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Growing Horizons: Endings and Beginning

Chapter 1

Warringer

Goto Wogon for Hard SciFi
Author
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Endings and Beginning

Chapter 1

December 13, 1009 BC
Raydsul Orbital Complex, Cterin, 61 Virginis


Slowly the blue, green, brown and white orb rotated beneath the view port, its view shifting just a little with the rotation of the Orbital Complex.

Cterin was a wonderful world.

Lush green expanses of vegetation, meandering blue rivers cutting through the landscape and its great forests. Great cities were place along the shores of lakes, some of them millennia old, build when the old Empires were great. Monuments, old and new, visited by scholars and tourists daily, at awe to the great works of the Quetzal.

The vast stretches of the oceans, blue and full of life. The massive bulks of the great arches floating along the coastlines on their endless journeys of trade and commerce. Each arch a city of its own, build to house ever growing populations for the last two millennia.

Cterin was a wonderful world. The home world. The birthplace of the Quetzal.

But Cterin was a dying world as well. It was to be the third world to be killed by the great cancer of the plague.

Rynem of the Gerant Vorem, Sovereign of Thriem, stood on the viewport, unblinking eyes staring down at his dying home, the hands of all four arms balled into fists. Even after the past two cycles, he still could not understand why this all was happening. Try as he might he could not understand why the creators of the Onouch'l Automatons would destroy the ecosystems of entire worlds.

"Why?" he whispered as he looked down at his dying home, while he made a high keening noise, not unlike the distress cries of a youngling.

Even from medium orbit, he could see the vast mats of The Plague swimming on the surface of the ocean beneath. Single celled organisms with a shell of dense, hard polymers that grew everywhere, using any resource to multiply.

He had seen images and videos of Quetzal infected by The Plague. How the enzymes and acids produced by the organisms slowly decayed the living bodies, covering them in biofilms of greenish biopolymers, while they writhed in agony.

Nothing could finally kill The Plague. Any conventional attempts to kill the organisms were defeated by their biopolymer cell membranes, no antibiotics could penetrate, no enzymes or acids eat away the cell membranes. Heat and pressure were useless, as was extreme cold. Ionizing radiation had a hard time to penetrate the hydrogen rich biopolymer membranes and if they did, enzymes and other cell products repaired the multiple redundant cell cores.

Only fission and fusion weapons were able to hold The Plague at bay, but at what cost? How could one destroy the entire planet with nuclear weapons to save it from a biological one?

"Why?" he whispered again, his mind trying again to find a way to save his home.

There was a flash of light in his field of view and he closes his eyes, pressed them shut.

Another one. Another shuttle that had launched from the surface, trying to flee from the now quarantined world. A shiver ran through his body as his mind involuntarily supplied him with images of afraid and panicked Quetzal crammed into every nook and cranny aboard the shuttle craft as they ran for orbit. Only to be shot down by one of the surviving automaton craft build by the Quetzal.

"Damn you," he whispered and opened his eyes again, the claws of his upper hands digging hard enough into his palms to draw blood.

He looked back up through the view port again, only to see another flash of light from another dying shuttle craft.

"Damn you!"

His voice was louder this time as he turned his upper body around on his coiled up body, staring at the white feathered quetzal that lay coiled up not too far away, unmoving and apparently unfeeling.

"How?" Rynem almost screamed as he glared at the figure. "How can you just sit there without any emotion?"

The Quetzals head rose slightly as he looked back over at him.

"No emotions?" the avatar of one of the Quetzal automaton craft asked, his own voice a horse whisper. "No… emotions."

The light of a third noiseless explosion flashed through the view port and a holographic image came into being next to the coiled up form of the avatar. Slowly it began to cycle through the images of one Quetzal after the other, each with a name displayed beneath it. Faster and faster.

The white feathered avatar pressed his own eyes shut and seemed to tremble.

"I grieve for every life that I am forced to take," he said silently. "Those faces? They are the faces of everyone aboard one of the shuttle craft that I was forced to destroy to enforce the quarantine. Thirty two thousand, five hundred and forty-six lives. Afraid for their lives. Filled with panic from having seen their fellows die a horrible death from The Plague."

The avatar drew in a simulated breath.

"You have no idea how I feel," he continued, his voice almost dead. "I am forced to kill those that I have been constructed to protect. I have to kill them to ensure the survival of those in orbit. To ensure the survival of the final convoy, before the Onouch'l return to ensure everyone in this system is dead."

He opened his eyes again, white pupils staring back at Rynem.

"You should go," the avatar said softly. "You have a duty to your surviving people, just as I have a final duty to protect this world from the Onouch'l."

Rynem stared back at the avatar of Petan, one of the oldest of the Automatons build by the Quetzal, build by his own nation. For a moment he remembered the almost innocent personality the Synthetic Intellect had when he was first activated, ten cycles ago. Gone was that innocence of a Youngling, replaced with the weariness of a veteran warrior that had seen too much death. Gone was the friendly barter between an Automaton craft Intellect and the heir to the Thriem Sovereignty.

