Chpter 88
The endless darkness of the side dimension disappeared as we transitioned back. The next moment, on the command bridge, we all witnessed a bright sun appearing to our right.
It was always fascinating when you transitioned out of the side dimension and immediately could see something so bright, just because your transition was where its light had already travelled.
For everyone else that was around, the further away you were, the longer it would take them to see us, as we would just have appeared out of nowhere, and it would take for the sun’s light to bounce off our hull a while to make it to any population centres.
This was a distinct advantage for anyone who wished to attack and something that the defenders always had to take into account. Also, one of the reasons why large mana devices weren't run on ships, as mana could be detected way faster than light.
The tactical screen populated next as more and more ships were identified. Right now, they were just red dots, but slowly their orbits and their heading appeared. Next, the location of the planets and their orbits were confirmed.
While we had data from the quantum net on the solar system, that only helped us narrow down where we should search for these planets. We only cared about one singular one. It was the second planet of the solar system, but it was still as far out as Earth would’ve been. The reason being that there were simply fewer planets around this sun.
There was a smaller planet near the sun that was inhabitable. Then came the tomb planet with its large moon. After that there were two gas giants and that was it. There were plenty of asteroid rings that could have perhaps formed into planets, but they just didn’t.
The traffic of this system was extreme. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of ships flying about, but only hundreds were entering or leaving the system. A lot of the ships seemed to move between the gas giant and tomb world, and some of the larger clusters of asteroids.
As minutes passed we continued to drift in the designated zone while our communication programs worked to establish connection with the authorities of this solar system and to confirm who we were and why we were here.
This would take some time, but we weren’t in a hurry. It was actually nice to get to see how a solar system like this operated, at least on the large scale. There were also plenty of open communications happening all around, so FH was busy gathering data on what the culture of this solar system looked like.
Eventually, we got clearance to approach the tomb world. It was easy enough to move us sideways as we were already heading in the right direction; now we were just in the confirmed runway of people who actually had permission to approach.
We were at the edge of the solar system, so it would take a while to even get to the deceleration runways. All of this was going to be the boring part. To get to our destination would take another week of just drifting about and deceleration. We would be using the main engines for that, so at least it would be faster.
Because of that the side engines weren’t currently working and I kind of missed the kind of vibration they caused. It was quite pleasant and something that I could not get sick of, which was good news.
All of the AI were quite excited. It was a bit disturbing how they discussed the best angles to attack the ships that were close to us, but those were the turret AIs and that was their job.
It took about 8 hours before one of the early warning AIs gave a proper alert. The next moment, the entire view of the command bridge changed to focus on a ship that was drifting towards us.
With its current trajectory, it was going to get really close to us. I looked towards Lola and then Sam and Dean, but none of them had any idea on what to do.
“FH, open a communication line with that ship.”
A moment later, a line clicked open, but the other side didn’t say anything, so I started.
“This is the Forward Horizon. Please adjust your heading, you’re drifting too close to us.”
There was quite a long pause before we heard the voice from the other side. It was always weird to hear words that you didn't understand, but then the universal translator perfectly fed you the correct words with just a tiny bit of a delay. Over time, I have grown more used to this, but it’s still a bit off putting, especially when the language is so grindy.
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“And what’s a cargo ship like you going to do about it?”
Oh, so it was like that. The explosion of communications from the AI’s was intense. While I was now an F rank and could handle way more AI’s, I had still pushed myself to the limit. So I did get taxed when something like this happened. The next rank up should fix that problem.
In my mind I gave a simple command. “Show them.”
The next moment the shields powered on fully and all our weaponry rose up, targeting towards the ship approaching, even if they were quite a ways out from engagement range.
Our ship also turned. As we were drifting, we could orientate ourselves however we wanted and still move in the same direction. Space was kind of nice like that.
The railgun port was opened and could easily be distinguished. It took them about 45 seconds before the communication line cut off, with their ship adjusting course, staying well clear of us now.
“Should we report this?” Sam asked, but I didn’t know the answer to that.
Slowly, as FH gathered more data, we started to understand how things worked here. We also witnessed a couple of space battles, but they were quite far away from us.
While there was an authority that claimed this system, the only true lawful zones were around the tomb planet, the closest gas giant to the sun, and a few larger asteroid outposts.
Otherwise, it was the law of the strongest. The main runways were somewhat secure, but there was just too much space to patrol. Apparently there were plenty of gangs who demanded toll when you wanted to go to the less populated places around the solar system.
