Daranma

"I withdraw nothing. I will follow him in."Commander Adaeze Nwosu, executive officer, log of the UNS Gagarin, 2 November 2308

Daranma is a star system about 13 light years north of the Sun. Its third planet is Mardak Vol, the garden world the extinct Mardak Vol searched three hundred years for, settled and died on, and the most habitable world humanity has found. The Yildun capsule's chart marked the star with the Mardak Vol's symbol for the garden.

The survey ship Gagarin under Tian Shen reached Daranma on 2 November 2308, after five years at Tadasca reading the Mardak Vol's records. The Office of Settlement claimed the system in 2313, and the UNS Legacy settled Mardak Vol on 4 January 2323. The Red Khanate's fleet never reached Daranma. By 2460 the system held 600 million people, and the Republic's Senate has sat at Nkrumah on Mardak Vol since 2505.

Name

Daranma is the name on the Office of Settlement's charts. It was given in the Office's catalogue of 2299, before any ship had visited, from the star's entry in the survey plan's list of targets for the Gagarin's northern sector. The Yildun capsule's chart of 40 stars carried the star with the symbol the Institute of Xenology reads as "the garden".

Astronomy

The star

Daranma is a yellow star a little cooler than the Sun. It is a dwarf of spectral type G5 V, of about 0.92 solar masses and 0.79 times the Sun's luminosity, and about 5.4 billion years old. It is steady, with a cycle of activity milder than the Sun's.

Planets

Daranma has six planets. The founders of Mardak Vol named the five that are not their own in Swahili.

Mardak Vol is the only planet with a biosphere. The Gagarin's survey of 2309 found no Mardak Vol works on the other five, and the Institute's searches of the outer system since have found none. Whatever the Mardak Vol built at Daranma, they built on their garden.

The edge

The Gagarin's forward telescope resolved Mardak Vol at 40 astronomical units on 2 November 2308, and the ship took seven weeks to fall from the edge into orbit. The system's Pillai radius lies at about 34 astronomical units.

History

The Mardak Vol

The Mardak Vol surveyed worlds for three hundred years before settling them, and their records are concerned with one search, for a garden. The Tadasca colony ship's records gave a course to it, and the Yildun capsule's chart marked Daranma with its symbol. The Mardak Vol settled Mardak Vol and lived there for four to six centuries, about 100,000 years ago, and died there in the same century as every other Mardak Vol site humanity has found. The Mardak Cluster expedition of 2502 to 2505 found that the fleets of the Fevarian golden age had destroyed the Mardak Vol's worlds.

The Gagarin, 2303 to 2309

The Gagarin under Tian Shen found the Mardak Vol colony ship at Tadasca in May 2303 and stayed there for five years reading it, against the Office of Settlement's orders, which arrived by courier every four months. His executive officer, Commander Adaeze Nwosu, recorded her dissent in the log in 2305 and in 2307 asked the Office to relieve him. The Office did not. The wreck's records gave a course, the Yildun capsule of 2307 gave a chart, and Pavel Petrenko's key from Sirius, which reached the Gagarin in April 2308, let Shen read both.

On 2 November 2308 the Gagarin jumped from Tadasca along the wreck's course and arrived at Daranma's edge at 1410 ship's time, six hours later. Shen had the first picture of Mardak Vol put on every screen in the ship. Nwosu wrote in the log that evening that she withdrew nothing and would follow him in. The Gagarin entered orbit around Mardak Vol on 21 December 2308 and landed on 3 January 2309. The courier carrying its first report reached Sol on 8 February 2309.

Claim and settlement, 2313 to 2323

The Office of Settlement claimed Daranma in 2313. Its register for the system received 40 million applications in its first month. The Office designated the Central African Confederation as Mardak Vol's founding region in 2318, and the UNS Legacy landed 100,000 colonists at the Harbour on Mardak Vol on 4 January 2323.

Daranma in the war, 2441 to 2449

The Red Khanate took Landfall, Circumstance and Dauntless between 2441 and 2444 and assaulted the Sun itself in 2446. The Fevarian Acolytes named Mardak Vol as the Return's last world after Earth. The Khan's fleet never crossed the Sun to reach Daranma, and Mardak Vol's platforms never fired. Between 2441 and 2446 the system took in 500 million refugees.

The Second Republic, 2460 to 2510

Daranma held 600 million people in 2460, almost all on Mardak Vol. The Nkrumah yards in orbit built a tenth of the Repatriation Authority's ships. The yards draw their metals from Jangwa's mines and their fuel from Kubwa's skimmers, and by 2480 they were the largest in the Republic outside the Sun. Mardak Vol's assembly funded the Mardak Cluster expedition, which left Torrom in 2502. The Republic's Senate moved to Nkrumah on 1 January 2505.

Installations

• The Nkrumah yards, in orbit of Mardak Vol, built after the war on the assembly's revenue.
• The Institute of Xenology's Daranma station, at the Harbour on Mardak Vol, beside the three Mardak Vol wrecks, opened in 2323 under the Ancient Sites Act.
• The Pillai radius station, a courier and customs station of the Office of Settlement from 2313 and of the Ministry of Worlds since.

BOOK SOURCES

1. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind: The Four Explorers"
2. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.3 "In the Shadow of Ancients: Mardak Vol Monuments"
3. Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.5 "Discovery of Eden: Mardak Vol"
4. Solar Eternal, Part XIII, §13.1 "The Darkest Hour"
5. Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.9 "The Hulk, the Fifth Drive and the Mardak Cluster" and §15.11 "Earth - Mardak Vol Tensions"