A Decent Land: An Anthology of Arks #3

Brief biographies of the first forty ships to arrive in the system Mammaria.

Part One of this anthology is available here. Links to the remainder of A Decent Land can be found in this collection.

11. Greenbelt Citadel (Zaļā Yowusta)

Zaļā Yowusta is forbidden territory. Only a few royal delegates may visit, and natives stay put; fearful of disease. They take special care with their on-board forestry, scooped from the flaking skin of our home. In the rush and confusion of the legendary Cataclysm, we grabbed what we could from the tempest, the flames and the magma that twirled together in terrible spirals of wanton calamity.

As a chunk of our history, preserved and protected, we devised a novel defence for Yowusta. Behind its main city, ahead of the various bubbles of disparate environments, a portal blinks a rhythmic pulse of blinding, azure light. This ethereal threshold — woven by the Alternative Propulsions team — is a stable fixed-point wormhole, anchored back to a harmless quadrant we looted.

It can activate in seconds, should the fleet sense danger anywhere around its perimeter. When it does, it launches our Greenbelt Citadel through the hidden alleys of a galaxy; profane with its lack of respect…