32546 Quetzal lives had been ended by him as they tried to flee the quarantined planet below. Lives that had to be ended to ensure the survival of the remaining Quetzal. It was a racial, genetic imperative to ensure the survival of the people, but intellectually it was still hard to see the dead of a world.

Rynem himself had given that order, nearly one cycle ago, as the only one with high enough order clearance that was off planet, when the Onouch'l Automatons had appeared over Cterin for the first time and managed to drop a single bomb filled with The Plague into the oceans of his home. Back then, almost all the other heads of nations had backed him up, only to falter one by one as their own lives were at stake.

Sometimes even the strong instincts for survival of the Quetzal were badly strained. The first shuttle craft had attempted to evacuate the old Sovereign of Thriem, his own predecessor. Attempting to argue for his own immunity of The Plague, it had been one of the Negnal war craft that had destroyed the shuttle during ascent, leaving Rynem the Sovereign.

Then more had tried to leave and the first crews of warcraft had stopped following the quarantine orders until only the Automaton craft were left, destroying every shuttle craft that tried to leave.

"Leave, Rynem of the Gerant Vorem," Petan said. "You have your duty, I have mine."

The silence in the room fell again, only the light hum of the environmental systems audible, as the two friends of ten cycles stared at each other.

"You have to preserve with the living, Sovereign of Thriem," Petan continued after a few moments of silence. "While I guard the dead."

Unblinking eyes stared at each other, before a hollow, empty sounding chuckle burst forth from the Synthetic Intellect.

"Perhaps it was inevitable," he said and turned to face the blue, green, brown and white orb that rotated past the view port. "I was named after the Guardian of the Dead. And I shall be guarding a dead world."

Rynem was tempted to say more, but his friend had changed since the Onouch'l Automatons had first attacked the Ormiold and the Quetzal and Turukal had come to their aid. He had seen a world dying of The Plague. Seen how a quarantine failed and infected the orbital infrastructure. Seen how the Onouch'l had returned and reduced the remaining orbital structures to scrap, only to screen the world beneath from intervention.

Only fifteen thousand Ormiold, all of them colonists in cold sleep, had survived. And entire colony mission of their way of putting settlements on other worlds. A meticulously planned mission what carried everything with it to build a colony for all fifteen thousand colonists from scratch. Mining equipment, fabricators, reactors and solar power grids, live stock in cold sleep, they had everything to create a settlement in less than six months.

And Petan had seen the same on the Turukal home world, all the colony worlds of the three races. Each killed one after the other, its existing ecosphere replaced by one entirely made of The Plague. The Turukal had been able to impose a limited quarantine of the planetary surface, but soon the commanders of military spacecraft and stations had stopped carrying out their orders to destroy shuttles coming from the surface, infecting some stations with the Plague, before the survivors were extracted.

Of the Turukal, twenty five thousand were now in cold sleep, survivors of orbital infrastructure, asteroid mining outposts and science stations. With them came mining equipment and three entire orbital structures quickly converted into FTL capable spacecraft.

Rynem looked back out of the view port for a few moments, before his eyes lingered on the avatar of Petan again.

Everyone owed Petan and the other Automatons their life. Quetzal commanders may have been able to continue to keep the quarantine for longer than the Turukal, but in the end it would have broken. The Automatons kept following their orders, they could calculate what would happen if they didn't. And it hurt all of them.

Now the transport fleet was ready to depart with the last ten thousand Quetzal from the inner system. And whatever remaining infrastructure they had managed to salvage. All was going into a system only about 15 light cycles away, so far unknown to the Onouch'l Automatons as far as everyone knew. A large asteroid had been selected, hollowed out to hide all their spacecraft and had cold sleep capsules installed in the new internal spaces, powered by reactors and controlled by an Ormiold Automaton that had volunteered to run the maintenance.

Other survivors had fled into the outer system, severing all contact to the inner system and trying to survive on their own. And then there was a fleet that had just up and left on their own.

Who knew? Maybe they would make it, maybe they would not.

"Good luck, my friend," he whispered as he slowly uncurled from his sitting position and made his way out of the viewing area and towards the last shuttle to the transport fleet.

Hopefully they would all survive this and their three peoples had a future.
 
Chapter 2
March 21, 2130
Asari Mining Complex, Ceres, So
l

Almost clutching the papers in hand, he slowly left the local Asari office of the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs. As he stepped into the corridor, he still had the words of Mr. Davidson in his ears.

"Congratulations, Mr. Alberti. Your papers are all in order and we have processed your claim. Your claim has been recognized by us and the IAU."

Davidson had smiled at that.

"A nice presentation, by the way. But something I'd expect from what is effectively your Masters thesis."

Slowly a grin spread out over his face as he walked down the corridor of the UN compound in the Prime Torus towards the main concourse, a spring in his step.

Three years. Three years of working his ass off to get everything together for his thesis. Painstakingly planning the mission, designing the habitat, requesting every bit of information he could get his hands on. Three years of work that had payed off.

