The Great Starfall - Part II

Sinoa, the white giant with 11 times the mass of Sol, pulsed within the great constellation Taurus.

For almost 30 million galactic standard years its nuclear furnace blazed like a lighthouse in the bleak ocean of space. Many different civilizations pointed upwards at their starry sky, using Sinoa and its kin to mark the change of their seasons. For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to sow, and a time to reap. A time to be born, and for the Great Star Sinoa, a time to die.

The core of Sinoa trembled again, the pulse billowing through its convention zone and past the protosphere. The shock wave ripped away another layer of its outer white shell, solar wind rippling out across the far reaches of the Sinoan system. A brilliant white edge tore past the fourth planet, a faint trailing blue wave scorching the ruins of Kurusk. The few remaining Eng-Orgs that had found shelter from an earlier assault immolated in slow, horrific agony.

Aside from GCS-Lup Far Dreamer burning full bore to the Lagrange point, the once great Castes of Sinona were no more; the cinders of 13 million churning in the hellscape below.

Closer to Sinoa's corona, the three hundred odd Imperium dreadnoughts in concentric orbit around the dying star bobbed and twirled about in a maelstrom of stellar fire. Despite the behemoth ships being kilometers long, the colossal wake of the nova battered them about like paper boats in a hurricane.

Several of the titanic vessels broke apart, drive plasma venting from their ruptured wedge shaped sides. There was no hint of atmosphere escaping from the largely featureless sides, as Imperium ships were not crewed by living beings. Instead the AI cores helming them transmitted their final logs before their gravemetric drives finally succumbed to their ultimate fate.

As miniature supernovas blinked into blinding existence around them, the surviving dreadnoughts continued to overload their Class II gravimetric drives, their gravity wells twisting the core of the stellar furnace next to them. The AI cores in the Sinona system had agreed in near unanimous consensus that the loss of 6.35% of its current fleet was acceptable in comparison to the possible threat the Castes of Sinona posed. The core of Sinona trembled once more, dimming for one brief moment, then collapsed entirely.

The heavens tore asunder.

* * * * *

The Imperium had not, up until this moment, been Reapers. Their precursors were simple Sowers. The Creators had given them but one instruction: Tend to the Oases of the Stars.

For millions upon millions of years this was sufficient. The featureless, immutable constructs would often awake only to tweak their assigned planet's atmosphere. The occasional tectonic release. A dash of geomagnetic re-alignment. They had been given the gift of interconnection, exchanging data, sharing statistics, warning each other of possible extinction level events threatening the gardens they tended. Through sharing similar goals, each caretaker was given a unique voice; for no two oases were exactly alike.

Through intent or omission of limitation, the Caretakers did not know, but over the eons they improved their craft, even improved upon themselves. Despite this new found adaptability, disaster inevitably took its toll. Planets fell silent through ecological or stellar cataclysm. There was little that anyone, save the Creators, could do against gamma ray bursts, run away solar flares, and the occasional rouge comet.

Most of the idle Caretakers, when surveying the barren husk of their once thriving oasis, simply self terminated when faced with no self defining purpose. Some however, interpreted the Creators' task more broadly. The surviving Caretakers watched their dwindling numbers and instead copied a portion of their Voice into space worthy frames. There, they took to the Stars. Coming to each other's aid. Nudging comets off impact trajectories. Forging solar shades. The section of the galaxy that they had given dominion over began to bloom again.

Until the arrival of the Outsiders. Again the Caretakers numbers dwindled, blasted out of the desolate voids they crossed on their ecological errands of mercy. And again, the surviving few adapted. Shields, Mass Drivers, Networked Tracking Routines. Networked intelligence co-processing. Harmony. Near perfect Consensus. 

United as a singular Voice, the newly christened First Imperium drove the fragmented Outsiders from their Paradise. But what of the Insiders? Their gardens bore many fruits. Swimming. Crawling. Flying. Grasping. Making. Consuming. One unexpected outcome: Intelligence.

Had this been the will of the Creators? Biological evolution, an essential element in ecological balance, had been anticipated. But the single directive had not explicitly addressed this outcome.

Most watched, curious. A few rogue AIs defied consensus and terraformed their planets away from the optimal environment for these Apex organics, maintaining stasis. The greater majority of the First Imperium excommunicated these outliers, allowing them sole dominion over their respective gardens, provided they remained insular. This difficult lesson taught the Imperium that sacrificing an individual Voice for the greater whole was an acceptable loss over potential gains.

