the galaxy.

Inevitably, war broke out between the Great Ones and the Cham Nar. Initially, the two species were evenly matched, and Great One expansion in the Cham Nar area of the galaxy was initially stymied. But as more and more systems fell to the Dark Conquerers, their power swelled, and Cham Nar controlled space slowly became an island in a galaxy dominated by the Great Ones. As their civilization fell about them, the Cham Nar began to search for a means by which they could oppose the Great Ones.

It was during this time that a slave-ship captained by a group of Ruus stumbled upon the dead and frozen Crin-1 vessel. By this time, the Great Ones had already discovered Earth and begun developing the human race as a secret weapon. The Great Ones collected thousands of men, women and children to conduct experiments on, and hundreds of these humans found their way onto the galactic slave market. The Ruus that found the Crin-1 vessel were transporting vat-grown human embryos that were bound for the flesh markets on Daragthar.

The slaveship was large enough to store the Crin-1 vessel within its hold. Logs recovered from the Ruus vessel indicate that the slaver-captain believed the Crin-1 vessel would fetch a high price on the black market. However, the Ruus did not have a chance to make a profit.

The curious Ruus, lured by the treasure they believed to be hidden inside the organic vessel, thawed the Crin-1 vessel out. The ship's neural systems woke up, and--finding itself inside an alien vessel--it initiated a series of defensive protocols. Neural tentacles sprouted from the organic ship and began working their way into the mechanical ship's electrical and computer networks, effectively rendering the Ruus vessel under direct control of the living ship. A biotoxin was released into the air, and within fifty minutes--the time it took for the toxin to permeate the entire vessel--the Ruus crew was incapacitated. The Chin-1 vessel then released a cloud of microscopic spores which, after falling on the comatose Ruus, worked their way into the beings' neural center, where they began to multiply. When the Ruus finally awoke, they had become nothing more than three hundred pairs of eyes, ears, and hands for the Chin-1 vessel.

Having secured its surroundings, the living ship set about fulfilling--as best it could--its secondary mandate: finish the process of transforming the nodanisms into living creatures. The human embryos the Ruus had been transporting made ready subjects into which the nodanisms could be implanted.

Surrounded by lightyears of empty space, the living ship happily went about its work, unaware of the galactic war raging all around it. It was there, hanging in the void of interstellar space, that the 10,000 were finally created.

2,000 years passed, and the failing systems of the Chin-1 ship finally died completely. The Ruus vessel--a shoddy thing of metal and wires--had gone dark centuries earlier. Slowly, both vessels succumbed to the freezing cold of space--only the embryonic chamber that housed the 10,000 remained sealed against the vacuum.

That it was the Cham Nar that found the Ruus slave ship and the Crin-1 vessel inside, and not the Great Ones, is a stroke of blinding luck that simply cannot be ignored. The power of the 10,000 wielded in the hands of the Allmind is too terrible to contemplate.

The Cham Nar, recognizing the power that lay dormant in the embryos, immediately brought the dead Ruus ship and its precious cargo back to their original homeworld, which was at that point, the only remaining world under their control.

It is at this point that the data retrieved from the Blade Ship, and the military installations on Graemarijii and Nexpael XIII, fail us. Circumstantial evidence found in the data (method of recording, timing, language, etc.) suggests that even before the 10,000 were discovered, the Cham Nar homeworld was under siege, surrounded by the full might of the Great Ones. What the Cham Nar intended to do with the 10,000 is a matter of pure speculation.

It is known that the Cham Nar enclosed the Ruus ship--and the Crin-1 vessel it still held-- inside a gigantic craft . . . the alien vessel termed Enigma by its discoverers. Evidence recovered from Enigma indicates that the enormous vessel left the Cham Nar homeworld roughly 6,000 years before the present. The ship sustained damage to its navigation and drive systems that is characteristic of a Blade Ship attack. Carbon samples collected from the damaged areas have been dated at 5987±5 years before the present. The ships' log--crippled at some point--suggests the ship jumped to no less than twenty random star systems before settling down in one undisclosed location for more than four millenia.

