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Deep Space Epoch - Chapter 58

Published at 20th of February 2019 10:40:21 AM


Chapter 58: 58

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Today was the annual visit to the Vulpes home world. Nearly fifty percent of the Celestials packed a bag of belongings and flew up through subspace toward the surface universe where the orbit of the planet was crossing. The scene of all of them flying up from the forest canopy was like a field of dandelions blowing their seeds into the wind.

Ivan left with Iris and Valeria later, but instead of flying through subspace themselves to get there, they instead took the Kraken and instantly flew to the planet.

This day was a major event for the Vulpes home world, as it was also the day that up until now, they have received news from the Celestials and all the changes that had happened. This would be changing from this visit though as the Heralding News Subdivision would be employing some Vulpes and providing several SubNet Tablets to them to stay in touch and transmit news between both the Vulpes and Celestials.

Ivan didn't enter the main concentration of Folkien Empire citizens who piled up by the hundreds of thousands to welcome the returning Celestials. Instead, he went directly to the royal palace and met with King Margold, who wasn't taking any audiences and was instead busy doting on his son and daughter, the prince and princess, who were growing bigger every year.

"Father, when can we become Celestials already?!" Princess Silvea asked discontently as she puffed out her cheeks. "I have already come of age and made my first public appearance. I want to become a Celestial already!"

The 12 year old princess had long silver hair with short fox ears on top of her head. She only stood at the height of her father's chest, but she still stood on her toes to try and seem higher as she made her demands.

"Silvea, you need to wait until you are older. It's the same as your brother, Atlas."

Prince Atlas stood by the side silently, he was the kind who would never argue with his father and always followed what he was told. Silvea was still discontent though and gave King Margold the cold shoulder as she stomped off.

"Eh?" Silvea stuttered in surprised when she bounced back after walking into Ivan due to not watching where she was walking.

"Mr. Ivan! You are here! Can you help me become a Celestial already!? I don't want to wait to wait for years!"

In response to Silvea's expectant puppy eyes, Ivan could only shake his head and apologize. Silvea clearly didn't get the answer she was looking for as Ivan was also included in the list of people she was currently ignoring.

"Sorry, our daughter is quite wilful," King Margold chuckled heartily as he apologized to Ivan.

"Don't worry about it, I'm just here to talk about everything that had been happening, particularly the possibility of an alien invasion."

"Bah! What invasion? Those bastards from the Federation you called it, they've been constantly sending their spies undercover. We have discovered spies belonging to seventeen different parties already."

"That many?!"

"Yeah, most of them die without revealing any information, but we've recently been trying new interrogation techniques which made some talk."

"They could be shifting the blame onto someone else."

"Unlikely. The different groups underwent different procedures for attaching fake ears onto their heads and fake tails, meaning they aren't working together."

"That's understandable, who did they say they worked for?"

King Margold he pulled out a four-dimensional notebook he had been carrying with himself and handed it over to Ivan opened on a certain page. Ivan flipped the page around as he checked the names before quickly searching them through the galactic web on his tablet.

The names coincided with a total of nine politicians, five high ranking military officers, and three major companies.

"Whilst I knew some people would spy on use due to the operation of the Galactic Fleet several years ago, but I hadn't expected this many."

"Indeed, it is tiresome. They have recently been trying to kidnap our Prince and Princess, which is especially troublesome."

"Let them steal some samples of things except for the four-dimensional matter. That will take some of the pressure off you."

"What?! We can't let them have this technology!"

Ivan shook his head gently as he disagreed.

"The technology isn't anything special when looking on a galactic scale. It will be found out and replicated sooner or later regardless. Once people know something is possible, they will find a way to do it. All we need to do is protect the four-dimensional matter, and they will never be able to replicate the transformation in its entirety."

"What about if they find some four-dimensional matter? The same way you and Mazur did."

"That's not impossible, and will possibly happen one day, but with how massive the universe is… Let's just say that even if they started a massive search today and continued it indefinitely, they wouldn't find anything for at least 500 years, and to take only that long would be incredibly lucky. By that time, we would be so much larger and more advanced than them, they wouldn't be able to even compare with us."

"That is reasonable. Okay, we will go for it. I will allow them to slip through the cracks on occasion with some sample material."

Ivan knew how competent King Margold was as a ruler, so he didn't need to extrapolate with any advice on managing the spies. The only thing he wasn't overly educated on was the rest of the galaxy.

King Margold and Ivan continued their discussion on various matters for the entire day, somewhere along the point Iris vanishing with Queen Sherell as they began to gossip about different matters.

