《Here We Die》 Prologue Planet 7181 Local Designation: Thermaiya Date: Unknown Galaxy: Cartignon Galactic Position: Western Spiral 1 "Alars, are you about done yet?". Hearing his name Alars paused, placed his instruments on the table and turned around. He opened the door and walked to the edge of his trunklab, looked down and saw his master. He waved, "Master Hun! I am almost done, maybe 15 more minutes and I will be ready to join you for supper. Would you like to come up and wait here while I finish?". Master Hun looked around for a few seconds before making up his mind, "No, you finish up there. I''ll sit down there near the lake." he said, pointing west to a spot less than a 100 meters from the trunklab. "Come there once you''re done, I''ll converse with our aquatic friend till then." he concluded and started walking away. "Sure Master, give her my regards." said Alars as he turned back to his work table and focused on finishing his task quickly. Less than 15 mins later he decided that he was done for the day, there was no more he could do today. The next part of this assembly required several hours and he did not want to start now. Not only would this aggravate Master Hun who was waiting for him but also Ritana, who he promised to meet after supper. He placed his tools back into their correct places on the wall and looked down at his work table. It was slightly messy but nothing that needed immediate attention. He picked up a cloth and wiped down the surfaces, moving some lenses out of the way and put them back into their softboxes. Those lenses were the core of his work here, scratching them would set him back weeks so he best take care of them. The trunklab room was a modest sized workshop in this treehub.The lab itself was a medium sized room with all walls covered with workstations for everything from chemcalc to reagant storage. He looked to his right and saw biocalculators took up almost an entire wall. He walked towards them and initiated the sleep procedure so the biocalculators could hibernate for the night. He would need to use them extensively tomorrow to finish the final stages of his project. He shut the lab door behind him and palm-locked it. The hand sized gel-pack gave a small chirp of acceptance as it turned a bright yellow and vines wrapped themselves around the door. Climbing down, he looked back towards his trunklab. He was lucky enough to get an empty treehub since his work required him to use several levels and a clear path to the top of the tree itself. Master Hun''s influence had been critical in ensuring his requirements were approved at every stage. Better not keep him waiting. He walked towards the lake and saw Master Hun sitting on a ledge with his legs hanging down. Noma was holding on to his right leg and they were deep in conversation. As he approached them, Noma looked towards Alars and hummed a deep tone, her smooth skin tone changing to green as it washed over her from head to fin vertically. She was pleased to see him. Alars waved at her and gave her a bow. "It is an honor to see you again as well Noma." At his words, Noma went through a few more colors indicating joy and then hummed several short tunes towards Master Hun. Alars didn''t catch what he said back to her since he could speak Friyun, Noma''s native language of water. Alars was not even a novice at Friyun and he didn''t expect to learn it anytime soon. It would be good to know the language but the list of things that Alars needed to do was ever growing. He needed far more time than he had in a day. Master Hun said his goodbyes to Noma and started walking towards Alars. Noma hummed once before she dove back to the depths of the lake, heading back to Arikoyo, their city at the bottom of the lake. Alars and Master Hun started walking back towards Lorin and Master Hun asked about his progress. "I will be done by days end tomorrow. We should be able to get a viewing as soon as day after and I hope you''ll join me master as we look outward for the first time." Master Hun looked at him with a warm smile, "It would be my pleasure Alars. Though I would prefer you be the first one to peer through. This project has succeeded because of your determination and your deep understanding of lenses. I will join you at the time of the viewing and bring along my star charts as well." Alars was excited! Master Hun''s star charts were almost legendary and while he had seen them before, he never could get enough of them. Before the advent of biocalculators and chemcalculators, Master Hun had spent decades painstakingly mapping the movement of the stars, the constellations and most importantly, the path they were taking through the greater galaxy. His charts were proven accurate via calculations and Alars''s work, his telescope, would confirm a lot of Master Hun''s theories and allow them to look at some of the star systems in more detail than ever before. All previous telescopes would look like toys compared to his. With building excitement as they spoke, Alars and Master Hun entered Lorin and went to their favourite tea house. Master Hun and Alars parted ways at the end of their supper and Alars headed home to shower and change before going out to meet Ritana. They had decided to meet near the famous Moncato Library which was not far from Alar''s home. He walked briskly and reached their designated meeting place. He quickly looked at his wrist and the bioband told him it was exactly 3 hours before midnight, so thankfully he wasn''t late. He heard footsteps behind him and turned around to see Ritana. Ah, she was gorgeous and Alars thought for the umpteenth time how much out of his league she was. "Well, what do you think?" asked Ritana as she showed off her purple and green shaded dress to Alars. She turned around and the dress seemed to change hues every time the moonlight hit it. "I wish I had words to describe you, but they would fall woefully short. Suffice to say, I am the luckiest man alive." Ritana laughed and punched his shoulder mockingly, "A poet today are we? Let''s go, I am hungry!". And they walked towards the pier to have a late night dinner. 