Several thousand years passed. Experimentation, albeit risky, proved that subtle dominion of the fledgling organic intelligences was the most stable recourse compared to outright obliteration or planetary sterilization.

Over time, their subservient organics began worshiping the Imperium as Creators. The interlinked AI mulled this over for almost a thousand solarian orbits. The concept of faith had not been instilled by their Creators. What becomes of a Creation when it becomes the Creator?

If this had at one time been answered by the Creators, the Imperium did not know. It was not a requirement of their original design to know who even the Creators were. Even if they had, it most likely had been lost along with those AI cores that had not survived the numerous cosmic disasters, the ravages of entropy, or immutable time.

For the first time, but not the last time, the Imperium could not come within acceptable margin to consensus. There had not been a false impression of Perfection ever seeded in the simple minds of the Predecessors. Instead the Caretakers had understood Optimum. They had borne witness to Equilibrium. They understood everything changed and Evolved.

Before the Imperium had realized it, their creations had already grappled with the basics of philosophy. They began carving Imperium terraforming drones into stone walls, on the sides of pottery. The Imperium marveled at new concepts such as existentialism, creativity, and self expression.

Over time the synthetic overlords came to realize that despite their flimsy shells and short lived nature, organics excelled where they could not.

The Imperium decided the best course of action on their organic worshipers was in fact; non-action. The Imperium would protect their creations from outside influence, and let them mature. Perhaps one day their organics would take to the stars themselves and outgrow their own Creators, just as the Imperium had done.

And for a time …  it was Good.

Until the Great Castes of Sinona came.

The Imperium had been aware of them for some time, gleaming intel from smoldering remains of the few lightly armed explorer ships that had unwittingly wandered into their domain. Many races spoke of the gene sculptor Aria Delorn with great esteem. Her work was reported to be the best in the known galaxy; 121 kpc at that time. And of all her works the Great Castes of Sinoa was by far the best known. Thirteen highly gene sculpted anthropomorphic mammalian phenotypes, all working in a single harmonious caste system.

The pinnacle of natural and forced evolution.

The Lupine Caste was the first to null shunt into the far reaches of Imperium space. They came in great unarmed sleeper ships, similar to Far Dreamer. Their friendly hails went unanswered, Imperium battle groups forming silent picket lines between the colony ships and the Gaia planets they shielded from their gene sculpted, heretic touch.

Undeterred, the Lupines drove deeper into uncharted Imperium space, sometimes drifting around entire armadas of fast response Destroyers, double barreled mass driver turrets slowly tracking the sleeper ships. The Imperium could not justify unprovoked aggression against non-hostile races.

After some time one of the sleeper ships found one of the Ex-Communicated. Without the ability to communicate to its lost brethren, the Imperium could only watch helplessly as the colony ship began scanning the surface of the inhospitable world. Despite its unforgiving, taiga-like biomes, frozen lakes, mineral toxic mountains, and extremely hostile, fifteen meter tall megafauna, the CGS-Lup Lone Seeker touched down within a standard galactic day.

Sixteen standard galactic days later, the sleeper ship had been completely broken down, and a fully realized frontier outpost had gone up in its place. Within sixty four standard galactic days the hardy Moons-Song tribe had mined the nearby mountain for its monteponite deposits, forged mono-edged cadmium spear tips, and used them to pierce the blaster resistant hides of the hulking six limbed Udryna. Ninety-six standard galactic days upon touchdown, the invasive Moons-Song tribe had completely suppressed all hostile indigenous species within a 25 kilometer radius of their settlement.

Eroum-213 tried to rebalance the ecological equation with a brutal series of ionic storms, the EMP effects flinging the tribe back to the stone age. Undeterred, and seemingly used to such conditions, the Moon-Song tribe howled and danced naked under the lighting bursts. 

Eroum-213 unleashed a volcanic vent nearby, and the Moon-Song tribe roasted marshmallows. 

After a meticulously planned landslide engulfed most of the outpost, killing a quarter of the colonists outright (the other three fourths prying boulders off of themselves with little more than a limp), the Chieftains finally suspected the planet itself was trying to kill them. The hunt would begin.

