Obsidian Ressurection

by T J Bryan

  "When we rendezvous at the Nelots entry to Wu we will consider our actions. If Wu is devoid of life, or for that matter of any bit of civilization that can provide information on its' former trading partners, I am considering dividing up the fleet into two squadrons with two separate destinations. Helen you are to proceed to Carm and then to the once agricultural Bizon. Emmitt, you and OM Marx are to proceed to New Carthago. My thinking is that the Iceland is a newer and never damaged ship. She is a bit stronger than Greenland. Therefore I want Sigrún to accompany Greenland. At this moment this is only a proposal and our plans are subject to change once we assess conditions at Wu.

  OM Marx spoke, "Is that wise Commodore. Splitting the fleet."

  Silvi responded, "Wise? No. Necessary? Yes. Under normal circumstances keeping the fleet intact in potentially hostile space would be a necessity. But we cannot linger and by dividing the fleet we double our chances of obtaining what we need and returning to Jamon. Even if we loose one of our freighters and the other returns home with needed supplies we will have achieved the mission. We must stay focused."

  Silvi paused before continuing, "Now, we may not need to split the fleet at all if Wu provides us with credible information. And this plan to split the fleet is only a proposal for your consideration at this point. Everything can change at Wu."

  "Lastly I wish to be clear on this. The freighters must get through. Our SAR's are here to protect Iceland and Greenland. If sacrifices are to be made for the mission, and I pray we don't reach that point, but if they do, then Captains remember; the freighters must get home with their cargo intact."

  "Now before we depart," Silvi said, "lets all have a drink. The bar tab is on me."

  ...

  Girots System - Entry Portal - Ragnarök - Year 3246. February 5ET: 23:18

  Ragnarök arrived in the Girots system just inside the entry portal at a dead stop.

  "Pilot Karrlson, maximum reaction power to Girots. Astrogator Nomi give me a direct least time route for the fleet from the entry portal to the exit portal to Nelots. Mr. Brunner scan for that Spikey. Mr. Schneider prepare a load of sand casters."

  As Silvi spoke each station responded 'Aye aye, Sir."

  "Give me a vid screen on the planet please," Silvi called out and the vid screen sprang to life in exquisite detail. But they were still too far out for Girots to appear only as a sparkle in the great distance but the star field was spectacular. They would have to wait, but it was already apparent that the Spikey did not lay in wait at the entry from Gwiso. One down, one to go, thought Silvi.

  Buddy called out as the sound of the ships reaction engines throbbed at a dull roar, "I have nothing yet on scan. Were still too far out. Nomi should be able to get a gravimetric anomaly reading as we close in."

  Silvi thought it unwise to interrupt Nomi until her fleet plot was complete, but to her surprise Nomi responded. "On the far side of Girots, Won't see for six hours."

  Silvi let out a breath she had been holding and did not know it.

  "Farn?" Silvi asked unaware she had dropped her 'Captain speak'. "I know you spent some time studying terra-forming for our voyage. Any idea when the Spikey's began to attack Girots?

  "Not really. Certainly it was not before the last visit of the Bountiful, or at least after she arrived. That's about 65 days after she left Girots. But given where they are in the sterilization process they must have started recently. The whole effort of blasting Girots with the kind of power we have seen should not take them more that a few months to achieve their objective. So, as a wild assed guess, perhaps about 6 months ago perhaps nine."

  Silvi thought a moment, "What can you tell me about this planet wrecking and rebuilding?"

  Farn who had been monitoring their Environmental Station, the ES, turned to Silvi. "We humans began terra-forming early. Long before the diaspora. The process is complex but also very simple. You find a 'goldilocks' planet around a Sol like sun. It might not have water, or be all water, or it might not have an atmosphere or it might have one deadly to humans. The condition of the planet matters little, it is the location, its' tilt if any, its' distance from the sun, its' gravity, any moons it might have. These are all factors we humans cannot change, but we can add an atmosphere, or remove water, or for that matter add some if water comets are in the system."

  "One moment Farn. Pilot Karrlson, reduce speed to Girots. Take us in close enough to get a good scan on planetary conditions. It seems we have sufficient time in system to take a look before our Spikey friend comes around the corner. Hopefully by then we are long gone."

