Exile on a Primitive World

By Sean Brandywine

The galaxy is filled with intelligent races. Most are peaceful. Then there are the Borrileans, a species ingrained with extreme paranoia. Convinced that every threat to their civilization must be eradicated, they set about a program of destroying any intelligent species that might one day develop the technology for interstellar travel.

When one courageous individual tries to put an end to the wholesale annihilation, she is exiled to a primitive world, a world on the list of those to be totally destroyed. There she will have to live among the primitives, not knowing what day or minute will be the last for her and for that entire world.

She is certain that nothing can be done to prevent the vaporizing of that world, but still she tries to warn the doomed race before it is too late. That world is Earth.

This book is a sequel to “Rogue Planet” by Sean Brandywine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Running Wolf Books
• Release date: Jan 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463450895

Sean Brandywine

Sean Brandywine was born in 1943 of a Russian father and Irish mother. Most of his professional life was spent working with computers, ranging from programmer to systems analyst and project leader. His BS and MS are in Computer Science. He began programming computers in 1961 and still enjoys writing code occasionally, and designing his own websites.In addition to science fiction, he also writes juveniles under the pseudonym of Shiloh Garnett, and adventure/horror as John Savage.He has been married to the same woman for over forty years and claims to love her more now than ever. He has two children, named Talon and Melody, and three grandchildren (so far). He lives in Solana Beach, California where he enjoys watching his grandchildren growing up, astronomy, fishing, fast sports cars, and, of course, writing.

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Exile on a Primitive World

by Sean Brandywine

Published by Running Wolf Books

Copyright 2013 Sean Brandywine

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means except by prior and express permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used as an element of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter I: Death of a Planet

Chapter II: Condemned

Chapter III: A Hot World

Chapter IV: What’s a Hospital?

Chapter V: Interrogation

Chapter VI: On the List

Chapter VII: Different Cultures

Chapter VIII: An Alien Learns to Surf and then Escape

Chapter IX: Believed, at Last

Chapter X: A Long Story

Chapter XI: The Alien’s Crime

Chapter XII: Committee Meeting

Chapter XIII: A Lesson in Space Flight

Chapter XIV: Aiming Point

Chapter XV: Near Star MSC 34533-23613-09884

Chapter XVI: Telling the World

Chapter XVII: Reaction

Chapter XVIII: XI-3

Chapter XIX: Faster Rockets

Chapter XX: The Launch

Chapter XXI: Building a Weapon

Chapter XXII: Nervous Time

Chapter XXIII: Countdown

Chapter XXIV: X Minus 2:44

Chapter XXV: Saved!

Chapter XXVI: Inside an Alien Weapon

Chapter XXVII: Snooping Around

Chapter XXVIII: To the Stars

Chapter XXIX: Aftermath

About Sean Brandywine

Contact Sean

Other Books by Sean Brandywine

Chapter I:  Death of a Planet

In the cold, empty stillness of space there suddenly appeared a blossom of white light, a burst of energy forming a sphere that immediately exploded outward at the speed of light, leaving behind a silent, dark shape where nothing had been before.  That shape was itself a sphere with a black surface that did not reflect any of the faint starlight falling upon it, absorbing, indeed, all energy coming to it.

For a long time that shape did nothing.  It simply sat there, unmoving and silent, all but invisible to any eyes.  Then a small spot on one point of its surface began glowing a soft red that shifted to an orange then a yellow and finally a white, increasing the intensity as it did and expanding until it covered half the sphere.  The shape began to move in the opposite direction.  Ahead of it, a bright star shone among the uncountable diamonds forming a broad band across existence.  This far out from the center of the galaxy, stars were few, stragglers among a hundred globular clusters that formed a halo for the spiraling disk of the galaxy, the home of three hundred billion stars.  That bright star was its destination.

Rapidly the shape accelerated, although it did not eject any mass for reaction to drive it.  Some magic of an advanced science drove thousands of tons mass with ever-increasing velocity to nearly a tenth the speed of light.  The distance between it and the yellow-white star shrank.  At twenty-nine light hours away, an opening formed on the front of the shape and from that emerged a smaller shape, like a monstrous mother giving birth to a sinister baby.  The smaller sphere moved slowly at first, then accelerated away from its mother.

The powerful engine driving the smaller shape was rapidly increasing the speed, straining to propel the small egg on its mission.  Within an hour it was traveling twice as fast as it had been, fifteen percent of light speed, then twenty.  As the speed increased, the engine strained harder to claw out a few thousand more miles per hour.  Finally, at just under a quarter the speed of light, the engine exhausted itself and fell dark.  But its job was done.  The black egg sped on at an incredible velocity, so fast that nothing could catch it or even know it was coming until it was too late.  Light or radar, should it happen to reflect off the object, would arrive only a short time before the shape itself, certainly not enough time for any type of defensive reaction.  It sparkled as it encountered dust particles, each tiny particle being turned into energy as it impacted at that incredible speed.

The black shape was an unmanned drone, a self-piloting bomb, designed for only one purpose: to destroy a planet.  Within its shell, held tightly in the grip of magnetic fields of hundreds of Gauss, was a mass of antimatter, over two tons of it.

