Chroniech!

by Doug Farren

  Because of the approaching neutron star, the population could not be placed in stasis anywhere within their own star system. A planetoid orbiting a nearby star in an otherwise featureless system was chosen to become the temporary resting place of the Kyrra people. To prevent detection from other space explorers, the time stasis devices were shielded and placed deep underground. The removal of the population began.

  Forty-three years before the neutron star was to pass through their system, an exploration ship from another race discovered the Kyrra homeworld. This was an event which the Kyrra had hoped would never happen. The initial contact with the explorers was peaceful. They claimed to be from a race which, like the Kyrra, desired only knowledge. However, before the ship had left, more arrived in the form of an invasion force. The Kyrra quickly discovered that the supposedly peaceful explorers were in fact a race of slavers.

  The slavers invaded the Kyrra homeworld, destroying cities, manufacturing complexes and anything else they considered a threat to their domination. As the invasion began, the Kyrra reacted quickly and warned their exploration ships of the attack. Because of their nonviolent nature, the Kyrra had no weapons and could offer no resistance against the invaders.

  The slavers quickly learned that Kyrra technology was vastly superior to their own. For generations the slavers had relied upon their slave labor force to build and maintain their ships and weapons. Conquest was achieved through the sheer number of ships and troops the slavers could bring to bear on a newly discovered world.

  If the conquered planet was found to possess any devices that could help further the conquest of new worlds, the enslaved population was forced to to mass produce the device. After several generations of such behavior, the slavers no longer understood the technology behind the tools they used.

  The slavers attempted to force the Kyrra to apply their peaceful technology towards the creation of weapons. The Kyrra refused. This infuriated the slavers. They turned to torture and violence in a vain attempt to persuade the Kyrra to change their minds. The Kyrra learned quickly and it didn't take them long before an underground resistance had been formed. Unable to achieve the results they desired, the slavers scaled back the number of troops on the Kyrra homeworld — they were needed elsewhere.

  The slaver empire (which had encompassed an enormous volume of space) was quickly coming apart. Subject races had been rebelling against their masters for years and a few of them had managed to actually force the slavers off their worlds. The rebellions were slowly ripping the vast empire apart.

  Soon, the number of slavers on the Kyrra homeworld began to fall. The Kyrra were considered a passive race requiring little supervision to keep them in line. The slavers needed manpower and weaponry in other areas of their empire.

  As the number of slaver troops declined, the Kyrra found themselves with greater and greater freedom. The occupation had taught the Kyrra something they would never have learned on their own — how to kill. Over the course of many months, several large, very powerful force field generators were secretly built and installed. Hundreds of smaller, semi-portable generators were also built and placed at strategic locations.

  Because of the earlier evacuation, the Kyrra population living on their homeworld had steadily declined. In order to continue to produce the stasis chambers and to maintain the normal functioning of their society the Kyrra had automated most of their factories.

  Using these advanced robotic assembly lines, the Kyrra constructed thousands of small, personal field generators. Small enough to hide inside their clothing, and designed to look like a personal communications device, these field generators were distributed to every adult Kyrra. After many months of planning and preparation, the Kyrra acted.

  On the chosen day, as many Kyrra as possible had gathered within the confines of their remaining cities. At a specified time, every semi-portable force field generator was activated. Within each bubble of force there were Kyrra; sometimes as few as one or two; in others as many as several hundred. Those Kyrra who were not protected ran toward the nearest bubble.

  The field generators that had previously been distributed to all Kyrra allowed those who carried it to pass through these force fields. Many hundreds were killed by the surprised slavers as they ran for safety. After a specified period of time, the larger field generators were activated. These generators were far more powerful than the small ones protecting the Kyrra. They produced a force field large enough to cover entire cities. But they were not normal fields of protective energy.

  After forming, the city-sized fields began to slowly contract, squeezing everything, including the air, within them. As the pressure rose, the slavers turned their efforts toward escape but there was nothing they could do to penetrate the Kyrra shield or slow its collapse. The slavers eventually succumbed to the pressure and soon were all dead. The city-spanning force fields were then allowed to return to their original diameters.

  Although the slavers had been killed, the collapsing fields of energy had caused enormous amounts of damage. The shrinking force fields had dragged everything inside their boundaries inward. Buildings near the edge of the city were destroyed. The ground around and under the city was pulled inward causing massive earthquakes. The entire area inside the force field actually sunk into the ground by several feet.

  The entire Kyrra rebellion lasted less than an hour. Those slavers who had managed to escape, found the Kyrra were now behind impenetrable fields of force. Try as they might, no weapon they could apply would penetrate the city-spanning force domes. In their rage against the Kyrra, the slavers lashed out and destroyed everything on the planet which was not protected. For a short time afterwards, the slavers continued to test the strength of the Kyrra defenses.

  Eventually, the problems within the empire forced the slavers to abandon their fruitless attacks and leave the Kyrra homeworld altogether. On planet after planet throughout the outer regions of the slaver empire the slavers stripped everything of value they could load into their ships and departed. From orbit, the departing ships bombarded the defenseless worlds, obliterating all life. The slavers were gathering all their resources together to defend the core of what was left of their disintegrating empire.