We also witnessed some of the larger cargo ships being escorted, which just reinforced the fact that if you didn't have a proper combat vessel you were immediately a target.
This actually made the trip quite exciting, as all of us tried to predict what was going to happen next when we noticed ships that were getting too close to each other. It was really good training for some of the AI, and it was even better for our future training as we could get a lot of data on other ships.
When we were real close, almost at a point where we would start to decelerate, we noticed a weird construction. It was pretty close to the tomb world. Obviously it wasn't finished yet. It kinda looked like a huge ring.
“FH, any idea what that is?”
“Give me a moment.”
“It seems to be a deceleration gate. Oh wow, it’s mana tech. They are going to use the mana field around the planet to supply it. What it’s supposed to do is when a ship flies through it at near FTL speed, it will come out the other side moving at the current maximum approach speed to the moon.”
It took me a moment to process that.
“How is that even possible? Are there other gates like this?”
“I believe this could only work where there is a lot of mana to be siphoned off, so a lot of places couldn’t even power this. I will add it to the list of things to research.”
“Yes, do that. I’m guessing we are going to be adding a lot of things to that list FH.”
“I know, right? It’s going to be quite exciting.”
That wasn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting, but it was a welcome one. That is why it's so important to raise your AI’s correctly, because if they get the passion to do the work they need to do anyways, it's just better for everyone.
We started our 10G burn so we wouldn’t just fly past the planet. We were also now close enough to connect to this world web, even though the connection was slow. We can now get some proper information on the planet itself.
Now dominating the screen around the command bridge was the tomb world itself.
Back on Earth, whenever someone said to me the word tomb world, I envisioned a barren place inhospitable to life. While that could be the case, for the rest of the universe that word more meant inhospitable, not because of the environment, but the monsters that lived in it.
Most tomb worlds are discovered when a planet that previously held a sapien species was off-limits suddenly becomes approachable. For this world, this was exactly the case. There were even remnants of the old civilization left here, but the portals just became too much.
The first scouts made it here 212 years ago, with the first colonisation efforts properly starting 185 years ago. It's quite amazing how much they have built in such a short time frame, but then again, they only focused on one large city on the moon, and on the planet itself, the pockets of civilization were mostly large independent groups trying to make it rich.
Apparently, the planet’s surface was about 50% water, but the seas were quite shallow. From space, there didn’t seem to be any water. That was the result of the vegetation of this world.
Every sea and lakes surface was covered by thick mats of plants. On land, some areas were covered by grass-like plants, but most areas were covered in fern-like plants. The only places free of vegetation were the mountains and the colder areas of the north and south.
Originally, there weren't any trees on this planet. Now there were some forests, although they were still quite young as the colonizers brought them in. Some of our cameras were good enough to even witness some of the portals. They looked so much bigger than the ones I’ve used.
Our orbit took us to the other side of the planet where we could finally see the moon. It was at least half as close as Earth’s moon was, and it was bigger, also denser. The orbital programs almost immediately started throwing out error codes saying this shouldn't work, but it seems like mana was for some reason holding things together.
We also witnessed something that none of us had ever seen before. There were three space portals opened. All of them were large enough that if the Forward Horizon was five times bigger than it currently was, it could easily fit through it. Around the portal were at least a dozen ships either protecting or waiting to enter.
The moon itself was properly barren, with only the city called Paradise being properly alive. There seemed to be hundreds of active portals on the surface of the moon.
The city itself was not what I envisioned. I expected a tightly packed megacity that was under a dome so there would be atmosphere for the people living there.
The reality was somehow more unbelievable. There were some tall buildings, but not many, as the city's area was truly gigantic. There did seem to be some sort of a dome, but it wasn’t physically built, yet something was definitely keeping the air inside.
This dome was also a lot bigger than I envisioned, a circular 170-kilometre diameter ring, but a lot of the area also seemed to have farmland of some sort.
The population seemed to be concentrated in the centre, but there were plenty of other areas that could be called towns. Everyone was calling this just one city, but this more looked like a nation with a large capital city with plenty of farming land. There were even a few lakes and some rivers connecting them.
It looked like someone carved away a piece of a planet where life was plentiful and placed it on this barren moon. Never in my life would I have imagined that I could actually see something like this.
“Is that actually real?” I heard myself ask.
“It is one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen,” I heard Lola answer, but all of us were glued to the view of the city called Paradise, so teeming with life that was surrounded by a barren moon.
So, this place was going to be our home for the foreseeable future. I bet while it does look stunning, it has a dark side plenty deep to match the beauty.
End of book 2