A Thousand Murderous Suns

[NASAFanboy]

Inspired by "The Killing Star", by Pellegrino.

☢-----------------------☢

For those who survived to look back, the most fearsome deaths were the quickest. For those who survived the first Kerbal contact with another species for several seconds, alive one moment, billions of beings thriving on half a dozen worlds neatly spaced out in an solar system, happy or unhappy, seeking new romances and relations, or leaving old ones behind, or those who chose to be alone, working toward small dreams, large dreams, or no dreams at all. An then, in a moment, over an entire planetary hemisphere over Kerbin, their consience dissolved, as if they had been a dream of a being who had woken up, fading in the time frame of a millisecond.

The first ship came from the direction of constellation Ara. It came with fire, with purposes of no good, with promises that were never made. It was an aged vessel, some fifty years, without a crew. The only sing sof life onboard were the machines, small and plentiful, moving about as the ship fell Kerbinward, toward its main target. It came with antihydrogen tanks nearly empty, depleted by years of continous thrusting toward the Kerbol system-but, this did not matter. The vessel was never intended to decclerate into orbit or to voyage home-and at ninety percent of the speed of light, this task was nigh impossible. With its speed, the ship slipped through the heliospause, undetected by the Kerbal radio stations which scanned the sky both day and night. Long before entering the heliopause, it had split itself several times, with large pieces of itself hurtling toward Kerbin, Moho, Eve, Duna, and the Mun. These projectiles homed in on the signatures of an advanced spacefaring civilization, targeting its radio transmissions, which outshone even Kerbol, on certain frequencies, as clear and easy to follow as a torch in a dark room.

Moving at a velocity that aged it at the rate of only 1/3rd that of the rate of the outside universe, turning itself into a kinetic weapon of such kinds that had never been seen before. If ti struck a world, every gram and pound of that ship would be recieved by the world as the equivalent of a million atomic bombs exploding throughout the atmosphere. Someone, somewhere, was putting to use this instrument of death, a true relativistic bomb of nightmarish intentions, as giant atom smasher of worlds.

Cold, fearless, and determined, the ship knew itself and its purpose. It halved itself again, this time with the halve astern plummeting away toward Laythe by braking with whatever remained of its antimatter rockets while the front half continued its grim, relentless journey toward Kerbin.

The front halve was deeper into the Kerbol system now, striking hundreds of solar particles which ionised into a faint plasma trail behind it along with producing considerable radio outbursts, which could be read by someone on Laythe, if anyone was listening, that was. The main rule of relativistic bombardment is that if you see it far away at ninety percent light speed, it was never going to be where you saw it, but was practically upon you. Some ten minutes away from Laythe, the astern half blossomed into ten thousand relativistic bombs, bursting forth in an expanding cloud, each to impact its own target.

Down on Laythe, thousands of Kerbals lived their lives, unaware of the deliveries of death that were soon to be rained upon them. The only insititution with the slightest knowledge of what was to come was the astronomical observatory, seeing thousands of specks of bursts of gamma radiation, unaware that they were interstellar missiles, and most certainly unaware that they and their colony were the targets of its onslaught. And even if someone did comprehend, they were powerless to stop it. Armed with this knowledge, and with indifference, the cloud of missiles hurried onward to their destination, smashing into Laythe while the forward module hurled toward its own target.

Kerbin was now the size of a grape in the distance.

☢-----------------------☢

The living chambers were all full, making it nessessary to put canvas sheets to divide the already cramped staterooms to accomandate the yearly influx of interns as colleges and universities on Kerbin let out for the summer. Adam Kermans room was the largest, but it was scarely as large as a typical living room of a house back on Earth, a small corner room with a porthole overlooking the oceans of Laythe, an holopad with an charging station on the wall, and some tables and a fold-up bed. There were few luxuries on Laythe, but one striking difference it had from other offworld colonies was the fact that it was habitable. Although they were encouraged not to, the colonists and researchers on Laythe often walked outside of their structures unprotected, breathing in the cool atmosphere and the sounds of the waves lapping up against the massive gravel beaches. Laythe Colony was like a city on Kerbin, massive towers rising into the sky with houses and other commerical districts below. It was as if the hand of god had uprooted an entire metropolis and set it down on Laythe; such was the similarity Laythe had to Kerbin.

