Children of Terra 002

Prologue

Even in a spiral arm galaxy with millions of suns and billions of planets in just one of its quadrants alone, the bright blue planet; the third planet within an orbit that placed it exactly at the best distance for liquid water to occur; was exceptionally beautiful.

A fact that was not lost to the Saran commander who was focusing her attention on the big view screen that was in a prominent central position before her and the rest of the Saran space barge operators that sat in a semicircle to the right and left to her.

This space born battle barge of the Saran Empire, the mighty Samoteth was on an annual routine patrol and visit to this system, which was not exactly in the busiest region of space but was of special interest to the Sarans.

This world was so blessed with a seemingly endless array of natural features making it one of the most perfect garden worlds in the entire universe. It had a liquid core of nickel and iron, a single moon at a perfect. Not too far for causing tectonic mayhem, but close enough to affect the tides and thus help to create a complex weather pattern; to constantly churn the oceans to keep their salt levels perfect for oceanic life. The moon’s gravitation also created a magnetic field by spinning the liquid iron-nickel core like an enormous dynamo. The magnetic field thus created, caused a wondrous natural electromagnetic shield that kept most of the harmful radiation of this healthy, still young yellow star away from the planet’s surface.

The planet’s axial tilt was enough to create seasons and a wide variety of climate zones, ranging from the Arctic to Tropic but not severe enough to make one zone dominant. Its atmosphere was a mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen not only good for carbon-based plant and animal life, but with a perfect mix ratio for fires to burn easily, but not rage out of control or hard to start. It had enough landmass for life to develop outside the oceans and thus giving the dominant life form a chance to discover fire and thus make the most important initial step towards a tool making society.

The Saran commander knew of quite a few oceanic worlds with intelligent life, but since fire could never be discovered on these worlds, the sentient beings there were cursed to remain on the lowest rungs of the ladder of achievements, without the chance to develop their civilization

She smiled as she thought about the blissfully ignorant inhabitants of that planet. Completely unaware of her presence or any of the developments, politics, and events that occurred on the Galactic Stage all around them.

The Sarans had been here many times before. Sarans and the humans of that planet, its population called Earth shared the same origin.

Biologically there was very little difference. Saran and Earthers looked alike, shared almost the exact same DNA information. The differences were so minuscule, that it was possible to mate and procreate without any need for genetic tailoring.

Records of the first interaction between Sarans and Terrans had been lost in time. Some scholars insisted on their theory that Earth has been colonized very early in Saran history, when the Sarans first discovered faster than light technology, a good 12,000 years ago. These scholars believed that due to lack of contact and support, the Saran colonists forgot all technology and had to restart the process of building a civilization and thus forgot their Saran origin and became Earthers. Something that occurred quite often with young, expanding civilizations. She was certain there were forgotten colonies of almost every starfaring society out there.

However, the more commonly accepted theory was that Saran and Earthers somehow shared the same origin and that neither Saran nor Earthers were truly native to their worlds but had started somewhere else.

This theory was widely accepted, as there were other human species sharing similar features and major DNA sequences. This theory was called the Human Mystery. Archaeologists of many civilizations scoured crumbled ruins all over known space, analyzed ancient artifacts and petrified remains,

in the hope to find clues helping to answer this existential question.

It was about six or maybe eight thousand years ago when a Saran expedition discovered or perhaps rediscovered this beautiful world and made contact with a stone tool using pre-metal civilization. While there were some very fragmented and ancient recordings of this expedition, very little verifiable facts remained.

What has also been lost to time was the answer to the question who influenced whom. Sarans and Earthers or more precisely one tribe of

Earthers started to worship the same gods, developed very similar art and cultures.

Much had happened since then, the Saran Empire expanded over a wide region of space and under the rigid rule of Queens, Saran joined the Galactic Council and contact to the Earthers was first restricted by the Queens of distant past and finally prohibited. Scholars believe Imothahp the IInd. who reigned during the period of the third rising of the Isis cult and the Nilhathe dynasty or about 4000 years ago, was the first queen who limited exposure and finally Queen Thometep the Ist, four generations later, issued a complete ban on visits.

The commander kept smiling as she, of course, knew about the reasons that explained the ban. The official explanation for this ban varied, but generally claimed the reasons for this ban had been lost to time, the real reason was forbidden to be mentioned.

But the few familiar with Earth history and culture and those like her who had been visiting this system for a good ten years and able to receive and understand the radio and moving picture transmissions that kept getting better in quality, knew the reason. The ancient Earth civilization of the Egyptians had male kings, called Pharaohs. Just like the Saran empire supposed to have before Saran ascended to the stars and accepted female rulers only.

