by Rick Blackburn

Appendix 1

WARP GATES Warp gates are essentially bi-stable worm holes, artificially created by
an as-yet unknown alien intelligence between six and a half and seven million years ago.
The first warp gate was discovered in close orbit around the KO orange giant star Arcturus
in 2043, and a year later a second warp gate was discovered in orbit around Capella. The
warp gates connect two points in three-dimensional space and have the effect of allowing
the traveler to instantly travel between the two points without actually traveling through
the space between the points.

The warp gates are the product of unknown alien technology. Although the effect is easy
enough to understand (and use), the exact method of achieving this effect has so far eluded
the brightest minds in the Federation. The warp gate seems to be related to the transporter
system in wide use through out the Federation and known space, but whereas the warp gate
causes a physical overlap of two spatial frames, allowing an individual to disappear from
one and instantly reappear at the other; the transporter is limited in both the range of
propagation and the time such a frame overlap can be held.

The transition from one side of the warp gate to the other is instantaneous, there is no
apparent "time lag" through the warpgate. Warp gates are stable; a trip through them
always deposits the traveler in the same spatial frame. The warp gates are
bi-directionally stable: that is, flight through the warp gate in one direction results in
destination A, while reversing the flight brings one back to the point of origin. Thus the
warp gates can be looked at as a string of beads, or as "stations" on an interstellar monorail
network.

So far, all of the discovered warp gates have been found in orbit around massive stars or
black holes. One theory of operation suggests that the warp gates use the gravitational
energy of the parent object to generate the stable worm hole. Although all warp gates are
identical in structure and physical dimensions, there appear to be two separate "types" of
warp gates. The first type offers a choice of two directions for travel, and tends to be
located around "normal" giant stars. A second type is located around higher-mass stars and
black holes. These gates allow the selection of four destinations. All of the warp gates so
far discovered are identical in dimension and composition. The warp gates are doughnut
constructions of meteoric iron and stone with alien crystal "components" sunk into the
structure. The warp gates are exactly 113.787 kilometers in diameter and 0.939
kilometers "thick." The center hole measures 39.323 kilometers in radius.

Actual transition through the warp gate involves passing through the exact center of the
gate at zero velocity relative to the motion of the warp gate in orbit. If a functional stutter
warp drive passes through a warp gate, this results in a nuclear explosion; while ships
employing active hyperwave drive units have never been seen again. Type I warp gates,
like the one in orbit around Arcturus, have two entrance vectors, identified as RED and
GREEN, that are totally reciprocal. Type II warp gates around very massive stars or black
holes have four entrance vectors, the normal RED and GREEN, and a second set of reciprocal
vectors, designated BLUE and YELLOW.

So far, no Federation warp gate has opened on to territory served by warp gates accessed by
any of the known alien races, and it is theorized that they never will, being closed systems
unto themselves. Most warp gates tend to cover more than 1,000 light years, and so far as
anyone can tell, there is no limit in sight to the network of warp gate stations. Currently,
the Federation routinely makes use of a network of seventy-four warp gates. The furthest
single warp gate shift is between the Cygnus X-1 black hole and the 1E2344 + 18 quasar
science station, 16.3 billion light years away.

What about the race who built these wonderful objects? So far, even less is known of
them. From radiological dating it is possible to say that all the known warp gates were
built during a half-million year period between 6.5 and 7 million years ago. Of the
builders themselves there is no evidence. Although it is believed that the warp gates were
designed to have living beings in supervisory positions, much like the telepaths of ITT are
acting today, there have been no finds of other artifacts or records of the enigmatic
builders.

The best that can be said about them is that the warp gate builders appear to have been
contemporaries of the First-Wave activities of another vanished race, the Preservers,
who are responsible for the propagation of so many humanoid life forms in this sector of
the galaxy. Although it is tempting to identify the warp gates as Perserver artifacts, much
more is known of the Preservers than of the race that built the warp gates. It may be that
the Preservers constructed the network of warp gates throughout space and time; however,
there is currently no concrete evidence of that.

