《Voidsong (A NaNoWriMo 2018 winner)》 Chapter 1 Part 1: Diaspora Fifth Year of the Diaspora Project, Zeroth Year of the Exodus Zeroth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Admiral Ossian Supesu sat on the flag bridge of his Terran United Countries Void Guard (TUCVG) Cutter Isoroku. It was just another day in the service, sitting in Martian orbit, looking out over the desolate wasteland of the world. It hadn¡¯t always been that way. He remembered when Mars had been humanity¡¯s great hope some sixty years ago when the Terraformer Project had begun, the attempt to make Mars habitable for humans to relieve the overcrowding and resource depletion problems on Earth herself. As with so many human endeavors, it was the smallest things, the ones so oft forgotten, that had proved the greatest problem. Admiral Supesu shook his head, remembering the crushing despair that had engulfed Earth when the Terraformer Project managers announced that they had failed because they had not taken the carbon dioxide produced by yeast into account. The resulting environmental fallout caused by the runaway greenhouse gasses and melting ice caps had made the great red spots of Jupiter look like a fart in a hurricane. The atmosphere was too storm-wracked even for robotic miners to operate within. With no other use for the next few thousand years, Mars became humanity¡¯s dumping ground for all matter of radioactive, toxic, or otherwise dangerous waste. It had taken decades of fierce debate to decide on the next mega-project to save humanity. Years in which long-term cryopreservation and cryosleep had finally been perfected. Years in which particle screens had been improved enough to take velocities of up to 0.05C for prolonged periods of time. Years in which humanity had perfected zero-gravity megaprojects. Years in which gravity generators were reduced to manageable scales and for laser based communications devices to become practicable. For all of the other million and four things needed for a colony ship to be possible. For the Diaspora Project to become a reality. The first ship of the Diaspora-class, the Far Strider, sat in orbit around the sun. Suspended between the dumping-grounds of mars and the automated resource-collection nodes of the asteroid belt, she was nearly ready for launch. Her cryo-trays finishing loading the last of the three and a half billion colonists, her tech archive updating, her navigation systems undergoing final checks for her trip to Alpha Centauri. Admiral Supesu regretted that he was consigned to remain in the Sol system instead of joining humanity''s first manned foray into another system, but such was the privilege of rank and age. His son had managed to make the selection however, and was already sleeping aboard the Far Strider. In three weeks the Far Strider would be ready to depart the Sol system.
Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, commander of the Light Cruiser (CL) Viinein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and the Empire¡¯s Scout-Claimant flotilla, leaned back in his throne, his eyes fixed on the streaks and swirls of Faster Than Light (FTL) travel visible in the view screens. First of his line, and first to command both the Viinein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and the Scout-Claimant Flotilla in the Empire¡¯s name, today would mark a momentous occasion: the second time the Empire had claimed a system and the first interstellar system claimed. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta glaned at the list of ships under his command. The CL Viinein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa herself, eight Scout Destroyers (SD), and sixty-four utility, worldshaper, and logistical ships. He did not expect a fight, but the Empire believed in being prepared for any eventuality. The revision to Slower Than Light (STL) velocities came with usual intestine twisting feeling of disorientation. The scopes were awash with transit energy interference, but the beacons were launched without need for orders. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta leaned forward in his throne, staring at the secondary displays, waiting for the beacons to illuminate his scopes with information gleaned from further into this rocky little system.
¡°Admiral Supesu, Tracking. You¡¯d better look at this, Admiral. Contacts on the out-system scopes. Sixty to seventy with mass readings the size of the Isoroku, eight to twelve a little larger, and one much larger.¡± ¡°What vector Tracking?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Assuming a straight-line course to the Sol System? Computer indicates the Alpha Centauri system, Sir.¡± ¡°Damn. Communications, raise Earth Command and inform them that I am enacting FIrst Contact protocols. Then hail the Far Strider and have her expedite her preparations. She¡¯s on the far side of the system form these people, whoever they are, so she can run if everything goes to hell on us. Given the arrival vector of our guests, instruct her to begin calculating a new destination should it prove necessary.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Aye aye Sir.¡± The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°Good. Tracking? Refine your data please.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking, aye aye, Sir.¡± Admiral Supesu touched a stud on the arm of his command chair. The chime of an all-hands announcement went out over the public address system on the Isoroku. ¡°We stand at the dawn of a new era for humanity. Contacts have been detected in the outer reaches of the Sol system. Their origin vector indicates the Alpha Centauri system. First Contact protocols have been activated.¡±
The beacon followed it¡¯s pre-programmed course into the system. It was bound for a spot in space just outside of the rocky belt of asteroids, and from there into a star-centric orbit around the system¡¯s primary star. It detected artificial structures and movements, which it obediently reported to its mothership.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. The beacons are reporting structures and movement inside the system asteroid belt. Artificial in nature.¡± ¡°Set First Meeting principles, and dispatch Scout Destroyer one for more detailed scans.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. One of the contacts is headed for the asteroid belt.¡± ¡°Probably picked up the miners. What mass is she Tracking?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Slightly larger than us, but not the largest ship in the unknown fleet Sir.¡± ¡°Thank you Tracking. They dispatched an escort to investigate then.¡±
The automated asteroid miner detected a large ferrous mass moving into its assigned area. As the mass was larger than its current prey, it queried its processing node control computer for instruction. The processing node control computers, ever hungry for more material to feed humanity¡¯s shipyards, instructed the asteroid miner to harvest this new body of materials. The asteroid miner ran the needed intercept calculations and fired its thrusters.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. We have a movement response from one of the ships in the asteroids. Looks like a mining craft of some sort, given its position and vector.¡± ¡°And where there is a mining ship, there must also be miners. Still no other response to our communications attempts Cryer?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Null response to First Meeting Principles communications attempts.¡± ¡°Keep trying then Cryer. If nothing else we should have visual contact soon enough.¡±
The asteroid miner latched onto its quarry, engaged its mining drills, and began to harvest. Atmosphere began to vent, and the quarry began to attempt to dislodge the miner. The miner lacked the programming to respond to these developments, and continued to drill.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. We have a hostile response from the mining vessel. Scout Destroyer One has been attacked. Atmosphere and lives have been lost. Telemetry indicates that a ship loss with all crew is inevitable due to the destruction of the life support systems.¡± ¡°Understood. All ships are to discontinue First Meeting Principles and go to combat alert.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. One of the asteroid miners has destroyed the ship investigating the asteroid belt. The remaining unknown ships have activated of energy fields of some kind and are showing power spikes comparable to charging mass drivers.¡± ¡°Damn. Well, there goes any hope of peaceful contact. Communications, stand by to record for transmission. General alert to all TUCVG ships, priority one, no encryption, fleet scramble.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Ready to record for transmission Sir.¡± ¡°Message begins. All TUCVG ships, this is TUCVG Isoroku. Authority code Five Six Uniform Charlie India Sierra. Code Omega. I say again, Code Omega. Rally in Martian orbit as soon as possible. Message ends.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Good copy Sir. Code Omega logged. Transmitting in triplicate now, all receipt notifications expected within thirty minutes form mark¡­ mark.¡± ¡°Good. Second message; alert to all non-TUCVG ships, priority one, no encryption, no scramble.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Ready to record for transmission Sir.¡± ¡°Message Begins. This is Admiral Ossian Supesu, commanding TUCVG Cutter Isoroku to all Terran United Countries Merchant Ships (TUCMS) and civilian shipping. First contact has proved hostile and Code Omega has been declared. Make for safe orbits at best possible speed and stand by to defend yourselves. This order is non-discretionary. Message ends.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Good copy Sir, transmitting now, Receipt notifications, if any, expected within thirty minutes from mark¡­ mark.¡± ¡°Third Message. Recipient is the Far Strider, CC to Earth Command for records. Priority one, fleet scramble, fleet encryption.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Ready to record for transmission Sir.¡± ¡°Message Begins. Far Strider, this is Isoroku. The hostile contacts out number and out-mass my available forces. Moreover they are concentrated, where as my command is still responding from all over the system. I do not expect to avoid hostile contact, nor to repel the enemy. Accordingly, I hereby order you to make for the exit we discussed earlier at best possible speed. Godspeed, and know that humanity¡¯s hopes go with you. Message Ends.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Good copy Sir. Transmitting now, receipt notification from Earth Command expected in the next three minutes, from the Far Strider in the next thirty minutes form mark¡­ mark. ¡± ¡°Helm, put us on course for the Omega rallypoint. Guns, arm all weapons.¡± Chapter 2 Fifth Year of the Diaspora Project, Zeroth Year of the Exodus Zeroth Year After the Battle of the Sol System ¡°Cryer, record for transmission to the flotilla. High priority, standard encipherment.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡± ¡°Proclamation begins. This is Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, commanding the Viinein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. The loss of our fellow ship has proven beyond all doubt that this system is infested with hostile forces opposed to the illuminating will of the Empire. All ships are to raise screens and prime meteor cannons. We will leave no rock unturned and no foe unmarked. In the Empire¡¯s name! Proclamation ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, Ottolu¡¯Liekki. Clean recording Ottolu¡¯Liekki. Transmitting now.¡±
The communications rating frowned at his display, then pressed a key, ¡°Communications, Admiral. Message coming in for you Admiral, from Earth Command. On your auxiliary display now.¡± ¡°Thank you.¡± Admiral Supesu tapped the play key and listened intently to the tinny voice on the recording. ¡°All ships, this is Earth Command Actual. Authorization code Alpha Zero Zero Echo Charlie Papa. Code Omega is Confirmed. I say again, Code Omega is confirmed. Earth Command is activating battle plan Masada at this time. All ships, TUCVG, TUCMS, and civilian alike, are to make for Earth orbit at war emergency speed.¡± ¡°Helm, set course for Earth orbit.¡± ¡°Helm, Admiral. Aye Aye sir..¡± ¡°Tracking, status on the Far Strider?¡± ¡°Admiral, tracking. Still stationary on the far side of the system as of twenty minutes ago Admiral.¡± ¡°Very good Tracking. Inform me if the Far Strider changes course radically.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Willco.¡±
The computers of the Far Strider finished their abrupt departure calculations. The helmsman, a luckless fuel barge driver by the name of Donn MacBrash, who had been at the right place at the right time confirmed the course and set the autopilot. That done, he headed for the cryosleep compartments, his emergency task completed. He dreaded waking up in the far future and having to explain everything to everyone who had missed what was going on. The Far Strider¡¯s central computer recieved its extra-system course and fired the thrusters to orientate on is exit vector. As one process triggered the escape burn, another section tallied the command roster and found several glaring holes. The helmsman position was vacant, but the helmsman¡¯s cryopod was full. The computers considered the emergency launch orders that it had received and assigned Donn MacBrash to the rank and position of helmsman. Tracking and Guns were likewise vacant, and filled from the ranks of available non-commissioned officers on the basis of seniority. Overall Void Guard command was also vacant, as was the entire Void Guard command staff. They had been scheduled to embark in the last week before launch, and would never have the chance to do so now. Far Strider¡¯s central computer went scanning through the ranks of embarked Void Guard personnel, and came up with only a single commissioned officer: Lieutenant Commander Korekage Supesu. In the total absence of any more senior personnel, and given that the Void Guard commander¡¯s slot was marked as an Admiral¡¯s command, Far Strider¡¯s central computer began processing the paperwork for the needed promotions. The necessary time-in-rate between promotions would elapse during transit, and the promotions for the rest of the Void Guard command staff would follow suit. After all, the Far Strider would take over eight hundred years at its maximum velocity of 0.05c to reach its new destination: the TRAPPIST-1 System. It massive engines burning at maximum sustainable rate and producing an acceleration of almost twelve thousand kilometers per second, a feat only possible in near zero gravity conditions, the Far Strider began the two-week process of leaving the solar system.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Request permission to arm missiles.¡± ¡°Weapons, I am considering. Scopes, do we have target vector analysis on the hostile ships in this system?¡±You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Active scopes and Beacon probes are only tracking ships on this side of the system¡¯s primary star. All specified ships are shifting orbits. Destination appears to be the third planet from the system¡¯s primary star. They do not appear to be using inertialess drive mechanisms. Projecting target vector analysis on your tactical repeater now.¡± ¡°Scopes, I have it. Weapons, permission to arm missiles is denied at this time. Run pre-arming checks and stand by to arm them, but I see no reason to risk a premature detonation while our foes are so helpfully massaging themselves. For your information, I plan to arm and launch witch such timing as to catch the foe as they settle into orbit around the third world from the system¡¯s primary star, approximately one Crown World orbit from now.¡± ¡°Ottolui¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will.¡±
Admiral Supesu studied his displays and wondered. The hostile ships were approaching on a totally predictable vector; slightly ¡®above¡¯ the asteroid belt to avoid the miners, but otherwise a direct linear approach towards Earth at a constant acceleration. ¡°Guns, run some numbers for me.¡± the Admiral ordered. ¡°Assuming the hostiles do not change vector, and that they are accelerating at their maximum possible rate, could we hit them if we opened fire with our mass drivers? And more importantly, would we hit any friendly ships if they evade?¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Given the current vectors and accelerations in play, hitting the hostiles is a matter of simple mathematics. Missed shots and over penetrating shots would be above the system plane and headed out system. Tracking, do you confirm that there are no TUCVG, TUCMS, or civilian ships in the cone I¡¯m sending you on display three?¡± ¡°Guns, Tracking. I confirm zero total TUCVG, TUCMS, and civilian ships in the purposed cone of fire.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. I confirm no possibility of blue on blue if we were to open fire with mass drivers at this time.¡± ¡°Thank you Guns. Communications, contact Earth Command and request permission to open fire with mass drivers at extreme ranges.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Wilco.¡±
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Several of the smaller foe ships have rotated along their current vector. Estimate that they are bringing meteor cannons to bear on our projected vector.¡± ¡°Very good Scopes. Any sign of screens?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. None at this time.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Battle Information Center. Analysis of foe ship signatures and observed acceleration numbers indicates that the larger foe ships are merchant- or transport-class ships. Designating as T-AG plus figures on your displays now. The smaller classes of ships, the ones that just rotated to engage, appear to be a system defense force of some kind. Designating them as FF plus figures and DD plus figures on your displays now.¡± ¡°Very well BIC. Is there any indications of screen or weapons fit aboard the foe ships?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Possible meteor cannons aboard foe FF and DD class ships, unknown if foe FF or DD class ships carry missiles. T-AG ships weapons fit unknown. Foe ships of all types do not appear to carry screens.¡± ¡°BIC, Say again foe screen status?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. I say again, foe ships of all types do not appear to carry screens.¡± ¡°Understood BIC. Cryer, transmit authorization for independent evasive maneuvers within the formation to the flotilla. I want zero collisions, but I also want ships to evade against incoming meteor cannon projectiles without having to ask for authorization.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, Communications. Message from Earth Command Actual. Message Begins: ¡®To all TUCVG ships, engage with mass drivers at your discretion.¡¯ Message ends.¡± ¡°Acknowledge that message Communications.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Wilco.¡± ¡°Guns, open fire with mass drivers at will.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco. Opening fire.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Additional message from Earth Command Actual. Message begins: ¡®to all TUCVG and merchant ships, keep well clear of the attached vectors. Improvised weapons fire will be outbound along the attached vectors within the next seven days per Battle Plan Masada.¡¯ Message Ends.¡± Admiral Supesu frowned and wondered. ¡®Improvised weapons?¡¯ What was Earth Command on about? Battle plan Masada did call for the use of any and all means to defend the Sol system against outside attackers, but what improvised weapons were there to be used?
