Yildun is a star system south of the Sun, one jump from Brink on the arc the survey ship Grissom followed toward the Saolea sector. It holds two things for which it is known. In a long orbit at the system's edge lies the Mardak Vol capsule, found by the Grissom on 14 December 2307 with its pilot still in the chair, the first evidence humanity saw that it was not alone. On the third planet is Dauntless, the mangrove world settled in 2314, the third of the four core worlds.
In June 2444 the Republic's Grand Armada fought the Red Khanate at Yildun to cover Dauntless's evacuation and was defeated, and Grand Admiral Stjepan Kvoravich was killed. The Khanate burned Dauntless's capital and coast on 20 June 2444, with 180 million dead, and gave part of the world to its clans as the Khanate's first human colony. The Republic retook the system in its counter-offensive of 2447 to 2448, and Dauntless was rebuilt under charter in the Reconstruction.
Name
The name was taken from the Office of Settlement's survey catalogue, which reused names from the old Earth catalogues for stars the survey plan of 2299 assigned to the Grissom. It is not the bright star of that name in the Earth catalogues.
Astronomy
Yildun is an orange dwarf of spectral type K0 V and about 0.85 solar masses. Its third planet, Dauntless, is a low, warm, wet world with a single shallow ocean, coastlines of mangrove forest thousands of kilometres deep, a day of 20 hours and a gravity of 0.8. The system's other planets are two hot rocky worlds inside Dauntless's orbit and a gas giant and an ice giant beyond it. The courier and refuelling station the Office built at the gas giant in 2316 made Yildun the charging station for ships bound for the Gulf.
The capsule
The Grissom found the capsule on her second pass through Yildun, on 14 December 2307, because Mahesh Pillai's survey doctrine numbered every body larger than a hundred metres. It lay in a long elliptical orbit 30 astronomical units from the star. It was 40 metres long, a blunt cylinder of the Mardak Vol's grey alloy, cold to the background, and it had been in its orbit for about 100,000 years. The drone that reached it on 16 December found a hatch that opened when pushed and a single chamber. In the chair, built for a body two and a half metres tall, sat the pilot, mummified by vacuum and intact. Its head was turned toward a viewport that faced, when the capsule's orbit was run backward, the inner system.
The capsule's lattice carried a chart of 40 stars, which Pavel Petrenko's key unlocked in 2308. It showed the Sun, Sirius, Tadasca and Daranma, with Daranma marked with the symbol for the garden. The chart led the Gagarin to Mardak Vol.
The capsule's pictures were published at Sol on 3 February 2308, and were on every screen in the solar system by the 4th. The Ancient Sites Act of 11 June 2308 put it in the Office of Settlement's custody. The pilot was left in the chair, and the capsule in its orbit, with a courier station beside it. The colonists on Dauntless learned to point out the star the pilot had watched. The Fevarian Acolytes, who read the Mardak Vol monuments as the work of their own golden age, left the capsule untouched through the Khanate's occupation, and the Republic found it as it had been when the fleet retook the system.
History
Survey and settlement, 2306 to 2316
The Grissom surveyed Yildun in 2306, and two of her crew died that year in a failure of her hangar doors. The Office chose Yildun's third planet for its third colony, for its marine biology. The Chamber's Ancient Sites committee chose it for its distance from the capsule, which the Office's planners had wanted a colony near and the committee had not. The UNS Dauntless, the third Recalada, landed 100,000 colonists from Caracas, Barranquilla, Ciudad Bolívar and the delta towns of the Orinoco and Magdalena basins on 3 November 2314. They built New Caracas on stilts and floating platforms where the largest river system reached the ocean. The first storm season killed 180 of them in the platforms' collapse of February 2315. In 2316 Reliance took a shell concession in the system.
The Khanate, 2444 to 2448
The Red Khan reached Yildun in February 2444 from Brink and the Saolea side, after a year spent consolidating Circumstance, Talandra and Procyon. Dauntless refused submission. Grand Admiral Kvoravich brought the Grand Armada to Yildun in May 2444 against the Navy Board's advice, with 420 hulls, eight Vindications and 3,000 platforms, because the Republic could not withdraw from a third world in succession without a fight. The Battle of Yildun of 8 to 12 June 2444 was the Republic's last defeat of the war. The platforms went in three days. The Armada came out on the fourth to cover Dauntless's evacuation, and Kvoravich was killed aboard the Defiance on 11 June with 14,000 of her crew, when her field failed under the lances of 40 monoliths. The Armada withdrew to the Sun on 12 June with 300 hulls under Vice Admiral Tomás Ferreira-Obi.
New Caracas and the mangrove coast were burned on 20 June 2444, with 180 million dead. The Khan's landing force took the Canopy Islands and the Carabobo Marsh in September, and the Khan gave them to the clans as the Khanate's first human colony. Brink's mining world submitted in the autumn of 2444.
Liberation and reconstruction
The Republic retook Yildun in its counter-offensive of 2447 to 2448, with Alpha Centauri, Brink, Procyon and Circumstance. Under the Burned Worlds Act of 2463 Dauntless was rebuilt by charter.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind: The Four Explorers"
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.3 "In the Shadow of Ancients: Mardak Vol Monuments"
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.4 "La Recalada: The Founding of the Core Worlds"
- Solar Eternal, Part XIII, §13.1 "The Darkest Hour" and §13.9 "Counterattack"
- Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.5 "The Burned Worlds"