Preserving Perfection: Self-obsessing with body augmentation has left the entire planet of Ramos without children. But to acquire children means interstellar war! (Veiled Destiny Book 2)

by Jason Bourn

  Dorial sat upright, hoping for anything that might mitigate this disaster. “Go on Rheana, what do you have?”

  She paused, deep in thought. “There are actually two anomalous readings. First, the traffic coming from the planet was ...” She paused again, searching for the right word, “Well, it was just not right. Kind of too perfect, too predictable. If we didn’t have all the previous recordings, I would never have noticed it, but there is something a little too regular about all the traffic. I don’t know what this means, but there it is.”

  Dorial quickly looked at the data and thought about it, but it didn’t make any sense to him either. “What about the other anomaly?”

  “That one was an odd one too. It appeared like all the data was coming from a single source. I would have expected that there would be many sources of emanations across the planet, but the closer we came to the planet, the more it appeared to be emanating an entire planet’s worth of traffic, all from one site.”

  Grecian slowly muttered to himself, but out loud, “Maybe that’s because there was only one source.” He picked up speed as an idea formed in his mind. “Maybe there was a single transmitter and the data that we received was fabricated.”

  Dorial didn’t know if that hypothesis was good or bad, but he intended to find out if it was accurate. “OK people. Everyone go back to all your sensor data feeds and scrub them for any corroborating evidence.”

  Dorial then sent a message to the Terran robotic ship asking it for the same information.

  Using the superior processing power that was available on the Terran ship, far more than even Rheana’s enhanced processing, it provided a response after a brief interval, “Based on an analysis of the recorded and newly received data from the planet, there is over an eighty percent probability that the data received was not “real” data, but rather data artificially generated. After our ships were detected, the messages changed and the power level increased. This increase in power level was most likely not intended for us. Therefore, it follows that it was intended for someone else.”

  Markus sounded excited saying, “I dug into the radar and lidar returns and I can see something where the transmitter appeared to be broadcasting. However, the returns did not show a large city near the transmitter, nor was there any evidence of other cities anywhere on the planet’s surface.”

  Rheana said, “There appears to be reasonable evidence that there was no large settlement on Torval. Therefore, I would propose a theory that they merely sent a reconnaissance probe with an artificial intelligence-based transmitter to generate messages simulating a slowly growing settlement world. This AI-based transmitter would serve a couple of purposes. It would lull Earth into thinking they were monitoring the settlement and had everything under control. Also, it could serve as a warning to the actual destination when Earth, or Ramos in this case, actually came calling. This was when they sent the high-powered alert messages.”

  Dorial nodded. “It does seem quite ingenious. A cheap atomic generator would allow this transmitter to keep broadcasting for thousands of years. It would be a simple, yet effective way of giving them a heads-up that someone has come looking for them.”

  Rheana added, “If they wanted to send the data to another star system, they would have needed to use a quantum transmitter to allow it to go faster than light. Just like our FTL drives, it would need to be located far enough away from the planet for it to work.”

  Dorial instantly took command saying, “OK people, you now have the search parameters. Let’s parse this out, with everyone taking a quadrant. If there is a transmitter out there, I want it found now.”

  Immediately everyone went to work, searching for the theorized transmitter. The transmitter on the planet would send out in all directions going at the speed of light. This was what Earth had received many years after it was transmitted. The quantum transmitter, on the other hand, was, as Einstein said, “spooky action at a distance”. This was how both the quantum drive and the quantum transmitter worked. The quantum transmitter was, of course, much simpler, only needing to send digitized information – essentially just ones and zeros – off in a specific direction and at a specific distance. They had that technology from Earth when the ship had launched, although it was still quite new at the time.

  So now Dorial had focused all their efforts into finding a quantum transmitter somewhere circling the planet about three ship-days’ journey away. The volume of space was huge, but they had five ships and the time and processing power to use a brute force approach.

  – – –

  After searching for more than three days they still had not found it.

  Rheana, after consulting her ship interfaces, volunteered: “After an exhaustive search, there is a 99.4% chance that this transmitter does not exist. We looked everywhere from three, all the way out to ten, days out from the planet. It is very unlikely that it is further out than that – there is just no need to have it out that far and it takes more power for the handshaking transmissions the further from the planet you go. It is highly probable that this is a dead end.”

  The four Ramos leaders each sat in their own ships contemplating what this meant. If this was true, then their society was, for all intents and purposes, going to go extinct.

  Grecian finally said, “OK, if it is not more than three days out, maybe it is less than three days out.” Before anyone could object, he said, “Bear with me here – I know that it wouldn’t work, but what if it is now less than three days out, but before it was exactly that far. They could have sent it planet-bound after the emergency message was sent. I just looked back at the sensor data and found a small energy signature at approximately the correct location right after the emergency message was sent. I am plotting potential trajectories of where it could be now… Hold on just one more minute.”

