The Singularity on Hydrobius

[Pirx Danford]

History is only information about things that happened a long time in the past and sometimes uncovering it requires as much detective work as your regular crime fighter performs day by day.
Its just like yesterday that I remember stumbling across a certain document in my historic studies, opening up this oh so weird opportunity to have the past answer my questions directly through a witness of the period and even more strangely one involved in just the events that might hold the answer to my specific research area.

The arrogant core dwellers with their mighty empires think of us in the rimworlds as uncivilized barbarians, but even as the distance between the habitable planets is huge and we oftentimes lack resources a good amount of worlds is steadily improving. That is... until a certain point and then one of the oh so pleasant gifts from the core monkeys destroys all of which we achieved.

What I am writing about is of course the mechanoid plague, nobody knows from where it came from and why they corrupt any advanced technology. Is that an act of war? At least that is how it felt for many of our worlds.
I am putting together the pieces of a puzzle stretched across hundreds of light years with bits and pieces that date to over a thousand years back.
With "our" I mean the rimworlds of course, alas each system fights for survival on its own, the few ships that dare to make the long travel are highly appreciated, especially considering that they are not much more than fragile tin cans most of the time.

So the document I stumbled across was a flight passenger list, dated back about 867 years. The reason I received that list from our "space port" (a flat concrete surface with a cabin and one guy calling himself flight manager, who in fact is not much more than a hobo drinking booze every time I see him) the reason was that the list came in fact from a space ship that just landed on our comely planet.
Even as it was nearly a millenium old it was current and from the eight names on the list one figuratively jumped at me. General Jeromê Cazpar Shrikoven - deep frozen history brought back to life through the miracles of cryogenics.

This is when I am just about to meet him.
He was thawed a month back but I figured I would let him have his time to acclimate before bombarding him with the oh so many questions I had.
Sadly I learnt that he took quite a liking to the cheap whisky from the only bar we had in this shambles of a town.
Anyway I made up my mind about this and seeing as he ignored my invitations I decided to do this field trip and do an interrogation police style... hopefully he wont notice my utter lack of authority.
The saloon is made from wood, as most of the buildings in this town.
Burns fast but is built up again as fast as well.
The swinging doors creak as I enter and the dim room is filled with just a handful of patrons, some look at me just to recognize me and looking away uninterested.
Instantly I know which one is Mister Shrikoven, it has to be the fellow that has an impressive lineup of empty shot glasses and beer pints on his table, its not even noon and he already lies there snoring with his head sideways among the glasses.
Or has he not even woken from last night?

To confirm my impression I walk over to the bar and ask Pete the barkeeper if its my guy.
He nods and says "But just call him Jer. Do mind not to call him General if you value your teeth where they are eh?"
So I walk over to the table. Neither a quiet nor a loud "Hey" yield any reaction, so I stretch my arm to shake him when suddenly I hear a clicking noise and an evil humming.
From somewhere this lifeless lump produced a sort of energy weapon and its pointed at me - I instantly freeze.
"Touch me and you are dead. Now bugger off and let me sleep."

To convince him to talk to me took hours and I fear it will cost me a fair amount in drinks to learn all what he knows.
But this day I learnt about the one planet empire of Ashlesha and the singularity on Hydrobius.

[Pirx Danford]

Alright if the only person willing to hear me out is a historian I cant help it.
I tried to find something resembling at least a bit like an army or government, but the best I found was a sheriff like in some fucking wild west oldie.
And that guy was too drunk to understand more than two words.

Okay... so here I am. Fuck!
You want a story right?
Keep that beer coming and I'll give you one.

This dates about one thousand and a fifty years back.
Have you heard about transcendents?
Well there is a shitload of stuff that can go bad before we silly apes manage to get there.
Okay and *burp* right at the top of the list in good company with nuclear war, biological warfare, bad nanotechnology (haha like real bad) and fucked up climate control is of course "how not to use artificial intelligence".

So... to cut the story short. Eh nevermind, more beer if I don't.
See, we at the core have these short distances, well if you can call a few light years short.
Its fun, we manage to have our wars and so on, its good for the human nature being righteous and fighting the good fight.
My empires military had a few successes, we had like 5 planets in control and I slowly progressed up in the ranks.
I could have had a good future, lots of decorations to earn, but these fucktards at Ashlesha had to mess everything up.
They had a planet and I believe 2 or 3 moons in their system and they were well on their way to becoming transcendents.
But then they decided they had to spread their wisdom and even wanted to have an empire.
Instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to occupy some neighbours they decided to spread out to the rimworlds,
but not personally of course. They planned to create an autonomous lag resistant terraforming and communications network.
But that would need the resources of a whole planet, so they found one.
An uninhabitable planet in the Hydrobius system, not too far away from them, was used to install a gigantic industrial network.

