But regardless, life had to continue.
People began to forget about their old Earth and they began to start their new life while masking their communication channels.
Without being certain about the level of civilization on the Earth in this universe, it would be unwise to expose themselves.
Survival took precedence.
This idea was supported by all crew members.
The colonization ship entered the synchronous orbit of 581g and began to deploy observation devices along the twilight line.
When the device landed on the surface and transferred up data from the surface, the colonization ship released the airdrop cabin for the paratroopers. Next was the basic infrastructure unit then the living quarters with the survivors. Thus began the “Colonization Era.” Although a year was 37 days, since there was no concept of day and night on this planet, people still used the 24 hour and 365-day calendar year convention from Earth as a sign of commemoration to the blue mother planet.
There was no ocean on this planet; all the freshwater came from the glaciers on the other side of the planet and freshwater lakes scattered around the twilight line as well as the underground river with complex vein-like tributaries.
The large fungi and low shrubs on the surface provided adequate oxygen for the air which made breathing the planet’s air pleasant. The planet was almost designed for humans.
The planet was beautiful; a lot of stunning views were here that couldn’t be seen on Earth.
From the river that stretched out from the sun-facing surface to the back of the planet to the mist wall thousands of kilometers long due to high-temperature evaporation, sunlight refracted and formed an everlasting rainbow. The giant fungi and odd-looking vegetation covered every single inch of the soft soil on this land. From space, it was just like a carpet interwoven with fresh green and vibrant red.
Life existed on this planet, although it was scarce.
From long ago, the planet’s observer, Steven Vogt, made a prediction. From his point of view, he thought that life must exist on this planet without a doubt.
And he was proven to be right.
The twilight line was covered with dense vegetation and a large amount of eccentric small and medium-sized arthropods, forming a simple ecosystem.
The colonists were delighted by the discovery because this meant they weren’t alone.
With the living quarters built, an endless amount of farms were created then the roads began to expand to create a connected city. The mining vehicles traversed the ground like ants, the construction vehicles terraformed, and the biologists keenly collected genetic data they had never seen before. The unsetting giant sun was like the sun at dawn. People worked hard to create their new home and celebrate the beautiful future.
They were just like the colonists who first stepped onto the land of America.
Except they weren’t criminals from Europe but human elites from PAC. They had the confidence to despise the painful history of work. Utopia would be built from their hands. There was no war nor crimes here; everyone here were brothers and sisters.
The conflict was resolved in the old world.
The seed of mankind would once again prosper on this soil.
Of course, there were still difficulties.
For example, the mineral reserve on this planet was beyond low. Toxic gas from underground could lower human immunity and even cause people to become sick.
But all the problems could be resolved – the space mining module on the colonization ship could increase mineral stores and the toxic gas that endangered the health of the colonists was caused by a special form of spores. The biologists quickly invented antibiotics that could eliminate the reproduction of spores, easily solving the problem.
But aside from that, there was a more pressing problem.
It was the solar wind.
Without a stable magnetic field, the planet had almost no resistance against the particles thrown its way from the red dwarf.
581g was only 0.15 astronomical units away from the star, therefore 0.15 times the distance between sun and Earth. The constant solar wind whipped the humans’ faces directly. Without the protection of a magnetic field, all the electronic equipment had to operate under the electromagnetic shielding environment.
It was like thousands of EMPs constantly bombarding the planet.
To increase the accuracy of some physics experiments at the atomic level, they had to be moved onto the space colonization ship.
Later, to prevent solar wind from the red dwarf from damaging the ship, people moved the ship to the back of the planet, away from the sun. Therefore, the space colonization ship was always one planet away from the star to prevent the disruption of the solar wind on the space colonization ship to enable scientific research to be properly conducted.
The humans who relied heavily on electronic equipment were heavily influenced. Even though humans used a wide-range magnetic field to solve the problem of the solar wind, the disruptions still existed.
Regardless of how wide the magnetic field was, it couldn’t enclose the entire planet under its field.
