Found in constellation:
Catalog names: [formerly] Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629
Right Ascention, Declination, and Distance: 8h47m, -6°45', 6.80
light-years
Spatial coordinates: -4.50, -3.90, 3.30 (almost directly between CN
Leonis and Sirius)
Velocity vector in A.U.s/yr: 2.3, 0.6, -0.8
Light-Years to neighbors: Wolf 359 4.4, Sirius 4.5, Procyon 5.6,
Bonner Durchmusterung +5°1668 6.7, Sol 6.8, Alpha Centauri 7.6, Ross 128
7.7, Ross 614 8.8, Kapteyn's Star 11.0, AD Leonis 11.1, Epsilon Eridani 11.4,
FL Virginis 11.9, UV Ceti 12.2, CC 658 13.6, Groombridge 1618 13.8, Omicron-2
Eridani 14.5, WX Ursa Majoris 15.0
Arity: singular
Spectral class: M6
Luminosity class: V
Luminosity: 0.00002 x Sol
Mass: 0.07 x Sol
Diameter:
Age: At the time of the story, 100 years.
Heavy element abundance: 130% of Sol
Comfort Zone: 0.0045 AU (670 000 km)
Orbital period in CZ: 0.42 days (10 hours)
(A number at the beginning of a paragraph indicates mean Solar [Earth] year, with year 1 being arbitrarily set as the year of first contact between humans and Centaurians. Humans still use the Gregorian calendar year; Centaurians use their own calendar except when communicating with humans. For reference, the year "x" is sometimes called "x AC", with AC being variously interpreted as "Alpha Centauri", "After Centaurians", or "Anno Contacti".)
-43 – Manned (or should I say Centaurianned) survey of Alpha Centauri B performed by the Centaurians. The second planet from the star is found to harbor life; however, nothing more advanced than a trilobite-like species has evolved.
-38 – First colonists sent to Alpha Centauri B II. The oxygen atmosphere means there is no need for terraforming — er, A-III-forming.
-35 – Centaurians lay plans for a spacecraft using what humans would call the Bussard interstellar-hydrogen-collection principle. It is to be sent to Alpha Centauri Proxima.
-30 – First Centaurian ramscoop completed and sent on its mission to Proxima. In the years that follow, new designs emerge that could make the trip considerably faster, but the Centaurians figure, hey, we can wait, it's only Proxima Centauri. Their attitude turns out to be completely correct.
-15 – Details of the bleak, lifeless rendezvous with Proxima Centauri reach Alpha Centauri A III. These results aren't too surprising, seeing how ol' Alpha Centauri C is a flare star. Centaurians realize they're going to have to literally reach for the stars if they want any hope of contacting another intelligent species. Several decades ago, the Sol system nearly doubled its total radio energy output; some Centaurian astronomers have interpreted this as a sign of emerging technological life in that system.
-9 – Centaurians send one manned spacecraft (Bussard-sized ramscoop with a controlled-fusion engine and interstellar plasma deflection field) toward their nearest Truly Interstellar neighbor, Sol.
1 – Arbitrary [Earth] year some time in the 21st century. First contact with Alpha Centauri is made. We detect their ship on its way to the inner Solar system, it enters a direct circular orbit about the Earth at an altitude between the two Van Allen belts, everybody gets jumpy, and then some paranoid general orders two ground-lanched tactical nuclear missiles (which were originally ICBMs for use against strategic thermonuclear launchers) to attack the ship as their target. The Centaurian spacecraft is blown to pieces in a fission fireball. (The Centaurians had never encountered nuclear weapons before, and weren't expecting to get shot at anyway. The only other place they'd found life had been Alpha Centauri B II.) The U.S. government, which had been working toward being the World Federal Government anyway, kind of takes over and launches a massive defense program, and redesignates its Air Force as its Space Force, to prepare for the inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack.
2 – Analysis of the fragments from the destroyed Centaurian spacecraft show that it was almost certainly a Bussard-Ramscoop-like design. It also seemed to be able to force the ordinary light-hydrogen it collected to undergo controlled, sustained fusion. Although the engines are in nowhere near one piece, just the alloys used give human engineers an idea of what to look for to duplicate this technology. This helps to further prepare for the inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack.
15 – The inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack. Some of the paranoids heading up the Alpha Centauri government perceived Sol as a potential threat to their own home soil, reasoning that any species that could vaporize one of their ships in one stroke must also be at least that much farther ahead of them in interstellar travel capabilities. (We're not, they're just afraid we are.) Three combat-oriented interstellar spacecraft (all Bussard ramscoops) enter low Earth orbit and begin heavy reconnaisance. Nuclear missiles converge on them both from ground launch sites and newly-installed orbital launchers, but this time the Centaurians manage to shoot them down before they hit their ships. Well, all but one of them, anyway — which gets through and cripples one of the three Centaurian craft. The craft has to be abandoned in orbit. Big fighting ensues. Ground sites where missiles and suspected missiles are stored are attacked by the Centaurians from orbit. Troops at these sites, of course, die. After a few [Earth] days, the fighting reaches an uneasy cessation, and the Centaurians send down an illustrated dictionary and analog LP-like recordings of their language. The World Federal (formerly U.S.) Government responds by sending them an illustrated English dictionary and some compact discs (mostly to boast about the level of our technology). Although their language is unpronounceable to a human vocal mechanism (while our CDs are, at the time, beyond their ability to read), communications are established, diplomats meet behind hermetically-sealed windows, and the Centaurians and Humans agree to an uneasy ceasefire — which, of course, leads to a cold war by both sides. Having seen the real state of our space capabilities, the Alpha-Centaurians no longer consider humankind to be as much of a threat as previously supposed. Captured human satellites provide the Alpha-Centaurians with a computer technology the likes of which they have never seen before. Conversely, the one abandoned Centaurian craft was in good enough shape that humans were able to figure out the final secrets of its controlled-fusion engine; this marks the beginning of the end of the Ballistic Age of Space Exploration.
16 – Besides revolutionizing the energy industry, controlled fusion allows humans to really pick up the pace of space exploration and exploitation. Boosting people and cargo into or past Earth orbit is no longer a big deal, and orbiting spacecraft construction facilities sping up practically overnight. Human colonies on Earth's moon follow almost immediately.
19 – Alpha Centauri learns of the shaky armistice reached on Sol's third planet and decide they need to develop an antimatter arsenal. Positron collectors and starlight-powered antiproton factories are set up on Proxima Centauri's first solid planet. (Proxima's flare activity means lots of stray gamma rays, which can be used for pair creation, but it also means its planetary system must remain uninhabited.) [Note: at this point in history, antiprotons are considered the most useful form of antimatter, since they are 2000 times heavier than positrons and can be herded into magnetic bottles that much more easily. Positron collecting is only of fringe interest to any star system's military.]
20 – Martian colony follows soon after the lunar one, and terraforming begins (in the form of planting lots of dark-colored plants wherever there might be water). Humans begin colonization of the larger asteroids and the Galilean moons. The World Federal Government that started these colonies makes many overtures about freedom and self-sufficiency, but still considers them subject to World Federal Government control; however, this policy has yet to be tested.
21 – North Mars colonized.
22 – Colonel Ira Henderson makes his address to the Earth Committee for Space Travel. Sirius and Ross 154 suggested as good, nearby star systems to colonize.
23 – Mars and North Mars colonies grow to each others' borders.
24 – The Mars/North Mars conflict. After months of bloody fighting, Earth intercedes by taking strict control of both of them. This marks the solid beginning of the transition from the World Federal Government to the Solar Federal Government.
27 – Alpha-Centaurian "check up" ship arrives in Sol space and reports current state of events to Alpha Centauri. A few of the visiting Centaurians decide to stay in North Mars, and the World/Solar Federal Government's constabulary in North Mars allows it. Although greeted with open arms, these Centaurian visitors are soon quarantined and studied intently (two of them with microscopes and scalpels) — but not before some of each species' xenobacteria are exchanged. The way in which the Federal Government lured these Centaurians into their clutches is to blame for the lack of epidemiological precautions. While there, the check-up ship surreptitiously leaves some hard-to-detect reconnaisance satellites in Solar orbits between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Our progress disturbs them. When the humans find one of these satellites, they too are disturbed by this interstellar spy and figure the best course of action is to branch out outside of our own star system. The SBI is formed, and the first plans for the colonization of Sirius are begun.
28 – One of the many strains of airborne Alpha-Centaurian bacteria to be brought to North Mars causes a lethal epidemic there. Over a quarter of the human population in North Mars dies before the disease is contained and an anti-xeno-biotic is developed. Conversely, a normally innocuous terrestrial bacteria kills each and every one of the quarantined Centaurians, since the visiting Centaurians weren't equipped to handle a plague.
30 – Ramscoops, though much smaller than the full Bussard designs the Alpha-Centaurians visited us in, leave Sol for Sirius en masse. And not all Federally backed, either. Several rag-tag groups of people that can't stand the Federal government take off to Brave the Wilds themselves. As do some criminals, much like the indentured servants that came to America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Federally-backed ships carry enough equipment to begin a small Defense program of their own once they reach their destination. [Note that at this time, hibernation technology has not yet been discovered by humans. These colonists have a long ride ahead of them.]
33 – A second wave of small ramscoops, all Federally backed, depart Sol for Sirius.
34 – Via their outer-Sol-system-orbiting satellites, the Alpha-Centaurians learn of our colonization fleet and send a small fleet of their own to Sirius. They also like our idea of colonizing a new star system and, fearing Sirius's high gamma ray output would lead to accelerated antimatter production by the Solar colony there, send out a slightly larger colonization fleet to CN Leonis (alias Wolf 359), consisting mostly of malcontents. (Ross 154, while closer and larger, doesn't have the flare activity to produce enough gamma rays. UV Ceti, on the other hand, has so much flare activity as to be uninhabitable.)
