May 27 2621

                                                                            May 27 2621

Prologue…

No one knows for sure, but the year is thought to be near 2602
We base what we know almost entirely on remnants of human archives drifting in and out of mankind’s grasp.

Little is definite, but what is known is that they came in the later part of 2284.The human race had expanded greatly, they called it the age of flourish for every civilization on the globe, but that was exactly the problem, our own stupid race became so engaged in advancement that we got ahead of ourselves.

It was now 2108 and the human population on earth had grown drastically to almost 15 billion, we had enlarged by nearly 2 billion people in the 100 years since the turn of the 21st century,
By 2158 the earth could no longer sustain our numbers we were so great. Rivaled by the governments, the largest companies and organizations at the time funded independent expeditions in space to find a new resting place for the men women and children of an overpopulated earth… we found nowhere.
12 years later a small repair craft named, Alpha Beta Stellar , lost in a largely unexplored portion of our galaxy stumbled upon a dense cloud with a strong magnetic field, the ship survived passage through this cloud and found on the other side… a new solar system, waiting, sitting closer to our own than anyone had ever thought possible.

Within two years of discovering this new system, the Human Galactic Union had explored and mapped over 85% of its spread, finding it much larger than our own and having much more potential than we could ever have hoped for.

In total there were 16 known planets in the new solar system… by now known as Dorian Swiess, Portuguese for “grand beginning”.
Of the 16 planets in the solar system three showed promise, none were perfect but these three stood out, they had almost breathable air, rich resources, and the air was heavy with the gases needed to produce plasma energy.

The union put in place a plan to terraform these worlds to make them inhabitable by humans, the length of the process varied on the condition of the planet but was expected to take about 55years.

The first terraforming began on the planet Horvay in 2175.

The terraforming was taking longer than anticipated, we were off schedule and already had almost 16 million people working at the site, 400 controlling from a centre on earth and between 4 and 5 million settlers on the moon and orbiting ships awaiting their new homes.

The terraformation of Horvay was completed in late 2239.

2264 and the human empire was spreading further still, we now had a total population of 22 billion people, there were a few thousand living on earths moon, 20 billion on earth itself, and just under 2 billion on Horvay, but earth was still unable to cope with us…. Almost all 22 billion humans had their eyes on the next planet, it was becoming more beautiful with every month, and the technology being used to make it that way was highly advanced, it would be complete in just 27 years.

Mans biggest mistake was ignorance

















































Tylor Hilden was trapped deep within his thoughts, his voice had become distant…alien to even himself.
He had been in his laboratory for almost three solid months now, working feverishly, day in and day out, but he thought he was almost done, he was painfully close to establishing the first human interplanetary communications in almost 300 years.
Outside his lab sat the entire earth population of 2000 people waited anxiously in the ruins of a pre-x city. X was the term given to the great assault on man kind, a devastating event in human history that ended the age of flourish and began the scavenger years.
Every man woman and child in the city was desperately awaiting the ability to finally make contact with the 6 or 7 billion people estimated to be living on the planet Horvay, they awaited other human contact and they awaited their removal from this forsaken rock.
Tylor fancied himself a scientist or maybe even a historian, but he was a jack of all trades… and master of none.
He had been studying the attack for nearly 13 years now and he knew more about what had happened than any of his fellow humans.
He knew that after the event there were only 53 survivors on earth, he knew that their enemy had attacked from a blind spot and entirely out of cold blood, and he knew that they were a mighty force. Among these facts he also knew two other things that everyone on the home world knew, about two hundred years after the event, all but a few humans on earth suddenly became sterile, that no electronics worked and without the knowledge to build new ones… none ever would.
They had assumed that the attack had been nuclear, and that that was why the plants had stopped growing, only the people living at the poles had survived and even then we became sterile, but that was where Tylor had made his big breakthrough. Whilst reading a very old book on physics one afternoon, he discovered a basic diagram of a machine that reads levels of radioactivity, the book also stated that after a nuclear detonation, the air and ground could remain radioactive for thousands of years, using  the diagram, some scrap metal and the speedometer from an old train, Tylor built one of these devices and went exploring, he knew he was at the northern most point of the continent once known as Antarctica. He found a boat at an old research station and explored for almost 200 kilometers in every direction, everywhere he went he tested the air, the ground and the water, and nowhere he went did he find any evidence of radioactive material.
In the second week of his expedition Tylor did find something interesting, a small coastal island is what the map said, but his eyes said differently , he found an entire island shining, literally as though it were glass, he found more of these islands near by, and when he explored inland he found multiple areas, some tens of square kilometers that had been superheated through million year old layers of ice and into the earth underneath, revealing huge reflective craters in the desolate ice plains.