Ivan talked to the King about the threat of the Scalians, current business developments and the Celestials' technological progress. He even brought a SubNet tablet for each the King and the Queen so they could keep up to date on recent news and be able to communicate for meetings etc.

Whilst Ivan was relaxing before revealing himself to the public tomorrow and getting ready to welcome the new Celestials, there were plenty of others who were busy with work during this time.

*****

Lanise was aboard one of the Osiris subspace ships on their journey to explore the vast mysteries of subspace. They had a designated area which was under the coverage zone of the SubNet so they could send back any new information to the Celestial Network. They were also required to remove any presence of Scalians found.

Lanise's role was to be a senior assessor for any new races found and if they would be beneficial being added to the Celestial race.

This Osiris was but one of nearly twenty scouring the endless universe. They flew just under the surface universe as speeds of 5.0HU and upwards. They were so close to the surface universe that wherever they passed was filled with a trail of quantum ripples strong enough the gravity distortion would rip any ordinary matter into small pieces.

The captain of the ship, a gray-bearded male Celestial called Saus Pilar, calmly directed the ship as it navigated between solar systems. The ship would stop briefly at each planet as a team of analysts would rapidly record data on the planet's atmosphere, size, material composition and several other miscellaneous records for the growing star chart.

This uncharted territory Ivan had planned to claim as his own before the federation could explore here. He had to wait however until he had enough forces that he could prevent any unauthorized or militaristic incursions into his territory.

Lanise didn't interact with the crew much, only to boss them around from time to time with the authority delegated by Ivan, so it was only natural the others of the crew considered her as somewhat snobbish. She had a beautiful face, but others were still wary to be near her and would actively go out of their way just to avoid her.

After several months of travel, the ship had come across nine life planets. Lanise took her role as assessor extremely seriously and did a thorough job of assessing them, the only thing which prevented the rest of the crew from outright hating her.

The first planet they arrived at had a human civilization in the medieval ages. The massive subspace ship suddenly appeared over a battlefield between two armies of several ten thousand each and caused a massive lull in the battle. It wasn't long before both sides were fleeing to take defensive positions at their home fortifications.

With the connection to the SubNet available, a large amount of servers and specialists translated the language and created a software to actively translate their language so the Celestials could interact with them.

Lanise met both sides of the initial battle and acted as an ambassador for the Celestials under numerous guards. The grey-skinned humans who looked normal with the exception of their short height and strange leathery tails.

The Celestials were rapidly revered as gods due to their invincible might as four-dimensional beings and ability to fly freely. Every single nation on the planet they met did everything they could to flatter the "gods" and try to gain their favor.

Lanise led a life of luxury as she secretly was assessing the local humans in every way possible. She had servants take care of her every need, and Lanise had recalled the words of Ivan as she took a greater focal point than those beneath her. She didn't immediately kill anyone that annoyed or touched her, but several males who become completely infatuated with her perfect beauty were thrown into subspace and evaporated into energy.

Her conclusion on this human race were that they were underdeveloped and massively uneducated. They could provide nothing to the celestials other than basic laborers, while they needed skilled artisans and people educated in all kinds of fields.

They were all short tempered and quick to fly into a rage, something which seemed to be instinctual in their DNA and would be a liability toward them as Celestials. Lanise reported that they were worth investigating again, but not for at least another thousand years, if they all hadn't lost control of their anger and killed one another by then.

The second to fourth life planets had many kinds of flora and fauna, but no humans or other sentient species were present.

The fifth life planet had a civilization of humans that hadn't even developed language so that was quickly passed on, while the sixth life planet had a human civilization currently in the information age.

The sixth life planet showed some promise in evaluating, but the human lifestyle that was present was simply abhorrent, even to the Celestials who didn't care much about three-dimensional beings.

The humans on this planet, who looked very similar to normal humans except for they had a braided vein-like head along with a strange combination of fourteen fingers and eight toes, had a culture no outsider could accept.

Their population had a large number of disabilities among the populace, a result of generations of inbreeding. Their culture didn't punish **** as they viewed more population as a beneficial thing. This was because of a long-practiced culture of cannibalism.

The first people to be eaten were those with disabilities. There was even a massive market for the selling of other people.

"One way or another, natural selection still seems to be at work," Lanise commented in wonder as if everything she witness was happening in a different world, however even she was unsettled when she watched a young child killed and carved up for meat.

With the concern that these people may try to eat other Celestials, they were instantly rejected as potential new Celestials. They were lucky Lanise didn't order for the ship to directly carve up the planet and exterminate all life on it.

The seventh and eight life planets were also duds without any human or other sentient life, but the ninth planet was especially unique. Not only unique, but currently under a mass attack by the Scalians…




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