The Legend of Earth

habitable zone. One was called Olypon, and would serve well as the Klin’s base of operations. The other was called Eilsion by the race of Primes who dominated its landscape — a people called the Kracori.

Even though Eilsion was a rocky world, with a large molten core and a strong magnetic field, it still suffered from considerably more stellar radiation than did Olypon. The Kracori had evolved as an extremely tough race, with thick leathery skin that had turned a deep, ashen gray over the millennia. But there was another unique quality that set the Kracori apart from nearly every other race in the galaxy.

Eilsion was a heavy-gravity world. Ever since the Juireans had taken over the galaxy and set the surface gravity of Juir as the galactic standard, all worlds were compared against this measure. The home of the Kracori was rated at 1.28 that of standard. This was significant, but not unique. There are literally millions of planets with higher gravity than even Eilsion throughout the galaxy, yet what made the Kracori so unique is how they had adapted to it.

Most inhabitants of heavy-gravity worlds were thick, low-lying and bulky. Also, these creatures had very slow metabolisms, so their movements were sloth-like, almost like a world in slow-motion.

But not the Kracori; they were an active, strong race of beings, able to move within their environment at speeds comparable to those on lower-gravity worlds. The Klin, being as cerebral as they were, classified the Kracori as Prime-D, and they would remain the only race so classified for another thirteen hundred years — until the discovery of the Human race.

The Klin established a small colony on the neighboring world of Olypon and began to watch the Kracori as they developed their society. They also continued to be pushed further out from the heart of the galaxy. This was not a problem for the Klin. Over the millennia, they had learned not to concentrate their population in only one location, and by the time the Earth was discovered, the Klin had established three very distinct colonies.

The main base was on Olypon, and over the years, contact was made with the Kracori, who become willing and proficient manufacturers of the Klin technology. They built spaceships by the hundreds and enjoyed the benefits of all the wonders of Klin science.

A second base — a much smaller one — was located on the planet Glasien-4 in the Far Arm of the galaxy. It was from here that scouts first discovered the planet Earth, although the world had already been visited many times in past. These early visitors had been the frontier adventurers seeking freedom from the confines of the Juirean Expansion, and more often than not, slavers. Although the Humans were an exceptionally strong and durable race, perfect for the slave trade, they had proved to be almost impossible to contain and control. After several thousand years, only the most stubborn slavers continued to find new product among the Humans.

The Klin’s primary administration headquarters was located on the distant world of Marishal, far out near the galactic rim and out of the main gravity lanes. This was where the Pleabaens of Klin resided, the leaders of the race. Marishal was also the secondary manufacturing location for the Klin, although not nearly as extensive an operation as on Elision.

All three of these locations served the Klin well for over fifteen hundred years, primarily because of their isolation from the major deep-well gravity lanes.

The Klin had developed the gravity drive four thousand years earlier, just before the Juireans had attacked their world and killed off nearly ninety-nine percent of the population. Even though the Juireans called this event the Reckoning, the Klin word for the event more closely translated into Holocaust.

Gravity drives work by focusing dynamic-forces to create microscopic singularities in space. Since these miniature black holes were always created at the same distance from the generator, the motherships were already well within the event horizon of the singularity when it was created, thereby shielding the generating spaceships from the effects of relativity. As space would flow toward the singularity, the starships would move as well, requiring no additional energy to propel them forward.

But here is where the true genius of the gravity drive paid dividends. Since the effects of the singularity were felt in all directions around the central point, space on the opposite side of the generating spaceship was also drawn in, and when the singularity dissolved, space would rebound, propelling the starship several billions of kilometers from where it had originally created the singularity. Space travel was achieved through the constant creation and dissolving of hundreds of these tiny black holes along the line of travel.

Of course, as with any great scientific discovery, there were guidelines to be followed to achieve maximum results.

Gravity drives were constantly being affected by other gravity sources around them, such as stars, nebulae and even other black holes. One simply couldn’t plot a straight-line course through space. In addition, gravity drives were very temperamental with regard to the amount of matter available within a particular region of space. Too little matter and the critical mass for singularity generation could not be achieved. Too much and the amount of matter drawn toward the singularity would cause a rainstorm of deadly projectiles capable of ripping any starship to shreds. These large-mass singularities were also very unstable and hard to control.

For true deep-well generation, just the right mix of matter and void had to be found. This requirement restricted truly swift movement throughout the galaxy to a relatively few well-established gravity lanes. Here the large interstellar spacecraft could crank up their wells and travel at speeds of several hundred light years per standard hour. Using these lanes, a journey from the planet Earth to Juir for example — a distance of approximately twenty-thousand light years — could be achieved in just over under nine standard months.

However, for the majority of travel within the galaxy, these kinds of speeds could not be employed. Journey between relatively close star systems — as well as within the systems themselves — was reserved for shallow- well generation.

With so many competing gravity sources and ample clusters of matter in the form of dust and debris throughout the bulk of the galaxy, shallow-well speeds were greatly reduced, often down to only a few millions of kilometers per hour. It was like comparing atmospheric ramjet speeds to those of surface wheeled transport, and with those transports having to navigate down narrow streets and between buildings. These smaller spaceships could include within their engine rooms massive gravity generators capable of much higher speeds, but why would they? It would be like carrying a ramjet engine on the back of your wheeled transport, just in case one needed to jump a twenty kilometer-wide canyon at some point. It just wasn’t practical.

So the three worlds the Klin chose as their main sanctuaries were well-isolated from the major deep-well gravity lanes, and far enough from normal star-to-star trade that they remained hidden from most prying eyes for hundreds of years.

Four thousand years ago, at the time of the Reckoning, there had been approximately forty-eight thousand Klin living off-planet or on ships in space. The surviving Klin had run for their lives, moving from refuge to refuge as the Juireans expanded their empire. The Klin are very slow breeders, often not reaching physical maturity until after seventy-standard, so even in the present time, the descendants of these survivors still only numbered about two-hundred thousand adults.

The past two hundred years had been the most stable for the Klin, as the push by the Juireans to bring new members into their Expansion had subsided. The Juireans were now content to let new worlds approach them with requests for membership, often after these worlds had been exposed to the realities of galactic society by the frontier explorers.

It was also around this time that the Pleabaens of the Klin had first devised the current plan for revenge against the Juireans, the one that was rapidly falling apart — thanks to the Humans.

The Juireans had never been a very forward-looking race, and the recent evolution of their society had made them even less so. In the time before becoming a galactic power, the Juireans — as did most all races — mated in pairs and for long-term. As a result, the mothers and fathers of the offspring produced through these unions would have to consider the future and plan accordingly for the well-being of the children. Meanwhile, these offspring would plan for their own futures, including for families of their own.

When the Juireans switched to a more dispassionate means of reproduction and child-rearing, things began to change. Females become pregnant through artificial insemination and the children would be raised in government-run facilities. The needs of every Juirean were satisfied from cradle to grave, and with their life path predetermined at an early age as well. There was no need to plan for the future in Juirean society, since all decisions had already been made for them.