Stardogs, page 32
2041-2055 Exploration and contact with other Stardogs established. Hans Wienan personally recruits new pilots. Attempts by G8 to restrict access to space division of colonial rights. The Texas Rebellion is brutally put down. A secret message begging for help is sent to RSPCA official from Joan Cheng.
2055-2103 The colonial period. With 432 worlds on Stardog routes found, colonial expansion outstrips Earth control. Wealth flows to Earth, little returns. But all flows both ways were taxed by the League. The League only revealed 130 of the less viable worlds to Earth, and colonized the others for a secret powerbase.
2104 The Brandahar rebellion. Stage-managed ‘revolt’ against Earth taxation. The League is ‘forced’ to assist rebels until Earthgov came up with better conditions for League, including rider recruitment legislation. Then the rebellion is brutally crushed.
2104-2130: Colonial retreat by Earthgov. Sybaritic life on Earth by rich is pestered by religious fanatics, convicts etc. which are dumped by Earthgov. They are sent off on League transports without Earthgov bothering to find out where they go. These malcontents are the source of the Imperialists future troops.
2131 The Post of Managing Director is declared hereditary. Earthgov protests. The great embargo of earth follows. It is stage-managed to leak just enough to keep Earth dependent on Interstellar trade. From this point the league League’s own secret service begins to increasingly become all-powerful.
2135 End of the embargo with the ‘Council of planets agreement.’ This is a puppet council controlled by the League
2215 The Starkadd Coalition: An attempted and partially successful coup by the once-puppet planetary councilors. League control of planets in the coalition is shattered, although they still have control over Interstellar travel. The League panics. Planets are isolated, and Selim Alsten-Wienan, a rising young thug, is made into a new ‘Emperor’, and given access to mercenaries on former convict worlds of Carab, Selbourne, Canto and New Tambor.
2215-2393 With the League artfully manipulating supplies, the colony worlds are maintained (the League does not wish to lose its tax base, or labor pool) but militarily crippled while the new ‘Empire’ picks off worlds one by one.
2393 The fall of Phillipia, the most powerful, populous, mineral rich and verdant of colony worlds. Salman Alsten-Wienan II declared Supreme ruler of human Space.
2412 Last isolated open resistance brutally suppressed on isolated worlds such as Arunachal, and New Texas. Minor guerilla skirmishes continue.
2459: Declining numbers of League children forces the guild to take the step of recruiting new blood, with Managing-directorship and Security only being reserved for pure Wienan’s.
2488 Turabi I, having arranged for the assassination of his father, ascends the throne.
2507 Now
APPENDIX II
GENERAL BACKGOUND INFORAMTION
The Denaari: A silica-bat, egg-laying semi-marsupial species. A wingspan of +-25 feet, a bodyweight of +- 30 kg. Bi-lateral species, ie: Two eyes (vision more into uv. spectrum), two ears, (higher frequencies), scent, pressure, and temperature sensors on either wingtip. A single magnetic sensitive barbel. A face like a walrus (with tusks for mineral-mining.) Dexterous toes (three) and wingclaws (3). Therefore they counted in 12’s. Food: Able to use solar energy and also farmed crystals, grown in carefully maintained terraced mountain soup-ponds. Society: More structured than human society, with gene-dictated castes: Not warlike, but given to individual combat. These are largely ritual battles. Also practice genocide of ‘non-humane’ groups. On planet this meant nest-minders (eggwarmers) would withdraw their heat, and destroy gene lines of chicks, this had been extrapolated into passive extermination of non-emotive sentient alien species. They live/d in colonies in rookeries presided over by a senior egg-layer, Egg layers are bigger and higher fliers, (egg-layers are less emotive and more inclined to fight than eggwarmers) sex ratio 4 egg warmers to 1 egg layer. Female carries and lays the egg, the males warm egg, and then pouch-rear the young. The female can lay more eggs than males can rear.