Critical systems affected by the final Blade Ship attack began to fail almost as soon as the ship made its first jump. The cursory research conducted on the ship indicates that the ship attempted to repair itself . . . some of the blast damage on the drive units has been repaired on the atomic scale. But the repair systems themselves seem to have been among the first systems to crash.

One thousand years ago the ship had become, for all intents and purposes, a ghost ship. Somehow, the critical systems that protected the Ruus and Crin-1 vessels had remained intact. At that time, the Cham Nar ship was infiltrated by an unknown group of beings who repaired the drive units and jumped the ship into our own system's outermost regions.

The jump signature was detected by a Blade Ship that was monitoring our solar system. Briefly, the two vessels engaged; however, the battle proved to be mutually destructive. The larger, but derelict, Cham Nar vessel was all but destroyed, and the Blade Ship was completely destroyed. The unidentified crew that had piloted the Cham Nar vessel was wiped out in the action, but--again--the quantum nodes, housed in their human bodies, survived.

For a thousand years the Cham Nar vessel orbited our sun, until it was discovered by naval forces of the former United Empire of America.

The subsequent discovery of Enigma and the 10,000, along with the actions of the most notable of the 10,000 during the past few months, are the subject of continued study by the FIA and the Interim Congress.

As more information regarding Enigma and the 10,000 become available, the FIA will submit a revised report to the Interim Congress.

-End of Packet-

Authorized by Rear Admiral James Turner (UFMCOM)

A Beginning

Ok, so this is the start to a fantasy story I've been kicking around for a while. Its not much yet, but halfway through it I got into a sci-fi mood again, so I'll put up what I've got, and finish the rest later.

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All things have their opposite, or so the Lector told Arondal and Ethiladan each day after the First Bell rang and their lessons had begun.

The Lector was an ancient man brought by Father all the way from Riandathar, the White City upon the sea, away in the North beyond the Three Towers and Tar Mandithar. He had arrived on the twins’ fifth birthday. Father had tried to call the man’s appearance a sort of gift for the two boys, but of course, Ethil had complained—loudly—that what he wanted for his birthday was a riding horse and not some stuffy old school teacher (Arondal’s brother had pulled him aside a year earlier on their fourth birthday and said that both their names were too much a mouthful to be used often . . . since then, Ethiladan had been Ethil and Arondal had been Aron and they’d both been spared a lot of tongue work). Aron had had kept his mouth shut, sparing himself the fierce strapping Ethil earned for his cheek, but he felt much the same as his brother about the Lector. What he’d really wanted was a sword.

Despite the twins’ voiced (and unvoiced) disapproval, the Lector had stayed and their schooling had begun. And, two years later, the Lector was as much a part of the family as Cook or Sheriff or even Old Gill the houndmaster. Both Father and Mother called the man by his right name—Gavim; but the one time when Ethil did the same, the Lector had hauled him by the ear out to the strapping block Father kept beneath the old oak tree in the corner of the courtyard and paddled him until he was bawling like a newborn calf. After that, Aron resolved to never call the man anything but Lector.

“Can there be life but where there is death?” the old man would ask as he passed out parchment and trimmed their quills, his strange accent so thick that Aron could only understand half the words the man said.

Their reply was always the same: “No, Lector.”

To which he would respond, sometimes without even waiting for them to speak, “And rightly so. Just as a plant”—he would gesture to the small potted flower that Mother’s sister had sent her from the South—“is nourished and strengthened by the soil until it reaches its full height, so too the soil is replenished by the plant as it decays and dies, falling back to the earth from whence it came. Day and night, the planting and the harvest, life and death: the course of all things is described by the Balance.

Then the Lector would gather up his pale gray robes, and—seating himself on his tall stool before Aron and Ethil—begin reciting in his gravely voice their lessons.

Ethil insisted that the Lector—and by association all the Old Folk that lived on or near their home, Tar Derethon, were all daft, and that there was no Balance of any kind.

“If Old Gavim was right,” his brother had said one day with a grin and a wink while stuffing three or four of Cook’s fresh-baked pasties into his pockets, “Then I’d get caught for this and Father would strap me silly. Now come on Aron, grab a few more for us.”