39 – The fledgling SBI reports the outbound Centaurian ships to the Solar Federal government on Earth. Two ships were positively identified as being aimed for CN Leonis; the rest could not be pinned down as to their destinations. Sol assumes the entire Centaurian fleet is headed there.
40 – Sol: Several armed starships are sent to CN Leonis.
42 – Sirius: First human interstellar ramscoops arrive at Sirius A. The fourth planet from the star lies closer than the traditional Comfort Zone, yet, because of the extremely low CO2 content of its atmosphere, has pre-aerobic life on it at the middle-to-high latitudes. Colonies are established and terraforming slowly begins, with an eye on keeping CO2 levels down. Eight light-years worth of distance from their original home makes the three months of travelling time between England and colonial America look like a trip around the block.
44 – Second wave of scoops arrive at Sirius. These more gung-ho Solar Federalists quickly learn just how much On Their Own they really are. It doesn't take long for Sirius to declare its independence.
47 – First Alpha-Centaurian Bussard ramscoops arrive at CN Leonis. Colonization of CN Leonis II begins. CN Leonis's being a mild flare star means that CN Leonis II can never be terraformed (at least on its surface), but that antimatter production can take place at a pace rivalling Sirius. A period of "salutory" neglect follows, during which the colonists engage in a massive military buildup.
50 – Sol: News of Sirius's declaration of independence arrives at Sol. Sentiment among interplanetary colonists there, and even on Earth, is mixed, so the Federal government can only send a small military force to Sirius to restore order there without losing face. That military force consists of one interstellar craft carrying four automated "fighter" ships which had originally been engineered to fight the Alpha-Centaurians. Sirius: First Alpha-Centaurians arrive at Sirius. First thought to be another wave of human colonists, the Sirians transmit the news of their independence to them. When they discover that they aren't human at all but Alpha-Centaurian, panic ensues, and the entire Sirian military is mobilized against the ships. (A few of the interstellar ramscoops they'd made their journeys in have been converted to weapons platforms, in anticipation of attempts by Sol to re-take the system.) Being primarily colony ships and not expecting this kind of resistance, the Centaurian colony ships soon surrender. The secrets of the Alpha-Centaurian hibernation chamber, used in these colony ships, are unlocked by humans for the first time, as are their interstellar plasma deflection fields (which are more efficient than the methods humans used for surviving relativistic speeds).
51 – Sol's military force arrives at CN Leonis, with gun ports open. The Solar folks weren't expecting the massive military buildup that had happened in the past four years, and the Leonians blast hell out of some Solar ships while capturing the rest. The prisoners (all of whom are human) are paraded around on CN Leonis-II like captured slaves. News of this little replay of the Bay of Pigs invasion has been sent back to Sol before Sol's forces are completely vanquished, though.
59 – Sol hears about the victory at CN Leonis and decides to leave the damn place alone — in part due to a small, grass-roots group of "learned" citizens calling themselves Humans for Better Interspecies Relations.
60 – "Peace Keeping" force from Sol arrives at Sirius. The Sirians, who had been expecting such a turn of events, had converted some of the ramscoops they made their journeys in into weapons-carrying spacecraft. Although outmatched in terms of maneuverability by the fighters, the extra armor plating and Alpha-Centaurian interstellar plasma deflection fields (now beefed up to "battle screens") are all the edge the Sirians need. They win the Sirian War for Independence in a matter of days.
61 – Alpha Centauri hears about the victory at CN Leonis, but only by indirectly inferring it from the least official of their communications. They're not sure who to be infuriated at more: Sol for attacking their colony, or CN Leonis for not acting like they were an Alpha-Centaurian colony any more. Not knowing how strong CN Leonis is, Alpha Centauri sends its own military force there to prevent them from "breaking off" the way Sirius did from Sol. Some concerned citizens become worried by all this warmongering and begin stepping up personal correspondences with Solar citizens in an attempt to bridge the species gap.
65 – New slew of messages from the more concerned citizens of Alpha Centauri reaches Sol. The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations grows as a result.
66 – The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations cause a minor backlash movement among some old-timers, resulting in the most hawkish election turnout in twenty years.
68 – News of the outcome of Sirius's War of Cesession reaches Sol. The Solar Federal government grudgingly accedes to Sirian independence; it works to the advantage of the hawks, who can now point to Sirius as a "new outside threat" to further Sol's cold-war footing. The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations are now the best place to go if you want to correspond with a Centaurian in another star system.
70 – The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations reaches a critical mass. Citing emotional-plague behavior and so-called "intolerance" as the main cause of xenophobia, they announce the intention of building a new, independent colony in a new star system, and send an open invitation to any other humans or Centaurians who wish to join them. The only restriction on citizenship in this new "Human-Centauri", they insist, is that emotional plague behavior will not be tolerated, and that they will be free to deport any emotional plague characters.
72 – Alpha Centauri's military force arrives at CN Leonis. The fleet is devastated within minutes of announcing their role as enforcers. Leonian independance has been waiting to happen, and this provides all the impetus it needs.
74 – News of the Human-Centauri project reaches Alpha Centauri. There is a large degree of interest — and some suspicion from the Alpha-Centaurian government. The interested Alpha-Centaurian citizens realize that the best solution to avoid interference from any of the three existing governments is for Human-Centauri to be in a star system that nobody else is interested in.
77 – News of the Human-Centauri project reaches CN Leonis. No Leonian with interstellar travel capability is interested.
78 – Sirius: News of the Human-Centauri project arrives. Few Sirians are interested. Sol: Agreeing with the interested Alpha-Centaurian citizens, the Humans for Better Interspecies Relations have already chosen one of the least interesting Human-Centauri locales imaginable: a substellar ball of heavy-element-rich hydrogen named Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629. It didn't even manage to ignite into a star under its own weight, but is large enough to be ignited artificially. (It's also situated closer to Sirius and CN Leonis than to either Sol or Alpha Centauri.) The first wave of emigrants leaves for this Human-Centauri system, carrying with them an antiproton bomb which they figure will start a fusion reaction within the substar.
79 – Sirius: News of CN Leonis's sovereignty arrives. (The Leonians have enough of a resource base to feel comfortable in broadcasting this fact, unlike Sirius.) Alpha Centauri: News of CN Leonis's independence arrives. This causes Alpha-Centaurian government to fear it's losing control and clamp down on its own populace somewhat. The Human-Centauri enthusiasts get even more antsy to leave.
80 – Sol: News of CN Leonis's sovereignty arrives.
82 – Alpha-Centauri: News of the location of Human-Centauri arrives. A few Centaurians back away out of skepticism over the ability to "create" a star, but in light of the more militaristic political situation in their home system, most of the previously interested citizens embark for this new world. With enough supplies to get back home if stellar ignition fails, of course.
88 – First Solar immigrants arrive at Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629 and prepare to convert it into a star system. The region of the future star's comfort zone has no planets, but does have a sufficient asteroid population to "build" artificial worlds out of. While stellar ignition preparation continues, construction of the future "Human-Centauri I", which will be plate-shaped to increase its light-gathering area, is begun.
89 – First emotional plague behavior incident at the future site of Human-Centauri. The perpetrator is given a choice of one year's private confinement, or deportation back to Sol. She leaves. Many feel the situation was not handled well and that new standards for dealing with plague-characters should be adopted.
90 – Human-Centauri stellar ignition. A star is born. Planetary plate construction crew can now work by the light of this new candle, instead of their portable fusion furnaces.
93 – First Centaurian immigrants arrive on (Gregorian) June 5th to a warm welcome at the still-under-construction Human-Centauri I. The human inhabitants of Human-Centauri officially name June 5th "Grand Opening Day". Sadly, a few Centaurian's are found to have character structures tainted with their own species' version of the emotional plague, and have to be sent back.
94 – Sirius: Light from the newly-ignited star arrives. Sirians are flabberghasted that these independent malcontents could actually pull it off. CN Leonis: First light from Human-Centauri arrives. The Leonians are frankly amazed, but have had political and economic problems of their own so can't pay it much attention at this point.
95 – Human-Centauri I completed (at least to the point of habitability). Human-Centauri decides to build a second artificial planetary plate to share the same orbit as Human-Centauri I. Work on Human-Centauri II begins.
97 – First light from Human-Centauri reaches Sol.
98 – First light from Human-Centauri reaches Alpha Centauri.
100 – First disgruntled Human-Centauri reject arrives back at Sol. Her story blurts "Human-Centauri unfair!" in tabloid-like news media across the system. Those who've actually met her tend to agree with the Human-Centaurians' decision, however.
101 – Human-Centauri II completed to the point of habitability. The eastern limb of the plate is designated as a "greeting area" where prospective Human-Centauri citizens, emotional plague bearing or not, may arrive and live before being accepted or rejected.
107 – Human-Centauri III completed to the point of habitability.
113 – Human-Centaurian projections indicate that their population may exceed the capacity of all three planetary plates within the century. Plans are laid for a "higher class" neighborhood, consisting of the future Human-Centauri IV and V. Existing 3 Human-Centaurian planets begin slow modification to a curved shape, which would allow for all the plates to be linked together in a "ringworld" some time in the distant future.
124 – Human-Centauri IV added to the artificial star system's real estate. It is considerably larger and more quake-free than any of the first three planetary plates. The need to receive all starlight equally factors into a noticeable curvature in its design.
143 – Human-Centauri V built. The possibility of a Nivenian ring-world within the next couple of centuries is not out of the question, although the fact that such a structure would have no surface gravity presents a big theoretical problem in atmospheric engineering. Human-Centauri VI is not planned for the near future.
150 – Mad Scientist's phased antimatter bomb experiment approved by the Solar Federal government's Board of Research. He is granted Luyten 726-8 B IV for his personal testbed; the extreme flare nature of UV Ceti makes the system too hostile for habitation, despite the lure of its high gamma ray output. Mad Scientist departs Sol system for good old UV Ceti. Pre-assembled materials for the Phased Antimatter device follow soon thereafter.
