Dark Ring

It was the time of beginnings and ends. Earth was at an end, the sun was expanding. It was the end of our nest. It was time for us to leave. No craft could leave our system. It wasn’t possible. The background radiation of the universe would have killed us all. It took the magnetic field of a sun to save us. So, we created one.

Jupiter has long since been the site of our ancestors. We cleaned our solar system of all the materials we could find. Scoured the Oort cloud for trace minerals. Pulled the ore out of moons. Created stations through the asteroid belt to collect ice.

A great half shell was built around Jupiter.  integrated into that was the moon Io. It long held a magnetic connection with Jupiter that gave rise to the possibility of using the moon as a source of power. By tapping into the flux tube that connected moon and gas giant, great amounts of power could be channeled across to a ring that girdled the space around the Jupiter/shell. Spanning 40,000 kilometers in width and the inner surface the distance of 2,000,000 kilometers from the outer atmosphere of Jupiter.

Once the framework was completed on the shell and ring, it was time to ignite the unborn star. For the centuries it took to build the ring and shell, hydrogen was slowly being collected and funneled into the star. Slowly adding mass and fuel to the great sphere. Great bulges protruded from the four cartesian points on the ring. They created tremendous magnetic fields that could pull, funnel, and concentrate incoming hydrogen in, and more importantly, concentrate and push mass, radiation, and magnetic fields away.

When the great world was ready to leave the system, it would deploy smaller rings ahead and behind its course. Each outfitted in a similar fashion to the habitat ring

When the sun was ignited, and the flux tube of Io was properly re-stabilized, the ring itself became the focus of more centuries work. Section by section and atmosphere was constructed, the landscape was prepared, water was poured, and vegetation was spread. The inner surface of the ring grew and built. As each great atmospheric wall was dropped, opening a newly terraformed section.

It was not until the last section was finally opened that the architects knew they had done it. A massive ring made habitat. A planet made star. A world created. All that needed to be done was to add animals and people.

The ring and stardrive pushed itself out of the solar system, breaking away from the sun. It took decades to accelerate it to a velocity that would be able to break away. Its orbit widened each year until it was far enough away. After three hundred years, the stardrive and ring left the solar system and was free to begin its journey across the deepest dark.

He stood at the top of a grassy knoll. The fields of grass waved like the great oceans in his mind. He had never seen a sea, but he knew about waves. The hissing sounds of grass blades traveled around him as the multitudinous blades bent to the wind. Next, to him, his only companion on rolling plains was a tree. As soon as he saw its knarled surface, he knew it was the one. His mind was filled with images of it. He knew it by name, yet it never spoke. It was the only tree for days worth of travel

His eyes traced the horizon. The land sloped upwards as if climbing up to a great wall. The far away mountains of forward-spin could be seen clearly from base to tip. He could see the twisting of rivers, and the puddles of lakes. Like a ribbon being lifted up, it continued to arch over his head, details lost to his eyes as distance and atmosphere occluded his vision. The upturned land disappeared into the twinkling sky. When he had visited a colder region in those far mountains, he noticed how broken ice had reflected the same light. Something within him told him he was right. Since then he imagined the sky was full of ice. The sky-light showed through it. Other people, who were less convinced said it was the sky itself that glowed. The sky itself curved up in either direction to follow the land. His eyes passed across the sky several times. He was told he was to wait here for what was to come. He did not know what to expect. He knew only to watch the skies.

Like a bird flying behind sky-lit leaves, there was a shadow. It was subtle, hard to notice. If he wasn’t already trying to be aware of anything unusual in the sky, he would never have noticed it. It grew, slowly. It was a growing absence of glints and flashes. He remembered watching far off wildfires being put out by heavy rain looking something similar. Something inside of him suddenly felt terrified. He had never known what this was going to be. With a suddeness, the skylight grew brighter. The entire sky lighting with blinding intensity, and as quickly as the light flared, it died. It was the night. His vision tried to adapt to the sudden darkness after brilliance.

