Far Removed - Revision #2 - April 1, 2008 12:27:26 AM UTC

PROLOGUE

It was 30 years ago that the K'ronei, as it has been directly translated, first showed up. Humanity never expected it. How could they? Earth had been destined to doom since the beginning, but how could one truly anticipate with any certainty the way in which the end of human life on Earth would come about? Many would have sworn it would be global warming. Others would put their hard earned cash on human conflict as being responsible for their demise.

Sure, some theorized alien attacks; sadistic beings with giant death rays, or little green men experimenting on humans, preparing for some great invasion. One would speculate today that, before the K'ronei, people were too caught up in the mass media, conspiracy theories, celebrities, entertainment... they had no inkling that a threat could exist beyond their imaginations.

But that would all change. There was no attack; no invasion to speak of. The aliens' arrival was only marked by unexplained radiation patterns, sickness, and death. It began in the heart of the Troodos mountain range on the isle of Cyprus. Seemingly unconnected at first, people on and around the island started becoming sick; the result of human contact with a yet-unknown radiation type.

Shortly after sickness turned to death, and the area of effect was found to be rapidly spreading, expeditions were sent into the deep parts of the island, where a number of unrecognizable and uncategorizable organic objects were discovered, seemingly multiplying right before the explorers' eyes--or so the transmissions said. The bodies of the explorers, unrecognizable but for their implants, were found in the mountains by a defense satellite weeks after the fact.

Man's best guess today is that the reproducing organic matter is some sort of terraforming device, and the radiation it either emits or causes was in some form required for the aliens' successful colonization. Humanity have no reason to believe now that the aliens had the intention of killing them off, or kicking them off their own planet as it were; if they had intentions at all as humans understood them. Regardless of intentions, the radiation, as it effortlessly spread across land and sea and air, produced no early warning signs, and left no human in its path. There was no way of stopping its ultimate spread across the globe, and no way to lessen its rapid and violent effects on the human body and nervous system.

The joint Deployable Space Station project, which had begun several decades before as the result of a space exploration and military resource collaboration treaty signed by many countries formerly part of NATO, was humanity's last hope.

Eight such stations had launched in total, and several had already deployed and begun work creating relatively small livable habitats on the surface of several surrounding otherwise-barren planets. If humanity was to continue to exist, only one solution remained: Move every non-contaminated human being off the planet and onto one of the other colonies immediately.

The undertaking was more than anyone anticipated, and turned out a complete disaster. None-the-less, millions made it safely to one the newly-formed colonies, which had become almost-literally overflowing with inbound citizens. To humanity's collective relief, the aliens did not give pursuit. They didn't shoot any spacecraft down on its way to safety. They didn't do anything but continue to spread their radioactive disease across humanity's homeland.

Now, 30 years later, there is still no defense against the radiation. The K'ronei still resided on Earth. Humanity had tried everything, even as far as detonating large arrays of nuclear blasts in certain areas, yet the alien radiation completely covered the blast sites within minutes. Instead of moving back to Earth, humans were being pushed further back. It seemed Earth's atmosphere was no proper container for such radiation, and it effortlessly spilled into space and exponentially divided outward.

Their colony on the Moon had been the first to fall, just 6 years after their frantic escape from Earth. In another 15 years the radiation had reached the edge of the Mars colony, pushing humanity helplessly further back into the uncharted depths of space. Humanity was on the verge of complete breakdown. Desperate corporations and freelance explorers charted deeper and deeper into space; colonized less and less savory environments; hoped to discover some new and exotic component that would be key to their eradication of the alien radiation and their eventual return home; or maybe to discover a new, preferrably uninhabited planet with lush vegitation and ample water they could call Earth.

One thing was clear. If the K'ronei radiation was allowed to spread uninhibited, it would surely eventually swallow up each planet in turn, and maybe even work its way to the surrounding galaxies. Something had to change. Something had to be done. And if the humans ever wanted to return to their home, the K'ronei had to be stopped.

This story begins with an explorer; a human male in his twenties charting deep space in the outer reaches of the Milky Way approaching the Andromeda galaxy. His Alpha Mk IV's radio analysis scanner was picking up tiny traces of the alien radiation in the direction of an unknown and non-reflective mass recently discovered about 12,000km inside their galaxy's gravitational influence, and he was hoping whatever it was could help explain some things, and that he was the first one to find it.

Freelance pilot Timothy Brenton took a deep breath, hand on the turret controls, as his ship accelerated toward the mass.