846 Lipperta was going to be his.

Okay, well… It was going to belong to the Lippstadt Asteroid Mining GmbH. But since he had founded that company…

Ahmed Alberti was in a good mood.

"I see you were much successful, Ahmed."

His mood rose immediately and the grin only got wider as he turned to face the source of the, mostly faux, British accented voice.

"I was just about to go looking for you, Adam," he told his friend and silent business partner.

"Riiiight," Adam replied, rolling his eyes. "I bet you were about to head to the Atomic Rocket to grab a pint."

Ahmed chuckled.

"Well, my second goal for the day. Getting drunk on success before it's back into the data mines for us."

Adam gave him a toothy grin in return.

"Indeed, indeed, old chap. There's still that decision to be made whether we go local, Chinese or Indian with the Habitat."

"Eh," Ahmed made and turned spinwards as they reached the concourse and headed to the next Torus spoke and the Multi transport hub there. "I'm still not sure why we should go for either the Chinese or the Indian hab contracts."

He looked down at the papers in his hands and shuddered just a little.

"It seems I've beaten a Chinese application for Lipperta by just ten minutes," he said as Adam called for a Multi capsule.

"Come on," Adam said. "We're not in the 20th century anymore. The Chinese aren't going to hold a grudge just because they've been beaten to the claim of a single rock in the Belt."

The capsule arrived and they both stepped in.

"Delta Torus, Spoke Five," Adam ordered and the capsule began to move along its maglev tracks. "Besides, it seems they are mostly concentrating their efforts around the Greeks and grab a couple of Hildas to act as long term cyclers."

Slowly the pull of the centripetal force lessened to zero and the capsule moved into the hub of the torus, following a path into the sub-cereran tunnel network that linked the habitat tori of Asari Mining Complex.

"Instead, they are going to take your money, give you a decent quality product and leave you alone."

Ahmed eyed his friend.

"How do you know that?"

"Oh come on," Adam said, rolling his eyes. "I'm a data mining, correlation, and analysis specialist. It's something I do. Besides someone in this partnership had to keep out an eye on the political situation. Especially with the FSEAN is rattling their sabers again."

Ahmed sighed and massaged his forehead. He could still remember the invasion six years ago.

"Great… And?"

Adam shrugged.

"The MoD is offering to use their new Type 15 escorts to protect valuable cargo and other missions. I reckon we might get some protection there."

Ahmed nodded.

"Sounds good."

Adam grinned again and the capsule came to a final halt, after descending into Delta Torus, the main commercial area of Asari. The doors opened and they stepped out into the air, which was filled with the scent of various food stands and some yelling and screaming from vendors. The city government was almost deliberately keeping the atmosphere of Delta Torus like a bazar on Earth, largely because it was a big attraction for tourists from other Districts as well as from other parts of the Solar System.

'Visit the great Delta Torus! You can find everything here!'

The two companions slowly made their way through the Torus to the Atomic Rocket. For this time of day there was not much happening and the only somewhat strange passerby was an Europan walker. The massive brass, stainless steel and glass contraption moved along on its eight legs, each clacking across the floor, while steam hissed from pistons now and again. Four manipulator arms hung in their resting positions. Its Europan passenger was floating in its glass bubble, tentacles wrapped around brass leavers, pulling at them and punching buttons.

It was always a strange sight to see the steampunk contraptions move along so fluidly, almost animal like.

The shells of the octopoid Europan flashed in an explosion of colors and a translated voice came from a brass speaker grill.

"That good for nothing… If I ever get my tentacles on that slimy…"

Ahmed made sure to move out of the way of the apparently quire infuriated Europan, before spotting the entrance to the Rocket. A large neon sign that could have come straight from a 1950s movie hung over the entrance, which was flanked by a pair of glass boxes.

Adam groaned as he saw the posters in one of the boxes.

"Great… Frank is back."

Ahmed in turn grinned.

"Oh, this is going to be fun," he said and chuckled.

Just as they were about to enter the Rocket, a pair of burly men in the coveralls of the Torus Maintenance Staff walked out, the name tags on one man reading 'Wazlav', while the other read 'Wilfried', a struggling suited man between them. The suited man was cursing loudly in Italian and Ahmed winced. Wazlav in turn responded with several harsh sounding words in Polish, finishing with the unambiguous 'Kurwa', where both of them flung the man to the ground.

"Do you know who I am?" the suit screamed, his voice almost breaking in his rage.

"Do not know, do not care," Wazlav replied in broken English. "Do not come back."

The suit stuttered, before pulling himself up from his prone position.

"Fucking Janitors!" he screamed. "You will hear from my lawyer!"

Ahmed winced. Bad move. No one called a member of the Maintenance Staff a janitor. They were highly specialized workers with at least bachelor degree in their area of expertise. Not to mention they made sure that no one died a horrible death due to space. Spacers in general and Belters in particular held the Maintenance Staff in high regard for that fact alone.

As the man moved out of hearing distance, the man sighed.