  Lennie replied "Aye aye, Captain."

  "Farn please continue. You were saying."

  "The problem with 'goldilocks' planets is that there is usually something already living there, native flora and fauna. In the earliest years of terra-forming by humans they just sterilized the planet from space. They killed everything and they were taking no chances on any surviving organisms causing humans difficulty. All this went on for hundreds of years before we found that some of the things we were killing were sentient. Not that it mattered a lot. We went on killing them anyway. The diaspora made it worse as humankind got desperate for living space."

  Farn continued, "The big problem is if you sterilize a planet, or need to add water, or change the atmosphere the whole process can take a hundred years and more often two hundred years. During that time planetary engineers and fleets of ships for blasting the surface, towing ice comets, siphoning off gasses from gas giants, all need to be at work. The investment is huge for a distant payoff. Then you have to seed the planet and that takes time as well. And sometimes it simply does not work. Earth like flora and fauna sometimes refuse to thrive on a new planet. They just die or fail to reproduce. Sometimes no one knows why."

  Silvi kept staring at the vid screen as if something would appear which of course it did not. "I thought there were restrictions on terra-forming if sentients were present?"

  "Well that was supposed to be the case, but it rarely was. Greed for land or planets overcame all moral scruples. That is until we found a planet called Moolongshi."

  "What was special about Moolongshi?" Silvi asked still staring at the vid screen.

  "Moolongshi was a goldilocks planet covered in some kind of mold or fungus. I am unsure if that is the right description but the surface was covered by it. As humans began to sterilize the thing they discovered that the mold was sentient. It was a single organism and it could think. Perhaps it was a bit slow by human standards but it could think and eventually we realized that it had a philosophy and could think logically. But we, I mean we humans, decided it had no tech so we set about blasting it anyway. That is until we found it had friends. Friends with weapons. That's how the Neer-Ants and humans collided. The rest is history. After some nasty fighting we engaged in a treaty to leave sentient planets alone, although the agreement was as often broken as adhered to. Kind of depended on how close the Neer-Ants were to the target planet."

  Farn paused, "That's about it in a nutshell."

  Silvi broke her gaze for a moment looking at Farn, and then returned it to the vid screen. "Ah those Neer-Ants. I read something about them in middle school, but I don't remember much"

  Farn replied, "When I was reading about terra-forming I did read a bit about Neer-Ants, although we don't really know that much about them."

  Nomi shouted, "I have fleet plot."

  "Nomi when does the fleet enter?"

  "Eighteen minuets. I will transmit."

  Silvi looked at Nomi, "Transmit the fleet plot each time a ship enters. Let's not take a chance that one misses the plot or it gets garbled."

  As usual Nomi did not respond but nodded her head.

  "Nomi now give us a plot to join the fleet one hour after the last departure. I intend to remain on this course to Girots for the next," Silvi looked at the ship clock, "for the next 32 minuets. Then we shall head for Nelots."

  Nomi nodded again.

  "Now Farn. "How about a brief tuto
rial on Neer-Ants to kill the time?" asked Silvi who wanted to have something on her mind other than dread.

  "Ok, Lets see. Neer-Ants live on eight systems all close to one another. Most have unusual two way streets, that is entry and exit portals to their other systems, so getting from one to the other does not take a lot of time. But since Neer-Ants don't have ships that are too fast it takes a long time to get from one place to another. Neer-Ants are highly territorial, and aggressive by our standards, but they are not expansionist or acquisitive. In the more than 1200 years we have known about them they have never tried to expand or colonize. Occasional survey crews of some kind are seen, but never for long. Why they are out surveying no one really knows. That's how they found Moolongshi I think."

  Silvi continued to stare at the vid screen as Girots became an identifiable but very distant planet. "And their ships. Do we know anything about them?"