But humans were adaptable.
After they adapted to the difficulties, everything became smoother. All the cities were built within the magnetic field. From space, it looked like umbrellas opened around the twilight line and people were sheltered under the umbrella.
Everything was so pleasant.
Until they discovered the “original inhabitants” of the planet.
They were a bunch of hostile creatures with a similar social form to ants. They had a queen bug responsible for reproducing, battle bugs responsible for hunting, and worker bugs responsible for the expansion of caves.
Typically, they lived 20-30 thousand meters below the surface on the dark side of the planet. The temperature underground could mitigate the frozen surface and could melt underground ice into water.
People discovered later that the thousands of rivers underneath the surface were the work of the bugs and their species had been in existence for millions of years already or their civilization existed at least for the past hundred thousands of years.
A civilization longer than the total sum of all the human civilizations added together.
Although their civilization wasn’t yet “civilized.”
Their iving spaces were too far apart from each other, with one on the twilight line while the other was in the deep underground of the dark side. Perhaps both thought the other were “bugs” so humans didn’t discover their neighbor until living there for over a hundred years.
This only happened when the living spaces became constrained and humans began to expand to the underground river belonging to the bugs.
It was determined the instant both parties encountered each other that a war was inevitable.
Typical speaking, with bugs made out of flesh, humans with technology would not be at a disadvantage, but the reality soon proved far more complicated than the humans imagined.
Soldiers with Gauss Rifles steamrolled through the bugs that spread to the surface. The scientists invented a virus that could make the bugs extinct, and the satellite in orbit launched drilling missiles to clear the underground caves of the bugs.
Everything was going smoothly to the point that people thought optimistically that they could easily declare ownership of the underground river the bugs spent thousands of years carving out.
Until a bug flood attacked a border city.
Millions of arthropods flooded the human city without a fear of death. With a thunderous attack, they crashed through the human colonies along the twilight line.
The explosions lt up the sky and still couldn’t stop the bug flood from moving forward.
The scene looked like doomsday.
Everyone was stunned. They never thought the bugs they crashed through could became such a strong battle force. Although their missiles and bombs could easily penetrate through weak bodies, they were still futile against the swarm of bugs.
From biological weapons to genetic bombs, humans thought of everything yet were still unable to exterminate the bugs. Instead, they facilitated the evolution of the bugs. Just like humans took hundreds of years to not even eradicate mosquitos and cockroaches, these bugs couldn’t be wiped out.
Under highly intensive natural selection, the bugs evolved different functionalities with similar genetics. The previous queen bugs, warrior bugs, and worker bugs continued to differentiate into a difficult-to-ignore state.
The Spatter’s acidic saliva could corrode tanks and the Shredder’s diamond-strength claws could easily rip through nanocarbon vests. A hundred-meter-long Attacker with a hardened surface could destroy the city by wreaking havoc like worms. Humans had to limit the usage of nuclear and biological weapons to prevent bugs from further evolving.
The civilization that continued for hundreds of thousands of years demonstrated their heritage. The civilization that could not be understood by humans used its own cruelty to declare its sovereignty on this planet.
It would take 18 years for humans to be born and grow into adults, but it would take the bugs one week at the longest for that to happen. They would feast on the bodies of their own species and use the organic matter to evolve. People were dumbfounded to discover from an economic perspective that mutants could rip through nanocarbon vests with their claws that had less “cost” than a magazine clip of the Gauss Rifle.
The creatures, not knowing what death stood for, used their numbers to test humans.
With their living space challenged by the bugs, the humans had to retreat to the space station near the orbit. Even with advanced scientific research, without the resources to convert it into power, they had to admit that they were at a disadvantage in the war with the bugs.
Their saving grace was that while some bugs could fly, they could not leave the atmosphere.
Humans created a word to summarize the bugs who evolved through the mutated process – mutants.
With this, the “Battle Era” that spanned a thousand years unfolded.
The battle between humans and mutants.