Confusion set in. How could it be night so quickly? As his eyes adjusted he strained to look to where the dark spot was growing. It was no longer dark, now the brightest thing in the sky, it was a dim orange that didn’t have the strength to light any surface. The no-longer-dark spot grew larger. An orange glow spreading even further across the sky. Without warning the sky shattered. An object, inconceivably large broke through the sky. The thing pushed through the opening, widening it as its body pass and pushed the ice away. There was no sound. Flames curled over the surface, spilling out of it. It flared sporadically at points across its surface. Large blasts of fire billowed in its wake. The far-off mountains glowed with each flare of the object.

This thing that could split the sky and light mountains was going to crash into the land. Confusion melted to terror once more. He had seen things fall from great heights. Simian war machines made use of the devastation such objects could cause. He had seen how the projectiles were set on fire. At night those flaming boulders lit a battlefield as effectively as the sun, up until it impacted the earth and crushed and burned its victims. This was bigger, much bigger.

The body of the object passed through the sky. The sleek object had the shape of a water drop hanging from a leaf. The front, or the side that led the fall, was broad and rounded. As the body tapered back, it broke into twining twisting spires, like vines. Each tapering to a point. Fire and smoke poured from every surface. The shattered sky bits spilled down and away from the point, the object burst through. Still, there was no sound.

Something inside of him told him, there was nothing he could do. It also told him that he had to stay. It told him he will feel pain. It told him it was sorry.

She wept. There was nothing she could do. She was in flight.  the asat pushing at full thrust, running a high-velocity orbital strafe of the ice barrier. There was no visual cue, but the comms flair to an activity level she had never known. One moment she was gazing with an absolute concentration in keeping a mean distance from the barrier, the next she was caught in a maelstrom of maydays and broadcast alarms. She couldn’t make sense of any of it. The comms flew through her mind like screams and wails. It broke her concentration, and the asat wavered as a result.

Pull up, break training run, we have an emergency, thought the lead.

She followed the thought order and coaxed the craft out of the high burn and lifted the front of the ship way from the upward lift of the barrier. She turned her sensors to look around and see if she could see what was going on. It took little time to see it.

The Balka was on fire. It was out of place. It was drifting out of its ancient orbit. She saw just in time to also see the plasma arch reach out beyond the listing vessel. Her home, her nation, her life was destroying itself as she watched. The plasma flare arched away from the sun, etherial tendrils still linked it to the sun’s surface. Suddenly the sun flared brighter. Her sensors compensated to keep her visual brain cells from being overloaded. The next moment optical vision was blanked out, and she was reduced to seeing in the infrared. No… there was still color.

She looked to where the sun should have been, a dark sphere only existed now. A soft glow of dissipating plasma spread out around it, casting a soft glow on the barrier wall. The sun was gone. Balka was falling towards the ring.

Obscenities from the flight group began to enter her mind as they thought them. Emotion spilled through the mind link infecting them all with each other’s disbelief, terror, and despair. One of the minds in their group hardened up and started thinking out, There have to be survivors… we need to get to them before they hit the barrier. 

The other four minds began to focus, Damin, focus the distress calls and get locations if you can. Prioritize any closest to the barrier wall. Adri, see if you can raise other assets and figure out coordination. Loch, take over the flying formation, hold us steady, watch for debris as we get closer, full push priority. Banya, see if you can in contact with Aronish. I’ll try to contact Balka.

She felt Loch’s mind approach her flight controls. She handed them to his mind and felt him grasp them firmly. She gave him the equivalent of a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. As she let go of the controls she turned her mind away from them and began to focus out with her communication fields. Leaving behind the sensation of altitude, and vectors, she forgot that she had wings and opened her ears.

Aronish? she queried with her outstretched broadcast fields.

Hello came the machine’s voice, I’m to assume you already know. What is the plan?

Good question, I’d say make the best speed for intercept. We are making full push priority to intercept survivors. Rainar is trying to contact Balka. Any luck yourself?

No, all the comm bands are full. Even if I could get a thought in, it’d be jammed into oblivion. I see your formation, be there in three marks. She could sense some added purpose behind its thoughts. Aronish had been holding a deeper orbit, monitoring the local volume as the squadron of asats flew their training run. The support ship was a capable military craft by itself was more than capable of looking after itself. She felt Aronish retract its communication fields. Banya did the same, pulling her attenuated mind back to herself.

