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Remember how I said a SMART failure ate my Prequel Series to Rare Earth, Common Ground and it wasnt backed up on my Google Drive? After having a lapse of better judgement and installing Windows 10 on my primary Debian rig, I was shocked to find this story backed up on my LiveDrive desktop profile. Its rough, its stilted, but you have to believe me when I say its the best Ive written in half a decade. Maybe I'll get that hormone scuplted brain back into the groove. Maybe I wont. But I wont let this second chance pass by again.

I hope it was worth the wait.

_ ** Tales from Sinoa: The Great Starfall** _

_ Part I _

Inside the colossal GCS-Lup sleeper ship_Far Dreamer_, all was dark and quiet. Twenty kilometers of pitch black durasteel corridors crisscrossed in a seemingly endless Stygian labyrinth. Endless conduits and maintenance crawl ways coiled up inside the monolithic vessel like artificial intestines. Aside from the imperceptible hum of backup systems running on auxiliary power, the ship lay dormant.

The ship had been built for a single purpose, and in its long hibernation, the long years of intricate design and precision manufacture might have seemed wasted. A fine layer of dust coated the checkered deck plates throughout the ship; its inert atmosphere recyclers never filtering the remnants of what few maintenance crews came through on Far Dreamer's annual inspections.

The ship, and by extension its Virtual Intelligence, remained idle for entire generations.

Until the Great Starfall.

A distant rumble broke the stillness. Silence returned. Another rumble, closer this time, shook the slumbering ship. Inside the central computer core, seismic sensors tripped an automated fail safe, bringing the auxiliary system to full power and initiating the class II gravemetric drive start up sequence. The Virtual Intelligence glossed over system diagnostics and immediately began downloading updated information from Sinoa's central repository.

Far Dreamer sensed thousands of First Imperium assault drones swirling in the thick atmosphere above the spaceport, almost blotting out Sinona's single white star. They continued to rain nanite bombs down upon the Wolven capital of Kursak. Kilometer tall buildings buckled underneath the uncaring onslaught of true Artificial Intelligence as the nano-machines ate away at the load bearing structures holding the capital upright. Far Dreamer shook again as another skyscraper collapsed onto the secure underground bunker keeping the ship hidden.

Pentabytes of manifests flowed into Far Dreamer even as the howls of millions of gene sculpted bipedal wolves cried out above, many of them disintegrating before each others tortured eyes or crushed like ants by falling debris. Electro Magnetic Pulse ground batteries filled Kursak's airspace with sizzling electronic dead zones, but for every black, pentagonal drone that fell out of the sky, five more took its place.

Despite the rampant chaos and wholesale slaughter of the Engineered Organics in the capital above, the Thirteen Wolven Elders representing the thirteen genetic tribes were in fact being de-materialized at that moment, their digitized personalities, deep wisdom, and even genetic encoding funneled to Far Dreamer to escape the genocide.

Klaxons blared out when the VI realized something had hacked its way through a maintenance hatchway from the skeletal framework of the shipyard loading gantry holding the colony ship secure.

Warning: Intruder Alert ... Warning: Intr ....

Far Dreamer's emotionless alarm cut off abruptly when the Eng-Org transmitted a kill code, crippling the VI's self awareness. It carried out its core functions regardless. As it spun up the thirteen data arrays in preparation to receive their respective elders, a bloody bipedal coyote in a seamless white engineer's outfit lurched into the computer core, smearing a bloody paw print in the entrance.

The coyote's holographic blue visor flickered as nanities chewed their way through its emitter and canine with equal indifference. A crimson patch continued to spread around the coyote's clutched right side. Thin muzzle lips winced as the hacker made a final lurch towards one of the data arrays, falling against it even as its data matrix filled with brilliant blue lights.

The intruder ignored the agony of being chewed up from the inside out and pried open a bypass panel. Dainty paw tips slicked withblooddropped a data cube into the emergency receptacle. The Wolven Elder within the data matrix howled out in silent protest as the dark deed erased her digitized soul, replacing her with something far more ... sinister.

Satisfied of their last act, the androgynous canid slumped to the grated floor with an effeminate wheeze. They hooked their claws into the grating and dragged themselves behind a bank of computers, leaving a small crimson smear behind them. Out of sight, the coyote closed their green eyes for the last time.

Inside the computer core nothing living stirred.