  Behind their protective shields the Kyrra watched, helpless to stop them, as the slavers methodically placed hundreds of fusion bombs around the protected cities. Each city was ringed with at least ten such devices. The rest of the planet was subjected to random bombing from dirty nuclear weapons. Stunned, the Kyrra watched their world die around them as the radioactive fallout from the bombs filled the atmosphere with lethal radiation. As the last ship departed orbit, the bombs surrounding the cities were detonated.

  The destructive power produced by the release of a thousand megatons of nuclear weapons is something that cannot be imagined. Fifty eight protected Kyrra cities felt the full force of such destructive power. Seventeen of the cities were destroyed as their force fields collapsed. The rest experienced severe damage as the shock-wave of the explosions produced intense tremors.

  When it was over, and the slavers had left, the Kyrra evaluated the extent of the damage. At the time when the Kyrra had first discovered the neutron star their homeworld had a population of over 125 million. Because of their unique evolutionary history, the Kyrra had never developed the need to rampantly procreate. To their horror, the Kyrra discovered that the slavers had dealt them a terrible blow.

  Their non-stasis population had been reduced to a little over a quarter of a million, many of whom were injured and would probably die. There were about 11 million Kyrra in stasis deep within a planetoid orbiting a nearby star. The Kyrra homeworld had been rendered incapable of supporting life. Their factories had been destroyed.

  After the slavers had left, the remaining Kyrra repaired one of their long-range communication stations and recalled their exploration ships. While waiting for these ships to arrive, they repaired a few of the ships the slavers had left behind. They were very lucky that several
such ships had been within the confines of their city-wide force fields because stepping outside the protective energy wall would have meant certain death from radiation.

  Once these ships had been repaired, the Kyrra used them to again begin the transportation of their people to a place of safety. Time was now critical. The neutron star was due to arrive in just under 41 years and there were over a quarter million Kyrra still to be moved with only a handful of ships.

  The Kyrra also had another, more pressing problem. Because their world had become a radioactive wasteland, their source of food had been removed. Compatible plants from a nearby star system would have to be used until a hydroponics garden of sufficient capacity could be constructed.

  The ship the Komodo Dragon had discovered was one of the repaired slaver ships. It was transporting one of the few stasis modules which had survived the slaver invasion to the planetoid when the drive system had malfunctioned. That particular stasis chamber was considerably smaller than the others on the planetoid having been a development prototype.

  The crew attempted to contact their base but discovered that the quickly assembled FTL transceiver was not working. They reasoned that if they did not arrive as scheduled, another ship would be sent out to search for them. Assuming this might take some time, the crew entered the stasis device. Help never arrived.

  "Because of what has happened to them in the past," Stricklen continued. "The Kyrra are reluctant to reveal the exact location of the planetoid where their people were placed in stasis. They are also very cautious in talking about their technological abilities. I did find out some very interesting facts concerning their race.”

  "The Kyrra are exceptionally long lived. In our terms they have a normal life-span on the average of 380 years. Between 120 and 230 years of life, each Kyrra will produce an average of one child. This means that not only are they long lived but their population grows very slowly. This is probably due to the nature of their ecosystem.”

  "Another result of this slow growth, long life, and lack of racial competition has been that Kyrra technology was very slow to start. The Kyrra claim to have a recorded history going back at least 33,000 years. Once they had achieved a certain level of technology their thirst for knowledge and understanding gave them the desire to improve and their level of technological sophistication rapidly grew.”

  "The five Kyrra who are now our guests come from a civilization that over 45,000 years ago possessed a level of technology at least a hundred years ahead of the best that the Alliance has to offer.”

  "They do not like to talk about what they can do, but in speaking with them I have learned a little about their abilities. For instance, the stasis field is powered by a matter/anti-matter reactor which uses super-heavy metallic hydrogen as a storage medium for both the reaction masses. This provides the reactor with enough mass to run at its full output of 380 terra-watts for over 50,000 years."

  The silence, which had been total until now, was suddenly broken by gasps of disbelief and wonder. Stricklen motioned for silence before continuing. "The Kyrra were also capable of traveling at speeds beyond even our wildest dreams. They had very high speed communications across interstellar space. They understood and could manipulate matter on an almost sub-atomic scale. If their civilization has survived to this day, then the technology they now possess would appear to us to be nothing less than magic.”

  "All of their technology, however, did not prevent another race from nearly destroying them. They do not understand violence. It never occurred to them to build devices and weapons to protect themselves from aggressive species such as ours. We are extremely lucky that the slavers were an ignorant race, because if they had ever realized what sort of technological wonders they were so blindly destroying we would most likely not exist today."

  Stricklen stood up to emphasize his last point. "The Kyrra cannot exist in our society. They would remain isolated and would be subjected to endless questions about their advanced technology. The Kyrra's computer has examined the history of the member races of the Alliance and has reached a similar conclusion.”