As she did so, she became reaware of the squadron mind and then her asat, she could feel the engine ports on the wings glowing with the heat of the priority burn. She touched on Loch’s surface mind, checking to see if he was alright. He was holding the squadron together, all the craft under his control Aronish is on his way. Says it is about three marks out.

Adri leaned into the mind-link, Banya felt her mental exhaustion from trying to reach out I can’t get a clear thought out of the confusion.

Damin burst in, his thoughts just as exhausted feeling There are no thoughts out there. If there are, they are being drowned out by automated distress beacons. I can’t even hear anything coherent. 

The silence over the mind-link was numbing. After a quarter-mark Rainar thought Everyone take individual action, maintain formation and vectors. Keep eyes open. There will be debris. our best chance looks like a dive after the Balka. 

All eyes in the squadron looked at the bulk again. Its massive shape had penetrated the ice barrier and was sliding through as if the barrier had not existed. Nothing had ever passed through the barrier for as long as the history could tell. No one knew what was on the other side.

It grew impossibly large. Larger then the sky itself. It was angled directly towards the ring, and he knew deep inside that there was no way he was going to be able to outrun or escape the thing. It still swelled. The breeze around him grew in strength. It grew in heat. The fur along his body was pressed back as he stood against the force. Finally, there was sound, and it grew in intensity very quickly.
Great balls of fire were hurtling down around the massive object. They blazed to the ground, impacting and exploding with intense ferocity. He could see the distant impacts creating expanding spheres of explosive fire. Trees and earth was ripped into the air. Several of the fireballs landed very near, blowing away the rolling hills and vaporizing the grass blades. The ground rocked and vibrated under his paws.

The entire scene was lit by the flaming masses falling. Long shadows swung with each light source. Every impact of debris caused the land to flare with brightness.

His eyes traced the falling thing, he watched as its bulk crashed against one of the distant mountains. He wasn’t sure if it was the ship that gave way, or if the mountain top was sheered off. In the end, the effect was much the same. More fire lit the surrounding mountain range. Then, it hit the ground. The object was suddenly hidden from his sight as great swaths of earth was instantly ejected straight up. It took a few moments for the sound to reach him. It was like a distant thunder rolling towards him. Louder, and louder. It was the only thing he could hear, and it still grew louder. Just as the volume was reaching points of painfulness, the ground left his feet, and slammed back up to hit him into the air. He was caught by the branches of the tree he stood next to, and fell back to the ground.

He could feel bones breaking throughout his body. His screams of pain were lost in the hurricane of sound. Dirt, grass, tree all blew around him. Several times he slammed against hard objects. Rocks battered his body, and then he felt a great heat swelling. He saw the flames snaked themselves through the devastation. Causing the great plumes of dirt to glow from within. It rushed at him and making him rediscover what true terror was as it blasted at his fur, eyes, mouth, and ears.

When he next opened his eyes, he didn’t know how much time had passed. He didn’t remember falling asleep. Fires raged around him, grass and dirt buried part of his body, what he could see of it. The pain was beyond tolerable and it came from his entire body. All efforts towards moving was futile. Trapped, alone, and broken.  His keening tones could barely escape his mouth.

Aronish had intercepted the group. The support craft kept just above the formation in relation to their passing above the ice barrier. Banya could only watch as the Balka penetrated the ice barrier and passed underneath.

Do we have anything out here? Rainer thought to the squadron. In turn each of the squadron members replied in the negative. The communication fields were erratic. Nothing was coming through in a manner that made sense. Banya knew that it was something interfering. In the many trainings she had leading up to being part of the elite guard, she knew that her combat electronics was capable of screening and separating thought strands from each other. It generally didn’t matter how many strands had entered her comm field, she should have been able to get something coherent out of the knarled and twisted strands that existed in the space around her. It had to be something extra. The star-drive was cold, it must have sent out some sort of damping effect. Though, it didn’t seem to affect local communications, only long distance was affected.