Everything that could go wrong there did go wrong.
I'll get to that later, but I was one of the pilots of a combined task force from about 8 core empires formed to take out the threat that they constructed.
We had good technology, fast ships, everything automated.
A crew of about 10 people could control a frigate class battleship.
Not then!
I woke up in a refurbished half a century old small bomber.
Some genius had the idea to install an alarm that would make you rip your ears off if you had the strength after being in cryostasis for a decade.
A complete fleet of small ships had arrived at Hydrobius and I have to tell you it was an uncanny sight.
Our target planet looked like it was breathing.
Every few seconds it spit out ships that would make their way to the rim.
We did what we had to do and for what its good I could have lived the life of a hero from there on.
When  it realized we were there and out to annihilate it, it threw everything it had in our way.
Only a few of us survived that.
But I went on to the next mission and that is why I am here today.
I went to Ashlesha, we went to Ashlesha in a mission to rescue the humans even after what they had done, but what we found was so far from human...
we had no choice.

Right but let me tell you what we fought on Hydrobius first.
See. The Ashleshans believed it to be smart to give their autonomous industrial complex needs and wants to be more dedicated to the mission.
Other civilizations end up with a singularity problem by accident, they fucking forced it.
We dubbed the intelligence the hive queen.
And then we went and destroyed it, because she already did her best to destroy us.
Our task force was better that day if not by much and we made it, but that did not help the Ashleshans anymore.
When the hive queen began to understand the universe around her, she decided that her mission could be easier if she simply subdued us silly humans.
Call it poetic justice, but she began with Ashlesha if only because it was the convenient thing to do.
She found ways to infiltrate the computer systems and then she slowly spread through the whole planet.
It took years for the signals to pass from system to system.
That was our luck else we might have found out too late that she was doing the same on the worlds of our tiny empires.
Anyway... after a while she found out how to control the humans by influencing the media and through implants.
When we arrived at Ashlesha every human had been rebuilt into a cyborg.
Luckily we managed to destroy the hive world right before the hive queen could transmit herself to the systems at Ashlesha,
else we would have had a much harder time and who knows if we would have won had she used what she learnt from our first encounter.
What happened was a massacre, morbidly she had constructed the cyborgs in their human shapes, even the babies.
Ech I dont want to talk about it, no matter how much beer that gets me.

But listen, this is important to you, to all of the rim worlds.
We managed to prevent the signal to Ashlesha, but before that... well she managed to sent one to one of the worlds out here.
This is why I am here.
I know how much trash the core worlds send out to the rim, but this is more toxic than everything else.
Damn I am too drunk!
Listen son when I am sober we'll wrap this up okay?

[Pirx Danford]

But we never got the chance to wrap up.

Luckily I managed to convince the General to stay at my place, else Steve would not have knocked on my door the next morning.
Well by now I know his name is Steve...

I must admit I downed a few beers that last evening too and well I truly felt it, so the knocking reverberated in my ears.
When I managed to get myself in some decent garment I was surprised to see the "flight manager" standing there, panting like a madman.
He asked if the General was awake yet and that he needed to see him instantly.
I tried to hush him down as his voice was boring into my brain, but also signaled him in.

Then I seated Steve and already the General yelled - clearly not truly sober yet - and asked what all the ruckus was about.
My head nearly exploded when Steve jumped up anxiously and yelled "There are thousands of them! Listen! I want to show you so you see for yourself!"
Somehow between all the excitement I managed to get all 3 of us some coffee and then we got Steve to tell us what he was droning on about.

Apparently some sort of gigantic centipedes where rallying in the next valley and starting to make their way towards the spaceport.
Also Steve was not only a drunkard, but deemed himself to be on a holy mission passed on to him by his father.
Well I can't truly tell his story without being condescending and by now he saved my life so often that he truly does not deserve that.
So prepare yourselves for a time jump as these are diary entries from Steves diary of that time and, well some time after... you'll see!