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Active sensors have picked up faint energy spikes emanating from foe ships. Passing data to BIC for detailed analysis.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Probable meteor cannon projectiles inbound, though the weapon signatures are far weaker than our own meteor cannons. Suspect electromagnetic based launchers instead of gravitic launchers. Incoming fire will be much harder to track due to lower launch transient signatures.¡± ¡°Very good BIC. Scryer, new flotilla-wide proclamation. High priority, standard encipherment¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Lekki, Cryer. Recording for transmission.¡± ¡°Proclamation Begins: Foe ships are using low-signature Meteor cannons. All ships are to go to evasion pattern Kiertamalla¡¯Kaarme at this time. Proclamation ends.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Clean recording, transmitting now.¡±
The mass driver rounds crawled across the vast distances of space. Each round was a mere ten kilograms worth of ferrous materials and was hurled by electromagnetic drivers with an acceleration a hundred times the force of gravity on earth. Yet any given round would impact with about as much impact force as a thousand kilogram bomb. The Empire scout-clamant flotilla squirmed along their vector. They could not evade, not fully. They had their screens raised, though. They did not need to evade at all.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Intermittent screen impacts from foe meteor cannon projectiles. Null damage at this time.¡± Chapter 3 Fifth Year of the Diaspora Project, Zeroth Year of the Exodus Zeroth Year After the Battle of the Sol System TUCMS Krasnyy Molot, known to her crew as the Red Vodka, wasn¡¯t much to look at. A big engine block and a bridge connected by a narrow spine containing crew quarters and the gravity tractor nodes needed to grab and secure large masses for cargo, she resembled a child¡¯s drawing of a dog¡¯s bone more than that of void-fairing cargo hauler. She had been sitting near the siberian space elevator, awaiting a cargo of cryo-frozen foodstuffs for one of the Diaspora Project shipyards when the Code Omega alert had come in. Now her captain and chief engineer were awaiting a very different cargo. The missile pallets crawled up the siberian space elevator, still under heavy guard. Hard-suited technicians hung like limpets along the Krasnyy Molot¡¯s spinal section, making tweaks to her massive gravity tractors, attaching quickly fabricated clamps and collars to her hull. Turning the Krasnyy Molot from a cargo carrier to a missile collier. The Chief engineer squinted at the zoomed in image of the missile pallets on his display, then he swore softly. ¡°Sukin syn! Captain, are those really¡­?¡± ¡°Da, they are. And we are to place them and send the launch command.¡± ¡°This Battle Plan Masada, it really does commit everything. Even the things the Motherland kept locked in the closet and hidden in the cellar.¡±
¡°Weapons, arm the missiles. With the foe ships having no screens, we can launch sooner than anticipated.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will. What are the targeting priorities?¡± ¡°The FF and DD class foe ships. They are smaller, but without inertialess drives they can not dodge, and without screens they can not survive even glancing hits.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will. Missiles launching, salvo all.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. Missile separation! Estimate three six inbound to Earth orbit! Flight time is eight hours. Targets appear to be TUCVG ships.¡± ¡°Only thirty six missiles? That is a tiny salvo. Guns, switch mass drivers to point defense mode.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Aye Sir.¡± ¡°Tracking, any word on Earth Command¡¯s ¡®improvised weapons¡¯?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. I¡¯ve got missile pallets on the siberian and north american space elevators. Big ones.¡± ¡°Tracking, clarify. How big?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Too large for Isoroku¡¯s missile racks. Estimate each missile is four zero meters in length and five meters in diameter. Three missiles per pallet, so weight is approximately three hundred plus tons per missile. There¡¯s a TUCMS cargo hauler, the Krasnyy Molot, at the siberian space elevator loading missiles. She¡¯s loaded eighteen so far, and is only half full.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Hostile missiles entering outer point defense perimeter.¡± ¡°Acknowledged Guns, engage at your discretion.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco.¡± ¡°Admiral, Combat information Center. Earth Command indicates that the TUCMS Krasnyy Molot is loading thirty-eight SS-X-35 missiles for orbital launch, complete with special weapons payloads.¡± ¡°CIC, confirm your last.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Earth Command has confirmed release of three eight times Sierra Sierra dash Xray dash Three Five missiles, complete with special weapons payloads to TUCMS Krasnyy Molot. ¡± ¡°Tracking, are the dimension of the missile on the north american space elevator similar to the ones on the siberian space elevator?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Missile dimensions of the missiles on the north american space elevator are similar to missiles on the siberian space elevator. Additional missile pallets detected on the pan-asian space elevator. Missiles on pan-asian space elevator also similar in dimension to missiles on the siberian space elevator. TUCMS The Heavens Falling is loading missiles on the north american space elevator. TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ is moving into position to load missiles at the pan-asian space elevator.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Earth Command confirms release of four zero times Lima Golf Mike dash Six Zero Seven Bravo missiles with special weapons payloads to TUCMS The Heavens Falling and release of three eight times Charlie Sierra Sierra dash Xray dash Five Five missiles with special weapons payloads to TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´.¡±Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. ¡°Admiral, Guns. Last incoming missile shot down in the outer pont defense perimeter. Requesting permission to resume offensive fire with mass drivers at this time.¡± ¡°Guns, Permission denied. Flush our missile tubes to add to Earth Commands missile strike. Link targeting solutions with nearby TUCVG ships and set up for mass driver time on target salvo attacks in the wake of Earth Command¡¯s missile launch.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco. Synchronising missile targeting solutions with TUCVG Lord Keyes and TUCVG D?nitz.¡±
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Null effect of missiles on targets. Foe appears to have used meteor cannons firing cluster submunition projectiles as a long-range missile countermeasure.¡± ¡°Understood Weapons. Time to effective meteor cannon range?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Time to effective meteor cannon range is one kymme.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Foe missile launch! Estimate one one six incoming! Time to impact one kaksi!¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Re-designating three foe T-AG ships as T-AE plus figures. Highlighting on your displays now. Unknown if the indicated foe ships are controlling the incoming missiles or merely acting as firing platforms. Unable to determine foe missile warhead type: no distinguishable energy signatures detected.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Second foe missile launch! Estimate two two eight incoming! Time to impact one kaksi! These missiles are smaller than the ones from the first salvo, origin appears to be foe DDs. Estimate foe DDs have salvoed all missiles.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Missile defense active.¡±
Earth Command, being for all intents and purposes a glorified coast guard operation in space, did not have the funding to build and maintain large orbital defense platforms. It had instead built a total of three ¡®flagship¡¯ destroyers (named for wet navy Admirals) and twelve frigates (named for rivers) which were deemed sufficient ships for the purpose of patrolling the Sol system and performing police and rescue operations on an as-needed basis. All fifteen ships were classified as cutters as tradition dictated. The lack of funding for large ships or fixed defenses did not prevent Earth Command from making contingency plans anyway, including Battle Plan Masada. Under Battle Plan Masada, Earth Command would ask for (and receive) cooperation from all of the countries in the Sol system. In particular, Earth Command was interested in those countries stockpiles of heavy missiles and their corresponding payloads. Missiles that, in previous ages, were known as Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
¡°Admiral, Guns. Good effect of missiles on target. Requesting permission to engage with mass drivers as previously specified.¡± ¡°Guns. Permission granted.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Acknowledged. Opening fire.¡±
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Shipkeeper. Screen generators one, three, and five offline. Time to repair unknown.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Support Squadron Six reporting a mass casualty situation, status combat ineffective. Support Squadron Four is not responding to hails, mass casualty situation presumed, combat effectiveness presumed to be zero. Scout Destroyers Two and Five report status as combat ineffective, mission incapable due to battle damage.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. We are blind due to massive electromagnetic and radiological interference.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Missile silos one, three, five, and seven are disabled. Meteor cannons three, five, and nine offline. Meteor cannons one and seven online under local control.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Foe missiles from T-AE ships were particle-merger in nature. Use of Weapons of Extermination by the foe is confirmed for the records. Foe DD missiles were armed with ¡®standard¡¯ high-explosive warheads.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Scout Destroyers Three and Four reporting total screen failure, combat power unimpeded.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Coordinated meteor cannon impacts on remaining screen! Screen failure imminent!¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Shipkeeper. Hull Breached! Multiple hull breaches between frame five zero and frame six two! Atmosphere loss limited to affected spaces.¡± ¡°Weapons, return fire on vector of incoming fire!¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will!¡± ¡°Scopes, time until we can see again?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Unknown time until we can see again. Unable to estimate if scopes are only degraded by electromagnetic and radiological effects or are totally non-operational.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Missive from Scout Destroyer Eight. Her status is combat effective. She reports Support Squadrons Four, Five, and Seven are dead in space.¡±
¡°Guns, focus your fire on hostile ships that are no longer showing those energy fields. let us knock out who we can while we can.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco. Shifting targeting priorities.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Mass driver rounds incoming from hostile ships.¡±
TUCMS Krasnyy Molot lumbered back from her launch position to her loading position atop the siberian space elevator for another load of missiles. Neither she nor her crew ever saw the meteor cannon shot that killed her. The one thousand kilogram projectile came in with just shy of one thousand earth gravities of acceleration behind it. It stuck the Krasnyy Molot just behind the bridge and tore along her spine, exiting just below her engines. The severed halves of the wreck tumbled into the top of the serbian space elevator. The entire assembly began a tortuous, fiery descent to the Earth¡¯s surface a hundred kilometers below. SS-X-35 missiles tumbled free from shattered pallets, adding their fiery reentry trails to the shower of debris. The Luna shipyards took several impacts from misaligned meteor cannons firing down incorrect vectors, but the laws of physics care not for user error. Atmosphere and hydrogen fuel from ruptured storage tanks formed lethal plumes. The main drydock managed to catch two projectiles, but the force transfer tore it from a stable orbit and put it into a death spiral, bound for the lunar surface. Another cluster of meteor cannon projectiles tore through a gaggle of TUCMS and civilian ships. They were no military threat, just in the wrong place at the wrong time, unable to shift orbits fast enough to get out of the line of fire. The spreading patterns of high-velocity debris tore into the TUCVG Yangtze and TUCVG Amazon. Both ships suffered catastrophic hull breaches, their atmospheres blasting out into the void in a matter of moments. Chapter 4 Fifth Year of the Diaspora Project, Zeroth Year of the Exodus Zeroth Year After the Battle of the Sol System The Far Strider¡¯s central computer noted the detonation of fusion warheads in the Sol system and made a mark in its sensor record. Now almost half a light hour from the combat, everything its sensors could see had happened long enough ago that there was nothing the Far Strider¡¯s central computer could do about it. Far Strider¡¯s sensors kept their silent witness, and its central computer kept a faithful record of the last stand of the Terran United Countries Void Guard.
¡°Admiral, Communications. TUCVG Amur reports loss of primary thrusters, continuing engagement¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Total mass driver ammunition is at five zero percent.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. TUCMS Krasnyy Molot and the siberian space elevator have been destroyed.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. TUCVG Nile is dead in space, passing to CIC for analysis.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ reports three eight times Charlie Sierra Sierra dash Xray dash Five Five missiles deployed and awaiting final release from Earth Command.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. TUCVG Nile took a hit to her bridge, estimate as combat ineffective due to total loss of command structure.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communication. TUCVG Amur reports as drifting out of control due to mass driver recoil. Her commander is requesting help from nearby tugs to stabilize his ship.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. TUCVG Lena and TUCVG Mekong have collided. Passing to CIC for analysis. Alert! Hostile ships are shifting formation! Looks like they are maneuvering to shield injured ships.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. TUCVG Lena and TUCVG Mekong evaded into each other. Looks like a combination of combat damage and helm errors. Multiple hostile mass driver rounds are inbound in their projected course. Estimate that they will not be able to disentangle themselves before impact.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. TUCMS The Heavens Falling reports Four Zero times Lima Golf Mike dash Six Zero Seven Bravo missiles deployed and awaiting final release from Earth Command.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Earth Command Actual confirms release of all missiles and their special weapons payloads to TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ and TUCMS The Heavens Falling.¡± ¡°Admiral, Engineering. Hull breach at deck two zero is patched, restoring atmosphere to sickbay at this time.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ and TUCMS The Heavens Falling have salvoed ICBMs and are returning to the space elevators to reload.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Shifting fire patterns to avoid hitting friendly ICBMs.¡±
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Scopes partially restored. We have eyes again! Foe missiles detected! Estimate eight eight incoming! Time to impact three satav! ¡°Weapons, switch meteor cannons to submunition projectiles and target those missiles. We can not afford more hits like the last ones.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will.¡± ¡°Cryer, relay a Proclamation for all Scout Destroyers without screens at this time. They are to prioritize shooting down incoming missiles above firing at foe ships!¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Transmitting proclamation now.¡± ¡°Shipkeeper, what is the status of our screen generators?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Shipkeeper. Screen generators are non operational. Damage survey indicates they are not repairable out of onboard resources. I¡¯ve got blown power relays, dead control units, and liquified heat sinks.¡± ¡°Understood Shipkeeper. Do what you can.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Shipkeeper. By your will.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Submunition projectiles highly effective against foe missiles. Estimate all foe missiles destroyed.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. I confirm all foe missiles shot down.¡± ¡°Steersman, continue to close the range and roll ship against incoming meteor cannon projectiles. I want what¡¯s left of our screens to take the impacts. ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Steersman. By your will.¡± ¡°Cryer, Proclamation for the Worldshaper Support Squadron. They are to drop back from the formation, then hide behind the fourth planet from the system¡¯s primary star, using its mass and gravity as a screen against meteor cannon projectiles and missiles. Scout Destroyer Eight is to go with them as a close escort.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your word.¡± ¡°Weapons, if you¡¯ve run out of missiles to swat from the void, crush the foe T-AE ships. ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, CIC. TUCMS The Heavens Falling just took a glancing hit amidships and is de-orbiting. She reports having enough thruster capacity to avoid the north american space elevator, but not enough to stay in orbit. TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ is changing orbits to use the north american space elevator in her stead. She reports that the pan-asian countries have depleted their stockpile of special weapons payloads.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°Communications, get on the link to TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´. Order her to stockpile the ICBMs in low orbit instead of firing them immediately. We are going to need larger salvos to get through their new point defense scheme.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Wilco.¡±
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Confirm kill on foe T-AE two. Targeting T-AE three now. Meteor cannon projectile count is down to five zero percent of maximum capacity.¡± ¡°Weapons, acknowledged.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Foe T-AE 3 had deployed missiles. Passing locations and vectors to Weapons for prosecution.¡± ¡°Scopes, Weapons. Data received. Shifting targeting priorities. Selecting cluster submunition projectiles.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. Hostile mass driver rounds inbound on the stockpiled ICBMs.¡± ¡°Tracking, time to impact?¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Twenty two minutes.¡± ¡°Communications, get me Earth Command Actual. I need the firing codes for those ICBMs, and I need them now. We are in a use them or lose them scenario.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Aye aye sir.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. TUCVG Mississippi and TUCVG D?nitz have taken hits. Estimate both ships are now drifting hulks.¡± Admiral Supesu gripped the shock frame of his command chair. It was a race against time. The TUCVG stood a chance if he could get the ICBMs launched before the incoming mass driver rounds wiped them out. The mass drivers were dealing heavy damage the the un-shielded hostile ships, but were about as useful as soft boiled eggs against a stone wall when they hit hostile shields. The ICBMs, much as he hated the idea of using them, had proved to be the only weapon he had that could knock down those shields. ¡°Admiral, Tracking. TUCMS L¨®ng Zh¨© N¨´ just took three hits and is breaking up. It appears that the north american space elevator has been damaged by debris, possibly by an over penetrating mass driver round. Estimate north american space elevator as disabled at this time.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. ICBM launch authorization codes are in a secure file on your number three display. They require your DNA signature to unlock.¡± Admiral Supesu cracked the seal on the gauntlet of his space suit. It was technically against regs to unseal the suit during combat, but the same could be said of putting that file on the TUMVG Isoroku¡¯s datanet. Given the time limits he was working under, Admiral Supesu decided he would deal with the repercussions later. His hand went into the DNA reader, the six needles pricked his fingers and palm just hard enough to draw blood, and the file unlocked. ¡°CIC, spin up a dedicated secure communications link. Recipients are the Lima Golf Mike dash Six Zero Seven Bravo and Sierra Sierra dash Xray dash Three Five missiles sitting in earth orbit. Purpose is transmission of final release authorization and firing codes. I have to input the codes manually, so put the secure link on my number two display as soon as you have it.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Wilco.¡± Admiral Supesu pulled his gauntlet back on and hoped there was enough time left.
There would have been enough time had the Viimeinen¡¯Lavia¡¯Verta fired standard meteor cannon projectiles. The cluster submunition projectiles were only a few kilometers per second squared faster due to their reduced weight, but even a very small acceleration advantage over a long enough period of time amounts to a noticeable difference in velocity. The edge of the cluster submunition projectile¡¯s scatter pattern clipped the trailing ends of the ICMB missiles as the began to accelerate. A tiny handful escaped unscathed and continued on to attack the Empire flotilla. Some of the ICBMs twisted onto corkscrew vectors that took them through the dwindling TUCVG fleet and out of the battlespace to sail endlessly in the places between solar systems. A small handful slammed directly into TUCVG ships or large pieces of debris, activating their backup impact fuses. The resultant plasma blast fronts tore the TUCVG Isoroku and all of her fellow TUCVG ships apart. Only three ICBMs were spun far enough around by impacts to point at Earth. Hastily retrofitted to not require targeting coordinates, as their global positioning systems did not work in space, they hit terminal velocity and obediently deployed their warheads. With only fifteen warheads per missile, and each warhead having a blast equivalent to ¡®only¡¯ three hundred and fifty thousand tons of TNT, the effects were devisating but localized. One warhead hit the Yellowstone Caldera, triggering a minor volcanic eruption (as far a super volcanoes are concerned) that sprayed ash high into the atmosphere. It was this ash that was the ruin of the defense of Earth, as it severed all laser-based light-speed communications links across the planet. Unable to coordinate any further defensive efforts, Earth Command was left helpless in the face of the enemy.
¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Particle-merger detonations have eliminated all effective opposition in this system. For the record, all particle-merger detonations, even those detected amidst foe formations and on the foe world, originated from missiles launched by the foe. This has been confirmed by sensor tracks from all surviving Empire ships. Heavy foe ground resistance is expected on the third world form this system¡¯s primary star. Environmental conditions on the surface of that world are unknown, but expected to be extremely hazardous to any ground troops landed by this Scout-Clamant Flotilla.¡± Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta rested his head in his graspers and tried not to crumble. Of the seventy three ships that he had set out from the Corownworld with, only thirteen remained. His own ship, CL Viinein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, no longer FTL capable, given her damaged state. Scout Destroyer Eight remained FTL capable, but that was all she was good for. All three of the other surviving Scout Destroyers were heavily damaged and would require extensive work by a repair ship before they could make it back to a shipyard. Of the transport and support ships, only the eight ships of the Worldshaper Support Squadron were intact, and all of them had suffered at least some damage. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta raised his head, speaking slowly and clearly for the record, ¡°Battle Information Center, confirm the status of the troop transports attached to this Scout-Clamant Flotilla.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Null troop transports are part of the Scout-Clamant Flotilla at this time. They did not survive contact with the foe.¡± ¡°Battle Information Center, do you confirm that we do not possess enough surviving ground combat power to successfully prosecute a ground campaign on the third world form the primary star of this system at this time.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, BIC. BIC confirms that this Scout-Clamant Flotilla does not possess enough ground combat strength to successfully prosecute any ground or boarding operations against the foe in this system.¡± Battle Information Center, given the foe¡¯s indiscriminate use of particle-merger weaponry which the Empire classifies as World Breaker Weapons, do you confirm for the record that the standards set forth in the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat have been met?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Battle Information Center. I confirm that the standards set forth in the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat have been met and exceeded.¡± ¡°Weapons, given the foe¡¯s indiscriminate use of particle-merger weaponry which the Empire classifies as World Breaker Weapons, do you confirm for the record that the standards set forth in the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat have been met?¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Weapons. I confirm that the standards set forth in the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat have been met and exceeded.¡± ¡°Weapons, prepare for terminal bombardment against the third world from the primary star of this system and any remaining inhabited stations or colonies in this system in accordance with the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Weapons. I will comply with your porclamation. Beginning terminal bombardment calculations at this time.¡±
The central computer of the Far Strider stopped attempting to monitor the events transpiring behind its thruster wash in the Sol system. Not out of any human want or desire, but simply because those events were beyond the range of its sensors. It calculated that it would take a total of three years of acceleration to get to its maximum sustainable velocity of 0.05 times the speed of light. All three billion of is passengers rested peacefully in cryosleep, all but one totally oblivious to anything having gone wrong. Chapter 5 Part 2: Worldshapers Sixth Year of the Exodus Sixth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat in his command throne and stared down at the world below him, the fourth world form the system primary (and only) star. The red world¡¯s vast mass, slow rotation, and slower orbit were mesmerizing to him. Officially the world had only the automatically assigned catalog number of S04-ZNC-AO-T050. Unofficially it was being called Salama¡¯Maa by the worldshaper teams for its ferocious atmosphere, the byproduct of a failed wordshaping attempt by the system¡¯s previous inhabitants. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta regretted exterminating thoes inhabitants. As an Individual, he hated the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat and its total disregard for sentient life. As an officer of the Empire, he was bound and sworn to apply it where and when it was appropriate. And Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta did have to conceed that if any species could be considered so obscenely insane as to be classified as Fanatical Purifiers from a first contact event, the previous inhabitants of this system certainly did. Even after their crownworld had been destroyed, the survivors had fought to the last. Time and again his boarding parties had been met by suicidal defiance, lethal traps, self-terminating strikes, and other acts of madness that his boarding teams had not only taken to shooting first and offering to accept the surrender of the surviving locals afterwards, they had stopped even offering to take surrender. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta had ordered investigations into the first few reports of this nature to reach him, but after personally viewing the helmet-watcher footage from a boarder offering surrender terms being blown to pieces by a local missing both legs and one arm he had called the investigators off. A report waited for Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta on his secondary display concerning the remains of the shipyard on the lone moon of the third world. It was chilling reading. A massive ship had been under construction there, before a meteor cannon round had put an end to the project. So large in fact that the Empire considered ships of that magnitude to be theoretical at best. Such ¡®Titan-Class¡¯ ships dwarfed even the largest cargo carriers and capital ships, akin to the width of a man¡¯s grasper compared to their height. The Shipkeepers had managed to get portions of the shipyard working again. Not enough to repair any of the Empire¡¯s ships, as the technology was simply incompatible, but enough to get some measure of the speed at which a ship of that scale could be built. Their estimates placed it at only another two hundred Crown World Orbits until the ship, named ¡®Diaspora¡¯ according to the markings on her hull, would have been ready for launch. Ottolu¡¯Liekki suspected that estimate was actually high, given the Shipkeepers¡¯ unfamiliarity with the equipment. He shuddered at the thought. Only great good fortune had won him the battle for this system without even greater casualties. Had the locals had even a single Titan-class warship, no matter how crude, on their side in the battle¡­ his command would have been utterly wiped out. ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Scopes are picking up FTL transit indicators. Bearing is consistent with a transit from the Crown World. Numbers are consistent with a relief fleet.¡±This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°Thank you Scopes.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming missive from the relief fleet.¡± ¡°Cryer, route it to my primary display.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer, By your will.¡±
Taivutus¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku (TKS to his friends), First Linguist of the Empire¡¯s Scout-Clamant fleet, poured over fragments of physical documents. Transcripts and printouts of the signals detected by the Scout-Clamant fleet before the first ship was lost were spread out before him. The Empire¡¯s transmissions were clear. The human, for that was what the local inhabitants of this system had called themselves, transmissions were full of frustrating errors and sentence structure anomalies. TKS was sure that most of the ¡®structure anomalies¡¯ were explained by the lack of contractions in the human language. Empire Tounge, the common language of the Empire, simply ran words together and used breaks to signify the end of a sentence or the change of ideas. The human language used them everywhere, even when perfectly suitable contractions were available. TKS shook his head and pulled a old-fashioned stylus out to make more annotations. He felt that his team was getting close to some sort of comprehensive lexicon or translation guide. But some of the human words, the less-commonly used ones, were rather frustrating. ¡®Diaspora¡¯ for one. It made no sense to create a Titan-class ship and not name it something significant. A portable computer sat in the corner, awaiting instructions with the infinite patience of a machine. It contained all of the salvaged human documents, including the tiny handful that had been recovered from damaged computer cores and were readable by Empire computers. The vast bulk of digitized human data was actually pict-captures of physical documents, some of which were even searchable. TKS shook his head in frustration, ¡°Terminal, search all human archives for keyword Diaspora.¡± The computer beeped compliance and began to work. TSK went back to pouring over the physical documents. He did not expect the search to find anything, but TSK had to try. His search teams and archivists were adding more documents and data every kaksi, so perhaps something new had been added since the last time TSK had tried. ¡°Search complete. Two references found. Translation (origin: prototype human-Empire autotranslator) available.¡± TKS froze in surprise, then pulled himself together and turned to face the terminal. ¡°Terminal, say references and translation of Diaspora.¡± ¡°Reference the first: Diaspora, Project. Human endeavor in shipbuilding, objective to complete a Titan-scale ship. ¡°Reference the Second: Diaspora, Ante. Human time demarcation term to indicate a time-period after the Diaspora. ¡°Translation (speculative): to go out of or away from. See terms: Jews (unknown), Jewish (unknown), Israelites (speculation: synonym of ¡°Jews¡±), Israel (speculation: location).¡± TKS stared at the terminal, his mind chasing after echoes. ¡°Terminal, create new notation file.¡± ¡°Notation file figures seven six three ready.¡± ¡°Notation begins. Query Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯verta on possible purpose of Diaspora ship. Could it have been intended as a sub-FTL colony ship? Notation ends. Save file as quote Diaspora Ship Question end quote. Close file.¡±
Junior Shipkeeper Onneton¡¯Hitsaaja¡¯Orja stared at the piece of metal. It was part of the hull of the Diaspora ship. Specifically, it was a piece of exterior hull plating that was ready for installation, or possibly re-installation, when the shipyard had taken damage. On the far left edge of the plate was the edge of one of the human letters, the one that looked like a triangle with two overly-long sides. In the center of the plate was a simple horizontal line, and on the right was a human numeral. The one for the second in a series if Hitsaaja¡¯Orja was remembering correctly. He pulled out a picter and captured an image. With the pict on the display, he held the picter up to the intact section of hull plating above him, the one that held the Diaspora ship¡¯s name. The image lined up perfectly. Hitsaaja¡¯Orja froze in panic. The Diaspora ship in front of him was not the first Titan-class ship the human shipyard had produced. It was the second. Chapter 6 Sixth Year of the Exodus Sixth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta stared at the text of the missive on his primary display. He struggled to believe what his eyes told him. It read: ¡®Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯verta, Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta. I bring word from the Empress, whom we both serve. Congratulations on a task well accomplished, but I think that we should save the formalities for when you come aboard CV Kruunu¡¯Rutto¡¯Tuo. I will see you soon, grandson mine.¡¯ His grandfather, the Kokko¡¯Liekki in command of the Empire¡¯s entire voidborne fleet, had come to this system in person? And what was this about an Empress? Had the old Emperor passed away in the two hundred odd Crown World Orbits that had passed since he had completed the conquest of this still nameless system? ¡°Cryer, missive to Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta aboard CV Kruunu¡¯Rutto¡¯Tuo. Missive begins. ¡®Kokko¡¯Liekki, it is an honor to receive you in this system. I am currently in orbit above Salama¡¯Maa (map designation S04-ZNB-AO-T095); the fourth world from this system''s primary star. My ship, CL Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, will maneuver to match orbits with you on arrival. Navigational Advisory: Major asteroid belt is hazardous to approach in this system due to automated mining operations.¡¯ Missive ends.¡± ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Clean copy, transmitting missive now.¡±
Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta looked up from the missive on his display, ¡°Steersman, adjust fleet course to avoid the local asteroid belt.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Steersman. By your will.¡± ¡°BIC, do we have a hard count on the ships in this system?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Still only the twelve ships Kokko¡¯Liekki. We¡¯ve got the eight ship Worldshaper web over Salama¡¯Maa, the three Scout Destroyers and the CL forming up into a parade formation, and nothing else.¡± ¡°Thank you BIC. I had hoped that more of the Scout-Clamant Flotilla had survived, but it appears that the fragmentary reports were indeed correct.¡±
Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta tugged his dress uniform into order for the twelfth time and stared at the shuttle¡¯s transfer hatch. He could not help but wonder that the Empire had sent its only Carrier just to relieve him. He wished that he had had time to meet with the Archivist and Shipkeeper teams before this meeting to discuss their missives more thoroughly, but their impersonal testimonies transmitted to his ship would just have to do. The hatch slid open on squealing hydraulics and the ramp descended to the deck. He walked down it, the three Scout Destroyer commanders at his heels, and saluted the officer of the deck. ¡°Permission to board?¡± ¡°Permission is granted Ottolu¡¯Liekki. The Kokko¡¯Liekki is expecting you in briefing chamber one, if you would follow me?¡±
Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta stood next to the chair and tried not to look nervous. The BIC officers buzzed around outside the door, clearly searching for something deeper in the system. The Kokko¡¯Liekki shut the door and took his seat. Everyone else followed his example and the debriefing began. ¡°What happened in this system Ottolu¡¯Liekki?¡± ¡°Did you not get the reports I sent back to the crownworld aboard Scout Destroyer Eight?¡± ¡°She broke up upon revision, snapped in half at the keel. We managed to retrieve fragmentary data from her computers, and the battle damage was obvious, but the after-combat summaries were either lost or incomplete and deemed outlandish by the politicians of the day.¡± ¡°If that is the case, then I should begin at the STL speed revision, unless you would like me to being earlier?¡± ¡°STL revision would be the place to start.¡± ¡°The Scout-Clamant flotilla reverted to Slower Than Light speeds at the system edge, just outside the orbit of the eighth planet. We deployed Beacon probes and activated active scopes, dispersing into a standard search pattern. Almost immediately, the Beacons began relating artificial structures and ship movement in the asteroid belt, and I enacted First Meeting Principles before dispatching Scout Destroyer One to investigate. ¡°This was a mistake. The Beacons were starting to report more ship signatures further into the system at the same time Scout Destroyer One entered the vicinity of the asteroid belt. One of the mining ships there, automated as we would later learn, detected the battle armor on her hull, decided that she was an asteroid worth mining, and proceeded to do so.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. ¡°Scout Destroyer One lost all atmosphere and crew before we could render any aid. I discontinued First Meeting Principles and went to combat alert at that time. My intention was to secure the system without further Empire deaths if possible. All non-Empire ships in the system maneuvered to make orbit around the third world from the system¡¯s primary star. None of them exhibited inertialess drives, which became doubly evident when fifteen of them, the largest the size of a destroyer, shut down their engines and rotated to engage with meteor cannons at extreme range. ¡°Their fire proved unable to breach, or even seriously stress, the screen of my Flotilla, so they ceased fire for some time. Having taken fire, and with all foe ships on predictable vectors, I salvoed missiles at long range. The foe blew all thirty six of them out of the void with ease, and replied with three hundred and thirty four missiles of their own. Two hundred and twenty eight of which were ¡®conventional¡¯ ship killers, while the remaining one hundred and sixteen were particle-merger type World Breakers. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta paused, waiting for the inevitable outcry. It was not long in coming. ¡°Tulipalo¡¯Ja¡¯Armo!¡± ¡°One hundred and sixteen? Impossible!¡± ¡°What Hulluja¡¯Olentoja would make such a weapon?¡± Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta rapped his grasper on the table to call the briefing back to order. ¡°Officers of the Empire, this is hardly unsuspected news. We knew this was a possibility from the plasma scoring and radiation counts on the hull fragments of Scout Destroyer Eight. Ottolu¡¯Lekiki, continue please.¡± ¡°Thank you, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Missile defense went active of course, and performed well, but given the raw numbers of incoming missiles, it was woefully insufficient. Plasma blast fronts blew out screens all across the flotilla, and the combination of electromagnetic and radiation-induced disruptions in flotilla scope and communications threw us into temporary disarray. Communication and control channels were quickly re-established, but the foe had sequenced their resumed meteor cannon fire to come in close on the missile wakes. ¡°Any ship without a screen was subjected to systematic meteor cannon bombardment. Though the foe meteor cannon fire may have been light due to their small electromagnetic launchers, it was still more than sufficient to punch through our hulls with ease. Sensors and BIC were able to locate the foe¡¯s launch platforms. All of the standard ship killers had come from the foe¡¯s three destroyers, while the World Breaker missiles had come from arsenal ships in planetary orbit. ¡°A second, smaller salvo of World Breakers came in, this time without standard ship killers in support.¡± Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta paused again expecting further outbursts, but only clenched graspers and stun-shocked eyes greeted his glances. ¡°BIC estimated the salvo as containing only seventy eight missiles, so our meteor cannon fire had either killed or disabled one of the foe¡¯s arsenal ships. We copied the foe¡¯s tactic of using cluster submunition projectiles to shoot down missiles at extreme ranges. The few missiles that survived were easily picked off by missile defense. ¡°The meteor cannon engagement was slowly shifting in the Empire¡¯s favor. Un-screened ships were hideously vulnerable, but any ship with a screen was the next best thing to immune to incoming fire. Weapons managed to pick off a second foe arsenal ship, and BIC was able to locate a large salvo of World Breaker missiles being stockpiled in planetary orbit around the third world from the system¡¯s primary star. Weapons targeted them with cluster submunition projectiles, which impacted at about the same time the missiles were launched. ¡°The result was the total destruction of the foe fleet and heavy damage to the foe Crown World. At which time I authorized the implementation of the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat against the local inhabitants of the system, an order which was duly countersigned by both my BIC Officer and my Weapons Officer.¡± The briefing room wend deadly silent. ¡°Why?¡± The question came from an unknown BIC officer in the back of the room, but Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta answered it all the same. ¡°The foe had repeatedly used weapons of a World Breaker nature and demonstrated Fanatical Purifier tendencies in doing so. We all remember the leveler and unmaker rebel groups, and the craters left behind when their secret places were illuminated by the Emperor¡¯s light. These ¡®humans¡¯ did the same on a planetary scale, and had the means to do so on a system wide scale. ¡°Moreover, I had lost all of my marine transports, leaving me without a ground force capable of taking and occupying any world, much less a radioactive deathworld inhabited by foes that would resist to the last. This fanatical, suicidal resistance was confirmed repeatedly and beyond all doubt during the cleansing of orbital installations and moon bases. My ships have literally Crown World Orbits of footage from hundreds of boarding party members that testify to this effect.¡± Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta stood, signalling the end of the briefing. ¡°I would like you to transmit that footage, along with complete sensor records of the entire engagement, to my flagship for review. I have no doubt that you acted in full accordance with all Diktats and Directives, but an event of this scale, with such casualties on all sides, must be reviewed at the highest levels to ensure the accuracy of your testimony.¡± Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta stood and bowed, ¡°I have only two things to add before this meeting is adjourned. The first is that the Scout-Claimant flotilla was extraordinarily fortunate in its timing. My Shipkeer teams have been going over a Titan-class shipyard that had orbited the moon of the foe¡¯s Crown World, and they report that it held the remains of the foes second ever Titan-Class ship.¡± Kokko¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta was visibly vibrating at his grandson¡¯s findings, but gestured for him to continue, knowing that more was to come. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta bobbed his head and continued, ¡°The second fact is that these Titan-Class ships appeared to be a Scout-Claimant pattern, according to both my Shipkeepers¡¯ analysis of the wreck and my Archivists¡¯ efforts at translating the wreck¡¯s name. Had the foe possessed a combat capable Titan-class ship in the system at the time of the engagement¡­¡± The audible ping of the ornate, antique timekeeper on the wall of the chamber echoed in the silence. Chapter 7 Seventh Year of the Exodus Seventh Year After the Battle of the Sol System Ensimmaainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta tapped idly at his new rank decorations, proclaiming his rank of Kynttilan¡¯Liekki. With the new rank had come the promotion to command a newly built Cruiser that had not yet even been named. This was unusual, to say the least. When Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta had asked about it, his grandfather had replied that the ship he was to command was as-yet unnamed because it was still in the Shipmakers¡¯ hands, under construction in the home system. With the relief fleet¡¯s Intersystem communication unit up and running there was at last a FTL missive roue to the Crown World. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta had been troubled to discover the propaganda surrounding the old Emperor¡¯s abdication and the Empress¡¯ ascension to the throne. Officially it was due to the Emperor¡¯s declining health, but the rumors in the relief fleet put the propaganda to sleep with a gravemarker. The Emperor had lost the confidence of the major industrial concerns: the fleet, the army, and the politicians. The Empress had stepped in as a peacemaker and given her father an ultimatum: either abdicate willingly or be forced from the throne. The propaganda covered over the transition for the public. What really bothered Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta was the fact that his own accomplishment, the conquest of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system (as the local system was now officially named) was being twisted for public consumption. He was being made out to be a great war hero who could make no mistakes, who had smashed the fleet of the Fanatical Purifiers against overwhelming odds and in spite of horrible losses. He regretted that the ¡®humans¡¯ were only ever referred to as Fanatical Purifiers, often without even calling them ¡®humans¡¯ in the first place. The Archivist teams had been unofficially instructed by their bureaucratic superiors to keep to the Empress¡¯ line if they valued their jobs. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s brother, an Archivist employed by the Fleet, had even been censured for trying to publish a true biography of his efforts in the system. The scroll still appeared in stores, and the public still devoured it, but it was a heavily edited version. And now orders had come through for Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta to report to the Crown World Shipyard to oversee the construction of his new command. It would put him about as far away from the view of the public and any levers of political power as he could be placed.
