Arc of Arrivals

  Chapter 1:

  Eden

  1.1 – Caius

  30th December U.S.Y. 2939.

  Parvus Command Bridge.

  4 hours before the start of operation Eden.

  “We discovered it by chance.

  While observing a sector of the Perseus Arm emerging from the Zone of Avoidance, a blue world appeared.

  The fifth planet of a single star system comprising eleven. We began observation, and the more we observed, the more it resembled Earth.

  It has water, a large continent — breathable air. It is slightly larger, with oceans far vaster than ours.

  But one thing is certain: it is suitable for human life.

  We called it Agua.

  And with it, hope was born — a new Eden was born.”

  The recording had looped almost without interruption since the last drills ended.

  A waste of electricity, Caius judged in his mind.

  If officers required motivation at this point, then they were not soldiers.

  While the voice droned through the overhead speakers, Caius advanced along the corridor linking the elevator shaft to the bridge.

  “Welcome, Admiral Cornelius Caius,” announced Scipio’s voice — calm and warmthless.

  The doors parted with a pneumatic hiss.

  “Admiral on deck!”

  “Sol Invictus!”

  The bridge erupted into motion — officers rose in salute from the tiers above as he stepped out from the entrance built beneath their seats and advanced toward the command dais.

  The Parvus’ command bridge resembled an arena.

  Built in a semi-circular design, it descended in six progressively shorter tiers, each ringed with officers’ consoles. Six stairways fanned outward like the spokes of a wheel — an audience encircling not a stage, but the one who commanded the warship.

  At the far end stood the command platform: two concentric circles forming a raised deck. The inner circle, three meters in radius, sat one step higher, beneath it the sealed compartment housing the captain’s chair — locked away under a thick metal hatch, emerging only when required.

  Caius reached the center, turning to face the panoramic viewport spanning the front of the bridge.

  Saturn loomed closer now, its fractured rings so near his eyes could distinguish individual fragments of debris.

  As silence returned to the bridge, he began reviewing the operational sequence for Eden.

  The three vessels assigned to the mission — Mater Patriae, Parvus, and Tabula Picta — would queue in that order, aligning along Saturn’s rotation axis. Maintaining adequate distance to avoid the planet’s gravity well was critical.

  Once formation was secured, the wormhole ignition sequence would begin. Blazar charges, buried close to Saturn’s core, would detonate in a programmed cascade. The collapse of the core would trigger an implosion strong enough to rupture the fabric of space — opening a passage to Agua.

  Caius’s gaze drifted below the viewport to the myriad satellites arrayed in orbit — the Urizen System.

  Its task was to stabilize the antimatter burst following the wormhole’s creation, keeping the event horizon coherent just long enough for the fleet to pass through without annihilation.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Admiral Cornelius Caius understood little of the science behind it — and cared even less.

  The wormhole was the engine. Saturn was the fuel.

  That sufficed.

  And he doubted even the architects of Eden fully grasped what they had built.

  Most of the calculations had been performed by Delphi, the most advanced AI ever conceived by humankind.

  Yet, for the task, even Delphi required reinforcement — countless other quantum machines linked in what the Science Bureau called the Synapsys.

  The energy draw of a small star, all to feed the equations. And still, Eden had taken decades to model.

  Agua had been discovered only a few years after the War’s end. The Bureau had been waiting for this day longer than it would ever admit.

  But despite the endless propaganda echoing through every speaker, Caius’s presence aboard the Parvus proved the Bureau’s lack of confidence. He had not been chosen for his appetite for battle — regrettably — but for his commanding skills.

  Each ship’s AI was linked into the Synapsys network: Scipio for the Parvus, Egeria for the Tabula Picta, Minerva for the Mater Patriae. The system had been synchronizing trajectories and timing corrections for weeks.

  If the machines faltered, Caius’s instincts would act.

  The wormhole would remain open for no longer than twenty seconds — with an optimal traversal window of barely seven. He was there to ensure, manually, if necessary, that the Parvus entered within that sliver of time.

  Failure meant consequences — of what kind he couldn’t predict, but surely severe ones.