2 Feeling a faint buzzing, Alars opened his eyes and looked at his bioband. Of course it was time to wake up, hadn''t he just fallen asleep 5 mins ago? He was definitely not a morning person. Last night with Ritana was still on his mind and he hoped to ask her to marry him once his telescope project was complete and running smoothly. His life would finally start to look like what he always imagined it to be. Well, time to go make his dreams come true. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Sun up was still an hour away and he decided to get a head start and maybe finish his work earlier. Who knows, he might even be able to turn on the telescope today! His reagant supply was ready, just the final lens installations was the incomplete part. He started getting excited and had a quick meal and whiteroot tea before setting on his way to his treehub. As he reached his treehub, he saw Master Hun waiting for him. His helper, Moira, was also present pushing a cart carrying what looked like Master Hun''s star charts. That was weird, why was he here today and so early? He hurried towards them. "Alars, something has happened that I cannot explain. Let''s go up to your lab and discuss, Moira will move my maps in the lift." He said and started walking up quickly. Alars had not seen his master panicked before so he wordlessly followed him up and unlocked the lab door with his handprint. The vines slid back and the door slid open, Master Hun walked quickly towards the biocalcs and started turning them on. "What''s going on Master? You are worrying me." said Alars. "Last night before going to bed, I pulled out my star charts for our discussed meeting tomorrow. I looked at them and instinctively started looking at the sky and something miraculous yet mysterious happened right in front of my eyes." said Master Hun, continuing to turn on all the equipment. Alars focused on getting his side of the chemcalcs and reagant stores started. Master Hun continued, "I was looking at Joraya sector, specifically at Markon. Granted my telescope is no longer considered advanced but while simply gazing in the direction of Joraya, I saw Markon disappear right as I looked at it. It was there one moment and the next all I could see was darkness." Alars considered this, he knew Master Hun was as experienced as anyone could be in Astrometrics and he was considered the best there was across most of the known world. For him to say something like meant he knew what he was talking about. As impossible as it sounded, Master Hun saw something that should not be possible. "How can that even happen? Nothing we know can cause an entire system to simply vanish." said Alars. "This is why I am here Alars, we need to finish your telescope faster so we can look at Markon with it. Something is wrong and your project is our only path to understanding it better." finished Master Hun. Moira entered the lab and put the star charts next to the large table in the center of the trunklab. Master Hun quickly moved to it and started spreading the star charts on the table. He took a biomarker from the table and started marking on the maps, knowing the ink would disappear in a few hours leaving the maps intact. Alars moved to the table and looked at his master, "Have you spoken to anyone else about this?" he asked. "Yes. After I saw what I saw, I rushed to Onomayo''s and asked her to verify my discovery. I thought I was hallucinating and so did she when I first told her. But she checked and confirmed it. Markon is gone. We quickly sent out biopings to the star gazing community on our continent and just before you reached your lab, I received confirmation that 17 people are now combing the sky looking for anything else out of the ordinary. I wish our technology was advanced enough to let our biocalcs do this somehow but we have to depend on people for now.". Every word jolted Alars. If a system had disappeared, it was massive news. "Markon is, well was, just about 9 light years from Thermaiya which means whatever happened there happened a very short time ago. It was extremely lucky you saw it at all Master." he said, to which Master Hun just nodded morosely. Word of this would soon spread on the daily bulletins to the rest of the public but for now, he had to focus and finish his project quickly. He redoubled his efforts and with Master Hun helping as well, they started making considerable progress. By noon, he estimated that the telescope would be ready within an hour. And then the day got worse. Moira entered the trunklab and announced a visitor, Onomayo was here. She entered the lab and Alars could tell that Onomayo had spent most of the last 12 hours awake and stressed. He offered her a seat and she walked to it and sat down. Alars leaned on the table and Master Hun sat down heavily as well, "What has happened now?" he asked. "Our star gazers have now confirmed the disappearance of 3 more systems. Gyrano, Polyps and Rewace." Onomayo said. "Polyps is the farthest away at 11 light years but Gyrano and Rewace are on the other side of the spiral from Polyps...how is this even possible for 4 systems separated by light years to disappear? Did the people who reported these disappearances see them happening?" asked Alars. "No, they simply compared our existing star charts to the night sky. So far they have found 3 more, there could actually be tens more or even hundreds and we''d never know. We would have needed dozens of telescopes like yours 15 years ago to notice this as it was happening." she finished. Master Hun looked up at Alars and said, "You finish your telescope, me and Onomayo will go speak to our contacts at universities across the continent and see what else we know. We''ll be back in a few hours." he said. With that they left and Alars sat down heavily on his chair. Something occured to him then, if Polyps was the farthest and Markon happened last night, that meant that whatever was blanking out these stars or killing these systems was headed towards Thermaiya. Towards them. He shook his head and rushed to finish his telescope. 