Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

The children let out a fearful Ooooh.

"Did they invade the Ring Empire, miss?"

"No, they didn't invade the Ring Empire. Have you forgotten? They didn't know it was there. They made their wormhole go in a very different direction. You see, worm-holes are formed from a distortion of space-time. We use ours to create a tunnel through space so we can fly to the stars. The Mordiff traveled in time. Because the Ulodan Nebula denied them a vision of space, time was all they knew. The overlord ordered a single giant wormhole terminus to be built, standing at the center of his nation. It was the greatest device the Mordiff had ever constructed, for not only did the terminus generate the wormhole, its own structure was self-sustaining. As long as it had power, it would never decay or fail. And it got its power from the way it distorted space-time. In other words, it was eternal, almost like perpetual motion."

"My daddy says that's impossible," Melanie said with haughty self-confidence. "He says only fools believe in it"

"It is impossible," Denise said. "But that's the best way to describe how the Mordiff's terminus worked."

Edmund sneered at the girl, then turned to Denise. "Why did the overlord build it, miss?"

"Ah. Well, that's where the terror and the tragedy of the Mordiff begins. When it was finished, the overlord ordered an exodus of his whole nation. An armada of flying craft carried them all into the terminus, millions and millions of Mordiff. And when they were all safe inside, the overlord's personal guards set off the most terrible weapons the nation possessed. All of them, all at once. They were so bad, and so powerful, that they killed every living thing on the whole planet, and turned all the cities to rubble, even those of the overlord's nation."

The children stared at her, awed and troubled.

"Every Mordiff nation had the same awful doomsday weapons; some spread deadly diseases while some simply exploded hard enough to open up cracks into the magma below the continents," Denise said. "The overlord knew it would just be a matter of time until somebody used them. By then, each of the nations was so desperate for new land and resources that not using the doomsday bombs would mean they'd collapse from within.

"So now the overlord's nation was inside the wormhole, traveling further and further into the future, away from the time of the planet's death. Some of them, a scouting party, emerged a hundred thousand years later, flying out of the terminus—which had survived the explosions and radiation, of course. To the scouting party it was only minutes since they'd entered the wormhole, but as soon as they came out they found a sterile planet, with the ruins of the megacities crumbling into dust. By then, the radiation had decayed, and the plagues had died away. These Mordiff scouts dumped bacteria and algae over the surface and flew back into the terminus. Then they came out another thousand years later, when the bacteria had spread everywhere, bringing the soil back to life. This time they scattered seeds before they went back into the terminus. The third time they emerged, they left breeding pairs of animals and fish. A thousand years after that, the world had returned to the state it was in before their Industrial Age, with huge grassy plains and forests and jungles. That's when the whole of the overlord's nation came out of the wormhole. They'd only been flying inside the worm-hole for a couple of hours, while outside a hundred and twenty thousand years had rushed past.

"They looked around at this beautiful, clean new world, and they rejoiced and thanked the overlord for delivering them to this wonderful place. Many of them forgot the crime that had been done to give them this chance at a fresh life and settled down to rebuild their original society. So once more they mined the land for metals and minerals, and their cities began to grow again, always expanding over the wilderness. After a few generations, some of the Mordiff forgot the debt they owed to the overlord family, which still ruled the original nation, and began to break away and form new nations of their own. Two and a half thousand years later, the planet was once again covered with cities. Once again, wars were being fought. So, the overlord of that time did what his ancestor had done. He gathered his nation into flying craft and sent them through the terminus. Behind them, the doomsday weapons exploded yet again.

"This wretched cycle turned another three times. Whenever the world grew too crowded to support the billions of Mordiff who filled the cities, the overlord's nation would escape through time and kill everyone left behind. But after the last time they fled into the terminus, the scouts came out a hundred thousand years later to find something unexpected had happened. Their sun had changed. When they looked at it, they could see dark sunspots swelling and bursting all across its surface. It was reaching the end of its main cycle and growing colder. Of course, as they'd never seen the other stars in the galaxy, they didn't know what was happening. They never knew that stars change and die; they'd assumed that their little universe was static and eternal. The physicists among them began to speculate and produce theories at once, and they probably worked out what was happening, because they were smart, don't forget But knowing what's happening and being able to do anything are very different things.

"So the scout group took measurements and recordings of how cold the air was becoming, and how frigid the land had turned, and went back into the wormhole to report to the overlord. At first, he didn't want to believe what they told him, but, eventually, he came out and witnessed the star's winter for himself. By now, the ground and ruins were covered in a thick layer of frost, which glittered in the dimming sunlight, and the seas were frozen solid. For a long time the overlord raged against what he thought of as supreme injustice before he regained his senses. Scouts were dispatched far into the future: two hundred thousand years, five hundred thousand, a million, two million, even ten million. They all came back with worsening reports of how the sun grew colder and colder, swelling into a huge red monster that covered a fifth of the sky. At no time did it ever show signs of returning to its original state."

"Can stars do that?" Melanie asked quietly. "Get better, I mean?"

"No, dear, they can't. Not by themselves. There are stories that some kingdoms in the Ring Empire tinkered with the interior of stars when the Empire was at the height of its powers, but they're only stories. And for all their knowledge and technology, the Mordiff were never as strong and wise as the Ring Empire. So the overlord had no choice, he had to order his people out of the wormhole as soon as the effect of the doomsday weapons had faded away, and while the sun still had some warmth. In that respect, he was a good leader, doing the best he could. He ordered that the new cities were to be built under protective domes. Their technology, he said, was enough to turn back the tide of night. Which, in truth, it was. They could still live on their planet, protected from the cold under skies of crystal. Fusion power would provide them with all the light and heat they could ever want. But these enclaves were harder to build, and took even more resources to maintain. It was a difficult life, and by now, the Mordiff had evolved for war and conquest. They knew nothing else. After so many generations devoted to endless conflict the outcome was inevitable. Once their population began to expand again, the ordeals and depravation hit them harder than ever before. The domed cities fought each other. It was insane, because they were so much more fragile than the open cities of old. And this time there was nowhere to flee if anyone let off the doomsday weapons. The only thing in their future now was cold and darkness.