It was nighttime now, and Adam was one of the few awake, working the graveyard shift. The sounds and lights of the bustling metropolis fifteen miles away from the Astrobiology Research Center had never ceased to amaze him, nor did the glittering pale stars stars in the sky. Adam preferred the solitude, and now, at 2AM Laythe Time in the morning, he sipped a cup of coffee and scribbled down notes in his pad, giving the massive glass dome above him an glance or two as he labored throughout the night.

The first sign of the visitors was streaks was gamma radiation, each around half a million electron volts, passing through the observatories array of tanks and producing brief flashes of light that were measured and recorded by thousands of ultrasensitive equipment placed along the perimeter of the facility. The station computer immediately triggered itself, expecting a next batch, which came in time. Across the station, sensors were picking up gamma photons and alerts were popping up on the computer stations. The computer searched throughout the personnel files, only to find that none of them had the security clearance to act. And so, it waited, ceasing the warning and letting the researchers sleep in peace. The computer resumed its scan throughout the files, and fixed on Adam, who was on duty and by profession an astrophysicist. He had contributed much to research on massive solar flares from other stars in his college years as an intern. Adams was here to research something else, to attain his degree in astrobiology, but he would have to do, the computer decided.

An alert popped up on Petersons computer, displaying an star chart of the entire Kerbol system, then zooming in to focus on Jool. Seeing that it had Adam's attention, the Computer quickly wrote on the screen. "Analomous Gamma Radiation Source At Position On Your Screen". An red dot began to flash, getting closer and closer to Laythe. "Zero probability of Kerbal vessel, all records have been searched. Your input and advice is needed, Dr. Adam."

The profile of the radiation source showed hundreds of strange particles were coming in, all with the energy only attainable with an antimatter rocket drive. Even a single particle was enough to prove that someone, someone out there had manufactured antihydrogen and was coming in on an intercept trajectory with Laythe.

Adam quickly rejected the notion that it had been an crude prank played on him by an aspiring jokester, even minor hacking offenses nowadays were much too severe to be worth the risk. And he knew the computer well, it was an Artifical Intelligence, and he had coded and built parts of it himself. He also knew the crew at this base. Even though most of them were competent researchers, some, like Scott, were typical university fools when viewed outside their field of expertise; party kids who had nearly burned down a hotel and caused a small riot in the Laythe red-light district over some female kerbals. He could hear them, the thump-thump and laughing downstairs, partying throughout the night and hangover during the scientific operations in the morning.

Adam looked at the star chart and the blinking red dot, then glanced outside and found the same stars on the horizon. Where the dot was was between Kareas and Qies, but nothing was visible to the unaided eyes. But something was out there.

"Computer, give me velocity and distance."

The particles alone would be enough to discern this information. The computer flashed numbers, that, under different circumstances, would make Adam famous. The ships were apporaching at around eighty to ninety percent light speed, and were approaching the Kerbal system from nine months away. He did some quick calculation.

"Nine months, and at ninety percent light speed...oh, god, we'll have some company really soon."

More and more gamma photons were streaking through the tanks, all at half a million electron volts. The computer assembled the new information and quickly displayed them to Adam, and without warning, two new dots appeared near Qies. Another winked in, and another, and another, and another.

"You've got to be kidding! You're kidding me!", screamed Adam.

"Multiple deceleration sources", the computer replied. "Distance five light-months. Velocity ninety percent light speed."

Adam choked, and quickly replied. "Call Kerbin. Call the United Kerbin Outer Space Authority."

"Maximum Power?", the computer asked.