(Related topics: Preservers, Pre-Galactic Races, Arch of Time, The City on the Edge of
Forever, Prof. Alexander H. Pickering [20th Century scientist - anomaly].)

* * *

Appendix 2

STAR NOMADS, ORIGINS OF There exists no firm documentation of the origins of the
human race that we now call the Star Nomads. There are, however, abundant references to
them in the mythology of several dozen alien races, beginning around 30,000 years ago.
The following then is an amalgamation of dozens of myths, legends, and oral traditions from
races scattered halfway across the galaxy.

A long time ago, so long in fact that no one knows for sure how long ago it was, there was a
world of human beings who learned the secrets of faster-than-light propulsion. Shortly
after this milestone, the First Wave Expansion took place. It is commonly accepted that the
dating system of the First Age was based upon the death of a great martyred religious or
political leader, later believed by many to be the incarnate representative of God. An
alternate but sizable minority view claims that the First Age dating system was based upon
the first successful release of nuclear energy. Whichever system is used, it is certain that
the First Age began more than 30,000 years ago. The First Age is today considered a Golden
Age of learning and exploration for the inhabitants of Dariahbar.

The First Wave Expansion This was a nearly random explosion in all directions from
the mother world. The exploration ships were quickly followed by colony ships, which
within a span of a few thousand years spread the human race across three million worlds in
a sphere with a radius of about 1,250 parsecs. Some of these colonies prospered and grew
wealthy, others did not, and some failed altogether. Although the speed of the expansion
slowed, it never stopped. In advance of the political hegemony of the Imperium, Free
Traders made tenuous finger and toe holds through the terrifying distances of the galaxy.
Months or years might pass between landings on an Imperial world. Their ships were often
nothing more than patchwork quilts of repairs and improvisations, but these Free Traders
were in a real sense the ones who tied the human worlds of the galaxy together into a single
political entity, the Imperium.

Near the end of the First Wave Expansion, the Imperium, welded together from the old
warring factions of the human race and the other intelligent species encountered in man's
centuries of space exploration, became the diadem in the crown of human/humanoid
civilization. The Imperium brought culture and prosperity to all the star nations. But the
expansion of the frontier had been much too fast — the frontiers were expanding
exponentially. Each year, thousands of new worlds were discovered and hundreds were
colonized by the older, more technically advanced worlds of the Imperium. Civilization had
reached the point where communication and trade routes were stretched beyond the
maximum and were collapsing. The frontier "burst like a soap bubble," leaving the inner
core of civilized worlds totally isolated from the worlds of the still-expanding frontier.

The Dark Ages Slowly, but unavoidably, the Frontier began to slip behind the core
worlds in living standards, technology, and economies. Even the civilized worlds of the
Frontier, established long enough to provide an industrial base, began to slide backwards
because of the isolation, and they gradually lost contact with the rest of the civilized
galaxy. The Free Traders were able to keep a few tens of thousands of worlds from total
isolation, but the sheer magnitude of the problems associated with interstellar logistics
and the bureaucracy necessary to administer the Imperium began to add to the drag on
civilization and hasten the coming of what so many scholars dreaded, the fall of the
Imperium.

Hundreds of independent star kingdoms began to rise and declare their independence from
the Iridium Throne as the Imperial nobility began to think of themselves less as vassals of
an Emperor on far off Dariahbar, and more as the local royalty. At first, these
successions and rebellions were dealt with militarily and brutally, but more and more
worlds began to slip away from the centralized authority of the Imperium; and there were
limits to what even the Imperial Armada could do to prevent brush-fire rebellions and the
less spectacular, but more efficient, bureaucratic malaise. Without anyone actually
realizing it, the Dark Ages descended upon the Imperium. The dark ages lasted
approximately 3,000 years and extended from 4050 to 7200, as annotated by the local calendar.