The tension in the link was very strong. She felt Aronish massaging it with an array of mental sedatives. The mind was stronger against emotional instability, its formulation based largely on logic with emotion developed afterwards. It thought into the pause, our ability to sense and communicate is compromised. The only reliable sense we have is sight, and communications is largely dependent on that as well. We have no chance to find survivors, and with Balka already through the barrier, chances of finding anyone above the barrier is significantly lowered. They most likely have already perished against the surrounding barrier, assuming they escaped.

What the fuck was that anyways? I mean, WHAT THE FUCK? Loch raged into the lin,, Why would the stardrive go out? Why now, what is this?

Lock it down! This not the time to destabilize our link, Rainer thought. Then his own mind turned harder and colder, However, I’m sure the rest of us have the same questions. Aronish, did you see anything?

No, Rainer. I was caught by the suddenness of it myself. There were no indicators or signs. I simply could only observe with no understanding.

What did you see? Adri asked.

Should I show you? Everyone replied yes, though, not very quickly or confidently. Even Rainer’s response was colored with apprehension.

Aronish’s mind became a stronger presence in the link. The machine’s thoughts and emotions became stronger and readable. It brought a memory to the front of its thoughts. The other minds in the link felt the memory enter their own minds as if they were recalling it themselves.

The mind’s memory was stronger, and fuller then that of a human’s. Some prejudiced people discounted machine memory as nothing more than a recording. Though, to most, the associated emotions that came with the memory made it much more than a recording.

Banya found herself remembering an experience that was not hers. She felt her sensors suddenly shift their focus. The magnetic fields around her had wavered and twisted in the most unusual way. Her eyes and ears and fields looked around, testing and tasting the energy fluxes around herself.  She was settled in a fuel flux, her collectors wide open, consuming the concentrated hydrogen that the stardrive created. Even the flux had become distorted. The only thing that was strong enough to do that was the Balka, or the stardrive. All her senses pointed in those directions. With her current relative position she could see both at the same time.

Her spectrographic senses noticed that the starpdrive’s output was significantly different. It was hotter. She ran quick simulations, but canceled them when the effects became apparent. The stardrive grew larger, expanding in all directions. The Balka was the third largest entity within the ring. It had no ability to maneuver away from the blooms of plasma spewing from the drive’s surface. Great arms reached out in many directions. Within those arms, she could see flares of light. Distant ships being vaporized by fusion ejecta. She quickly looked around to see if any waves of plasma were to sweep at her or her squadron’s direction. She saw none, but did see one pass across the Balka’s hull. Her mothership was being blasted with high velocity plasma and radiation. Hull plating was made brittle, and fires flared from within.

Suddenly she lost her connection to Balka. It wasn’t a strong one in the first place, a distant whisper. It was more a subtle reminder. She reached out to the mothership, straining her fields to near collapse, and she could still hear nothing. No links.

The Balka’s mass was pushed by the ejecta significantly, and started drifting towards the ice barrier.

Banya felt the memory end, just as remembering worked. She wasn’t sure when or where it ended, but she became more aware of herself again. The memory fresh in her mind as if she had just woken from a deep dream. Her time sense told her seconds had only passed during the sharing.

So now she knew. It wasn’t much better.

The squadron was coming up on the breach now. No one made direct thoughts after the sharing. Each person was processing what they saw, heard, and felt. The shock of everything was overwhelming to each of them. The breach in the ice barrier was massive, and chaotic. Parts of the Balka drifted in madly twirling masses. Vapor clouds were expanding, ice chunks flying at tremendous speeds. Aronish fed the pilots locations and velocities of the concerningly large chunks that threatened the formation. The formation broke several times to avoid them while they kept very close to each other, staying under a kilometer to one another.

The squadron flew over the edge of the breach, the passage large and clean from the Balka’s passing. As the pilots and machine looked down into the breach, they met a sight that humanity had not seen in eons. Clouds, land, lakes and rivers, green hills, mountains. These things had only been words and illustrations for thousands of generations. This was land.

