Jungles of Branama

[Pankong]

Hey guys here's the beginning of a story concerning my adventure on the planetary sistem of Branama.
I will here tell you firstly about the historical background of this adventure, will post a description of the protagonist and the rest of the story later these days.

Various vicissitudes led me, many times ago, to visit the luxuriant world of Branama. It consists in four main planets, each one a little bigger than the other, the smallest being more or less the size of earth, and a cluster of few but big asteroids, everything orbiting a point in space that is slowy moving towards an inimmaginabily enormous star far away from them: I have to say that that was a quite empty region of the universe.
On each of the four planet, at some time of its history, life began to spring here and there, firstly prokaryotic organisms, then eukaryotics, then, you know, evolution. Every planet became a different ecosystem with its types of what you would call plants, animals, fungus, and other things human language hasn't met yet. The fact was, eclipses were ordinary events, the day/night cycle was irregular, orbits were always changing... life, particularly pluricellular life, had to fit with the environment and evolved by consequence, originating such monstrous symbionts and hybrids between organisms that no one could imagine, adapted to prosper in the most various ecosystems.
But let's proceed by order. Here must begin talking about humans. This story is set in what is usually referred to as "future", and there humans had already made lot of mess here and there, colonising planets (either living in presurized cans or terraforming them), reproducing at the point of being very very many, and becoming, you wouldn't say, one of the most experts in building starship capable of destroying a planet without very effort, the reason for creating such a weapon still being debated.
They created an empire based on commerce and war, colonising and conquering and steeling anything they found new, never seen. Much like the New World of the Americas or the Mars Colony, many outposts of the human empire became more and more independent and claimed liberty, or even, many became deserters, this common among battleships commanders who finished to become pirates, or even generals that conquered stellar systems with their fleets, founding personal reigns.
This story begins with one of those generals, sent by the Imperial High Command to the planetary system of Branama, with the purpose of studying the beings living there, searching for minerary deposits and eventual intelligent life, and especially of claiming property on everything he could in the name of the human specie.

As you might expect, this is not what happened, but I will stop now and continue my story another time.

 

[Moonbloom]

I love the voice in your writing. The set-up of the universe and view on humanity is intriguing. I'm looking forward to reading the continuation!

 

[Pankong]

Galaxy of the witch. It is indeed named after a witch, an elf named Asara, so powerful and witty and ambitious to conquest, stellar system by stellar system, the whole galaxy; she uses her possessions as mines and factories for golems, each of her generals having created specific magical seals for each planet and using a specific set of materials, to produce a specific race of golem. The result is a crowd (billions) of magical monsters, each race on his planet with its unique power, trained to war and taken under control by the witch’s subordinates, elves like her, as they were sent to conquer the galaxy by the Elvish Federation.
Human Empire and the Elvish Federation hadn't a good relationship, and if you were a human you wouldn't find yourself comfortable to travel through elvish domains, especially with those elven ships, the most rapid known at the time, built using plants, mushrooms and magic, which makes them powerful sentient beings, constantly surveying the borders of the galaxy. Aside of them, those fat Gundam/Transformers-like golems, floating in space like zombies or stocked on planets waiting magical words being whispered from their masters. Definitely, you wouldn't want to find yourself even in the most tropical paradise-like planet of that galaxy; off-limits spacetime.
But,
If you own the Human Empire Main Battleship “Gorgeous Cow”, the first of the class “Bovines”, things are quite different. This is the newest and most advanced series of main battleships, I will skip technical details, let you just imagine a spacecraft as big as a mountain, having the form of a zeppelin with four huge protuberances resembling wings on the sides and four ones, stocky and short, on the belly, that can change their height in order to always land horizontally. The ship holds the title of most destructive (and expensive) object ever built. You are never really in danger, if you are on the Gorgeous Cow. You wouldn't want to be nowhere apart from its main deck, also because if you are there, you can go anywhere. Definitely, you would want a Bovine class main battleship in your garage.
But let's first take a step back in time.
Lord Numbrus was proud about his progresses in accomplishing the mission Queen Asara gave him. He had to conquer one of the last human strongholds in the galaxy, planet Branama, and he was at a step from entering the main and last city the enemy was keeping fighting for. Elves were winning the war, he knew, and here, the battle as well. Humans had fought vigorously to let cargo ships full of their precious shipment leave the planet before it was over: in fact, they settled on that planet some of the main factories of the empire, producing thousands of battle robots per day. Numbrus had indeed been chosen for the mission because he was one of the best experts in human technology of his species, thanks to his past as a spy, and he could manage to better understand and replicate the process of assembling the robots. Yes, magic was a very good weapon, but it's better to have a gun and a knife than just a gun. Also, it was crucial to cut the empire supplies of soldiers in order to end the war rapidly.
Was saying, the enemies were to collapse and surrender or dye, he was going to celebrate victory drinking cider and beer with his fellows, when an earthquake shook everything. For a second, it seemed to Numbrus, into his pressurized heavy armor, to float as if gravity was disappeared; the moment later, looking at the sky, he saw an intense light, like when you look at the sun at midday, embrace all the horizon; the third second earth began to fall to pieces and things all seemed to begin to break apart; then he understood: it is better to destroy the weapons that can not be carried during retreat, isn't it? The empire was bombing his own fellows, and it seemed like the intention was to destroy the planet. It was a questionable choice, but it was sure that there were thousands of enemies for each human still alive, and in any case they would have been killed or enslaved, so he thought it made sense. The fifth second he barely had the time to evocate the most important magical shield of is life around himself, then everything became red.

