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Canis Major
CMa
The Greater Dog
SIRIUS (Alpha CMa), Murzim (Beta CMa),
Muliphen (Gamma CMa), Wezen (Delta CMa), ADARA (Epsilon CMa), Furud (Zeta CMa),
Aludra (Eta CMa)
M41 (open cluster)
The brightest star in the constellation is Sirius. Canis Major and Canis Minor
are hunting dogs of Orion from the Greek legend. Orion was in love with Merope,
one of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, but Merope didn't care about Orion.
Orion stepped on the scorpion (Scorpius), and died. The gods put Orion and his
two dogs in the sky as constellations.
Sirius (also called the Dog Star)
9Alp CMa
-1.45
A1Vm
48915
151881
6h45m8.9s
-16° 42'58"
8.7 light years
Accompanied with a small star, a white dwarf by the name of Sirius B (or the 'Pup'),
only 32000 km in diameter and of magnitude 8.5, it makes a binary system.
Located in the stellar constellation of Canis Majoris, or The Great Dog, less
than 9 light years away from the Earth, Alpha Canis Majoris, commonly referred
to as Sirius or The Dog Star, is the brightest star in the skies. Observed from
the Northern Hemisphere it is visible low in the southern part of the sky.
Ancient Egyptians considered Sirius as the celestial representation of the goddess
Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris, the most important goddess of their mythology.
Isis assumed virtually every important attribute and function of all the other
goddess and she was worshipped for mothership, healing, magical spells and charms.
Egyptians believed that Isis has learned the secret name of the god Rae from himself,
and therefore was the most powerful magician in the universe.
Some twentieth century historians speculated that Egyptians, as well as some other
ancient cultures, had contacts with intelligent beings originating from Sirius.
But those theories were not considered too serious and never achieved general
approval. Lately, it proved to be a bit more than just a silly idea.
Lying on the floor, professor Bennett was staring at the stars and watching them
slowly turn and move in complicated patterns in the dark sky, as Prospector was
rotating around its primary axis in the orbit around Titan, which is orbiting
Saturn which is in turn orbiting around our Sun. Not the she could actually see
the influences of all those planetary motions, except for the Prospector's gravity-generating
rotation, but she was still impressed by the sheer thought of the complicated
forces that made each part of the universe constantly spin around some other part
of the universe. It was her favorite thinking position since the beginning of
the Prospector's mission on Titan. She was a respected linguist and the leading
scientist in the mission. Last few months here were very busy and very fruitful,
and now she was too tired make any more progress in her work, so she decided to
take bit of a rest. She was just staring at the stars and thinking of how it all
begun.
Although it first seemed a bit hard, the humans did escape their gravity well
and, eventually, started to expand in the solar system. Building bases, mining
planets and moons for precious metals and minerals, making more living space and
progressing in large. Still, always a bit behind with the resources and space,
as humans usually have larger needs than abilities, space mining was not yet a
full replacement for digging our own planet. However, that did prove good in the
end. Since the temple of Abu Simbel was moved to an alternate location in the
previous century, there was no archeological researching there any more. So one
small local oil company did eventually get a permit to build an oilrig on that
location. If they didn't drill there, we would still be sitting on the most valuable
ancient artefact ever, without even suspecting it.
The underground crypt found was not really the space base as it was first hoped,
but did contain significant amounts of alien machinery with unknown purpose and
provided lot of written documentation. It was all written in the Sirian pictograms,
which, what is not peculiar, are very similar to the hieroglyphs that Egyptians
used. The translation was simplified by the fact that the Sirians did leave all
those with the intent to be discovered and translated. Something like a concept
of the gold disk on the Voyager. It was also accompanied with audio-visual recordings
and Egyptian translation samples. Sirians invested great efforts to make all that
as much understandable to a foreign race as possible. The writings contained much
more information than those that we sent to outer space. Not all texts were fully
understood, but what the Prof. Bennett's team and other scientists from different
countries were able to translate was enough to decipher the core facts of Sirian
history and their presence in the ancient Egypt.
Sirians were intelligent race much like humans in appearance, a bit taller, without
any body hair, and with each hand bearing two fingers and a thumb. When their
expedition came to Earth, some five thousand years ago, they were on the peak
of their prospect. They have become adept in interstellar travelling and have
expanded throughout their solar system and several others in the neighborhood.
