— Excerpt: holobrief from Jerome Dannikan, Ph.D. (Noetics), M.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) to the Journal of Xenological Science, 17.3.2114
The artifacts found last week range in size from a small… spaceship?… (roughly 45 feet in length) to easily pocketed items (4 inches) and are made of both organic and inorganic alloys. These objects are clearly not of human or qin design.
The items hover with eerie stability, suspended in Mgitu’s hydr ogen atmosphere, and contain unfathomable circuitry. My plan is to locate and tag as many items as possible, to see if they are linked in any way. I will proceed with a thorough physical examination of minor devices, with noetic examination to follow as soon as appropriate psions become available.
available resources were so few that the outpost’s continued existence five years later was in doubt.
Hopes were high when the jump ship Meroe headed for Far Nyumba r ecently. The ship’s Tesser sent back a datapod, just as the other jump ships did upon arrival, but the datapod was crushed somehow during transit.
Though all recorded data was destr oyed, the datapod configuration suggests that it was launched normally, so we may assume that Meroe arrived safely in orbit around Mgitu. While there is no serious concern at present, a new expedition is planned. Until then, the fate of Far Nyumba remains unknown.
Averiguas
Shortly after aberrant attacks renewed on Earth outposts in space, Brazil took steps to establish a deep-space colony. On Norça recommendation, the Upeo transported explor ers to an ancient white dwarf/red giant binary system.
One of the six planets was capable of supporting human life
— in fact, due to the red giant’s expansion, the barely hospitable r ock hosted a sort of proto-algae life for m.
The planet, named Averiguas, orbited the red giant at an average of 1.5 AU, and was deemed suitable.
The Associação Avanço Universal — the Association for Universal Advancement, or AAU, as the Averiguas colony was named — was meant as a training ground for psions. Here, Brazil claimed, psi-users could explore the potential of their powers without fear of causing harm or destruction.
Yet only Norça agents were given the opportunity to use the facility. The Æon Trinity soon lear ned Brazil’s motives: To guarantee its future should the resurgent aberrants prove too
INTERSTELLAR COLONIES
that the white dwarf could go super nova, and despite the danger posed by the dwarf’s regular flares as it absorbed the red giant’s stellar matter, Brazil proceeded with construction.
The Brazilians made one mistake in establishing AAU: They relied on subjugated Euro-American workers. These disenfranchised looked for new o p p o r t u n i t i e s everywhere, and Averiguas was as good a place as any to make a fortune. Working conditions were quite brutal. It was only a matter of time before the Western “never say die” spirit came to the fore. In 2114, only three months before the Upeo vanished, the Euro-American workers rose up against their Brazilian leaders. It was a quick and carefully staged coup, the mutinous workers taking over key areas of the outpost with minimal bloodshed.
Unwilling to reveal the facility’s
SS3819 SYSTEM
Suns SS3819a (giant), SS3819b (dwarf) Suns’ spectral types G5, A0
AVERIGUAS (ASSOCIAÇÃO AVANÇO UNIVERSAL)
Founded 2106 (Brazil) Source Upeo investigation Planet mass [Earth = 1] 1.17 Equatorial diameter [miles] 7,966 Planet gravity [Earth = 1] 1.10 Water content [Earth = 0.75] 0.52 Atmosphere nitrogen Rotation period [hours] 23 Indigenous life Algae in oceans, no notable land life Human population 22,000 Closest distance
to Earth 2,800 light years Primary satellite Vigiar
power ful to stop. Working in conjunction with Norça, the Brazilian gover nment established an extrasolar military base.
The binary system’s instability made the site inhospitable to other colonization efforts. The planet was ideal for the Brazilian plan, however
— remote, dangerous and of little foreign interest. Despite warnings
Result of Feasibility Study for Colonization of Averiguas in SS3819
This committee r ecommends that Averiguas not be chosen as the location of Brazil’s first interstellar colony. The nature of the binary star system leads us to predict that the white dwar f star SS3819b will go supernova in the near future, astronomically speaking, r esulting in the complete atomization of the entire solar system, including Averiguas.
Based on spectral analysis of the two stars, and the rate at which matter transfers from the giant to the dwarf, a supernova is extremely likely in the next 1,000 to 2,000 years. Furthermore, we cannot anticipate the minor nova behavioral effects that the dwarf currently exhibits. Averiguas’ magnetic field may be insufficient protection against the extreme solar winds produced.