  There was one unspoken concern left hanging over the operation: the entire plan was theoretical.

  —This had never been done before.

  No one could state with certainty what occurred inside a wormhole, only make conjectures.

  Some claimed that time would cease for those within it — the time the journey took wouldn’t be perceived by the passengers.

  They would simply cease to exist — then start again on the other side.

  Even two days before launch, that doctor, Aldermann, had stood aboard the Parvus during inspection, pretending comprehension when Caius pressed him for clarity.

  They had met before. Aldermann had once been among the leading scientists of the H.O.Pe. project — just like his father. But Caius did not recall that eagerness in his eyes. He hoped it was confidence — and that the confidence had solid foundations.

  But one certainty remained: If there were three ships, casualties were already accounted for.

  Caius had long since aligned himself with machine reasoning. It was efficient.

  And he knew Delphi well — knew precisely what it was capable of.

  That omniscient construct had directed the Moon’s strategic defense under his command during the War. Even he had stood in awe of its coldness.

  To Delphi, humans, ships, missiles — all were but matter to be bent, repurposed, or discarded by logic alone.

  And the whispers in UN.SY. corridors told another story still: it had been Delphi itself that proposed — and planned — the crash of Phobos.

  It wasn’t cruelty. It was calculus.

  And the War would not have been won otherwise.

  A faint smirk touched his lips. The irony was almost beautiful.

  Humanity had birthed war — but war had evolved beyond its creators’ control.

  The Martians hadn’t fallen for lack of technology.

  At the height of the War, the Fourth Planet Republic had possessed sharper minds, stronger industry, and machines superior to anything Earth could field. Their fleets were faster. Their logistics cleaner. Their engineers brilliant.

  They lost because they refused to let war stop being human.

  They would not cross the final line — allow machines to think like machines instead of men.

  They refused to produce Alter-humans.

  Not because they couldn’t — but because they chose not to.

  Even their military AIs were different.

  They were thought empathy routines. Ethical governance. Altered with decision dampeners meant to preserve human judgment in moments where hesitation meant defeat.

  Taught foolishness, Caius thought.

  But Eden was not the offspring of the FPR’s restraint — it was Delphi’s design.

  The projected aftermath of Saturn’s destruction remained classified — even he was denied access. But the presence of the Mater Patriae, with the System Leader aboard, spoke more clearly than any report.

  Delphi had likely concluded that the collapse of the Solar System was an acceptable sacrifice to achieve the desired result.

  Even the deployment of three ships was nothing but a failsafe.

  One might suffice. Enough to preserve the species.

  That was the meaning of Eden.

  If one sought a new beginning, he had to be willing to wipe the board clean.

  His train of thought broke as Scipio’s voice filled the bridge: “Warning. Gravitational fluctuation imminent. Commencing artificial-gravity adjustment.”

  The Parvus entered Saturn’s orbit.

  Caius summoned a holo-screen from his omni-com and began reviewing Scipio’s latest navigation updates.

  Soft groans of discomfort rippled across the bridge.

  The delay between the artificial-gravity correction and the ship’s orbital alignment had caused a brief pressure spike — half a G, by his estimate.

  Barely a breath to him, but enough to make trained officers flinch.

  Gravitational distortions far worse than this had been routine during high-speed assault maneuvers. The difference was that back then, even ordinary humans didn’t falter.

  “They’re not ready,” he muttered, glancing back at the crew.

  Several had already slouched in quiet relief as gravity stabilized.

  He returned to the data.

  The work of the Synapsys could be described with a single word: perfection. No drift, no variance, no propagation error. Trajectories computed down to the billionth of a second.

  He had studied navigation data countless times, but never like this.

  Have the machines finally cracked open even the skull of nature? He wondered.

  After Aldermann’s visit to Scipio’s core, the patterns had grown even cleaner.

  Not even the brightest mind in the Solar System could now distinguish truth from error within those figures.

  “It seems we’ve chosen to trust you and your peers blindly, Scipio,” Caius said, mostly to himself.

  As if in response, the machine’s voice resonated through the deck:

  “Admiral Cornelius Caius. Your guests are entering the bridge.”