"Get every single power surce you can, and get this message out fast as possible. Broadcast toward Duna, Eve, and Kerbin. Download all data immediately, and prepare for transmission!"

"Affirmative, Dr. Adam."

He fumbled in his mind for the right words, but there was no predecent for this scenario. There was no first contact team like they had in the movies, no protocol if an armada of alien starships entered the Kerbol system. His hesitation assured the data would arrive before his words, and he let that be. The facts and telemetry should speak for itself. No amoutn of words could back it up.

"This, is, uh, Dr. Adam at Laythe Colony, we've pi-"

"Trajectory, sir."

"Trajectory, what?"

"Trajectory will impact Laythe in fifteen minutes."

He looked back at his computer. There was several thousand blinking dots, all with their trajectories outlined in green, all pointed dead-on at Laythe.

"Oh, god, no!" Adam shouted, and he quickly pulled the "Evacuation" alarm.

☢-----------------------☢

The sun rose over the horizon in a dim red haze, its rays illuminating the dark landscape below. The forests and lakes below caught its light and threw it back up into the cold vastness of space. In the distance some thirty miles away, stood Aseria, one of the many megaopolises situated on Kerbin. Having abandoned the ubran sprawl that had propelled much of its growth during the cities industrial period, Aseria was a momument to Kerbal engineering, composed of two dozen massive towers several kilometers high. Across the landscape, steel snakes slithered through from city to city, bringing magnetic transports quickly when needed, and greatest of all, stood the Aserian Space Elevator on an island nearby. Even in the less fortunate regions, nature was reclaiming its land and renewing itself as cities shrank their sprawls to massive citadels, products of nanoengineering on an large scale. For Geoferry Kerman, it was a good time to be alive. He walked along the pathways that spanned from tower to tower, taking in the scenery. Although it was early morning, Aseria was still buzzing with light and nighttime markers that governed the flying vehicles that came to and fro from the city.

Then, looking to the north, he saw an object coming, a blazing streak-or, atleast, his eyes saw it-but his optic nerves did not last long enough to transmit it to the brain.

For its potiental, the object as quite small, enough to fit into an average Kerbal room, but its speed was lethal. Moving at ninety percent of the speed of light when it impacted the atmosphere of Kerbin, turning itself into a streak of plasma flame. The object dove deeper into the atmosphere on its death dive at speeds so intense that air gave way below it, forming a tube of vacumn from which it descended, surronded by walls of flame kilometers thick and leaving a trail for dozens of kilometers more while burning hundreds of billions of watts per second-the flaming spear that Geoferry had almost seen, but had not. And for all its gusto, it had not yet expended one percent of its destructive energy.

Some twenty kilometers above the city of Aseria, the object snapped in two, both pieces still hurling toward the twinkling city, both pieces both equally deadly. It tunnelled down another ten kilometers until it could go no more, then denontated with more force than every nuclear weapon on Kerbin combined.

Geoferry was more than fifty miles away when the blast wave struck Aseria. He felt a trickling sensation on his skin, then nothing as he turned into carbon dust. The city stood for a nanosecond after being struck by the wave, its shadows gone, the energy of the blast piercing everything, airplanes, walls, notepaper, and kerbals. Ten million Kerbals. And with a moan, the towers, the shops, the pads, the space elevator, the waste facilities, the apartments, all liquifed instantly, tumbling down like a great waterfall, only to vaporize into the air before striking the ground. At the feet of the vanished cities, the trees and houses could cast no shadows, for they-along with the cities population, had long since been turned into a fine layer of carbon dust on the ground. On the shore of New Hesenburg, were the roads had melted and the ocean partly evaporated, the sitation was no different. The EMP pulse burned, fried, melted, then vaporized every living being in its wake as far as Reconville, turning thousands of miles of land into an microwave of hell.

It was not the last. As the shockwave spread out to the southeast, it was met and overpowered by the wave of another strike on Bali.