 

[Pankong]

The Admiral was the captain of the Gorgeous Cow. It was an AI specificatly built to fit the role, his memory filled with every kind of knowledge about strategy, tactics, and history of war (both on the land, under the sea, and in space). It was designed to mimic the role of a human, also with emotions and so on; it was able to feel fear and to be egoistic, according to the manufacturer to prolong his life expectancy and to protect the ship, a very big investiment for the Human Empire.
It hadn't a specifical name aside of the Admiral, which was not a title (robots could not have ones, indeed), and his mission was to carry the Gorgeous Cow to Branama in order to deliver scientists and colonies supplies and machinery for their work. The ship had some trouble at mid-flight with the engines and had to stop nearly two earth's month to the satellite outpost in the Starfish nebula: In the meantime, elves had began to mess here and there in the planetary system of Branama, and, by the time the ship finally exited che space curvature at the end of his voyage, and was approximating to Branama's orbit, what was happening became clear. the crew of the ship was composed mostly by robots, a part from some scientists, hundreds of colonies and a little group of human soldiers guarding the little big treasure, composed of gold coins, that every human ship had to carry at any time for any mission according to the Law; but the majority of the personnel were war robots, and the Admiral, once seen the situation, didn't have a second more of hesitation: he gave the alarm, and in less than five minutes everybody were at their combat position: a giant elvish ship, big as much as ten times the Gorgeous Cow, dominated the landscape aside of the planet, and hundreds of smaller ships, smaller but still of considerable size for a human ship, were swarming to the planet's surface.
They got the advantage of the surprise, and before the elves could understand some ten nuclear warheads where travelling at inimmaginable speed towards the elvish mothership: the Admiral thought that surely they were very beautiful ships, made from living matter and magic, and was almost regretting to having ordered to destroy that symphony of wood, leaves and mushrooms surrounded by that mysteryous yet fascinating violet, magic-saturated mist; a second later, explosions. Sunlight the likes of wich would blind you instantly, winds of radiating energy spreading in all directions, a turbolence... the Gorgeous Cow was engulfed in that heaven-like suspencion, then it was clearly visible the damaged ship litterally ripping apart. There weren't secondary explosions, elven ships didn't have engines or explosives on board: the giant mass simply fragmentized, pieces scattered everywhere, and each one began to burn; ripples of mist, clouds of spores and insectoid dead soldiers, trunks the size of a skyscraper, totally in flames, flying everywhere... the vast majority of debris were attracted by Branama's gravity; it took ours, to magic, organic, still living matter to rain down to the planet's surface. These are the bombs Lord Numbrus thought humans were deploying against their own people: skyscrapers of wood, mountains of mushroms, hives the size of the Gorgeous Cow, all falling on his and his crew's head, all burning entering the atmosphere, all creating craters never seen before,destoying a good quarter of the planet's luxurous forests and landscape. The earth itself lifted over that armageddon-like rain, as when you drop a rock in a pound and droplets of water squirt here and there.
In synthesis, with the press of a button, the Admiral broke off one of the biggest ships ever built in few minutes, vaporized a hole quarter of Branama's life creatures in few ours, and doomed the planet to an end similar to that of earth at the time of the dinosaurs extinsion: years to come in a perennial winter caused by the dust, the majority living creatures destined to die within the next years. But at list, this was the greatest strike ever casted agains the elves.
It was contemplating the rain of debris still occurrying on the planet, when resolved to a decision: "Prepare the ship to land on Branama" said to his second-in-command; "we will look for prisoneers; perhaps we will find lots of survivors, especially humans: the colonies are hundreds of kilometres below the surface".