Armpit of the Gods by Frank Sonderborg
This shudder sends an expanding X-ray death wave into its surrounding
interstellar surroundings.
The Wyse, the branch of
science and war that had planned the exit from our dying sun, had found some
suitable planets we could colonize.
We were the last remains of our cephalopod's civilization.
Uprooted and launched on a perilous diaspora journey across the vastness of time
and space.
Were they aquatic beings like us out there? Will they
resist our coming to take up residence, in their Solar System.
And if life had evolved, as it should with aquatics,
they could not be, other than intelligent, and therefore open to an intelligent
negotiation.
724 light-years away,
Ubururu had hung like a shining welcoming beacon in the black emptiness of
space.
They said it was a
rare wonder, a complete water world.
Would they share
their planet with another alien refugee species?
But why not? We were
a spacefaring civilization. And as far as our constant data updates had
discovered, the inhabitants of the Ubururu Planet, where new to Space travel,
and had, surprisingly, not gotten out of their own Solar System.
Our enemies where also on the move too, looking for a new home.
It was imperative we found a place and built our
defences. For a sure as the light sped from our dying star, the Bipeds would
come and try to eradicate us.
The death of a star was both a great sadness and a great religious
occasion.
It spread death at lightspeed, but it also released all the heavy metals
needed for great Space faring civilizations to thrive.
We started, long ago,
building great Space Arks to be flung out into the stars. In the hope that one
of our aquatic seedpods would stick.
We studied Ubururu for
eons, and the perceived opinion, was, it could easily sustain our cephalopod type of lifeform.
Water is what we
needed. And the Ubururu Planet had it in abundance.
It was with great
excitement; we started to pick up the first bits of incessant Ubururu chatter
as we neared their Solar System.
Our scout ships were
already in their Solar System relaying back information about the planets. And
mining their asteroid belts.
The incoming torrent of
information that was sent, made no sense at first, as the Wyse struggled to
interpret the sound and images that overwhelmed them.
We managed to piece
together the current story of Ubururu.
And with horror we
realized the sentient beings in charge of Ubururu, were not aquatics.
They were Bipeds, land
bound Bipeds.
But how could this be.
Ubururu was an aquatic world.
The Ark was immediately
put on a war footing.
The information
streaming from Ubururu was a wonder of music, violence and images likened to a
mad cephalopods secret stash of psychedelic body picture shows.
Then Wyse broke the
stunning news. And it wasn’t that Bipeds rejoiced in waging war, on the burnt
dry lands, that rose out of the Ubururu waters of the planet. Or that we’d have
to fight them for our survival.
It was about element L115 or the lack of
it. Our mining teams had searched their Solar System. And turned up zero.
The shock was profound,
when The Wyse informed us, we could not entertain remaining trapped in a Solar
system at the mercy of our enemies.
Their Sun was too
young. It would take another Super Nova to produce the essential stable element
L115. The element that drove our great gravity engines. And made Interstellar
travel possible. This backward planet would remain just that, a backwater. The Bipeds
would possible consume themselves, when they realised, they could not escape
their Solar System prison. Of course, they could travel sub-light. But without
the stable element L115 they could never become Intergalactic Space farers.
Our search would go on.
We would bypass
Ubururu.
Making a Sling Shot manoeuvre using their Sun and on and out
of their Solar System. Heading towards our next target.
Should we warn them of
the stream of new travellers, that will come hurtling out of the death throes
of our exploding sun, we now know they called, Betelgeuse. No, the
consensus was no. We would just pass on through and leave them to their fate.
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