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  Singularity

  The Labours of Iktis.

  Book 1

  “In the beginning, we were all one...”

  Pablo D. Rodríguez

  Phaeton

  The Labours of Iktis Appendices

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  Phaeton: The death of a planet.

  The Labours of Iktis – Appendices

  The hidden history about a planetary disaster that brought chaos to the whole solar system. And how an advanced civilisation, inhabitant of Phaeton, had left their mother planet behind to follow a dangerous path among the stars.

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  http://pablodanielrodriguez.com/phaeton-the-death-of-a-planet

  Lost

  S.O.S.

  The Spark

  The space century

  The scrap yard pilgrimage

  The Guilds of Legend

  Mission

  Necessary Measures

  Puntshó Blade

  Vengeance and Grief

  A rescue in the mountains

  Frozen Stage

  Immediate problems

  Experiment

  Forensic key

  Lone Warrior

  Damage assessment

  Jumping into vacuum

  Decompression

  Epiphany

  San Francisco

  A ray of hope

  Ferry

  Witness

  Risen from the darkness

  Puntshó Blade must die.

  Results

  Transport

  At the foot of the Himalayas

  Four years later

  A very distant mission.

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  Author's Note

  Lost

  The first thing I saw was a light, reddish-brown, moving in front of my eyes.

  After a couple of seconds my mind cleared up a bit and I recognized what I was seeing: Clouds, bright, huge and moving within a giant circle that was nailed to a very black sky.

  Crossing the circle of clouds I saw a vast field of rubble on which I myself was floating. This field of rubble curved itself around the edge of the circle of clouds, and I understood it was a huge planetary sphere.

  “Rings...” I whispered to myself. “Where am I?”

  The reality of my situation hit me hard, causing actual physical pain and the lights blinking in my helmet's visor suddenly made sense.

  I'd survived the decompression and was now aimlessly floating away from any possibility of rescue, flying towards the giant planet, which was still distant and beautiful. It was the worst situation an astronaut could want: Lost in space and without anyone knowing my real position.

  A rescue, if it occurred, would come too late to save my life. Although the most likely scenario would be that they wouldn't even find my remains.

  At that moment I remembered, I'm not sure why, the hero of an old song I heard as a child; who was lost in space and watering the flowers he had in his cabin. At least he had a spaceship.

  I pressed the communicator button in my left arm and spoke almost desperately:

  “Distress Call... Alfa priority. Distress call, Alfa priority! It’s Puntshó Blade, the station's security chief, calling to any rescue ship from the Saturn Orbiter Station fleet. Mayday! I repeat: Distress Call.”

  I made the communicator repeat that recording in one-minute loops, but there was no answer. Gradually, I understood that the decompression had thrown me far away from the only ship around and that even if they were looking for me they wouldn't arrive in time. I turned awkwardly to look in the direction of the ship that had thrown me and I saw it, small, bright and distant.

  My emergency suit had small gyroscopic stabilizers and it was hard enough to maintain my position. But if a rescue ship approached, it would come from that direction and I wanted to be able to see it.

  My transmitter, embedded in the emergency suit, didn't have enough power to reach the station. Especially due to the intense charged particle fields that surrounded the giant. I needed to wait for the rescue mission or die slowly due to the air pollution that was growing inside my suit.

  That's when I noticed a change in that bright spot that was the ship from which I'd been thrown. It gradually increased in brightness, and suddenly, a huge bubble of bright energy surrounded the position where the spaceship was at.

  There was something inside the bubble. A different image and a message that was being transmitted straight into my head.

  For a brief moment I saw and understood what they were trying to transmit. A second later the bubble collapsed on itself with astonishing speed, followed by a burst of the whitest energy which replaced the distant ship's place for a moment.

  The last words I heard from this strange vision, still echoed in my head as the implosion's shock wave reached me, and made me tumble, pushing me further away from any possible rescue.

  My suit finally stabilized me and I stopped spinning. I was orbiting the rings and looked, stunned, at the silent beauty regaling me.

  “Beauty is truth...” I repeated Keats's phrase aloud inside my helmet. And surrounded by all that wonder, I accepted I would die.

  S.O.S.

  A distant space station

  At the dawn of telegraphic communication, a simple sign was established to request assistance in case of imminent disaster. Three dots, three dashes and three dots. A distress call for isolated and endangered vessels. One last cry for help and rescue.

  Created based on the simplicity and speed with which it could be telegraphed, a new interpretation of the meaning of this message grew in popularity: "Save Our Souls".

  The use of this signal in the last hours before the sinking of the famous ocean liner "Titanic" is famous, which occurred a few years after defining the code.

