History speaks little about those that first crawled from the first primordial oozes at the beginning of the universe. Little is known about how they developed, what desires and instincts drove them to do what they did. And even less is recorded about what kind of civilizations they built, their culture, music, poetry, or even how they felt about each other. Evolution, the shaping force of creation, made most with two legs, two arms and a head, like the majority of species currently populating the galaxy, such creatures apparently the most efficient of nature’s designs for upright sapients.
What is known about the races of the dawn is that they were powerful. They were the first of their kind: intelligent creatures that saw the fledgling universe before any others. And they were the first to learn its secrets, how to bend it to their will, and how to make dream into reality.
Yet this knowledge, as much knowledge does, came at a price. And that price was confrontation and conflict. When one species that considers itself godlike in its ability to manipulate reality, comes face to face with another species that has the same self regard, the results are seldom pretty but always predictable: comparison, envy, derision, jealousy and, finally, anger. And when one godlike species wants what another wants, or already has, war is the result.
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As vast as a small planetoid, the ship stumbled into the newly formed system, leaking energy and pieces of itself. Charged particle shields, made to protect the massive hull, flickered with multiple failures, mirroring the breaches in the hull beneath, the shields smashed aside by weapons that were made to shatter stars. And with those shields knocked down, the hull had buckled beneath the strain of trying to keep those weapons at bay.
Sensors sweeping ahead of the stricken vessel found the fifth planet habitable and laboriously the great ship turned itself to head towards it. The effort to change course however, was too much for the ship’s overtaxed integrity system to withstand. The ship’s surface rippled with one last attempt to contain the limitless power within its drive and power grid. Then it exploded, the force of its abrupt demise sending a ripple through the very fabric of the space-time continuum.
Sending fragments the size of cities spraying in every direction, the titan died, secondary explosions rupturing its surviving structure into ever smaller pieces. Until, with a final series of brilliant flashes and reality-twisting shudders of force, it was gone, the newly formed star system having become its graveyard filled with pieces of its failed body.
Over the fifth planet, and the two other planets in the system with atmospheres, the skies lit up with a fiery rain as debris from the ship’s death, both large and small, was either pushed in by the force of the explosion or pulled in by gravity, began to fall to the surface. Not yet old enough to support life, nothing watched as a piece the size of a large island split the air with a howl and a shockwave that shattered the lava fields that stretched in every direction beneath its entry point. Then the planetary crust itself was cracking as the fragment slammed into the planet’s surface, the impact forming a crater that would’ve covered a continent while burying the fragment deep beneath the rocky surface.
There it was hidden, as were many of its colleagues, mute testimony to the violence of the ship’s death. And above them, unheeding to the destruction that so briefly made the very substance of space quiver, the stars shone down in silence.
* * * *
Resources; regardless of how advanced a species could become, the availability of raw materials was the determiner of how quickly that species continued to grow and expand their spheres of influence, even if they had control over the conversion of matter to energy and back again. Nothing allowed quick expansion better. Thus were so many of the more advanced species in this galaxy, and others, actively engaged in the search and accumulation of raw materials.
In the secondary galactic arm, known by some as the Centarus Arm, of what some of the human derivative species call the Milky Way Galaxy, a number of species were working hard at accumulating raw materials at a rapid rate. The greatest of these were the Au’six, an oxygen breathing species in standard two legs, two arms format, in command of a vast protectorate spanning thousands of star systems. And on this day, the Au’six were surveying an uninhabited but relatively ancient star system on the edge of a globular cluster close to their borders after preliminary scans detected large deposits of heavy metals and rare earths.
The geophysics technician frowned as he lifted his hand held scanner once more and let its beams probe the rock wall in front of him yet again.
“Logistics reports that you’ve come to a stop, EHM-72.” A quiet voice hissed into his ear. “Have you discovered something of importance?”
Encapsulated in a heavy environmental suit, engineered to withstand both the temperature and the pressure at the depths he was working at, over six kilometers below the surface of the fifth planet in the system they were surveying, the technician nevertheless began to sweat at the quiet question. He swallowed and cleared his throat.
“Affirmative, control.” He replied, his voice overloud in his padded helmet even as the scanner flashed confirmation of the earlier reading. “My handheld has detected something buried in the primal strata I was scanning. The return signature matches that from the item we found in the asteroid belt five days ago.”
“Geological age of the strata layer?” The question came quickly and the technician was forced to do a quick calculation in his head.
“Approximately twelve and a half billion years.” The answer was almost a whisper.
Deep and profound silence greeted his revelation, those on the other end of the com line obviously considering his words. Then, like lightning falling from the sky:
“Prepare for withdrawal, EHM-72. This site has now been categorized as classified, under control of the military. You will be extracted in five, four, three, two, one, . . .”
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YOU ARE READING
A Whisper of War (ON HOLD)
Science FictionKoden Gaal was a sapient on a mission. He and his team of security specialists at Moonsteel Security, had been hired by the biggest and most powerful government in the Centarus Arm, the Au'six, to retrieve a stolen Progenitor artifact. But after w...