152 – SBI agents Arnold Hasselberg and Jerry Redlands depart Sol for UV Ceti.
161 – Mad Scientist arrives at UV Ceti IV and begins setting up shop.
162 – Start of the story. Mad Scientist test-detonates first Phased Antimatter device on UV Ceti IV, destroying the planet (and himself). SBI observers Arnold Hasselberg and Jerry Redlands discover one-ended hole in space (filled with utter darkness) at the flashpoint. Arnold accidentally falls into hyper hole and is believed gone forever. Jerry violates orders and sends the secrets of the terrible, planet-rending destructive power of the Phased Antimatter Bomb to all five star systems.
177 – Jerry's data-transmission signal reaches all five systems simultaneously. The problem of What Happened At The Flashpoint becomes the hot topic in the various scientific communities. Sirius's physicists quickly stumble upon the answer to the riddle of the Phased Antimatter Bomb by codifying the Energy Density Limit. The news is sent to the other four star systems. Since the realization involves the fact that the Phased Antimatter Bomb essentially produced a four-dimensional stairstep into a parallel 3-D space, the bomb is re-christened the "Hyper Bomb".
186 – News of Sirius's discovery reaches Sol and Alpha-Centauri. Sol had gotten pretty close to this answer themselves, but Sirius still beat them to the punch. Alpha Centauri has a large enough positron stockpile to attempt building a hyper hole tunnel between themselves and another star system. Since trade with Sol would be the most profitable to them, and since Sol also has the largest positron stockpile of all five systems, Alpha Centauri sends a message to Sol detailing how the two of them could build a hyperlink.
190 – Alpha Centauri's hyperlink idea reaches Sol. The Solar Federal government had a similar idea a couple of years ago, and they're ecstatic to try it. They send the go-ahead signal to Alpha Centauri. They even send precise aiming and timing information to Alpha Centauri as to when (5 years hence) and where (between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn) they're going to blow their hyper bomb. They figure that even if Alpha Centauri doesn't agree, or misses their target, or the theory doesn't work, they'll get to put the hyper bomb through a real domestic test.
194 – Sol's acceptance and plans reach Alpha Centauri. The A-III government finishes its own hyper bomb and starts lining it up to within a thousandth of an arc-second of the precise location Sol said they'd be detonating theirs.
195 – Both Sol's and Alpha Centauri's hyper bombs go off. The aiming and timing were superb on both ends. Despite the monumental odds against them, the hyper link was successfully created. (One photographer poised behind the Sol bomb was killed, though, since no one had anticipated the foreflash from the other guy's hyper bomb would come though the hole to their own side.) The English-language radio transmission of "Can you hear us?" was greeted with an English "yes!" from the other end not ten minutes later. Less than a week later, the first Alpha-Centaurian spacecraft crosses the hole to Sol space, and the next day, Sol's first craft voyages to Alpha Centauri in a like manner. Sol and Alpha Centauri immediately relay plans for similar hyper holes to Sirius and CN Leonis, respectively.
196 – Analysis of the blast and hyper holes indicates that there was more of a margin for error on angular alignment than had been anticipated (which was why the first dual detonation had been successful). Sol and Alpha-Centauri each place a communications relay station in matching orbit with its end of the Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper link.
197 – Border patrol functions are added to the communications relay stations, first by Sol and then by Alpha-Centauri within the same year.
198 – To ensure the border patrol stations stay put, Sol and Alpha-Centauri each move an asteroid a few miles in diameter into hyper hole orbit, and anchor their station to it.
201 – Sol's good news arrives at Sirius. They suspect a trick, but have been looking for an excuse to test their own hyper bomb. Like Sol before them, they transmit intended coordinates and timing back to the system that suggested it to them.
203 – News of the Sol/Alpha Centauri hyper hole arrives at CN Leonis. Although it would deplete them of almost every positron they've cultivated (they'd been stockpiling primarily antiprotons prior to the success of the Phased Antimater Bomb), CN Leonis agrees to detonate their own hyper bomb and transmits the intended time and position to Alpha Centauri.
208 – The Sol/Sirius hyper hole detonations work. Communications relays are set up on either side of the hole immediately. Sirius begins its second hyper bomb and asks its other neighbor, Human-Centauri if they'd like to link with them.
212 – The Alpha Centauri/CN Leonis hyper hole detonations are a success. Now Human-Centauri is the only one of the five major star systems to be lightspeed-isolated. CN Leonis tells of this success to Human-Centauri, and accelerates its positron collecting operations in an effort to build another hyper bomb as soon as possible. (Not just for linking with Human-Centauri, either; the Leonians, who are primarily Centaurian, are wary of their species' homeworld. A planet-killer bomb would make quite a deterrent.)
213 – Sirius's request to establish a hyper bomb link with Human-Centauri reaches Human-Centauri. Positron collecting has been slow at best, but they figure they'll have enough in three or four years to make an attempt. The details of where and when they intend to detonate are transmitted to Sirius; since four years is only enough time for a one-way message between these two worlds, Sirius will not have the option to ask them not to make the attempt if they so choose.
215 – A Leonian "Would you like to establish a hyper hole link with us?" request arrives at Human-Centauri. They agree, but tell them it'll take some time to accumulate the necessary positrons since they're already planning to link with Sirius.
217 – Human-Centauri's "We're going to detonate" message arrives at Sirius, who obliges them. The two systems successfully establish a hyperlink and use the new trade route to request some extra positrons for their proposed link with CN Leonis. Sirius refuses. Human-Centauri begins the ten-year process of positron accumulation to produce the necessary 25 kg of positronic antimatter for a hyper bomb.
218 – By using the four existing hyperlinks, the Leonians actually deliver 20 kg of their own positrons to Human-Centauri. They are really intent on having a direct Human-Centauri link. The Human-Centauri Defense Force gets a bit suspicious about this, but the go-ahead for the next link detonation is given to the Leonian courier, who takes it back to CN Leonis.
219 – Human-Centauri completes its second hyper bomb. The communications relays on all the existing hyper holes greatly facilitate the process of synchronizing their detonation with CN Leonis's. Creation of the fifth hyper hole link is a success.
220 – Human-Centauri II's formerly small "greeting area" expands into a tourist spot, as it is the only place in the Human-Centauri system that noncitizens can go. An embassy is established there.
223 – Sirius completes another hyper bomb. They do not use it to create a hyper link with Sol or CN Leonis, and have no intention of doing so. For the first time in the history of post-first-contact space, a star system holds the threat of planetary annihilation over its neighbors.
224 – Alpha-Centaurian intelligence discovers that CN Leonis has had their own spare hyper bomb for at least as long as Sirius has. An emergency summit of representatives from all five governments is held on Human-Centauri II. The first SALTY treaty is signed, banning positron stockpiling for any purpose other than creating hyper hole links. All star systems begin a build-up of conventional antiproton warheads and military spacecraft.
225 – Sirius and CN Leonis refuse to comply. Sol is discovered to have made two hyper bombs since it coestablished the Sol/Sirius link. SALTY II, requiring all hyper bombs to be phased out over six years, is proposed and signed by four of the five systems (CN Leonis refuses), and, since unanimous participation was needed, is rejected. SALTY III, a more palatable solution allowing each star system to stockpile at most one hyper bomb at a time, is signed unanimously. The border-patrol installations on both sides of each hyper hole link are beefed up into massive "gate guards" capable of holding their own against an entire carrier's complement of fighters.
226 – Sol refuses to dismantle or use its second hyper bomb, giving excuses like "Well, what if a new alien species showed up and decided to attack us?". SALTY III breaks down. Sol proposes SALTY IV, which, after cutting through pages of legalese, basically says that everybody else gets to keep one hyper bomb in reserve, but Sol gets to keep two. No other star system signs this treaty. Tensions mount. To avoid threats of blockade, Sol reluctantly signs SALTY V, forcing them to dismantle their second hyper bomb but (in a loophole their diplomats discovered) allowing them to stockpile as many raw positrons as they liked.
227 – Discovering the SALTY V loophole, the other star systems demand another summit with Sol. This one is held on Alpha Centauri A-III. After heated discussion and the threat of war, SALTY VI is ratified, which does not limit the size of a positron or hyper bomb arsenal but requires that each star system keep all of its positrons (and hyper bombs) in plain sight for the other systems to inventory.
228 – SALTY VI seems to be working. With the exception of Human-Centauri, which has only one hyper bomb in reserve, all 5 star systems have two hyper bombs and some extra positrons on the way to building a third bomb.
229 – Alpha Centauri discovers a third Solar hyper bomb that they've been keeping hidden. Military spacecraft move into blockading position. Yet another conference is held, this time on Human-Centauri II. Right there at the negotiating table, a messenger tells Sol's representative (James Carter) that a secret extra Alpha-Centaurian hyper bomb has just been discovered. Sirius, CN Leonis, and even Human-Centauri are revealed to have an extra hyper bomb (or in the Leonians' case, two) in reserve that they weren't telling the others about. Blockade decisions fly around the room. Tempers flare, tolerance limits break. Finally, Alpha Centauri's representative (Holsteader) declares war on CN Leonis. And James Carter declares war on Alpha Centauri. And Holsteader declares war on Sirius. And CN Leonis's representative (Krammer) declares war on Human-Centauri. And Sirius's representative (Harlbjorg) declares war on Sol. And on it goes, until every star system is formally at war with every other star system.
