Empire
by Warringer
Chapter 6
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Arthur Charles Clarke was a truly massive structure. Hovering about 36.000 kilometers above the cross of the Greenwich Meridian and the Equator, it was the orbital base of several hundred monomolecular carbon threads that connected it to a massive base station down on Earth allowing several dozen climbers to move between the surface of the planet and the massive station.
To counter the massive angular momentum on the threads the station was held stationary by massive Ferron counter gravity generators that were powered by by the Hawking Reactors that also powered the entire structure together with the normal fusion reactors.
But Clarke wasn't a simple counter station for a space elevator. It had never bee intended to be since it started out as ten kilometer asteroid in 2010. Ferron and EA derivate systems had broken the asteroid down and used its material to build the first parts of the giant structure it would eventually become. And the massive autonomous robotic Von Neumann factories were still continuing to expand the massive structure.
Clarke was far from finished. It was still only the base structure with three arms extending from it. The Base structure was a large cylindric structure with a diameter of two hundred kilometers and a hight of fifty kilometers. It also had a large fifty kilometer diameter half-spherical indention in its middle, where some of the Von Neumann factories were breaking down a large forty kilometer asteroid to either replicate themselves or send towards the other factories that build the massive arms of the station. The Asteroid wouldn't last longer than maybe two month until the factories had broken it down and used its materials for construction.
Two of the large arms were extending along the geostationary orbit of Clarke. With a length of one thousand kilometers extending from the base structure, the curve of the arms along the orbit was already noticeable. Each of the arms was based around a rectangular form with twenty kilometers length and five kilometers height.
The last arm was extending towards Earth, although it was less long as the orbital arms. Only extending five hundred kilometers towards Earth, the ten by ten kilometers structure had to be hollow to allow the threads of the space elevators to pass through. It would needs some time until it would meet with the similar structure build up from Earth, creating a large tower like structure from Earth towards the orbit.
Most of the contents of the structure were industrial complexes that also helped to build itself, but also everything from every day articles to space ships. It also has large areas for people living aboard and hydroponic and other installations to feed the people living here. And there was the large decentralized Artificial Intelligence that was the heart of the structure, Arthur.
It was also essential parts of the planets defense. Massive shielding generators protected itself and parts of the planet, while offensive systems where lined along the arms, massive retractable turrets of GODs, GLIPAs, MACs as well as Launch arrays ready to defend the planet.
But Arthur Charles Clarke wasn't the only structure that was build like this. Two other structures, Robert Anson Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, were build 120 degrees into each direction along the geostationary orbit, each more or less fast by building themselves. Eventually all three would come into contact with each other, connecting the orbital arms, creating a massive ring around Earth, connected to its planet with three orbital towers.
But right now massive Warlock sized autonomous factories were still building the structures as the weapons were deployed and ready to fire at any aggressor. And they would continue to build it for the next about six decades.
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Kyle couldn't help but stare at the structure that floated in the center of the incredibly clear holographic projection that was floating in the center of Red Palace's bridge. Sure, he had seen the Kuat Drive Yards and Center Point Station, but this structure was something else, somehow.
He couldn't quite explain it, but he had the feeling that it would be much larger than KDY. And than there where the large green objects floating around the structure and just about everywhere else.
"Is that out destination?"
Admiral Danna looked up from where he talked to one of his subordinates and shook his head, as slight smile on his face.
"No, we are not going to Clarke. High Command is on Shabazza, one of the Solar Trees."
"Solar Trees?" Jen asked from next to Kyle. Like him she was sowhat overwhelmed by what she had seen until now. Earlier she had told him that there was no way that they were still in the same system as there wasn't any planet that could support life on its own.
"Dyson Trees," Danna noted." Essentially they are giant trees that grow on comets. Space born intelligent life forms. The Ancients created them to act as self governing space stations. They are members of the Commonwealth."
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Tenchi Masaki was worried. It wasn't simply because of the transfer or that the transfer had stranded them in the Star Wars universe. No. He was more worried about his ship, his crew and his family. Over the last few decades the three women that were now laying in the medbeds of the Medbay had become more of a family than the people he used to call his family.
It was partly his fault through that his old family had become strangers to him. But the time he had lived in the Earth Alliance universe had changed him from the boy into the man he was now. And the following decades after his return had changed him more than the time in the EA universe.
And that was also the fault of his old extended family, especially the Emperor who had tried to force him to act against the thing he believed in.
Now he had to face the possibility that he would loose his new adopted family to the petty fight between two races that dared to call themselves First Ones and acted like spoiled brats.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He just hoped that Dark Knight would adapt to the now stronger telepathic ability of Setsuna. She was already growing neural tissue in several unused areas of the ship as reaction to her bond to the greenheaded ex-Psicop.
Ever since they had made the transfer, Setsuna was in a form of coma as her brain tried to shut out the large amounts of thoughts she sensed and was unable to block out. Dark Knight was bonded to Setsuna and acted as something of a filter, helping her to block out the thoughts and keeping her sane. But now Dark Knight didn't have the power to block out the thoughts of more and more people and fell into the same form of coma. Her two Avatars, D and K were the same. He was only glad that he only had a headache.
