Long ago, settlers set out for the unknown in sleeper ships from earth. While they did not know what they would face out in the inky blackness of the unknown, they knew what destruction faced them if they stayed.
They eventually came to a system with 3 potentially life bearing planets and set about terraforming and colonizing them. 2oo years later they had build an exploration fleet and begun exploring the neighboring systems. They slowly expanded, leaving behind fortress worlds and massive fleets to call upon should they find those from Beyond. In this time they met and either assimilated or exterminated several races they met. They were the supreme power, that they knew of. During this time they begun tinkering with their DNA to enhance certain abilities. Their intent was to make the perfect combat soldier. Exceptionally fast, able to sense those around them, and to communicate without the need for radios. They called these soldiers Numenors.
Centuries later, the genes had started to spread through the civilian population and had started to stratify the population. But there was a problem. The telepaths seemed to have a problem with many of the social injustices. Including a burgeoning slave trade. Needless to say, the politics became brutal and entire sectors threatened to leave the Union of Parheel over the slavery issue. Neither side would give in and evidentially it came to blows. Kinetic blows that made cities vanish in massive mushroom clouds, destroyed entire worlds and races. The Civil War spread quickly as systems chose sides. Automated fleets bashed each other into scrap and ionized gases. Von Neumann machines began to mine their own resources and attack each other and anything in their way as their living controllers were killed.
In the mist of all this were the newly established colony and resort worlds. They had no particular value as military targets, but they were forced to choose sides as well.
Numaria was one of these worlds. Several years into the civil war, the Kanderi AI sent a cleansing fleet to the system. The system defenses were waiting for it, but were not yet complete. The fleet was able to beat its way through the blockading defense fleet and reach the planets where the heavier planetary weapons came into play. But the Kanderi AI fleet was no pushover. It had done this successfully before and its sub AI knew what they were doing. But this world and its sister had not been idle. Massive launches of missiles came up out of the oceans and from mountain ranges. The AI fought back with kinetic strikes that leveled cities and lasers that swatted missiles from the skies. Several planetary fortresses opened up with meson based weapons that ignored the atmosphere and struck directly at the insides of the AI ships. The Fortresses became the new targets and fell quickly. seventeen seconds after reaching orbit, the defenses were manned by Computers alone because nobody else was alive to give orders. 16 seconds later the remaining missiles arrived and wiped the Kanderi fleet from space.
In spite of the destruction, some people survived. Most of them died from starvation and outlaws, but some few banded together by chance and lucked out long enough for the long winter to fade. Villages grew into towns and science was founded again. It helped that not all libraries had pure electronic media and some scientists had survived. Slowly they grouped together and reestablished government and rebuilt their industry. Now, 500 years after the Rain of Destruction, they have once again began to explore not only their world , but their system as well.
_________________ Benno the Mad Wrote:
man, you gotta realise that thor and bos fell out of the patriot tree (like the ugly tree, but instills patriotism instead of ugly) and hit every branch on the way down.
"Gone now, dispersed by the brutal destruction of this one day, was the belief that the Darkman and his army of the dead were so superior as to be invincible. By attempting to destroy the morale of the Marines, the Darkman had restored it to full vigor. Dia De La Muerto had failed in its objectives."
The Gunny: Stand of the 300
Si vis pacem, para bellum
If you want peace, prepare for war
Gunny's color #FF2400
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