Mindshard (ON HOLD)

Chapter 4: The Pax

     It was chaotic beauty, an intricate dance that seemed to possess neither rhyme nor reason.  With Galus Prime, a beautiful cloud-wreathed crescent of pristine blue and white, dominating the left side of the scene, Vaughn found herself looking into a storm of motion that, for a brief, dizzying moment, nearly overwhelmed her by its very scale.  Only after steadying herself with a hand against a bulkhead and blinking a couple of times, was Vaughn able to drink in the maelstrom.

     They were ships.  Thousands of them, some as large or larger than the Indurin and others the size of the shuttle that brought them from Icarus Prime, with a multitude of sizes in between, thronging in Galus orbit.  The bright halo of Galus’ sun reflecting off the atmosphere seemed to be full of them, flitting back and forth, gargantuan fireflies and moths drawn to the silvery planet light.

     But, as Vaughn concentrated on identifying individual ships, she found order appearing in the chaos.  The larger vessels, obviously ships-of-war like the Indurin, were moving in tight formation, patrol patterns, if she was correct.  Several dancing motes of light surrounded each, keeping pace with the far larger mother ship, combat defense patrol fighters by all appearances.  Various support vessels paced the warships as well, though their exact purpose was unclear from this distance.

     That made the rest of the ships, by default, civilian; transports, shuttles and the like, plying the route between Galus and at least one moon, partially hidden behind the planet’s crescent, and several massive stations, each the size of a small moon themselves.  They hung in Lagrange point orbit between the moon and the planet, leviathan constructs of alloy and plastic, swarming with light every time they passed out of the sun’s direct light and into shadow, mimicking moons in shape and motion.

     It was into the midst of this chaos the Indurin and her fellow ships descended, powerful energy fields working in tandem with maneuvering thrusters to slow her momentum until she gently eased into the surging traffic girdling the planet.  As they drew closer to Galus, Vaughn noticed, much to her amazement that while the technology surrounding the planet was obvious, it wasn’t on the planet itself.  Swinging across the terminator and beyond the sun’s reach, the lean colonel found the Indurin traveling over a surface in darkness

     No cities with their clouds of illumination were visible, as they would be from Earth or Icarus orbit.  Nor were there any traffic paths marked with beacons of light.

  “Long ago the Sidhe discovered the benefits of living in harmony with nature.”  Cienisar quietly explained from the comm link on the desk, somehow noticing Vaughn’s astonishment.  “Orbit throngs with way stations, orbital factories and defensive platforms, mute testimony to the technological might of the Pax.  But down on the planet, it’s forbidden by the strictest law to put in place any technology that might harm the environment or endanger its animal life.”

  “Surely you have cities down there.”  Vaughn reasoned out loud.  “Places where people live.”

  “Of course.”  Cienisar replied with what could only be described as a laugh, an odd thing coming from a computer.  In her many conversations with the puissant Sidhe AI, she found him more likeable and human than many of the UDF officers she had associated with on the base.

  “Galus Prime is home to close to 10 billion inhabitants, concentrated for the most part in a number of very large cities.  The cities, however, were designed and built with the sole purpose of being one with the environment around them.  Often it’s difficult to distinguish where the forest ends and the city begins.  They are meant to live and breathe like any other living creature in the biome, an organism unto itself.  It has a Vuzhahn-class AI for a brain, Esha-class AI’s for a neural net and a variety of recycling, regulation and monitoring technologies to keep its body working.”