The pasties had been delicious, and just as Ethil had predicted, they’d never been caught. And yet, Ethil’s indifference towards the Balance never sat right with Aron; a feeling of uneasiness lodged itself in the pit of his stomach for days at a time whenever the Lector or Ethil brought the subject up, so that he was constantly looking over his shoulder trying to spy something that wasn’t really there.

The feeling came one day when the Lector had fallen asleep midway through the day’s lesson and they two had crept quietly out of the study, snuck past the Hall where Mother was tending to a group of freemen who’d come with complaints about taxes, and darted out the tiny side-door that led to the kitchens and the stables. From there they had slunk west through the shadows that clung to the base of the rough stone wall that encircled the courtyard, to the dog-gate set deep in a dark alcove in the wall.

The gate, barely large enough for a single grown man to squeeze through, was always locked, but they’d solved that problem nearly a year earlier. It had been Ethil who’d slipped the key off a sleeping guard’s belt one brisk autumn afternoon and made an impression of it in a bar of soap Aron had nicked from Mother’s room. It had taken weeks to carve a wooden key strong enough and of the proper shape to turn the lock, but their efforts had been amply rewarded: the whole world beyond Tar Derethon’s dark walls opened its arms to them . . . and more importantly, neither Father nor Mother, nor any of the Old Folk knew it.

On the day of the Lector’s inadvertent nap they had pushed through the dog-gate and leapt down through the tall, golden grass that carpeted the steep hill as it rolled down to the long, broken shore that was the castle’s namesake. There was a narrow path that snaked down the steep slope, but they had ignored it, half-running, half-rolling instead down the slope, swinging their arms wide to brush back the thick grass, laughing with delight and nearly dizzy from the heady smell of turf, the sea, and the white Daystar blossoms that bobbed in the cool breeze.

Aron had thrown off his shoes and rushed out onto the strand, feet crunching through the rounded pebbles, the surf hissing around his ankles, but Ethil stopped at the edge of the grassy slope, where the waist-high turf and bobbing flowers gave way to the dark, wet gravel of the Derethon, the Long Shore. Grey clouds were rolling in from the west, veiling the afternoon light. To the north, dark wings of rain curtained the distant dunes that marched along the margin of the sea.

Long, blond hair matted to his forehead by the sea spray, Aron had twirled about happily, arms spread wide, and crowed: “Don’t you love it, Ethil? Isn’t the sea wonderful? You can go anywhere on the sea. Why, if I were as strong as Father I could swim to the Jade Tower from here!”

Thunder was muttering, nearer by then, its dark voice mixing with the endless murmur of the sea and the hiss of the dark gravel on the Derethon and the whisper of rain drops moving closer along the shore. It was as if the world were alive, alive and speaking to Aron in a thousand different tongues. If only he could just understand it . . . then he’d know more than the Lector with all his dusty books ever had.

“No I don’t like it,” Ethil shouted back at him from the edge of the grass, and Aron found he’d moved further out into the surf without realizing it. Water sloshed about his knees, and he could feel the pebbles tumbling over his toes as they were dragged out to sea by the receding waves. “I don’t like the sea, Aron,” Ethil continued. “I never have.” His brother took a few steps back into the tall grass and carefully sat down. “You can drown in the sea, Father told me so. You can’t drown on land.” Ethil thumped a fist against the hard earth meaningfully, “Its too hard, see? There’s no order in the water. I don’t like it. We should go back, Lector will be looking for us.”

It was then that the Feeling came to Aron, and for the first time in his life he could sense the Balance, almost like it were a living, breathing thing, standing right next to him. Somewhere, high above in the endless sky, the sun’s light broke through the gathering clouds and pierced the mists and rain that swathed the Derethon. For an instant that seemed an hour long, the world stopped, and Aron caught his breath. Sunlight, bright and pure, vied in his dazzled eyes with the dark shadows of the storm clouds. The rain falling on the dark shore hissed into steam and rose again skyward. Waves broke on the shore, pushing the sea’s limit inward for an instant before being forced back by the slope of the land. Everything, from the surging foam to the shifting shoreline dunes to the light of sun and dark of cloud, was caught up in the Balance, creeping forward and then back in an endless dance that pulled down everything that was built up, thrust up all that was broken down.