Their advances were mostly technological, but they have also discovered other
races that practiced mental powers and magic casting. They have just started to
research and develop such skills, and were still very fresh on that field.
Not genuinely destructive, they helped any other intelligent race on lower technology
levels that they met, and they never met any race more advanced than themselves.
Up to that time. According to the scripts found in the crypt, just a few decades
after the Sirian expedition arrived on Earth, one of their other expeditions has
found traces of an ancient and now extinct race in some near part of the galaxy.
Sirians named that race Eillians, or 'The Ancient Ones', as the race has disappeared
several hundred thousand years ago. The Sirians found Eillian legends of large
empires spanning great areas of the galaxy for eons. The Ancient Ones called that
old age 'Tag'h Na-Mah', meaning 'big order that oscillates', as the empires were
constantly expanding and contracting, blooming and falling apart, merging and
separating, like all great systems involving organic being always do. Still, the
entire system was seemingly stable. Allegedly, the empires were usually governed
by creatures called 'Hum-Tah', the infinite beings. Those were some kind of immortal
beings whose exact nature is still unclear. As the most important clue for the
events that followed, Sirians left a fragment of an old Eillian song in rough
and unclear translation meaning:
According to The Ancient Ones, the age after great empires was named 'Ugh-Tah',
the infinite death. Not explaining how it begun, Sirians describe that age as
a curse for intelligent life in the entire galaxy. It is marked by the dark reign
of the last persisting immortal being, The One Infinite, or 'Tah-Um' in Eillians
legends. Sirians also called that being Chaad Sheen, what meant wizard-exterminator.
It is a blood-thirsty immortal that uses its magic powers, supernatural mental
abilities and all available technology to wipe out any intelligent life it finds.
Sirians describe that there are no other immortals left except for the Chaad Sheen
and that it, according to the Eillians, is wondering across the galaxy now, sweeping
in long periods measuring hundreds of thousands of years. It is not interested
in subduing other races and keeping an empire of its own, but rather uses any
eventual violent races it encounters together with robots and magical creatures
under its control to just wipe all others out. Chaad Sheen had wiped out the Eillians
long time before intelligent life appeared on Sirius and approximately at the
same time when Sirians discovered the Eillian traces, it found the Sirians too.
From what is written in the Sirian messages, they fought long war with its dreadful
armies, but apparently, they had no chances for survival in the end. Together
with the Sirian own planet, it was going to destroy all their colonies and all
the primitive civilizations supported by Sirians. That is, each and every one
it could locate. But the Sirians were pretty sure that although The One Infinite
was a powerful being, it did not know that they had an expedition on Earth, since
that was just in stage of an early contact. So the members of the expedition suddenly
became refugees who were ordered not to return and not to have any more contacts
with their home planet. They were deemed to stay on Earth and cease any large
scale technological construction or traveling in order to keep low profile and
not be noticed by Chaad Sheen.
All Sirians and all the other races in the nearby systems were exterminated by
the One Infinite. The members of the last expedition on Earth were left alone
on the planet alien to them to live like the last few of their race among the
primitive strangers, not using most of the technology they were used to. In that
poor situation, they were not really happy. They were depraved and couldn't really
keep their culture going. From the documents and from the Egyptian legends, human
scientists have concluded that they were decimated by the sole depression, and
that few left have gone mentally unstable and started to play gods to the ancient
Egyptians. They were using what was left of their technology and established the
concept of the pharaoh - a divine being living on Earth. After few generations,
they were completely extinct, and the Egyptian civilization continued its own
way without them. Their last sane efforts were put into building the crypt and
providing all the materials in it, so that when the earthlings develop to a larger
level of civilization, they would have some data to start with, and especially
to be warned about the fact that they live in the age of Ugh-Tah, the infinite
death.
