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An observer, had there been one, would have seen relatively little, had
they come to observe the planet Eosia in the aftermath of the year (as
Terrans would know it) 31,132 BC. That was the year that what appeared
to be a fleet of Beastie starships had laid waste to a former
civilization on that planet. Cities that had been home to thriving
communities for thousands of Terran years had burned in nuclear fire.
Forests and agricultural land that had been lovingly cared for over
many centuries were incinerated by multi-gigawatt laser beams.
Billions of people died in the course of a few days, and when the
attack was over, a world was smoldering.
The planet was orbited by two moons, and both had been inhabited for
thousands of years. The innermost moon was attacked by the same fleets
that laid waste to the planet, but the outermost moon was a different
story.
For thousands of years, the outer satellite, a ball of rock and metal
309 miles in diameter, had been the site and home of the government of
a vast, loose association of worlds, a government that had, at its
height, kept the peace between the peoples of over 14,000 planets. In
later times, that moon had been perhaps the most heavily fortified site
in the space controlled by the Eosian Hegemony. So protected had this
moon been that the final destruction that befell the planet Eosia had
largely passed over the moon. When the fleet had departed, its
horrible work complete, Ashtra remained untouched. Its defense shields
still shrouded the moonlet, its surface untouched by the weaponry
deployed in the final battle. Yet it was no less dead than the people
of Eosia.
Where the people of Eosia had been put to the sword (or rather the bomb
and beam), those who were on Ashtra had fallen to a different
weapon...disease. An artificially modified, carefully prepared
disease, which fulfilled its design purpose with ghastly effectiveness.
There were widely scattered survivors on Eosia, there were none on
Ashtra. The disease did, of course, have just a little help.
After the attack fleet departed the Eos System, for a long time an
observer would have seen nothing much change. Ashtra, intact but dead,
circling in orbit around a planet smashed to bits but still living, its
biosphere functioning and with a few living inhabitants yet.
Civilization on Eosia had dropped back to TL0 and TL1 levels, but there
were still widely scattered communities of survivors and their
descendents, living far from the radioactive ruins of their ancestors'
cities and lands.
Time passed, and little would have seemed to change in the perfectly
intact tomb that was Ashtra. Indeed, fully 300 Terran years passed
before the first hint of a change would have been visible in the quiet
of Ashtra. Even then, all that an observer would have seen was a hint
of motion in the empty 'streets' of Ashtra, which was still covered
pole to pole in structures, machines, and facilities that had once been
the bustling center of a galactic government. There were, for the
first time in thee centuries, machines moving in those streets, through
the transfer tubes, along the gravitic chutes, machines that moved
through the vast tomb, and began to gather the mummified bodies that
had lain untouched in those years.
A watcher would have seen those bodies brought by these machines, with
something almost like mechanical reverence, to sealed chambers which
were then flooded with oxygen and chemical fuels, and in contained
infernos, cremated. Not casually or mechanically, but with care, each
body laid carefully atop its mass of fuel and arranged in as dignified
as way as could be.
This task took several Terran years to complete, as the machines, which
were of many sizes and shapes and designs, but all of which worked
smoothly together, gathered the dead from millions of obscure corners
of Ashtra. There were literally millions of bodies to be cremated, and
the care with which these machines did the task made a longer one than
it would otherwise have been.
At last, though, the grisly task was completed. The ashes from the
pyres were gathered, and sealed into containers, and stored away, and
the machines turned to other tasks. With the bodies removed, an entire
moon-covering city of resources lay available, and now these mysterious
machines began to mine these resources, building more machines like
themselves, dismantling and reassembling machines, equipment, and
facilities for other purposes. As time passed, the work accelerated as
more and more machines were created.
About 20 years after the mysterious machines first appeared on Ashtra,
they converted some of the spacecraft that still waited, unused, in
Ashtra's spaceports for their own use, and for the first time in over
300 Terran years, spacecraft again descended from the skies onto the
surface of Eosia.
Some went to the ruins of what had been immense cities. Others visited
the sites of former military bases or other facilities. One set of
ships, cargo ships converted to be flown by robots, flew to the site of
the highest mountain on Eosia, and there the robots brought the
cremated ashes of the dead from Ashtra, burying the containers in a
ring around the mountain peak, as if they wished to use the mountain as
a natural marker.
An observer might have puzzled over all this, but the activity did not
stop. Now an observer would have seen robots gathering materials and
equipment from ruins all over Ashtra, and especially the precious
orichalcum from former power plants and starships and defense
facilities and a thousand other uses across Eosia, and bringing it back
to Ashtra.
On Ashtra, what had been a city spread across the surface of a small
moon was now being transformed into something quite other. Where
buildings and domed pressure habitats had been, now vast manufacturing
complexes were rising. Where administrative facilities for a
government had stretched for mile after mile after mile, now
laboratories, sensor arrays, power plants, and spaceports rose. Even
before, there had been extensive arrays of tunnels and enormous
underground facilities on Ashtra, now those were expanded tremendously,
as robots dug into the crust of the moonlet, sinking immense mines into
the depths, converting the new volume into vast new facilities of a
thousand different kinds, turning the moonlet into a beehive (not that
there had ever been any bees on Eosia or the Eos System) of activity, a
swarm of mechanical motion.
By 30,700 BC, Ashtra bore little resemblance to what it had been in the
days of the Hegemony, and the transformation was continuing. All over
the Eos System, robotic spacecraft were sifting through the vast
wreckage of a civilization that had spanned the system. Useful
resources of many sorts were gathered in to Ashtra, but most especially
every microgram of orichalcum that could be found was gathered and
brought back by the robotic emissaries.
As for why, and what was going on, and where these mysterious robots
came from...MORE LATER.