  "Although we are a far cry from the likes of the slavers, all species which are currently members of the Alliance have had a history of aggressive behavior. It is their belief, and my fear as well, that their continued presence here will result in conflicts within the Alliance as one race after another attempts to gain the knowledge of the Kyrra in order to use it to their own advantage. The Kyrra will not allow this to happen and if I have a choice, neither will I."

  Ken glanced at Sorbith and could not discern any clues as to how he was reacting to what had just been said. His cybernetic body was as still as a steel I-beam. Stricklen shifted his gaze to Trisk and noted that the Tholtaran was close to interrupting him. Ken figured the only reason Trisk had not broken his silence was he may be thinking that Stricklen had already discussed this issue with Sorbith and Trisk did not want to anger the peacekeeper again.

  Placing his hands palm down on the table in front of him, Stricklen continued in a firm voice. "The Kyrra have requested we provide them with a ship so they can return to their people. In exchange for this ship they will provide us with a set of mathematical equations which more accurately describes the field structure dynamics of the space-time continuum. In time, we will be able to use these new equations to construct faster stardrives and better communication systems. As a representative of the Alliance, I have tentatively agreed to their proposal pending final approval from the Alliance ruling council.”

  "Until that time, I am declaring the Kyrra guests of the Alliance under my protection and I am ordering all individuals to respect their privacy. Marine guards will enforce this privacy if required. This meeting is over."

  Stricklen turned and quickly exited the room before anyone could recover from their shock. As the door was closing behind him he heard the stunned crowd break into an uproar. He did not care what they thought of him at the moment. He had made his decision and all he wanted to do now was sleep. He made it to his stateroom without being intercepted, set the door and intercom controls for privacy, and without bothering to remove his uniform, fell onto his bed and was instantly asleep.

  9 - Change of Course

  Shortly after the captain's meeting was over, Doug Scarboro personally checked the placement of the marine guards that Stricklen had ordered and found the security arrangements for the Kyrra to be satisfactory. He then briefly checked with the Kyrra to see if they needed anything. Two of them expressed a desire to tour the ship. Doug assigned a marine escort to them and off they went. He then made his way to the bridge where he was scheduled to begin his watch.

  Doug had barely assumed the watch when Sorbith came through the door. The marine, of course, allowed him access without any challenge. Sorbith headed straight for Scarboro. "Do you know of any reason why Captain Stricklen has agreed to provide the Kyrra a ship? Did he discuss this decision with you?"

  "No he did not," Doug replied. "The captain came to this decision by himself without any input from me. If he were to have asked me though, I believe I would have agreed with him. The Kyrra should not be forced to live in our society against their will. Doing so would be the equivalent of imprisoning them. They may be technologically our superiors but they are under no obligation to share that technology with us."

  Sorbith seemed to consider this argument for a moment before replying. "You may be right, but, the captain had no right to make such a promise to the Kyrra without first discussing it with me."

  "He did say that it was pending the approval of the Grand Council," Scarboro reminded him.

  "True," Sorbith replied, "but the act of making the offer practically forces the council to agree. I believe a reversal of the captain's proposal would not be looked upon favorably by many people."

  Scarboro smiled and nodded his head knowingly. "Then I think he made the right decision."

  "As soon as he wakes I would like to speak with him," Sorbith concluded. After receiving a nod of
acknowledgment from Doug, the peacekeeper turned and departed. The crew of the bridge let out a collective sigh of relief as the doors slid shut behind him.

  A moment later, Trisk barged onto the bridge and also demanded to see the captain. Doug had had a feeling that Trisk might make an appearance. "The captain has left orders that he is not to be disturbed. I would recommend returning to your ship and I will… "

  "We will just see about that!" Trisk angrily interrupted and turned to leave.

  "I would not attempt to interrupt the captain's sleep," Scarboro calmly but firmly said. "The marine guarding his door has orders to arrest anyone who attempts to enter his cabin and seeing that this is his ship the captain's orders will have precedence over anyone else including yourself — Sir."

  Trisk swung around and angrily glared at Scarboro for several seconds. Doug simply stared back with a questioning look on his face. Finally, Trisk turned and angrily exited the bridge muttering a string of Tholtaran curses as he left. Doug smiled at his departing back.

  At the meeting, Ken had said that the Kyrra reactor was fueled by something called super-heavy metallic hydrogen. Metallic hydrogen was in common use throughout the Alliance. It was a room temperature super conductor without which much of Alliance technology would be impossible. Doug, however, had no idea what the super-heavy part of the name meant.

  "Dragon, I know what metallic hydrogen is; what is the super-heavy form of metallic hydrogen?"

  "The term super-heavy refers to the super-heavy form of elemental hydrogen. It is a theoretical possibility that the periodic table repeats itself but with elements possessing extraordinarily high atomic numbers."

  That partially answered Doug's question but it did little to fill in the gap of knowledge he still possessed. He wanted to know more. "What exactly is a super-heavy element?"

  The computer quickly referenced its known information concerning Doug's level of education and composed an explanation that was suitable for him. "As you are aware, the more protons and neutrons an atom has the more unstable the element becomes until a point is reached where the atom is so unstable, no additional nucleons can be added because the atom will spontaneously disintegrate.”