230 – A year into the war, Torra Zorra, Ken Tractor, and Jennifer Doe receive The Message. They request one of the old Star Ships to make the voyage to UV Ceti IV's remains. Yukariah Heap agrees. The Message indicates that they had better get there inside of 10 years; unfortunately, UV Ceti is over 13 years away from Human-Centauri. Only the Sol system is close enough to UV Ceti to cut a non-hyper-hole interstellar voyage down to less than 10 years of travel time. Taking an old ion-transfer warship built prior to the Human-Centauri hyper holes yet small enough to fit through a 200-meter-wide opening in space, they run a deadly gauntlet across Sirian space and past three hostile gate guards into Sol space, and take off for UV Ceti. Thankfully, Sol does not pursue, since the three are not maneuvering toward any potential targets and the Solar military has its hands full with Sirius at that moment anyway.
236 – Sirius drops antimatter bombs on several major Human-Centaurian metropolitan areas, including New France and New Mars.
237 – The war is going badly for Human-Centauri. Although CN Leonis has been leaving them alone, Sirius has been dealing them heavy blows. They need help. They give CN Leonis permission to transit their space to put pressure on Sirius, since CN Leonis is at war with Sirius too. The Leonians say they'll need to operate from one of the Human-Centauri planetary plates if Human-Centauri is going to get their help. In one of its most self-destructive long-term moves ever, Human-Centauri grudgingly allows the Leonian military — including its Fanatic Brigade — to inhabit Human-Centauri citizen territory. The emotional plague poisoning begins.
238 – Throwing off the gloves, CN Leonis authorizes its Fanatic Brigade to use a Leonian hyper bomb on Alpha Centauri A III. They succeed, and Alpha Centauri A III is shattered. The homeworld of all Centaurians is no more. So much for the history, art, archaeology, biology, paleontology, geology, etc., etc., of the planet. Thoroughly appalled, Human-Centauri revokes its permission for CN Leonis personnel to inhabit citizen areas and begins to round them up and herd them out, but the social damage has already been done.
240 – The Chosen Three arrive at UV Ceti. No news has been beamed to them, since the signals would've had to have originated from Sol. The Messages are found to be from the "ghost" of Arnold Hasselberg, who points out the Zero Drive that the Mad Scientist had developed before he shattered the fourth planet. Ken recovers it, Jennifer tries to kill him, Torra Zorra (in attempting to subdue her) accidentally kills her. They install and test the Zero Drive, then use it to enter a Limbo (neither wholly in Real nor in Parallel space) while moving through the hyper hole. (This is done by calculating the movement of the hype hole through absolute space as it orbits UV Ceti, and letting it envelop them while their zero-drive makes them stand rock-still.) On the trip back, they learn the news of the Sirian bombings of Human-Centauri's planetary plates, Human-Centauri's allowance of the CN Leonis military into its citizen areas, and A-III's annihilation. They emerge from the Human-Centauri end of the Human-Centauri/Sirius hole and, using the decisive maneuverability the Zero Drive gives them, vanquish a Sirian assault force just moments before they would've hyper-bombed Human-Centauri I. They tell Human-Centauri about the impending End of the Galaxy, who tells of this catastrophe to the other four star systems, who stop mucking about with fighting each other because, darn it, the galaxy could end at any moment. Ken Tractor and Torra Zorra then take the Sirian hyper bomb originally intended to blow up their homeworld, go back into Limbo through the CN Leonis hyper hole, race to the center of the galaxy, and (using the hyper bomb) squelch the impending explosion of Sagittarius X in the nick of time. And everybody lives happily ever after. (Until I write the sequel, that is.)
Alpha Centauri A III:
The Centaurian homeworld, abbreviated A-three in human speech, orbits Alpha Centauri A at a distance of 200 million kilometers, making its "year" last 1½ Earth years. It has only one moon, which is about the size of Phobos, and a sidereal rotation period of 17 hours, 43 minutes (thus one A-III year is around 740 A-III days long). Its axis of rotation is tilted 20° with respect to its orbit, whose eccentricity is nearly zero. Its size and density are about the same as Venus, making its surface gravity about 80% that of Earth. The lower concentrations of heavy metals in the planet means naturally occurring radioactives are rarer, which was one of the reasons the Centaurians didn't develop nuclear fission weapons before they met us.
Its atmosphere, like Earth's, consists almost entirely of biologically-created oxygen and nitrogen gas, the nitrogen comprising about three-quarters (rather than four-fifths) of the atmospheric partial pressure. Mean sea level atmospheric pressure is about 0.85 Earth atmospheres. Geological activity on this planet is far more subdued than it is on Earth, resulting in shallow oceans and great, flat expanses of land. (The lower heavy-element abundance of the planet in relation to the Earth means that these oceans aren't quite as salty as ours.) Rocky areas on the land masses can be as flat, hard, and vast as the salt flats found in the North American deserts. It was for swift crossing of these giant natural parking lots that Centaurian foot-wheels evolved.
Its oceans cover the majority of its surface, but are shallower that Earth's and not as saline. (The lower salinity is due to the lower abundances of chlorine and sodium thoughout the planet.) The weather tends to be drier than on Earth, meaning fewer freshwater lakes and rivers and not as much groundwater.
It should be noted that A-III is the most distant whole planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri A. Farther out is just an asteroid belt, and there are no planets or debris of any kind orbiting A any farther out than that. This is due to the fact that anything orbiting A or B at a distance of more than 2.9 AUs would be thrown out of the star system due to the perturbations of the other star. There is, however, another asteroid belt and a few gas giants orbiting the A-B pair out at distances of a hundred AUs or more, the way Proxima does.
The closest English-pronounceable approximation to the name the Centaurians give their homeworld is "Go'orla." (The o'o sound is actually two o's pronounced in rapid succession with each of two adjacent mouths.)
Ecosystem: A-III has an ecosystem nearly as rich and varied as that on Earth. Cellular salinity levels for A-III lifeforms are lower than in cells from Earth, since they evolved in less-salty seas. No A-III cells are Eukaryotic in the sense of having a self-contained nucleus; however, the double-chromosomes necessary for gamete production are present in all multicellular life forms. As far as organelles go, there are plastids but no mitochondria (the bacteria that evolved double chromosomes were themselves capable of aerobic respiration, so no "guest" respirators were needed). Endoplasmic reticula are also present in double-chromosomed cells.
There are some flying insect-like invertebrates but no flying chordates (like birds or bats or pteradactyls). Historically, there was no age of giant land creatures, so Earth's ancient dinosaurs are of particular fascination to Centaurian paleontologists.
Alpha Centauri B II:
The only other world besides Earth and A-III to harbor multicellular life, B-II orbits Alpha Centauri B at a distance of 150 million kilometers, making its "year" last 1.1 Earth years. It has no moons, and a sidereal rotation period of only 8 hours. Its atmosphere is thick with CO2, allowing it to trap more heat from Alpha Centauri B, and distribute it more evenly over the planet's surface, than either Earth or A-III. This is how life managed to get enough heat to arise despite the planet's extreme distance from its sun. The high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere makes it unfit for human or Centaurian consumption directly, but its biologically-created ozone layer combined with cheap and plentiful CO2 filtration technology allow one to walk (or wheel) around outside comfortably wearing little more than a mouthpiece. The sky above is awfully dreary, though, what with the continual, hazy, Venus-like cloudcover.
The planet's size is akin to that of Mars, but its density is closer to Venus's or Earth's, giving it a surface gravity of about 50% that of Earth. Only its greater-than-the-normal-comfort-zone distance from Alpha Centauri B allows the planet to retain such a thick atmosphere despite its low surface gravity.
Ecosystem: Life on this planet has progressed to about the stage of life in the Paleozoic era on Earth, since multicellular organisms only got around to making their appearance a couple hundred million years ago. The more successful species do sexually reproduce.
CN Leonis II:
A lifeless world before the Centaurians arrived, CN Leonis II orbits its star at a distance of 590 thousand kilometers, giving it an orbital period (a "year") that lasts only 7 hours. It is locked in synchronous rotation with the star it orbits; the only thing keeping its day side from frying and its night side from freezing is the steady, howling wind. The atmosphere resembles that of Jupiter, but with a higher CO2 and a lower water concentration.
Since CN Leonis is a mild flare star, the surface of CN Leonis II can never be terraformed. However, surface-based energy collectors and subterranean tunnelling have allowed for a thriving underground community, populated by Centaurians and some humans.
Sirius A IV:
The only known planet other than Earth, Alpha Centauri A III, and Alpha Centauri B II to harbor life, Sirius A IV orbits its host star at a distance of 380 million kilometers, giving it an orbital period of about 2.8 Earth years. It rotates once every 13 hours, and has two decently-sized natural satellites. Since the star system it's in has only existed for some 300 million years, and since it is so close to its host star, the planet's interior is still quite warm, and its surface is highly tectonically active. The lower latitudes are too hot to prance around in without reflective shade or air conditioning, but the middle latitudes are habitable and the upper latitudes are actually a bit on the cool side. (The planet's 27-degree tilt helps in this regard.)
The human population has nicknamed this planet "America".
Ecosystem: Life does exist in the middle-to-upper latitudes of Sirius A IV. However, no aerobic life forms have had a chance to evolve. Judging by Earth's evolutionary timetables, cyanobacteria are still several hundred million years off — and Sirius A isn't going to stay on the main sequence that long. More likely, the transplanted humans and Centaurians now inhabiting Sirius A IV, and the plants, animals, and microorganisms they have brought, will displace most indigenous life forms.
The Human-Centauri Planetary Plates:
To avoid the problems the CN Leonis II inhabitants are constantly having with the stellar wind, the Human-Centaurians wanted to have their worlds orbit their host star farther away than the conventional comfort zone (at 0.0060 AU instead of 0.0045 AU, giving them an orbital period of 15 hours 24 minutes and an orbital circumference of 5 640 000 kilometers). This meant that to gather enough energy for comfortable living, though, the planets would have to be in synchronous rotation with the star so that one side would heat up to be at or near the substellar temperature. Unfortunately, doing so with a round planet would mean that only one spot on the planet would be facing directly toward the star, so the Human-Centaurians came up with a simple solution: make the planets flat.
