Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  He shrugged. “And as for the Oghaldzon?” He grinned again, this time a bit wider. “We definitely screwed them. Think about it; we got the plans for their drive, it’s actually quite easy to produce, and it could be fitted to any asteroid to convert it into a starship. Message Bearer is going to set out towards Tau Ceti any day now; it won’t be long before dissident groups start launching their own asteroid ships…and then, we – the government – will start quietly encouraging their use…

  “Think about it; they brought two billion of their people because they need large groups,” he said. “We don’t need anything like that many, not with modern technology – and, of course, so much of our modern technology is going to be shared with the Belt and the Rockrats and everyone else. Give us a hundred years and every worthwhile star within fifty light years – except the Shuneshu System, or Wolf 359 as we call it – will be colonised by humanity.”

  He laughed. “It still surprises me, you know, although it should have been obvious from their biological make-up; their homeworld had to be a very strange place and their star a very odd one, nothing like the sun. We knew the direction they had come from, but we never realised which star had given them birth. Still, Wolf 359…makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Denny said nothing.

  “In fifty years, the Oghaldzon will start to discover that we are heading out and taking all of the real estate,” the President said. “We’ll honour our word, we won’t go near the Shuneshu System unless they launch a second attack on us, but they won’t be able to compete with us.” He closed his eyes and looked into the future. “I think we came out ahead in the end, don’t you?”

  The End

  Appendix A: A Short History of the World of Thunder and Lightning

  Few would have imagined, in the waning days of the 20th Century, that the affairs of the 21st Century would be shaped by the actions of a handful of desperate and ruthless terrorists, striking directly at the economic and cultural heart of the world’s most powerful country.

  In a single day of infamy, the terrorists shook the world out of its complacency and reminded humanity that history – despite some self-congratulatory nonsense about its end – was marching on. The fifteen years that followed 9/11 saw the world turned upside down; the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Arab Spring, ISIS… and the decentralisation of international terrorism.

  As Western governments became more inclined to take action without regard for the prior norms of international and internal behaviour, terrorism mutated, passing through stages of cell networks to genuinely decentralised transnational networks, linked together by shared knowledge and a shared hatred of democratic society. The Wreckers, as they came to be called, existed only to destroy; they would spread chaos without restriction throughout the 21st Century.

  The early days of the war exposed one major weakness of the Western powers: their dependence on oil, which was being used to support the war against them. In a very real sense, the West had paid for the rope that was being used to hang it, even to the point of selling its enemies that rope, in the form of weapons and even training that ended up being pointed back at them.

  The desperate need for an alternative drove research as nothing else; in 2031, a partnership between SpaceX, NASA, and ExxonMobil landed the first moon mine, drilling for Helium-3. The element, used in fusion reactors, was cheap – once the difficulties of landing on the moon had been overcome – clean, and, best of all, there were no locals to use it against global interests. Once the concept was proven, it spread: by 2035, there were three other bases on the Moon, with a growing lunar population of miners and support staff.

  It was just in time. In 2038, New York City was destroyed by a nuclear weapon, which was later traced back to Pakistani weapons believed to have been safely under the control of the local government. Several other attacks using radiological material took place at the same time, in Europe; Paris was particularly lucky as the dirty bomb exploded well ahead of time, detonating in a confined place and killing its makers; Marseilles, Berlin, Edinburgh and Naples were not so fortunate. As the US went into Pakistan – with the support of almost the entire global community – the world’s economy faltered. Only the increasing flow of lunar Helium-3 kept the world’s most important economies functioning.

  The European Union had been leaning towards the right for a long time, a process that had been generally ignored because the MEPs had tended to be socialist or from other far-left factions. The European Parliament was dissolved in a wave of nationalist anger, the continent’s major governments signing quick agreements to form a new federal alliance to prosecute the war and pushed human rights legislation aside. As European naval forces secured the Mediterranean – with orders to sink any ship that headed into European waters without warning – even vaguely suspect Muslims were rounded up and shoved into internment camps, followed by rioters – those who survived the armed forces’ orders to suppress riots with extreme force.

  The rioters would later be deported back to North Africa; the rest were forced to make a choice between assimilation and deportation. The EF’s actions would eventually lead to war between the European Union and the North African states, the latter of whom would end up having their societies forcibly reshaped by European military forces. The new EF discarded the effects of nearly a hundred years of socialism almost overnight, the union actually beginning to work as hundreds of miles of red tape were swept away. It took nearly twenty years, but in the end the European Federation became a functioning and effective government.

  The crash in the price of oil had a second major effect. The political movement known as Reform Islam – as much a religious group as a political organisation – had been gaining strength in Iran, mainly through the youth sick and tired of the mullahs’ endless threats of war. The American position in Pakistan and the fact that oil was suddenly starting to plummet in price (Helium-3 and nuclear power had reduced demand for oil by 70% between 2030 and 2050) proved to the reformers that the mullahs had squandered Allah’s gift to the Muslims.