"Bridge to Admiral Masaki," the voice of Setsuna's current replacement, until she was back on her feet, came over the PA.
"What is it Commander?"
"We get some..."
The voice of the Commander suddenly was covered by a high hitched noise that came directly over the ships PA. It sounded like an injured animal. At the same time the light began to flicker and the gravity to fluctuate.
Tenchi was thrown off his feet as the ship made a sudden movement without adequately working compensators. Than there were three inhuman human screams coming from the medbeds and Tenchi looked up from where he was holding to one of the beds, that were fastened to the deck.
Setsuna and the two avatars where all but buckling in their beds and against the straps that held them down just in case, eyes wide open and with a nearly insane look in each of them.
This was the moment as a hot knife seemed to slice into his head. He collapsed onto his knees and floded over as he held his head.
For a moment it was as if he was feeling the thoughts of several thousand people screaming in his head only to be stop abruptly.
As sudden as the pain had come it was gone and with it gone, the light and gravity came back. His head hurting like hundreds of dwarfs trying to mine ore from it, he looked up. Setsuna and the two avatars were still screaming, but the screams died down before they collapsed back into their medbeds, falling limb.
Tenchi breathed in deep as he stumbled back to his feet and towards one of the med cabinets to look for something that could at least dull down that massive headache.
At the same time his mind tried to come up with an explanation for what had just happened. He was just about to swallow a number of Aspirin dry as a single quote came to his mind.
"As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced," he said out loud a look of horror on his face.
His stomach seemed to twist itself into a ball. This had to be how Sestuna felt when they witnessed the destruction of Home by the hands of the Vorlons.
"Admiral, are you there?" the voice of the Commander called out again over the PA.
"I'm here," he said and swallowed." High Priority message to Admiral Ryan. Alderaan has just been destroyed by the Death Star..."
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"Be careful with that!" came the rather loud shout from one of the technicians that were milling around on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Tyrannic.
Captain Tanner Bishto grit his teeth as he was forced to watch how the unknowns were falling over his ship like locusts.
"Rebel scum," he pressed out between his teeth as he had to watch how the technicians of the unknowns moved some sort of tank on a repulsor sled onto the bridge.
What else could they be? They had to be Rebels. Rebels that were hiding out in the unknown regions and had managed to get unknown aliens to help them. But they would never win.
Bad enough that they had managed to board his ship and than had pulled it into some sort of massive transport. But now they were daring to take his ship apart while they were still on it.
"Rebels?" he heard one of his guards say." I guess that is not too far from the reality."
The repulsor sled stopped in front of the defense station console. The cover had been removed and a number of technicians were frowning at it.
"Here goes nothing," Bishto heard one of them say." We need to force a hardware connection."
"My kingdom for an R2-unit," said another.
Bishto grit his teeth as he watched the technicians getting into the interior of the console attaching a multitude of different cables and other connectors to the various systems.
A few moments later they stepped back.
"Lets get The Brain to work," one of the technicians said and walked to the console on the side of the tank.
Bishto wondered what the tank was about to do as a small holographic projection appeared next to the tank and a blue glow began to shine from inside of the tank, casting strange shadows all over the surrounding space. He thought that some of the wired blue glow shined through the bodies of the technicians, but he brushed it of as being a result of the stress.
"What is that?" Bishto tried and asked his guard. He might be a prisoner, but he still could ask. Maybe it was useful when he got back to his base, after they had send a fleet after him to take a look.
One of the technicians chuckled.
"Oh, just wringing out every last piece of data from your computer banks."
The technician was about to pat the tank, but pulled his hand back before it could touch the tank. Bishto could have sworn that the wired blue glow had shone through the hand.
"The Brain is able to get into any computer. Even those that we don't even know the architecture and protocols of."
Than he grinned.
"Gotta love quantum computers."
Bishto was about to say something as he noted something outside of the bridge. The hangar of the massive unknown ship had opened again and the tractor beams where pushing his ship out of it.
He looked out of the window to his side and stared out into open space. There was a blue-green-white planet not far from them, but what caught his glance was a massive gray shimmering wall that stretched to either side of his field of view, through he could see a larger object somewhere down along one of the walls.
In the center of his field of view was a massive opening of a hangar and they were moving closer. Space made it hard to tell dimensions, but he saw several large turrets that looked very much like turbolaser turrets on a planet, but they appeared to be much larger.
A reflex from above caught his attention. A large reddish object, looking like an unholy amalgam of different structures slowly drifted across the large wall. Dozens of large tentacle-like structures, each as long as the object and split down in even more tentacles, were moving about through space, several of them carrying massive plates and other parts.
At first Bishto thought of it to be small, but that he saw how the shadow glided over the massive wall and disappeared into the hangar for but a second as it drifted past, showing that the object was at least as large as the opening of the hangar. And the hangar was large enough to 'swallow' an Imperial class Star Destroyer.
Bishto swallowed as he stared after it with large eyes.