  "Yes, we probably know more about their ships than the Neer-Ants themselves. They rely on tiny ships. Tiny by our standards. And they swarm. That's how they fight. They swarm. They don't seem to have weapons as such, just their ships. In the early fights with Neer-Ants they simply smashed thousands of tiny ships into the forces from Sol and destroyed human ships. About the individual creatures themselves we know little, but there seems to have been only one creature to a ship. But there were tens of thousands of them and if you got swarmed you were in deep trouble."

  Lennie, called out, "Reversing course in 20 minutes."

  Silvi looked about the bridge and then at Farn, "Before you and Mr. Brunner take a good scan of Girots, can you tell me where the Neer-Ants live in the Galaxy?"

  "If I remember correctly about 700 light years out from Jamon. Moolongshi was kind of halfway between us and one of their systems, although our system Jumon was not founded until some 800 years later. I might be wrong on the dates, but that's about it. They are pretty far away from Jamon and I think a bit farther from where we are now. Oh, and one other odd detail about them. If they challenge you, and you run they don't follow. They may be aggressive but if your quick about leaving then they loose interest in a fight."

  "Thank you Mr. Mayers," Silvi said reverting to proper Captain speak. "Mr. Brunner and Mr. Mayers please begin your survey of Girots now. We don't have much time remaining."

  Chapter Forty One

  Nelots System - Entry Portal to Wu - Year 3246. February 14 ET: 06:23

  "We are about to enter Wu," Silvi said to the three captains on vid. "We shall follow the same procedure as we did entering Girots. Ragnarök will enter first followed by Sigrún two hours later. Then on fifteen minute headings Iceland and Greenland will follow. Nomi will immediately begin to set multiple plots. One for the Wu system itself, and one each for Bizon via Carm, and another for New Carthago. Let me emphasize this point, we have not decided on a destination or on splitting the fleet at this time. Our destination upon entering Wu is Wu itself. Is that understood?"

  The three captains replied yes.

  "Unlike Girots I want each ship to skirt the actual system of Wu itself until the Ragnarök has had time to assess conditions on both the planet and within the system. We should, to the extent we can, remain stealthy. Anyone with Greayson or Unity like technology will see us enter, but anything less than that we will remain just dark holes in the void. Once we understand Wu we may call upon you to join us at Wu, or we shall proceed onward. I asked Nomi to prepare a brief on the Wu system and she has provided me with this 234 page summary. Fortunately there is an 18 page Executive Briefing that I have spent considerable time studying. Each of you has been copied on your inter-tab with the full report. However I will summarize Nomi's report and we can discuss her findings. It's important that we know what to expect."

  "Now Nomi has cautioned us that much of what we know of Wu's condition is based on the EG summary of the early years of the Great War. Wu tried to be neutral and profit from the conflict by trading with both sides, however her location as an entrepot of commerce and her astonishing eight exit portals to settled systems and her nine entry ports from other settled systems, including two from Unity systems, marked her doom. Within the first 25 years of the Great War Unity attacked twice destroying most if not all of the infrastructure of Wu. In destroying her three very large orbital stations and her very successful ship yards on her moons Unity tore the heart out of Wu's commerce. Greayson seems to have attacked as Unity attempted to control the crossroads that was Wu. Any surviving elements of Wu were targeted in that attack. As to what happened later we simply do not know."

  Helen sipped her tea in the mess on Iceland and interjected, "It's possible that some element of civilization survived and has recovered to some extent. It is unlikely that all Wu's trading partners were fully engulfed entirely into The Dark, but we cannot be certain. As a cross roads, even in ancient earth history, in its' darkest ages, sometimes slivers of commerce and trade survived. What we know as the 'silk road' in ancient earth history is an example, as is the Mars Europa alliance following the diaspora. If some element of commerce has survived they may well be able to point us in the right direction. On the other hand they may just shoot at us and hope we go away."

