Frontier, Part I

Albedo was the quintessential extrasolar backwater. 70% lime-salt desert, oceans so backish that no terran fish could even hope to live, dry dusty summer storms (it was always summer), and an atmospheric humidity that made the skin on your arms peel just thinking about it. Still, it was home. And as far as homes went, this one was pretty private. Considering it was the only station still transmitting within about 50,000 light years, one could say it was almost exclusive.

The last we'd heard from Earth had been more than three years earlier. Calamity. Death. Every frequency was the howling of thousands, lives abruptly cut short. Still, the Immortal convoys that came through our space brought news that it wasn't a complete wash. Humanity had been taken to the brink before. Billions died then. Reports this time said only a few thousand. It was a sign of the times when we could rejoice at mere thousands disappearing, but this wasn't the heyday of humanity.

If anything, we'd beaten the knell of extinction - twice. Nemesis was a black spectre that haunted us still, but we'd managed it, and even taken some from it. The Immortals were evidence of that. The Monolith invasion was a second, far more vital blow. An alien invasion headed by an insane Immortal, the only objective: to build a replica weapon to destroy all remaining humanity. It was the stuff of nightmares, but even then, we persevered.

The cost had been steep. The Immortals especially, had lost a large portion of their oldest and brightest. Second Generation members, they'd been called. People so old that they could remember what Earth looked like without Nemesis. We remember when a First Gen immortal, Sol, had visited this planet. Didn't look like much, but he left us with a record of one of the dead. Ark, they'd called him. Rumor was he was from Albedo, but hadn't been home in nearly a thousand years. That would've made him one of the founding members of the first colony, back when Albedo was the outermost fringe of thousands of human colonies that exploded across the Outer Reaches.

The record was encrypted, and even now our best computers are working to decode it. All we know at this point is that certain sections are time-locked, and based on the rotation and position of Albedo, certain records will open. The first is due to open in a few weeks time; we'll see what exactly Ark has to show us.