Colonization of Caesius During this period, a small colony fleet set out searching for
a new home with 25,000 people and their plants and animals. Their origin is unknown,
but many traditions place the origins as one of the outer core worlds that had been settled
from Dariahbar a thousand years earlier. After pushing far past the ten established
boundaries between the Imperium and unexplored space, they came to a small golden sun
far to the rimward edge of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. This star, along with a dozen
others, were "hidden" in a dense dust cloud covering a sphere two parsecs in radius.
Historians have speculated that perhaps this particular colony was not "approved" by the
Imperium, because the choice of location seems to have been selected for maximum
concealment: Far beyond where another colony ship would have stopped and at a star in the
center of a nebula which cut its photographic magnitude by a factor of 106.

Circling this golden star was a beautiful, blue water world, which the colonists named
Caesius. It was a rich world in both natural resources and climate; civilization quickly
took hold, and life for the new colony was prosperous.

Some 9,000 years passed, and the expanding Imperium found Caesius. It had become the
seat of a small stellar republic covering about half of the available Terra-norm worlds of
the Nebula, with a population of approximately 24 billion. The Imperium, dimly
remembered from old records, songs, poems, and myths of the Before Time, was welcomed
by the Caesians. Unfortunately, the Imperium had mutated from the benevolent instrument
of galactic culture and civilization into a vast, decadent, corrupt, and evil empire
supported only by the might of its armed forces. The Imperium now held a million slave
worlds in thrall by the force of arms. The Imperial nobility was always on the lookout for
more worlds to conquer, more slaves, and more raw materials and natural resources to
feed its vast war machine.

The Imperium's Reemergence The squadron of the Imperium's Armada that finally
discovered Caesius was commanded by Archbishop Jeremy Hicks, who was a devout
fundamentalist. The Rt. Rev. Minister believed that his "mission" (ordained by God
himself) was to violently convert all the savage races of the Galaxy to the One True
Religion. The religion of Caesius was branded neo-paganism by the Archbishop and spelled
doom for the establishment of peaceful relations between the Imperium and Caesius.

The military commander of the squadron of six warships was Commodore Sir Cybeer
Mjarkyn-ahkbarr (literally: Cybeer, the fist of God), an ambitious man who dreamed of
high political office and the almost unlimited power that came with it. Cybeer saw in the
Caesian Republic the chance to vault into the ranks of the political elite as the
governor-general of the newly discovered and "pacified" region that now lay before him.

The Caesians, who had over 9,000 years of peace and prosperity and respect for the
individual, were appalled by the Imperium's demand for tribute in the form of gold,
radioactives, dylithium, and slave children. The demand was immediately rejected by the
Caesian Legislature and the worlds of the Republic reluctantly began to prepare for war.
In a savage, month-long battle, fought entirely within the home nebula, the Caesian Star
Fleet crushed the Imperium's forces, mostly by sheer weight of numbers. A few stragglers
aboard a heavily damaged cruiser were allowed to flee into hyperspace, and the Archbishop
and the Commodore were able to escape the total decimation of their joint command.

A Brief Victory The Caesians knew that they were in for a real fight now. It was
expected that the crippled cruiser would flee at the maximum velocity its damaged warp
generators would allow to their command base to tell of the disastrous defeat — a defeat
inflicted upon the Imperium's squadron by a miserable backwater world out beyond
nowhere. Caesian scientists and engineers began to analyze the wreckage of the other
Armada units that had been salvaged from the battle ground. The enormity of the
technological gap between the Imperium and the Republic became all too apparent as
research continued at a frantic pace. A crash program of research and development was
launched to narrow the gap in weapons technology.

The Imperium was at that time ruled by the mad Emperor Fedak XXIII, who took the defeat
of this squadron as a personal insult. In one of his more lucid moments, he ordered the
Caesian Republic totally destroyed and its population either killed or enslaved. A huge
battle fleet was assembled from all the vast forces of the Imperium's space military and
placed under command of Admiral Kyle (the Butcher) Bolasko, who had recently returned
from the Deryennie Wars, where he had distinguished himself by ordering the massacre of
15 million inhabitants of one of the smaller Deryennie colonies.