Again, this committee advises that Averiguas not be chosen.
Eleanora Bordes
Chair, Astronomical Committee University of Rio de Janeiro
true nature, Brazil claimed that it was sending resources to quell a miner’s strike. This cover story and the sudden disappearance of the Upeo limited the number of reinforcements that Brazil could send, so only a preliminary force was transported.
The jump ship Mae de Céu arrived years later to discover that Brazil’s reinforcements surrendered once ships stopped arriving after 2114. The rebels and anyone who agreed to their terms remained in New Hope, while everyone who couldn’t deal with that was ostracized to a scientific outpost about 30 miles away. Only about 2,100 people were condemned to the outpost — mostly military officers, political types, the troops sent in to put down the r evolt, and about half the Norça stranded there. The rest didn’t care who was in charge or decided to join the winning team.
The communities maintained a stalemate and even engaged in trade, but flar e-ups of violence wer e not uncommon. Even this fragile peace was shatter ed once r econtact was established. The workers fear subjugation by Brazil and the shifters who joined them fear reprisal by their proxy; in turn, the AAU Brazilians and Norça at last see the opportunity to quell the uprising and r etur n home. Initial r eports note increasing outbreaks of violence between the two groups, and all indications are that it will only get worse.
ALIENS
well with telepathic aid on the part of both human and qin. A dialogue was begun and ambassadors were exchanged — embassies have even been established on Qinshui and Luna.
The Chinese gave the aliens their name:
The ter m “qin” is a reference to a form of Beijing opera. The race’s stylized, l a c q u e r e d - l o o k i n g humanoid “bodies” — not their true forms, in fact, but advanced psiware suits — evoke images of the old plays. They’re quick learners: The earliest qin “biosuits” wer e clearly artificial — crystalline, shimmering shells that prompted the occasional nickname “icons” — while the newest are Since the dawn of history, humanity has stared into
the celestial void. Thirteen years ago, in true Nietzchean fashion, the dark between the stars gazed back at us.
With the coming of qin, then chromatics, and finally the Coalition, humanity’s very concept of itself has been tilted on its axis and sent spinning into the mysterious sky.
The discovery of life on other worlds, while not quite so shocking as it would have been had humanity never experienced the Aberrant War, was nonetheless an epochal event. (The effects on religious belief alone changed the demographic base of several major faiths.) In the past two decades, humanity has advanced its frontiers of knowledge a hundredfold — and learned to live with the looming fear of invasion from the stars.
Thus far, humanity counts a number of new species:
the afor ementioned qin and chr omatics, and an undisclosed number in the recently discovered Coalition (potentially between five and two dozen species alone).
Rumors of another species displaced by aberrant attacks remain just that: rumors. And then there are the veiled references by the proxies of powers beyond even they, that are somehow their allies.
With jump ships active and the Upeo now returned, we at last venture out to investigate those aliens we know of, and search for others that may still dwell amid the stars.
QIN
“With friends like these….”
The punchline has yet to be written for the enigmatic qin, humanity’s for-the-nonce
allies among the stars. These quixotic cr eatur es seem friendly — but then again, they seem humanoid and just about everyone has figured out the falsity of that supposition.
Humanity first contacted qin when a Chinese explorer vessel inter cepted a transmission of qin radio static. A r endezvous was arranged at the aliens’ home system, which later became known colloquially as Qinjunan. First contact went
QIN BIOSCHEMATICS >>> ÆON ARCHIVES
ALIENS
Celebration
— Excerpt: Luna Sun Times © 31.10.2117 Eclipse Media
The smooth, soaring lines of the qin embassy arched high over last night’s celebratory banquet as diplomats, press and the wealthy rubbed elbows with the alien exiles in our midst. Our qin allies remind us of two things:
that races as rich and intriguing as humanity do exist in space, and it is the very vastness of space that strands our cousins with us. The curving hall, walled entir ely in the qins’ unique
“bioglass,” allowed guests the peculiar sensation of walking unprotected on the surface of the Moon. Overhead, the organic spir es of the upper towers glimmered in the sunlight.
A qin diplomatic assistant commented that the celebration was one of great importance to their race, but declined to explain further.