It was not until Queen Hepsut the XXth ascended upon the Seat of Eternal Light and to occupy the Throne of the Divine Falcon to become the absolute ruler of all that was Saran about 2000 years ago when a new expedition was sent to check on the development of their sisters on Earth.

Only to find that this so promising Earth culture; called the Egyptians was crumbling and slowly crushed under the heel of a new society and culture, calling themselves the Romans.

The Egyptians, a shadow of their former glorious self, were no longer ruled by Pharaohs but ruled by a Queen, unable to restore the old splendor and power, she seemed helpless against a powerful male-led empire.

This discovery spread like wildfire across the already unhappy and malcontent populations of the outer colonies and was most likely the trigger event for these outer colonies of the Saran empire to revolt.

The ideological concept, so long touted as a fact of nature; that women were the only ones able to successfully rule and be in positions of authority, was proven to be wrong by Saran’s brothers and sisters of Earth. The truth could not be suppressed because it always was self-evident and had a tendency to surface.

The real explanation why Saran queens forbade Earth contact was the fact that male rule did exist and that it could be successful and thus being in sharp contrast to the strict religious and cultural Saran doctrine, that men were too many slaves to their hormones, too much influenced by the lure of the flesh offered by the so much more cunning females that they could never be trusted in any true leadership role.

Male Sarans, especially those living and working far from the Throneworld, eking out a living on new, dangerous worlds now had proof that it was a false doctrine. Men and women alike realized when there was a lack of equalizing technology, females tended to shun the real hard physical labor of taming a new world and much rather tended homes and raised children. The harsh reality of colonies erased many of the civilized notions of equality and reverted to what nature intended before the species became civilized, where emotion-driven political decisions tried to erase biological and natural facts. It didn’t mean women shunned to pull their weight, there were little time and even less tolerance in the frontier settlements. Raising gaggles of kids, tending homes with much less amenities than any woman of the core worlds could imagine in her worst nightmares; preparing meals, baking, washing and creating a well-tended, clean home for the hard-working men to come home to, was a demanding and a serious chore all on its own. What the Saran core also liked to suppress was the fact, that these families and communities were healthier and in general, much more content and happier than their counterparts on the old worlds where everything was automated, provided for or done by slaves.

Those men demanded an equal share in the decision making process and the leadership of their respective communities, took these images of a glorious male-led civilization, that had conquered the decadent and decaying female empire and revolted, surprisingly fully supported by their wives, taking the news and the example of the Romans of Earth from fringe world to fringe world, both as a rallying point and an example.

The undisputed, rule of the queens suddenly questioned. This lead to bloody attempts to quell the revolution and punish the up-risers, only to make them martyrs and rallying even more colonies behind the new cause. Thus a civil war erupted fast and violently that eventually split the mighty Saran empire effectively in half.

The revolting colonies became the Pan Sarans, who copied the cultural aspects of the Earth Romans with almost obsessive attention to details. Including the Roman religion and down to the language. Rejecting everything Saran even their old mother tongue. Pan Sarans to this day spoke Latin, a language that had long ceased to be spoken as a living language on Earth.

War across the vast distances of space was not a quick endeavor. There the was lack of fast communication. News, commands and orders traveled only slightly faster than ships. Both sides were at exactly the same level of technological development, had almost exactly the same level of resources. Thus it came that this cursed conflict was lingering on. Going into and out of more active violent phases for now about two thousand years. Just about the same time the Civil war erupted and spread across the Saran empire like a wildfire, the consortium of all known spacefaring societies, known as the Galactic Council decreed that no primitive society should be raised to the galactic stage by outside influence and could only be contacted once they made the discovery of Faster than light technology on their own. In other words, it became forbidden by common consents to provide primitive civilizations with the knowledge of Faster than Light technology and not to contact or openly visit them until they were able to ascent on their own and take their place among the starfaring civilizations; to become a participant in the eternal play, also known as the Galactic Stage. Saran agreed but stipulated that Earth and the solar system was a Saran protectorate and that it would be Sarans privilege alone to welcome their lost sisters on the galactic stage. The Saran commander wiped her eyes and moved into a more upright position, cleared her throat and then addressed her Assistant commander.

“Sheput, are there any artificial contacts on the scanner horizon?”

“There are plenty of Commander. All of them however robotic probes of our Earth sisters. Their propulsion systems remain terribly primitive, but we noticed a sharp increase in terms of computing power. Still two dimensional and digital in nature instead of the three dimensional trigital base of our systems, but the capacity and speed quadrupled in capacity from our last visit.”

One of her scanner and sensor operators interrupted. “I am reading energies consistent with a harnessed Fusion propulsion and the built up of arti-graviton waves. Inconsistent with Earth technology, very consistent with Freon tech.”

The commander openly cursed. “Ammuntherah’s ever devouring maw may rip these gray interlopers to pieces.

Chapter 1 »