Mankind Chooses the Stars

In this casement, the Skydark was averted and mankind actually managed to make it to the stars and beyond.

Kane is the captain of a Ranger ship called the 'Sabre'.  Cotta, Domi, Grant, and the other exiles, including Beth Li Rouche are all with him, part of his crew.  His full name is James Tiberius Kane, and he had been part of the Sol 9 Commonwealth Space Rangers corp. for the past nineteen years of his life. Unlike the other casements where his dopplegangers had fought him, this one stood aside and wasn't unfriendly. In fact, it prompted him on telling him what to do and when. 

Also, in this casement, Salvo wasn't a bitter, hated enemy, but instead he is an actual friend and a brother to Kane.

The reason this particular casement's Kane was so easy to take over is because of the guilt he felt over the deaths that he was responsible for. All those he lost over the years, and the guilt he felt towards ruining Grant's life. He felt guilt over Fand, who let him go for the Sabre instead of staying beside him. This casement's Kane was soul weary.  Despite the fact that he was a great man.

In this casement, he had a brief romantic affair with Beth Li, but it was over-ridden by his relationship with Fand. And Beth Li had a man, and would be leaving the corps after her two year term was complete.

His ship, the Sabre, was a Rapier class ship, that had been in service for fifty years and should have been decommissioned a decade before.

The main base for the Commonwealth Rangers is based on Parallax Red.  The commonwealth has other bases scattered among the solar system, most notably a base on the moon.

The Ranger Corps was not attached to the Commonwealths military arm. During the early generations of solar exploration and colonization, the corps had been at the forefront, protecting new settlements and intervening in disputes. The rangers had broad magisterial powers, and could enforce laws and delve out justice where it was required.

Once the four colonial councils was brought into play, who all had their own private security networks, the Ranger Corps had been re-organized into a token peace-keeping force.

The commonwealth maintained a fleet of thirty ships, only half of what it had been when Kane first joined the Rangers. 

The technology is very advanced in this universe.  The ships are capable of achieving the speed of light but are prevented from doing so because of the effect it has on time. A ship, in this TAU effect could see only a handful of minutes pass for the ship and crew, while in the normal space, years could have passed.  

The ships are also built around powerful computers, reducing the number of crew that are actually needed. The commonwealth believes it is far better and more economical to research and construct better ships than it is to spend the money and hours on training highly specialized crew for different tasks. 

Weapons are energy based, such as Particle Based Lasers that are standard ship weapons.  The solar system is ringed with Defense satellites that fire more powerful Neutron weapons and have old fashioned nuclear missiles and bombs.  

The 'enemy' in this casement is the Directorate.

The nuclear holocaust of Jan 20th, 2001 had been narrowly averted. On that day, due to the events that had lead up to the near holocaust, the world had become united. Within a decade, the Sol 9 commonwealth was born.

As in the other casements, the Archons had conspired for thousands of years, and the events that took place in WW2, lead up to the near holocaust.  With the defeat of the Nazi's, the Archons 'allied' themselves with the states. They gave the American government and military the technology and the means to research more, all which fell under the guise of the Totality concept. This was considered 'Above Top Secret'  Only a handful of very high ranking politicians, Military officers and so forth were privy to this information. In fact, only two of the Presidents had any knowledge. They were Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his successor, John F. Kennedy. 

Eisenhower learned of the Archons shortly after an accident in the sands of New Mexico in the late 1940's. It was then he had been briefed on the Totality concept and the Archon Directive. He didn't like what he had discovered and tried to warn the American People in his farewell speech, but he employed the euphemism of the military-industrial complex.  He told Kennedy about what he learned, and the young president was enthralled by totality concepts subdivisions, he was less impressed when he was briefed on the pact that had been struck between the Archon directive and a small cabal of politicians, military men and corporations. He had also been deeply shocked when he learned that the Archon Directive had performed genetic experiments with earth's life forms, thousands of years before human history had begun.

Kennedy never met any of the Archons, only their representative, Col. C.W. Thrush. Through Thrush, Kennedy learned that the totality concept and it's many related researches constituted the most ambitious and secret scientific project in recorded history. The Archons provided the crucial technology to translate and meld quantum and hyperdimensional physics with relativistic physics. 

The aim of the Archon Directive, and it's involvement in the Totality concept, was to unify humanity. It was a goal that Kennedy couldn't argue with.  The answer he got from them regarding their allying themselves with the third Reich was less than satisfactory to him. He was told that backing out of the pact with the Archons was not an option.

He was told by Thrush that the doomsday clock was set for twelve noon, January 20th, 2001.  On that day, humanity would be united.

Kennedy didn't like being told this, especially by a sinister figure like Thrush. He refused to agree to the code of silence that his two predecessors did.  He had been only allowed a glimpse of the totality concept projects and realized that the only way he could see more is to expose it to the public.