---

28 of Markmon

I patrolled the towns vicinities like every day for the past 15 years.
It is just not the same without my father, but I have to be vigilant because the plague will surely return.


29 of Markmon

Today after I returned from my patrol suddenly a spaceship landed.
Such dry words - it has been over a good hundred years since we had visitors.
Only a few people were aboard and they were quite disoriented from just thawing up.
I received the passenger list from the captain and forwarded it to our historian... he probably is the only one who might take any interest in it.


30 of Markmon

I have to be more vigilant from now on, surely with that much modern technology the plague is on the rise again.


[The whole 30 days of Dunmas nothing special was going on, besides this entry.]

21 of Dunmas

No movement yet, but I heard rumours of a guy calling himself the General trying to talk to "the military", might be interesting to find out what its about.
Maybe he was sent by the Lord to aid against the evil machines sent by the devil himself?


2 of Vernum

It's there I can see it at the end of the valley! My sight is a whole lot better since I stopped drinking. Sometimes I even believe I can hear the Lords voice again.
Have to find the General by now I am sure that I am not alone in my mission anymore.
Found him at Markus Vans house, another sign that our historian took him in.
Our past sins are catching up to us and we have to repent through fighting evil.

This day went down in history, probably the town has been razed but at least we could warn the people.

After I showed the approaching horde of centipedes to Markus and the General there was a lot of talk.
It looks like these are enemies the General fought in the past and the core sent them to us.
They were doing good things for a long time, terraforming the rim worlds in preparation for an empire that never came to be.
But now they turned into monsters craving for all technology, seeking it out when they sense it and destroying it, no rather assimilating it.

This is what happened in the last 500 hundred years all over the rim worlds, anyone advanced enough was bombed back into the stone age.
All technology has to keep a low profile else they are awakened.
I did not truly understand all that, but all became clear when the General told of the transfer of the hive queen.


3 of Vernum

The swarm is nearly upon us.
The town is evacuated I believe and we are preparing to take off with the ship.

This is what my father trained me for and I don't know how but I believe I convinced the other two that indeed we are holy warriors meant to find and eliminate the queen.
The general even has a weapon that will destroy the queens programming, a holy artifact!
He allowed me to guard it until we find the queen.
It will take hundreds of years to travel among the outer rim, but eventually we will find it and redeem ourselves and thus purge the sins of mankind.


---

Reading Steves diary can be quite tedious I admit, over time he became ever more of a zealot and on some planets he even converted people to his beliefs.
But he does fight with a fervor and I actually see forward to finding the hive queen.
I do write these lines a good 600 years after we left the planet together, since then we visited about 8 worlds - hundreds more might lie before us, but we will find her.

[minami26]

I feel the need to reply to this topic to tell you I'm hyped about your idea from whence the Mechanoids came from. hurrhurr. Can't wait!

[Pirx Danford]

Hey thanks minami26! This is a well needed push to continue.
I wanted the next part to be told in character by the general, sadly I got a mean case of tooth aches - well and when I got aches I am a total wuss - as the general is not a wuss I just could not get into character.
Anyway I'll try to get into character and a writing mood this evening :-)

[minami26]

Hey thanks minami26! This is a well needed push to continue.
I wanted the next part to be told in character by the general, sadly I got a mean case of tooth aches - well and when I got aches I am a total wuss - as the general is not a wuss I just could not get into character.
Anyway I'll try to get into character and a writing mood this evening :-)

so thats why it took so long. xD yikes, toothaches. I feel you man! get well soon!

P.S don't rush it! I'd rather have a superb read that took passion than just thrown words just to make something.

[Pirx Danford]

Right so here is part 2 - I'll let that one sink in a while and then I'll give you the ending 

[minami26]

alright! one more! huzzah!

[Pirx Danford]

And with that its finished - hope some readers liked it :-)

[Pirx Danford]

Oh this got over 400 views, but no comments.

As I strife to improve my writing skills, please let me know what you did not like or which parts you enjoyed the most. Only criticism will help me become better so bring it on. Of course praise is always very welcome too and is the superglue needed to fix the cracks that brutal criticism brings along :-P

[Untrustedlife]

pirx would you be interested in joining the succession game?

[Pirx Danford]

pirx would you be interested in joining the succession game?

I am watching the thread to get a feel for how the succession game works.
Its looking very interesting but I have not made up my mind about taking part, so... not saying yes or no yet.
Sorry please bear with my indecisiveness a little while longer k?