All five solid worlds in the Human-Centauri system are artificially constructed out of smaller asteroids (there were no solid objects in the system bigger than Vesta when the first colonists arrived). They are all of rectangular outline. The first three measure xxx kilometers long by yyy kilometers high by zzz kilometers thick; the fourth and fifth measure www kilometers long and are of the same height and thickness as I-III. The surface gravity of all these worlds varies in both strength and direction the farther one travels from its central starward point, at which it is 0.nn times Earth gravity for Human-Centauri I-III and 0.mm G's for Human-Centauri IV & V. Each of these planets has a strong artificial magnetic field generated by means of supercondicting magnets to keep out cosmic rays and the occasional stellar flare. They have atmospheres, and dirt, and sand, and oceans, and most of the other things you'd expect on a solid inhabitable world; they're just nonspherical.
Ecosystem: The entire ecosystem on all 5 planetary plates has been artificially introduced. It consists primarily of humans, Centaurians, their pets, oxygen-producing plants, and food plants and animals for both species. The planets do hold oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres and have the commensurate ozone layers.
UV Ceti IV
A granite ball about the size of Mars and cloaked in a thin atmosphere of methane, UV Ceti IV has one small (but not tiny) airless moon. It orbits its parent star at a distance of 2 million kilometers, twice as far away as what would be the Comfort Zone distance if UV Ceti weren't a flare star. This gives it an orbital period of 3.0 days.
Centaurians are sexually reproducing, multicellular oxygen breathers with RNA/DNA. That's about their only similarity to humans.
Seen from the outside, Centaurians look like small versions of the Xorns in AD&D, with four stubby little legs, four long triple-jointed arms each ending in four finger-like tentacles, four mouths with cartilage-ridge teeth situated between and below each pair of arm-pits, and a three-pointed eye-and-ear stalk at the very top of their artoo-detoo-shaped torso.
A three-pronged retractable eye turret sticks up 6-10 centimeters from the top of a Centaurian's torso. The three eyes on the turret stick out 3-6 centimeters and are 120 degrees apart (facing sideways from a vertical base) with a 118-degree field of view (each); they look like miniature elephant trunks. Rotational muscles (see below) at the base of the whole turret move all three eyes sideways. Annular muscles on the front keep the lenses clean and control the aperature size. Focus is achieved by moving the (immaleable) lenses closer to or farther from the photosensitive surfaces at the center of the turret, like a camera. Each eye also has vertical "wiggle" muscles that can move the eye up or silghtly down. Vision can resolve details down to two arc-minutes, can see wavelengths anywhere from 10 000 Ångstroms to 2 000 Ångstroms (peaking at around 5 500 Å as human sight does), and can see colors in light levels low enough for a human to only be able to distinguish grayscales; however, even in bright light, Centaurians don't have nearly as great an ability to distingush colors as humans do. Visual deficiencies are rare but do exist; traditionally, these were corrected with glasses that looked and fit like the one-eye eyeglass Gypsy sometimes wears on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but at the time of the story can also be fixed by contact lenses, laser lens sculpting surgery, or sometimes vision therapy.
The center of the eye turret contains the Centaurian's one and only ear, sticking straight up and ending in a closable duct; Centaurians have no sense of smell. Their sense of hearing has a broader frequency range than a human's does; however, its sensitivity to quiet sounds is not quite as acute.
Body parts requiring rigidity (such as the arms, legs, braincase, and eye turret) have an endoskeleton of a tough cartilage-like substance like a shark does, which ranges in rigidity from the soft, pliable inner pelvic plate to the bone-hard foot wheels. This cartilagenous substance can heal or "knit" much faster than human bone can, and does not require setting if broken. Running through the near-centers of their bodies are four backbone-like jointed columns composed of alternating rigid rods and thick-walled pliable sacs made of the same cartilagenous substance, called simply the support columns. The sacs in the columns can be inflated with air to increase the Centaurian's vertical reach, or deflated to allow the Centaurian to fit through smaller openings without crawling; the sacs in one column can be inflated while deflating the column on the other side, allowing the Centaurian to bend its torso. They have no hair, feathers, leaves, moss, or the like, but are instead encased in a soft but leathery skin in varying mottled shades of light brown. They are mildly endothermic (what one might call "luke-warm blooded"), and so were traditionally restricted to operating during the warmer A-III daylight hours. This lack of true endothermy also means they don't have to eat as much as humans do; one meal every A-III day or two is sufficient.
Mounted in the bottoms of each of their four feet are a single, hard-shelled, five-centimeter-diameter retractable wheel. These wheels evolved in response to the wide, flat plains that cover so much of A-III's land mass, and are present in other Alpha-Centaurian species. They are spun by means of two central Rotational Muscles (one for clockwise and one for counterclockwise), similar to the rotational muscle group beneath the eye turret but more powerful. These kinds of muscles are unique to Alpha-Centaurian physiology as they can spin for several thousand or million revolutions in the same direction without getting wound up like a rubber band or anything.
Their reproductive system is a bit odd by human standards in that there is only one Centaurian sex (much like with terrestrial slugs). Any two Centaurians may mate, and either or both of them may produce offspring. Centaurians ovulate once every 35 A-III days (26 Earth days), and remain fertile for three A-III days following. During this time of fertility, they indicate their sexual readiness to each other with honk-like mating calls. Humans call this their mating "season", being "in heat", "that time of the month", or a number of other terracentric labels.
All Centaurians have a vagina, and a retractible cartilage-reinforced (i.e. constantly erect) penis right next to it on a line oriented 23° from one leg. Their cloaca sphincter is to one side of this line. Both the penile tip and a point one centimeter inside the vagina (on the penile side) must be stimulated simultaneously for orgasm to occur. This sexual anatomy requires that two Centaurians mate bottom-to-bottom; their climaxes are usually simultaneous and involve contracting straight down the lengths of their bodies until they are only about 2/3 of their normal height. The Centaurian "uterus" fills most of the way with oxygenated saltwater and the rest of the way with a slightly heavier (and insoluble) nutrient-rich fluid during the fertility period; the ocean-water and nutrient fluid are internally recycled if pregnancy doesn't occur but are constantly resupplied by the parent's "bubbler" and "albumen" glands if it does. Almost all litters are of one child; twins are exceedingly rare and triplets are unheard of. The total gestation period is a little over one-quarter of an A-III year (5 Earth months), and pregnancy shows as a bulging below the central hard-cartilage ring after the 2nd or 3rd Earth month. Young are born alive and breathing as from a terrestrial mammalian uterus and placenta, although there is no umbilical cord (the Centaurian "uterus" is effectively an egg). Newborn Centaurians look like miniature versions of adult Centaurians except that their eye turret is disproportionately wide (almost the width of the torso, i.e. as wide as it will be when the Centaurian is an adult).
The parent doesn't produce anything like "milk" and has to feed his baby mashed grains and water. (Alpha-Centaurian grains are absolutely nutrient-free to a human, being based on levuloglucose instead of the dextroglucose humans normally metabolize; terrestrial grains are downright poisonous to a Centaurian.) The modern Centaurian parent can buy packaged pre-mashed grains the way humans can buy baby food and formula, but some Centaurian parents insist that it's more rewarding to mash the grains themselves. Centaurians can extract the water they need by drinking water as salty as their home planet's oceans; however, these oceans aren't as salty as Earth's, which would present a problem to them if they drank from them. ("Fresh" water is considered bland by Centaurian standards, and most will add a pinch of salt to such water before drinking it.)
Genetically, the only similarity between Centaurian chromosomes and human ones is that they are both made of DNA. The Centaurian genetic code — which nucleotide sequences code for which amino acids — is completely different from terrestrial eukaryotic DNA and RNA, although the same 20 amino acids are coded for. Centaurian chromosomes are much smaller than human chromosomes, with each Centaurian cell containing about 5000 chromosome pairs. This is due to the inability of Centaurian chromosomes to exchange genes during meiosis. Normally, the chromosomes huddle together near the center of the cell, but there is no nuclear membrane confining them. Their cells also contain organelles and thus probably evolved via the same kinds of symbiotic relationships that created terrestrial eukaryotes; however, don't confuse the organelles that fulfill the same function as terrestrial plastids with actual plastids. In fact, no analogue to terrestrial mitochondria exists in Alpha-Centaurian cells; cristae-like respiratory structures were apparently present in the earliest double-chromosomed cells and no respirational symbiosis was necessary.
Alpha-Centaurian nerve cells use electrical impulses to convey data, just like terrestrial nerve cells do; however, unlike terrestrial neurons, which send messages from one cell to the next by means of chemical signals, Alpha-Centaurian nerve cells send messages between linked nerves solely by means of electrical conduction. There are no Centaurian chemical synapses. You could replace an entire Alpha-Centaurian nerve path (except for the nerve endings which signal muscles and provide feedback) with a wire. The longest nerves in Centaurian bodies run up-and-down along the four support columns, kind of like a spinal cord, and can easily collapse and extend. About half way between the tops of the legs and the bottom of the mouths, hugging the geometric center of the body, is a gigantic bundle of nerves that functions as the Centaurian's brain. This is the only part of the torso intenally plated in a wide, continuous, hard cartilage ring; the rest of the torso is protected by much narrower cartilage ribs, none of which are anchored to other cartilage pieces (they float free so that the torso may expand and contract vertically).
The main "pulsation" movement of a Centaurian body is vertical expansion when inhaling and vertical contraction when exhaling (as opposed to the horizontal expansion and contraction in human breathing). They express yearning by stretching their arms upwards, not forwards. The three eyes on the eye stalk have swing-up and swing-down muscles as well as stick-out and shrink-in muscles. A Centaurian intent on leering at something will bend the top of his torso in the direction he wishes to look and arch all three of his eyes toward it; this results in a triple image, however the visual centers of a Centaurian brain cannot "fuse" the images into a 3-D picture the way a human's can.