  Grecian paused, then smiled and said, “The good news is that I found it. It looks like I was right. It had been in orbit around the planet, but it just recently altered its course, sending it tumbling towards the remains of the planetary mass. If we hadn’t looked for it quickly, we would never have found it. The bad news is there is no way to determine where it was sending its signal to. We are going to have to scan all the stars within 125 light years or so from here. They most likely didn’t go too much further than that. It’s going to take a while, but there is no doubt that we should be able to find them, if they are emanating, even if the data is 125 years old.”

  – – –

  It had been much easier to find where the second ship had gone than Dorial had expected. They had mapped out the stars that were within 125 light years from Torval and found several thousand. They had parsed them among the five ships, breaking them into sectors and giving each ship a sector. The hardest part had been to design and build sufficiently sensitive receivers to be able to receive any transmissions from so far away. They had plenty of processing power to remove the “white noise” that was ubiquitous.

  They had found the first signs of life in less than two weeks – and only seventy light years away. This was quickly followed by more hits from many of the star systems close to the first hit.

  “It appears,” Dorial said to the group, “that our friends have been very proliferant and industrious. They have populated planets across many star systems. It appears that we have our pickings of where we want to go.”

  Rheana added, “By far the most emanations are coming from one planet. This appears to be their home world, which, after interpreting their transmissions, they have dubbed Torval 2. The rest of the worlds that they have populated are within a big circle, with Torval 2 roughly in the center. Torval 2 appears to be an Earth-like planet with slightly more than fifty percent of the surface area covered in oceans, but it has three small moons, each of which are much smaller than Earth’s moon.

  Edgar spoke, which was very unusual for him, “I propose you hit a few of their furthest away worlds first and then work your way into their main world, for several reasons: This will
allow us to more accurately gauge their defenses. Also, these remote worlds are most likely far less well defended. Finally, we will learn as we go, making changes to our strategy as needed. I should note that we probably won’t find vast numbers of children on the remote worlds, but that shouldn’t impede you from accomplish your mission – as long as we are successful in getting to their main world, we should be all right. The more children we get on the remote worlds, the less time we’ll have to spend near their home world, which we should assume will be much more heavily defended.”

  “Edgar,” Markus said laughing, “you are still with us. I haven’t heard from you in ages. I thought you might have left your ship on automatic, since you have so many other important things to do on Earth.”

  Edgar did not respond to this barb, which made Markus laugh even harder.

  After a quick discussion, they all agreed to take Edgar’s recommendation. They were ready to attack the humans on their worlds.

  CHAPTER 5 – WINDS OF WAR

  Nadia Davidson felt the meeting was doomed to failure.

  She had finally succeeded in gathering the representatives of each of the planetary factions together, all in one room. That in itself had taken years of effort. The goal of the meeting was grandiose: to get an agreement to establish a federation among all the planets. The intent was to stop the escalating violence that had taken more and more lives and created near lawlessness over their vast and growing star system territory.

  Torval 2 had been settled hundreds of years earlier, directly from man’s birth place – the almost mythical planet Earth. For the first several generations they had grown their numbers steadily, then more rapidly as the terraforming of the planet made the world more life-friendly.

  It appeared life that humans were familiar with was not nearly as common as most scientists had expected. Conditions had to be just right to get complex life started in the first place, specifically that miracle of DNA which provided such diversity and ability to become plants and animals. Rudimentary life was found on many other worlds, but it appeared that Earth was the only planet that successfully figured out how to chemically encode the information necessary to perform complex functions and replicate itself. Earth, it seemed, had just the right environment of harshness and softness: too harsh and everything was killed off; too soft and there was never any need to change, to develop complex structures. At any rate, once the colonists had introduced all the DNA-based life forms to Torval 2, there was no turning back. Life prospered, including human life.

  After the population grew to sufficiently to populate Torval 2, small groups had traveled to nearby star systems with promising planets for subsequent colonization. Terraforming these planets quickly gave the more adventurous of them control over more and more habitable worlds. Fortunately, Torval 2 was located in a much denser region of space than Earth was, so it was much more feasible to not only emigrate to these closer star systems, but also to conduct trade.

  Trading between planets was profitable enough that groups of them aligned under the strongest of the leaders. The most powerful of these planetary magnates was Garth Nolan, boasting almost twenty planets under his direct control and authority – large enough that it was called a kingdom. The second most powerful was Kadar Rahib, controlling more than ten planets as his own kingdom. Both of these men were at the meeting.

  The last major group represented at the meeting was the Periphery representative, Saul Voluck. Saul represented the large group of unaffiliated worlds that were the furthest from Torval 2. This group consisted of fiercely independent planets that strongly rejected control from any and all off-world would-be leaders. Saul was at the meeting, but was not empowered to do anything but collect information that the Periphery planets would look at, but would most likely ignore as a matter of course.