The new vision could only hold their attentions for so long. It was all lit by pin pricks of light scattered all over. Their eyes swept and saw the great ship, now stranded against mountains. Its mass had gouged a furrow kilometers deep and wide. Fires burned all along the path of the ship’s fall. The great ship itself aglow with fire. The mountains surrounding the crashed ship radiated light from wild fires. Explosions blew outward from the hull. Their brief flares gave stark relief to the surrounding landscape.

Banya could sense Damin mustering her will, is there…. Anyone alive down there?

There has to be. Balka is host to six billion lives, someone had to survive. Adri thought back.

Finding them will be a problem, so will helping them Loch interjected.

We will do what we can. We are the elite guard, it is our duty to assist in any capacity. Besides, we may be all that is left of the guard. We have responsibilities to the emperor.

The tension pulled on all their minds.

Aronish salved the link as best he could and offered a distraction, I have a best guess route to the crash site. It is optimized for survivor scan. A suggestion was pushed into Banya’s mind, and she accepted it from the machine. A line formed in her vision that showed a course the squadron would take through the chaotic breach zone. If she chose to move her head the line’s image would shift. She could also see where it passed behind ice and metal debris giving it visual depth. In addition, some of the debris were dynamically highlighted and are targeted as being risk factors along the course. Some of the debris were kilometers away and at high speeds. Banya accepted Aronish’s 4d-plot, and felt as the other squadron mates did as well.

Rainer cast his vote last Okay, we will do a multi-modal search sweep. Open comms, Open eyes, Open minds. See it, call it. I would rather second guess then leave someone to die alone.

No more thoughts were passed as they sped into the breach. The asat’s twisted and weaved through the ice debris. The formation dissolved into a loose collection, giving each other room to maneuver, but always staying within line of sight. Maneuvering through the field was a talent the asats and pilots were trained for.

The asats were unique, and was what supplied the strength the elite guard needed to protect the empire’s royalty. It was a design that had been improved on for thousands of years. In the antient history texts that Banya had seen, the earliest asats were metal cans, nothing more than a dart with mechanical maneuvering thrusters. The modern asat was beyond the imagination of the engineers of light years past.

It took time for the realization that nature still held secrets that would evolve our technology further. On a few of the larger psudoterra ships, there existed birds. They fed on garbage scraps that escaped the recycling systems, and survived on the condensed water between bulkheads of living spaces. Some lived on vegetable matter, and some preyed on small pests, or other birds. The mightiest of these were the hawks. Their compact bodies leant significant power, but they could also maneuver through tight spaces with ease.

The modern asat was a derivative of the first bio-engineered combat drone. Over time a place for a pilot to directly interface was included, and finally, an augmented mind was added. The asat was part creature part machine. The two blended together seamlessly. Deep inside it held a fusion reactor that too mimicked both machine and animal. The asat consumed hydrogen, and its digestive system would either store it, or feed it to the reactor. The power was distributed across the entire body of the avian. The feathers were plasma conduits, micro tubular magnetic shunts that fed the plasma to the tips. When inflight the asat has a glowing aura. Simply by shifting its body in minute ways, its velocity can change, and some minor control was held in the individual feathers themselves.

The mere presence of an asat in a local volume was usually enough to end any conflicts. In the moments that people underestimated the raw savagery were soon educated as they were ripped from their cockpits by talons, and then vaporized by a focused ray of plasma.

Banya saw through the asat’s eyes. She felt with its skin, and heard with its ears. Her bond to it was singular. She knew it and trusted it. It took years of constant training and interactions to get to that point. She was certain the asat trusted in her as well.

This was new territory for everyone. The guard unit understood that the asats were capable of atmospheric flight. It was proven several times, but rarely done. It was trained for, but it required significant focus to ensure that the plasma output was carefully controlled. In the most earliest of cases, a barracks ship was vaporized from the inside out when an asat ignited the atmosphere.

Something inside him kept him awake, kept pushing him to think more. To stay aware. All he wanted was to sleep, to rest. He’d have nothing more than to escape his torture with unconsciousness. He knew he would not live. He had one eye he could look out from. It was still night around him. The fires still burnt all over. More fire was still falling from the sky. He could see the crashed thing. Its shape was wedged between two cradling mountains. Next to the thing, they looked more like a few boulders. Had he not crossed them himself, he’d have not known the scale the thing was.