Shermanlee
An observer, had there been one, would have seen relatively little, had
they come to observe the planet Eosia in the aftermath of the year (as
Terrans would know it) 31,132 BC. That was the year that what appeared
to be a fleet of Beastie starships had laid waste to a former
civilization on that planet. Cities that had been home to thriving
communities for thousands of Terran years had burned in nuclear fire.
Forests and agricultural land that had been lovingly cared for over
many centuries were incinerated by multi-gigawatt laser beams.
Billions of people died in the course of a few days, and when the
attack was over, a world was smoldering.
The planet was orbited by two moons, and both had been inhabited for
thousands of years. The innermost moon was attacked by the same fleets
that laid waste to the planet, but the outermost moon was a different
story.
For thousands of years, the outer satellite, a ball of rock and metal
309 miles in diameter, had been the site and home of the government of
a vast, loose association of worlds, a government that had, at its
height, kept the peace between the peoples of over 14,000 planets. In
later times, that moon had been perhaps the most heavily fortified site
in the space controlled by the Eosian Hegemony. So protected had this
moon been that the final destruction that befell the planet Eosia had
largely passed over the moon. When the fleet had departed, its
horrible work complete, Ashtra remained untouched. Its defense shields
still shrouded the moonlet, its surface untouched by the weaponry
deployed in the final battle. Yet it was no less dead than the people
of Eosia.
Where the people of Eosia had been put to the sword (or rather the bomb
and beam), those who were on Ashtra had fallen to a different
weapon...disease. An artificially modified, carefully prepared
disease, which fulfilled its design purpose with ghastly effectiveness.
There were widely scattered survivors on Eosia, there were none on
Ashtra. The disease did, of course, have just a little help.
After the attack fleet departed the Eos System, for a long time an
observer would have seen nothing much change. Ashtra, intact but dead,
circling in orbit around a planet smashed to bits but still living, its
biosphere functioning and with a few living inhabitants yet.
Civilization on Eosia had dropped back to TL0 and TL1 levels, but there
were still widely scattered communities of survivors and their
descendents, living far from the radioactive ruins of their ancestors'
cities and lands.
Time passed, and little would have seemed to change in the perfectly
intact tomb that was Ashtra. Indeed, fully 300 Terran years passed
before the first hint of a change would have been visible in the quiet
of Ashtra. Even then, all that an observer would have seen was a hint
of motion in the empty 'streets' of Ashtra, which was still covered
pole to pole in structures, machines, and facilities that had once been
the bustling center of a galactic government. There were, for the
first time in thee centuries, machines moving in those streets, through
the transfer tubes, along the gravitic chutes, machines that moved
through the vast tomb, and began to gather the mummified bodies that
had lain untouched in those years.
A watcher would have seen those bodies brought by these machines, with
something almost like mechanical reverence, to sealed chambers which
were then flooded with oxygen and chemical fuels, and in contained
infernos, cremated. Not casually or mechanically, but with care, each
body laid carefully atop its mass of fuel and arranged in as dignified
as way as could be.
This task took several Terran years to complete, as the machines, which
were of many sizes and shapes and designs, but all of which worked
smoothly together, gathered the dead from millions of obscure corners
of Ashtra. There were literally millions of bodies to be cremated, and
the care with which these machines did the task made a longer one than
it would otherwise have been.
At last, though, the grisly task was completed. The ashes from the
pyres were gathered, and sealed into containers, and stored away, and
the machines turned to other tasks. With the bodies removed, an entire
moon-covering city of resources lay available, and now these mysterious
machines began to mine these resources, building more machines like
themselves, dismantling and reassembling machines, equipment, and
facilities for other purposes. As time passed, the work accelerated as
more and more machines were created.
About 20 years after the mysterious machines first appeared on Ashtra,
they converted some of the spacecraft that still waited, unused, in
Ashtra's spaceports for their own use, and for the first time in over
300 Terran years, spacecraft again descended from the skies onto the
surface of Eosia.
Some went to the ruins of what had been immense cities. Others visited
the sites of former military bases or other facilities. One set of
ships, cargo ships converted to be flown by robots, flew to the site of
the highest mountain on Eosia, and there the robots brought the
cremated ashes of the dead from Ashtra, burying the containers in a
ring around the mountain peak, as if they wished to use the mountain as
a natural marker.
An observer might have puzzled over all this, but the activity did not
stop. Now an observer would have seen robots gathering materials and
equipment from ruins all over Ashtra, and especially the precious
orichalcum from former power plants and starships and defense
facilities and a thousand other uses across Eosia, and bringing it back
to Ashtra.
On Ashtra, what had been a city spread across the surface of a small
moon was now being transformed into something quite other. Where
buildings and domed pressure habitats had been, now vast manufacturing
complexes were rising. Where administrative facilities for a
government had stretched for mile after mile after mile, now
laboratories, sensor arrays, power plants, and spaceports rose. Even
before, there had been extensive arrays of tunnels and enormous
underground facilities on Ashtra, now those were expanded tremendously,
as robots dug into the crust of the moonlet, sinking immense mines into
the depths, converting the new volume into vast new facilities of a
thousand different kinds, turning the moonlet into a beehive (not that
there had ever been any bees on Eosia or the Eos System) of activity, a
swarm of mechanical motion.
By 30,700 BC, Ashtra bore little resemblance to what it had been in the
days of the Hegemony, and the transformation was continuing. All over
the Eos System, robotic spacecraft were sifting through the vast
wreckage of a civilization that had spanned the system. Useful
resources of many sorts were gathered in to Ashtra, but most especially
every microgram of orichalcum that could be found was gathered and
brought back by the robotic emissaries.
As for why, and what was going on, and where these mysterious robots
came from...MORE LATER.
Shermanlee
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