Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Celestial Axis

Operation Celestial Axis
Location: Triangulum Messier 33 NGC 598 HO or 3 centigram 4th quadrant area 6 GA
Planet: TM-440, pseudo (Lamb)
At approximately 0400 HST or 5/10 rotation GA time scientists set an urgent message reporting the imminent destabilization of TM-440 (Lamb)'s core. Destabilization can and will result in a complete planetary breakdown resulting in the worldwide extinction of all major lifeforms including the class A sentient Homocimex Parvus henceforth known as the Tvek.

After serious deliberation, the galactic assembly has determined the loss of TM-440 would be a loss to the future galactic community. In accordance with this determination, human operations experts have been given access to a Class B model D40 planetary stabilizer and additional equipment to stabilize the planet. It has been determined that contact with the primitive species is necessary to preserve life. Human operators will be equipped with pseudo translations of current language as discovered by scientists as of this moment.

If contact comes to violence operators are expressly forbidden to use deadly force encouraged to use only defense tactics. We hope for their swift action. If the planet cannot be stabilized, operators will be ordered to leave and preserve all life that can be preserved.

***

The ground rocked again trembling and rumbling beneath them as if it would never stop. Underneath their dim, cloudy sky, the Tvek huddled in their cities, and their houses, in their groups waiting for the eminent ending.

There was nothing they could do, only an act of deity could save them now, and at this point, deity seemed further away than it had ever been. Their entire species would die out, here and now under the cloudy sky blasted into a million pieces by their unstable core. Fathers held children, mothers sang songs, and the lonely figures sat outside their dwellings waiting, and watching for the moment when everything would be over. No one went to work, no transports moved on the street, all was silent. The animals had fled to their underground dwellings. Even the Umbertrees had shed their fluff filling the air in a delicate grey haze, as if they knew what was coming. Shedding their fluff like tears.

As was its nature, a lone Tvek sat watching the sky eyes closed against the rumbling of the ground below. A rumbling that seemed to grow heavier as the night continued. Here, at the lowest city on the planet, the core was as close as it was ever going to be, and soon it would be gone.

They sky above grew even darker, as their star drifted away around the curve of the planet, and then the ground began to tremble again. The Tvek closed their eyes as stones on the surface of the planet began to rattle and then roll leaping in time with the distant roaring nose, growing closer and closer.

This was it, this was the end, they could see it before their eyes, their planet shattering into a million pieces, heating up and then boiling down.

And then the sky above burst into light. A mass flash and a hundred pinpricks of light. The Tvek leaped to their feet staring up towards the sky. A bright flare, a mass of fiery burning light, the roar of a million screams. Umbertree fluff caught fire, burst into flame and then burnt out with one great woosh leaving the sky vast, blank and dark....

Accept for the massive, alien ship held suspended in the sky upon jets of fire. There it hung, for the longest moment, suspended black against the sky thousands of feet wide and absolutely plastered in ancient, alien symbols

U.S.S. Stabby

More lights flashed above, and it seemed as if a thousand of the ships appeared from nowhere bursting into light as they broke through the atmosphere.

Screaming erupted from the surrounding city center, from the houses, from the streets. They didn't know what they were seeing, as the massive celestial ship descended from the sky ancient and alien markings painted across the side of the ship. Blotting out the sky, the ship descended from above fire roaring and catching upon remaining umbertree fluff. The Tvek stood staring up at the underside of the ship as it descended even further towards the ground. A whirring noise rose over the ships engines as the massive legs of lading gear whirred from the underside of the ship digging into the ground, casting dust up and into the air. The ship's body screeched and rattled as it settled to the ground and the engines were cut.