Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 50

That story repeated on every planet they visited for the next couple of weeks. The invention of the hyperspace gates had indeed seen a significant spike in resorts and other entertainment attractions. The hyperspace gates had also been a boon to the residents of the planets as well; for centuries they had been so remote and disconnected that it had been prohibitive to visit other planets.

All the 'old' planets, were a lot like Earth, where the sole civilized species was human, the exceptions to that were Olympia, which had many human settlements, but also had a race of flying centaurs and a race of avians or bird people. The other exception was Tauron, which was the sataur home planet. The species Gyges and Athena were, most or less, satyr/minotaur type people. There were a few human settlements on Tauron, but the primary species was sataur.

Before the gates, these planets were all merely a few days away from each other by light drive. Then past Arias it was over two weeks to reach Atlanterra and nearly a month to reach a planet like Neptune. Although Earth would now be the next closest Federation neighbour, but it still would've been just over a week by light drive. The hyperspace gates had given all Federation citizens a sense of freedom they simply hadn't had before.

Mark also learned that the Prince had never visited these planets and the last king had last visited them nearly two centuries ago. The track record of previous royals being what it was. None of the planets held a grudge against the Federation. They took care of themselves and chalked it up to their remoteness; they still had regular transports, communications, security and everything else that other Federated planets got.

After the announcement of the hyperspace gates, there had also been a tremendous increase in travel and immigration from other residents on Earth. It was now easy to visit another planet, and emigration from Earth to the Federation was exponentially increasing, which was probably what was fuelling the growing number of Pro-Federation political parties.

The mere presence of the Atlantean Federation was changing life on Earth. Overpopulation was still an issue, but there were millions of people emigrating to other Federated worlds. Thulark, Neptune, Atlanterra and Geminus were the most popular destinations, with Atria and Savann being the least popular, but people were moving to every planet in the Federation.

Mark hadn't really been paying attention to most Earth news, but surely the other countries of the world had given up trying to colonize Mars or their feeble attempts at commercial space travel. It didn't make economic sense to spend millions or billions of taxpayer dollars to build something you could get a much nicer version of from a neighbour for a fraction of the cost.

***

By the time they completed the tour, the Sentinel had arrived at the Norn home world, which they now knew as Norsvund'ka. They had dropped communication beacons along the way, so there was now a live link between the Federation and the Norn, allowing Mark and Annabelle to take part in a conference call with Fleet Commander Ka'Ryll and the other Norn leaders. They were happy to have met descendants of the Mazjik, and were going to upgrade their ships to interface with the Federation communications and sensor network, in exchange for uploading all their star charts, which the Federation would use to help direct the beacon seeding ships towards planets or rift nebulae.

Once they combined the star charts from both civilizations, they were almost equal in area; the only areas that overlapped were where Earth, Atria, Savann and Magellan were. In thousands of years of exploring space, the Norn had found five rift nebulae, besides Rift 13, along with nine planets.

The Norn inhabited only their home planet. They had nine planets they checked in on, but only one of them was local. The others were scattered about, orbiting different suns, but only accessible by 'space rivers' that went between those 9 planets. Although all the planets were inhabited, four of them were sparsely populated due to harsh environments.

Surprisingly they did have space worthy vehicles for shuttling cargo or passengers between the planets, but no evidence of faster-than-light travel nor any sign of any weapons stronger than a laser. So the more technologically advanced Norn, had taken it upon themselves to be the peacekeepers for the region. They routinely monitored, but did not interfere or visit the settlements.

With the merging of the two sets of star charts, the Sentinel began manufacturing hundreds of seeding ships. Cricket had created a new program for deploying a redundant network of the sensor communication beacons. She based it on a group of 16, moving in a pattern to deploy sensor and communication beacons outward from a central point, be it a planet or a rift.

Rift 13 was the inaugural deployment of this alternative pattern. The Sentinel had manufactured 16 seeding ships and set them on their ever-expanding sphere from the rift, then deployed a construx to build a hyperspace gate. There wasn't a planet or anything near the rift, at least nothing they had detected yet, but in the future it would be available for Derek and his crew or anything else discovered out that way.

The seeding ships that were being manufactured were targeted, with each group of seeding ships directed toward each of the five rift nebulas and one for the local planet of the nine. Each of those groups would drop sensor beacons along the way, solely to expedite linking the area into the sensor communication network. Once they reached their destination, one would begin building a hyperspace gate and the others would begin expanding the sensor communication networks outward from that point.

The Norn also agreed to having a hyperspace gate built near their planet and for the Federation to set up an embassy. They also asked for the seeding ships to deploy outward from their planet, just so they had active communication and monitoring of the area around their planet. Once all the seeding ships were manufactured and deployed, the Sentinel would begin the gate construction.

Once the Norsvund'ka gate was active, the embassy construction would begin. The plan was to have an official meeting and celebration announcing the embassy and the personnel to staff would already be there.

END