Blue Planet Rising (Pebbles in the Sky Book 2) Read online

  I would like to dedicate this book to my parents. Over the years they have demonstrated patience and sacrificed much to give me many of the opportunities that I have had. Their love is unconditional and I love them both in return.

  Blue Planet Rising

  Chapter 1

  7007 BC (Earth Modern Calendar)

  180 Light Years from Earth

  Ranor Ungor Hanth sat alone in the control center. Twenty revolutions ago, the rest of his tanth, or crew, had taken the journey of their ancestors. In recognition of his place as the senior Ranor in the tanth, they had left him alone to contemplate the destruction of their world. With food supplies diminishing rapidly, and only partial power production left for essential systems, his crew had taken the Taal that would painlessly send them to join their ancestors and the rest of their doomed race. Now, only Ungor remained to behold the aftermath of the catastrophe that had encompassed his world.

  Ptrafath, the invader, the destroyer of his world, had been detected over three cycles ago. The astronomers of his world had caught their first glimpse of the approaching dark star at about the same time that his people had first started venturing out among the planets of the yellow star system where they had originated.

  The Barbakath, Ungor’s people, had possessed the capability of space travel for several cycles prior to the discovery of Ptrafath, but their star system was a poor one. Other than Horast, the blue green planet of their birth, the planetary system around their star consisted only of two gas giants that were barren of any moons and a far flung ice world that was circling out at the edge of their star’s influence. With no interplanetary resources to tempt them, his race had no reason to venture out into space. His people had been content to remain on their warm and wet planet slowly contemplating and solving the mysteries of the universe.

  That satisfaction and philosophical contentment with taking and using only what was at hand came crashing down on the Barbakath with the discovery of Ptrafath. The fact that Ptrafath was going to be the destroyer of their world drove many of Ungor’s people insane with depression. Many of them chose to take the journey of their ancestors early rather than live out the days that remained for their planet in despair and hopelessness. There were some Barbakath however, often considered the radical and undisciplined by his people, that were not content to wait for the destroyer to come and erase their race from existence along with the planet of their birth.

  Ungor’s clan was one that contained a disproportionate number of the Barbakath

  scientists and engineers. Having been given a deadline of around three birth cycles until Ptrafath arrived, his clan embarked on a race to try and preserve the heritage of his people and home planet.

  Initially, they had planned on building a huge ship, an interstellar biosphere that could transport specimens of his people and their planets abundant biodiversity to another star system. There, they hoped to re-establish the Barbakath. They invested enormous amounts of time and research in developing the technologies that would be required to do this. Ungor’s people mastered the ability to produce energy by the same fusion processes that their life giving star did. They even discovered how to manipulate gravity itself. The things they did not possess however, were the resources or time needed to build a ship of the size required to take a biosphere with enough diversity to survive on a multi generation interstellar voyage. They knew that the nearest star system with a potentially habitable planet was over seventy light years distant, and that world was only deemed marginal at best. Even with all of their scientific breakthroughs, Ungor’s people had not solved the mysteries of faster than light travel. The realization came to them early in the planning phases of the giant ship that this strategy of survival was impractical.

  Looking at their other limited options, it was decided that if they could not transport life itself to a new world, then it was still possible that the very blueprints of the life on their world could be transported and then re-created upon arrival at a new home world. The project was started to try and accomplish this process. The first was the construction of a ship that would contain the genetic information for all the life that existed on Horast, their home world. The ship would be controlled by an intelligent computer designed for that very purpose. There would be no need for vast supplies of food, water, or atmospheric gases on the ship since only the encoded data of the planets life forms would be contained in the computer’s data banks. The ship itself was merely the shell of the computer. Since the ship contained little more than the computers data banks and a small genetic re-generation area, it could be built very compactly and given the ability to travel the vast distances needed to find a habitable world to deposit the seeds it carried. A journey with a length of a thousand cycles would mean nothing to an artificial intelligence.

  The mission was planned so that when the seed ship found a planet compatible with the blueprints of life it carried, it would land and re-create a small breeding group of Barbakath. The Barbakath embryos would be nurtured in tanks of nutrients that would simulate the warmth and safety of a Sabba’s gestational pouch. The ship would raise and educate the first generation of that new race of Barbakath. When they were mature, and had become Ranor, the computer would turn over the responsibility of the colonization of the new world to the members of the re-created race.

  There were myriads of engineering details that had to be worked out. The philosophers of their race had many heated disagreements over how the new adolescents that had known no Sabba or Ranor in their infancy would mature intellectually. The problem over how to produce the first mature Ranor had been worked out by the administration of the required hormones to one of the un-mated Sabba. The philosophers and medical experts of the Barbakath could not agree as to whether a Sabba that had never given birth could maintain its sanity when it became a Ranor. The ship was eventually completed and launched with its precious cargo of genetic blueprints a cycle before the destroyer arrived.

