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| FORWARD |
| Considerably more than ten millennia had passed since the home planet of Terra had finally broken apart under shattering tidal stresses; leaving only fragments drifting in eternal orbit about a now-childless sun. The first colonist had evacuated the ancient star group and founded the peace-loving Terran races that occupied the regionally governed worlds known as The System.
When the Terrans landed on the first colony planet of Thessaly, there were no children in the crew. Multiple births were encouraged through the use of fertility drugs. The children came soon enough, for it was planned that there would be a five-fold increase in numbers during the first generation.
The thousand females and males aboard the transport ship represented the cream of their generation: genetically strong, all of superior intelligence, and all with histories of superior clan health. The gene lines had been searched for longevity factors, for this thousand had to assure the survival of their race. Life continued. Life spread and multiplied throughout the quadrant onto the worlds of Carthagia, Demetria, and eventually to the planet Aidennia. It was only one world within The System that had been civilized for many millennia.
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Ever since two pioneer ships found the blue-green and white-clouded world some four thousand orbits before, the spacers' occupants and their descendents built a prosperous, self-satisfied civilization. They grew into a proud race that had tamed a world so wild that it tested the survival of the fittest amongst the Terran progenitor settlers.
The weak died before they could produce offspring, yet the infant mortality rate was frightful for thousands of orbits. But the Terran species displayed its surprising adaptability. The land changed Terrans before Terrans changed the land as they spread north and south from the first settlement of Novice along the planet's equator.
The race's physiology was subtly altered while outward appearances changed very little. Muscle tissue became denser, motor reflexes became sharper, perceptions broadened, optic capacities widened. A whole new range of physical and mental abilities began developing, just to allow Terrans to live under normal condition on a planet where weather changes were drastic, whose sun had a variable as to heat and to light intensity.
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| The Terrans began to build as subsistence was achieved. They built with a vengeance, these tuned-up Terrans. With vengeance, and ruthlessness, and a good deal of bloodshed.
They had to do what worked - fast. Those who did not let nature stand in their way did not allow other Terrans to do so, either. In building, as in adapting, the primary rule was to survive. Once a civilization began to come together on Aidennia, Terrans began to turn their attention on values. The Aidennians took as an assumption in their lives the fact that there was a right and wrong in the Universe; to kill was wrong, to give someone food as right.
Through generations of slavery, warfare, and of Terran sacrifice in the name of progress, the population of Aidennia ached inwardly for tranquility. They became a people of magnificent social organization, culture, art, and commerce. They turned away from being a military people; they thrived instead, on their remarkable mercantile abilities.
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With the development of the supralight plasma drive in 4518 A.T. and the subsequent improvements for more efficient Space travel, the Aidennians were able to form with other planets a republic, The System. For the Aidennians also exported their culture as well as goods, and a derivative culture grew up on the Core Worlds of The System with their remarkable architectural logic, their hypnotic art, and the richness of cultural artifacts.
In centuries to come the Aidennians and their allies would live eventually a harmonious existence under a constitution set into motion by The System's elite senate seated by The Echelon.
The Echelon themselves were a caste of terran life forms that were the off-spring of genetically compatible parents from any number of sentient races belonging to The System. Like any result of interspecies coupling, mutations arouse that were better at adapting to new environments and situations.
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| The Echelon were such a change in the evolutionary matrix that became who they were after passing through a physical puberty as well as a spiritual rite of passage known as Ka-tela. Through the generations of mutation and growth, eventually all citizens made this crossing into adulthood; but, only those same-gendered in a mass majority were Echelon -- the minority continued on to be opposite-gender oriented and continued to reproduce and feed the numbers of The Echelon.
Systemite planets were bureaucratic monarchies. While Echelon spiritual vicars or "priests" dominated the government and while the senate had some ministerial functions, the principle role of the senate was that of CEO of The System; for the Systemites operated their territories as businesses, and entrepreneurships. While the bulk of the population enjoyed the wealth of interplanetary trading, the circumstances of that trade were tightly controlled from the senate. Beneath the senate was a large administration of scribes and bureaucrats who carefully regulated production and distribution both within The System and without. This administration kept incredibly detailed records, which exercised a great deal of control over the economy.
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In order to facilitate trade, The System and their allies developed the most advanced navy that had ever been seen. The Aidennians had been an "astrocracy," that is, a "star power". With the rest of The System planets they developed a military navy, eventually called Spacecorps, all the while concentrating on trade and mercantilism. Initially, the Aidennians built warships that were mercantile ships with the capability of defense against pirates. Their trade was extensive.
The concentration of wealth produced social equality; the wealth was spread pretty liberally. Society became organized around kinship lines rather than to be organized around "class," that is, economic function. Life was good for just about everyone. In addition, there was no inequality along gender lines. Cultural equilibrium was achieved, tranquility soon followed.
The inhabitants of The System became tranquil too soon. That was to be their downfall.
Unknown to The Echelon was a power hungry and restless saurian race who called themselves Taurus Lacertilians - meaning bull lizards -- or Tauron in Systemite Contemporary Lingua. Totally alien in form and thought, they were an obsessive and dominant force.
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| A force that one-day felt they should rule the galaxy. This thought drove them far across the stars toward their first ambush against The System. Their first battle with The System began abruptly. They did not expect the republic to be prepared for war. To their surprise, The System was ready for any attack, and for the next century they continued in battle readiness.
As time wore down the rhythm of war, The Systemites forgot the extent of Tauron treachery and concentrated all energies on the time twisting of deep Space travel. To once again reach out into the void and spread life amongst the coldness of Space. In 6752 A.T., as Aidennia began its first colonization mission to a remote uncharted star and its serene satellite, the Taurons began a mission of their own…
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