Shipkeeper Onneton¡¯Hitsaaja¡¯Orja dragged his graspers across his eyes and glared at the bulkhead. The human-Empire auto translator was still frustratingly incomplete at times, particularly with human abbreviations. But staring at the schematics, especially now that he had the dimensions converted to Empire-standard at last, was quite illuminating. Human World Breaker missiles were about the same size and shape of Empire missiles, but human ship-launched missiles were significantly smaller. Small enough to be carried in huge numbers. An Empire Scout Destroyer carried only four missiles, while the human destroyers had carried ninety six. And now that Hitsaaja¡¯Orja had access to human missile schematics, he could tell why. It came down to missile design philosophy. Empire missiles were essentially mobile mines, an omni-directional explosive stuck on the end of a strike-craft engine unit with contact fuses. ¡°Human¡¯ missiles had evolved from an air defense role into the ship killing role, focused on hitting a single target instead of an area of space. human ship killer missiles were much smaller, but packed nearly the same amount of explosive power. It came down to human missile warhead design, which forced all of the missile¡¯s destructive power into a single cone. It sacrificed the area-attack capability of Empire missiles, but reduced missile size by a factor of eight or so. By sticking to single-shot launch silos, a refitted current generation Empire Scout Destroyer could launch as many as twenty-four missiles, each just as capable as the single missile that they were replacing. Hitsaaja¡¯Orja was sure that his report would have some impact on future Empire missile and ship design philosophies, but he wasn¡¯t sure how much. After all he had been a lowly Junior Shipkeeper not thirty Crown World Orbis ago. On the other hand, his superior (several levels of oversight above, but still a superior) Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta was being sent to to the Empire¡¯s Crown World Shipyard to oversee construction of a new ship. HIs higher rank and war hero status would give him a bit more leverage than a mere Shipkeepr, or so Hitsaaja¡¯Orja hoped. He completed his report, made a final check for spelling errors, and routed an additional copy to Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta for his personal consideration.
Tenth Year of the Exodus Tenth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta stood on the observation deck and looked out across his new command. Senior Shipkeeper Hitsaaja¡¯Orja¡¯s reports had thrown quite a jolt into the Empire¡¯s Ship Design Bureau, once he had forwarded them to the proper eyes. It had delayed the construction of his command by forty five Crown World Orbits while the design had been redone multiple times over. What had been a new class heavy cruiser armed first and foremost with Meteor cannons had become something else entirely.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. First the missile silos had been updated to handle the new, smaller ship killer missiles. Then the number of missile defense stations been substantially increased. Then a new generation of missile defense stations had come through. And finally the consumables storage, of all things, had been totally revolutionized with a cutting edge cryopreservation technique. Rumor had it that Hitsaaja¡¯Orja had managed to reverse engineer a human system, and Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta was fairly sure that this was true. But now his new ship was finally ready to launch. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta pressed the button to initiate the name giving ceremony, and the Heavy Guided Missile Cruiser (CAG) Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa was officially his to command as a void mobile ship. He would miss the old CL who had given up her name along with so much of herself in the battle for the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. Buth the CL had proven too old, too battle damaged, and, in light of all of the ship design changes, too obsolete to be worth saving and upgrading. Her name would live on, kept in perpetual commission by the Empire, and he would even get to command the second ship of that name. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta had a sneaking suspicion that the name was proving to be an omen of ill fortune however. He already had his tasking orders: to complete acceptance trials, perform all essential maintenance, and then to depart the Crown World System as the lead ship of a Scout Flotilla. The Clamant role having been split off from the Scout role in light of the conquest of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s ship would operate alone, tasked with charting and mapping systems, establishing First Meetings as needed, and then reporting back to the Crown World System. His new consumables cryostorage system, combined with a higher-speed FTL drive, made these sorts of single ship expeditions possible: half of the Toinen¡¯Maailma Scout-Clamant Flotilla had been cargo carriers and hydroponics ships packed with consumables to feed everyone. Now the new cryostorage system let the CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa carry enough consumables to act independent of resupply for hundreds of Crownword Orbits instead of only a few dozen. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta was uneasy about his assigned tasks, though he let no one see it. He was not overly worried about the cryostorage system, nor the new missile and missile silo designs, or indeed the weapons fit in general. The CL Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa had carried eight missiles, eighteen meteor cannons, and four missile defense emplacements. The CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa carried only twelve meteor cannons (firing notably larger projectiles), but two hundred and seventy two missiles, and had six missile defense batteries, each with as much anti-missile capability as his old ship. What Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta was worried about was his FTL drive. The Empire had pushed the boundaries of FTL technology as hard as they could in the Crownword Orbits since he had been dispatched to the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, cutting transit times by a factor of ten or so. But the new FTL speeds put higher strain on the particle screens during transit, and on the Inertialess Drive during revision. Both systems carried comfortable safety margins on paper, but neither had been tested under conditions of prolonged use in the void. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta and CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa would be the testbed ship for actual operational conditions. It was shaping up to be a fateful tasking indeed. Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta made a mental note to send one last missive before he departed the Crownword System, just in case.
Senior Archivist Taivutus¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku stared at the missive on his computer. It purportedly came from his one time superior Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta, and the size of the attached files gave some weight to the missive¡¯s message. It read: ¡°Good TKS, I worry that the events of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system will be buried under mountains of new reports and forgotten within the span of a few more Crown World Orbits. Already the bureaucrats and politicians make light of what happened in those first three Crown World Orbits. ¡°So I have sent to you a true copy of my personal logs, all of the sensor recordings, the after combat reports, the missives and the proclamations, even what I could get of the raw input to the scopes of various ships. ¡°Don¡¯t bother trying to publish any of the attached files, it will only draw anger and reprisals. Instead, I would beg of you to establish an archive within the Fleet Database. One that is dedicated to the truth above and beyond politics. One that will inform future generations of Fleet Officers of the real dangers that even small missteps can have during operations.¡± TKS selected several external data storage devices and began to download the files. The Archivist in him simply refused to let so much precious information go to waste, despite the danger he put himself in by merely handling such records.
Not three Kymme after Kynttilan¡¯Kiekki Vanha¡¯Verta left the Cownword system, the Empire¡¯s Bureaucrats began quietly burying all of the evidence that the ¡®humans¡¯ ever had a Titan-class shipyard, much less that they had managed to launch a Titan-class ship that the Empire could not account for. The potential for mass panic, scandal and social upheaval was simply too great, in their opinion, to do anything else. Only TKS¡¯ hidden archive survived the purge. Hidden in the heart of the Fleet Archives, it would, in time, become the core of the fabled True History of the Empire, containing all of the dangerous, embarrassing secrets that the Fleet needed to know (at the highest classified, most closely-guarded levels possible of course) to get the job done. Chapter 8 Eight Hundred and Tenth Year of the Exodus Eight Hundred and Tenth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Far Strider finished her three year long deceleration burn and slid into orbit around TRAPPIST-1, the central computer choosing to orbit outside of TRAPPIST-1h to avoid the congestion of the inner system. That task complete, the central computer sent the wake commands to the command crew¡¯s cryosleep tubes.
Korekage Supesu leaned over the side of his cryosleep tube and vomited up the contents of his stomach. His head throbbed like the dancefloor at a nightclub, and his bladder felt like it was going to explode. Korekage rolled over, then pulled himself out of the crypotube on the far side of his vomit. His blurry eyes found the hospital gown-like garment and the indicator light leading to the public lavatory. Korekage¡¯s feet skidded briefly on the steile floor as he staggered out, heedless of the maintenance bot already cleaning up his puke. Half an hour, two detox pills, and a filling meal of nutrisoy later, and Korekage felt almost human again. His brain was still worrying away over a few details like the fact that he had been alone in the lavatory, or that he had not seen anyone else up and moving about. Korekage almost tripped over another cleaner bot as he finally noticed that the gudestrip on the wall wasn¡¯t leading him to the section of the Far Strider that his brief had indicated contained his temporary quarters. Korekage stopped and looked back down the passageway to see a steward bot following him, carrying his effects. ¡°Bot, what is our destination?¡± The steward bot¡¯s inflection was the soothing, emotionless toines of its kind. ¡°Your quarters, Admiral Korekage Supesu, so that you can change and join the command crew on the bridge. There are important developments to be discussed.¡±
Donn MacBrash woke up and promptly wished that he was dead. HIs stomach was a cramped, knotted mess and his eyes felt glued shut. He forced himself to sit upright, bounced his head off the lid of the cryotube he barely remembered getting into, and discovered that his bad dreams had been nothing of the sort. Donn managed to keep his stomach from upending itself as he half-climbed half-fell to the deck. Scraping the dirt from his eyes, Donn decided to get presentable, and then see if the Far Strider had any alcohol aboard, preferably drinkable and not the medical, denatured crap. He definitely did not want to tell the rest of the command crew, whomever they were and however much they outranked him, about what had happened to earth while he was sober. Donn¡¯s legs gave out under him. Distantly he could hear the whine of the emergency medical bots coming to his aid.
Abby Bain, head of the Environmental Engineering department and the command crew member responsible for any terraforming efforts, was worshiping the porcelain throne. Wiping the last strands of saliva from her face, she keyed her terminal to begin the process of scanning the planets of the alpha centauri system while she went and cleaned herself up. With any luck the Far Strider¡¯s central computers would have a short list of likely landing places for Abby to focus her initial efforts She did not plan on attempting a full-planet terraformation the way the Terraformer Project had attempted on Mars. There were simply too many ways that could go wrong and the Far Strider did not have enough fuel to get back to the Sol system if things went that far wrong. Instead she had planned from the outset (and equipped the Far Strider) to deploy habitation domes, solar panels, water synthesizers, and the dozens of other structures needed to have a self-contained colony in an otherwise hostile atmosphere. It would be akin to the lunar colonies back in the Sol system, although it would require adaptation to account for the atmosphere of whatever world¡­ Abby¡¯s musings were cut short as the terminal chimed a completion announcement. She paused, one foot in the communal shower (though no one else was awake to share it with yet), and stared in confusion at the terminal. There was only Proxima Centauri b to scan, but a full planetary evaluation should have taken more than just a few moments. Abby stepped out of the shower and over to the terminal to check her data. She was still standing there five minutes later when the communal shower blared the water shutoff warning, staring at the scans of the seven planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
Donn MacBrash woke up in the medical ward and promptly tried to sit up. His legs were not responding, so he put his hands behind himself and levered up to a sitting position. Donn then toppled forwards onto his face, and discovered that the emergency medical droids had amputated his legs at the hip. An explosion of profanity followed this discovery, silenced only when the surgery droids unceremoniously knocked him back out to attach his new cybernetic replacement legs.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Admiral Korekage Supesu started about his new quarters. They were not large by planetary standards, little bigger than the average apartment, but absolutely stupendous by shipboard standards, particularly considering that they were for his personal use alone. Admiral Supesu shook his head, wondering just what exactly had gone wrong. As he directed the steward bot in the storage of his megar effects, Admiral Supesu had to wonder if it was all some ghastly joke. He had gone into cryosleep two weeks before the Far Strider¡¯s planned departure date, with the rest of the Void Guard command staff scheduled to finish their planning sessions, turn over their commands, and go into cryosleep no later than two days before departure. A check of the Void Guard roster had shown only his twenty five man cutter crew, all with similar rank inflations. Something had to have happened back in the sol system, but Admiral Supesu had no idea what it could have been to annihilate the Void Guard command structure. There was supposed to have been six cutter crews (of which he was the least senior), and a full general staff headed by an Admiral to command the Far Strider herself until her eventual decommissioning to form the heart of a colony capital.. Now he was the Admiral, and his cutter crew had been promoted all over the place to fill in the staff and command roles.
