Asteroid Vanvas: Part 1

From the desk of Vitasta
Notes: This is my tribute to the Star Trek Universe, which I love.
Time: irrelevant

Chapter 1:

The Intergalactic Agency meant to keep us safe from the solar flares of our sun chose instead to use us as target practice and declared war on our beloved institutions. We had long abandoned traditional organized religion of the past, things that kept us shackled and in the dark for centuries, led us almost to the brink of the third world war and destroyed almost all organic life on the planet by continuing anti-environment activity. But it all changed when we discovered the relics. Our space faring abilities were only fledgling at the time, we hadn't even reached the planet Mars, which was to be a thriving center of commerce, art and fashion. New Paris Colony near Mars' Cassini crater was where I was born, but this is not a story of man's triumph, no. This is a story of man's greed and ambition. 

The relics were discovered almost by accident. During an early mission of one of Earth's most ambitious space programs to the Jupiter moon Europa, then considered a fore runner for a space colony, the space probe NX-01 picked up something strange, something so dramatic that it changed the very living systems on Earth. We found celestial temples there, ruins of a great civilization, and proof, proof of the existence of higher beings. It was then, in those early days that a manned mission was carried out. It took seven years, but the artifacts left back by the great civilization of the First Men were brought back to Earth, and studied, and fought over, and discussed and debated, and mulled over and disputed, argued over and scrutinized until there was no doubt left. Life on Earth, us, our fellow earthlings, all species that roam this great planet, we were all remnants of their drive through our planet. We still don't know where they came from, or if they would ever return, but their legacy had ensured long lasting peace on the planet, and it led to an era of cooperation, scientific discovery and we became, the great conquerors of the farthest reaches of the solar system. And we thrived, for a while, exchanged notes on the meaning of life and humanity with the strange and alien people we met from other worlds. And for a long time, this peace lasted and we prospered. We had no religion anymore, but we considered the relics we found on Europa and then on Jupiter's fifth moon, Amalthea to be sacred and dear. But that was before the inevitable.

Like all planetary bodies governed by the principles of entropy, our sun too had started to decline. We had already established many colonies on different worlds, but without the warmth and gravitational bond between star and planet, our solar system was headed towards cold celestial death, and so we set up the first Intergalactic Agency to stabilize the fusion reaction of our aging sun, and it worked for a while. But then the soldiers of the agency, those military scientists once assigned to look into the preservation of life in the system, turned against the very principles for which they were set up. There were early signs of trouble, but we ignored them, and now, they threaten to wipe out all alien life on Earth and it's surrounding planets. We tried to reason with them, that the First Men, those who propagated life on our planet, were also responsible for fostering life on Pluto and on the Moons of Jupiter, our fellow members on a great planetary scale, but they wanted pure blood, their own species, and they said they would not stop until all alien life was destroyed and only humans remained. Those who opposed them were targeted, hunted down, and eliminated. Those who remained became puppets of their supremacist agenda. 

We only had 2 other races that originated in our solar system, other aliens we had met long left the now racist regime of Earth. With us, evolved on Pluto, a simple people, the Tombaughs, small, keenly intelligent dwarfs, with thick brown skins and a large lion like tails. The Agency refereed to them as monkeys, but the truth is that they were scared of their innate abilities to process methane. It was because of the Tombaughs that Earth initially discovered a way to convert GHGs into oxygen. If it wasn't for their help, we would never have survived the third climate revolution. And then there were the telepaths. Mythology and pseudoscience, the telepaths and Humans have a strange relationship. When they first came to Earth, it was not to meet with us, it was to meet with the dolphins. Of course, once they reached here, they demanded that the dolphins be given "equipment" that would speed up their evolution, which of course was rejected by the scientific council. But now, after years of war, the telepaths and those of us who refuse to live under the neo-nazi regime of the Agency, have developed a quiet peace. 

It has been a decade since we left our homes, a decade since the Agency, in a show of brute strength destroyed, not just our homes, but also our faith. We watched in grim silence, us, the rebels and the telepaths, the Toms and the handful of alien races that remained in our system, we watched and silently prayed when they destroyed the holy historical celestial temples and made waste of the last remaining legacy of the First Men in our solar system. And we could do nothing, as they erased our history, our memory, our faith in a better world. 