Aron breathed in, lungs expanding, and then breathed out. For a fleeting instant, he worried that it would be his last breath, for all the world seemed to be poised on a knife edge, balanced perfectly, but only barely so.

And then the moment passed.

Sound returned, and Aron gasped, filling his lungs with salty air. He blinked, and blinked again, working the salty spray out of his eyes. The piercing shaft of light that had torn through the clouds a moment earlier disappeared, and the storm rolled in closer to the shore.

Ethil was standing again, still well back in the grass, shouting at him that they’d best get back to the castle before the Lector ratted them out.

Around blinked once more. How long had he been standing there? The tide must have been coming in, for the water was up to his waist. Or had he stepped further out to sea? Ethil certainly seemed further away.

Slowly, reluctantly, he took a step towards the shore. His feet moved like they belonged to someone else, but with each step they seemed to gain strength, pulling him further out of the water. It was like Aron was waking from a dream, with step, reality became more solid, Ethil’s voice louder.

And with each step, the voices of the ocean, the air, and the earth grew quieter and more confused, until—by the time he reached the spot where Ethil was waiting for him—they were voices no longer, just the noises of a world that Aron could never understand.

The rain fell harder, drowning the world in mist, and like two wraiths, the boys slipped back up the hill, this time following the muddy path, and disappeared into the castle.

Another aspect of the Balance was revealed to Aron that day, for the peace they had known all their lives was shattered by the arrival of news from the North.

All things change, for Change is the wheel that drives the Balance.

They entered the Keep through the side-door, rain-soaked and shivering, to find Father and Mother waiting for them in the Hall. Besides their parents, the Hall was empty, save for one other man. Grim and half-hidden beneath the hood of his dark cloak, the man was a messenger from the High King at Riandathar.

Dark storms were brewing in the North, and fell creatures were gathering in the hills and mountains. War was coming. It would break upon the Kindoms of Men before the first snows of winter fell. The messenger had come to Tar Derethon to call on Father to fulfill his oaths as a Ring-holder to the High King: to gather what men he could and ride to the High King’s aid in the coming struggle.

Her face tear-stained, Mother had pulled them close, and Aron could feel her trembling. Father, his face pale but determined, had then hugged them both. “I will return,” he said, gray eyes holding Aron’s gaze, “I will return, and Tar Derethon will know happiness again.”

There in the Hall, Father gave Ethil his ring and, laying his right hand on Ethil’s dark head, named him Lord-in-Waiting of Tar Derethon and the Long Shore, and Master of all the Folk that lived there, should Father not return from the North.

Father rode out that same day, as the sun was fading, the King’s messenger at his side and five hundred spears at his back, long banners snapping in the cold breeze that blew in from the sea.

Aron stood on the steps of the Keep with Ethil and Mother, who was dressed in black and had her face veiled. Father had bid them all farewell inside, and out in the cold no one spoke, not even the gathered soldiers. Only once did Father look back, raising his hand high towards them. Then he turned, and with drums rolling, left Tar Derethon.

When the last soldier had ridden out the gate was shut. Ethil turned without speaking, and entered the Keep, but Mother didn’t move, so Aron waited with her, until even the sound of hooves and armor had faded, and night without moon or stars fell.

Darkness lay on Tar Derethon.

Time passed.

Autumn failed, white snow fell, and winter crept over the land. Besides Father’s absence, which Ethil and Aron both felt keenly, life continued much as it had before. The Lector still roused them early each day, chivvying them as they washed and dressed and broke their fast, then leading them to the study with its tall windows and smell of parchment and wax, where he spoke of the Balance and then gave them their lessons. They did, however, see less of Mother, who—three weeks after Father had left—took to standing hours at a time on the high tower that rose up from the Keep, where she gazed north and said nothing to the maids that waited with her.