'Most of those facts were of purely historical and archeological importance, but
there was one notion that made humans extremely enthusiastic. It was the exact
chart that described where they had parked their spaceship before their definite
grounding on Earth. The chart showed the underground base on Titan, Saturn's largest
satellite. They hid the ship there, so that both they couldn't get to it even
if some of them cracked and tried to return to home, and that the earthlings wouldn't
discover it too early. Whole human civilization was delighted with the idea that
they had a real interstellar spaceship available. Scientists could examine it,
hopefully understand most of the technology and build their own spacecrafts for
interstellar travels. We would no longer be prisoners in our solar system, confined
with the finite sub-light-speeds of ordinary traveling methods. That is why the
Prospector was now orbiting Titan for the last few months. The team lead by Prof.
Bennett was trying to decode the writings found in the underground base and they
were doing well. Pretty soon, they will have all the technical data that Sirians
have left in the base translated, and humans will be able to travel to the new
worlds, going from system to system, to explore, to expand and to prosper.'
When the Sirian technology for interstellar traveling was fully understood and
building of first interstellar spaceships commenced, the initial fear of The One
Infinite has already ceased. From the start, many have complained that it was
unwise to continue expansion, since we might encounter the evil immortal, which
will wipe our world out. But when considered deeper, the arguments seemed week
even to those who were their originators. If all the data was even approximately
valid, it was clear that the Chaad Sheen has confronted with Sirians only a few
thousands years ago, and that the period between its arrivals was usually few
hundred thousand years. From current perspective it seemed like being afraid of
our Sun becoming a nova. Like, yeah right, it is going to happen, but it will
be so far in the future that no one knows what is going to happen until that,
so it doesn't really matter.
With such thoughts, all humans were happy to see first few of our spacecrafts
leaving for outer space. First for the nearest star, Proxima Centauri in the constellation
of Alpha Centauri. In the beginning just basic exploration. Then came the miners
to bring valuable materials and together with the miners came archeological expeditions
to search for traces of Sirians and other races that might had lived there. When
we became adept with going to our nearest neighbors and back, we sent out the
first expedition to Canis Major, to find out if there is anything left of the
civilization on Sirius.
Even being bigger than a good sized aircraft carrier, with its sub-light propulsion
engines spewing wide beams of accelerated ions and leaving a glaring trail few
miles long behind it, Surveyor is still just a tiny little spark in the great
darkness of the universe. The super-light part of the voyage is now over, and
the main computer has switched the engines to intrastellar mode. At ten percents
of light speed, the ship is slowly approaching outer limits of the Sirius system.
The crew has already waken up from hibernation and they are now busy running around
the decks getting all the systems up and running, preparing the instruments to
start scanning the system for possible traces of civilized life. Surveyor is the
first exploration ship sent to gather basic information of the system, and prepare
environment for further missions.
Everything is running smooth so far, and things are more or less as expected,
accounting prior experiences in dealing with systems previously inhabited by the
Sirians. Just one thing is strange. According to first scans, there is a large
asteroid belt surrounding the four planets of the system. To be more exact, it
is really more of a sphere than a belt. Array of pieces of rock all very similar
in size distributed more or less regularly around the globe, like a giant bubble
it is encompassing entire system. The asteroids are all sized like a medium mountain,
and at distance between each other one hundred times of the one between Earth
and Moon. The bubble should not cause any navigational problems to Surveyor, since
the layer is thin and the asteroids are away from each other enough to make a
smooth pass between them. But the strangest thing is that Sirians have never mentioned
something like that in their writings.
Captain Stone is standing on the bridge with his hands on his back, staring at
the big front monitor showing empty surface of the artificial asteroid in front
of Surveyor. The ship is now parked steady relatively to the asteroid, following
its orbit around the star. A shuttle was sent down with a scientific team to explore
the surface of the asteroid. They didn't really have a choice of what to do. The
situation was strange, since they didn't expect to find something like that. The
entire crew was a bit afraid and no one was really eager to just go through the
monstrous layer of asteroids and proceed with their voyage inside it. They were
cut away from the company headquarters on Earth, since they didn't have an interstellar
transceiver built in with the ship. They were supposed to deploy a team on the
outermost planet, which would unfold a large transmitter's antennae and mount
a relay station for interstellar sub-etha communication. Before that was done,
they were just stuck with conventional radio signals, and it was of no use to
wait sixteen years for the return information. There were only two options. Go
through it, or get back to Earth, or at least to Alpha Centauri, and ask for further
instructions from the headquarters. Strategic consultants on the ship had no desire
on approving the idea of returning back. The S&E and HBM missions were on their
way to the Canis Major too, and the company has invested great deal of money and
resources in this mission. They didn't really want be the second ones to get there.