Donn MacBrash sat in his wheelchair, medical throw blanket tucked around his shiny new legs, and waited in the briefing room. The cybernetic interfaces itched something fierce as they set about interfacing with his nervous system. Donn was still sober, even the anesthetics had been flushed from his system, leaving him clear headed and wishing that he was not. The medical droids had told him what had happened to his legs: Cyropoisioning. Put into cryosleep too fast, and without the proper preparations, the water in his legs had frozen solid, rupturing all sorts of important things like his bones. Donn had been fortunate that it was only his legs and not his heart, and that the medical bots had been able to save him. Donn turned his head to stare as a woman walked into the room, her hair still wet from the shower. The utility jumpsuit was not particularly flattering on her body, but the passcard and tools of an engineer of some description marked her as the Head of the environmental engineering team, and the command crew member in charge of the initial planetside efforts to found a colony. She strode over to him and reached out to shake his hand, ¡°Abby Bain, EE head. And you are?¡± ¡°Donn MacBrash, Helmsman. I¡¯m guessing you have questions?¡± ¡°Like why we are in the TRAPPIST-1 system instead of the Alpha Centauri system?¡± ¡°Yeah. If you don¡¯t mind waiting, I¡¯d like to only go through this once, and the Admiral is supposed to be along soon enough. I can¡¯t make enough sense of the sensor readings anyway, too much military jargon in them.¡± ¡°MIlitary jargon?¡± ¡°Like what?¡± The young man in the Admiral¡¯s uniform strode through the hatch. He wore it well, for all of the unease on his face. ¡°I am Admiral Supesu. It¡¯s good to meet you Abby Bain and Donn MacBrash. Please pardon me for skimming your records, I needed something familiar to anchor myself.¡± Donn nodded, flipping his hand at the large conference table in the middle of the room, ¡°why don¡¯t you two find seats and I can get this over with. Far Strider, can you call up the Code Omega orders? It is as good a place to start as any.¡± Abby sprawled in a seat, ¡°Code Omega? I¡¯ve never heard of such a thing.¡± Admiral Supesu folded himself neatly into a seat, plucking at the sleeves of his uniform, ¡°I have. It is a TUCVG code, indicating an attack on the Sol system. Never heard of it outside of drills before.¡± Donn wheeled himself to the table, ¡°This one was real enough, issued by your father himself Admiral. Far Strider? Play the recordings if you would.¡± ¡°Affirmative Helmsman MacBrash. Playing recorded transmissions.¡± The dead Admiral¡¯s voice drifted from concealed speakers, echoing out of the distant past that wasn¡¯t quite so distant for the three people at the table. ¡°This is Admiral Ossian Supesu, commanding TUCVG Cutter Isoroku to all Terran United Countries Merchant Ships (TUCMS) and civilian shipping. First contact has proved hostile and Code Omega has been declared. Make for safe orbits at best possible speed and stand by to defend yourselves. This order is non-discretionary.¡± The quiet blip that signaled the end of the transmission recording hailed the change from one recording to another. ¡°Far Strider, this is Isoroku. The hostile contacts out number and out-mass my available forces. Moreover they are concentrated, where as my command is still responding from all over the system. I do not expect to avoid hostile contact, nor to repel the enemy. Accordingly, I hereby order you to make for the exit we discussed earlier at best possible speed. Godspeed, and know that humanity¡¯s hopes go with you.¡± Abby Bain and Admiral Supesu were ashen faced with shock, almost unable to speak. Donn wished for something, anything to drink to make the butterflies in his stomach go away. ¡°I was near the Far Strider when the orders came in, and the ship needed a registered pilot to authorize her departure. TUCMS sent me on-board to hit the needed buttons, given that my fuel barge was already in orbit in compliance with the Code Omega orders...¡± Chapter 9 Eight Hundred and Fifteenth Year of the Exodus Eight Hundred and Fifteenth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Abby Bain threw up her hands and took another lap around her office. The habitat domes were down, the atmospheric generators were up and working, and the colonists were settling into their new lives on TRAPPIST-1d and -1e, now known as Nova Terra and Nova Mars, with a remarkably low amount of consternation. Her job should be simple. Finding new places to put the remaining two billion colonists should be a matter of mapping new relatively flat places on the surface of TRAPPIST-1e, dropping the needed habitation and utility domes out of orbit and sending a few bots to do the initial assembly work. The problems were far more complex, to Abby¡¯s unending frustration. For one, every world of the TRAPPIST-1 system was tidally locked to the star. That meant that just under half of their surface area was eternally baked in the pale red light of TRAPPIST-1, just under half was a frozen waste that saw no light, and only the thin terminator lines were actually habitable. There was just not enough space for everyone in the available space on Nova Earth and Nova Mars. The inner worlds were too hot by several hundred degrees celsius, and the outer world too cold by the same margin. Even Nova Mars was barely survivable with its average temperature of negative twenty seven degrees celsius. In frustration, Abby turned to her terminal and its uplink to the Far Strider¡¯s central computer, ¡°Terminal, rerun analysis of all TRAPPIST-1 Geological data. Filter for surface anomalies, excluding human-created anomalies.¡± ¡°Searching, please stand by.¡± Abby did not expect the search to find anything, but it gave her something to do. The alternative was to go ahead with mass material processing and refining to start creating orbital habitats. She had hoped to hold off on doing that for another five years or so, but it looked like¡­ ¡°One anomaly found on TRAPPIST-1h. Structure analysis confirms that it is artificial in origin. Geological analysis confirms it as pre-dating humanity''s presence in the TRAPPIST-1 system by approximately eight hundred years.¡±
Donn MacBrash deftly feathered the shuttle¡¯s throttles, landing neatly in the lee of a rocky outcropping. ¡°We¡¯re here Admiral. Hope you remembered your thermal underwear!¡± Admiral Supesu shook his head, ¡°I hope you remembered yours, if you are still set on coming along to see this hunk of metal up close.¡± ¡°Hey it beats standing about in space waiting for nothing to happen. ¡®S why I volunteered to be your shuttle pilot in the first place. How is the wife?¡± ¡°Grumpy, what else would you expect when she¡¯s six months pregnant? Shuttle, begin environmental suit power-up sequence.¡± ¡°Admiral, Shuttle. Complying. Environmental suits will be ready in three minutes Admiral.¡± ¡°Ahh, she will get over it. What is she grumpy about now?¡± ¡°The availability, or lack thereof, of fried sweet pickles at all hours of the day.¡± ¡°Fried pickles?¡± ¡°Fried sweet pickles.¡± ¡°Can a kitchen bot even make those?¡± ¡°Not fast enough apparently.¡± ¡°Admiral, Shuttle. Environmental suits are ready.¡± ¡°Alright Donn, let us go for a walk.¡±
The metal fin stuck out of the ground at an unnatural angle. Even through their visors, still frosty after exiting the shuttle¡¯s airlock, Donn and Korekage could tell that it was part of a spaceship of some sort. Their helmet lamps illuminated its black-tiled surface, its fishtail sweep broken up by missing tiles and a ragged missing chunk. ¡°Donn, what do you think that is? A wing? Some sort of stabilizer fin?¡± ¡°On a spaceship?¡± ¡°I mean, if whatever was flying this thing made it to go into an atmosphere, would they not need some sort of aerodynamic features?¡± ¡°That is what the counter-grav generators are for. Besides, they would have to re-design, reconfigure, or adapt the ¡®wings¡¯ for every atmosphere they encountered. This looks like some sort of solar fin or heat sink array to me. My old fuel barge had a bunch of them sticking out all over the place.¡± ¡°How big were they?¡± ¡°Solar fins were perhaps a few meters, though the solar arrays folded out to much larger. The heat sink fins near the thrusters were ten, perhaps twelve meters long. Why?¡± ¡°According to the orbital scans, this thing is at least twenty meters long and there is still more of it under the surface.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± ¡°Yeah, big ship. let us go find Commander Dennis, see if his bots have found an entrance yet.¡±
The entrance that the excavator bots had found was a ragged hole in the side of the spaceship, made where the impact of the crash had torn open the hull. The metal was bent at the familiar, unnatural crash-induced angles. The edges were worn dull with time, and the shine had mostly gone out of them. Donn paused to look at the edge, wondering at its faded lustre. ¡°Admiral, have the bots figures out what this thing is made of?¡± ¡°Not yet Donn. Why?¡± ¡°Because some of these streaks kinda look like rust.¡± ¡°That can¡¯t be. What race would be mad enough to make a ship out of iron?¡± ¡°Remember the bastards who invaded the Sol system? The autonomous mining drones went after their ship for some reason, so there is at least one race that would be that crazy.¡± ¡°You think that this ship is built by the same race of aliens Donn?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a possibility we can not afford to ignore Admiral.¡±
Commander Dennis Asgir, commanding officer of the Nova Terra Void Guard¡¯s Engineers, cracked his gum as he watched his robotic minions work. He would prefer to tap his foot in his habitual impatient manner, but the environmental suits were made to withstand cold, heat, radiation, and toxic atmospheres, not to allow one to tap their foot. At the moment, he was most appreciative of the radiation protection that his suit provided, although the insulation against TRAPPIST-1h¡¯s insane cold ran a close second. The reason for Dennis¡¯ appreciation was the powerplant of the unknown spaceship. It looked like a reactor of some sort, and the radiation still emanating from it was enough to make parts of the room glow in the dark. Strangely, neither he nor any of his bots had seen a corpse yet. There was plenty of bulkhead and deckhead mounted automation equipment, if the mechanical grasping claws protruding at odd intervals were anything to go by. Dennis glanced at the giger counter (the needle was still all the way into the red) and shrugged mental shoulders. He certainly would not go near any improperly shielded reactor if he could help it. ¡°Commander Asgir! Good to see you so hard at work!¡± ¡°Good day to you too Admiral Supesu.¡± ¡°Any particular reason you aren¡¯t tearing this thing apart to see how it works?¡± ¡°The glowing bits and redlined geiger counter not reason enough for you sir?¡± ¡°Quite good enough for me Commander, quite good enough. A question though, has any of your bots run an analysis of this ship¡¯s hull yet?¡±This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Not yet sir, I¡¯ve been a bit preoccupied with the radiation levels. Why do you ask?¡± ¡°Well, the Sol system mining droids decided to ¡®mine¡¯ one of the invader¡¯s ships, indication a high-iron alloy. And, as Helmsman MacBrash pointed out, the edges of the torn bits of metal have these odd reddish-brown streaks that look somewhat like rust.¡± Dennis cracked his gum again, ¡°out of the mouths of¡­ I¡¯ll detail a few bots and and Lieutenant Briggs¡¯ section to take a look at it. At the same time Admiral, I would ask you to respect your geiger counter¡¯s warnings, and to avoid any hazard marked areas. It would not look good on my record to be the man who lost the Admiral of the Void Guard to a hole in the deckplate!¡± ¡°You and my wife both Commander Asgir.¡± ¡°Far be it from my mind to argue with such a wise woman, Sir.¡±
Lieutenant Avis Briggs was whistling while she worked. It would annoy Ensign Grey and the four Engineers under her command if they could hear her (the bots of course not caring at all) but with them scattered all about the ship Lieutenant Briggs was free to indulge herself while the bots diligently scraped fragments, drilled hull cores, and performed the field analysis. Her section was scattered all over the wrecked ship, surveying and testing as they went. She wasn¡¯t sure why Commander Asgir had decided to add hull sampling to her duties, but Lieutenant Briggs was no woman¡¯s fool and not about to argue with a full Commander. The check-ins of her section in her earpiece came like clockwork, and she settled back into a long, boring work rotation. ¡°Ensign Grey, Lieutenant Briggs.¡± ¡°Lieutenant Briggs, Enign Grey. Go ahead.¡± ¡°Ensign Grey, Lieutenant Briggs. One of the bots has found organic remains. Not human, not terrestrial.¡± ¡°Lieutenant Briggs, Enign Grey. I¡¯m going to need more detail then that Ensign.¡± ¡°Ensign Grey, Lieutenant Briggs. That is all the detail I have at this time Lieutenant. The bots hit bone or something similar on one of their hull cores. I¡¯m having them cut through the bulkhead a few meters away. Should be able to have a camera through in a few minutes. Out.¡± ¡°Lieutenant Briggs, Section. Set your bots to automatic and converge on Ensign Grey¡¯s position. We¡¯ve got something people!¡±
Helmsman Donn MacBrash stared about the ¡®bridge¡¯ space. It had clearly never been built with humans in mid. Everything was too short by half, and too wide by the same ratio. The helm controls were an obvious feature to him, featuring the same flight stick with its plethora of buttons, and the two extra displays. The captain¡¯s chair was likewise readily identifiable from its prominent position and extraneous displays, though it looked more like an ancient roman dining couch then any acceleration chair Donn had ever seen. None of the lights were on and none of the buttons responded when pressed, so he figured that the spaceship was well and truly dead. There was one display that Donn guessed was some sort of engineering display, given that it had an outline of the ship burned into the display. He recognised the fin protruding from the ground as the one on the back of the ship, but was puzzled by the odd shape of the aft for a moment. Then Donn realised what was missing. ¡°Where are the thrusters?¡± ¡°What did you say Donn?¡± ¡°Sorry Admiral. I¡¯m looking at what I think is some sort of engineering display. It has an image of the ship burned in, but it looks funky as can be. I don¡¯t see any main thrusters.¡± ¡°Then how does this spaceship move? It obviously got here somehow.¡± ¡°That is one for the Engineers I think. I just fly spaceships, I don¡¯t build or fix them.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Commander Asgir.¡± ¡°Commander Asgir, Admiral Supesu. Send traffic.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Commander Asgir. Two things. One: the main reactor contains some sort of gravity-warping apparatus, possibly a containment field generator. Whatever these aliens are, they certainly weren''t using a fusion reactor or a fission pile for power. I have the bots working on gathering specifications so that we may be able to reverse engineer this monster, add in some proper radiation shielding, and see what kind of power output we can get. Two: You and Helmsman Donn were correct about the hull. It is some sort of iron-rich alloy. Horribly inefficient structural integrity for its weight by our standards, but maybe these aliens had a good reason for using it. Wait one.¡± Donn looked over at Admiral Supesu, who was staring at a set of displays surrounded by a number of covered buttons. ¡°What is that lot do you think?¡± ¡°Weapons control, probably.¡± ¡°So this is some sort of warship?¡± ¡°Probably. An armed scout at the least, but if the number of buttons and status indicator lights are anything to go by, then this ¡®scout¡¯ was better armed than anything the Far Strider¡¯s records indicate was at the battle of the Sol System. On either side.¡± ¡°Commander Asgir, Admiral Supesu.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Commander Asgir. Send traffic.¡± ¡°Commander Asgir, Admiral Supesu. Lieutenant Briggs and Ensign Grey have found something you need to see. I¡¯m sending you their position now.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Commander Asgir. What is it?¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Commander Asgir. If Ensign Grey¡¯s guess is correct, and he¡¯s a smart young officer, then the two of them have found the body of one of the aliens.¡±
Admiral Supesu looked down at the remains on the stretcher in a mixture of disgust and confusion. It was humanoid in form, in that it was bilaterally symmetrical, with a head set atop a torso, two limbs just below where the head joined the torso, and two more limbs at the other end of the torso. The similarities to a human being ended there. The skull had a trio of sockets that presumably held eyes at some point in the creature¡¯s life, and the mouth was a circular hole ringed with sharp fangs. All four limbs had four swivel joints, with a ¡®shoulder¡¯, two ¡®elbows¡¯, and a ¡®wrist¡¯ leading down to a bird foot like grasper. The graspers on the upper limbs had seven multi-knuckled ¡®fingers¡¯ arranged in a circle, each ending in a short talon. The two lower limbs had only four ¡®toes¡¯, but three of them were double boned, as if two thin toes had merged into a thicker one. The spine was jointed strangely, as if the alien switched between leaning far forwards and standing upright on a regular basis. Admiral Supesu¡¯s gauntleted hand tapped at the face mask of his environmental suit before he remembered that he was wearing the thing and could not scratch his chin. ¡°What in the worlds do we call this thing?¡± Helmsman Donn MacBrash flipped a gauntleted hand in confusion, ¡°Three-eyed seven-fingered Earth-killers is too much of a mouthful for me. Anyone got a better suggestion?¡± Ensign Grey shuffled his feet nervously, but did not say anything. Lieutenant Briggs shook her helmet, not wanting to step forward. Commander Asgir cracked her gum, ¡°Traditionally the discoverer of a new species gets to name it. Ensing Grey, do you have any ideas?¡± ¡°Only thing coming to me would be the Twisted. As in, a twisted limbed abomination.¡± Admira Supesu Nodded his agreement, ¡°The Twisted it is.¡±
Commander Dennis Asgir consulted the physics textbook, looked back at the reverse-engineered schematics, traced a line, and looked back at the textbook. He could not believe his eyes, but the scans of the Twisted Spaceship¡¯s ¡®reactor¡¯ were beyond doubt. What he had supposed to be a ¡®reactor¡¯ was nothing of the sort, it was some kind of inertialess drive! The Twisted had somehow managed to create and cage a gravitic anomaly akin to a black hole. Suspending it in the middle of their ship, they would effectively be able to change which direction was ¡®down¡¯ at will, and ¡®fall¡¯ towards it at whatever acceleration they chose. As far as Dennis could tell, the only upper limit on their acceleration was whatever stresses their particle screens could stand, the structural integrity of the spaceship, and the gravitic tolerances of its crew. The radiation saturating the compartment must have been from when the drives containment had failed spectacularly, perhaps during a change in mode of operation. Dennis was not completely sure, but if it was possible to warp gravity both inside of and around a ship that much, then would it not also be possible to warp the space itself around a ship? And if space was mutable, then space-time was equally mutable almost by definition. And that meant that the proposition of an Alcubierre drive and faster than light travel was not so improbable after all. But being a Void Guard-trained military engineer by training, Dennis could not help but think of other applications of gravity manipulation. He wondered how strong a gravitic field could be generated over how large of an area, and at what range. Human gravitational plate technology was only good up to a few gravities of acceleration, eight at the most on Void Guard ships, and then only for a range of perhaps two and a half meters. Just enough to go from deckhead to deckhead, though one did have to be careful of the reduced effect near the very top of a given grav plate¡¯s field. But if a field could be generated that started, say, ten meters form the hull of a ship and went outwards for even a half of a meter, with a strength of a few dozen or hundred gravities¡­ Commander Dennis Asgir could not think of any weapon that could penetrate such a field. Mass driver rounds would get torn apart, or pulled off trajectory from the ship. Far more fragile missiles would simply disintegrate, torn apart by forces that they were never built to withstand. Only near light speed or perhaps faster than light speed radiation would have a chance of penetrating such a field, and even then it would be ¡®bent¡¯ or ¡®distorted¡¯...
