Contingency
Page 32
Chapter 33
The young planet loomed in the Skyrrnian view screen. It was a twisted gray and brown that gleamed beautifully in the eyes of the Skyrrnians. The small Skyrrnian fleet orbited its homeworld, turning slowly around its axis. The ships immediately hailed the Skyrrnian government, and explained to them the future that was in store for them.
The fleet landed upon the planet and the visitors were regarded with awe and keen curiosity. They warned the Skyrrnians of the Imperium and the future that would lie in front of them. The Skyrrnians could not identify their visitors or the things they carried with them on their ships. They knew only that their visitors were of the same race.
The populace was skeptical of their visitors. They were welcomed, but their urgent tidings were avoided. The people had only to look to the stars to see that the Skyrrnian people stretched over several systems and showed no signs of weakening.
The Skyrrnians were especially doubtful of the newcomers’ words, because the human space, or as the humans had called it, the Imperium, consisted only of words and thoughts. They were far away from Skyrrnian space, and their paths never crossed except for the scouting and mapping ships that flew about. They had contacted and knew the humans, but they were far away, and the incompatibility of different species made contact useless. The two could at best make out what the other meant; a relationship was pointless. The newly born Imperium clawed at its surroundings from its birthing pool while the Skyrrnian space was a bustle of life.
Nevertheless, the visitors began to parade all over the world, heralding the doom that would await them all if they did not rise up against it and throttle it in its sleep. The mysteriousness of the visitors and their technology garnered the interest of a fair amount of people. They spoke like prophets of destruction, and the Skyrrnian government began to grow restless.
Their untraceable origin stirred odd questions in the minds of countless of the people. Word spread far and wide of the visitors, who claimed to come from a different time. A large investigation was carried out by the Skyrrnian government to try to crack the question of where their visitors’ home was located.
They could not trace them to a location on any of their planets. None showed signs of once harboring the visitors, much less of being their home. There were no birth records, no family records, no records at all that could point towards their existence. The search for the people had been a complete failure. The search for the origin of their small fleet gave likewise no results. No trace could be found of the production or movement of their fleet. It really seemed as if the fleet had built itself from thin space.
In a few weeks after the fleet had arrived to the Skyrrnian homeworld, the government buckled under the rising pressure, and a formal technological analysis team was established to work with the visitors. The government could not place the threat the visitors might pose, but they knew that the population was beginning to be affected.
The analysis team could detect faint similarities in the builds of the ships. The ships seemed to have similar material compositions, and the proportions in which they were mixed and put together were familiar. One could make the assumption that the ships had been built using the materials in the asteroid belts in the Skyrrnian homeworld’s system.
The visitors’ fame and credibility grew, and soon crowds began to cry for action from them. They demanded that the visitors immediately begin on a plan of action. All through Skyrrnian space the plight of the visitors was heard, and slowly heeded. The visitors eagerly gave the Skyrrnian government access to study the relics they carried with them.
The technology amazed the people, but they could barely make out what the devices were. The 30th century Skyrrnian scientists were almost entirely dumbfounded by the foreign compositions and designs. The visitors explained to them the intricacies of each of their devices, and heralded the power they carried.
After raising enough support in his home, Khrrn set out once again for Acar. There he knew he would once again find the android and all of the planet’s relics, just as he had first found them one thousand years in the future.
The primitive 30th century Skyrrnian ships would have taken years to travel to Acar. The visitors’ convoy, however, left as it had departed, only to return several weeks later loaded to the brim with what they said was unimaginably powerful weaponry. Their first android had slipped through their fingers using the time machine, but they now had an exact copy of him from the past, as well as much more of the Kher’Somaaw’s relics.
The visitors’ plight could no longer be ignored. They were all over the Skyrrnian broadcasting channels. They began to talk in great detail about their arrival. They told everything about the time manipulation device and their ability to use it. They told everyone about its unimaginable power.
They told the stories of the near extinction of their species. They recounted their glorious discoveries. Their hype had reached its peak. They now were all that the Skyrrnian people talked about. Several groups attempted raids on the visitor’s fleet as it orbited in space, but all were taken down by the visitors stationed on the ships.
For a short while, they seemed to be in pseudo-chaos, as both the government and independent groups tried to seize their ships. With a computer system a millennium more advanced than those of the Skyrrnians, they were virtually immune to cyber raids. With Kher’Somaaw defense turrets immensely more advanced than 30th century weapons, physical attacks were stopped immediately. The visitors’ only weakness was their physical death, and so the visitors prudently stopped their actions on the planet itself and dealt only from their ships in space.
When they had proven their indefatigable strength, they began to move the masses to consolidate power for themselves. Virtually all of the populations of the Skyrrnian planets sided with the prophets. The zeal with which the visitors had preached their ominous tidings had burned itself into the hearts of the overwhelming majority of the Skyrrnian population. The visitors’ holy relics promised salvation to all, and like a horde of rats they came rushing to them.
The Skyrrnian government defected almost entirely to the visitors’ power. Some came from conviction, and the rest came in search of personal gain, seeing how the now demolished Skyrrnian government had failed. In the end, several months after their flight through time, the visitors instated a new system of order, one with Khrrn and his men at the head.
And so it came to pass that in the year 2988 of the Earth’s Gregorian calendar, the 200- year-old Imperium’s greatest threat was being born in the form of the Skyrrnian orbital shipyards.