"Fucking Earthers," he said, his broken accent gone, it was just an affectation when he got angry. "Always trying to get into trouble."

"Da sachse wat,"* Wilfried noted drily.

Next to Ahmed, Adam grinned again.

"Wazlav, my good chap," he said jovially. "What good fortune to meet you on this hour."

Wazlav eyed Adam in return.

"What do you want…"

"Oh, I just want you to explain a few things to my partner. We have a few problems concerning a habitat. Ahmed isn't sure whether we should get local, Chinese or Indian. I personally say to go with the Chinese model."

The two Maintenance technicians turned chuckled and walked back into the bar.

"We can do that over a drink. I take it your claim got through?"

They followed and entered the bar, to be greeted by a rendition of 'Banned from Argo' coming from the live band on the bars stage. Today it was 'Captain Frank and the Crewmen', even though the drummer was a woman. Frank was actually the owner of a tug craft, the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the others of the band were his crew mates.

Adam groaned at the choice of music.

"Oh come on, Frank," he yelled over the music." Play something else."

"Why?" he asked between verses of the song, a huge grin on his face. "The song fits perfectly."

Then he continued singing.

Ahmed just chuckled and followed Wazlav and his friend into one of the booths, which was decorated posters of old SciFi magazines, like Amazing Stories. The bar itself looked like it was ripped straight from one of the novels itself, looking very much like a 1950s version of a science fiction spacer bar. A lot of polished metal, leather and glass.

"One of the usual for me, Thorsten," Ahmed called out to the barkeeper, who nodded back at hi as he and Adam joined the others, who were nursing their own drinks.

"So, Wazlav," Adam said as he had settled down with his usual problems. "Care to tell my friend why we should get a Chinese hab since we're on a tight budget?"

Wazlav smirked.

"Oh, that's easy," the Maintenance man said and leaned back. "It's cheap, it's good quality and the Chinese almost come up to Russian standards when it comes to ruggedness. And you'd find a lot of Maintenance guys that know the Chinese stuff."

He took a sip of his beer, as Ahmeds beer arrived.

"Sure you can go with the Indian stuff, but while they are cheaper than the Chinese, they have a worse MTB, Main Time Between Failures. It's going to give your maintenance guys a workout. Not to mention the higher follow up costs for the manufacturing rights of the replacement parts. And since you are on a tight financial and mass budget, that's going to eat into your stock."

Wazlav then grinned.

"As for our local stuff," he said with a sigh. "Might as well get a hab with solid gold toilets. Sure, there is to loyalty to Ceres to consider, but… while its solid construction, and the best available on the market, the quality has its costs. Not good for someone on a budget."

He pointed at Adam.

"I have to agree with fluffy here. Go for the Chinese hab. It's going to be cheaper in the long run. I've read your Masters thesis. If you actually pull this off, you can by a better hab later. And everyone else is going to buy themselves some Chinese habs..."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*. translation: Indeed.
 
Chapter 3
February 3, 1008 BC
TSC Rardet Umathe, Outside the Feynman Limit, 5.3 AU away from 61 Virginis


The Command Center was almost silent. Every eye was directed at the nearest screen.

"Please," a pleading voice came over the speakers from a radio transmission. "We are not infected! How can we be infected by The Plague if we needed three periods to here without a single death?"

Rynem closed his eyes as he listened, drawing in a deep breath, waiting for the inevitable. As he opened his eyes again, he looked back at his screen and the blips that streaked towards the transport craft moving towards Seuwack. Three more contacts on the screen were combat spacecraft on an intercept course.

"Please listen to me," the voice of the transports' commander. "We are not infe---"

The voice stopped in mid word, replaced by static.

"High energy event," the voice of a sensory technician broke the silence. "One… No, two. Three… Five. Five High energy events. They are consistent with 200kt fission warheads."

Rynem closed his eyes again.

Two thousand more lives lost. Two thousand that could have come with them to Sanctuary. Instead, they had all opted to go to Seuwack, 'remaining closer to home' they had thought. The United Katran Sects had seemed to the transports' crew and passengers to be the closest they could go.

"And yet again!" a voice suddenly boomed from the speakers. A voice used to orating in front of a large enraptured audience in a temple. A voice Rynem had grown to hate over the past cycles, as it stood for the polar opposite to what he himself had done and organized.

The voice belonged to Ranydan of the Whaush Sect, the Elder of the United Katran Sects, its religious and worldly leader.

"Yet again the Wicked have tried to betray the Righteous! Again they have tried to bring those Infected by The Plague into our midst to strike us down! Again…"

"Turn it off," Rynem almost whispered as he turned away from the display that showed the three combat spacecraft continue on their intercept course almost a quarter of the system away from them.

The voice continue to speak.

"We will not be deterred from our Path of Righteousness and Truth! We..."

"Turn it off!" he repeated louder, almost yelling this time around.

The voice stopped and only the sounds of the cooling pumps were audible through the structure of the spacecraft.