Denaari homeworld: A tectonic hell-hole. A lot of mountains, some impossibly huge. A lot of volcanoes. Relatively little water. Geo-sculpting by wind rather than water erosion. Wind is almost incessant. G: 0.82 earth normal. Temperatures at Equator. 5-20o. Temperature at poles in winter approx. -170o. Humanly habitable up to +- 30o line. No major seas or lakes. Few streams and small rivers from high altitude precipitation in Subtropical region of stable ancient plate chosen for launch-imprint center. Mountains are old and wind-worn on the plate at the launch center. The area was probably Denaari idea of the pits to live in. Vegetation, pre-dominion breakdown was non-existent. Life forms are numerous but only accidentally inimical. Many are modified ie. rock-burrower miners, Mineral drifters (tiny balloons deflating and burrowing into new mineral sources), solar sheeters which cover hillsides and collect sunlight, and then lay high-energy eggs (harvested by Denaari) before tumbleweeding. In the breakdown, Zoos and several botanical museums lost specimens, which have colonized a few wet bits. There is now a small carbon-based biota, including vicious predators. Now rock-leguvaan, bouncer-hyrax, jagular, and sliver-python, diamondback pseudosnake, red-mottle thrush and feral peccary occur in the wild. The vegetation is more varied, plainly from a number of sources, occurring wherever there is water.
The Denaari Dominion: 432 worlds settled + homeworld. Ruled by gene-selected, gene modified castes, egg-layers ruled and decided, but eggwarmers controlled succession. A flying species, therefore they had no roads, but had communal rookery type dwellings. A society where gene-tailoring was second nature. Very little was ever made of inanimate material, but they shaped lifeforms to their ends. Even a Denaari toothbrush was alive. They had a Buddhist-like life-religion about animal forms. Originally no plants lived on the mother planet. Some of the worlds of the Dominion also had no carbon-based lifeforms, and these were most popular and largest settlements. Early settlers cleared vegetation and altering climates before the vegetation / carbon-animal relationship was understood. Worlds were selected for lower G, colder, drier thinner atmosphere, preferably with abundant mountains for eyries. Numerous humanly habitable worlds (ocean-planets, jungle worlds, hot worlds, higher G worlds) known, but were not colonized or on Dog-routes. Earth only had an observation station, a small one, because of intelligent life there. It was not considered suitable for colonization. Alien societies were assessed and if inhumane: prevented from attaining space travel or destroyed. They were assessing earth, when ‘plague’ destroyed them in part of a conflict with the Sil.
The Imperium: The first Emperor, Selim Alsten-Wienan, was little more than a figurehead, a front-man for the League’s opposition to the Starkadd Coalition of planetary Councilors (which itself had begun life as a league puppet). However some of the worlds he drew his mercenaries from would change the nature of the conquest. He originally styled himself as The Leader of the Peoples’ Liberation Struggle for a Democratic Federation of Planets. In the first load of those who had been forcibly settled on Selbourne were a small lunatic fringe of plotters from Earth, almost all of whom could be found in the pages of the now meaningless Almanac de Gotha. In a cargo which was otherwise composed of unassociated dregs of Europe they had proved the most cohesive group. Before later ships of convicts had arrived they had assumed total feudal control, which they maintained, destroying new rivals, or, if these were too strong, raising them to the peerage. The bickering fiefdoms and endless postage-stamp duchies had provided a rich supply of younger sons to make skilled officers. Canto, one of the main sources of cannon fodder, also had a strong feudal-type robber-baron system. The officers wanted payment not in money but in hereditary fiefdoms. The League, to whom the form of politico-social system was unimportant, as long as they maintained control, was happy to oblige. Of course their man had to have a higher title, that was all. With the children of Selim intermarrying with the Selbourne peers, the dream of the original Almanac de Gotha rebels of a return to rule by divine right or at least by genetic right was achieved. Names were assumed from the Holy Roman Empire. The aspirations they brought were of course passed on to the future emperors, reaching its peak in the rule of the Emperor Vespasia. The Empire had known nearly a century of relative peace and steady increase in bureaucracy. By the start of the reign of Turabi I, the system was groaning from increasing taxation and the employment of nearly a third of all people in the civil service. The army, once powerful, had become little more than a brutal riot-police for suppressing the increasingly restive populace.