  The situation had been getting worse and worse as time progressed. There was strong evidence that both Garth and Kadar had used force more than once to acquire more worlds into their empires – and neither leader was scaling back on their rate of planetary acquisitions. Those that might have objected simply disappeared. Once a planet was brought into the fold, they lost all rights and had to answer directly to the planetary magnate. As bad as Garth and Kadar were, those still trying to establish smaller empires were even more ruthless, meaning if a planet fell under their control, Garth’s and Kadar’s planets appeared like amusement parks in comparison.

  Life on Periphery planets was not any easier. Conditions were much harsher, with terraforming just started on many of these “newer” worlds. The lawlessness was legendary, akin to the one-saloon towns of the wild, wild west in old folklore. Anything went on these planets, and there was no higher authority that could or would help.

  Getting the four of them all in one room was difficult. Getting them to agree to establish a federation among all the planets to help put an end to the most severe of the abuses was not anything that any of the other three would even contemplate. It just wasn’t in their best interests. Both Garth Nolan and Kadar Rahib saw a centralized force as a threat to their multiple planetary holdings. Saul Voluck would not agree to any kind of challenge to the independence of the Periphery planets, centralized or otherwise. The only reason that they had agreed to meet in person was the threat of a trade embargo.

  Nadia, as the leader of Torval 2, had gained that position by running on the platform of uniting all the worlds under a single governing body. The Federation, as this was commonly referred to as, was at this point only a dream. To be sure, it was a popular dream on Torval 2 – and hence Nadia’s landslide victory in the last election. It hadn’t hurt at the ballot box that she was the direct descendant of the original founding leaders, Calaes and Hope Davidson. However, popularity on Torval 2 was one thing. Federation popularity on the rest of the mostly lawless worlds was almost entirely of the negative sort – ranging from polite refusal to threats of violence and terrorism if outside control were ever thrust upon them.

  The meetings had been going on for days and Nadia had resigned herself that any further discussion would be fruitless. As much as she knew it was the right thing to do, she also knew that with such strong resistance from the others, that an agreement was just not going to happen. She was just summoning up the energy to put a final stake into the heart of the meeting when her persa alerted her to a high priority message. She noticed that the other three also received messages at the same time. This was noteworthy. It was very rare that her persa interrupted her in real time. To have this happen for all four of them simultaneously meant that it was truly something that merited interstellar prominence.

  Looking at each of their persas, as they received their messages, each face instantly showed more concern, bordering on panic.

  Nadia was the first to speak. “Well, we knew it was going to happen at some point. It is actually longer in coming than it might have been.”

  Garth responded quickly, since he was a man of action. “So, Earth is finally going to come visiting. The message indicated that there were six ships. The puzzling thing is that they appeared out of nowhere. We should have received years’ worth of warning since we have been monitoring for any potential approach from Earth, but they showed up just three days from Torval 1. We can hope that they are friendly, but we should prepare for the worst.”

  Kadar seconded Garth’s warning, “It appears that either they have some cloaking mechanism or they have some revolutionary drive that we know nothing about. If it is the former, then we need to assume that they will show up without any warning in about seventy years. If it is the latter, then all bets are off and they could show up within three days of any of our worlds at any time.”

  Nadia responded, “All of our plans revolved around having well over one hundred years of warning between seeing the ships coming from Earth and then arriving here. With their new technology, they could potentially be here in days. We have never built up a strong fleet of ships for defensive purposes.” She knew she shouldn’t, but she cou
ldn’t resist, so she added, “I have been trying to get us to build a stronger fleet for some time, but all I have met is resistance.”

  Saul scowled at her and said, “Don’t try to use this as an excuse to build up a fleet that can be used to limit our independence. As a representative of the Periphery, I won’t and we won’t stand for it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nadia quickly apologized. “It is just that now that things are different, we have to do something to be ready to defend ourselves. Don’t you see that?”

  Saul quickly responded, “No, I don’t see that. We need to see if they are aggressive or not. There may still be no need to build up a fleet. We in the Periphery need to have proof of their aggression before we will be willing to support such an endeavor.”

  Kadar shook his head saying, “We have to be able to defend ourselves. If they could really get here in a matter of days, then we wouldn’t have time to build any kind of a fleet. Our only hope would be to arm the ships we have and hope that they can stand up to the six that are coming. We have numerical superiority, but that may not be enough.”

  Saul continued, “We in the Periphery are a collection of relatively poor planets, compared to your worlds,” he nodded to Garth and Kadar, “and especially compared to Torval 2,” he nodded at Nadia. It is unlikely that these foreign ships will want anything from the Periphery, so the way that I see it, it is your problem not ours. So, don’t expect any help from us.”

  The rest of the meeting was mostly given to the back and forth of both resistance from Garth and Kadar as well as agreement that better defense was needed. They finally broke off, deciding to have internal discussions with their representatives, and they all agreed to meet the next day.

  The following day, the four leaders were back in meetings discussing whether they really needed to arm ships.