  As a backup plan, and as the debate over whether any Barbakath could maintain sanity after being raised by a machine intelligence continued, it was decided to put a second cache of genetic blueprints into storage on the far orbiting ice world of their star system. Exploration probes sent to the ice planet had given evidence that the planet had at one time orbited much closer to its mother star. It was theorized that it had been thrown out into its distant orbit by interactions with the gravity of the systems two gas giants. Primitive life forms had even been discovered deep beneath its frozen oceans.

  Shortly after the project was started, it was calculated that Ptrafath would steal this planet from its parent star even as it devoured the home world of the Barbakath. The project was almost canceled, until one of the leading philosophers of his cycle had come up with a plan that would not depend wholly upon computer intelligence for success.

  Ranor Alraric Potrath was a philosopher that had become well known by debating what other types of intelligent life may inhabit the galaxy. He made a proposal that caused quite a bit of emotional distress and many heated discussions among the Ranor of his people. He made his proposal In an emotional speech that was transmitted across his world to all the clans. Standing on his hind feet and gesticulating with his hands and front feet, he proposed putting a cache of their world’s life blueprints on the ice world and letting the Destroyer take the cache with it on its interstellar wanderings.

  Astronomers predicted that in the next twenty thousand cycles Ptrafath would pass near at least six star systems with planets that potentially harbored life. He argued that if just one of those systems had evolved intelligent life, it was possible that they could retrieve the cache and c
ould use the information there to re-create the race of Barbakath. It was considered a low percentage chance, but worth the effort when compared to complete extinction.

  Ranor Alraric Potrath’s speech started another great dialogue over what an alien race may do with the cache of biological data if it was discovered. Many opposing philosophers argued that their proud race could possibly be used as experimental animals, or even enslaved for the benefit of the race who found the cache. There were others who feared that any race that could re-create the Barbakath from the genetic information could also alter their genome in such a way that would make them unrecognizable to their ancestors. They argued that when those deformed and altered Barbakath took the path of their ancestors, they may not be recognized by those that went before them and would be lost for eternity. The Barbakath were also fearful that the cache would be found by a race that was greedy and had a tendency toward violence. Violence and hostility were the bane of Barbakath culture and philosophy for good reasons.

  Deep in the jungles of their home world, Horast, Barbakath explorers had found the ruins of another intelligent race. That race had gone extinct long before the ascension of the Barbakath on their planet. Close examination of the civilization’s ruins gave evidence that the ancient ones had perished in a violent struggle. The ruins showed evidence of damage by powerful weapons that had rocked an entire world and had caused mass extinctions. In contrast, the Barbakath were a peaceful and pastoral species that had never known war and abhorred all violence. Conflict in their society was settled by philosophical debate and compromise.

  After all the debates were finally over, it was decided that taking a chance on sending out their biological profiles and those of their world’s diversity was better than certain extinction. The Barbakath re-started work on the ice planet’s cache. Another artificial intelligence, similar to the one placed on the first seed ship, was created there and given instructions to attempt to contact and communicate with any intelligent race that it encountered. The outpost and data storage facilities were given several backup power sources and made as impervious to the cold and emptiness of interstellar space as possible. In addition to the vast stores of biological data, the entire knowledge of the Barbakath race was placed in the memory of the artificial intelligence that would oversee the outpost on its interstellar wanderings.

  Less than half a cycle before the arrival of the destroyer, the scientists of his world made the scientific breakthrough that they had struggled so hard for. The irony of the discovery was almost too great to bear. They had discovered a way to create a faster than light starship. For the Barbakath however, it was too late to accomplish their original plan of building a huge biosphere ship. Ptrafath was upon them, and their time was at an end.

  Ranor Ungor Hanth had watched with the rest of his tanth as Ptrafath, the dark destroyer from the depths of space, consumed his home world. Then, when it was at last over with, his crew had filed past and given him a last embrace of respect and goodbye. They had gone below to take the Taal. They would all take the final journey of their ancestors. Ungor was left as the last living member of his race. He maintained his lonely vigilance until it was a certainty that Ptrafath had indeed captured the ice planet and started its long cold journey. The cache of genetic information that resided in the computer memory below the outpost he was in was now on its way to an uncertain future. With nothing left for him to accomplish, he realized that it was now time for him to take his own journey and follow his tanth and ancestors. There was only one more important thing that he had to do before he departed.

  Ungor went the lower levels of the outpost where his departed tanth were lying at peace. A special tank had been prepared there for his body. After he took the Taal, he would climb into the tank. When the computer sensed that his life essence had departed, it would flood the tank with preservatives. It had been estimated that unless some un-foreseen event took place, his body should remain reasonably well preserved for thousands and thousands of cycles. It was only fair that any race that found this cache of information should know the Barbakath as they were before they attempted to re-create them.