Riders: projective-receptive Telempaths. Possibly an innate human ability, it only tends to be expressed by sensitive, intelligent, emotionally deprived, usually insecure, often unhappy and physically abused people. Their emotional sensitivity is heightened if they have communication problems. The League began with natural cases but very soon resorted to physically imposing conditions including deafening of riders. Selection was vastly refined in 2130 with the discovery of emotional-moss, a Denaari relic, a species of emotional echoing silicate-animal, little more than a fuzzy patch which changed color when in the presence of empathic-projectives. This stuff remained one of the trade secrets of the League, not even available to the Empire, who thus had to resort to more brutal methods of finding sleepers to infiltrate into the riders. A mechanical device, less effective and sensitive, was devised by the Satellite folk. Armed with this the ISPCA had been attempting to find rider-recruits before the League, and provide shelter for them.
The riders were trained in schools where the conditions to heighten their misery were deliberately engineered. From these conditions they were taken to rider compounds, then into space and introduced to their dogs. Thereafter while the life of a rider on shipboard or in the spartan compounds was no easier there was an end to actual physical abuse. Riders were still held in thrall by the toxin canisters placed in the missile launch tube and linked to the EEG and heart monitor of the League agent who rode with them. On a normal ship League and rider quarters and airlock were wholly separate from the other people onboard. The rider would actually sit, suited, between the Stardog’s eyes. Early riders had lost themselves, dog and spacecraft, by running out of air or freezing to death. Now hookah lines pump warm air to them and jumps are restricted to short hops. In space, but out of jump the League operates a cell-system restricting contact.
Sil: Warlike, xenophobic and totally mechanistic culture on world close to Arunachal. Engaged in active aggression against first Denaari explorers, and foresaw rapid conquest of the same. The Denaari genetic engineers tailored copper-devouring bacterium which caused famine and near-total destruction of society, but the Sil turned to the use nylons, plastics, and a new special alloy to build silicate/chitin complex disintegrators which they let loose on starlanes. The Denaari replied with a sterilization plague virus: This gave Sil years to develop own mechanical ‘plague’ of mutable self-replicating nano-circuit brained microscopic robots and send it out. The only Sil colony was on Arunachal, a Denaari-mapped for colonization world. The Sil colony hid itself successfully from the Denaari, but with mechanical destruction of Sil Homeworld, was isolated and gradually became run down. The Sil colonist numbers declined due to a lack of trace elements. The last survivors did meet Humans before the species became extinct. Intervening in the human conflict they used their appearance to give rise to a new religion, which preached undying hate for Denaari.
Stardogs: originally feral with limited wormhole surfing capacity. Silicate, sheetlike, filamentous, like vast bearskins when feeding or drifting (top-fibre-optic skin for effective light collection, bottom-modified cilia for mineral ingestion). In flight they change their shape to allow optimal micro-rocketry positioning and acceleration or braking. They can build up and lose velocity by minor flatulent rocketry shifting mass with inertia. Often they assume a half-open umbrella-shape. They have vastly complex nerve-nets with endless local nodes and billions of inputs. Their eyes are large and telescope-like, and bifocal. They have brilliant visual imaging and memory. A low intelligence, but a vast memory.
They have huge canine-tusks from their feral pack status-maintaining origins. They ingest small asteroids or leach minerals from larger ones, and use solar energy to feed. They enjoy titbits of certain chemicals. Enjoy filament combing with a food/comb. Only visit worlds of the long dead Denaari Dominion. Because of the Sil plague they may not return to the Denaari Homeworld, which they are genetically imprinted to do to breed. They have long lives, but need males (planet-bound) to mate. Fertilization occurs at the end of the larval (planet-bound) stage, when females are transported into space. Eggs are laid after crash-down. (Original feral species, both sexes flew, but the Denaari, to control numbers, removed flight capability from males. This also assured that females were available for route imprinting. There is a huge imprinting center near breeding grounds. Stardogs can live a maximum of 4000 years, therefore those in service in the Human Empire are nearing the end of their natural lifespan. At the time of this story there are about 2200 Stardogs in human space. Initially there were more than 3700 when humans were first encountered. The number of Stardogs is the main limit to interstellar commerce. Most Stardogs used to live +- 200 years, normally linking their lifespan to a Denaari eggwarmer. At the start of the plague there were about 40 000.