For the most part, the internal organ arrangement is as symmetrical as the outside of a Centaurian's body. They have four lungs and four cowlike stomachs, arranged in a circle between the four support columns. These lungs are capable of extracting a little oxygen from water as salty as A-III's oceans, but not enough for any kind of sustained physical activity unless the Centaurian is very young. Thus, you can't drown an adult Centaurian by holding him under water, but you may be able to knock him out that way.
Centaurian skin is quite delicate at birth. It takes several years to develop the firm, tough, leathery hyde of an adult Centaurian. (It also takes at least one A-III year for the foot wheels to be usable.) The skin is toughest on the soles of their feet and the bottoms of their hands (which hardens during pregnancy so they can use it for grain-mashing when parents). It has sebaceous glands but not sweat glands (Centaurians' incomplete endothermy means they don't have as much excess heat to radiate away; plus, not sweating conserves water). As they age, their skin gradually becomes harder, until after the age of 40 or so Earth years, it is rigid enough to impair their bodies' natural bending. A healthy Centaurian can be expected to live to the age of fifty Earth years or more, and will be fertile in both directions from the onset of "puberty" at the age of 5 A-III years (7½ Earth years) until death.
The vocal mechanism of a Centaurian can produce a much wider range of frequencies than a human's can. Furthermore, the common Centaurian language takes advantage of using more than one mouth to produce some of its syllables. Certain sounds in the language even require chord combinations of up to four separate pitches. The most dedicated human attempts to reproduce Centaurian speech with the human vocal mechanism sound like a bad speech impediment at best, and are incomprehensible at worst.
When they do sleep, Centaurians prefer to sleep standing up, as it allows them to breathe without grating against the floor. While sleeping, their eyes droop down at an angle from their turret's center, and all three eyes plus the ear orifice are closed. However, most Centaurians require only 3 hours sleep every Centaurian day (17¾ hours), and can go 2 or 3 days without sleep with no problems.
Although Centaurians do group-bond and parent-child-bond, they do not pair-bond with their mates, so the "father" of a given baby is not socially important. Therefore, one's paternal ancestry isn't socially important either, but one's maternal ancestry is. Centaurians tend to group together in extended families which, for want of a better term, are called "clans" by humans. Siblings and "mother" parents may be part of this clan, but so may friends born into other clans. One clan may contain up to 50 Centaurians of all ages; however, 50 Centaurians is kind of pushing it, and when a clan gets that big it will often splinter off into smaller clans. Adult clan members will usually assist in caring and providing for all of that clan's children, although "mothers" will of course give their own offspring special attention.
Centaurians on their own often have a strong urge to find a clan. In fact, a Centaurian group-bond is almost as strong as a human pair-bond. There are even rituals, much like most human cultures' marriage ceremonies, by which a Centaurian formally becomes a new member of a clan. And in similar fashion, dissociation from ones former clan can be as painful as going through a human divorce, with property disputes and even occasional arguments over child custody if the child is no longer an infant. (However, it should be noted that the dominant Centaurian cultures do in fact treat adolescents as full adults, much like the ancient Israelites do on Earth; child custody is generally not an issue with Centaurians who are at least 5 A-III years old.) If a Centaurian's clan has a specific name, (s)he will often attach it to his/her own.
A Centaurian in heat doesn't exhibit any odd behavior except for the mating call, unless he hears another mating call, in which case he will likely pursue the other call; he can even become aroused by hearing mating calls while not in heat, though this is less common and milder. However, a Centaurian will in general not be aroused by a mating call that sounds like his own; this tendency away from identical mating calls helps the species prevent inbreeding. A Centaurian will completely ignore his own mating call and any other mating calls that sound the same as his; these won't even be a distraction. (Thus, actively trying to block out the sounds of someone's mating call is viewed as a sign of sexual rejection.) "Foreign" mating calls are one of the few motivations for Centaurians to venture into the space of other clans, and possibly even join that clan if he hangs around long enough after mating and perhaps engages in some food-sharing. The social repression of the Centaurian mating call has taken the blame for much of the Centaurian version of emotional plague.
Unlike humans, Centaurians evolved as herbivorous gatherers and do not hunt. Centaurians feel the same way about eating animal meat of any kind the way humans do about scavenging off of roadkill, in other words, "Eewww!". Like humans, though, Centaurians evolved as nomads, and as such have a natural curiosity and a desire to explore. This is how they found us to begin with.
The user-interfaces of their technology are, obviously, designed for users with 360-degree nonstereoscopic vision, monaural hearing, 4 arms with 4 finger-like tentacles on each "hand", and 4 legs ending in feet with wheels in them. Any apparatus with "dumb pedals" that don't take wheel input was designed for handicapped Centaurians. (In fact, inoperability of one or more wheels is probably the most common of the Centaurian birth defects considered crippling; it's usually remedied with something resembling a roller skate.) Conversely, human tri-vid displays and stereophonic sound systems are useless to them. Having 4 digits on each hand, their numeric system is in hexadecimal, which made the transition to digital technology somewhat easier for them to handle.
Since Centaurians are only one gender, our concepts of male and female are alien to them (although there are a few gender-specialized species on their own planet they can use as study models). Next to learning to use Base Ten, the proper use of "he" and "she" and "him" and "her" is probably the hardest challenge facing a Centaurian when he [sic] tries to learn English.
The main Centaurian language is verbal; however, it utilizes many of the sounds which a Centaurian voice can produce but which a human voice cannot. Thus, although a human may learn to comprehend Centaurian (with difficulty), he or she cannot learn to speak it. The written language is phonetic, where each symbol stands for an atomic or nearly-atomic sound in the spoken Centaurian language. Written Centaurian is much easier for a human to get a handle on than the spoken language is.
Centaurians don't feel the strong urge that humans do to hold annual festivals or holidays. They are simply not as superstitious as we are. In the words of one Centaurian psychologist, "If humans had evolved on Go'orla rather than Earth, they would hold a big festival every 53 [A-III] years to celebrate [Alpha Centauri] B's peak brightness and closest approach, and dance for their gods in the intervening years to pray for the fading light's return. They would attach spiritual, even omen-like, significance to the brightness-phases of our tiny moon, and fear for the end of the world when the moon partly eclipses B. But their celestial superstitions mean that they would also have been able to predict the precise motions of these bodies millenia before we could."
Centaurians feel perfectly comfortable wheeling around in public with no clothes on. (It should be noted that some tribes of humans are at home with their own public nudity, too, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.) The placement of the Centaurian genitalia means they aren't normally visible while standing up, so even those Centaurians with a "Victorian" sense of shame can hide their anatomy without cloth. Protective clothing is usually designed to protect from the wind rather than the cold; the species' rather weak endothermy means that wearing clothes to "hold in ones own body heat" is somewhat ridiculous. When clothing is worn, its colors are either terribly drab or the most striking, gaudy clashes of solid toddler-toys-bright pastels imaginable to the human mind — and in either case slight blemishes or stains will go completely unnoticed. (This is all because of Centaurians' reduced color sensitivity.) Shoes are sometimes put on infants' tender feet, and are often worn by adults whose feet are more sensitive; but they always have a hole in the bottom for the wheel. Body wraps that fit snugly below the mouths are another staple of those Centaurians who wear clothes. Rarely will a Centaurian submit to clothing that hangs down from the shoulders over any of the mouths, and all clothing for the top of the body must have a hole big enough for the eyes-and-ear stalk to fit through.
Since Centaurians can rest standing up, they don't use chairs. This makes titles such as "chairperson" sound a little odd.
Sol:
The Solar Federal government, headquartered in New York City, is similar to the representative-democracy of the Constitutional United States, considering it grew out of the U.S.. Its Territories do not have representatives in the House or the Senate; its States do. Early in its off-Earth-colonization period, even moderately populated territories were granted Statehood almost as soon as they requested it. After the break-off of Sirius, the Solar Federal government throttled way back on State admissions; there hasn't been a new State admitted since Ganymede.
States: North America, South America, Eurasia, Asia Minor, China, India, North Africa, South Africa, Australia, Antarctica, The Moon, Mars, North Mars, Ganymede. Territories: all other Solar system bodies that aren't States, Lalande 21185, UV Ceti (and Luyten 726-8 A). Mercury is a major antimatter production facility.
The intelligence and security functions of the 20th-century FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service are rolled together into the Solar Bureau of Investigation, or SBI. Like the NSA, it's a scary organization. Like the FBI, it's also rather clumsy.
The Sol end of the Sol-Alpha Centauri hyper hole orbits the sun with an aphelion distance between the orbital distances of Jupiter and Saturn. Being the first hyper hole, the fact that it would orbit the sun like any other planet wasn't known for certain and definitely wasn't worried about much; accordingly, its orbit is highly eccentric as planets go, with a perihelion distance only slightly farther out than Mars. Several kilograms of asteroid-belt dust have already fallen through it; but, fortunately, its orbital plane is tilted from the ecliptic enough that it will never physically intersect Jupiter or its moons. (At least, not within the next few millenia.) The Sol end of the Sol-Sirius hyper hole, on the other hand, has a nearly circular orbit not too much farther out than that of Jupiter. This gives the Jovian system a high degree of economic and military significance, since every few years one of the two holes comes close enough to Jupiter to make the gas-giant a convenient first stop for travellers or attackers. Thus, by the time the War breaks out, most of the military might of the Solar Federal government has been concentrated in the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft hangar known as Station Jove.
Alpha Centauri:
Alpha Centauri A III is still the central power hub of the Alpha-Centaurian government. The lesser colonies on the planets in the three-star Alpha Centauri system that used to be lifeless — and even the large, self-sustaining colonies on Alpha Centauri B II — are all subsidiary to Alpha Centauri A III. In that sense, A-III holds much the same role that Rome did to its subject nations, as the center of an empire.