Across Kerbin, without warning, thousands of flaming swords pierced the sky.

They were not the last.

☢-----------------------☢

Out of nowhere, out of the sky, out of space itself, a massive bombardment came from which no government, no Kerbal, and no military had ever prepared for.

Some five days short of the departure date of the first faster-than-light colony ship, every inhabited and livable planetary surface in the Kerbol system was utterly obliterated, destroyed and mangled beyond recognition. Research bases on Duna, Eve, Laythe, all silent, all gone. Sprawling lunar colonies on the Mun, gone. Moho Solar Plant, gone. New Hesenburg, gone. Aseria, the once grand capitol of the world, gone. Gone, gone, gone, all gone in one morning.

A orbital shuttle transmission of Moho had revealed massive craters on surfaces that once held planet-spanning solar farms stretching for hundreds of miles only hours before. Only now, the pockmarked surface of Moho existed, the Kerbal bases gone. Gone forever. The transmission lasted two seconds-just long enough for Nedbob Kerman to realize that there was no power source to fuel the massive antimatter rockets that had taken Kerbalkidn out of its solar system to the surronding stars. After two seconds, the transmision abruptly cut out as the shuttle dissappeared in a silent white glare. And from millions of miles away, safe from whatever destroyed the shuttle, Ned felt a cold chill run down his spine.

Ordering the station telescopes and radio dishes turned Kerbinward, he found the situation impossible to believe. Kerbin, once a blue-green planet of paradise was now stained an unsightly yellow color with streaks of red in its atmosphere. Half of the ocean had boiled away during the assault and the remmants were evaporating quickly. The atmosphere was reaching temperatures on Eve, and three times denser. The Kerbin he knew was gone, replaced by an death world. There would be no more supplies, no more gifts sent to them from their families at home to their tidy base on Bop.

He turned his eye toward Laythe, which now hung in the sky.

It was stained red as blood.

Edited March 8, 2014 by NASAFanboy

[NASAFanboy]

Bump

All views and no replies, as usual.

Added a tidbit to the beginning.

(10char)

[sal_vager]

You have a knack for this, that was a very good read, dark and somewhat final though (can they survive on Bop?)

[Ravenchant]

Well, this was...dark. And good. Have you read The Gift Of Mercy, by any chance?

[Itsdavyjones]

I just noticed this and

[KSK]

A good read but very dark.

I'm adding this to the library in the Unfinished Works section for now. Please let me know if there's a second part coming up - I'm never quite sure with some of your writing!

[Xorth Tanovar]

Are you a WH40k fan by any chance? The title reminded me of Graham McNeill's "A Thousand Sons" novel. Imagine Magus returning from the Eye of Terror, with his first stop the Kerbol system. Though orbital bombardment isn't quite his style...

[NASAFanboy]

Anyways, I got a message asking if I abandoned his story, and no I have not.

Added a tidbit talking about what happens on Laythe Colony, and will add more about the survivors.

[DJEN]

This is how a realistic alien culling session would happen. No chance of counterattacks.

[Ironwatsas]

Not nescessarily. If there were properly supplied Kerbal bases scattered throughout the system that survived, and they had Extra-planetary Launchpads installed, they might be able to trace the kill vehicle's origin source and launch a Plaid in atleast some form of retaliation attempt. Mutual assured destruction.

Plus, this many Relativistic Bombs going off at once is sure to anger the Space Kraken...

[Space_Kraken]

Moooooorrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[NASAFanboy]

Not nescessarily. If there were properly supplied Kerbal bases scattered throughout the system that survived, and they had Extra-planetary Launchpads installed, they might be able to trace the kill vehicle's origin source and launch a Plaid in atleast some form of retaliation attempt. Mutual assured destruction.

Plus, this many Relativistic Bombs going off at once is sure to anger the Space Kraken...

This issue will be addressed in the next few chapters, spoilingly labelled "Genocide".