Manhattan Sector

The Manhattan Sector


“Fire!”

A loud sound is heard in the distance, a sound of a thousand gunshots from a projectile weapon, or so it sounded.

“Fire!”

A thousand more, only a few seconds later.

“Alright men, let’s go!” The firing platoon leader yelled, just over the mountain ridge to his men.

A hole was carved in the mountain beyond the river, and a flood of water came pouring through, ravaging the land and pushing any waste to the front of the flow. A new river had been formed, manmade, to help the planet form into a Terra-made planet.

Cheers were going off with the settler’s rejoice that night, they finally had a source of water and nutrition for the town. They had been dying of thirst, as they were left here, abandoned on the only planet in the Manhattan sector that had any water. They were left out to die by the enemy, and they have begun to flourish. A few days had passed, and it was midnight during the 36-hour day, when the ground shook beneath the settler’s feet.

“What was that?” a man from the construction crew yelled, waking all of the fellows in the huts.

“Is it an earth quake? Get the Doctor!”

Moments later, a crowd had grown around the only remaining telescoping station from the downed space ship, as it was no longer working. The Scientist had been long at work, and he was held up tight with the door shut. He came out on a balcony, which was a broken wing, to address the mob, holding their torches, down below.

“My fellow citizens! We are to fear, fear not our enemies or ourselves, but our land!”

The crowd began to worry, a few dropping torches and running off into the dark into no apparent direction. They only stared up at the Scientist blankly, silently, waiting for the rest of his words. His words now were the only words anyone could listen to, out of the five-thousand men and women stranded on this planet.

“In three days time, this planet will crack! We are a mere distance from the Jersey Sun, and its heat waves are deteriorating the atmosphere we have created! We must join together and repair our ships!”

The workers began immediately, forgetting their nightly 10-hour rest through the long nights, and began to do what they can to bring the systems back online, and make sure there were no holes in the ships. It was two days before the time, and with one day remaining, there was yet another tragedy to happen. Dark spots formed in the blue sky early morning on the third day, and they grew bigger, and bigger. Small red dots located in placed regions on the black specs, and they began to get familiar…

“They have returned! Get to your stations people, we’re under attack!”

The ones who have abandoned the settlers there came back to finish the job, after finding their location. Men and women were gunned down from the ships, and after troops dropped to help the massacre. The few ships that the settlers had were able to fly, but the large House Ship carrying most of the men was close to, but not yet ready.

“Protect the Alamo! We must not let her fall!” yelled one brave settler, referring to the House Ship as an ancient word.

A few of the ships that were able began to combat the APC’s dropping the troops, gunning a few down, but this became an all out war on the small planet near the Jersey sun. More earthquakes then began to shudder the planet, and small crevices formed on the surface. Thousands of settlers and thousands of enemy troops were stuck on the planet, and with the APC’s under fire, there was no hope for neither side.

“I got it! Everyone get on board!” the Scientist yelled, after placing the finally Fusion cell coil into the Collector cage.

Everyone rushed, firing what weapons they had back at the enemy, trying to get on board. Hundreds more were being shot down from being in the open, and the atmosphere began to rip and shred. Auroras in the sky formed, but devastating red colors as if they were bleeding the planet. The troops below stared in horror and stopped the firing as the settlers climbed aboard. They were going to be safe, it seemed.

The sun breached the atmosphere, burning a few of the settlers, and slowly began to exasperate them from their oxygen. Water steamed to the air, algae life began to torch and the planet’s surface rise in temperature by one-hundred degrees Celsius per second. The settler House ship began to lift off the ground, a few pads of metal being melted as it takes off, and the heat shields then kick in. Few settlers were left to burn, but just over one thousand made it aboard.

It was then when they began taking off, and leaving the atmosphere, that they saw with horror that it was not the planet, but the sun… The Jersey Sun released a wave of plasma, known as a “sun flare” came from the red-giant, and it was nearing the planet and volatile speeds. It was thousands of kilometers farther than it should have been, and this could… It could destroy the small planet.

The ship began to leave orbit, to get away from the wave as possible, but in their debris there was the planet, now devoid of life and atmosphere, while the sun wave ripped into the crust of the planet at amazing speeds, slicing it like a slice of butter, and exploding the molten core inside. Debris and plasma rocks were flying into high orbit, smacking a few burning chunks into the shell of the ship, before the planet’s nuclear core exploded, causing a massive shockwave through the system. By then the ship had been far enough to escape the blast, but there was another issue… The sun flare had kept its pace. It couldn’t have been possible…

As fast as they could fly, the settlers flew as far away as possible. They had no hyper drive, so it was nearly futile. The Flare was ripping through more planets and moons like they were a piece of bread against a knife, causing catastrophic explosions, making the gravity field hard for the ship to escape. How far would this flare go?

It could have been only a matter of time, right? No, they just noticed… It was headed right for a large gas giant, only five percent the size of the large sun, trillions of miles across. It had a very small hole in its side, as if the gravity from the sun had pushed it in all by itself. There was a small spark of its volatile gases, and the entire gas giant was instantaneously consumed in flames, only a mere five seconds from when the flare smacked into it. It cut it in half, but the two halves, not yet burned to the core, followed the wave, making more of an arrow shape out of it.

The flare had stopped, and the gas giant exploded. A huge gravitational wave ripped the space around it, and dark matter was like rockets flying in all directions. The ship was being hit, and hull breaches were seeping radiation into the ship. The settlers were all killed instantly, but they managed to get one thing out… Just as soon as they hit a small red button on an escape pod’s door, the film of a black box stopped recording. The last record was of the final occasion…

The large has giant, exploded with blue-glowing space debris was in a small nebulae of glow-dust, a rare mineral only crystallized from a non-dwarfed exploding star. The sun flare was consuming a large mass of pure matter from the explosion, lit into a white flame…

The black box’s last record was the created of a never before seen birth of a binary star system. Not of generic values, but between a larger Red Star, and a smaller Blue Star. Creating a gravitational and radiation effect never before seen. The crystals near the blue sun were of frozen shards, not even melting from the proximity to the new star.

This is the Manhattan Sector, and to whom may ever find the black box shall see only that of what a God can see. A millennia will pass, maybe more. The universe’s best kept secret may forever die without knowing.

This will be known as the Manhattan Story.