When an assassination attempted at the end of his first term failed, he redoubled his efforts to expose the pact and the Archons. When he was re-elected, he found an informant willing to go on the record with everything he knew. Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, former head of the CIA and a patriot of the old school.  He was villified by the press but stuck to his story about alien bodies being discovered in Roswell, NM, and the agreement with the Archon Directive and a group of ambitious men. But he lacked proof and despite his credentials, his tale was delegated to the ranks of the lunatic fringe.

Fortunatly, several people who weilded power in the right places believed him, especially after he was contacted privately by a representative of a secret principality.

Kenndy wasn't so easily deterred.  Near the end of his second term in office, he saw to the establishment of a small, ultrasecret watchdog group codeanmed Cerberus. It wasn't an organization in the classical sense, since officially it did not, and could not, exist. Its sole function was to defend and preserve the spirit of the constitution by violating the substance of it.

Through sympathetic members of congress, Kennedy was able to arrange the channeling of funds to Cerberus, to keep it operating under the deepest cover through the administrations of his successors.

Cerberus had no bylaws, no operation manuals, no articles of procedure.  It had only one philosophy.  We won't let you get away with it.

During the decades leading up to the holocaust, the Cerberus watched, investigated, and learned what they could about the countdown.

On the fateful day, a Russian member of the Cerberus group  named Felix, managed to shut down the weapon set to detonate, with only 10 seconds to spare.  When general P.X. "Frag" Frederickson prepared to push the buttons that would launch a nuclear counterstrike for an attack that had not happened, a member of his personal staff, Major Llewllyen Kane, shot him through the back of the head.

This man, Kane's great, great, great grandfather had been a mole implaced by by Cerberus years before. Across the sea, in Russia, Kane's opposite, Colonel Piotr Sverdlovosk, took similar actions.

In military bases all over the world, Cerberus moles took the actions necessary to prevent world war 3. They moved swiftly and without hesitation, and within fifteen minutes time, they averted the holocaust.

The secret war, one where the battlefield was most likely a locked conference room in the pentagon, as a mined beach, had begun. That war had been waged for the past 198 years time.

In the near two hundred years since these events, the outer planets have been colonized.  Because of the conditions found on most planets, they had a physical effect on the inhabitants. The colonists from Venus tended to be slight of stature, and were albino.  Those from Mars were heavy set and powerfully built.

Corporations in this timeline are rare enough to be almost non-existent. One exception is the Nippon Interplanetary. Founded in the mid twentieth century as Nippon Multinational, the corporation had amassed a mindblowing fortune dueto it's breath-through in aerospace technology. It was also the first privately owned company to construct a permanent outpost on Luna. Earth had relied very heavily on this corporation during the first few decades of the twenty first century.

Unlike most corporations that were absorbed into the united commonwealth of Earth States, which later became the Sol 9 commonwealth, Nippon Interplanetary had remained independent. As such, the corporation and it's Martian colony were a sovereign state. Almost all the people who live on, or emigrated to Mars were employees, as well as colonists. 

The Ranger Corps had engaged with the Tigers of Heaven over matters of jurisdiction more than a couple of times. The Tigers of Heaven was the military arm of the Nippon Corporation. 

Khotan Khan is the name of a group of people who were not inasmuch a colony, but a way of life. He was a seventh generation Scion of a family enterprise that mined the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. He served as it's spiritual head, and it's ambassador and governor. 

His people were known as Rock Hoppers, which to the asteroid miners was considered a derogatory term, an ethnic slur. Nearly two thousand of them lived in an old Russian space station, the Shokastivich's Anvil. Originally, the station was only a kilometer in Diameter, but due to changes and additions made over the decades, it was almost five now. The station was now called Amicus, which was Latin for Friend. It was built out of tiers of the hulks of ancient space ships, cargo containers, and shuttles, all connected by humongous lengths of rusty pipe. The entire base was unappealing to look at but contained a huge hydroponics farm and an exceptionally efficient ore and mineral processing plant.

The Mercury colony was built mainly underground, due to its close proximity to the sun. Because of the conditions, the colonists had deeply tanned flesh, to the point of almost being black, and their body hair was bleached white. All had permanent retinal damage and had to wear dark goggles. The colonists lived in hundreds of cliff-locked, subterranean pockets, like a stone honeycomb.

Like the asteroid belt, the Mercury colony was a treasure-trove of minerals and ores. The colony was under exclusive contract to the Nippon Interplanetary to supply the raw materials for the corporations power generating plants. Few colonists were born on the planet. Colonists came to get their fortune, then left while they had a few years left to enjoy their wealth.  Perversely, Mercury was the wealthiest of the colonies, but poverty stricken. Cash rich but personnel poor.

Since the failure of the Directorate to initiate the holocaust, it has been the main enemy of the Commonwealth. That had also been the last act of known hostility between the two groups. Simply thwarting their plan was only the first step in driving them off the planet while keeping the technology that they had gained, and using it against the Directorate. 