Anyway, it was the captain's word last and he would rather go back than rush in
crazily, but he didn't want to give up so soon. So he decided they take a closer
look at one of the asteroids, just to gather more information. Maybe they will
know what to do when they get to know more about the nature of those asteroids.
Now as the shuttle is hovering near the asteroid, Stone began to think that maybe
it was not such a great idea. He had that strange feeling that there was something
wrong with all this, but he couldn't really tell what could be wrong with a pile
of strangely put asteroids. A pretty large pile, but still those are just asteroids.
They are just going to see if there is anything on those asteroids, and then perhaps
the strange feeling will go away. At least he wanted to believe so.
With the time that followed, that will be considered the greatest mistake in the
history of the humankind. As the shuttle was exploring the asteroid, the shuttle's
crew made a few circles around to observe it and then set out to explore it personally
with the jetpacks. They have found an underground cave filled with machines of
non-Sirian origin. After significant amount of analysis, it later turned out that
the asteroids were set there by Chaad Sheen which was a bit suspicious on the
Sirians and decided to leave automated watch units to warn him if intelligent
life reappears too quickly. The asteroids were connected in a lock-out network
of radio signals, which made an astronomical sized alarm device detecting anything
that could pass through. It appeared that the shuttle's circling was enough to
trigger the mechanism and the great evil was back in our part of the galaxy, one
hundred thousand years too early.
In the battles that followed, humans were fighting with all forces but The One
Infinite was virtually unbeatable with his unlimited supplies of evil armies.
Being so dreadful, the Chaad Sheen quickly got humans give it a new name: Notorious
Mental. Earth forces were steadily defeated, planet by planet, from the Alpha
Centauri systems and back into our own system. No matter how much we fought, we
could never survive.
Although everybody was more or less sure that the conflict was inevitable this
way or another, captain Sam Stone, just as most of the others from the crew of
the unfortunate Surveyor, kept blaming himself for the mistake of triggering the
ancient mechanism. Stone just could not forgive himself. He joined the armies
as soon as the first fights begun, and was reckless in the efforts to get himself
killed in action. With time, he became known for his habit of being the first
volunteer for any suicidal mission. Starting from serving as an officer on a cruiser,
he insisted on being transferred to fighter pilots, later to space marines and
finally to special forces. In all his fights, he was always concentrated and exact,
never caring of anything, just wanting to kill one alien more. Because he never
smiled or laughed, never cried or showed a glimpse of fear, but just scowled thinking
on how to get more alien blood on his knife, he got himself a nickname Serious.
With thousands of battles behind him, Stone became one of the oldest veterans
in the space war. He commanded a destroyer at the big space battle for Rigil Kentaurus,
he was victorious in countless dogfights against alien roboships, he lead hundreds
of diversions on Mental's bases and fought head to head with his minions for thousand
times. Wounded countless times, but never defeated, Serious Sam became famous
as a symbol of the Earth's defense against the ancient evil. In battle he was
always acting furiously and never cared for his life. Nevertheless, he survived
it all. Destiny just had something more planned for him.
The humankind is coming to an end. Great battles over solar system have been lost
and the Earth is now under direct attack. Mental is not really in a hurry. It
is just finishing what is left of human space defenses and it is a matter of day
when it will send the evil forces down to Earth and commit great slaughters country
by country. There is no more hope. After its short outburst of interstellar glory
during past few decades, the human civilization is doomed to be lost. Forever.
In the ancient underground crypt under the old temple of Abu Simbel, a small group
of officers is having a secret briefing. General Wilson, head of a secret committee
of the joined defense forces codenamed Escape, major Kowalsky, scientific advisor,
major Willowby, strategic consultant, and captain Sam 'Serious' Stone, the toughest
commando in the forces, are sitting on plain wooden chairs around a small square
table. The crypt is lighted with dim back light from ancient Sirian computer monitors,
and the walls are covered with writings in Sirian pictograms. Wilson, Kowalsky
and Willowby are a bit nervous. Strange behavior for people of their rank and
experience, but the situation is very complicated. Sam is, as always, serious.
