Shattered Glass Chapter 13: History Repeats Itself
History Repeats Itself
"So tell me Mr. ... What is your last name exactly if you don't mind me asking" Korrella asked feeling more talkative now that everyone was back in the room.
"Xiaxel, Serail Xiaxel" I answered feeling somewhat obligated for some unseen reason.
"Hmm interesting name. Tell me, how much exactly do you know about worlds besides yours and their solar systems? Do you have any idea such as population or industry?"
Feeling a bit on the idiot side of the knowledge spectrum, I just folded my ears and looked at the floor. I knew so little about the other worlds that it wasn't worth mentioning. I had no idea what worlds were outer worlds or inner worlds. I didn't even know which category my apparently doomed planet was.
Korrella getting the message expanded a map of our destination solar system and zoomed to a planet that seemed to be mostly all land with a single ocean in the southern hemisphere just past the equator. The land seemed to curve around the ocean in a backwards "J" fashion and it continued the wrap around the whole planet in that fashion. I could make out large lakes and rivers that made up the Northern part of the planet, and see that they all originated from the single ocean. It didn't seem to have a very balanced ecosystem due to the light brown dry land up in the extreme north and lush forests in the south. I've heard that water and the location of it could have a big effect on a planet but I never imagined it to cause the big of an effect.
"This planet was our original home planet Lillio, where we were..." Korrella paused and seemed to be distracted by something. She pulled up a file with text written on it, however it was no language I had ever seen before and seemed very elegant. She glanced at it quickly, tilted her head to the left slightly, and 3 seconds later closed the file and continued. "We came from, my apologies for the pause. This planet is what we consider the heart of our civilization. As one could figure all planets that are in close proximity of this one, 2 hours or less of combined gate jumps and warp, are considered inner colony planets and are heavily protected by military forces."
She expanded the map of the galaxy again and scrolled a little to the left and zoomed in on another planet. "This is Kelinen, our technical new home. This is the primary training bases for all military personal is located. It is also the location of some of the richest individuals in existence. It is 14.23 times bigger than Lillio. Although some people prefer to live on this planet, most do not due to the way of how the cities are constructed and the pure vast size of everything. Here let me zoom and animate it for you so you can have a better idea of it."
Unlike the last planet, this one had equal parts of land and water and rather than being continents, it was more like supersized islands that always had water on all 4 sides. By what I could count there were 17 in total and each one looked pretty much like the last one. It was apparent that there was heavy industry and infrastructure, but at the same time you could see all the lush green plants in the inside and outside of the cities.
Seeing this all lead to a question which I was becoming more and more curious about. Why would everyone leave their true home world and replace it with this one? Thinking back on it more it didn't seem logical that Lillio's climate and ecosystem would make it look to barren and uneven. Surely there had to be something else and I was going to find out, even if Korrella wasn't going to tell me.
"Korrella, why did everyone leave Lillio?" I asked in a determined tone. However I didn't get the surprised reaction I was expecting, and I should have guessed that she knew I was going to ask. She merely closed her eyes and waved the map away with her hand sliding it off the screen. She opened her eyes and bowed her head a little bit to look at me with a serious glare. I looked back at her determined knowing she was trying to gauge whether I could handle the information.
After what seemed to be about 12 seconds, she lifted her head and glanced at Alki who had his arm over my shoulder. He simply shrugged and pulled me closer into his side. I couldn't but think at this point if I had asked for something I wasn't truly ready to find out.
"Alright Mr. Xiaxel, you might want to sit down, this going to be a long history lesson, and after we are done you can ask Mr. Delarobia, or Alki as you know him, about any questions you have. This will be his 5th time learning this story so I'm sure he will be able to explain much better than I can."
I looked over at Alki who was still standing and looking at Korrella. She didn't seem to recognize he was or it was some underlying message to her. At any rate it was clear that I wasn't suppose to know what it was or meant so I gave up and sat down against the wall. To think I actually enjoyed the kiss, Alki seemed to back to his old mysterious ways and Once again I was getting the feeling that no one truly cared about me. I was tempted to walk out of the room but reasoned Korrella would do something to prevent such action such as locking the exit. I just decided to make myself comfortable and deal with a bit more exclusion from what seemed to be important topics.