At any one time there will be one clan leading A-III. The various duties involved in running the nation — military, diplomatic, economic, etc. — are divided up among clan members; there is no one individual within the ruling clan that has "absolute authority".
CN Leonis:
CN Leonis is a monarchy. The second planet from the primary, since it was the most hospitable, has the highest population and is the system capital. The next leader is almost always the favorite gestated offspring of the current leader (except when the ruling family is assassinated), and is always Centaurian in any event. Other members of the leading individual's clan share no more power than, say, the First Lady does in the 20th century United States. Warlike tendencies abound; one would call the government "patrist" save for the fact that there is no biological distinction between a Centaurian father and mother. The humans which are not officially slaves of the Alpha-Centaurian majority are treated little better than slaves. The inability for humans to speak the Centaurian language (although some have learned to understand it without their masters' knowledge) is just one of the many differences held by the local Centaurians as a sign of species superiority.
The scariest Leonians, though, are those subservient humans who have sworn their loyalty to the CN Leonis nation above their own lives. These hyperpatriotic fascists form the backbone of the Fanatic Brigade, that sect of the Leonian military willing to go on self-orchestrated suicide missions or other military tasks with low odds of success. Many of them were tortured and isolated early in life by local Centaurians to ensure this kind of behavior.
Sirius:
Authoritarian empire, with the capital on Sirius A IV. There is a figurehead electorate, but, like the U.S. Federal government of the 18th-20th centuries (and the modern Solar Federal government, for that matter), voters cannot vote on issues, only candidates. The real ruling faction makes it to power the same way the ancient Roman emperors did, i.e. by defeating the previous faction. The electorate gives the emperor a good look at public opinion, but the word of the imperium is always final.
Human-Centauri:
A participatory democracy. Those that wish to participate, participate; those that don't, don't. (Politics just plain does not interest some people.) Major nonemergency issues with far-reaching fiscal or policy implications must be decided by anonymous popular vote. The leader — officially refered to as the "Chairholder" even if of Centaurian physiology — as well as other political officers are elected on a more or less regular basis. It should be noted that any persons running for an elected office are scrutinized thoroughly for any signs of neurotic behavior that could interfere with their work if elected (this scrutiny is much more severe than the usual Emotional Plague weeding-out that the rest of the populace is subjected to).
The lack of Emotional Plague behavior among the general population means that the Human-Centaurian Defense Force is going to have hardly any of the usual mindless, fascist soldiers in it. This presents a lot of manpower problems from the standpoint of system defense. HCDF members are very serious about their work, but are usually sickened by the prospect of making a career out of fighting. Sometimes the knowledge of the terrible power of the Emotional Plague so prevalent in the militaries of the other star systems is the only thing keeping the HCDFers vigilant. History is a deadly-important subject in the Defense Force academy, since most recruits have grown up entirely within Human-Centauri culture and have never had direct Plague contact. Note that prior to the war, participation in the HCDF was entirely voluntary, and volunteers could quit at any time. With the war, tours of duty and even small-scale non-combat drafting were instigated.
Although natural features (such as mountains and lakes) exist on the planetary plates and have proper names, land areas are not divided into arbitrary "countries" or "provinces" or "congressional districts"; instead, each of the five plates is marked off in square grids, with each square being the same size (roughly 20 kilometers on a side). The only regions with proper names are metropolitan areas, which may or may not be divided into neighboring "cities" at the behest of the local government. (The postal and transportation industries use the grid numberings to determine where something or someone has to be sent, since those predate the metropolitan areas anyway.)
A "hyper bomb" is a phased antimatter bomb, as developed by the Mad Scientist around 150 AC. It requires 25 kilograms of positrons and 25 kilograms of electrons to be brought together on a wide, flat plane of annihilatory contact. If aligned just right, and fed into one another at the proper rate, the first layer of positrons and electrons will emit all of their annihilation gamma rays in phase with one another, and thus stimulate the next layer of e+ and e- to annihilate and emit their gamma rays in phase with the first layer. The result is a unidirectional, phased, coherent wavefront, much like what one would expect from a gamma ray laser. This phasing of the bomb's output packs so much energy into the beam that it actually exceeds the Energy Density Limit for the universe, sending half the energy into a super-powerful teraton-of-TNT-equivalent beam of destruction called the "foreflash", in Real Space, and the other half of the energy through a hyper-spatial hole into Parallel Space.
This hyper-spatial hole, or "hyper hole" for short, stays around after the blast subsides. In fact, it behaves like an ordinary gravitational object, obediently orbiting any nearby star or planet. Gravity is the only known force that will affect a hyper hole, however. You cannot grab onto it and "pull" with a physical object or a static-electric or magnetic field, nor can you "push" it with a blast of vapor. Furthermore, all attempts to detect its actual gravitational mass (by putting known masses really close to it and seeing how those masses move) have come up with zero or as close to zero as can be tested. And, finally, since the wavefront from a phased antimatter bomb is unidirectional, the hole is, too — it is two-dimensional and one-sided, and acts like an infinitely hard, infinitely inertial mirror to any matter or energy coming into contact with it from the rear. And it has a definite circular outer boundary some 200 meters in diameter.
Anything entering a hyper hole (from the front) will move through an infinitely-thin fourth-dimensional layer of hyperspace into Parallel Space, a three-dimensional universe fourth-dimensionally adjacent to our own. Little is known of the nature of this Parallel Space, except that everything that has gone into it has disappeared for good, and that nothing ever comes out (not even light). Theoretically, matter, energy, and even time as we know them should have no meaning whatsoever in Parallel Space.
When two hyper bombs are detonated facing into one another and within a few seconds of each other, the two hyper holes that are created become "linked". They will forever after face each other, no matter how far or in what direction either of them moves in Real Space. (A side effect of this process is that the Parallel-Space portion of each bomb's foreflash will race out of the other bomb's newly-created hyper hole as a "backflash", with all the punch of the bomb's Real Space foreflash.) This link means that anything entering one hyper hole will go into Parallel Space, travel in a straight line however it is that things travel in Parallel Space, and emerge out of the other, linked hyper hole the very next instant. The actual transit time is undetectably small and is probably mathematically zero.
The diameter of a hyper hole varies with all the little, subtle, uncontrollable nuances of the hyper bomb that created it, anywhere from 200 to 210 meters. It is also not perfectly circular, although it's quite close. However, the outer circular boundary is infinitely sharp and will shear off any part of a transitioning object sticking out past it — this is called, originally enough, "boundary shear". Spacecraft wishing to transition through a hyper hole therefore must be built so that their maximum cross-section never exceeds 200 meters, and have to aim for the hole's dead center and fold down any communications antennas before proceeding — slowly — to the other side. Entering the hole on a perpendicular course is not necessary, though, since any particle of the ship entering from one side will instantly appear at the other side at the same distance from the remote hyper hole's center and moving with the same velocity as when it entered. From the standpoint of the transitioning observer, looking through the hyper hole is like looking at the destination star system, since light travels through it just as infinitely-fast as matter does.
Besides the potential benefit for shortening interstellar travel distances by a factor of several million, the extremely costly hyper bomb is also useful as a doomsday weapon of last resort. The intensely powerful foreflash travels over ten thousand kilometers before the phased nature of its gamma ray photons dissipates. If detonated right next to a planet, and pointed straight into the planet's core, the foreflash will drill a path of destruction straight through the center of the planet, turning all the rock and metal it passes through into supernova-hot plasma. This in turn will vaporize a shaft of material several kilometers in diameter surrounding the foreflash shaft itself. And when that much solid and liquid material suddenly turns into a gas, the resulting pressure is more than enough to break the whole planet apart. In less than an hour, there will be a red-hot expanding cloud of small asteroids where the planet used to be, or at the very least the planet will be turned inside-out in a jumbled heap.
Near the end of the story, our heroes discover that by creating a Zero Velocity effect around themselves and their craft (by using the late Mad Scientist's Zero Drive) before they enter a hyper hole, they can enter a state of "Limbo" neither totally in Real Space nor totally in Parallel Space. They exist in Real Space as tachyons, and in Parallel Space as whatever unknown stuff Parallel Space things are made of. They can see the light given off by stars and radio beacons, and even be affected by gravity (which seems to operate at infinite velocity, at least in Limbo). Since they are tachyonic, and therefore on the other side of the energy curve, they have to maneuver "backwards"; i.e. firing a thruster (or throwing any material from inside the Zero Velocity effect to the outside, for that matter) will accelerate the craft toward its own exhaust rather than away from it.
Positron factories:
These huge facilities orbit very close to a star in order to harness the rare gamma rays that come out of them. Their collectors intercept most of the 1000+ kEV gamma ray photons that come into contact with them, pass them by atomic nuclei (thus pair-producing one electron and one positron per high-energy photon), and magnetically herd all the positrons into magnetic bottles for storage. One positron factory can manufacture about one gram of positrons per year.
Sol has an ecliptically-orbiting fleet of over a thousand positron factories. Alpha Centauri has some factories closely orbiting A and B, and has a small contingent of positron factories in orbit about Proxima Centauri to take advantage of the high gamma-ray content of its flares. Sirius and CN Leonis have fewer positron factories but make up for it from the high energy flux of Sirius A and CN Leonis's flares, respectively. Human-Centauri has the toughest time of it, with fewer positron factories and a smaller stellar gamma-ray flux than anyone else.
Proton fusion:
The Centaurians developed this technology over a century prior to human contact. They were able to duplicate the temperatures and pressures found in the core of a class-A or hotter main-sequence star, thus allowing a CNO cycle reaction to take place. The very long average reaction time (about 1000 years) means that this process won't generate a lot of power, but a small fuel mass will produce a little power constantly over a very long period of time. This, combined with electric arc-jetting, is the main thrust source of the Bussard-type fusion ramscoops that made the first interstellar voyages.