The Imperium Returns The battle fleet set out for Caesius in 15802 and immediately
and without preamble attacked the outermost world of the Caesian Republic. Lyric, the
attacked world (and the vast majority of the other outlying planets had been evacuated
immediately after the original defeat of the Imperium, five years earlier) fell in less than
a week, its defenders pausing only long enough to complete the booby-traps and destroy all
things that might have proved useful to the invading Imperials. The Republic's defense
strategy revolved around the three main worlds of the Republic: Caesius, Topaz, and Sylph.
These three worlds, protected from attack by a variation of a starship's defensive screens
and armed with giant particle-beam cannons powered by the planet's power grid, were
virtually impervious to attack.

However, Admiral Balasko was not a man to easily give up on a problem, and he
immediately laid siege to the remaining worlds of the Republic. For five years the
Imperium besieged the three worlds of the Caesian Republic. Then in 15807, Imperial
agents managed to bribe a traitor in the defense screen controller station of Topaz. The
energy screen that had protected the planet was lowered, and Topaz was bombed into
submission by high-yield neutron bombs within a month of the initial penetration of its
shields.

This defeat demoralized the two remaining worlds because it was unknown that the
Imperium had found (and later executed) a traitor in the Republic's Defense Forces. The
republic instead thought that some way had been found to neutralize the energy screens.
The Legislature of Caesius attempted to negotiate with the Admiral. Balasko made a show of
being willing to talk and only after his forces had landed on both Caesius and Sylph did he
renege on this original agreement and restart the attack on the Republic. The remainder of
the war went very quickly, and always in favor of the Imperium's superior technology and
weapons. Within a year, both planets had been totally subjugated. Fewer that ten percent
of the original population had managed to survive the war with the Imperium, and now only
one in ten or twelve would survive the wrath of Fedak the Mad. Extermination camps were
set up all over the two worlds, and only those with useful technical skills, and
pre-pubescent children old enough to walk, were spared.

Those who did survive were taken on board slave ships and transported to the Imperial
Prison World of Haydes. True to its name, Haydes was a hell world of nearly unbearable
heat: thin, nearly unbreathable air choked with noxious gasses in sub-lethal doses and a
gravitational field 1.85 times a powerful as Caesius. About 100 million men, women, and
children were dumped into the concentration camps of Haydes to work the dylithium and
radioactives mines, of which the planet had many.

Exposed to cosmic Beritol rays, gamma and X-rays from the mines, and other radiation and
chemical pollutants, the population soon began to shrink. For forty years the slaves
worked in the mines, and their numbers and their fertility declined drastically, to the
point that by 15878 only 2.3 million remained.

Rebellion on Haydes During this time, Fedak the Mad was involved in a civil war with
his half-cousin, Marlyn the Usurper. A slave rebellion broke out on Haydes. The
Emperor, occupied with his half-cousin thousands of light years away, was unable to
reinforce the guard garrison on Haydes. The rebellion was short and had a surprising
outcome.

True, the Guards had energy weapons and powered combat suits, and were backed up by
combat vehicles including light tanks. And the slaves had only their own bodies and
improvised weapons crudely constructed from mining equipment — but the slaves had one
other thing. They had been forced to live primitive lives, exposed to all that the hell world
could throw at them, and so had adapted to this environment — whereas the Imperium's
troops had not. When the vehicles broke down, or were caught in ingenious traps, and
when the powerpacks of weapons and powered armor ran out, the Imperials were trapped
and slaughtered by vengeful slaves.

The Great Exodus After the guard garrison had been slaughtered, the one- time slaves
bargained with the forces of Marlyn the Usurper and traded the metals-rich hell world for
starships. The survivors of the Caesian Republic, along with the other assorted
undesirables who had been on Haydes, again fled across the stellar frontier and into
unexplored territory. Instead of continuing up the star-rich Purseus Arm, the ragtag
fugitive fleet turned to the 5,000-light-year-wide gap between the Purseus arm and the
Cygnus Arm. This later became known as the Great Exodus. Still fearing pursuit by the
Imperium, the commanders of the fleet set their navicomps to select a random course that
would carry them deep into the unexplored reaches of the Cygnus arm. Finally, after
traveling spinward another 25,000 light years, the hunt for a suitable world began, not so
much because the fugitives felt safe now, but because more and more of the decrepit
starships were reverting back to their natural state: rust.

