SHEFFALI'S CARAVAN

Prologue The Gate Network was reputed to be thousands of cycles old, and many of the races whose planets were connected to the instantaneous transportation system were equally old and established. They'd gone through their turbulent cycles and emerged wizened survivors with stable, if sometimes stagnant, civilizations. The Tik, a race of Sentient Mechanical beings, administered, maintained and operated the expansive transportation network. They ensured the Gate Network continued to support all Assembly members. The rules for admission in this community were few. There was a charter of dos and don'ts that each invited race had to agree to follow. The single most important rule was to maintain peaceful interactions with the other members of the Gate Network. Failing to do this meant expulsion from the Network, a fate most could not endure. What you did to your own citizens on your own planets was your own business. f**k with someone else? That meant trouble. The Borrelians were not a young civilization, but they'd only been part of the Assembly for close to a century, making them comparatively new. As such, they were under the scrutiny of the more senior members, who watched for any and all signs of misbehavior. While they diligently followed the Charter to the letter, behaving in a most civilized manner with the other races of the Network, the Borrelians had a dirty little secret. Genocide. The typical Borrelian lifespan was slightly over two hundred cycles, yet they reached adulthood after just twenty. That's when biological imperatives drove them to find mates and begin building families of their own. Normally war and its accompanying scourges would maintain the population levels. After the last Great War, the newly victorious Rulers implemented a new system of social order which they insisted would bring peace and prosperity for all Borrelians. Few understood its chief purpose was to give the Rulers a means to control their people. They'd found their solution for stabilizing their civilization and implemented a caste system. The populace, weary from the last war and fearing the horrors of another, desperately accepted this promise of peace. With war a thing of the past and new prosperity on the horizon, the populations on their planets began to grow again. After much debate, the Rulers agreed. Acquiring additional planets was the answer. The Borrelians had well-established space travel. Their Empire had expanded to a dozen planets spread across three planetary systems. They sent ships out into the void beyond their third and stumbled upon a fourth system with two viable worlds. They just needed to eliminate the current inhabitants. As the Borrelians had just joined the Assembly, the need to complete their acquisition of the fourth system meant their war efforts had to be accelerated but quietly. Their enemy was unknown to the Assembly, so the Rulers determined they weren't technically breaking any Assembly rules. As long as the Tik never found out about the war or their enemy, the Borrelians could quickly conclude their genocidal efforts and expand into the fourth planetary system. The caste system imposed rigid rules for which of their planets each citizen was allowed to inhabit. Even after they joined the Network, none of the population were permitted to emigrate to any planets outside their three planetary systems. The Rulers demanded absolute control over their citizens, and those off-planet could not be trusted to maintain their policies. A few privileged members weresanctioned to work amongst the worlds of the Gate Network, but even these called Borrelia home. While most Borrelians were aware of the enemy, none would speak of the terrors who struck in the night. It became a well-established fact amongst the population that even whispering their names would bring the horrifying death-bringers down upon the whisperer, their friends, and family. This silencing p********a campaign was engineered by the Borrelian Intelligence Agency for the Rulers to terrify the populace. This effectively kept the secret from the Tik. What should have been a rapid elimination of their enemy from their two worlds developed into a generational war, as the enemy still on the planets became masters of guerrilla war tactics, becoming the very thing the Borrelian Rulers whispered into their citizen's ears. The hunt for the Ush who fled in ships into space was proving fruitless, as well. The Rulers were very frustrated with their military, but with the possibility of being caught by the Tik, they wouldn't stop the war effort until they were sure they'd killed them all. To ensure the Tik remained unaware, the rulers kept any sign of their war effort away from their three Gate hosting planets. They also informed the Tik they were not permitted to visit their other worlds as this interfered with their cultural development. With Gates only on the principal planet of each system, the Borrelians no longer used space travel to move civilians between the systems. However, intra-system space travel was still heavily relied upon, as it assisted with controlling the movements of their population. The only space travel outside their systems was done by their military in their clandestine and continuing actions outside the outer borders of their third system. These military ships never docked in the orbital stations over any of the planets with Gates. The Borrelian home system included the planet of their birth, Borrelia, whose Gate was the only one linked to the Gate Network. While they recommended against this restriction, the Tik had no rule specifying that all Gates must connect to the Network, as long as at least one did. This system had two additional inhabited planets, Aeolis and Casellion. In their second planetary system, the primary planet was Gibral, which hosted a Gate restricted to point only to their primary worlds. The remaining inhabited planets in the system were Secco, Zirdel, and Weena. The final planetary system had five planets. Hessani was the primary planet, and its Gate was restricted to point to Gibral. The rest of the inhabitable planets of the system were Dozany, Tetnal, and Llevven. The fifth, Zhirra, was only used for scientific and military research stations and home for their military fleet headquarters. Living conditions there were borderline because of its distance from the local sun. Borrelians were bipedal humanoids roughly similar to another young race, the Humans, but had more redundant organs, such as dual hearts, stomachs, livers, and brains. Their internal skeleton was like a Human's, but their increased bone density and larger muscle mass gave them greater strength at the cost of agility and speed. They also had slightly elongated skulls and jaws compared to Humans. They were harder to kill and healed quicker than Humans as well. Their ability to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions gave them better flexibility for habitation.