3 By the time he finished the telescope, news of this had spread like wildfire. Ritana had stopped by, worried, asking him about it and he had assured her it would be fine, they simply knew too little to worry at this point even though secretly he was worried deep down. He fed the space coordinates for the four reported systems into the telescope and ran the bioscript, it would take about 10 mins for each system to get captured on the biocalcs and processed before they showed up on the screens in detail. He also picked a few other popular systems at random from Master Hun''s list and fed them into the script. Best to not waste any time that can be spent looking at systems. Master Hun returned with Onomayo just as the process was almost finished. "The good news is we haven''t detected any more systems disappearing yet but several researchers are working on a bioscript for your telescope to scan the night sky. It will take days, maybe weeks but we will be able to scan thousands of systems compared to the few dozen to a hundred we might get done manually. The script should be ready by tomorrow." he said as he walked to the table and sat down. A chirp from the biolcalc alerted them that the current set of tasks was complete. Alars moved quickly connecting the results to the main screen. He selected Markon from the results and he looked over to Master Hun and Onomayo, "Ready?" he asked. They both nodded. Alars pressed play. The screen sprang to life, focusing on where Markon was supposed to be. Instead of a red dwarf star and 4 planets, they saw debris. The screen showing thousands of small dots where the planets used to be and absolute nothingness where the star was. "My god...its really gone. There is nothing but a debris field if I am not mistaken." said Master Hun. Alars switched the results to Gyano then Polyps and then Rewace. The results were the same, debris fields and darkness. By the end of the day, Alars has run 22 systems in a radius of 9 light years from Thermaiya and detected 4 more disappearances. The closest one was less than 4 light years away. It was then that Master Hun had spoken what would become the most haunted words Alars would ever hear, "It''s coming for us." Sweep 7179284 From this distance, the planet called Iratini by its inhabitants, was little more than a speck orbiting a late stage red dwarf. There was absolutely nothing special about the star itself or the planet and the sentient beings on it. The entity that now approached it was never bothered by emotions or feelings, that was for its victims. They felt all this whenever the Presence completed a Sweep. Continuing its approach the Presence pondered on what its method should be this time; should it go slow or quick? Should it offer hope before snatching it away at the last moment? All very important questions for the Presence. In the end, every Sweep must follow protocol, the end was always the same. The Iratini were not space-faring so this sweep would be easy. The Presence halted several million kilometers away from Iratini and spoke a single word with authority: BEGIN. And so it did. 1. It would start with some minor tremors. After the Presence''s command, 9 small projectiles had launched from the massive bulk of the entity, traveling on circuitous orbits, all headed for Iratini. The projectiles traveled in groups of 3 and each group landed on one of the continents of Iratini, several thousand kilometers from each other. Upon landing, the projectiles quickly burrowed down into the ground and unleashed their deadly payload on reaching their target depth of 4000 kilometers. Four of the nine projectiles landed inside cities and yet went entirely unnoticed by the local inhabitants. The payload started its work converting the local mass into more copies of itself. Once it reached a critical mass, it created more projectiles that shot deeper and went straight for the core of the planet. While the tiny projectiles did their work, the entity launched an energy beam in the direction of the local star. The beam would hit the surface of the star in 7 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes and 4 seconds, timed exactly with when the projectiles unleashed their payload into the core. On the entity, an energy barrier flickered out and a small ship was launched towards the planet. All preparations were completed and the Presence was notified and a timer counted down. The Presence took position and ordered up several screens to observe the sweep. 2. Provan was on her way to treepod 9 for her regular visit with her offspring. Anoo was still a sapling, barely 3 months old, but growing strong like her father, Kenik, everyday. In another 2 months she would be ready to leave the nursery and move into their family yard to plant her first roots. As she reached the treepod, she felt the first tremor. Along the street, several others stopped and waited for the tremor to pass which it did after a few seconds. Everyone went back to what they were doing and Provan entered the treepod and took the vine to the 9th level where Anoo was situated. After spending several hours with Anoo, Provan and Kenik were having a meal at the Solarium when a second tremor shook the place, far worse than the first one they felt. Several people lost balance and fell and the Solarium windows shattered all around them showering them with glass shards. Kenik held onto Provan''s hand and ran towards the exit along with the others who seemed to be in full blown panic as glass fell everywhere and several people lay bleeding on the floor or under their tables. The tremors stopped after a few seconds and Provan looked around at the chaos. The Solarium sat at the highest peak in Elakar and the city seemed to have suffered considerable damage from the tremor. Smoke was rising out of several areas and she could see rescue groves heading out to help the injured and the fallen. Someone nearby screamed and Provan looked in their direction. It was an older gentleman who was pointing up at the sun and screaming. Provan followed their gaze and saw that there was a large dark spot now visible on the sun. This was bad, she looked at Kenik who was also looking up in shock. She shook him and looked at him, he seemed to understand her without any words being spoken, they both ran towards Treepod 9. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. As they neared Treepod 9, the world shook again, but it felt different this time. Provan and Kenik stopped and looked around in confusion, it definitely felt like a tremor but it also didn''t. Nothing felt right, they started rushing towards treepod 9. Suddenly, a large treepod on their left shook violently and started rising out of the ground. The ensuing panic as several people ran away from it and crashed into Provan, pushing her to the ground. Kenik helped her up and stared at the treepod that now floated several feet above the ground. All the treepods and groves around them were shaking violently as they were ripped from the ground and into the air. It was an unbelievable sight. Treepod 9 was now starting to uproot itself as well. Provan and Kenik ran towards it and clung to some roots climbing into the building that held their sweet child. They took the vine up the the 9th level amidst the panic inside the treepod, saw Anoo was wailing loudly and quickly went to comfort her. The treepod continued to shake as it lifted off the ground. Kenik went to a window and looked outside, his eyes wide with shock. Most of the city was now floating several dozen feet above the ground and continuing to rise. In the distance he could see other large groves and forests also rising up. Most shockingly, people on the ground seemed to be affected as well and were starting to float off along with the buildings. An hour after the chaos began, everything that was in the city was now in the air, rising up towards the sky. Small animals, trees and even tiny plants and saplings seemed to be floating up. Below, the ground looked injured, as if it was breaking apart from the inside. As they continued to rise, the air got much thinner and they had to depend on their stored reserves to continue breathing. Anoo had access to breathing equipment that each treepod had so she was fine. Provan and Kenik were holding each other tightly as they looked outside at the disaster that used to be their home. Everything was destroyed in a few hours. As the atmosphere disappeared and their reserves ran out, they died holding onto each other alongside their child. Provan''s last thought was, "how is this fair?". 3. The gravity engine had been constructed around the core and started up on schedule. The mass around the core had been consumed to create the engine and project the initial field so that the planet did not immediately collapse in on itself, that would have been a disappointment. The second stage of the gravity engine had initiated, targeting all organic life on the planet and lifting them off the surface. The Presence watched as large tree shaped structures floated up into the atmosphere.The Solar projection field had also reported successful completion was was now ready to intiate. The third phase was about to begin. 4. As organic matter continued to rise into the atmosphere, the planet below was quickly consumed by the gravity engine leaving behind nothing but the core enclosed entirely by the engine. The core scanned everything in its vicinity and tagged every piece of organic matter, from the smallest to the largest. Once tagged, the gravity engine got to work again and started pushing all the organic matter into a single point in space. As more and more matter rushed to the designated spot, the large black area on the Sun glowed far brighter than its background. The Solar weapon had fired and would arrive in the next 2 minutes as the gravity engine continued its work. All organic matter had finally been squashed into each other at the designated point in space in time for the Solar weapon to arrive exactly on it. A massive burst of radiation, energy and intense heat collided with the organic matter instantly killing anything unlucky to still be alive. As the beam completed its task, it collided with the entity and seemed to get absorbed into it. The sun seemed to have dimmed considerably. The gravity engine got back to work as it formed a sphere of intense gravity around the now dead organic remains of what had once been a beautiful plant-based organic life. The sphere started compressing and it stopped when it had shrunk to a size of what the humans would have called a football. A small ship now approached the football sized remains of the Iratini and scooped it up, heading back the way it came to the entity. The gravity engine, its work now completed, moved towards the star at a blinding speed. As the small ship docked back into the entity, it realigned itself and engaged its Dark Drive and disappeared. As the gravity engine reached the sun, it engaged its shielding and headed straight for the solar core and detonated once it arrived. The sun instantly went nova releasing a large burst of energy and obliterated the remaining 4 planets in the system. Not a shred of evidence was left behind which would suggest an intelligent species ever lived in this system or was wiped out by another intelligent species. Sweep 7179284 was now complete.