The Wienan League: Hans Wienan had strong political connections, which got him into space. Quick thinking, he saw the potential advantage of Stardog control. Using Joan Cheng’s inarticulateness, he claimed credit and sole control for himself, silencing the rest of the crew with bribes of power and wealth, or resorting to outright assassination. He moved rapidly with his powerful political connections to isolate her and to control her, after early attempts, by Wienan and several pet scientists, to communicate with the Stardog had failed. On establishing that Joan Cheng could communicate and take the dog star-hopping and that there were several other ‘biological starships’ (the name never caught on. Stardogs is what they remained) out there. Wienan then set about working out why she could. Intuitively, he decided it was some kind of emotional bonding, and brought a group of children from an abused children’s refuge up to the Stardog. He located immediately another communicator who had remarkably similar psychological characteristics to Joan Cheng. Thus with the collusion of senior government officials the interstellar space development League was formed with a board drawn from the ruling elite, who actively and secretively recruited Stardog riders. These unlucky individuals simply ceased to exist as far as the populace of earth was concerned. Control over them was maintained as the powers that be had no desire to lose potential control of the starlanes to ‘mentally unstable individuals’. The League was given carte blanche to recruit and control the riders with the political heads of earth’s governments thinking that they in turn could control the League. They were wrong. From the first Hans Wienan conspired to obtain total control. Those he could not blackmail, he bribed, the one he could neither blackmail nor bribe he married. The League released information to the G8 about 130 of the 432 of the discovered worlds — The least promising 130. These it opened up to colonization and exploitation at a small price which was steadily and slowly increased. The remaining worlds the League began colonizing and ruling as its private fief.
With sole control and understanding of how the Stardogs were managed the relatively tiny League with some twenty thousand members, agents and sycophants maintained an increasing stranglehold on trade and movement between the stars. Increasingly the organization became two arms, those who rode the dogs with the riders, and those who conspired to maintain the status quo. The formation of the security arm of the agency from fifteen years before the Brandahar rebellion, marks the beginning of the golden period of the League, which ended in the reign of Vespasia (2403-2416). Thereafter the Empire began actively attempting to succeed from the League, and through sheer enormity had, to some extent, managed
The League, long aware of declining Stardog numbers have a cloning project off New Tambor: Aims: to create a Stardog that Leaguesmen can control mechanically, a Stardog which is not imprinted with a fixed library of stars.
Yak-Syndicate: Criminal guild controlling crime on most worlds. Run ‘smugglers’ but are unaware that these are controlled by League. League profits from illicit traffic in drugs, slaves, etc. Hierarchical (based on Mafiosi) with Russian-Mongol underclass, ruled by Chinese-Italian overclass. Loyalty enforced brutally. Upper echelon bought titles etc. Attempted to penetrate the Empire’s power core, but resisted by Imperial secret service who uses them. Their use has been too pervasive and the Empire has decided they’re getting too much of a share of the lifeblood of society. One parasite does not easily tolerate another.
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Morningstar
Dave Freer
CHAPTER 1
Port Tinarana was like an old, decaying tart, her face lined with a myriad of streets and alleys, inexpertly caked with a crude makeup of overhanging buildings. The alleyways seemed to grow narrower and more choked in filth with the passing of each year. Judging by the ankle-deep slush, this dead end hadn’t had the garbage cleared in the last three hundred of those years. And in a few minutes his body would become yet another once-human part of it. He shrank back against the cold, oozing stones of the overhanging wall. The night haze of fog and coal smoke streamered in twisted eddies about the ragged boys. They were vague, almost ethereal, except for the silver-pale lines of low held knives, moving in slow arcs as they closed in.
“Gonna cut you, dink.”
“Yeah! Gonna spill your guts, cull. You bin workin’ our turf.”
Keilin knew there was no use in pleading. They weren’t going to listen. They were all bigger than he was, used to using those knives. He touched the stone of his pendant, pressing it into his thin chest. It was always cool, but now it seemed almost burning cold against his skin. His pale eyes darted, trying to assess his best chance. Oh God, for some kind of break . . . They came closer. . . .