  Tens of years after this disaster, when the United American conglomerate government decided on the name for the future space station they were building in Saturn's orbit, the acronym S.O.S. (Saturn Orbiter Station) proved evocative and precise.

  Years ago, in 2064, that same conglomerate had sent a manned mission to the outer solar system. Twenty of the most promising space explorers from every research field were part of this pioneering mission. The ship that would take them so far away was the first of a class that would be called "Daedalus" and which included the latest field deformation propulsion technology and charged particles shield protection, which worked against stellar radiation and micrometeorites. The mission's success was guaranteed and the Americas conglomerate would again dominate space exploration.

  A small resupply station orbited Saturn, awaiting for the arrival of this brand new ship. This station was part of the mission but was unmanned. A huge amount of supplies, spare parts and fuel had been set in orbit to supply the crew and allow for ships repairs at their halfway stop. It would also be a signal repetition position and would serve as a lifeboat if something went terribly wrong.

  The Daedalus ship undocked from the small resupply station and faced the last, longest and emptiest part of the journey, which would take them from the beautiful rings of Saturn to the Pluto system itself as well as the mysterious Kuiper belt. In this journey they wouldn't visit any other planets as their orbits didn't coincide, and it would be here where the novel form of propulsion would be pushed to the limit.

  Everything went perfectly in the first week of flight, although reports of minor problems on the propulsion and the ship's protective field were received. The engineers solved all of these inconveniences and the ship accelerated to an incredible four million kilometres per hour, or nearly zero point four
the speed of light. And one day later, all communication was lost.

  The last and terrible message was rather bitter: "Save Our Ship", and was pronounced in the ship's captain's broken voice and then there was only silence.

  It took years for the American space agency to recover from such a profound loss and disappointment; but the pioneering spirit and inner strength that characterizes the American people, finally prevailed and a new project, also a pioneer one, ignited the whole continent's enthusiasm. They wouldn't give up and this new project wouldn't only involve the space agency, but several companies.

  The new Saturn orbital station, with its unusual origin and architecture, would be suited to send rescue missions and this time it'd be much more than an automatic resupply post. A small floating city around the "Lord of the Rings", and a departure port for future exploration missions, with improved interplanetary spacecrafts, which would never again be left alone “out there”.

  The Spark

  Year 2058. A new energy form.

  The invention of the century. Though it remained hidden due to economic and political interests.

  It was called the spark revolution; although it wasn't a real revolution. It was mainly a time of civil disobedience and civic union, but of a never before seen magnitude.

  A group of scientists, formed by the American and Asian conglomerates, had discovered a simple, safe, adaptable, functional and, above all, almost free nuclear fusion method. An energy revolution that would free the world from their oil and fuel dependence. And which proposed a radical solution to Third World poverty. When the news leaked, the investigation had already been finished for thirty-two years. In this period the price of household gas and machine oil; had risen so much that the whole economy was cracking.

  The worldwide population indignantly demanded this work to be unveiled. To be able to reproduce it and push humanity towards a unique and unknown age of freedom and sustainable development.

  At this point, international politics, were dictated by large corporations and companies; which created war or peace based on their annual result statements. Companies with interests in petroleum and petroleum products, had been enriched for countless decades, due to speculation and rising prices. Manufacturing and transporting any goods, was so expensive that products price rose immeasurably.

  Politically, the world was divided into conglomerates, joined by geography and common interests. The American, European, African, Asian and Australian conglomerates.

  The new discovery, suggested an almost free energy source for almost everything. Homes, vehicles, machinery, etc. Didn't pollute, was highly developed and adapted.

  The result was a great social upheaval and demands from the poorest countries for the liberation of the technology. It was a matter of life and development for millions.

  An Asian laboratory began to develop and distribute the "spark" among its citizens. The Americans were shocked and within weeks a menacing "Armageddon" scenario had emerged. This story is told in detail in "The Works of Iktis"; but it suffices to say that World War Three was almost a reality.

  Border skirmishes and air raids were a daily occurrence. And the permanent terror of total atomic destruction permanently floated in the air.

  When conflicts were overcome and this technology was available to all citizens, the world changed forever. The spark was a complete revolution in each family's daily life, if we talk about the freedom and prosperity it gave to the people of the world. It dramatically ended hunger and extreme poverty.

  It wasn't a bed of roses. There were deaths and injustice. But people took control and politicians took notice. The discovery was now public and everyone had to have access to it, but this did nothing but bring the differences between the conglomerates to light, and the African one was the worst standing. Over several decades Africa had developed industrially and militarily. But they didn't have the means to distribute this new energy among its population; at least with the speed those most at disadvantage needed. And that sparked violent riots and fractures in the “conglomerate” treaties. A cruel civil war broke out in humanity's mother continent.