8 weeks after leaving the city, Tylor returned and with him brought knowledge, not only from what he had seen but from the places he had been… on one of the untouched islands he had found a research station much like his own, he knew there would be no survivors, but he did find books, lots of books, and a very old computer which according to some crew journals he located, housed the entire Australian scientific research database, and an electronic encyclopedia.

Back at his lab Tylor found all the important books he could, electronics, plasma, engineering, and more physics, from all these books he was able to build a very simple crank that generated and stored electricity when you turned the handle.

With this primitive generator Tylor was able to operate the computer for small amounts of time, just long enough to continue his research and figure out how to build a hydro generator, now with sufficient electricity to run the computer, an electric heater and a home made oven Tylor announced his plans to a crowd of disbelieving people, he told them he intended to connect to the planet Horvay and send a cry for help, and that if it didn’t work he would build a ship and fly there himself.

After 2 weeks of testing, Tylor had succeeded in making a radio that could transmit audio almost 3 kilometers for up to a minute without exploding.
Soon enough he had even built a model of his ship, and named it too.

Now, three months after his return to civilization Tylor had built 4 generators for the others and two more for himself, he was ready to try and make contact with Horvay on his makeshift radio tower, he knew it worked… he had tested it on multiple portable units he had built, and he knew it would reach for at least 200 000 kilometers, which was far enough to get to the orbiting repeater station above earth, he also knew however that if he didn’t get a signal, than the repeater was down, and he would have to travel to Dorian Swiess and find the others himself.

At what was commonly agreed to be midnight that night, Tylor wheeled his 7 meter radio out into the plains where it was gathered around by every human on earth,
He switched it on.
It beeped.
It spewed static for 1 square kilometer.

After about five minutes of adjusting the placement, Tylor found the repeaters frequency, he spoke frantically of survivors and generators and needing help, and was answered only with more deafening static.

Slowly the crowd diminished until there was no on left in the icy Antarctic desert except Tylor who was still bent like a madman over his creation fiddling with dials and buttons. This continued for 6 hours until he was blue at he lips and his skin began  to freeze, but at last he found a signal, a signal being broadcast by the repeater stations emergency backup channel, it was…

Music…
The station was playing pre-x music, artists like led zeppelin and pink.
Once again, Tylor yelled at the microphone for salvation, this time he even heard his own voice returned just seconds after sending it, his own voice, loud above the music… received no reply.

It was two weeks after the music that Tylor Hilden decided to go ahead with plan b, he had already found the materials needed for his ship, drawn the blues prints, based on an old craft he had found on the computers history files, and he had built half an engine.

It took Tylor 5 more months until he was satisfied that his ship was ready to withstand the beatings of cold and radiation that it would have to endure within the vast nothingness of space, he had followed the computers blueprints exactly and even had the ship running on a 460 year old fossil full combustion system.

2 weeks after his vessels completion, Tylor and 4 of his companions donned their thickest clothing and a crate of dried food mainly fish and seals, being some of the only animals left near the city, they climbed triumphantly into the ship, each one hoping that they would soon be climbing out in just the same way, except in front of millions of smiling faces.
Hilden made the final touches to his creation, he broke an antique glass bottle across the bow, and stenciled the units name on the engines, “Alpha Beta Stella 2”.


It was almost two years before Hilden and his team came to the magnetic clouds that marked the gateway between the two solar systems.
The instant they had crossed the magnetic threshold they were amazed, Tylor himself was in disbelief, and although the crew of the allied assault cruiser in from of them were just as shocked, they were much more cautious,
If man had learned anything from the attack, it was that we were not alone and that we had to expect the unexpected.

Unfortunately the most sophisticated systems of communication that Tylor had been able to build from his materials were a 400 year old radio that operated on a long abandoned analog system, and a series of flashing lights that had been destroyed by the magnetic field in the clouds.

The captain of the cruiser attempted to contact the small vessel almost 10 times, and when no reply was received… under rule 16 of the interplanetary code of conduct, the ship “Alpha Beta Stella 2”, was fired upon and destroyed at 11pm may 27, 2621.