"Are you ready Mr. Xiaxel?" Korrella not asked but seem to state in a cold and foreboding tone> I simply nodded my head and Korrella flashed some files onto the Holo-Screen. She moved them behind her translucent self and presented the world of Lillio in her palm.
"172 years ago a great war began between the Humans and the Morphs. The Humans became jealous of us, and how much better we were with skills that had been learned equally on both parts. It was a very contradictory war because they created us to be better than them, and maybe it was because we exceeded their expectations that they began the way. Many said it was out of fear, others said it was pure hate. We morphs as a species have higher pain thresholds, better tracking and reflexes, more endurance and strength. We also have more acute basic senses such as vision and smell, and being covered in fur made it impossible for something to sneak up on us as our fur as you know is very sensitive to air movement. Pure jealousy became hatred, which turned into fear and sparked the 5 year war.
Korrella paused for a moment to start a slide show behind her image showing various amount of technology, some recognizable, and some purely imaginative looking.
"They attacked first, our main city of Hemel. They bombed it continiously for days as our leaders tried to work out a treaty, but they were stubborn and only cared about our erradication. Their messages always lead to their regret for making us, and continued to emphasise we were just an experiment gone rampant. Eventually we tired of being bombarded and killed, our city falling apart and blood everywhere."
Korrella changed the slideshow to show weapons of various sizes that looked like something from old videogames.
"Our leaders formed a secret military which started making classified prototypes of energy based weaponry. While the humans relied on ballistics and liquefied matter accelerators, we played with physics and developed weapons that could blast through walls, have controlled explosions, render electrical equipment useless, and for a fraction of the power that their weapons used." Korrella pulled up a 3D image of a large cannon with a long barrel and two long copper bars running up to the tip of the barrel. All together it was about 75 yards long and about 20 yards high. It was all gray besides those copper tubes. "This was one of their main, more advanced weapons. It is a Liquefied Matter Acceleration Blaster." Korrella pulled up a picture next to it of a different, much more complicated weapon. It was about the same size, but a little different in overall design. It had four barrels that had some sort of green lens at the end. It was also curved and elegant looking with some sort of scripture on each of the barrels. The color of it was amber gold with slim silver lines over the welds. "This is our Pulse Anode Laser, it uses ¼ the amount of power of their blaster and can cut an elite battleship cleanly in half. We still use it today in orbital defense platforms."
"How are you doing Mr. Xiaxel? I hope your holding up ok because we got a bit more to go" Korrella voice gently ringed in my ears. This technology was impressive and I have never heard anything like it before. I may have skipped history more than half the time but I know they had never talked about this subject. Korrella seemed to notice my interest and continued.
"Before we came into existence, the Humans had already developed the ability to navigate space, and for long durations of time. However they still had not managed to further than their own solar system. Before the war began, we learned from them how to make limited space vessels via their military, and how to use them. However from there, we managed to improve space flight exponentially. Canine Morphs such as yourself seemed to be able to bend information and understand it in a way that seemed unrealistic. It wasn't fifty years later that a canine Morph named Xeal Constraos made warp flight a reality. It was a rather complicated device that when fully assembled, became relatively simple. We shared the technology with the humans, but we kept the details of what made it tick to ourselves. At that time it wasn't an act of greed, but rather an act of honor and animalistic instincts to guard what was rightfully ours. At the time the Humans understood and respected our decision."
She flicked an image of a large ship on the screen this time in front of her image. The ship looked very sleek, even, and aerodynamic. For a large ship it was clearly designed with the ability to fly within a planet and Conquer space. Is was symmetrical in design and sleek with gentle ripples in the armor like waves. It looked very much like a high class yacht exponentially expanded and improved.