  The conquest of the Horn of Africa, the area of greatest tension, was swift and cruel; and it was there where the European armed forces intervened more forcefully.

  The European force then formed "elite groups". A military intelligence and espionage service aimed at acting to prevent future terrorist attacks and imprisoning radical leaders.

  In those years, Puntshó Blade worked his way up to Squadron Leader for the centennial Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW), where he stood out due to his leadership and combat abilities. Until his leadership was tested during a daring rescue mission that would mark his life and career forever.

  The space century .

  Space conquest then became the "new frontier", which would boost thoughts, dreams and technology to their maximum level.

  Ordinary people could only access space for recreational activities or sightseeing. And the discomforts of a gravity-less life soon discouraged the masses from leaving their comfortable world.

  On the other hand, the world government saw the need to take action with regard to birth control, as medical advances allowed for the extension of life expectancy to 120 years. It was about controlling the number of human beings being born. Although this only delayed the inevitable, Earth couldn't sustain so many people and needed to open up new territories. Space as a new "America", called out to the boldest and most resourceful.

  In 2063 the first civilian space station, Europa 1, was opened, which would be a key experiment, forming a bridge between Earth, Moon and Mars, a loading dock and orbital Spaceport. It soon became clear that calculations of transit through the station had been too conservative; and Europa 1 exceeded its capacity. They needed a huge new station, which could handle the growing number of new settlers and cargo ships. In 2066 construction of the first dome was completed, and the true colonization of the moon began. Thus, soon after, the World Congress approved construction of the space super-structure Europa 2.

  The American conglomerate, formed by the union of all of the countries in North and South America, then established an action plan to somehow recover global dominance in space exploration, which they'd lost in previous decades and decided to fund a pioneer project for an orbital station around Saturn. This "post" would be the most distant human settlement in the solar system and would be the spearhead for current human space exploration. Serving as an experimental base, to observe and especially resupply exploration manned missions heading towards the outer solar system and the enigmatic Kuiper belt. A "midway" place like this would ensure that crews would have a shelter for emergencies and that no other crew would ever be lost, as had happened with the infamous Pluto system mission; of which they never heard again after it abandoned the vicinity of the moons of the Saturn system.

  The station would provide the Americas with the opportunity to regain world leadership, by planning exploration and mining missions for the gas giant's rings as well as inhabited outposts on one of the largest moons of the huge planet.

  On that same year, the old planetary taboos were finally broken and by majority Congress vote to colonize and "terraforming" Mars. The latter, by having an atmosphere and water, was the first viable target for a human colony to thrive in another world.

  In those early years, only a few thousand were Moon pioneers; and Mars only had a few hundred inhabitants for nearly a decade; after which, as named by Martian immigration agencies, came the "rocket boom". Truth is that, a few years later, Mars would have more than one million inhabitants.

  In the meantime, Moon progressed slowly; and the difficult conquest of that hostile environment and its colonization had just begun.

  The elite groups dissolved after thirty years of existence and an international peace army was established in the main capitals of the world as a lookout for this new global unity. Puntshó then decided it was time to abandon those risky missions and applied for a mili
tary police position based in Oslo, Norway.

  Although his tranquillity wouldn't last long.

  The scrap yard pilgrimage

  Year 2071

  The Saturn Orbiter Station, which the Americas conglomerate had begun to build in the Saturn planet orbit; would be the most advanced and distant human presence in the solar system. An achievement for all mankind, which would again place America as the leader in space exploration.

  Fifteen hundred people worked at the station throughout the years it took to build the central nodes in the Earth orbit, and to launch them so they'd be automatically coupled nine months later in the distant orbit of the gaseous planet. There, and once the nodes had been coupled and worked well, a team of nearly a hundred engineers and astronauts would arrive to receive the second-hand ships fleet, which had been selected to be part of the new station, forming its various work sections for the research and development teams, who would come from every terrestrial continent.

  Nine months after its launch, all of the station's central nodes were successfully automatically docked; thus creating the base for the future structure.

  Once "the company" remotely confirmed that the modules had been safely connected and were habitable; they then gave permission to the captains of the ships that were to be recycled as part of the station, to leave on a nine months journey to the location of the incipient structure that was orbiting Saturn.

  A heterodox and mixed fleet made of used ships: a huge space cruiser, old lunar cargo ships, exploration ships, orbital pharmacies and dozens of other ships taken out of service for having run their course or to be replaced by more modern and faster ships. These were especially ships that the company was able to get at a good price in a strange and novel space market.

  Many ships had minimal crews, composed of staff trained by the company itself in land spaceports. Other space crafts would be automatically taken, and others dragged by chains and tied to other ships whose engines could make the long journey to the giant rings.