  "Thank you Helen," said Silvi as she continued. "Now to the Wu system itself. Wu's single sun is a M5 Subgiant and the planet Wu is located just far enough from the sun to be habitable but a bit warm by our standards. The period of Wu is 465 days. There is an inner planet, a cinder called Pitts. Pitts' surface temperature is well above 300 degrees C. Wu is the next planet out from Pitts with a gravitational force of 0.93 earth gravs. She has three moons, each of which supported shipbuilding yards. The moons are small with very low gravity and high mineral content. They were named Lol, Pol, and Dol. Further out is the wild card planet Zeno. Sometime in the ancient past as the system coalesced into the Wu system something knocked Zeno for a loop. Zeno is on a narrow ellipse that travels almost to the edge of the system before returning. Its' period around the sun is 132 years. It crosses both Wu and Pitts below their ecliptic to circle the sun before returning to the deep. Zeno is huge and its' gravitational disruption to Wu must be enormous, but only if Wu is near as it passes. The exact position of Zeno or even Wu for that matter we will not know until we arrive."

  OM Marx stood to stretch and asked, "Any asteroids, debris, gas fields we need to know about?"

  "There is a significant asteroid field that was mined in the past. It is rather far out from Wu. Nomi indicates it's easily a half light hour out or about 500,000,000 kilometres out. At our best speed with GWP it would take us about 9 hours to reach them. As for debris and gas fields Nomi has provided a quite detailed navigation map. Somewhere between page 56 and 94. But I expect that some orbital debris may well remain from the destruction of the orbital stations. So if we travel close in to Wu, which I hope we will not, then care must be taken."

  Emmitt asked, "About those orbital space stations do we know much?"

  Helen spoke first in response, "Yes, there were three and they were massive. The oldest was about 800 years in the building and the youngest perhaps 300. Trade was conducted on those station as there was no need to go planetside. Populations of the stations exceeded many many millions and the warehouses and ports provided by the stations facilitated commerce from a hundred systems well beyond their immediate neighbours."

  OM Marx asked, "A navy. Did they have a navy and might any of it survived the attack?"

  Silvi looked at Helen again, "Helen?"

  "Yes. Wu had something of a defensive navy primarily for the suppression of piracy. She also had a boarder guard fleet that was quite large in order to collect customs revenues. As to how many of these may have survived we don't have a clue. but if I were a captain on a revenue cutter and saw a thousand Unity dreadnoughts enter my system I'd sure as hell skedaddle." Helen paused, "But there would not have been anything to return to once Unity and Greayson finished and the revenue cutters were basically sub-light. I suspect they had a rather cold ending.

  ...<
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  Wu System - Entry Portal - Ragnarök - Year 3246. February 13 ET: 11:54

  Ragnarök entered the Wu system at a dead stop. Silvi ordered a scan and the scan revealed a system littered with debris. The debris of a thousand ships, tumbling and turning though the eternity of space. The litter of past battles, now hundreds of years in the past, stuck the entire crew as astonishing. The weight of Unity's fleets and the precision of Greaysons combat ships was readily apparent in the debris that flooded the system.

  Lennie commented, "Lots of junk out there and some of it is massive. I can see the partial hull of at least three warships within 1,000 kilometres of here. It's all a jumble and it is all orbiting Wu."

  "Nomi get me a route for the fleet to the Carm and New Carthago exits please. Prepare them for transmit as the fleet enters."

  Nomi did not respond but Silvi saw by Nomi's intense concentration and flying fingers over he keyboard that she had set about on the task.

  In the distance a tiny spec appeared on the vid screen and surrounding it a yellow circle in the vid screen. Wu, Silvi realized.

  "How long to orbit Wu Pilot Karrlson?"

  "At this rate and with all this junk it is hard to tell. Probably ten hours perhaps sixteen. There is so much stuff flying about I simply will have to pick our way through it all." Lennie paused and then spoke, "Will you look at that!"

  An enormous burnt out hull, undoubtedly Unity, coasted past the Ragnarök

  on its' orbital way inward toward the planet.

  "Mr. Brunner do you have any EMR emissions from this system. Any radio sources?"

  Buddy stared down at his console. "Yes, I have a rather weak beacon. It's in orbit around the planet. It is about to pass to the other side. Seems like a station beacon, but it's a bit weak."

  "Anything else?" asked Silvi.

  "There is a huge planetary body on the far side of this system. Probably Zeno. It's going to make a mess of Nomi's calculations."

  Silvi knew better than to interrupt Nomi while she was at work calculating the transit through the system. She would only have to wait till Nomi finished.