Abby Bain rubbed tired hands through her hair as she stared at space habitat schematics. The Far Strider did not have any of them in her holds, on account of their size. The only thing for it was to set up the heavy industrial domes and go to work creating a void-born industrial platform to build one set of tools to build another set of more complex tools needed to build the places the remaining two billion human colonists would have to live. She only hoped that she could get it done in time. The Far Strider¡¯s cryosleep tubes were rated for another ten terran years or so of use, fifteen if she were to run them to a near zero safety margin. Abby pulled up the messaging program on her terminal and started making calls to some of her subordinates, telling them to begin putting contingency plans into motion. She did not like having to go to what had been regarded as an outlandish contingency plan, but it was inevitable given the chance in the Far Strider¡¯s destination system. She had a thought as she was about to shut her terminal off. Perhaps the Void Guard could reverse-engineer something off of the crashed ship she had found. Something that might let them build a shipyard instead of simple habitats, that would let them build a new Far Strider, or at least enough of one to transfer the sleeping colonists from one cryosleep facility to another one¡­ Abby Bain snorted at the thought. The universe was nowhere nearly that co-operative. She should know, it was her job to make it comply to what humanity needed after all. Chapter 10 Eight Hundred and Twentieth Year of the Exodus Eight Hundred and Twentieth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Abby Bain looked out of her office window at a truly impressive feat of human engineering. The Far Strider was well on her way to full decommissioning, her hull stripped down to supporting frames and her innards exposed to the void. In orbit next to her hung two massive arrays of scaffolding. The first held a ¡®small¡¯ cryosleep array containing only a billion human beings in suspended animation. The skeleton of a new Diaspora-class ship, the Solar Wind, had begun to curl about the array. It would not be completed for many years yet, if ever. The second was the core of an orbital habitat. When it finished, it would be the sixth in orbit around TRAPPIST-1, each carefully balanced as to not interfere with the dance of the planets in the system. Abby frowned at the three smaller scaffolds hiding in the shadows of their larger brethren. The Void Guard were building two new cutters to help keep everything and everyone in line, and a scout. What was there to scout? TRAPPIST-1 was fully mapped, passive sensors and the laser-based communications net had been functional for years, and humanity had nowhere else to go. Abby wished she knew what had happened to Earth and the Sol system as much as the next person, but it was almost forty light years distant. Even the faintest blips of light from the fusion detonations of the battle of the Sol System had long since past the TRAPPIST-1 system by, flying past as she and all of the others had floated in cryosleep. Abby frowned, wondering if the persistent rumors of some new propulsion system where true. The wildest of them were of some sort of ¡®Black Hole Drive¡¯ which could go faster than light. Abby did not believe them for a moment. After all, the grav plating in her office still dropped to 0.75g every few days for no reason. So if TRAPPIST-1 humanity could not get gravity plating right, something that their Sol-system predecessors had long mastered, then how could they control a black hole, much less create one? Abby shook her head to pull herself out of the familiar mental rut. She supposed that the Void Guard had learned a few things from the derelict ¡®guided missile cruiser¡¯ that they had pried out of the surface of TRAPPIST-1h, but they would be insane to trust them without testing them first.
Admiral Supesu looked up from his desktop terminal and the video link to his daughter on Nova Mars when someone knocked on his office hatch. ¡°Sorry honey, Daddy has to go do Admiral things. Be a good dear and try to go to bed on time?¡± ¡°Daaaaaadyyyyyy¡­¡± ¡°You know how it is Musume, Daddy has things that happen that he has to deal with. I¡¯ll give you a call over breakfast if I can, okay?¡± ¡°Okay¡­¡± ¡°Love you honey. Clear.¡± He clicked off the video link, ¡°Enter!¡± Commodore Dennis Angir, Void Guard Shipbuilding Corps, entered and came to attention, ¡°Sorry to intrude Admiral, but the Computer types have found something on the Derelict.¡± ¡°What sort of ¡®something¡¯ Commodore? I was on the link with my daughter, so this had better be good.¡± ¡°It may be Sir. They claim to have found a translation module of sorts.¡± ¡°A what?¡± ¡°A human-Twisted Translation module. They are still pulling its secrets out one by one, but it has already started making some sense of various documents they already had.¡± ¡°Meaning¡­?¡± ¡°Meaning we can actually start reading Twisted tech manuals instead of just guessing and hoping, among other things.¡±You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Admiral Supesu sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin in thought. ¡°You are thinking of the Twisted¡¯s FTL drive, aren¡¯t you? And how we might be able to make it to the Sol system and back in a reasonable timeframe.¡± ¡°Yes sir, I am. At the very least, it should help us push our own FTL drive development along. But that is secondary to my thinking sir. The computer types have found what they think is the Twisted captain¡¯s log or diary. Form what they can read it isn¡¯t good.¡± ¡°How bad is it?¡± ¡°There are mentions of some sort of bombardment, and a ¡®Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat¡¯ in relation to the battle of the Sol System and the TUCVG¡¯s use of ICBMs in that battle. Extrapolating from human knowledge, and the common assumption of Reciprocity and Mutually Assured Destruction¡­ Earth could be nothing more than a ball of rock¡±
Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta looked out of the view port of his Salama¡¯Maa orbital office. He was responsible for watching over the Empire¡¯s second ever intersystem communicator. It was a dull and thankless task, particularly for a Vanha¡¯Verta. That vaunted bloodline went all the way back to before the conquest of the Toinen¡¯Maailma in which Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta now sat. It had served the Empire and the Emperor with distinction for over twenty eight thousand Crown World Orbits. But the Bureaucrats who really ran the Empire (irrespective of what the Politicians thought) had always viewed the Vanha¡¯Verta bloodline with distrust. After all, had it not been Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta who had condemned the third planet of the system to an airless ball of rock utterly unsuitable for habitation? And despite the well-known fact that Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had wiped out a race of Fanatical Purifiers in the doing, thereby saving the Empire unknowable amounts of cranial frustrations, the Bureaucrats only saw the lost productivity of an entire world. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta also suspected that it was due to the Vanha¡¯Verta line sometimes refusing to adhere to the official story. His family had had more than its fair share of ¡®renegades¡¯ and ¡®free speakers¡¯, almost certainly due to the Vanha¡¯Verta Bloodline also being the Fleet¡¯s Cypherkeepers and Tradition Masters. There had been a Vanha¡¯Verta at every system discovery, every system conquest, and every Clamant Landing. And those Vanha¡¯Vertas had made their personal logs matters of record in the deep Fleet Archives. If you knew where to look or who to ask you would find them and all of the secrets that they contained. Secrets that the Bureaucrats, with their tidy and orderly minds, would prefer never felt the light of a star. But so long as the Fleet and the Vanha¡¯Verta bloodline kept the secrets hidden, the Bureaucrats were willing to leave the Vanha¡¯Vertas as the Fleet¡¯s Cypherkeepers. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could not help but bare his teeth at the irony of the situation, even as it left him in a sensitive, important, and powerless position of authority. Bored almost out of his skull, he idly tapped his displays and pulled open the take form the beacon scopes that overlooked the really important installations in the Toinen¡¯Maailma system: the Empire¡¯s only Titan capable shipyard. It had never actually been called on to produce such an august, overwhelming, overpowered ship, but it had built the current Emperor¡¯s personal transport, as well as the Empire¡¯s entire current generation of carriers. No other shipyard in the Empire could have built all six of the massive ships at once, not done it as quickly or at such a (relatively) low cost. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was sure that the total cost was in fact absolutely staggering, many thousands of times his entire Crown World Orbit pay, but still less costly than expanding any other shipyard to perform the task. Not even the Crown World Shipyard was as capable, or as closely located to such rich reserves of materiel. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s comunications display chimed with an incoming missive. ¡°Kynttilan¡¯Liekki, Station Shipkeeper. The active scopes on the Beacons are temporarily near-sighted again. Estimated that their range is reduced to half a light-menentu. Star flare activity. I will inform you when it passes.¡± ¡°Station Shipkeeper, Kynttilan¡¯Liekki. Understood. Clear.¡± He found that slightly annoying. His Beacon¡¯s scopes normally had a range of two light-satav, more than enough to see clear to the far side of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. But the system¡¯s primary star was incredibly active, and routinely knocked them back to a tiny fraction of their usual effectiveness. Shipboard active sensors were not affected in nearly the same way, but then they only had a light-menentu or so of range at the best of times. Something to do with scope input processing and mass to usefulness ratios. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta shrugged the thoughts out of his skull and went back to staring at the shipyard. Watching the massive intrasystem freighters playing back and forth to it from the automated mines and forges on the surface of the third world. Rumor was that they would run dry at last in a few hundred Crown World Orbits. At which time the Bureaucrats would have to bow and command the Fleet to use World Breaker level technology to scrape away the planet¡¯s crust, exposing more of its rich, molten interior to the void. A few dozen Crown World Orbits later, and it would have hardened and set enough for the automated miners and forges to be re-deployed and resume fueling the appetite of the shipyard. The process had been done once before already. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had seen the picts, and it had been truly awe inspiring and utterly gut-twisting to see. The crust of the world had literally been torn apart by massive gravity generators. ¡®Waste¡¯ rock had been tossed into orbit and collected by mining ships, and the molten core of the world had glowed like a very small star for a few Crown World Orbits. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta wondered if he would still be on station in the system to see it. Chapter 11 Part 3: Second Contact Eight Hundred and Twenty Fifth Year of the Exodus, Zeroith Year of the Splintering Eight Hundred and Twenty Fifth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Every human in the TRAPPIST-1 system was watching the small test ship Sunstreak. It sat at one edge of the system, its inertialess Black Hole Drive online and waiting. The countdown ticked to zero, the Sunstreak brought its other propulsion system online, and promptly vanished from every sensor. Officially called a Distortion Thruster Assembly (DTA), it was known colloquially as an Alcubierre Drive. Like the hypothetical drive from which it drew its name, it worked by using gravity fields to distort space-time around the ship. Unlike that hypothetical drive it did not break the bonds of time. Travel still took time and it was not possible to arrive before you departed. According to all of the mathematics, studies, and computer modeling, the DTA drive would function and the Sunstreak would cross the TRAPPIST-1 system in less than three hundredths of a second. Physically, the Sunstreak mounted the first ever DTA drive that humanity had ever built, and it was utterly unknown whether it would function properly or not. The Sunstreak reappeared just as abruptly as it had vanished. There was no eruption of light or radiation, just the faint gravity distortion of its Black Hole Drive coming online to shed the last of her speed. ¡°Sunstreak to all points. Test complete. DTA drive functioning within expected parameters. The stars are within our reach.¡±
Abby Bain sat back in her chair and stared at the recordings of the Sunstreak¡¯s historic flight. The Void Guard had really done it. They had created a FTL drive. A scouting ship really could be sent back to the Sol system. They might finally be able to know what had happened to Earth. Abby found that she did not care all that much. She was responsible for the development of all of the human colonies in the TRAPPIST-1 system, both planetbound and on orbital habitats. She did not have a family of her own, but almost every one of her subordinates and staffers did. They had new lives here, new responsibilities that they had settled into over the last fifteen years. Abby did not want humanity to go back to the Sol system. They had a perfectly good, if rather cramped, system here in TRAPPIST-1. Why should humans move back to a dying world in a dying system, just because it was where they had come from once upon a time?
Admiral Supesu smiled down at the Sunstreak test results. Commodore Agins¡¯ DTA drive had worked precisely as the calculations had said that it would. And by those same calculations, the Sunstreak could make the trip to the Sol system and back in at little a seven days. That was an effective velocity of just under four thousand one hundred times the speed of light. In the Sunstreak, he had a spaceship that could finally learn what had happened to humanity in the Sol system in the last eight hundred years. And if needed, he had the shipyards and the technology to build a fleet that could deliver retribution onto the Twisted. Admiral Supesu signed the orders for Sunstreak to make the trip to the Sol system, a mission of recognisance only, and to report back. He hoped they found the Sol system empty of hostile forces. He issued contingency orders anyway.
Flight Instructor Donn MacBrash smiled at the young student as she studied the plans of the Sunstreak with focused intent. ¡°What do you think of her Cadet Supesu?¡± ¡°I think that I would like to know more about her DTA drive before I put my hands to her helm in real life. That being said, this new Black Hole Drive configuration has been wonderful in the simulators.¡± ¡°That is good to hear because, just between you, me, and the bulkhead, you might be serving on a Black Hole Drive equipped ship soon enough.¡± This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°Really? My posting request was approved?¡± ¡°Well, nothing so definitive, no. On the other hand, I¡¯m a bit tapped into the grapevine. You did request a posting to one of the Experimental Squadrons, and given your well deserved marks, it¡¯s probably going to be approved. The only question is which one. The Sunstreak is going to be the most contested, second only to the Solar Wind.¡± ¡°The Solar Wind? The Admiral is approved the completion of her construction?¡± ¡°Of course he did Cadet! With the new drives, the Solar Wind will be able to reach any system we can see in a few weeks, months at most.¡± ¡°Hmm, and that will reduce the consumables storage and hydroponics bay requirements by quite a bit. I wonder what Commodore Asgir will put in those spaces¡­?¡± ¡°Well, you will find out in a few weeks Cadet, right after graduation.¡±
Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta stared at his visual display in rapt attention. The gravity engines had been installed last Crown World Orbit, and were about to be activated. The mining ships stood ready to catch the first waves of ¡®waste¡¯ rock to be tossed into orbit. The reclamation forges were ready to liquify that rock down and claim all of the minerals that they could gather. The Fleet hovered in a protective rink, ready to intercept any stray debris. And here Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat, observer to it all. Official recordings were being made, Fleet and Bureaucrat alike, but he was making his own recording too. Mostly for his personal collection, but also so that he could watch it again later and revel in this display of the Empire¡¯s power.
The Sunstreak dropped back to slower than light speeds at the very fringes of the Sol system. Her crew immediately shifted vectors and dropped into orbit around the Sun outside of Pluto¡¯s orbit. It was a very conservative orbit, but their passive sensors would pick up everything in the Sol system in a few hours. From there they could decide to move into the Sol system or return from whence they came, hopefully undetected. Almost instantly, their sensors picked up massive gravitic energies coming from the vicinity of Earth.
Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta frowned as his Beacon¡¯s active scopes picked up a scope ghost, then promptly classified it as a false echo and removed it. He made a mental note to request the refurbishment or replacement of his outermost Beacons. This was not the first such false trace that they had reported, and each time the Fleet had wasted the time and efforts of a frigate squadron chasing it down. With the momentous events occuring this Crown World Orbit, Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta went ahead and squashed the signal before the frigates were dispatched. He reckoned that they either had more important tasks to perform, or would enjoy having some rest time to watch the skinning of the third world of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system.
The Sunstreak¡¯s sensors were reporting plenty of data, including the massive concentration of ships around Earth and the titanic gravitic energies radiating from her surface. They also noted the total absence of any human signals. The commander of the Sunstreak had the experimental human-Twisted communicator brough online in an attempt to decipher the signals that they were receiving. Much of the transmissions¡¯ context was lost in the translation, but the pompous officiality of the occasion was beyond doubt. The presence of a large number of military ships in Earth orbit could not be denied. The first mountain sized pieces of planetary crust were heaved into orbit. The molten glow of magma radiated dimly into space, illuminating the actions of the mining ships. The Sunstreak watched in helpless horror as Earth was torn open and fed into refineries and processing plants piece by piece. The sensors reported the massive shipyard in orbit around the Earth, the final destination of so much of the refined materials coming from the destruction of humanity¡¯s birthworld. ¡°Captain, Tracking. I think we are witnessing a planet crack mining operation in progress.¡± ¡°Understood Tracking. Do you have any trace of human habitation in the system?¡± ¡°Captain, Tracking. Negative on traces of humanity Sir. The furthest human outpost in this system would be the Pluto Research Base, if it is still there.¡± ¡°Helm, set a course for Pluto. The Far Strider was not able to catch the end of the Battle for Earth. It looks like humanity lost, but I¡¯d like to have firm proof to take back to the Admiral.¡± ¡°Captain, Helm. Aye aye Sir.¡±
The Pluto Research Base had only ever had a crew of robots on account of the dwarf planet¡¯s extreme cold temperatures and nearly nonexistent nitrogen methane atmosphere. But it had served as a repository of human knowledge, just in case. The Sunstreak arrived without fanfare, and dropped into low orbit. Not made with planetary landings in mind, she carried a pair of shuttles and half a dozen environmental suits. The base showed heavy external damage and no power signatures, so volunteers were called for. Six volunteers entered the base, unsure of what they would find. What they found was dead human bodies in environmental suits and more expended gyrojet ammunition then they could count by hand. They gathered what dog tags and identification papers they could find, along with every single helmet camera, tablet, and data storage device they could carry. The batteries were long dead, but the remains of the base may just have preserved some vital traces of data. That done, they withdrew to the Sunstreak, which departed for the TRAPPIST-1 system with even less fanfare then it had arrived. Chapter 12 Eight Hundred and Twenty Fifth Year of the Exodus, Zeroith Year of the Splintering Eight Hundred and Twenty Fifth Year After the Battle of the Sol System The return of the Sunstreak and the information it brought with it caused an uproar among the TRAPPIST-1 colonies. About a third of all of the humans, led by Abby Bain and her cadre of social and environmental engineers, wanted to simply start over. Stay in the TRAPPIST-1 system until the Twisted Empire inevitably made contact, and make overtures of peace.They did not particularly care if they became part of the Empire or simply good neighbors. All that they wanted was to be left in peace, to raise their families and live their lives. Another third, headed by Admiral Supesu and the Void Guard, wanted to take up arms and bring war to the Twisted Empire.They argued that the destruction of Earth and the occupation of the Sol system was a state of affairs that could only ever lead to war. And that the utter destruction of all humans in the Sol system, provoked or otherwise, demonstrated the fact that the Twisted Empire would settle for nothing less than the total eradication of humanity when the two races inevitability met again. The last third of humanity, largely leaderless and made up of humans dwelling on the orbital habitats, wanted to simply move even further away. Humanity had the capacity to build FTL colony ships, so why not use them? Set off for the far side of the galaxy, or even to other galaxies, find a new worlds and start fresh again? Grow strong far from the Twisted Empire, and should the two races meet in the distant future, negotiate from a position of equal strength. The Command Crew being divided, and with fully a third of the people of TRAPPIST-1 disagreeing with both of the other sides, a compromise needed to be found. A compromise that no side would like in its entirety, but which all sides could agree to. A Second Diaspora project was started, with two separate FTL super-ships to be constructed. Named the Nomad class, they would have cryosleep arrays at their cores, deep-space construction capability to fulfill the early needs of any conceivable colony, and enough firepower to defend themselves. The Solar Wind was already under construction, although she was being redesigned and rebuilt in the spacedock to accommodate a DTA drive, would belong to the Colonizers. The refit specifications reduced, but did not eliminate, the weapons mountis in favor of increased asteroid mining, resource refining, and deep space construction capability. The second Nomad-class ship, The Third World, would belong to Admiral Supesu¡¯s Militarists. It would first serve as a transport and colony ship, but would then be converted into a gargantuan flagship. Her plans were drawn up accordingly, with only limited but sufficient endurance as a colony ship, heavy armor, gravity shields, and heavy missile launchers. Once the colonists were unloaded, the cryosleep array would be stripped out and three heavy spinal mass drivers would be installed in its place. Both Nomad-class ships would be built at the same time and depart the TRAPPIST-1 system at the same time never to return. In exchange for not sabotaging the project, Abby Bain¡¯s Peacemakers would get to keep the TRAPPSIT-1 system and all of the infrastructure in it.