He is just dubbing his fingers on the table, anxious to hear if they have a great
idea on how he could slay some more bad guys, before he gets wiped out together
with their good old Earth.
Kowalsky starts explaining:
'Sam, you know that the scientists have been translating these Sirian writings
that are all around us here, on the walls, in papyrus documents and on hundreds
of crystal disks. That did take decades, and we now know most things of the technology
they had, and we use a lot of it. But there are some facts that have been never
been revealed to the public. There is one powerful, but very dangerous device
that Sirians have left us. The device is not their craft, but rather a work of
The Ancient Ones, or maybe even some race older than they are. It is called 'Gana-Og',
Urnpool, or the Timelock.
'The nature of it is very complicated and unexplainable. Sirians did not leave
any information on how exactly does it work, and we believe that even they didn't
know that. But we do know what it does. It enables one to travel back in time.
Just that the concept is not as simple as we would like. When one decides to use
a Timelock, it has to be placed on a certain place and armed. For arming, it has
to be charged from a power source stronger than any one we currently have available.
After that, Timelock accumulates the energy in a force field of nature completely
unknown to us, but allegedly, it can keep it that way forever. The energy is somehow
interlocked with the time-space continuum in that point, and internally to the
field, the time stops ticking. The current time of the Timelock's arming is kept
that way to be unleashed later. The whole concept is complicated, but what is
certain is that, if someone enters the Timelock at any later point in time, and
triggers it, the Timelock will unleash the field, bend the time-space and the
person will be transported approximately to the time when the Timelock was armed.
This does not allow for simple time traveling around whatever way you like, but
it does provide you with at least some way to go back in time. It is noticeable
that both the Eillians and the Sirians had that device available, but seems that
they have never used it. No sane man would ever want to have a thing like that
armed, because from then on, he would never know when can someone pop out from
the future and mess something up. Allegedly, both the Sirians and the Eillians
were afraid to ever arm it, so they couldn't use it to confront the Mental when
they needed to.
'The writings say that before their end, Sirians have sneaked the only Timelock
they ever had to Earth, so that it would not fall in Mental's possession. Anyway,
the Sirians on Earth have armed the Timelock just before they disappeared, because
they didn't have any hopes left, didn't care about anything anymore, and they
thought to give us a chance more, if we ever get to need one. And now we really
do...', Kowalsky's voice has already started to quiver.
'We have no other chance left', proceeds General Wilson, 'our forces are almost
defeated, and there is no way we can fight the Mental back with any regular military
power. Therefore, under the plan codenamed Escape, the joined defense forces headquarters
have authorized us to use the Timelock to try to stop Mental before all this mess
began.
'Problem is that we are still unsure of how exactly to use the device. We know
that if we trigger it now, it can transport one person to the time of ancient
Egypt, while the Mental was still somewhere around this part of universe. Perhaps
the device can be used to go to some later point in time, or to transport more
than one person, but we don't know how to adjust it yet. And there is no time
for experimenting.
'The final decision is that you, Sam, should go through the Timelock, sneak Mental,
since it is not expecting you, and assassin it, five thousand years ago. Then
it would not be able to confront us in the present time. 'Sure so', says Sam,
'but how am I going to kill it, if I'm on Earth, and it is on Sirius?'
'You see', Kowalsky drops in, 'Sirians have had their ship parked on the Titan,
so that they cannot go back. But they actually did leave a backdoor. There was
a remote control device which could have communicated the ship and bring it back
to Earth. But the keys to accessing the controller have been deliberately scattered
around Egyptian temples, so that no one person could activate it without being
noticed by the Sirians which actually lived there. If you collect all the keys,
which are held in the form of the four elements and find operating instructions,
you can call the spaceship back from Titan.
'Then', continues major Willowby, 'you can go to any other planet. But, you must
not go directly to Sirius, since Mental would notice you. You have to go to another
colony on Proxima Centauri, nearest to the Earth, and then use Sirian merchant
teleports to transfer from one colony to another and finally to Sky City at Sirius.
Hopefully, at that time Mental will be just busy finishing up what was left of
the other races around there, and won't even notice one man coming to get at it.
Of course, the colonies and the Sky City will be swarming with Mental's forces,
but there is no other option.'
