Second Earth Read Online Free Page A

intrepid explorers the colony
ship Thimbron and the destroyer Lagrong . Undeterred in their quest, the
fleet continued on for another eighteen months before they came to their new
home. It was exactly as it had been described to them, and exactly as they had
dreamed it would be.
       Officially claiming the planet as Second
Earth, and after deploying a jump gate to the new world, each colony ship was
allowed to set down on a landmass of its choosing. They began erecting
settlements of their own, cultivating farmland and setting up irrigation
channels from the rich blue oceans of the planet. However, of the three cities
that had been built—Aberdeen, Mendahar, and Crystal—only Crystal City was
chosen by Sector Command for their primary staging grounds.
       Beyond the west borders of the
thirty-two-square-mile city, Sector Command established a military base which
was fully equipped with research facilities to rival that of any system in Beta
Sector. They were the first scientists to have reached that far into space, and
they took the abundant opportunities that were afforded them to further the
sciences of the entire quadrant. In 2257, it was decided that Second Earth
would form the furthest edge of the Unified Collaboration’s outer sphere of
influence, itself containing all the member worlds of the fledgling Unified
Collaboration of Systems. Peace reigned on the planet for over a hundred years
as the wealth of knowledge inside the Unified Collaboration grew immensely.
       That was until the Kafarans had come. No one
could really say why they invaded Unified space. Some said it was because we
entered theirs first, while most thought of them as nothing more than a warlike
culture with twisted concepts of right and wrong. Most agreed they were
monsters who destroyed everything and everyone in their path. When they
massacred the entire colony at Beta Five, the inhabitants of Second Earth began
to get nervous. They knew—as did everyone in the UCS—that the planet was simply
too close to Kafaran space.
       As the war raged on, and as the Kafaran war
machine inched ever closer to the planet, the city of Mendahar—on the southern
continent of Imash—was completely evacuated. The mayor had tried to convince
the remaining colonists in Aberdeen and Crystal that they would soon face death
at the hands of the Kafarans, but her words were met with only deafening
silence. After two hundred years of peaceful existence, and with the aid of
Unified Colonial Operations, Mendahar packed up every last man, woman, child,
and pet and set back out into the heavens to try and start again.
       Years later, their departure would be
remembered as providential.
       Less than six months after Mendahar was
abandoned, every living thing on Second Earth was wiped clean from the planet.
The Sector Command Fourth Fleet was immediately dispatched from Concordia, and
when they arrived three months later, it was said they were greeted with a
lifeless world, completely incapable of supporting life in any form in the
known universe. The surface was said to be littered with craters from an
orbital bombardment, the air was completely saturated with toxins, the oceans
had been boiled away, and the radiation levels were off the charts. A fleet of
Kafaran warships was located nearby, and it was understood that the Fourth
Fleet wasted little time in dispatching the justice the enemy richly deserved.
       Once the threat was over, Second Earth was
sealed off from the rest of the UCS. A series of automated defense and
communications satellites was placed in high orbit, used to transmit warning
messages to any approaching vessel and—should it become necessary—open fire on
any ship attempting to gain access to the planet.
       Not long after, the Kafarans retreated back
into their space, and the war abruptly ended.
       Now, four years after the events that had
supposedly decimated the planet, a new fleet of Sector Command ships approached
the