On this casement, the scientists had discovered by studying the ancient texts they had, that the Archons were not truly aliens, but had inhabited the earth long before humanity.  In fact they learned that humanity may have been instrumental in the evolution of humanity. They also found that the Archons were not the only non human race to have occupied earth. Around five hundred to three hundred BC Ireland had been occupied by the mythical  Tuatha De Danaan.

The Danaan had also warred with the root race of the Archons after finding them philosophically uncongenial. The conflict extended into the solar system, forever immortalized in legend as the war in heaven. The war ended when both the Danaan and the root race for the Archons agreed to leave the planet. 

Saint Patrick acted as a Mediator between the warring races. He erected the Priory of Awen. Initially it was the task of the Priory to protect humanity from the knowledge of the Pact with the Archon root race and the Danaan. Both races agreed to create a hybrid species. From this joining sprang the Archons. 

The Danaan didn't stop there. They also mated with humans, creating yet another hybrid species. These people became central to the Priory's mission. Kennedy, in fact, met with the representative of the Priory, Mother Fand.

Years after the historic meeting, Mother Fand's daughter acted as Earths representative, negotiated the treaty with the Directorate. When the planned Armageddon failed, Col. Thrush had fled to parts unknown to join his masters. The diplomats hadn't wanted to deal with him, viewing him as a traitor. But the Directorate had insisted on him acting as their envoy, citing his familiarity with Earth social structure.

Earth used the Priory of Awen (as stated above) to provide a representative. When Thrush protested, the priory cited the Danaan familiarity with the Archons tendency to find loopholes in every agreement.

There hadn't been a bargaining table, only a small room equipped with a two way video channel. The terms were very simple.  No more interference in human development, and a hands off policy regarding earth. In return, Earth would allow the Directorate to maintain a small base on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. The issue of the Directorate laying claim to Earth was never touched upon. 

Once the commonwealth had been formed, everyone involved in the day to day political routine had been briefed on the pact struck by the Archons and Humanity. After so many years, it was something accepted as a given but to which was devoted no real thought, due to Europa's distance.

All the suppressed Totality concept projects had been brought out into the open.  Within thirty years bioengineering health facilities, short range mat trans gateways, orbiting habitats and so forth. The trouble with the technology is that it had spread too far and too fast. Apologists for the Archon Directorate argued that it should have had another century to expand so greatly, and that the technology had been suppressed for a good reason.

Two centuries later, a huge base was spreading across the moon and Mars was now three fifths  terraformed.  The apologists were still arguing about it. What mattered was the expected slow, gradual expansion became a human explosion across the solar system and had even spread into deep space exploration.

Oddly enough, one aspect of the totality concept that hadn't been expand upon was the Quantom Interphase Mat Trans inducer. These units had at one time been viewed as the key to humanity exploring space.

It was clear that the gateways were an integral part of Archon technology. Ships equipped with the mat trans units met with disappointing results. There had been disastrous failures with ships forever getting lost in the quantum stream. 

Research instead turned to geon packets that could reach speeds up to a quarter light speed. This greatly reduced the time it took to travel throughout the solar system.

The commonwealth expanded, concentrating on building. The four colonies were established (see above) and each had their own governor, who ended up envying the other had. Of course all four colonies paid a lip service homage to the commonwealth, all of them wanted independence and more power. 

They knew what the Archon Directive could offer them, but none had, to anyone's knowledge, contacted the Directorate. With the new hostilities by the Directorate, it appears that they are ready to take back what they lost.  This time, with ships equipped with gateway units. 

Thrush appeared and made it quite clear that they were going to be coming to reclaim the planet. The attack on the shipyard was just one of two demonstrations.  Salvo reveals that there has never been any evidence that the Archons had retreated to Europa after all. They found out only recently because no one was willing to take the risk of violating the treaty by sending probes too close to the moon. 

Thrush brought his intradimensional fortress into this particular casement. Once Kane and the others with him are captured after they jump to the Sirius system, Thrush shows him the plans he has for this particular casement. It shows a ruined world where the Annunaki roamed freely. They were leading hybrid children, who were to become the new masters of the world.

They learn directly from Thrush what the stones are and more on the man himself, if he can be called a man. They also learned what Thrush really was. 

In reality, bringing back the Archons was nothing more than a trap, a ruse. It was his plan to play the commonwealth against the colonies and visa versa, so that all out war would break out. Human would spill human blood. Its not the commonwealth itself, but what it represents that he wants to destroy. It represents a program of unification that was created by humanity for humanity, through co-operation and mutual self interest, not through coercion and terrorism. None of Thrush's machinations worked here. His conspiracies were defeated by other conspiracies.

The fight is exceptionally difficult, but with the help of the Tigers of Heaven, and Fand, they are able to defeat Thrush and end the Archon threat in this casement, and it appears, all other casements, for the rest of time.

Kane desperatly wanted to stay in this casement, but his Brigid is able to convince him to come back with her to their home casement, where they can still do good and help humanity dig their way out of the slagheap, and hopefully one day, gain the stars.

Created on 02/20/01