Rynem wanted to scream. Scream at how Ranydan had cowardly fled to a United Sects outpost the moment everyone had heard of the destruction of the Ormiold home world. Rant at how Ranydan had stripped everything from his own nation to fortify the outposts at Seuwack to protect himself and his ruling council from the Onouch'l Automatons. Wheep at how Ranydan had 'pacified' and 'protected the other outposts and settlements on Seuwack's moons the moment the Onouch'l had attacked Cterin, declaring a quarantine that had attacked every spacecraft that had tried to reach the sixth world of the sun. Every time it was accompanied by Ranydan preaching about the 'Wicked' and the 'Righteous'.

More than anything else, Rynem wanted to order the remaining thirty combat spacecraft of the allied survivors left in their home system to go to Seuwack and destroy everything Ranydan tried to safe.

But he did not. He could not. Not with the survival of the species on the line. Remaining in the home system was suicide. Even if they had fortified at Seuwack. Even if they had tried to lie low out at Dran like all those outposts and settlements, all those spacecraft that had gone there instead of Seuwack.

It was suicide, just plain suicide to remain behind for even one single moment longer than they absolutely had to.

With Cterin almost dead and devoid of any life not The Plague, the Onouch'l Automatons were bound to return soon and would destroy any remaining infrastructure.

All that was left to Rynem was to silently pray for all those people that had just died, something he had done a lot of times over the past cycle. More than twelve billion mature souls had returned to the Everchanging Black in the past cycle, leaving only half a million alive in this world. Twelve billion souls yearning to be reborn. Not to mention the untold number of immature souls that came from the Origin or those adult souls already waiting for a rebirth. It would be a long time until the Quetzal were numerous enough for them to return.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down, before opening his eyes again. He couldn't remember closing them.

"It is time to leave," he said in a low voice that sounded loud in the mostly silent Command Center and the bustle returned, in the subdued form that was the norm for the past cycle.

Orders were given and confirmed. A blue warning light flashed everywhere in the crew compartments, to inform the crew and passengers that the craft would maneuver. Only after a while the sharp retorts of the maneuvering thrusters firing were audible, accompanied by the abrupt, but comparably gentle movements they brought.

"Magnetic Linkages confirmed," a voice from the command crew called out. "Laser com links established. All vessels report ready for transition."

Rynem only registered the competent work of the command crew at the side.

Magnetic Linkage had been a mathematical discovery on the calculations for the Quahin FTL device that had been confirmed only twenty five cycles ago. By positioning multiple Quahin FTL spacecraft on the outside of a sphere and linking them together with close to perfectly synchronized fields produced by the FTL devices, and then rotating the resulting field in a specific pattern, the virtual drag in the Everchanging Black could be reduced and the little squadron move at faster speeds than a single spacecraft.

"Report on the other squadron?"

"They are still maneuvering into place."

The 'sweet spot' for the size of squadrons was twenty spacecraft in a classic bell curve. Any less or more spacecraft and the FTL speed would drop again. Yet there had been thirty spacecraft left, which meant two squadrons of fifteen had been formed to maximize the FTL speed. One would follow the other to the Refuge.

"Squadron Two reports full Magnetic Linkage and Com Link Establishment."

"Good. Tell them we see them in Refuge."

A whining sound slowly build up in the structure of the spacecraft as the two massive conducting cylinders of the FTL coils spooled up in their magnetic bearings, reaching high revolution speeds after a while.

"FTL coils have reached full speed. Building up magnetic field."

The whine disappeared as the revolutions of the coils stabilized and the reactors fed energy into the coils, building up the magnetic field around the spacecraft and linking it to the others.

Another light shudder went through the structure.

"We have some feedback with the magnetic interface. Compensating."

The shudder disappeared.

"Preparing transition into the Everchanging Black."

Moments passed and Rynem stared at the display in front of him. Slowly the star speckled black of the normal universe faded away as the spacecraft transitioned into the 8 dimensional realm of the Everchanging Black.

He took a deep breath and slowly slid from his seat, grabbing the handrails needed for microgravity and pulled himself out of the Command Center and towards the single observation blister.

He shivered as the armored bulkheads closed behind him leaving him alone of the observation blister, lights from the various panels illuminating his face. One by one he turned off the lights and stared outside into the total darkness of the Everchanging Black.

Here he was alone, staring out at the always changing eddies of pure black that had to be the souls of the dead, trying to see if there were changes, if there were more eddies in the blackness that would indicate there were more souls out there. But he knew that he was silly. The universe alone was a big place and the Everchanging Black was even larger. Why would a mere twelve billion even make this place more crowded? The times someone had reported to have actually seen a soul out there could be counted on two hands.

For a moment he contemplated to join the souls out there. To end his own life here and now. It would be a simple matter of letting the air out of the observation blister.

He started and pushed back from the wall of the blister, eyes wide.

Had he just?

He shook his head. No he had not seen anything out there. There was nothing out there aside from the other fourteen spacecraft of the squadron. He had not seen the disapproving face of his parents soul. He could not have seen the face that had told him again and again how proud he was.