  The revolution, when it came, was surprisingly bloodless; the only resistance was put up by the Revolutionary Guard, who were quickly crushed by a turned Army. Reform Islam spread rapidly, heading into Iraq and Saudi Arabia, reaching the borders of Israel by 2055. The new government, by then calling itself the Caliphate (despite being a loosely organised federal state with democratic elections and an elected caliph) signed the final peace treaty with Israel, ending over a century of hostility. The Caliphate would, however, be regarded with suspicion by the other Great Powers until the Oghaldzon War broke out.

  The Caliphate ended up being the forerunner of the final effect of the economic crash, the semi-unification of most of the world. Britain formed a federal association with the other major countries of the former British Empire, China entered into trade deals with its southern and southwestern neighbours, Japan formed a Co-Prosperity Sphere with Korea and Taiwan, and Russia absorbed much of Central Asia.

  The final Great Power War – more of a major skirmish – was fought in 2054; China attempted to move in on Taiwan and the US moved to block them. The resulting conflict, in which both sides used orbital weapons for the first time, caused the deaths of several hundred thousand servicemen on both sides, proving that warfare had changed once again. It was generally accepted past that point that conflict between the Great Powers would be far too disastrous to be permitted to occur again and the reformed United Nations was charged with working out compromises to prevent another bloody war.

  The expansion into space came with its own bumps and bruises. The United States suffered the first Lunar Rebellion in 2058, more of an industrial action; the miners had revolted against terrible living conditions and were rapidly crushed by the first major deployment of American military power outside Earth’s immediate orbit. The moon was just too important to the new global economy to be allowed any say in its own future; almost all of the Great Powers would have thei
r own revolutions, inadvertently fostering a core of lunar transnationalism, a core of belief in a Lunar dream that transcended loyalty to any single Great Power. The children born on the moon, increasingly, tended to see themselves as Lunar-born first and Americans, Russians, Chinese, etc, second. The seeds for future conflict had been sown…

  Other expansions continued, leading to the first successful capture of an asteroid in 2036; the material provided by mining the asteroid allowed the construction of large ships that would make the flight to Mars. By 2060, there were several large settlements on both Mars and Venus, with dozens of asteroids being colonized out in the belt. The conditions in the Belt gave rise to the independent Rockrat movement – the Embargo of 2051 proved that the Earth needed the Rockrats more than the Rockrats needed Earth – ensured that the Rockrats enjoyed a high degree of liberty; the shipment of several thousand refugee women from Earth ensured that the Belt would enjoy the rapid rise of its population. In 2100, Rockrats would generally be of mixed-race, although they were never able to shake a largely undeserved reputation for homosexuality.

  The Wrecker War continued on Earth, with the Great Powers cooperating to exterminate the Wreckers, some of whom hid within the African Exclusion Zone (AIDS, terrorism, war and other diseases had torn Africa wide open), others of whom hid within a population where civil liberties were becoming increasingly less important. The War was slowly being won as of 2100; the new states of both the USA and the European Union had been integrated into their economies and the standard of living had been vastly improved.

  It remains arguable, as of 2100, which of the Great Powers is the Great Power. The USA, Russia, China, British Commonwealth, European Union, Caliphate and Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere (it must be noted that both the Commonwealth and the Co-Prosperity Sphere are only called British or Japanese by outsiders; Koreans in particular get very irritated when they are referred to as Japanese) all have a network of orbital weapons platforms, active warships in space and colonies in space. The Brazilians and the Israelis both have smaller space programs – the Israelis managed to lay claim to Titan and settled it extensively – but neither of them can stand up to any of the Great Powers. It is also generally believed that if either the Rockrats or the Moon managed to unite, economically, they would be powerful players on the Solar System’s stage.

  Before the Oghalzon War, the future looked bright and full of promise. The first starship – Message Bearer – is on the verge of being launched to Tau Ceti, privately funded by a consortium of corporations and individual subscribers. The population off-Earth continues to rise, with every sign that humanity will one day spread to the stars. The only serious danger is a Great Power War, but as such a war would be completely devastating, it is generally believed that it will never happen.

  Of course, such things had also been said in 1913 and the 1930s…

  Appendix B: The Oghaldzon

  [Authors’ Note; the original concept of the Oghaldzon was developed by Tony Jones - http://www.clockworksky.net/aliens_oghaldzon.html - and is presented here in a somewhat condensed and modified style.]

  The Oghaldzon – the name is the closest that humans can pronounce to what they called themselves – originated in the Shuneshu (Wolf 359) system, a comparatively short distance from Earth.

  Dhoz, the home world of the Oghaldzon, is the largest moon of Orsargal, a large gas giant planet some two thirds larger than Jupiter which lies somewhat outside the habitable zone of Shuneshu. Orsargal provides enough extra heat from itself to make Dhoz habitable, but also generated powerful radiation fields about itself [as Jupiter does]. The result was an environment where life – and eventually intelligence – could develop, but that intelligence developed in a very different form. (An average Oghaldzon is roughly as intelligent as a human.) There was no possibility, ever, of an Oghaldzon being mistaken for a human being.