The VI however, satisfied that each of the thirteen data matrices contained a canine Elder, engaged their holoemmitters. Twelve bipedal wolves, each a sub-species ofextantTerran Canis lupus, suddenly winked into ethereal existence. It didn't seem to fazeElder Ruvo of the Frost Seekers Tribe,C. l. occidentalis.

"Status report." He barked out immediately to the other ghostly bipedal wolves standing in a perfect dodecagon around Far Dreamer's central computer core. His military pendant caught the bright glow of the core with a wink as he turned to a petite female wolf. "How many do we have on board?"

"Over two thousand hypersleep chambers have been loaded and their life signs verified."ElderOranu of the Mountain Criers answered back,C. l. hudsonicus."An estimated one thousand more are loading, but have not been verified by Far Dreamer as fully stowed and secured." Her elegant paw extended from underneath a gray diplomat's cloak to extend to the twinkling half globeembeddedin the floor.

A holographic diagram of Far Dreamer flickered to life above the core, spinning. More opaque parts of the diagram blinked, giving a visual representation of the boarding process. Blistering fast automation had already filled a little over half of the sleeper ship's capacity.

"We must wait until minimum viable population size is reached." Elder Vox of theSand StriderTribestated factually.His tribe's ancestors,C. l. baileyi,knew all too well how close they had come to genetic oblivion. The great Gene SculptorAriahad spent decades re-squencing their tribe alone, searching tirelessly through taxidermy trophies, musty museums, andprivategene banks from across the known galaxy. The xeno-biologistlooked up as another quake shook the central core.

Elder Ruvo shot the scientist a dark look. "We're OUT of time. If you had voted to let the Military caste engage the Imperium when we had first warned ...

"Ruvo ..." Oranu's soft voice stilledherhot headed counterpart. "We WILL live to fight the Synthetics another day." Her sapphire eyes narrowed to emphasize the urgency of her words. "But only if we stop fighting among ourselves ..." She turned to Elder Eron of the Moons-Song Tribe. "Can you bypass any of Far Dreamer's loading protocols?"

The System's Engineer closed her yellow eyes, pristine white fur bristling ever so slightly as she zipped through millions of lines of basebinary in mere seconds. Aria hadsequenced_C. l. arctos_ with the gift of manipulating expert systems. She opened her eyes, smiling at anothertaskexecuted with almost VI like precision.

"Loading efficiency of hypersleep chambers have increased 300%. Perishable consumable bulk container loading priority has beenhalted." Herblackmuzzle lips pursed somewhat. "StarboardLoading Gantry on Deck 42 has reported a security breach ..."

"I dont care!" Elder Ruvo growled. "Am I the ONLY one who ..." TheremainingElders began to chime in with heated discord.

"Wait ..." Elder Davos of the River Weaver Tribe,_C. l. crassodon,_put a paw up to silence the growing dissent. He pointed up to the steel sky above them, his nanobot-sculpting gauntlet flashing like a mirror ball in the soft blue twinkling of the core. "Listen!"

The Wolven Elders' ears all perked up, but all was quiet above them. They looked at each other, puzzled.

"Status of the Imperium battlegroup?!" Ruvo barked out, panic flooding his widening eyes.Eron closed her eyes again, concentrating on the piecemeal network of gravemetric sensors remaining on the spaceport's half consumedlanding pads.

"Retreating."Confusion creased her brow. "Flight path indicatesan 87.6% probability that allassaultdrone carriers are fleeingto the Lagrange point ..."

"But why ... whynull shunt out ofthe system entirely..." Elder Marktoc of the Den Makers Tribe,C. l. mackenzii. He moved forward, the matrix of tinkling blue dotting his huge lupine frame. The way the shadows crept over his bulging muscles seemed at odds with his gentle nature. What the Den Makers lacked in quick thinking, they made up for in brute strength. "Unless ..."

Oranu's slenderpaw touched her muzzlelips, horrifiedat the unspoken implication. "Oh no ..."

The First Imperium, unable to locate the all thirteen SinoanCastes and their respective Elders in their unprovoked attack, had decided on complete and utter annihilation on a scale unthinkable to even Organics; The gravemetric destabilization of the white giant star at the very heart of their solar system.

The Great Starfall.

Fin Part I

Its ironic. I remember how Eldyran could do three pages in a few hours, half asleep. But that was a different time. And He was a different person. Im sure some of this will change as I go back over and re-read Rare Earth Common Ground. But for now ... every story has a beginning ...