Because of the long exposure to high levels of ionizing radiation both on Haydes and on the
relatively unshielded rust buckets that had carried them across the void, the birth rate had
dropped to such an alarmingly low level that biological extinction was a real threat. A
crash program of biological research began. It used most of the store of technological
equipment available to the new colonists.

Of the live births, less than half were healthy, viable human children. There were 10
still-births of monstrous mutations to every normal birth. At the verge of racial
extinction, biologists managed to stabilize the population by 16393 at the dangerously low
level of 45,000 individuals.

Within a few centuries, the little bits of technology that the colonists had managed to
salvage from their ships had run down or disintegrated. The colony quickly reverted to a
wood-and-bone-tool Neolithic level. By 17650 (about 10,000 BC Terrestrial Standard)
the gene pool that today's Star Nomads evolved from had been mostly cleansed and
stabilized, and the population began to increase. Because of the hard times during the war
with the Imperium and the Great Exodus, when the live birth of a healthy child was a
miracle, the children of the Star Nomads have continued even to this day to be "spoiled
rotten" by their parents.

Finally, The Star Nomads regained civilization and eventually an industrial and
technological society about 2,000 years ago.

At this point the record switches from being based upon myth and legend to one supported
by the systematic records of history.

In 1422 AD (Terrestrial Standard) Nomad scientists discovered that the star they had
originally settled around was near the end of its stellar life and threatening to explode into
a nova, thus scouring life from the surface of their planet. In a vast program of research
and development, the Nomads managed to create a stardrive with which to evacuate their
race. The problem was that this drive created a very precise wormhole, from an exact
point A to point B.

By coincidence Sol (Terran Home System) was selected as the Nomads new home. The
Nomad escape fleet, with 3.5 billion inhabitants crammed into eighteen huge colony ships,
arrived in the Sol system in 2005 AD to find it already occupied.

Diplomatic contact was made with the Terrans and peaceful relations established, with the
Nomads eventually establishing their colony in the Sol Asteroid Belt.

* * *

Appendix 3

THE PRESERVERS AND HUMANITY For centuries, ever since man has started his
exploration of the galaxy, one mystery has stood out above all the other unanswered
questions of life in the galaxy. Why are there so many totally human and humanoid races in
the galaxy today?

In this context the term "Human" refers to any species that can successfully inter-breed
with the human race of Terra. Thus the Klingons are human and the Vulcans are humanoid,
because no special preparations either biochemical or mental have to be made for a
Human/Klingon pair to breed; while vast technological support is required for the creation
of a viable offspring from a Human/Vulcan or Human/Romulan mating.

Although the overall humanoid "shape" could be attributed to some vast galactic
morphogenetic field (and indeed there is some indication of the existence of this field) such
an explanation cannot be invoked to explain the so-called "genetic mystery" which links
such divergent races as the Terrans, Klingons, Correllians, Nomads, and Taurens. These
races apparently "born" on worlds scattered across half the galaxy are all genetically
identical.

In the mid 22nd Century, a Vulcan scholar, M'brien, advanced the theory, supported by
hundreds of archeological finds on dozens of worlds, that there existed at one time (circa
six to seven million years ago) a super-advanced race who toured the galaxy and "seeded"
the human race in several places.

They are called the Preservers because, in several cases, they carried out vast stellar
engineering projects requiring the administration of astronomical quantities of energy.
The only reason for most of these vast projects was the health and well-being of a human
"colony" on the world so affected.

Little is known of the Preservers, except that they had god-like powers of creation and
destruction, and that they DID pass this way some seven million years ago.

* * *

Appendix 4

THE THIRD INTERSYSTEM WAR Although the Clone Wars officially ended in 2354,
the Terran Psychology Service continued to maintain a heightened state of alert, and this,
coupled with the Federation-wide paranoia generated by the Spectral invasion, contributed
to the bloody Third Intersystem War fought between 2361 and 2369. This war was a
power struggle within the Terran Empire for the Throne.