Ensign Musume Supesu stood on the bridge of the Solar Wind and stared across at the work lights illuminating the core of what would become The Third World. Her relationship with her father had become exceedingly strained following her decision to join the Colonizers. What it came down to was Musume¡¯s belief, not shared by her father, that the Void Guard, with The Third World to lead its fleet, would be able to smash the Twisted Empire in open combat. She believed that the level of industrial effort present in the Sol System indicated that the Twisted Empire controlled more than just the Sol system and the Alpha Centauri system. While Musume conceded that they had shown no ships that could fight something the size of The Third World in open combat given equivalent levels of technology, they did not really need to match the MIlitarists ship for ship. With multiple shipyards across multiple systems, they could simply drown the Militarists in numbers and irreplaceable attritional losses. For now, they were both officers of the Void Guard, and would adhere to the regulations pertaining to their ranks. Musume had moved out of her family¡¯s home to the Solar Wind and had no plans of ever leaving the ship. It would be five years before construction would be finished. Five years before she could turn her back on the foolish Militarists and the idiotic Peacemakers. Five years before she would be free to follow her own path, chart her own future.
Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta re-checked the order slip for the seventh time. He could not believe his luck. Good or foul was yet to be seen, but his comfortable posting was drawing to a close. He had been recalled to the Crown World system, there to receive the rank of Soihtu¡¯Liekki and posting to the Twenty Seventh Scout Flotilla. He had heard rumors of a new Scout Flotilla being formed, and had wondered which of the Vahna¡¯Verta clan would be tapped for ship command. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had never anticipated that it would be him! His service record was solid but uninspiring. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s performance evaluations had confirmed his competence, but also highlighted his uninspired tactics during simulated engagements. He had bent the rules slightly to take a peek at the ¡®restricted¡¯ section of his personnel file, the part that included the Fleets decisions about future promotions and postings. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was unsurprised to note that he had been deemed ¡®not particularly suited to command of mobile units.¡¯Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The more Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta though about his new orders, the more he suspected that both the Bureaucrats and the Fleet was up to something. One of them was setting the other up to fail by putting him in command of a ship and expecting him to fail his tasking. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta suspected that it was the Beuracrats who had set him up, but the Fleet had chosen his posting when the inevitable seniority-based promotion came through. That meant that the Twenty Seventh Scout Flotilla was expected to remain in orbit for some time. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta found himself satisfied with this outcome. He would get ship command experience in his career history in a situation that was utterly unthreatening. This would in turn add the notation to his personnel file that he was indeed able to command mobile units. And when the inevitable promotion to Palo¡¯Liekki came through, Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta would be in a position to essentially pick his posting. Probably as an officer aboard one of the Fleet shipyards he speculated, leveraging his (by then) senior rank with his limited shipboard deployments to secure a posting aboard a fixed installation.
Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika, employee of the Resource Allocation Division of the Empire¡¯s Bureaucracy, stared at his display. He was not afraid of the results on his screen, despite the blinking red numbers that indicated resource shortages. He was running a three hundred and thirty Crown World Orbit forecast, which was performed on a routine basis. It was not Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika¡¯s decision on what was to be done about the inevitable resource shortage. It was only his job to complete the forecast, highlight that Something Needed Done, and bring that conclusion to the attention of his superiors. Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika checked the numbers on which the forecast was based, and ordered his terminal to run them again, with the consideration that the third world of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system would be ¡®skinned¡¯ a third time. He went to fetch a drink while the terminal processed the request. When he returned, he found that the results were actually worse than before. He checked the detailed analysis section, and found that ¡®skinning¡¯ the third world was actually a net loss of resources.. Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika set his drink down and considered the options. The Fleet was beginning to assemble a new Scout Flotilla, which may find some systems sufficiently rich in resources to be turned into mining outposts. But it might not as well. Thus his forecast should include options based on the fact that the Fleet could not be counted on to fill the resource shortfall before the stockpiles ran too low. Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika pulled up the Starlog for the Toinen¡¯Maailma system and started flipping through the worlds. The asteroid belt had long since been consumed, but perhaps one of the other orbital bodies could be tapped for resources. It was promptly apparent to Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika that only the first and third worlds of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system were suitable for Planetary Consumption, and the first world was only a marginal candidate. Being an Inner cauldon world, it was too close to its star for Planetary Consumption in its current orbit, which would require that it be moved. This was a resource-intensive undertaking, and usually not worth the cost. Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika ordered his terminal to re-run the forecast, excluding the ¡®skinning¡¯ of the third world of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, but including the completion of the Planetary Consumption process. The terminal processed the numbers and displayed the results. Yellow numbers this time, indicating projections were within acceptable parameters, but whose lower outlier bound was below acceptable parameters. Laskemalla¡¯Numerot¡¯Juoksupoika nodded his satisfaction and began to compile his report on the forecast. The third world of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system would require total Planetary Consumption, but the Fleet¡¯s Scout Flotilla should also be dispatched when it was assembled. Not that the Empire would necessarily need additional resources within the next three hundred and thirty Crown World Orbits, but it would need those resources in the future. And if the Fleet happened to find a suitably harvestable system in the next three hundred and thirty Crown World Orbits, then so much the better. Chapter 13 Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year of the Exodus, Fifth Year of the Splintering Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat in his command throne on the bridge of the Empire¡¯s Fleet Guided Missile Battlecruiser (BCG) Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, the seventh ship to bear that name, waiting for the order to break orbit and depart the Crown World system. He had feared that this order would come down from the moment he had received this posting. His crew was competent, efficient, eager to be about their work. His ship was one of four BCGs to be dispatched, each leading a force of eight cruisers of all types and sixteen destroyers. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s Fourth Squadron of the Twenty Seventh Scout Flotilla was the lightest squadron, comprised of eight light cruisers and sixteen missile defense destroyers. His was made of entirely new-build ships, none older than a hundred Crown World Orbits, outfitted with the newest and fastest FTL drives available to the Empire. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta would need that speed, as his Fourth Squadron had been assigned the most distant destination: a dwarf star with seven planetary bodies. HIs task was to reach the system, to scout it for threats and resources, and to report back to the Empire. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta hoped that he did not need to engage in combat, but there was a reason that his force was so large. The Empire had encountered other races besides the Fanatical Purifiers of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. Some had submitted to the Empire peacefully. Some had required the application of diplomacy or military strikes. Two had required technological uplifting. Only one, the Toinen¡¯Maailma Fanatical Purifiers, had required annihilation. None of the survivors of the other races had been permitted FTL drives, and few had earned the right to travel beyond the bounds of their home system aboard Empire-owned ships. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta felt a ripple of eagerness caress his skin. The departure order had come. The Cryer had repeated it to the Fourth Squadron. BCG 004, the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, was underway.
Rear Admiral Musume Supesu, Void Guard, Colonizer, commander of the Solar Wind was stargazing again. Her quarters were buried deep in the Far Strider¡¯s core hull, just aft of the cryosleep array, and the bridge was just forward of that same component. Both had fantastic view screens that could project imagery from any one of the Far Strider¡¯s sensor arrays. But it would be just that, projected imagery, not real starlight as seen with the human eye through the clear vacuum of space. Which is why Rear Admiral Supesu was standing in the ventral observation blister. Behind her was The Third World, crouched and eager in its dockyard. Its weapons were ready, its cryosleep array was empty. The humans who would ride in it waited on three of the orbital habitats that dotted the TRAPPIST-1 system, waiting final boarding clearance. The Third World claimed that she had hit another snag with her gravity shield generators, delaying her launch yet again. Privately, Rear Admiral Supse doubted that this was the case. The Solar Wind¡¯s gravity shields were functioning to specification. SO she had made some quiet orders. A few data taps had revealed that The Third World¡¯s work crews were concentrated about her missile launchers. Rear Admiral Supesu sighed. She knew her father too well, even if they had not spoken face to face in the last three years. He would be working for any and every advantage that he could get for the upcoming Second Battle of the Sol System. Fusion warhead equipped missiles had proved humanity¡¯s only method of breaking the Twisted ship¡¯s shields, so Rear Admiral Supesu knew that her father was making absolutely sure that his missiles were ready to go before leaving the infrastructure of the TRAPPIST-1 system behind for good. ¡°Colonizer Command Actual, Peacemaker Command. Come in Colonizer Command Actual.¡± ¡°Peacemaker Command, Colonizer Command Actual here. Send traffic.¡± ¡°Colonizer Command Actual, Peacemaker Command. We have sensor reports of ships reverting so sublight speed at the edge of the system. Sensor web indicates two five ships. I say again two five ships. All human ships are accounted for in this system, so they are not any of ours. Peacemaker command actual requests to know your intentions.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Peacemaker Command, Colonizer Command Actual. Intentions are being decided at this time. Request to know arrival vector of unknown ships.¡± ¡°Colonizer Command Actual, Peacemaker Command. Arrival vector calculations indicate unknown ships origin system as Alpha Centauri. Peacemaker Command Actual requests your intentions again.¡± ¡°Peacemaker Command, Colonizer Command Actual. Given the unknown ship¡¯s arrival vector, I must assume that they are of Twisted origin, and therefore presumably hostile. My intentions are to disengage and leave the TRAPPIST-1 system. The Solar Wind is a colony ship, not a combat ship. We have nearly a billion civilians aboard in cryosleep. We want no part, I say again no part, of any combat.¡± ¡°Colonizer Command Actual, Peacemaker Command. Intentions acknowledged Colonizer Command Actual. Sail in fortune.¡± ¡°And to you Peacemaker Command. Out.¡±
Admiral Korekage Supesu stared down at the tactical repeater on his command chair. ¡°Tracking, confirm unknown ships entry vector.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Unknown ships are on an entry vector that matches a least-time course from Alpha Centauri.¡± ¡°Acknowledged Tracking.¡± Admiral Supesu frowned. His ship was not fully combat ready. Admiral Supesu¡¯s ship still had the damnable cryosleep array instead of the spinal heavy mass drivers. His gravity shield generators still had problems with the increased strength settings. And of six hundred missiles loaded into The Third World¡¯s missile cells, only fourteen carried fusion warheads. Admiral Supesu needed to either flee, or fight on unfavorable terms. But more importantly, he needed more information. ¡°CIC, Admiral. Request estimated time to loading of all Militarists into the cryosleep array. Request estimated time until unknown ships are in mass driver range of The Third World.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Estimated time to board all Militarist noncombatants is six hours under emergency conditions. Estimated time until unknown ships are in mass driver range of The Third World is zero point seven five hours.¡± ¡°CIC, Admiral. Thank you. Message acknowledged.¡± That settled things for Admiral Supesu. He could not load up the Militarist colonists in time. He had to stand and fight here in the TRAPPIST-1 system. At least the Solar Wind was fully operational and could help him if the unknown ships forced the issue. ¡°Helm, disengage from the shipyard. Emergency priority. Guns, ready all weapons. If we must fight, then we will give these Twisted one hell of a fight.¡± ¡°Admiral, Helm. Acknowledged.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Aye aye Sir. ¡°Admiral, Tracking. The Solar Wind has begun to move. Projected course is a least-time vector to safe FTL distance from TRAPPIST-1. She is leaving the system.¡± ¡°Acknowledged Tracking. Communications, get me a link to the Solar Wind.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Aye aye sir. Wait one. Solar Wind has declined ship to ship communications link. Incoming priority link from Colonizer Command Actual on your personal channel. Routing it to your helmet com now Admiral.¡± ¡°Acknowledged Communications.¡± Admiral Supesu tapped the side of his helmet, dropping onto the personal circuit of his communicator and temporarily cutting off the link to the rest of the bridge. ¡°What the hell do you think you are doing Musume?¡± ¡°What I think I¡¯m doing, Militarist Command Actual, Is getting a billion human beings out from under before your damned nukes piss off the Twisted enough that they wipe out everyone in the system. I don¡¯t know about your sensors, but mine are showing me twenty-five Twisted ships in system. Sixteen of them smaller than the Derelict, probably destroyers. Eight more about the same size as the Derelict, which would make them heavy guided missile cruisers. And one more bigger ship, probably a battlecruiser or battleship. The Solar Wind doesn¡¯t have the mass drivers or missiles to fight that.¡± ¡°Damn you Musume, between the Solar Wind and The Third World, we can kick their asses all the way back to¡­¡± ¡®Quit bullshitting me Militarist Command Actual. And quit fooling yourself while you are at it! You may be able to destroy this Twisted fleet, possibly even the next one, but there is no way humanity wins an open war at this time. You know this. I know this. The Solar Wind is getting out while we can. I¡¯d suggest you do the same.¡± Chapter 14 Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year of the Exodus, Fifth Year of the Splintering Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year After the Battle of the Sol System ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. This system is inhabited. Scopes are showing multiple orbital habitats, a large shipard, multiple small ships, and two titan-class ships.¡± Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta froze in utter disbelief. ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Battle information Center. Confirm classification of titan-class vessels.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. BIC confirms Scopes report. Marking as Titan one and Titan two on your tactical display. Highlighting now. Titan one is emerging from the shipyard, possibly an emergency launch in response to our arrival. Titan two is already mobile, but moving away from the Squadron.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta rubbed his graspers along his lower limbs, nervous and trying not to show it. ¡°So we have a First Meeting, but I see no reason to take unneeded chances. Cryer, proclamation to all ships. They are to raise screens, arm missile defense, and ready weapons but not to fire at unknown ships unless fired upon. Let me know when all ships have acknowledged and compiled.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡± ¡°BIC, while that proclamation is being sent out, start working on a full scope sweep of the system. I¡¯m interested in anything particularly out of the ordinary. I do not wish for the Flotilla to be ambushed.¡± ¡°BIC, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. By your will.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. All ships report compliance.¡± ¡°As it should be. Cryer, Set First Meeting Principles. Let us see if these sentients will yield to the Empire.¡±
First Minister Abby Bain stood in the situation center, a room buried sixty meters below ground in the rock of TRAPPIST-1d, and stared at the oversized display on the wall. It showed the blinking lights of each ship, station, and planet in distinct colors, along with their projected paths. Solar Wind was headed away from the newcomers and towards the system edge, exactly as Colonizer Command Actual had said she was going to do. Now the question was reigning in Militarist Command Actual before he did something terminally stupid¡­ ¡°Communications, get me The Third World. I want to speak to Militarist Command Actual as soon as possible.¡± ¡°Aye ma¡¯am. Trying now.¡± ¡°Tracking, where is The Third World headed do you think?¡± ¡°Now that she has cleared the shipyard you mean ma¡¯am? With an Black Hole drive she is capable of near-Inertialess movement, so she can change her vector rather quickly. At the moment, she looks to be heading for the newcomers.¡± ¡°Communications, ma¡¯am. I have The Third World on link four. Militarist Command Actual is waiting to speak with you. He sounds right pissed off.¡± ¡°Thank you communications, I¡¯ll take it in briefing two.¡± ¡°Transferring it now ma¡¯am.¡± Abby strode into the small alcove of a room that was briefing two. Intended for private teleconferencing, it was equipped with a desk, three chairs, and a computer terminal. She keyed the terminal alive and opened the link. ¡°Militarist Command Actual, you¡¯d better be heading for the orbitals to load up your colonists.¡± ¡°I have neither the time nor the patience to talk with fools Ms Bain. I¡¯m heading for the foe.¡± ¡°You stupid sack of gods be damned testosterone! Stand down and get your ass to Orbital Habitat four! I¡¯ll have the first freighers already waiting for you by the time you get there. The faster you load up, the faster you can get your ass out of here and start you damn war in someone else¡¯s backyard.¡± ¡°You are not in my chain of command, nor do you have the firepower to stop me Ms. Bain. Good day.¡± Abby stared in shock at the ¡®no link¡¯ message on terminal screen.