  Ungor initiated the power down sequence that would put the outpost into dormancy. The computer intelligence would soon sleep also, just barely using enough power to listen and look for signs of an intelligent race. When it detected those, it would then wake up and attempt to communicate with that race if it determined that the alien race had the means to bring the Barbakath back into the universe.

  Looking around at his departed tanth, Ranor Ungor Hanth, the last surviving member of his species, held the piece of Taal in his three fingers and looked at it. For countless cycles, his people had used the Taal to take the journey of their ancestors when they felt their time was over. He placed the Taal in his mouth, swallowed and stepped into the preservation tank. Ungor felt his four feet grow cold, and then darkness closed over him. As his consciousness fled his body, he could hear his ancestors calling him.

  The computer sensed that Ungor’s life had left his body. It sealed and flooded the preservation tank. When that task was accomplished, it powered down the outpost’s instruments and equipment and then put itself into a watchful sleep. Over two hundred cycles went by with no change. Then, a sensor sent a signal that caused the computer to bring itself to a higher level of consciousness.

  One of the outpost’s sensor clusters was receiving an electromagnetic pulse that fit the algorithms for defining it as artificially produced. There was an intelligent race nearby that had the technology that fit its requirements. After the computer analyzed the frequency of the electromagnetic pulses, it started sending out a pulse of its own using a pre-determined pattern that Barbakath philosophers and scientists had all agreed that any intelligent race would recognize. The computer also detected that the solar power producing arrays on the outpost buildings were starting to produce appreciable amounts of power again. It shunted that power into its power storage arrays to augment what it was receiving from the geothermal generators deep in the planet below it. The computer then did what computers do best, waited for additional input.

  Chapter 2

  October 11th, 2043

  New Washington, Georgia

  President Hans Walden stood at attention beside the podium as the horse drawn caisson came to a halt below him. The solemn drum roll of the honor guard gave way to silence as the procession came to a standstill. Behind the President’s podium was a large tarp covered object. The President and all of the members of both the Senate and House of Representatives stood in respectful silence in the newly opened Magnolia National Cemetery. Around the elected government of the United States of America, there stood a sea of tens of thousands of people. Immediately behind the caisson was a group of forty Space Force members dressed in their blue trimmed, black dress uniforms. They were led by General Robert Seale, commander of the Space Force.

  The General turned to face the President and saluted him. President Walden returned the salute. A honor guard consisting of members from all the United States armed forces formed up as pall bearers and lifted the flag shrouded coffin of Colonel Mike Pierce of the United States Space Force off the caisson and placed it on a flag draped pedestal in front of the podium. General Seale climbed the steps and stopped to stand beside the coffin as President Walden stepped behind the Mahogany podium that bore the Presidential Seal of the United States of America. The President looked out over the sea of people below him. As the gathered crowd stood in silence, he began to speak.

  “Today I stand before you as we have gathered to honor one of our fallen heroes. Colonel Mike Pierce did not die as a result of enemy action. He was not killed by a bullet, a bomb, or as a result of an aggressor attack. He did not die in a crash of a bomber, he did not drown as his ship sunk beneath him, nor did he die as his tank was blown up around him. Colonel Mike Pierce died of natural causes while serving his country as a member of the United States Space Force.”

  “Colonel Mike Pierce was
on a vital mission in the depths of space. The enemy that the Space Force has trained and prepared to meet does not carry weapons. This enemy does not build ships, planes, or missiles to wreak havoc on our country. It is an enemy of nature. It is an enemy of cold orbiting asteroids and comets that wander the outer expanses of our solar system. This enemy isn’t just a threat against our country, but to the very existence of humanity. Colonel Pierce and his fellow spacemen risk their lives daily in the most hostile environment we have ever known to ensure that our country and the human race is sheltered from the threat of total destruction.”

  “We are here today not only to mourn this fallen soldier and countryman, but to pay tribute to his sacrifice and the sacrifice of others that preceded him as well as those that will make the same ultimate sacrifice as he did.. Yes, there will be more men and women who will that ultimate sacrifice to as they protect our great country and the rest of the world.. Even as we stand here today, our country is battered and reeling from the blows that it and the rest of the world took from the passing of the brown dwarf. Our country and its people are struggling to recover from the worst catastrophe that we have ever faced.”

  “Look up, and you will see the skies are still dark with ash and smoke from the erupting volcanoes and the wild fires that have burned out of control. Our coastal cities whose streets are filled with sand and debris are still draining from the massive tides that submerged them. Our farmlands have been covered by many feet of volcanic ash. As the coldest winter we have ever known approaches, many of our countrymen that did not seek shelter here in the south will die of exposure and starvation. Placing their selves at peril, the brave men and women who wear the uniforms of our country’s armed forces will go out and seek to render aid to those who are in need. They will be putting themselves in precarious and dangerous situations where they know they may not all return.”