The bright star began to shift slightly to one side, for it was not the target of that deadly drone.  Ahead of the onrushing shape was a planet, a peaceful, life-sustaining world that happened to be the home of several billion intelligent beings, a species that called itself the Harraydon.  Only one of those intelligent creatures was to know of the impending doom.  That single being, stationed before a console depicting an area of space above that planet, doing the lonely job of seeking out potential asteroids that might come near that planet and present a threat, was the first to know.  What he saw instead of a slow moving asteroid was a radar sweep showing an impossibly fast moving target.  His paw reached for a communications device but paused.  This was not what he was expecting.  Was it an error in the equipment?  That had happened before.  Should he notify his commander?

The decision was not his to make.  The object his radar was tracking was closing on the defenseless planet at a speed he could not believe.  The thought occurred to him that nothing could stop it, but still he picked up the communications device and attempted to communicate with his superiors.  He and his world had only two minutes to live.

The antimatter device released its magnetic fields as soon as it detected the imminent impact with the planet’s surface.  With the collapse of the magnetic field keeping the antimatter from contact with normal matter, the bomb exploded.  In a tiny fraction of a second the missile plowed into the planet’s atmosphere, hitting with enough kinetic energy to cause a massive explosion itself.  But when the antimatter began coming in contact with matter, the force of the missile became as nothing compared to the explosion that resulted.  Immediately, anti-particles and particles began total mass conversion to energy, following the rule formulated by a scientist named Einstein on a distant planet years before: E = MC².

That amount of antimatter hitting matter unleashed an ever-increasing sphere of pure energy, expanding outward.  A crack began to form in the planet’s crust, like an egg dropped on the floor.  Several seconds later, before the crack could spread around the planet, a massive chunk of the planet where the explosion began had been vaporized, and a ball of expanding radiation blasted outward as it devoured the planet.  A few chunks on the far side survived, only to be propelled away at hundreds of miles per second, but most of the formerly inhabited world was only an expanding cloud of radiation mixed with a little gas and dust.

Millions of miles away, the original dark shape, not bothering to confirm the completion of its mission, had rotated, shimmered all over, then disappeared, sucked into a place where time and space do not exist.  Instantaneously it appeared in another portion of the universe, accompanied by a burst of energy to announce its arrival.

The Harraydon and their home world no longer existed.

Chapter II:  Condemned

Archath walked up the stairs to stand on the podium, where she would be exposed to the judges as well as to those who had taken the time to watch her downfall in person.  Upon her wrists were slender bands of a golden metal, linked by a chain.  The shackles were symbolic rather than real restraints.  The real restraint was in a narrow band around her neck.  Within that was a tracking device as well as a remote controlled electrical shock device.  Should she try to flee, they could easily follow her anywhere she went on the planet, and deliver debilitating shocks at will, or enough to kill.  Should she be acquitted, the golden shackles would be removed.  Later, when she was actually set free, the neckband would come off.

Bright light shone down upon her as she stood there, making the shackles gleam in comparison to her drab, green colored prison jumpsuit.  Deliberately, she was not able to see the panel of judges before her, hidden in shadows outside the cone of light shining down upon her.  She also could not see the spectators gathered off to her right, but sensed that a few people were there.  She had to wonder who had come to watch, and were they eager to see her punished or perhaps friends who hoped in their hearts that the court would understand the nature of her crime and show mercy upon her actions.  The later hope was only a dim possibility, for this was a military court, and the military was the power upon Borrilea.  She had gone against their plans, and done damage to major military project.  For that, she would pay; there was little question on that issue.

Archath Procature a’Borm Millecant, came a deep voice from the shadows, Borrilea citizen number 4459-2242-4333-1001, administrator-scientist first class, you are accused of having, on Dom 45-222, deliberately sabotaged Defense Forces Project 2455, causing considerable physical damage to DF equipment and resources.  More importantly, you have set back the development of that important project by many years.

She wondered which of those dark shapes beyond the bright light was the one speaking.  Not that it mattered.

This is a most serious crime against the Borrilean Empire.  It is treason most high.  There came a pause, then, This court has debated greatly upon a proper punishment for such treason.

Archath felt a shiver race down her spine.  She was well aware of what she had done, and well aware that the penalty had to be death.  She could not conceive of the court doing anything else.  She had come to accept that on an intellectual level, but as the sentence was about to be passed, it was coming to her in a strongly emotional way that her life was soon to end.  She felt herself go cold and her knees weaken.  Perhaps there had been a little hope, however illogical, that the domineering government might not put her to death.  It had been a foolish notion.  There was no way they could do that.  Many had been put to death for lesser crimes than hers.  Without fail.

Taking in a deep breath, she braced herself and firmly told herself that she would not cry.  What she did, she did for a very good reason.  She was not sorry that she did it, and she would do it again.

Fine logic, but hard to face when a death sentence is about to be passed upon you.

A simple death sentence would be too quick and easy on one guilty of such a level of treason.  It is therefore the judgment of this court that you be condemned to exile from all worlds of the Borrilean Empire.  You will be placed upon a class 5 world, there to live out the reminder of your life.

Archath frowned.  Was this the unexpected: official mercy?  Or what?

"The world