'Never mind, it will be my pleasure to blow them off', Sam comments without shedding
a smile.
Kowalsky says: 'About the Egypt, we are not sure. It is almost certain that triggering
the Timelock will alarm Mental both at present, and in the past. When you come
there, its forces might be on their way to the Earth. But they will not know that
you are there. They will go primarily to wipe the Sirians, and the Egyptians whose
presence will be revealed with that event. Due to the imprecision in the operation
of the Timelock, you may get there before the aliens or after them. We don't know.
We can just hope you won't be too late to sneak on Mental.
'What you may take with you, is just your uniform, the implanted NETRICSA, a knife,
and your favorite Smith and Wesson. We cannot allow for anything more to go in
the primary wave, due to the possible instabilities in the time-space field of
the Timelock. The total mass transported is suspected to be limited and the exact
time-space location of the transportation will vary more if more mass is involved.
However, we will try to put in more weaponry, ammo, shields and medipacks for
your supplies. We will keep putting more in, after you have departed, as much
the Timelock will be able to eat. However, you may find them scattered across
the Egypt, but that is the best we can do for you.'
Willowby gives final directions: 'You can now download all the tactical data to
NETRICSA, and when you are out there, it will be your only strategic help. We
cannot tell you anything more, since we don't have any more information on what
you may encounter. NETRICSA will try to decode any new data you will eventually
encounter, and give you more insight on what to do. You know how to get from the
Earth, but once you leave Egypt, you are on your own for guidance.'
Sam takes a coldlight uploader interface from Willowby, and stares into it. With
few minutes of quick flashes of light on the small screen of the uploader, all
the necessary data has been uploaded through his eyes and into the NETRICSA (NEuroTRonically
Implanted Combat Situation Analyzer) which is implanted inside his skull. Sam's
NETRICSA is the best available of the wide range of such devices, common among
modern head-to-head fighters. It is a neurotronical computer connected to the
perceptual cortexes in his brain. The computer has all the access to his audio-visual
experiences and can provide him with feedback. It is used to provide fast and
simple access to all the necessary data and analysis for a skilled combatant,
so that he can keep up to date with the situation and know what to do next. It
translates texts, offers simple head-up-display directly to the visual cortex,
tracks targets and gives other kinds of help in fight and in general tactics.
His Smith & Wesson is not a simple colt, also. It is fitted with a technomagical
device seized from one of few captured Mental's minions. The device is known as
ammo-replenisher, and it provides him with infinite ammunition for extreme cases
when he has no other weapon left to fight.
After the download is finished, Sam takes the little of his equipment, and follows
General Wilson. Wilson approaches one of the walls and gives it a few quick touches
with his fingers over some pictograms as if it was a dial keyboard. The wall transforms
from its innocent appearance covered with colored Sirian pictograms into a dark
black stone with a visible trapezoidal line of a size of huge door in the middle.
The bordered part of the wall then slides in and to the side, showing a dark hallway.
They walk silently down the long hallway made of black marble and enter a strangely
lighted room at the other side. The room is all white and heavenly light is pouring
from all the walls, floor and the ceiling. It does not look like anything Sirians
ever built, it is a craft of some forgotten civilization, from the age of Tag'h
Na-Mah.
In the middle of the room there is a small pedestal in shape of three concentric
hexagonal stairs built of a material completely black and dull even in such a
bright room. On it, a thin metallic disk is floating, hovering slowly up and down,
spinning and tilting softly. Similar construction hangs down from the ceiling,
and strange forces seem to connect them. Soft lines of light dance between the
two disks, appearing here and there moving a bit around their surfaces and disappearing
again in the endless game of power.
The four soldiers stand around the device in the center of the room no one saying
nothing. The future of the entire human race in on the stake, and they are all
afraid of what is going to happen next. Except Sam. His brows scowl, as he slowly
approaches the middle. He looks to the others calmly and stands there a bit. Then,
suddenly, he salutes them. As if surprised at first, they salute him back, and
he walks into the Timelock.
Blinding light flashes for an infinite moment as they observe the time-space continuum
bending, forced by ancient powers to perform unnatural action and send captain
Stone back to time when Egyptians built their great pyramids, and Mental was slaying
the Sirians.
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