We had taken refuge in the Hilda asteroid belt, hidden in orbit around Jupiter. We were on two of the larger asteroids. My base was on asteroid 153. There were 83 of us, mostly humans, a telepath, a handful of Toms, and a Muni from the Alpha Centauri triple-star system. The base on asteroid 350 was much larger, and much more diverse. Most of our time in hiding was consumed with going over the remains of the relics of the First Men in our database and in secret raids to Europa and Amalthea. We know they built the temples some 300 million years ago and from the fossil records we discovered before the agency destroyed all collected facts about the First Men, they were some kind of giants. Some 98  to 130 feet long and almost 40 feet tall. But nothing much remains of their technology and we have been trying unsuccessfully for over a decade to contact them, if they still remain. For we know, we believe, that if they could see us now, their children, divided and killing each other, they would surely return and set the record straight. And this time, we have help, of the Toms, of the Muni and the Zindy, and the telepaths and the Saras, we all believe, and we all wait for their signal. 

We know of fragments of the technology they employed. We believe they sent out a series of repeating energy bursts from deep space. One recording we discovered in the early days of space exploration found a transband radio frequency of 1.618 GHz. Electromagnetic radiation across space-time we called it then. And our handful of scientists have been using this band to send out signals into deep space. The signals are transmitted at 20% the speed of light, and they should have crossed halfway across the galaxy from now. But still we heard nothing from the other end. It was a useless endeavor, hunting for old ghosts, a futile venture, but it was our only hope. But something happened a week ago, an error in transmission. One of the Toms was trying to tune into the frequency used by the Agency for deploying troops and transmitting orders. We did this often, listen to them on the radio to know the current state of things on Venus and Earth and Mars, dear old Mars, or whatever is now left of them. The Tom didn't switch the radio-telescope back to the frequency we were searching for and made a mistake. He set the telescope tuned to 408 MHz, and relayed our message, "Earth Solar System in Danger. Please Respond." 

And then, something miraculous happened. 3 days ago, we received a message, a message we believe was sent by the mysterious First Men. 

Hilda Asteroid 153. (Image source: Kornmesser)

Chapter 2:

The short cryptic message we received sent us into a frenzy. It was too specific to be ignored, and yet it was vague. What could it possibly mean. It was a short message, designed for efficiency in communication, and it was sent from a solar system close by. Not Alpha Centauri, as our Muni quickly pointed out, and yet we could not be certain of its origin. Had the Agency detected it? No. We didn't believe so. We had been dormant so long, hidden and placid so long, the Agency had all but abandoned its agenda to finish us all. I guess we were too low priority for them. But the message, it hinted at something surreal, something absurd. 

"Find Source on Hygiea. Destroy the Laboratory." 

Ever since the message arrived, we spent hours trying to decipher it. It had to be a code, it could not be interpreted so easily. Besides Hygiea! It was a wasteland. There was nothing there. Nothing had ever landed on that dark surface because nothing of value could survive there. It has no atmosphere. It was a minor planet in our solar  system, sure, but it was smaller than Earth's moon! Whoever had sent this message must have a twisted sense of humour, but the fact that this message arrived and was so clearly defined could not simply be ignored. And what was this talk about a laboratory on Hygiea. Of this we could be sure, that if there was a structure on that tiny planet, we would have known about it by now. It has been more than 6 centuries of space exploration, and Hygiea is in our backyard. You think we would not have noticed by now? How could we be sure this wasn't an Agency ploy to bring us out of hiding, and what made us so sure that this was the First Men, or any men at all. 

We were in terrible shape as it is. Our space vessels had perished. When we escaped, our group, 83 of us in Warcraft Gamma 3 and the combined strength of 340 on the other two warcrafts, we were completely at the mercy of the telepaths. The telepaths had sent in rescue ships, they were to take us, the rebels who stood in opposition of the Agency and the few aliens that remained on Earth back to the safety of the telepath world on Triton, the largest moon of Neptune. The telepaths long believe that they are the natural descendants of the First Men, and it is this superior attitude of theirs that has kept us from becoming as close allies as the Toms have been. But they did come, and when they did, the Agency declared war. I don't know all the details because I was in a refugee camp with my parents on Mars then. Being one of the youngest on our camp means that some of my memories of the recent war is based on hearsay. I was not a soldiers, I am not even a properly certified scientist, and my time with the telepaths has been very limited. From what I know, the Agency and the telepaths are still at war, and the telepaths are losing. Our convoy was attacked when we left Earth and Mars, and only 3 of the ships from the original convoy of 40 ships survived, or at least 3 are known to have survived. We took refuge in the asteroid belt and have remained here since then. We don't venture out much now, outside of our routine trips to the other asteroid. And from what we here of the planets, Mars is all but overrun by the Agency and all the colonies in the solar system are now military bases. I even heard a rumour that the Agency had committed genocide on a planetary scale when they destroyed the Tom homeland on Pluto. Good news was hard to come by in these times. And this message we received. Some hoped that it would be a good one.