  Physically, an average Oghaldzon viewed from the side would vaguely resemble a three-legged grey or black deer, perhaps dressed in some sort of coverall. However, instead of a head and neck it has a featureless dome not unlike half of a rugby ball, which protrudes from any clothing worn, and three long thin arms down each side, two in front of and one behind the front leg. The hands of these limbs protrude from the ends of the sleeves of any clothing worn. From the front or from above and below they appear much more obviously alien as from those angles it is much harder to miss their three legs and alien body plan. Naked, the only real difference between male and female is the mating crest on the female, which serves an important role in their reproduction.

  Oghaldzon arms are thinner and weaker than human arms, but they automatically use two or all three arms together as a unit if a task requires it. Because of this, taking all of their arms together they are roughly equivalent to human strength. Oghaldzon hands are basically a more flexible continuation of the limb, with more joints per unit length than the limbs as a whole and prehensile tentacles and flaps of skin on either side to give the ability to grasp and manipulate. The number, form and exact arrangement of these side digits vary from individual to individual. Oghaldzon weapons, designed for their bodies, are almost impossible for humans to use and vice versa.

  Their feet are, like their hands, extension of their limbs, though less flexible, and with the sideways extensions forming a footpad. Humans tend, without exception, to think of them as hooves, although that is not an accurate definition. Individual Oghaldzon favour their left or right sides much as humans do. However, there is no physiological advantage to one 'handedness' over the other so that roughly half of the species is of each handedness, with a very small percentage being ambidextrous.

  The Oghaldzon mouth is under the "melon" of their head, at the front of the body, while they breathe through a "nostril" on the top surface of the body above this. In females the breath is taken in through their hadrosaur-like crest, via which sperm are filtered from the air.

  Their hearing and sonar extends over a very wide range of frequencies, from below to far above the human range. Their language likewise uses a very wide range of frequencies. To human ears it sounds like complex barking and clicking punctuated by gaps, but to the Oghaldzon themselves there is, of course, much more to it than that. Because of their way they generate sound there is hardly any visible movement of external parts of their bodies when they speak. The Oghaldzon could theoretically learn to speak human languages, but unaided humans simply do not have the vocal and auditory equipment to speak Oghaldzon languages. The Oghaldzon do not have facial expressions, but they do have body language as extensive as that of humans.

  They are warm-blooded, but not mammalian. Their bodies are covered with skin without any hair, fur, scales and so on, not unlike that of humans. This varies in colour, but as Oghaldzon do not see colour this is irrelevant to them. To humans they would appear in a variety of shades from dark grey to black. They shiver when they are cold for the same reasons as humans, and pant when they are hot; this is because the generally moist air of Dhoz is not very conducive to cooling by sweating. Their bodies are adapted to be most comfortable when exposed to the six-day hot-cold thermal cycle caused by the orbit of Dhoz around Orsargal, so as much as possible they maintain this cycle in their cities, habitats, space vehicles and so on.

  Being creatures from the tropics of Dhoz, they require protection (clothing) to survive on other parts of the planet. They are roughly as resistant to acceleration and pressure extremes as a human being, but rather more vulnerable to hard radiation.

  In their primitive state the Ogahldzon suffer as varied a range of diseases as humanity. However, most of these have been conquered by advanced in their medical sciences. They are also helped by the fact that Oghaldzon prone to disease tend to be weeded out in the larval phase, so the species as a whole is somewhat more disease-resistant than humans.

  The Oghaldzon possess natural sonar, emitting from their domes, which allows them some very real advantages. Among other things, they can monitor their fellows when they talk –
it is almost impossible for one Oghaldzon to lie deliberately to another – and they can look inside other Oghaldzon. Consequently, their medical science became far more advanced than humanity’s at a much earlier stage in their development; their eyes are almost vestigial and some Oghaldzon believe that one day the species will evolve to the point where they will no longer have eyes.

  Oghaldzon names are variable, changing depending on what their current role is; "Oolane-Researcher-Seeker" for example, is ‘personal name – job title – location’. A human might be "Christopher-Author-Edinburgh", for example; the latter two components change regularly. The Oghaldzon have no concept of changing their personal names; they will adopt one when they reach adulthood and keep it for their life.

  Because of their lack of a diurnal or nocturnal cycle, Oghaldzon society is permanently functioning, with different individuals working, sleeping and so on at different times.

  Like almost all life forms on Dhoz, the Oghaldzon reproduce through a method very different to humanity’s. When an Oghaldzon enters mating season (on average, around once or twice every three months), the male will emit sperm into the air, where it will float until a female sucks it out of the air, through her crest, and use it to fertilise her eggs. The children will then grow on her body like limpets until they fall off – reassembling starfish-like creatures at that point – which, acting on instinct alone, will run wild until their body begins the transformation into an adult, intelligent, Oghaldzon.

  This entire process takes place without much active involvement of the parents; the Oghaldzon female can continue her normal life right through the stages of "pregnancy" and indeed, the children are not considered important until they become intelligent. It is not unknown for entire broods to die out without a single one surviving to adulthood; the development of a controlled environment (such as a space habitat) created a massive rise in the Oghaldzon population, as more children were surviving to become adults.