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(Posted on 03-03-2001)
Chapter 2 - The Bomb
I'm a fairly normal Daragiz beginning the second phase of his life. You may not know what a normal Daragiz is, but if you're at all observant you'll soon find out. You see, I have a need to prove myself, to get a name for myself - not uncommon to someone entering the second phase, which you may know as puberty - and as becoming another fighter pilot or captain would not be very creative, I've decided I will become a historian. During my off hours, I've been compiling memoirs of my family, various ancient texts, and other data into a large history atlas, and I'm creating this more personal version detailing the events during my own lifetime.
Of course, no history of the Daragiz people would be complete without a narrative detailing our escape from the clutches of the Kadee. As our history before that spanned six thousand years and was for the most part rather boring, I'll say nothing about the far past other than this: after a series of intraplanetary wars, the United Diplomatic Coalition arose from the ashes of a series of small factions. The UDC somehow convinced the leaders of each nation to meet at a neutral site, and Uvillsk, the lead diplomat, thought p a brilliant compromise that left everyone happy. Thus, our planet was united under one president.
Then, of course, the Kadee arrived, and we were forced to flee in 8987, the last year of the First Calendar. The Second Calendar began with our fleet cannibalizing three TH Freighters to create a station. Last-Ditch Outpost, as it was named by some prankster who obviously thought he was being quite humorous, was functional as a large space for living quarters and not much else. Five thousand civilians were able to live there for a few weeks, during which time the fleet put together a series of makeshift asteroid bombs, and the Kadee fleet arrived.
The first Kadee warships, being fairly slow and sluggish, smashed headfirst into the booby-trapped asteroids we had scattered across the system, being unable to differentiate between the normal asteroids and the bombs. The bombs, though, claimed only a few ships. Within minutes, the only undetonated bombs left had been brushed away by other explosions.
I'm surprised we survived that encounter. I suppose the only reason was that we split up after that, thinking (correctly) that it would be harder to track down and destroy two hundred different groups of ships than to track down and destroy one huge group of ships. I suppose we got out of that system with about nine hundred sixty ships - I don't know for certain, as records from before 50 S.C. are pretty sketchy. Anyway, my grandfather Kirochen and his mate Andrescha were assigned to a group of four freighters, one of which had a jump accelerator to get out of a system faster than the other three. Grandfather had done some tinkering. This group wandered through a globular cluster for a few years, gradually enhancing the engines of the freighters until 11 S.C., at which time Grandfather's group met another five wanderer freighters. We decided to stay together, and Grandfather enhanced that group's engines as well. However, in 13 S.C., a patrol group of Kadee destroyers found us and slaughtered one of our ships before we could shake them. Grandfather lived in fear after that as more Kadee ships were called into the area and we barely made it through three more attacks. Grandfather had a child late in life, and until 15 S.C., when my father was born, he was worried that he would be killed with no one to pass along his engineering knowledge to. Finally, there was a ray of hope, in the famous year of 18 S.C., during the fifth cycle.
At that time, our fleet of eight joined with another armada, comprised of fourteen freighters. In command of one of these was Resselina, who was working on a plan to eliminate the danger of the Kadee. Her first objective was to communicate to the rest of the groups the necessity of getting to the northernmost regions of the G'fengnis Nebula, in the far northwest area of our galaxy. Resselina's group had found a previously undiscovered hyperlink there, which we could use to escape the known galaxy. Resselina also planned to seal the gateway to the Kadee after going through. Now, with the fourteen ships now in her arsenal, she had enough power.
Resselina was building a giant bomb in her freighter's engine core.
What she proposed was that everyone in the rigged freighter be evacuated to others and that the rest of us would escape through the hyperlink. She would stay behind on her freighter to explode the bomb, which would trigger a reaction in the hyperspace drive's galanzium core, which would cause a mirroring explosion in hyperspace, erasing the hyperlink from existence and stopping any Kadee from pursuing us.
Grandfather was opposed to her plan. In his opinion, it would leave more than half of the Daragiz left in the Kadee galaxy, as we'd only managed to make contact with about a dozen more ship groups on narrow-band comm frequencies. If we switched to wide-band transmissions, Grandfather had argued, the Kadee would track us down and destroy anyone trying to get to us. His choice would have been to wait a few years until we had more ships, but Resselina overruled his advice and proceeded on her own.
By 20 S.C., the construction of the explosive device and the collection of energy modules to power it was complete, and we were on our way to the G'fengnis hyperlink. On the way, we accumulated followers until we numbered one hundred forty-six freighters. According to one freighter's captain, the rest of his group had been decimated by Kadee battleships, and he had seen dozens more ships destroyed in the same way. Resselina was undaunted.
Most people of my generation see Resselina as a hero for our people, the woman who gave us our freedom. I, however, have a different viewpoint, thanks to my grandfather. He told me that she was rude and stubborn, seeing victory only by following her own path and shoving others with her, even if it meant their death. According to Grandfather, she succeeded because of pure good luck.
Anyway, once we reached the hyperlink, we had only two hundred freighters with us. Resselina convinced the makeshift council we'd assembled out of our ship captains that the other eight hundred had been destroyed by the Kadee. To Grandfather, this was an obvious lie - it was virtually impossible that the Kadee could have found that many that fast. Indeed, he's sure that there are still some of us in the Kadee galaxy.
The way Grandfather tells it, the explosion was wonderful - from an aesthetic point of view. However, even as he appreciated the marvelous visual spectacle of Resselina's ship exploding and scattering energy fragments everywhere in livid color, he still couldn't help thinking about the millions of lives she had just doomed....
Coming soon: Chapter Three: The Council
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 03-03-2001).)
I am a bit uncomfortable with the narrator's use of 'we,' as it makes me think that he was witness to the historic acts he relates. Still, you could make a case for the narrator using 'we' to describe a strong racial/tribal bond.
But apart from that: an impressive narrative! Great voice with wry undertones, and an entertaining weaving of the personal and the historical. Looking forward to the next installment.
------------------ PlanetPhil not drowning, waving
Very nice!
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