After the news of the message was sent to the other asteroid, their leader, Ram and a handful of their scientists came to visit us in our camp. They traveled through by the last space shuttle we have between us. It's a low power engine that powered by liquid nitrogen. It is my baby. I was going to an engineer. or at least I wanted to be one, but life has me looking after the left of telepath technology and all that we could bring aboard it. But I am too young to be asked opinions of, and opinions about this message I have many. Our camp is run by Sita. She's a botanist. She was responsible for all the aeroponics space-garden that we have. I admire her ability to smile in every situation, and situations have been pretty grim in our camp now and then. Like when Koshi had a baby and we almost lost it, and then we had to set up a nursery with an incubator, or the time one of the Toms caught the Gerbil Plague. But things in the camp have been good for a while, and Sita has been instrumental. I don't know too much about Ram, but he's been said to be a strong leader. I think he is ex-military, and he does have a scar on his neck. One of the Toms told me it was a knife wound from a fight with a telepath, or a fight with a telepath he tried to stop. The Tom was not sure. 

Anyway, since Ram arrived, things have become very close looped, and information is very hard to get by. I was not involved with the proceedings and internal deliberations of the camp council at all, but then they called me in. And I was not sure why.

"You were born there?", Ram asked me. I was standing in front of the 13 camp council members. Sita was there, and Ram from the other camp. Russel, from our camp, Jerry and Arun and a Tom named Kaza. But I did not recognize the others. The room they chose for their meetings was the central control room from where we sent the radio signals. I had been in this room many times, even when the message was first received, but this was the first time it seemed so alien to me, and I was not sure why they summoned me. 

"Yes," I answered Ram, "is there something wrong?"

"How long were you there? Do you remember the area?"

"Of course, like the back of my hand," I grinned. I had spent the better part of my life playing the fool in the streets of New Paris. The colony-city was my playground. I knew every building, every park bench, every back alley way. "I still don't understand why though," I asked Ram, "because I know that the Agency destroyed a part of the city, and my parents and I escaped to the refuge camp near Alluva before we got separated. I joined this group then. That was some time ago, maybe 8 or 9 years."

"9 years." Jerry said grimly. "It has been 9 years."

"There is a rumour that the Agency is transferring its military intelligence base to New Paris." Ram said, "Do you think you can tell me where it might be located?"

"I. .I don't know, really? New Paris, a military base, " I was amused at the thought, but it did seem likely. The Agency was expanding. "Maybe near the old theater complex. They have a large expansive building and it has a lot of ground around it. But this much I am sure of, it has to be in the North-East quadrant of the city. Are we going to attack them?" I asked.

Ram smiled. "No, we are in no position to attack the agency, but let's say we sabotage some of their operations. If that happens, I will need a man who has knowledge of the terrain. Can we count on you?"

"Of course. It is my duty. Besides, I want to go back to Mars. I still don't know where my parents are. And my friends, I don't know if they survived."

"Of course", Ram said. He nodded at me, and I thought it was my cue to leave, but when I turned around, he said, "Join us." I was a bit puzzled, but stood near the table, where everyone was sitting and looking at a map of the Asteroid belt. They had been discussing the message. My heart skipped a beat. Could they be planning to go to Hygiea. Despite knowing better, I asked them. I was very wary of the message, and I didn't believe it came from the First Men. But these thoughts I kept to myself. 

"Do you think it's there?" I asked, "Are we going to check?"

Jerry looked at me sharply and I piped up. 

"It could be underground", Sita suggested, "It must be hidden by a force field."

"We can't risk it," Jerry said, "Besides we don't even know who sent this message. We are only assuming it's the First Men." Kaza and Arun nodded, but Ram got up and with a forceful voice said, "This is them! This is the first indication of their presence. Our Gods have answered our prayers. We must go to Hygiea!." 

I could not believe he said that. Gods?! Surely no one would listen to this line of reasoning, but almost all members of the council, including Sita agreed with him. Yes, they said, and it was decided that we would indeed travel to the c-class asteroid and search for the Source and this mysterious laboratory. Now, there was just one problem. To fly the warcraft for the journey, we needed to wake up the telepath. 

New Paris on Mars. Image Source: Inverse.Com