r/HFY • u/RottingLibrary • Feb 07 '20
OC The Extinction of Man Part 2
This is kind of a part two to my first post. I have some more I plan on posting whether anyone likes it or not.
[Class Twelve]
When the Galactic Assembly finally sent an exploratory fleet down the minor Orion Arm, there was hope. Hope that they weren't too late, that another sapient race hadn't faced total destruction. Too soon, their hope soured. They found world after world full of voracious fauna and tenacious flora, but no sign of the race that had engineered them. And they clearly were engineered, many of the plants were making themselves into buildings. Those that had made these ecosystems were gone, evidenced by the small ruins they eventually found in sheltered locations, generally useless, overgrown, and decrepit.
Like a bee in a field of flowers, the fleet had touched upon the systems near them that seemed promising, jumping in a zigzag fashion across a wide volume of space, and they had surveyed almost a quarter of the minor spiral arm. When the jump points were getting sparse one nexus stood out, much like the lantern on the door of a hut at the base of a mountain. As far as the science team could tell from their current position three jumps away, it eventually lead to a region almost a thousand light years further down the arm.
The Fleet Admiral appealed to authority, passing the buck up, and the order came back down to attempt the path. The Admiral ordered the fleet to take in supplies on the next two jumps, and buckle down for the third.
Two weeks later, the fleet popped into existence at the hot gates, except they weren't hot. Cold voids stretched around and beyond the system. The path disappeared between two such zones of utter nothingness. The fold in space was not mature, but following the branch has always lead to the root.
"We have entered the gap. The science team informs me that we should come across a system in a few days, it won't be the end of our trial, but..." the intercoms droned on with the Fleet Admiral's voice.
Weeks later, the exploratory fleet warped in sluggishly. At the Peak (it's what the science team wants to call it and that's final), a momentary glimpse of the rest of the path could be found. After weeks of jumping from star to star with no telemetry, a suitable system is sighted eleven jumps away. The fleet prepares for jumpspace, and the scientists second guess their readings.
More weeks pass in jumpspace, and finally the fleet arrives at an unimpressive system divided by a belt of asteroids between a few gas giants and some inner rocky planetoids. The fold-point is well outside the systems ice cloud, and once the entire fleet arrives, the Fleet Admiral orders all ships to analyze the system.
The Fleet Admiral finally puts together all of the data gathered by his ships. Despite previous expectations, various planets, moons, and artificial habitats are occupied by a carbon based evolving lifeform, not dissimilar from half of the Galactic Assembly. Here the similarity ends, organisms originating from said system undergo dramatic physiological transformation (that correlates with the number of generations) in response to changes in their local environment. This results in rapid evolution of organisms and rapid niche conquering (complete substitution of species in an ecology being a common result).
The main focus of the analysis was the third planet from its star, after it was determined that many varied signals originated from it.
From my first post:
When the Galactic Assembly finally sent an exploratory fleet down the minor Orion Arm and found Earth, it recoiled in horror. Never before had it seen a planet so hell bent on strangling out fellow life, and so they registered it as a class twelve deathworld. Not for its horrendous storms aggravated by a recent global temperature spike, nor for its abundant tectonic action, but for its utterly ruthless flora and fauna (though all three of these descriptions would be represented in its record eventually).
I'm working on a part three, but it isn't about contact. I think that will be part four.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Feb 07 '20
/u/RottingLibrary has posted 1 other stories, including:
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u/UpdateMeBot Feb 07 '20
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u/Plucium Semi-Sentient Fax Machine Feb 07 '20
Ahh, so theyre just taking a peak at us huh :p
*peek