Balls of light continued to sprout from its surface, fires raged all around it. Lightening was arcing between clouds of smoke and ash. The entire land was lit with a red half-light that unsettled him to his core.

He saw five fires falling from the sky, but what had caught his attention was how they moved together. All the falling fires traveled in random directions, but these curved as if they were one. For a moment he lost sight of them as they passed behind a newly formed hill of freshly turned and scorched dirt. Then they appeared again, larger, and moving horizontally.

It took only seconds for them to grow larger. It turned out that one was much larger than the others, but became darker as the flames died away from its surface. It looked very different then the large fallen object, and was significantly smaller. It looked like a simian building, all straight sided. He couldn’t see too many more details then that. As its surface darkened, lights pointed out in all directions from it. The four smaller things looked like birds. They were odd birds, but birds. He also noticed that he could still see them, they had their own light. Bathed in some sort of bluish fire, their bodies radiated light. The red fire raped earth softened from the passing of their blue hue.
He suddenly realized that they were coming towards him. What were they? Where did they come from? His pain was forgotten for a moment. An urge built within him, and he put all his effort into a final yell. He didn’t know where the urge or sudden energy came from, but he took hold of it. He yelled into the ash ridden air with a voice he didn’t know he had.

Banya felt something reach out to the squadron’s link. She felt herself breath in sharply. It wasn’t anything she knew. It was absolutely alien, yet here it was. Reaching out to her. There were no thoughts, but the background emotion was unmistakable. Rainer!

Yes, wow, yes, I feel it too. Aronish?

Nothing I recognize. There are theories that there was life on the other side of the barrier. Based on the availability of water and copious plant life, there must also be indigenous animals or people. How it is reaching out to us, I don’t know.

It is asking for help, Damin thought, It is pure emotion, but the combination is obvious to its state.

Decisions across a link was easier then having to debate it through verbal communication. Everyone’s point of view was made evident through the mind link. They were not so much facts or opinions, but impressions. Each mind offered its weight in one direction or another, yet still allowed the others to mold its impression with their own impressions. At a consensus, the minds all share the same impression that represents the decision achieved.

It did not take long for the squadron minds to achieve consensus.

He laid exhausted. There was only had energy enough in him to look and watch. The birds and thing all slowed and came to land around him. The large thing was many times larger then any simian building he had ever seen. Its sides were alight with fire blasting from holes. It kicked dirt and dust up, sending whatever debris flaming away. The air was buffeted with its scream. The ground channeled the thump of its landing into his body, reigniting some pains.

The birds were significantly larger then he had expected. They looked like predator birds, but none that he could recognize. Their wings were spread wide as their talons reached out for the ground. Each one shimmered with the blue aura that lit them. As each landed he finally understood their size. They were the size of trees.

Each one touched the ground, and he could feel their impact, not as strongly as the larger thing. Each one ran to a stop. Their blue light shimmered into nothing, throwing the large shapes into dark shadows. Orange-red firelight lit their forms only briefly as they moved.

There was a new feeling inside of him. Hope? Lights came on from all directions. He had never seen such bright light in the dark before. It was directed at him and the surrounding area. Then he saw a simian walking over one of the hills towards him. He had seen simian battle armor, but not like what this one was wearing. Its surface reflected the light better then a still lake. Points of light were scattered over it, and it was very light looking. This was not a simian. Whatever it was, there was nothing like it.

It carried something in its hand. It didn’t look like a weapon, none that he knew of anyways. The new feeling inside of him grew stronger. It grew stronger as the figure walked towards him. Whatever it was, it had to be the source of the feelings of hope. The emotion took him over and he began to struggle towards the figure.

Is that a canid? A real canid? Adri thought at her.

Banya was almost just as shocked to discover that the form resembled a canid. She slowly approached the creature buried in the ground. She held a field medical unit in her hand. The creature struggled towards her. It looked very badly hurt. Burns covered all she could see, half of its body was buried in the ground. One of the front legs was missing. It did look like a canid.

