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August 25, 2526. In the year 2155, Earthan scientists dispatched a series of
procession probes towards Proxima Centauri. These were not the first probes
to visit the star system, but they were far superior. It took the procession
over 28 years to arrive, most of them sacrificing themselves to the fury of
the red dwarf. There was nothing there to slow them down, except local
gravity. The first one used solar pressure to decelerate as much as physics
allowed, and transformed the energy it was receiving into a laser beam,
which pushed against the next probe, decelerating it even faster. One by one
they came, each one pushing back against the next in line before falling
into the sun, until the last one was moving slow enough to survive. It
performed a gravity braking maneuver around Centauri, and then remained
there to perform its duties.
The first thing the final probe did was prepare what they called a
catcher’s mitt. This was an electromagnetic tube built into an
asteroid, designed to slow down any other vessel set to arrive by creating
drag, so there would have to be no more sacrifices. The probe’s primary
function, however, was to survey Proxima Centauri b, which colonists would
later deem Proxima Doma. It looked up and down the land, building a map, and
charting its past. It captured the mass, density, and surface gravity. It
labeled the canyons, lava tubes, craters, and mountains. It sent high
resolution images back to Earth, and the rest of Sol. It prepared for the
nanofactories in 2194, which were made to build everything else that the
colonists would need to live and thrive on the surface.
The probe noticed two very interesting geological features, later to be
named the Chappa’ai and the Annulus mountain ranges. The former was in the
north, and the latter in the south. They circled the poles quite
fantastically perfectly. They weren’t artificial, but they were surprisingly
smooth, in geological terms, anyway. They separated the poles from the rest
of the planet, along the Terminator Line, and on both planetary faces. The
researchers who studied these fascinating walls interpreted them as evidence
of severe crater impacts. The fact that they could be found at both poles
was mysterious and noteworthy, but not wholly implausible. Space is a
dangerous and chaotic place. Things are flying every which way all the time.
Why, Earth only supports life because a smaller planet once crashed into it,
and ultimately made the moon. That was implausible too but it obviously
happened. They certainly didn’t think there was anything else going on here.
They had no alternative explanation.
As it turns out, the rings were not created by two perfectly positioned
bolide impacts. They are the result of a multi-millennia long cycle,
precipitated by the instability of the host star. Proxima Centauri was
already volatile prior to this, sending out solar flares, and even coronal
mass ejections, constantly. The polarity reverses every several years. It’s
commonplace. It’s predictable. It’s accounted for. Very occasionally—but
reasonably predictably, given enough data—the poles flip so spectacularly
that it spells catastrophe for the orbiting terrestrial planet. That is what
is happening in the here and now. The poles snapped, and sent a massive CME
towards the colony. The atmosphere swelled, the surface turned into soup,
and the ants were sent running for the hills. But it is not over. The
cataclysm is only beginning. Because those polar rings? They’re suture
zones, and they’re about to be ripped apart at the seams. And not everyone
will be on the correct side when that happens.
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