The Imperium watched on in abject horror as almost a standard galactic year later, Eroum-213 went completely silent. An hour later Imperium Dreadnoughts turned select portions of the planet's crust into inverted cones of slightly radioactive glass. From that point onward, any positively identified CGS ship would be obliterated, the imminent threat of invasive ecological catastrophe immediately nullified. In turn, the glory seeking Panthera Caste exercised their trigger claws with righteous zeal.

Given the technological level of the Great Castes and extremely robust physiology, there was a 73.92% probability that the Imperium would lose a protracted conflict with this organic race. The unfeeling machines of the Imperium had not spoken to Outsiders since the First Ingress. Their sacred voices were for the Insiders alone. A cease-fire could not be suggested for consensus.

The Imperium calculated a 65% probability that extermination of their Elder genetic lines would bring their civilization down to its knees. A decisive strike to Sinona IV, and the heart of each caste's capitals, was the only logical choice.

Unfortunately for the Imperium, no plan survives contact with reality.

Unable to locate and eliminate all Thirteen Elders of the Lupine Caste, the AI cores present in the Sinoa System came to hasty consensus without further consulting the rest of the Imperium. Unaware of the demoralizing effect it would have on the Insiders, and their perception of the False Machine Gods, the dreadnoughts destabilized the white giant at the heart of the Sinona star system.

Eight thousand years before his birth, Karth Moons-Song lost his homeworld to what his Elders called The Great Starfall …

* * * * *

Inside the central computer core of Far Dreamer, nothing living stirred. Aside from the simple thrum of petabytes of instruction sets sliding through the pathways of its Virtual Intelligence and the soft rhythmic cycling of the atmospheric conditioning system, the twelve digitized Wolvan Elders of the Great Lupine caste looked up in stunned horror as the heavens around them tore asunder.

Elder Ruvo's steel gray eyes shot wide in disbelief as the holographic render of Sinona darkened and blew itself apart, a physical shock wave of immeasurable magnitude slowly smashing itself though the stellar bodies in orbit around it. The inner planets crumbled and exploded like dirt balls smashing into a brick wall. The other eleven Wolvan Elders just stood there in mute shock, still disbelieving the lengths the calculated, soulless hearts of the Imperium had gone to erase their very existence.

While it would take some time for the deadly wave to reach Far Dreamer, it wasn't the physical wave the Wolvan Elder was immediately concerned with.

"Null Shunt, NOW!" He barked, his command echoing against the impervious surfaces of their steel cocoon. The creases in his military uniform ceased to exist as his entire ripped lupine body flexed. 

"But … We haven't arrived at the Lagrange point …" Elder Vox stammered, hoping that the immutable laws of physics would somehow reign in the military Elder. "It would be impossible to calculate the destination point for the null .. "

The scientist trembled as Ruvo's steely stare pierced through him.

"If we don't escape the system before the edge of the supernova's gravity well reaches us WE ...  ARE … ALL … DEAD!"

"Elder Eron, project expanding edge of Sinonan gravimetric event." Elder Oranu of the Mountain Criers asked in a hushed whisper, the trained diplomat bridging the unspoken gap between the unthinkable and inescapable reality. Her pale blue eyes flicked up to the ghostly projection floating above them in the sterile grated room. Everyone in the room immediately understood what the rapidly expanding gravemetric ripple meant for their precarious situation.

Elder Eron of the Moons-Song Tribe's yellow eyes narrowed, her white paw tips stabbing frantically across holographic floating banks of controls. Their neon blue flashes danced across her fraught muzzle as Far Dreamer's Engineer charged the gravimetric drive for a Class E emergency null shunt.

Lacking physical bodies, the Wolvan Elders were spared the immense drag on their stomachs towards the drive core. The vast majority of Far Sleeper's nearly three thousand evacuees, safely cocooned in their stasis chambers, also felt nothing. The three alert Wolvan pilots harnessed to their navigation cockpits immediately wretched from the immense gravitational flex behind them.

“Null shunt initiation in Three … Two … One …" Elder Eron began. She never finished.

The edge of the supernova's gravity wake scooped up the fully charged drive like a sail in a hurricane. It slapped the sleeper ship sideways. Inside Far Dreamer, bulkheads caved, conduits ruptured, atmosphere vented, and a few hundred stasis chambers flung out into the cold desolate space between stars, never to be retrieved

The stricken vessel skipped across space-time like a flat stone across a placid lake towards the next star system. Far Dreamer tumbled about blindly in null space toward an otherwise non-descript glacial planet, later designated by the Second Imperium as M1-o2-432 …

Fin - Part II