"This was our war machine as people like to call it, although it's given name was Allure. It is 1.5 kilometers long from the tip of the bow to the end of the engine thrusters. In its arsenal were 28 smaller versions of the Anode Laser requiring only 2300 megawatts of sustained power and a firing power drain of 30 gigajoules. It also happened to be fitted with a shield and shield regeneration system, which is considered obsolete by today's standards. However all of our ships still carry shield systems because they make a nice buffer while traveling through space to deflect all the particles and dust. They also happen to give us an advantage in battle situations, as if we need it of course. Our ships now days use passive nanobot regeneration which repairs the armor plates of the ship. while being a bit slower that shield regeneration systems, it is not only cost effect but the repairs come out double or triple of what a shield system could ever manage without being a total power drain."
She placed the ship in her right paw and materialized another in her left. This one was bulkier in design, and looked flimsy. It looked to be equipped with large solar panels held to the outside of the ship by large metal rods. It was also a good amount smaller than the other ship and it possessed a nasty metallic brown color. To me the shape of it resembled a built sideways sailboat turned upside down.
"This was their capital ship, The Jewel. It was only 1 kilometer long. This underpowered poor excuse of a ship relied on solar radiation to help power it's systems due to the fact that they could not produce a stable and big enough fusion reactor to power the ship."
"Why not put more than one?" I interrupted by accident. It was meant to be a question asked in the mind and kept record of until the end of the explanation, but I guess I was too curious.
It seemed she did not mind the question as the nodded her head and switch topics. "Imagine a fusion reactor as a baby cub, constantly letting you know how it feels by the sounds it emits and by its crying. Imagine how much care you have to take to ensure the cub makes it to childhood and has a good temperament. Fusion reactors are basically the same, and need constant watching over by a computer or A.I., and at that time A.I's. did not exist and although powerful, computer could barley manage one reactor along with all the other systems it had to watch. The maximum output a computer from that time was roughly 100 teraflops, whereas now days they can go well over 600 teraflops and A.I's. such as myself well over 1,600. I personal can manage more than fusion reactors and at one point managed 12, but that was years ago. Piloting this ship is boring for me to be blunt."
I nodded my head and stretch my arms outwards only to hit Alki in the shoulder who was now sitting next to me. I don't know when he decided to sit down or why, but it made me feel a little warm inside. I mentally shook my head and threw the feeling aside.
"Now back to the topic" Korrella continued "Their ship was armed with modified version of their Blaster, however it lack firepower and range but made up in tracking speed. Our ships were faster however which made the weapons overall useless. Although their ship could destroy our interceptors and frigates that had the get in close to cause effective damage, our cruisers and larger ships could stay well outside of its 10 kilometer firing range. After 30 minutes, they stopped firing due to the lack of power to charge their shields from our constant bombardment from our fleet. They were hoping that they could hold off longer than us. However after 45 minutes of bombardment, their shields failed and they lacked armor and we quickly vanquished no more than 5 minutes later. She ship ended with a semi-impressive implosion from a critical reactor breach and shattered like a billion pieces of glass from a vase. With the destruction of their capital ship the Humans fled from the space battle, some back to the planet, and some into the void.
She made the pictures of the ships disappear from her palms and she brought up the planet, both at the current time, and a picture that looked fresher and greener that was obviously from an earlier time. Though the planet looked similar in the past and present, there were some differences such as the greenness and the overall health of it. I also noticed one important key feature, and that was that the ocean in the past photo cut though the middle on the continent in a gigantic river and that all the rivers used to be 10 times their present size.
"We did this to our planet. After the Humans fled back into the planet, we took the Allure and parked it next to a space dock that was still functional, and we modified it. We added an intricate cooling system which would allow the lasers to fire continuously in slower but timed pulses, and allowed the beams fired to be 4 times their normal bandwidth. We entered the atmosphere and orbited the entire planet for 10 days and bombarded it with gamma radiation nonstop. We pointed the lasers at everything that looked like it could sustain life, including the ocean and rivers, and did our best to eradicate them. What was left was a planet so irradiated that nothing would ever be able to live on it, and through the years its condition has only gotten worse."
Korrella ended the slideshow showing a simple animation of the ship going out the planet and shook her head back and forth. "That was a long time ago Mr. Xiaxel and it was because we were desperate to end a pointless war." She paused a second before adding in a tiresome and depressed tone "The same war that we are fighting again."
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Psst TJ wheres that message man XD Mwah
The above comment nor this one is part of the story