Prologue

PROLOGUE

Deep space is a cold and foreboding place. To many people, that is an understatement of the greatest degree. Yet to the colonists intending to populate planets other than our own, it represents the greatest opportunity yet available to mankind. The fact that until Faster-Than-Light is available to space faring people makes little difference. The previous generations without Faster-Than-Light travel accepted the fact that they will not survive the journey, that in most likelihood it is a one-way travel, and that the actual colonists claiming another dust ball in space would be 20 generations removed, assuming their spacecraft would hold for a millennia, which is something they cannot assume when they first started.

Yet, colonizing the planets they do. In more than half the case, this involves terraforming the planet and atmosphere to suit our physiology. They will happily introduce oxygen on a dominantly nitrogen atmospheric based planet just so they can breathe easy, never mind the fact that the planet's dinosaur equivalent would die coughing and wheezing their way to extinction. Such is the heritage of our culture, whether it's humans, or animals, or plants, or even cell-based organism. The intruders will most likely replace indigenous life forms.
In more than one case, old pioneers are surprised to see another ship bearing their great-grandchildren passing them by. Such was the progress of technology. Such incidents have been in decline, though, as rocket engines have been replaced by space warp or hyperspace jump engine. This results in a lot more planets being colonized. As space travel becomes cheap, populations have been known to be relocated to different planets, just as interstate road has done to America. Human beings have now been accustomed to space travel as routine. The dangers of outer space travel remains, though. And after a few incidents involving a few drunks opening the airlock just to walk around "outside", the structural integrity of space ships have been fortified, and now routinely stayed aloft in orbit while a special shuttle or two ferries passengers on and off the mothership.

All is well and planets are being colonized at an incredible rate. This has the interesting effect of tangling with the native more than once, but since as yet none of the encountered planets harbor so-called "intelligent" life, defined euphemistically as life form capable of destroying the planet they are on without even trying, the colonists' life is relatively pleasant. More and more planets are becoming specialized to a culture. Of course, everybody would have farming and mining and industrial on the planet. But culture-wise, there are people who like cats who gathered on a planet. Dog people would gather on another.

One such planet was 1058-M34, known by the mother planet as "Low IQ Planet" due to their liberal educational policies. Unfortunately, when people can opt out Mathematics as required learning, most people would opt out. The few that did bothered to learn it, eventually went off planet, driven by insanity of math-less world. The rest are planet-bound, not having opportunity to go to any other planets. No one will take them.

This is not to say that they are primitive. They have the technology coming in from time to time. It's just that people aren't keen to learn mathematics when the computer does all the counting for them. Need to count sheep? Have a smartphone app scan and count them. Want to know how much to pay taxes? There's an app for that. Most people can count to twelve, and well, that's it.

So it is with this story. Spaceship HAILMARY was enroute to planet 1058-M34, carrying people who have elected not to participate in free educational systems elsewhere. It is hoped that by gathering them in like-minded population, they will thrive in their new environment. I suppose the term "space-faring hicks" would be an insult to them. It would be accurate, but it would be an insult as they do not consider themselves as such. "Fiercely independent with fair assessments of realities" would be more to their liking, although as far as accuracy goes, it ranked to landing at the wrong side of the moon.

Unknown to them, the little colony they're heading to was overrun with indigenous creatures. Having never bothered to do anything other than build a fence, manned with auto firing guns, the administration somehow forget to check the ammo supply as per maintenance schedule specification. Hence, when migrating creatures crossed the fortification, they simply walked right in. The resulting massacre went about unnoticed due to the irregular nature of their interplanetary communications.

But the spaceship HAILMARY has a good captain. He's a level headed, experienced captain who is at ease both in command, and in action. It is hoped that his visit would galvanized the population, who by this time has been decimated, and increase their productivity a little bit more. And thus begin our story.

Time 22 minutes
Word count: 819