She felt Rainer touch her mind, and she opened her eyes to him. She felt his shock as he too recognized it. So, canids aren’t a myth after all.

Banya remembered reading about canids in fantasy books. Stalwart companions and protectors of their human companions. Those were fantasy books though. She never once considered the fantastic creatures existed. Does that mean all the other mythical creatures are real as well?

“I can help you,” she spoke out loud. She tried to reach out to it with her mind. Radiating good will and desire to help,. She raised her hand that held the medical unit, “I am not sure if it will work for you, but we use this to repair our wounds. Will you let me try?”

At the point of consensus, one of the worries was that the medical unit wasn’t going to be compatible with the life they found. However, it was all they had. Aronish had a medical bay, but the same worry existed. It was all they had.

She knelt next to the creature. Even with all the burns, cuts, and broken bones, the canid was still magnificent. It had stopped struggling, and simply laid still, staring up at her.

Whatever it was, it had come next to him. It made sounds, but it didn’t sound anything familiar. The way it spoke sounded like a language, but it was entirely different than any simian tongue he came across. It didn’t make any threatening moves. It held the small thing in its hand out to it. He had no idea what it was, nor did he understand what it wanted of him.

It took the device and slowly brought it to his side, and gently pressed its surface against his burnt skin. He heard a hiss, and felt his burning skin cool and numb. The feeling spread across him from the point bringing relief to a tattered mind and body.

He sagged, his body’s muscles relaxing as the cooling spread across him. As it spread up over his head. He let it fill him and take him. His strength was gone, there was nothing for him to resist with. In his waning consciousness, he felt his mind fog, but a clear voice cut through his mind. It told him the worst had past. The pain would go away. Then he had no more thoughts, no more feelings. He fell into a deep dark sleep that he welcomed.

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This is the beginning of Grash’s story. After this point he begins his physical transformation. The injection from the medical device was more then compatible, and in fact begins to change him and make him stronger. This is due to how life on the ring evolved over the millennia.

The squadron return to the crashed Balka, and discover many survivors. There are of course even more dead. The recovery effort is made while the survivors attempt to discover what happened, and try to figure out what to do about it.

For the humans, breaching the ice barrier has long since been considered a great taboo. In fact the humans who did not live aboard the Balka, or were destroyed by the plasma arcs ban together to try and destroy the Balka and all who survived. Balka slowly recovers from the crash and becomes a greater presence in the story. The Balkanian royalty are introduced and become part of the subplot that involves the rebuilding of the Balka on the ring, and the defense of it from the Shattered Kingdom forces.

Grash joins with the elite guard squadron and together they learn of a way that would allow them to reignite the sun. This would the close of book 1.

Book 2

The asat squadron splits into two directions. Their mission is to unify the ring, and by going in opposite directions they hope to spread light, knowledge and hope, and a message. During the story of book 2 we meet the felids and the simians, two races at war with one another. The shattered kingdom continues to harass them and the Balka. The Balkanians continue to rebuild their ship as a city in the mountains. Their primary goal is to protect the breach, and to keep the Shattered Kingdom forces from getting through. At the same time they work to try and convince the forces to stop fighting them and to help them with the reignition of the stardrive.

Towards the end we meet the whales, find out their purpose and why they have caused all the things to happen. In the end, they must sacrifice their lives in order for the stardrive to be reignited.

Book 3

The events of books 1 and 2 have long passed, and become memories to the generations after the dark years. Grash must return from his deepest dark sleep, and help the ring once again as it approaches the new star system that would be its home, and home to the people of the ring.

The vessel of truth is encountered here, and proves to be a greater threat than anything imaginable. A renegade artificial intelligence that is bent on consuming all sources of matter and energy to accomplish an ancient goal. Grash must enter interstellar space and find a way to save their new home from a threat fare more powerful  than any weapon known.

Book 4

A new alien threat comes to light, and we encounter the Abnher. A race made up of three subspecies. They rely on bio-engineering and living technology to power their existence. They prove to be resistant to human colonization.

More books are planned, but we’ll leave it at that for now.