Heartbeat

“You’ll be wet-wired with 27 implants whilst genetic re-sequencing changes the colour of your blood.
Your bones will no longer break under G’s, your flesh will no longer boil in vacuum and your minds will no longer suck in combat. Your personalities will combine with your ship, you will become a machine of war, a Starfighter. And in those moments, those heartbeats in which a world of ocean could be boiled or the entire course of humanity irrevocably altered by the most mundane of your assets; I will teach you how not to lose your shit.

And yes, we will fold the fabric of the universe, breathe the atmosphere of suns and use the echo’s from possible futures to experience a reality so vast that your experiences of everything up until now will be like that of an unborn child.

But understand this, our enemy is formidable, they are intelligent, experienced, highly motivated and have been watching us for a very long time.

I am Topley and I will be your instructor. In a Strike Squadron you will need to know many things, but above all, you will learn one thing so well that in the darkest crevices in your mind, a purpose etched with the clarity of a diamond can chime like a bell, delivering you from a certain, meaningless death.

 

That purpose is Chaos; You are the harbingers of Chaos. Deliver this onto the enemy and you will control. Repeat! Chaos is their confusion and my control.”

The room jarred as the recruits barked back the phase to the instructor.

“That was your introduction, I will see you again in several days, until then, dismissed.”

A tale of two empires

Arkaedos

Within this wall beats the heart of an empire, within this radius lies the mind of Sol’s youngest child.

 

This is The Ark; cornerstone of Arkaedian civilisation. Its continuing construction has consumed thousands of worlds over tens of thousands of years in a project that will one day see it’s host star encapsulated by a sphere of Iron and Graphite.

 

The Arks primary purpose is the generation of “white holes” from which quantities of energy many times more than the output of it’s star can be harvested. It’s secondary role is the physical and virtual habitat of thirty one trillion personalities.

 

Many speculate that in the event of an extremely unlikely catastrophe, inhabitants within the Virtuality experience the remaining minutes as billions of years worth of run-time; a relativistic slumber that would see its citizens subjectively outliving the life-time of the universe in defiance.

Kacylis

Gazing upon the capital world at the center of Kacylis, one might be forgiven for believing that the Dyson Ring, with it’s 2200AU diameter was it’s most astonishing feature.

 

However, when one looks a little closer at the star, one might see why many consider ⌀ (Diameter) to be a modern wonder. 400,000 times more luminous than old Sol, this Blue Hypergiant lies sheathed in a cloud of computronium.

 

Feeding on the stars powerful radiation and stellar flux, and resonating with the broken symmetries of the early universe. Diameter manages to accomplish something computing substrates within bubble universes cannot.

 

Where information may only pour out of a bubble universe through plank-sized holes, this star and it’s matryoshka shells of processing dust, bind the will of man to the fabric of the universe in ways fundamental and vast.

 

To Arkaedians huddled within the Ark’s Golden minute, knowledge that here lies an entire system where light travels at the square of it’s normal speed, draws intense emotions, envy, not least among them.

Heavy Metal

“The Ashcen was the ceremony that celebrated a Kushauwan Pilot’s the 10th Magniacapra engagement.

The event was the acquisition of “war paint” via the low altitude gravitational assist of Ganarhun I in the Ganarhun system.

Ganarhun I was a Metallic Hypergiant who’s close proximity to it’s star caused it’s surface in daylight, to evaporate prior to being blown by the solar wind into interstellar space. As pilots undergoing the Ashcen transgress through the planets ;bleeding’ atmosphere, metallic vapour condenses and scars hull plating providing the vessel with unique patterns that distingish the pilot amoungst it’s peers.”

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Synax444’s work provided most of the inspiration for this piece.

Magnetar

Magnetar Proving Facilities provide the ultimate testing environments for new technology and tactics due to the extrodinarily tough conditions found within these particular stellar atmospheres.

Like with all stars, magnetic field’s excite and bake stellar atmosphere and the solar wind to millions of degrees hotter than the stars core.

This Magnetar (SGR 1900+14) although less than 20 killometers in diameter weighs in at over 5 solar masses and resides in a photosphere several billion degrees kelvin. It’s in these extremes, ship defences and weapons systems are assessed by some of the most competent test pilots in the industry.

Asgards in transit towards a Magnetar Facility.

Hypercolour

Hypercolour

These are the colours of radiation radio through gamma. This is gluon, graviton, strong, electro-weak and all the other forces of matter. These are the exposed, collapsed, quantum realities that govern the temporal world and all probable futures.

This is fifty thousand years worth of man and machine. This is space, time, alternate times, chaos, entropy, natural law, SEEN, MEMORISED AND UNDERSTOOD at competences comparable with godhood.

This is Hypercolour.