He…

Rynem curled up into a ball wrapping himself around himself, arms tightly folding and closed his eyes.

Then he started to weep.
 
Chapter 4
April 14, 2130
Asari Mining Complex, Ceres, Sol


For a few moments, Adam looked out of the large transparent window of the Lippstadt Asteroid Mining GmbH office. It gave a great look over the promenade of Gamma Torus, one of the mixed office and living spaces of Asari. And just a few more hours and it was off into the weekend.

He turned back to his display to work through the remaining few mails in the pipeline. His eyes fell on a mail with the address header from the Chinese part of the SolarNet. Intrigued, he opened it and grinned after scanning the mail.

"Hey, Ahmed," he called out. "Shanxi Engineering just got back with an estimate on the cost for one of their habitats."

"One moment," Ahmed answered, followed by the flush of the toilet.

Adam smirked. It was always fun to come around with this news when others were relieving themselves. It needed a few more moments until Ahmed walked back into the office with expectant look on his face.

"And?" he asked as he sat down.

The smirk remained on Adams face.

"They aim to charge us 20 million Euros," he said and Ahmed whistled.

"That's three million less than Jiangxi International," he said. "That makes them the cheapest of the bunch."

Adam nodded.

"Indeed. And I believe with that we have all offers. Now we are just left with reviewing what exactly they offer for their price."

Ahmed hummed and looked back at Adam.

"Well, this is where you come in, Mr. Big Data Analyst."

A snorting sound was his response as Adam looked at the information of the offer and leaned back.

"Indeed," he said. "Time to enter it into the database, link it to all the various reviews of previous buyers about their quality and customer service. And then we decide what we exactly want."

Ahmed sighed and dropped his head forwards.

"Lucky us…"

Adam grinned, showing his teeth.

"Followed by a lot more work, before we can even begin to interview employees."

That resulted in a groan from Ahmed, making Adam chuckle again. Sometimes it was fun to see Ahmed realize just how much work it was to get a project like this company actually working and producing.

It wasn't just the habitat they had to deal with, but mining equipment, a decent mass driver to get the mined material into the ballistic trajectories of the Interplanetary Transport Network, and, of course, the employees that had to know how to deal with the hardware in question. Not to mention food, licenses for replacement parts and various forms of entertainment.

Adam made a mental note to make sure that the computer and entertainment systems of the habitat were decent.

Ahmed meanwhile looked at his own work with a sigh and then made a humming sound himself.

"That looks promising," he said after a few moments.

"Oh?"

He nodded.

"There's apparently a small mining outfit called 'Rock Rats'," he said. "They are selling an older mining system with Mosquitos and a number of other bugs, and at least two solar furnaces for just three million."

Adam raised an eyebrow and made a short search, before nodding.

"Sounds about right," he responded.

Apparently the 'Rock Rats' were a subdivision of Lockheed Rockwell of all things and involved with testing new space mining equipment for the company. Lockheed Rockwell was designing and building good equipment and if these 'Rock Rats' offered old equipment, including a couple of Kuck Mosquitos, it had to have been experimental equipment at some time. According to the ad, it was still in good repair and it was unlikely that they were misleading in that case.

"I believe we should contact them for the equipment," he said. "Though I think we have to go to Lockheed Rockwell for the construction files for replacement parts."

Ahmeds forehead creased.

"That might not be cheap…" he said after a few moments.

"Depends on how old the equipment is and how many generations it lags behind the 'top shelve' equipment."

He paused.

"Speaking of which..." he continued. "We also need to look for at least one fabricator. Best an open source model we can somewhat easily copy."

Ahmed smirked.

"Already looked," he noted with an air of satisfaction. "I'm surprised that you didn't think of it earlier."

Adam made a meh sound and shrugged.

"And?"

"I found someone wants to sell three Mendel XL in various states of repair."

Adam frowned.

"Various states of repair…" he said dubiously.

Ahmed nodded.

"They want to sell it for twenty thousand. I figure we might build one, maybe two working ones from the parts of those three. Maybe with some externally sourced replacement parts."

That did sound risky to Adam, but the offer was cheap. A fully working Mendel XL sold for thirty thousand and they were perfectly capable to replicating themselves. Once one was working correctly, following calibration and testing, they could easily produce the replacement parts for the other fabricators, resulting in not one but three working Mendel XL.

"Buy them," Adam said after a few moments. "I'm putting up the money for them."

He hummed and looked at Ahmed again.

"Speaking of which… How far along are you with your half of the starting capital."

Ahmed sighed.

"The bank is still dragging its feet," he said. "They want more time to calculate the risks and rewards for the credit."

There was a long pause before Adam sighed himself.

"I am already ready to put in half from my private funds," he said. "They know that I would be ready to put in the full capital if need be. And they know that I am more than good for the full investment."

He thought for a moment.

"I may need to talk to the person in charge."

A ping went up, before he could say anything more, making Adam looked at his display again. He turned away from gazing on Ahmed, who sighed again. A high priority mail had just landed in the companies inbox and Adam opened it.