Deuteron fusion:
Tritium's absence in nature, combined with its 12-year half-life, mean that relying on it as a fusion reactant is questionable at best. Before the Centaurians perfected proton fusion, they managed to refine the deuterium fusion process to the point where a self-sustaining reaction was possible without tritium. (Due to the higher temperature required for pure deuteron fusion, tritons are usually introduced to start the reaction but are not required to sustain it.) Deuterium is more expensive than ordinary hydrogen, but the reaction happens much, much faster.
Newman Energy Machines:
At one point, I really believed that these things worked. Now that I know they're pretty much a load of wishful thinking, though, I have no intent of including them in my story. Their technological, economic, and social implications would be enormous. Hot fusion wouldn't play such a crucial role in energy production any more. Fusion may in fact be secondary to spacecraft thrust; electric ion accelerators can have specific impulses in the thousands of seconds, and Newman devices would mean practically limitless electric energy.
Even while I still believed in Newman's epectromagnetomic motor, though, I realized that including them in this future history would risk alienating a lot of my potential readership. One possibility was to declare that Newman devices merely make a vast increase in the amount of electrical power available from a given system, but still can't recharge a bigger battery from a smaller battery or anything.
Semi-Intelligent computers:
While not bestowing "sentience" in any sense, the ability to pack a vast knowledge base into a small space that allows super-high-speed access, combined with various adaptive-learning algorithms, have resulted in machines which, in their own narrow areas of expertise, can think as well as (or better than) any human specialist.
These semi-intelligent, or "SI", controllers are crucial to fighters (see below under "Standard military issue"). Not only must these combat vessels react to changing conditions in high delta-vee environments in a matter of milliseconds (if not microseconds), they also routinely accelerate at over a hundred g's, requiring "brain" hardware that can withstand such extreme force. (No human or Centaurian can remain conscious beyond 9 or 10 g's.)
Interestingly, computer technology seems to be more readily graspable by humans than by Centaurians. Only a tiny fraction of the human population had what it took to bring computing machinery into reality in the 20th century; among Centaurians, the traits necessary for this particular mental skill are practically nonexistent. Prior to their capture of human satellites after first contact, semiconductor transistors had been produced in Alpha-Centaurian laboratories only, and the idea of using switching elements for manipulating information digitally had never been seriously pursued. Alpha Centauri is continually playing catch-up with Sol in the computer department.
Hibernation chambers:
Euphemistically called "coffins" by humans due to their resemblance to burial caskets, these low-temperature pods reduce human biological activity to almost nil while still allowing the passenger to be revived later. They use various inhaled and insinuative gasses to preserve the living tissues; the mixture must be varied slightly for first-time hibernators.
Mass drivers:
Also know as electromagnetic launchers or "railguns", these super-cannons can fire guided or unguided projectiles at the relativistic speeds needed for spacecraft-to-spacecraft combat. They're also used to launch "message missiles" toward one's home hyper hole in an enemy system, which guide themselves toward the hole and transmit their message as soon as they're through it.
Antiproton bombs:
The terror of the phased antimatter bomb has not eclipsed the need for good old-fashioned "conventional" antimatter weapons. Antiprotons are over 2000 times as massive as positrons, and can be stored in a magnetic bottle with just as much ease, making them ideal for use in both warheads of large-scale destruction and supercompact one-megaton bombs. Their use against planetary targets en masse is only slightly less distasteful to international politics as is the antiplanetary use of hyper bombs.
Meteorite bombs:
Also called "asteroid bombs" or "surface renders", these are magnetic bottles filled with antiprotons encased in big rocks. Haul them over to the planet you want to attack and then de-orbit them so that they land on the military base (or city) of your choosing. Like real meteor strikes, these rocks will plow deeply into the ground before lithobraking to a stop. Unlike ordinary meteor strikes, the force of the impact will destroy the magnetic bottle inside the rock, releasing all the antiprotons to react after the rock has plowed some distance down into the ground. Depending on the size of the encased warhead, the surface destruction of said rock can be multiplied by a factor of ten, a hundred, or even a thousand. The surface waves will tend to do much more structural damage than an ordinary nuclear or antimatter aerial burst would. One meteorite bomb can utterly annihilate even the sturdiest and most deeply buried of ground installations. However, the radius of destruction is much smaller than that of an aerially detonated antiproton bomb, so they tend to be used more selectively against single, hardened targets than against large areas.
Meteorite bombs are not to be confused with "bunker buster" bombs designed to take out underground installations. Meteorite bombs are designed to detonate only after penetrating through many, many, many meters of rock and dirt, thereby going off under what it is their users intend to destroy.
Antiproton beams:
The ultimate charged particle beam weapons. They have a devastating effect on anything they hit. Their only drawback is cost: the craft firing such a weapon must either carry all the antiprotons with it that it will fire, or be able to manufacture antiprotons as it needs them. In either case, the total long-term energy consumption will be enormous. They are used on special missions and are not standard military issue.
Standard military issue:
Proton beams, electron beams, guided missiles (with or without mass driver assistance), gamma ray lasers, ball bearing shotguns and sand blasters, the Solar system's Radiation Gun. Reflective armor to resist lasers and radiation guns. Sirius' Acid Gum Gun to corrode reflective armor into nonreflectiveness. Magnetic plasma deflection fields for defense against charged particle beams and explosives, which may be augmented with short-range lasers to ionize monatomic hydrogen on interstellar voyages. Alpha Centauri's Liquid Metal Gun. Long-range radar. Various antiradar countermeasures not unknown in this century. Many low-powered weapons may be linked together in a point-defense system for use against incoming missiles or other nearby, small targets.
Fighters and Deployers: The usual military spacecraft is alternately called a fighter deployer, a carrier, and/or a mobile base. It is a manned vessel that tows 3-5 smaller unmanned vessels, called fighters. (Do not be confused by the name. These "fighters" have nothing in common with fighter aircraft of the 20th century. They are quite large, heavily armored/screened, and are not restricted to weaponry pointing in one direction only.) A deployer's fighter complement is called, as you might expect, its squadron. Fighters are semi-intelligent in their own right, capable of extremely complex tactics, strategic decision making, coordinating its actions with other fighters in the same squadron, and following orders the way a military pilot would. Both fighters and their deployers may also carry extremely small remotely-controlled unintelligent spacecraft called drones. A drone resembles an EVA pod in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the escape pod seen at the beginning of Star Wars; it's a small unmanned spacecraft similar to a missile that carries a single secondary-caliber ship-to-ship direct fire weapon — a high-energy laser, a proton beam, even an electromagnetically launched missile or two of its own. Not only is a drone too cheap for its own SI Controller, its too small for a useful radar emitter; a nearby fighter or manned spacecraft must provide it with both maneuvering instructions and weapon locks.
The primary function of the fighter deployer is as a repair and resupply station for its fighters. A fighter may burn a substantial fuel load and discharge an enormous amount of destructive force in a single engagement; it cannot afford to carry large stockpiles of either deuterium or ammunition due to the added weight. Since fighters can throttle their engines up in excess of 100 g's, but deployers cannot exceed the physiological g limits of their crews, a deployer is considerably less maneuverable than a fighter. It makes up for this deficiency by deploying its fighters a good distance away from the action, and by being armed and armored to the teeth.
Personal weaponry includes all the good old-fashioned (but messy) weaponry available at the end of the 20th century, plus: stundart pistols tailored for human or Centaurian physiology, a kevlar-like high-temperature plastic for body armor,
Ascenders and Atmospheric Descent Pods: If an offensive campaign gets to the ground assault phase, victory is all but assured. Any orbital defenses will have been taken out first (including the gate-guard sized space stations protecting any important planet), then any ground-based orbital strike installations and air/spaceports capable of launching orbital strike vehicles; then, any military targets exposed to the sky can be picked off at leisure from orbit. Only after the enemy's military installations have been whittled down to next-to-nothing and their means of communications severed or interfered with as much as possible (a deaf enemy is a confused enemy, and a confused enemy is a vulnerable, low-morale enemy), will troops be landed on the surface. The least expensive means of landing troops is an atmospheric descent pod (essentially a large Mercury spacecraft) — this requires a substantial atmosphere and cannot re-ascend once it has landed. For hit-and-run raids, or for temporary troops, an ascender can be used. These fusion powered aerospace craft are hardly taller than an Apollo spacecraft and have enough fuel to land, ascend to orbit at 9 g's, and even attain an interplanetary trajectory if necessary. An ascender's nosecone is plated in nonablative Heat Bolide™ (similar to Space Shuttle tile material but not nearly as expensive), allowing it to be used for re-entry aerobraking as well as hypersonic ascent.
Strategies and tactics:
Attacking a star system is like laying siege to a castle. The defenders always have the edge. No spacecraft larger than 200 meters across can fit through a hyper hole, but spacecraft and gate guards several kilometers wide will be waiting on the other side to tear apart any intruders. And even if your fighters or deployers do fit through the hyper hole, any large scale assault force will have to come through one ship at a time. The first dozen or so fighters sent through will usually be blown to bits before they can inflict enough damage on the gate guards (and neutralize enough gate guard weapons) for the rest of the assault force to squeeze by what's left of the first line of defense.
Missiles that can acquire a target outside the firing ship's line of sight can make the initial assault less costly. The problem is, such missiles have to be going slowly enough to make sharp, unforeseen course changes, and this makes them easy targets for gate guard point defense systems. The solution: drones. Drones are much more fragile and far less intelligent than fighters, but if a missile can be fitted with automatic target selection, hey, so can a drone.
In gate guard assaults, and in the rare fighter-to-fighter clash, drones are also useful for drawing some enemy weapons fire, since drones can usually fire their onboard weapon more than once and can stay outside the range of a point-defense system.
On those rare occasions when actual personnel go into combat, Sol and Sirius
use the same traditional army organization structure that's been in use on
Earth for hundreds of years:
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