The Assassination of Jasilonis XI by agents of the Corporate Sector Authority was the
primary trigger causing the Empire to fragment into several power blocs. By far the two
largest of these blocs were led by Gar Landry of Terra, the old Emperor's Prime Minister,
and Tokerarat Bulgannian, self-styled King of Perseus. In the opening days of conflict,
both sides ruthlessly used their power and influence to weld together coalitions from the
other lesser power blocs. Gar Landry was eventually declared Imperator by the Imperial
Senate on stardate 6012.24, and the Star Fleet and Army immediately swore their
allegiance to the new Emperor. Bulgannian's group immediately declared themselves in
rebellion against the illegally crowned Imperator and quickly crowned Tokerarat
Imperator instead. The Rebels quickly withdrew, seizing the New Titan Warp Gate as they
left, declaring it to be "Imperial property" of the King of Perseus, one of Bulgannian's
titles.

The new government petitioned the United Federation of Planets for recognition as the
rightful owner of Terra's influential seats in the Federation's Grand Assembly of Sentience
and the powerful Security Council. The debate was fast and heated, with several of Terra's
rivals seeing this as a way of bringing the haughty Terrans down a peg or two. In the end
however the Assembly voted 563 to 70 against recognition of the rebel government and
633 to 0 against seating the Rebels on the Security Council.

Bulgannian scored his biggest victory of the war in 2361, when the Corporate Sector
Authority, with its own indigenous military arm, decided to join with the rebels in hopes
of strengthening their power over the political rulers of the human race.

Within a month of that, Galron, the aging Klingon Emperor and First Secretary of the
Council of Peers, decided that Gar Landry was the most likely to win in any Terran version
of the Komerex Zha. Although they stopped short of actually taking sides, preferring to
hedge their bets with official "neutrality" (a relatively new concept to the Klingon
people), the government of the Komerex Klingon did not forbid its citizens from seeking
glory in the conflict.

For nearly six years the war was fought, mostly between Star Fleet and the Corporate
Sector Authority, aided by the latter's mercenary troops. Although the fighting was long,
hard, and bloody, neither side could win a decisive victory.

The battle of Corridon III in the Draconis Delta star system was the last major naval
engagement of the war and was also the only decisive space battle fought during the war.
Star Fleet won a resounding victory by luring most of Bulgannian's strategic reserves into
battle and then springing an ambush, backed by both Klingon and H'Rumbian mercenary
vessels. The battle essentially broke the back of the Corporate Sector Authority and left
Bulgannian with a scattering of auxiliary police craft and older reserve cruisers.

Rebel survivors from the battle, mostly belonging to the V Battle Fleet, retreated through
the Warp Gate complex toward the Federation Outer Territories, finally emerging into the
Terran Prime Quadrant through the Arcturus Warp Gate. The Rebels paused and stopped
long enough to attack and seize the refueling depot in the 70 Ophiuchi star system on their
way to a suicide raid on the Terran Capital world itself.

Known for its agricultural productivity and the exotic terrain of the western continent
caused by the collision of a planetesimal in prehistoric times, the planet Tarsus was a
sleepy little backwater world, dependent upon its agricultural production and its strategic
location (in orbit around the gas giant Awesome) as a liquid-hydrogen propellant
manufacturing and distribution plant; it was no match for the half-crazed rebels of the
defeated V Battle Fleet, who took out their rage on the civilian population of the planet,
using the cities as target practice for its remaining cruisers and destroyers.

The Tarsan Aerospace Defense Forces did more than their share of fighting a delaying
action, keeping the rebels busy and unable to refuel until the pursuing Star Fleet
squadrons were able to catch up with them.

* * *

References

Blackburn, Richard, DEFENDERS OF THE CROWN, c2371 Imperial War College Press,
Star Fleet Academy, Mars, Sol IV.   

(Editor's note: This story , which began in the previous issue of Planet Magazine, is
excerpted from Mr. Blackburn's novel in progress. Rick Blackburn can be contacted at
PwrPack@aol.com.)

Story copyright © 1994 Rick Blackburn.

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