"Bloody hell…" he cursed as his eyes wandered over the mail, taking it all in.

Ahmed looked through the display at him.

"What?" he asked and Adam all but hissed in response, making him jerk back.

"Topeka Interplanetary Mining Incorporated," Adam answered, as if that was all he needed to say.

Ahmed blinked at him.

"What?"

Adam leaned back and closed his eyes, massaging his face with his fingers. He cursed again.

"Topeka Interplanetary Mining Incorporated," he said again. "A rather small company in Topeka, Kansas. They have an extraordinary number of lawyers for an 'asteroid mining' company."

"I can practically hear the quotation marks…"

Adam took in a deep breath.

"They are claim trolls."

"Claim trolls?" Ahmed asked, blinking.

"Yes…" Adam said with a nod and a frown. "They go and just lay claim to a lot of small to medium asteroids and do nothing with them for the time they do have the claim. When the claim expires, they make a token effort to renew it. In most cases they can't renew the claim. But that does not stop them from sticking to their expired claim, and when someone else claims it, they threaten to sue that someone for the claim. That or pay some horrendous sum."

Ahmed took a deep breath and leaned back, cursing himself.

"And the UNOOSA? What are they doing against it?"

Adam shook his head.

"Nothing. Its outside of their jurisdiction, so they can do nothing. And those claim trolls just need a few companies to pay for their entire scheme to work out for them..."

"And the Americans?"

Adam rolled his eyes.

"You know how sue happy the Americans are. And how long they need to get loopholes closed off. Though..."

He hummed and leaned back himself, tapping against his lower jaw.

"I seem to remember they tried something similar with 4017 Disneya, after Disney announced they would set up a Disney Universe there."

Ahmed blinked a few times and then stared at Adam.

"They tried to mess with Disney…" he said unbelieving.

"They tried to mess with The Mouse…" Adam confirmed. "And of course, The Mouse won."

Another grin with a lot of teeth graced Adams face.

"And from what I know, The Mouse pretty much ordered their lawyers to take on lawsuits against Topeka as pro bono work, paid for by Disney."

He reached forwards and touched his display.

"And I just happen to have some small connection with Disney trough Anaheim Animatronics."

Following a raised eyebrow from Ahmed, Adam shrugged.

"What can I say? Anaheim produces the best animatronic systems."

He paused for a few moments.

"Should I contact the lawyer I know from Disney?"

Ahmed took a deep breath and closed his eyes, not saying anything for a few moments as he leaned back. After opening his eyes again, he stared at the ceiling for a few more, longer moments.

"Are you sure that they would do it pro bono?"

Adam nodded.

"I am sure."
 
Chapter 5
February 27, 1008 BC
Northeast of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, Earth, Sol


He stared out across the valley from his vantage point near the top of a hill, holding onto his senkan with both hands for the moment. Tears ran from his nostrils, matting the surrounding skin. He wanted to keen in mourning to his two friends, but he knew it would be an insult to their spirits.

Instead, he lowered his head again and grabbed the digging implement to painfully slowly fill in the hole in the ground of their burial spot, for a moment wondering who would be the one burying him. He shook his head.

He was unimportant. He was a shaman and he would make sure that his friends spirits would not wander this unknown, strange world in a restless state as they would do if he did not bury them. She gently began to chant and murmur his apologies to the spirits of his friends and those if the surrounding lands. He just hoped it was enough to satisfy them. And maybe, maybe it was enough to get the spirits of this land to keep his own spirit from roaming around restlessly when it was his time to die shortly.

His stomach growled at him again and he pressed his eyes shut, stopping to shovel dirt into the hole where his friends lay. A small stray part of his mind told him that his friends would understand if he was to partake of their flesh and their spirits would not curse him.

His tears dropped into the hole as he stared down into it for a few moments and onto some of the still visible orange feathers of Foed.

He shook himself out of the trance he had entered, staring down at the hole, gritting his teeth as he continued to shovel dirt into the hole. No, he would not. He could not. He could never do such a thing without damning his own spirit into become a dark malevolent force that would haunt this place. He was better than that.

As it had to be, he would die like the shaman of the Nejuto Ontan he was. He would die of hunger like his friends of the survey team.

He stopped again from his shoveling, his eyes moving to look south west, towards the great lake of salt, where the shuttle carrying him and the survey team had crashed.

A stray meteorite had caved in the cockpit of the shuttle during reentry and without control it had descended towards the planets surface. Only quick thinking of Soess had saved at least the lives of Soess, Foed and himself, Dacen. For a while.

The shuttle had crashed into the middle of the great lake, taking all their food, water and emergency rations with it into the depth. They had not even been able to save an emergency beacon to inform the survey craft in orbit that they had survived.

And without the rations, they would all starve to death within a few eight days. The biochemical composition of this world was bound to be different and who knew what sort of effect it would have on their digestive systems. He remembered hearing the story of someone eating of an animal on Orsald, one of the first settlements outside of Darass. The meat of the animal has all but destroyed his digestive system from one time consumption.

