The Past...
The sun, the source of all conventional power for a twenty first century civilization, the giver of life to photosynthetic organisms, and the benevolant behind the scenes giver for all oxygen breathing life. The star shone it's rays onto the world known to it's inhabitants as Dreck, it warmed the seas, and cast a warm glow over the inhabitants of this unusually warm world. As thousands of people spent their weekend heading to the beaches in their internal combustion powered automobiles and, more commonly, fossil fueled steam locomotives, to frolick in the ocean, play in the sand and indulge in the recent novelty of ice cream, a board of tired, irate, and stressed government offcials and scientists gathered in the Presidium, the largest theatre in the nation of Vallistan, and the world, chosen for it's seating capacity.
This was the penultimate meeting for a series of conferences, discussion, and other diplomatic ventures which had puzzled the worlds media for the past two years, they had speculated and conjured wild stories of imminent alien invasions, a plot to conquer the globe and institute the worlds best and brightest as it's supreme leaders, and the worlds imminent destruction. Recent developments however had pointed the media's column writers to a potential source of this unprecedented act of international co-operation.
The solar systems star hugging world of Prolluck had dissapeared, amateur astronomers with their cruddy telescopes were utterly unable to identify it's usually prominent black blot on the suns image. It was gone, without a trace. The usual rumours ensued, amateurs running out theories on it being pulled from orbit, knocked into the sun by a rouge planetoid, abducted by aleins; the scientific community, however, remained startling quiet on the matter.
The Presidium had every seat taken, many more standing in the isles, in every spare corner air conditioning units blasted out ice cold air, but had little affect on the rooms overall temperature. Handkerchiefs ferverntly dabbed at sweating foreheads, and greedily downed ice cold drinks that would only stay as such for five minuts. Finally, with a series of calls to peace, the assembly came to attention.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you, all, for coming." Hendron Draku, PhD in Physics, foremost expert in astronomy, waved a hand of greeting to the assembled masses, "We all know why we are here, and I am glad to say that we have made much progress in such short time."
He stood up, stepping round his fellow seated scientists, professors, and other foremost experts in their respective fields, and approached a blackboard covered in chalk inscribed diagrams and pictures, pictures that everyone in the room had become painfully aware of over the past year. In the silence that descened across the room all that could be heard was the air conditioning units and the click of Hendron's three pointed and booted feet tapping aginst the floor.
He adjusted his white and black suit whilst simultaneously extending a telescopic pointed and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "As we all know, over the past two years global temperatures have risen, on average, by five degrees. This is an unprecedented change, unexplainable by any phenomena that is present on this world, the affect on the environment aside, it is clear that the sun is directly to blame. The suns diameter is increasing, it's current rate is unknown, but it is enough, no, has been enough to pull Prolluck from it's orbit and into the sun itself."
There was a number of disconcerted murmurs from the audience, as unnerving as the news was, they had been given enough time to let it sink in, the meetings had been carefully planned and scheduled.
"Is this a normal cycle for a sun to undergo? Is it a normal part of it's life cycle? Is it temporary? We do not know. But what we do know, is that we must protect our people, our civilization, and lives." He held for the murmur of assent to sweep through the crowds assembly of political leaders, scientists, philosophers, important public figures and corporate heads. "As such, as it was agreed upon by the last assembly, the worlds greatest engineers and scientific visionaries have conspired to design a way to allow us to escape this world and it's impending destruction. I pass you onto Head Engineer Horack Grately of the Henron-Drem Polytechnical Institute for Technology, and Professor Guatly Shaym, physics lecturer at Jemin University.
He took his seat, and Horack and Guatly took their places besides the blackboard, they spun it around, to reveal diagrams detailing, in simplest form, rockets and asteroids.
"Ladies and gentlemen." Horack announced in a deep short accentd voice, "Me and my boys have been working round the clock for the past year to follow the Prof's calculations here, as well as other contributions from other scientists out there. And it has been hard, and tough, and the margin for error has been both great, and intolerable, but we have finally completed plans for our little problem."
Booklets were handed out to the crowd, a simple summary of the plan was outlined, there room was quiet for a minute as hundreds of eyes scanned the booklet, finally, someone broke the silence.
"You want to evacuate the planet! Using explosives? Are you mad!"
The scientists and engineers gathered on the stage closed their eyes and braced themselves for the political shit storm heading their way, but the plan was out there, all that remained to be seen too was how to go about implementing it.
Sixteen Years Later...
The secret was out. But then again, so were the Dreckians.
It was an unparrelled feat, a wonder that they had accomplished it at all given that the Dreckians had still not got to grips with aircraft, still, they wouldn't have to now. Every Dreckian, all six billion of them, was afforded a panoramic view of their homeworld, from their new homes carved into the asteroids of their solar system they watched the clouds drift across continents.
The plan had been carried out with exceptional planning, rockets to tow asteroids from the planets asteroid belt had been hastily constructed, then excavation and construction teams had ben sent to carve out living quarters for the six billion citizens who would have to be evacuated from the world itself. No resource had been spared, the planet was doomed, strip mining had been taken too with unbelievable enthusiasm, botanists and biologists had been quick to surge ahead of the industrialists, taking viable collections of each species, pinning insects to boards, stuffing mammals and birds, whislt preserving amphibians and fish in tanks of formaldehyde in what would prove to be the greatest natural history mueseum. As forests were chopped up, fields pulled up to ge to needed resources, the planets former life was quietly catalogued in a dilligently misguided attempt to "preserve" the planets life.
Ultimatly, the world was converted into nothing more than a giant farm and factory, as the citizens were moved up into their new asteroid homes, and the urgency associated with their predicament lessened, for it seemed that the sun was not about to envelop them as quickly as previously beleived, buissnesses quickly took to furnishing the citizens with a bewildering array of goods and luxeries, architecture, art and foodstuffs. Seeds were preservd, extra asteroids were commisioned for more room for livestock as opposed to simply living off algae and nutrient supplements; last to was the worlds own heritage of civilization. Ancient temples and structures were dismantled and transferred to warehouses for preservation, the nations greatests buildings were also dismantled and reassembled withen the asteroids, by the time the world was empty, companies had descended upon the empty sprawling cities to simply take everything that was left.
For the original board that had implemented the plan however a glaring mistake became obvious, the rate at which their world would be rendered inhabitable was not an estimated forty years, it was now, thanks to frenetic advancements in astrological physics, four hundred. Facing a political backlash the Dreckians now all too responsible elite took it upon themselves to shuttle the asteroids out to the edge of the system where they could their own people in blissful ignorance, all the while, private rockets shutled back and forth between the world, strip mining it, bleeding it dry, cultivating animals, all in an effort to make their new homes as wildly luxerious as possible.
Of course, nothing lasts forever, and even the newly established lord and masters of their asteroid homes had a deadline for it, four hundred years untill the game was up...
Present...
Across the blackness of space, the colony world of Ardracole was submitted to a rare and brief sight, a neighbouring star's rays intensified enough to become visible at dawn and dusk, a glowing remote spectre hanging low in the sky, after several months, it faded away to nothingness. A star had died.
The memory faded, as always, but a year later, as people resumed their lives, a reminder from that distance stellar death appeared, at the edge of the system, near the remotest orbiting planets, asteroids began appearing on scanners, first one, then three, then four more, then a dozen all in a cluster, each large enough to wipe out an entire worlds ecosystem, increasing in number untill there were over four hundred rocky harbingers of death hurtling into the system, at their current velocities, they would pummel the systems inner worlds in three days.
Unknown to the inhabitants of Ardracole, after centuries of travel, the Dreckians had finally returned from the interstellar void.
