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טיזר מתוך Lilith: Operation Genesis
בתגובה להודעה מספר 1 שנכתבה על ידי MS_Rogue שמתחילה ב "The Lilith Sanders series - סדרת ספרים מפרי עטי, עכשיו באמזון"
Through the looker's eyes, Day of Last Contact
“ ...we did not choose this war. We do not want this war. We might not win this war. Still, if the aliens wish to destroy us, we will give them war. We will give them such war that they will never, ever forget!.” - Excerpt from President Francois Antioch's Declaration of War speech, Circa 2227
Like most things in life, rather than happen in a big and melodramatic bang, the beginning of the end would happen in nothing but ominous silence. After a galactic war that lasted almost a century and spanned several star systems, the aliens were ready to execute their victory blow, a blow that nobody would see coming.
It began in space, with a massive alien starship entering the Solar System's Kuiper Belt. Officially, Space Corps referred to ships such as this one as “Artificial Mobile Planetoids.” They were codenamed Gargantuans and gargantuan the ship was. Nearly 10 kilometers in diameter, the warship was a mobile stellar fortress, heavily armored and armed to the teeth. One of these ships could easily lay siege to an entire planet; a feat such a ship recently performed when the Orions forced the human race out of the colony at Tau Ceti. An informed human observer, had there been one, would have noticed that the ship was somewhat different in shape than the regular Gargantuans. Its oval shape was pockmarked with square towers and pylons holding power cables. At the fore of the ship, where what passed for a command bridge was located, an extra layer of protective armor has been added, although was made of tritanium, an alloy more suited for radiation shielding than against beam weapons or missiles. The engine exhausts in the back of the great ovoid were also beefed up and an array of external power capacitors has been built around them like a buffer, as if the designers wanted to keep them safe from accidental power surges. Line after line of large capacitors, power transformers and safety dischargers ran around the body of the ship. The ship's external structures carried enough industrial-quality supragold cables to wire a large metropolis's power network. The Gargantuan's top was partially sunken, made into a huge parabolic antenna that was nearly 4 kilometers in diameter. Normally, a ship like this had a large launch bay, a gaping maw capable of spitting out swarms of fighters, bombers and heavily armed frigates in battle. In this one, the launch bay was replaced with what seemed to be an immense barrel. The diameter of the barrel was more than 300 meters across, something unparalleled by anything human history has ever recorded. It's length went deep into the Gargantuan's bowels, making it presumably as long as 12 kilometers from breach to muzzle. Whatever cannon this barrel belonged to, would undoubtedly be the most powerful weapon any human has ever seen. This Gargantuan was a sight that would send any human seeing it running for their life.
But there was no human there to see it.
The first warning any human got was when Vagabond Nine, a robotic hyperwave telemetry monitor satellite in the Kuiper belt noticed a massive spike of energy in hyperspace. The robotic station transmitted the telemetry to Earth United's Space Research Agency's center on Titan, the moon of Saturn. Holographic displays in the EUSRA control center were displaying the readings from over a hundred satellites in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Sentry satellites were transmitting information of ship movement in Hyperspace. Eagle Eye telescope satellites were constantly monitoring the universe for stellar phenomena. Vagabond satellites – Vags, as EUSRA technicians called them – followed on the transmission sent and received through the hyperwave broadbands and the Galactic Cybernet. The average reading on a Vag monitor was looked like a wave, going up and down softly as people went about their normal activity. There would be the occasional spikes, especially during Gravball season, but by and large the wave form was the prevalent telemetry on the Vag monitors.
Vag-Nine's monitor spiked up so high the display could not compensate and the form was broken. The system automatically attempted to compensate by expanding the view, trying to encompass the new spike. It was useless. The monitor could not “zoom out.” enough to follow the transmissions.
A monitor operator viewed the data incredulously for all of 30 seconds before raising a cry for his superior.
EUSRA Shift Manager Samuel Munro was at his office when the warning arrived. He ran the 10 meters from his desk to the monitoring station.
“I'm getting this reading from Vag-Nine, Sam,” the operator indicated the screen, “some sort of massive influx of energies. We're talking readings so far off the scale that Vag can't even see the upper end of them. As far as Vag is considered, those energies are boundless or nearly so.”
“ Could it be a false reading?” Professor Munro scratched his chin, “some sort of sensor malfunction?”
“ Can it be anything else?” the operator replied, “this flux is like… Sam, if we digitized every bit of information in every human databank in the galaxy and transmitted it through hyperwave at the same instance, we would not be getting a fraction of a percent of this flux. The computer is having glitches just from trying to process the data.”
“ What about power?” the Professor replied. It was theoretically possible to transfer power through hyperwave, although this was beyond mankind's technical ability. Munro eyed the monitor, “A flux like this, could it be some sort of-“
“ Sam,” the operator replied patiently, “we're talking such a massive flux. In theory, if we combined every last nuclear and fusion reactor in the whole solar system, we might reach a fraction of a percent of this power but… you'd need something of a galactic scale to get that kind of power. I'm talking a supernova or something of that magnitude, all concentrated into one continued instance of power transmission. By all means, those readings are incredible.”
“ Tell me about it,” Professor Munro said.
“ No,” the operator shook his head, speaking slowly “I mean they are incredible. That is, they cannot be real. Vag-Nine's probably just having a sensor malfunction of some extreme sort. You might want to inform Orris Station. I think they'll need to send in a repair crew.”
He was wrong. 10 minutes later, Vagabond Seven, in orbit around Eris also picked up those readings. This by itself was an alarming escalation, as the dwarf planet was 400 Light Minutes away from them Kuiper Belt, nowhere near the source of the emissions Vagabond Nine was picking up. It was as if whatever was happening was moving into or around the Solar System, even though neither Vag Nine nor Seven could pick up a source. This situation was enough to raise alarms all across Sol. Space Corps fleets were put on alert while reconnaissance assets, both manned and unmanned, were rushed towards the edges of the system. However, by that time, it was already too late.
Idling in the same position, the Gargantuan continued its activity undisturbed. The parabolic antenna built into the back of the Orion ship was now glowing fiercely, channeling amounts of energy so vast they could only be monitored on a galactic scale. Currents of power were running around the pylons, glowing from the towers, crackling as they built up in the ring of capacitors around the engines. A random asteroid nearing the ship was suddenly pulverized by a power current discharge from one of the hundreds of safety dischargers. Even in the coldness of space, the supragold wiring was under enough stress that it heated to almost room temperature.
There was a visible change in the barrel as well. An energy buildup was happening, a beam of extremely condensed energies growing from the muzzle. It seemed to flow out and dissipate immediately, but anyone who would've seen it would've noticed afterglows spreading in space, like the strange after lights seen when you close your eyes after someone flashed you with a bright light.
The condensed power would require another two minutes before an invisible sphere suddenly erupted, unleashing unheard of amounts of energy at Sol system.
Less than 5 seconds later, all hyperwave signals coming from Sol were cut off, disappearing abruptly and mysteriously.
The Orions made their endgame move and no human anywhere has seen it coming.
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 מר רוג - כי החיים קצרים מדי לשמות מלאים
נערך לאחרונה ע"י MS_Rogue בתאריך 16-05-2014 בשעה 04:12.
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15-05-2014, 21:13
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