At least they would not have died of thirst. What little there was microbiotic life in the water would not harm them at all. Only it did.

While Dacen had been spared, Soess and Foed had been afflicted with dysentery. Whether it was from microbiotic life of this world or some trace elements, he did not know. It had been bad and reduced their already low chances of survival.

Thinking of it, Dacen cursed himself for his health and how he had been spared, while his friends had died only a few feather spans of the sun ago. He did not know whether it was that the spirits of this land had protected him as the shaman of the survey team and recognizing him as such, or if it had to do with his origin as a nomad of the Nejuto Ontan, following their migrating herds through the steppes of Beldra.

But it did not matter, he thought as he shoveled dirt to cover up his dead friends, again muttering and chanting apologies to their spirits. He was still alive, while they were dead.

He continued to labor under the burning rays of the midday sun of this world, using a large flat stone in lieu of a proper shovel, which had gone down with the shuttle, until he had covered up their bodies completely under many digit length of dirt, hopefully protecting their bodies from the scavengers of this world. They may not be edible, but he doubted either his friends spirits nor those of the scavengers would be happy afterwards.

In the end he smoothed out the patch of ground under which his friends lay, piling a number of stones on their grave, the large flat stone resting on top.

He walked back towards the fireplace where they had died, reaching for a piece of charcoal of the local wood, so that he may at least temporarily mark the place of their burial.

His tears continued to flow as he wrote the traditional markings on the stone, before reaching up to pluck a feather from his crest, sticking it into the creases of the stone marker. He then rammed the sekan of Foed into the ground next to the grave, the carbon fiber composite staff of the other nomad easily sinking a hand span or two into the ground, and then tied a length of cloth to it, allowing it to swing out in the breeze.

He lowered his head. Praying for a few moments to his dead friends and the spirits of the land, besieging them to forgive him. To forgive their superiors. He prayed for himself, hoping that his spirit would forgive his own superiors for this foolish idea of ignoring the orders of their superiors and that Quetzal head of state, the last of any read head of state still alive after the devastation of three races.

He had told all of them to leave this planet alone. That any attempt to set up settlements and to industrialize the natives would lead to all of them die by the hands of the Onouch'l Automatons and the death of another world. And the extinction of a fourth, maybe even fifth, species of sophonts to the rampage of The Plague.

Dacen cursed those that did influence some of the ones that had attempted to land on this world, to 'influence the primitives'. He had even heard some wanted to set themselves up ad gods, abusing the natives as cheap labor for their own gain, in an attempt to regain some semblance of power as to fight the Onouch'l.

He himself knew it for being madness. He was a shaman, he knew that the spirits of this world would be angered by such and it would all fail. Maybe even catastrophically, even if the Onouch'l never came here. He shuddered to think what would happen if they did not appease the local spirits, to commune with them and inform them of their plight.

He stared at the grave for long moments as those thoughts crossed through his mind, curing those short sighted fools again. Cursing himself for trying to be a voice of reason among them as they went down. Cursing that damned rock for killing his friends.

Then he wept again, for his own spirit, which he knew would roam this world forever, unable to find rest without a proper burial.

"I envy you, my friends," he muttered softly as he looked down to the grave where his friends lay. "You have passed into the spirit world and are beyond the cares of this world."

He shivered for a moment, feeling as if he was observed from somewhere nearby. Clearly his friends were looking at him now.

"Farewell," he finally said and gripped his senkan firmly and turned. He started to walk west, never seeing the two natives that had observed him as he had buried his friends.
 
Worldbuilding V1.0
FUCKING YES!!!

Will you be continuing this on SB and here or just here? Because if only here you could put a banner/link in the original thread that you posting it here. We would get a GAZZILION of people!
heh, don't even need to do that, just post the non edited chapters up here for people to beta before posting them to main if you wanna draw people over.
 
heh, don't even need to do that, just post the non edited chapters up here for people to beta before posting them to main if you wanna draw people over.
But that would defeat the purpose of my Patreon... :cry:
 
But that would defeat the purpose of my Patreon... :cry:
ah damn.

or maybe like some additional info.

There's an idea, you can scatter some additional extra world building info both here and on your own site to attract people over to both.

I'll see about linking this story on other parts of the net though so more people find it. :)
 
Feel free to link the story to here and ignore the SB and SV threads. Your forum after all. ;)

One of the precursors of Growing Horizons has a TVTropes page. *hint hing* *nudge nudge*
 
Worldbuilding - Everyone's favorite Steampunk Squid
I'm wondering if you should have kept your Mass Effect fic running based on popularity now...
 
I'm wondering if you should have kept your Mass Effect fic running based on popularity now...
In what sense?

And currently this is a necro. People are going to be expecting something new... ;)
 
Worldbuilding - The Discovery of Aliens - A Short Introduction
Huh, so now the soviet union collapsed anyway, and no Quetzal survivor fleet in the Oort cloud?
Yes, it did. And there are survivors in the Oort cloud of 61 Virginis. They just don't transmit much.
 
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