Admiral Musume Supesu, Human Nomad Fleet, stood on the bridge and waited for hell to unfold. The Twisted ships were closing with The Third World, almost into extreme missile range, and they had not yet fired. She did not know if it was because the Twisted were simply waiting for better missile locks of their own or if it was something else. She got her answer soon enough. ¡°Admiral, Communications. Incoming transmission from the Twisted. Translator is chewing on it now. Text is on your tertiary display.¡± ¡°Thank you Communications, I see it now.¡± ¡°To [all?] sapients of [this] system, hail and met well! Empire of (untranslatable) greets you! [We?] are having first meetings, and come in [peace?] See the might of the Empire of (Untranslatable) and know you are help[less?]! Yield and become (untranslatable) or face [our?] wrath!¡±Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Admiral Musume Supesu shook her head, ¡°Guns, get our gravity shields online and prepare point defense. We may be running for the exits, but that is no reason to get shot in the back!¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco.¡± ¡°Good. Communications, does that translator work both ways?¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Yes, although the output has never been tested.¡± ¡°That¡¯s alright Communications. Record a message for the twisted if you please.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Recording for translation and transmission.¡± ¡°Message begins. Twisted, this is the Solar Wind, Human Nomad Fleet. Eat our thruster wash. Message ends.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Clean recording. Transmitting now.¡± ¡°Good. Helm, get us out of here.¡± ¡°Admiral,Helm. Aye aye ma¡¯am.
¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming missive from Titan two. Text-only, broken Empire common. Looks to be a machine translation. Message begins: ¡®Spinners, this is the Star Breeze, human wandering fleet. Swallow our ship leavings.¡¯ Message ends. Apologies for the language Soihtu¡¯Liekki.¡± ¡°Heard and forgiven Cryer. BIC, keep a track on Titan two. She seems to be running away, but alert me if that changes.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. By your will.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming missive from the third world from this system¡¯s primary star. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Missive begins: ¡®Large ships not, repeat not, part of system government. Large ship leaving shipyard is pirate. Respond please.¡¯ Missive ends. New incoming missive from Titan one. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®burn in (untranslatable).¡¯ Missive ends.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Missile Launch! Titan one has launched at us! Estimate six hundred, I say again six zero zero missiles inbound! Time to Impact one tuhan!¡± ¡°Weapons, missile defense free!¡± ¡°Weapons, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. By your will. Missile defense firing now.¡±
The Empire had long since learned from the Battle of the Sol system, and other wars besides. Their screens were well hardened against simple projectiles like mass driver rounds. A large enough round could punch through and do damage, but the real threat was a large number of simultaneous impacts. The screen generators could only handle so many incoming projectiles from a given vector in a given time span before they overloaded or overheated. Missiles were the most effective way to overload and burn out a screen generator, on account of all of the projectiles they generated in a very short timespan, so the Empire had lavished missile defenses on their capital ships, and outfitted their destroyers as missile defense ships. The Third World¡¯s salvo allocated an average of twenty four missiles at each Empire ship. All fourteen of her fusion warheads were aimed at the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. Empire destroyers opened up with meteor cannons firing cluster submunition projectiles as the missiles crossed the outer intercept perimeter. The hit chance for a given projectile was not very good, but the destroyers were putting a lot of projectiles into space. Three hundred and twenty missiles, including seven fusion warheads, made it to the middle intercept perimeter. The Emmpire light cruisers and the Viimeil¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa added thier defensve fire to the mixture, sweeping space with ten thousand kilogram cluster submunition projectiles. Only one hundred and fifty eight missiles, including three fusion warheads, made it to the inner intercept perimeter. Empire close-in defense batteries went to rapid fire, spewing out streams of ten kilogram ferrous slugs, endeavoring to build a wall of iron in space. None of The Third World¡¯s missile made it into attack range of Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s Fourth Squadron of the Twenty Seventh Scout Flotilla.
¡°Admiral, Guns. All missiles intercepted and shot down, estimate zero effect on targets.¡± Admiral Korekage Supesu slammed his fist into the arm of his command chair. ¡°Acknowledged Guns. Ready mass drivers and engage at will.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Missile Separation! Estimate one three zero zero missiles inbound!¡± ¡°Admira, Guns. Gravity shields online.¡±
The Empire, in addition to adapting their defenses to deal with a missile-heavy threat environment, had also accepted the missiles as the primary first strike weapon of its Fleet. Improving on directional attack ship killers first copied from human designs after the Battle of the Sol system, Empire missiles were fast weapons, intended to swarm targets under and saturate missile defense systems. Empire destroyers carried no missiles of their own, using the tonnage and space saved to mount very heavy missile defense systems. But the Empire Light cruisers each launched a hundred and thirty ship killers, with the Viimeil¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa adding three hundred heavy ship killers of her own to the salvo. In total one thousand three hundred and four missiles roared down on The Third World, who activated her gravity shields and then ignored them utterly. Human gravity shields, unlike Empire screens, did not attempt to deflect or break up individual projectiles. Instead, they wrapped the ship in a five meter thick sheath of intense gravity set a hundred meters away from the hull. The effect was to impart five hundred gravities of deceleration to anything caught in the field. Against mass driver rounds, it would slow down large projectiles and break up smaller ones. Against Empire ship killer missiles, which need direct hits for maximum damage, it was as good as impervious. Empire missiles slammed nose-first into the gravity shields and simply shredded themselves. The space around The Third World was lit up by failing warheads and ruptured fuel supplies, but none of it can within a hundred meters of The Third World¡¯s armored hull.
¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Missiles have detonated. Damage estimate¡­ null damage. I say again, null damage, null effect of weapons on target. Entering meteor cannon range. Requesting permission to fire.¡± ¡°Weapons, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. You are hereby authorised to return fire with meteor cannons. Cryer, relay that to all ships in the Fourth Squadron please.¡± ¡°Weapons, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. By your will.¡± ¡°Cryer, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. By your will.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Particle-merger warhead residue detected. Analysing at this time.¡± ¡°BIC, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. Please confirm last.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Foe missile salvo contained particle-merger type weapons. Analysing quantity and size at this time. Will advise if foe¡¯s weapon use approached the thresholds set down in the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat.¡± ¡°BIC, Soihtu¡¯Liekki.Heard and understood.¡±
¡°Admiral, Engineering. Gravity shield generators operating in the green at normal power levels. Will advise if this changes. Out.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Enemy is in mass driver range. Opening Fire.¡± ¡°Affirmative Guns. Target priority is the escorts. let us whittle their numbers down some.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Target priority is Twisted escort ships. Wilco.¡± Chapter 15 Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year of the Exodus, Fifth Year of the Splintering Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Year After the Battle of the Sol System First Minister Abby Bain watched the plot in horror. The damn Militarists had fired on the twisted, and the Twisted, the Empire she corrected herself, had fired back. Her emergency crews were responding to dozens of hull breaches on the orbital habitats from stray mass driver rounds. So far loss of life was light, with forty three people reported dead and another eighty one wounded to one degree or another. But Abby expected it to only get worse. Both the Empire and the Militarists were firing heavier rounds now. A stray one of those could rip a huge hole in an orbital habitat, venting precious atmosphere and rupturing vital systems. A hole too large to be patched quickly. And all Abby Bain could do was sit and worry. The Empire had not responded to her message, but they had obviously reacted in a timely manner against The Third World. And despite the stray rounds, Abby was impressed with their ships and their discipline. They kept formation on each other and looked to be professional handled. She only hoped that they were commanded by a person as competent at diplomacy as she was at combat.
Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta gripped the edges of his commad throne tightly. His facial muscles were taught and his mind races in circles trying to formulate some strategy. His ships had salvoed all of his ships¡¯ missiles to no effect, but his meteor cannons were inflicting some damage on Titan one. Titan two continued to flee, so it was not a threat in the fight. None of the orbital stations had done anything more than patch leaks. Certainly none of them had brought weapons online. All of the Fourth Squadron was concentrating fire on Titan one, and it was having more of an effect then the simulations had led him to believe that meteor cannons could have. Certainly his destroyers were the least effective, but even their lightweight main batteries were marking Titan one¡¯s hull. And Titan one¡¯s return shots were rather light for a ship of its size. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had expected guns that could turn his light cruisers inside-out with a single hit. Instead, he had only lost four destroyers and one light cruiser. He did not know that The Third World only had her secondary guns available, as the planned spinal-mounted primary guns could not be installed alongside the cryosleep array.
Admiral Korekage Supesu cursed as another meteor cannon salvo struck home in his hull. It was only low mass rounds from the Twisted destroyers, and they barely breached the outer hull, but it was still damage. Damage that Admiral Supesu thought that he should not be taking. What he had failed to consider was that The Third World¡¯s gravity shields were not invisible walls in space, but rather a discrete area within which any object was subject to crushing deceleration. The Twisted¡¯s meteor cannon rounds were solid lumps of metal: even crushed and slowed down, they were not destroyed entirely the way the missiles were. Enough survived to impact The Third World and inflict a small but steadily growing string of damage. The meteor cannon rounds from the light cruisers were no bigger, the ships simply mounted a few more meteor cannons to go with their missile silos. The meteor cannon rounds from the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa were of a much larger size, and every hit that the inflicted tore much deeper into The Third World. One hit had already reached into the core hull, the up-armored vitals of the ship. His own mass drivers, on the other hand, had a hard time tracking the Twisted destroyers. Intended to cover the flanks of The Third World, they had limited firing arcs ahead and astern of the ship. Twisted destroyers were taking advantage of these areas where only a few mass drivers could fire. The Third World twisted and squirmed, wrenching her vector around to try and bring more guns to bear, but this only aggravated the weapon tracing issues. At last, Admiral Korekage Supesu had had enough of trying to swat flies. ¡°Guns, ignore the destroyers and concentrate fire on the big ass bastard. He is the one hurting us the worst, so lets get him blown out of space.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco. Retargeting now.¡±
Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta silently recited a youngling¡¯s cantacle against fear. Titan One had decided that it was done trying to kill the agile Empire destroyers harring its flanks and was focusing its fire on the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. The battle had chanced, and Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta felt the need to adapt to it. ¡°BIC, Soihtu¡¯Liekki. Where is Titan one¡¯s firepower weakest?¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Titan one mounts few guns on her ventral and aft quadrants.¡± ¡°Steersman, get the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa below Titan one and roll us so that we are shooting into her guts. Cryer, proclamation to the Squadron. Destroyers are to harry Titan one at close ranges, in the gaps between the arcs of her meteor canon batteries if possible. Light Cruisers are to get aft of Titan one and rake her stern.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Steersman. By your will.¡± ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Fourth Squadron signals compliance.¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Admiral Musume Supesu watched her displays as the Solar Wind accelerated for the edge of the system. The Peacemakers were doing nothing to help the Militarists, who were slowly being chewed apart by the Twisted. The Militarists were striking back as hard as they could and had managed to destroy or disable about half of the Twisted fleet. But the shape of the battle had changed. The Twisted fleet had gotten itself below and behind The Third World and were systematically shooting its guts out. Admiral Musume Supesu looked at the countdown timer ticking away until the Solar Wind was far enough away from TRAPPIST-1 to engage its DTA drive. It would not be long now.
Soihtu¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta looked on in satisfaction as Titan one began to come apart. Plumes of escaping atmosphere marked deep, perhaps fatal wounds in the ship. Several destroyers had reported that the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa¡¯s heavy meteor cannon rounds had penetrated all the way through the ship on at least four separate occasions. He bared his teeth in satisfaction. The empire¡¯s first ever Titan class ship kill kill would be his along with all of the glory that came with it. ¡°Soihtu¡¯Liekki, BIC. Titan one is showing temperature spikes at multiple locations deep inside her hull, possibly inside her core hull. Cause unknown. Will advise.¡± ¡°Soihtu,Liekki, Cryer. Incoming missive from Titan one. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®we are dead, but we will drag you down to (untranslatable) with us.¡¯ Missive ends.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta closed his mouth, trying to think through the implications. What systems would be buried deep inside of a ship that could be used to destroy another ship? Weapons always had to be mounted on the outer hull, where they could fire at the foe. What was it that he had read in a Shipkeeper¡¯s report? Something about reactors and the risk if their containment fields were breached? All three of Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s eyes widened in sudden and total realization of what Titan one was doing. ¡°Steersman, get us away from Titan one now! Cryer, priority proclamation to all ships. Disengage from Titan one at once!¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was wrong about the specifics, but not the effect.
Admiral Korkage Supesu¡¯s engineers performed their last duty with impeccable timing and to devastating effect. All three of her surviving gravity shield generators and her Black Hole Drive were re-tuned to produce their effects inside the ship, pushing outwards in all directions with as much force as they could generate. The Third World, already nearly gutted by heavy meteor cannon rounds, shattered into several tons of hypervelocity shrapnel. The screen of Empire ships overloaded catastrophically, leaving their hulls exposed to the incoming debris. The eight surviving Empire destroyers carried only token armor, relying on speed and evasion to avoid being hit in the first place. As a result, they were simply turned into more shrapnel and a few floating giblets. The six remaining Empire Light cruisers fared little better than their smaller brethren. They were left as recognisable chunks, tumbling out of control across the TRAPPIST-1 system. The Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa survived, though she did take heavy damage. Her screen generators eiter melted down or overloaded trying the handle the strain. Her outer armor was suffered major breached in fifty two seperate locations, and her core hull was breached in twelve places, all from where overloaded screen generators had exploded. Her drive was reduced to a mere twelve percent of maximum power, as any more threatened the structural integrity of the rest of the ship. The human inhabitants of the TRAPPIST-1 system, Peacemaker and Militarist alike, suffered even more horribly. Given the cramped volume of the TRAPPIST-1 system, both the Nova Terra and Nova Mars colonies suffered severe bombardment. Domes ruptured, venting precious breathable atmosphere. Tens of millions of colonists were struck down in their homes by the wreckage of The Third World as if tore through them and into the planetary crusts. The residents of the orbital habitats fared little better. Their dwellings were shattered and tossed out of orbit to tumble into each other and crash into the planets in orbit around TRAPPIST-1. A tiny handful of humans, Including First Minister Abby Bain, survived the torrent of shrapnel and debris. Who were by ill fortune or pure bad luck in a place that did not lose atmosphere. Many of these places were emergency shelters containing food, water, and their own power supplies. But with the utter destruction of both human civilization and the Empire fleet presence in the TRAPPIST-1 system, search and rescue efforts were not forthcoming for human survivors. A fortunate few both managed to realize this and used some means to ending their suffering before they inevitably died from suffocation or starvation. Most did not.
Admiral Musume Supesu stared down at her displays on the bridge of the Solar Wind. She knew without question what her father must have done. The Solar Wind, like The Third World, had a quartet of gravity shield generators, a Black Hole Drive, and a DTA Drive. The DTA Drive could not be used safely inside a certain distance from a star, dependant on the mass of the star and the distance to the planetary bodies. If it was, it could, in theory, pull worlds out of orbit from their star or pull the star from its path through the cosmos. But the gravity shield generators and the Black Hole Drive could be configured to destroy the ship carrying them and send forth a dying curse of shredded hull and torn frames. Admiral Supesu stratified up in her chair, ¡°Admiral, CIC. Estimates of survivors in the TRAPPIST-1 system? Is there anyone here for us to save? ¡°Admiral, CIC. Estimate is that there are no survivors at this time, Twisted or human.¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. I have ship movement inside the debris field. Only one ship, too small to be The Third World, too large to be anything but the Twisted flagship. No estimates as to her combat effectiveness.¡± ¡°Thank you CIC and Tracking. Helm, stand by for transition to DTA Drive.¡± ¡°Admiral, Helm. Aye aye Ma¡¯am.¡± ¡°Communications, Spin up the translator again please. I have a parting message for the Twisted.¡± ¡°Admial, Communications. Ready to record for transmission.¡± ¡°Message begins. Beware, beware the Daughter of the Void. ¡®Beware,¡¯ I heard him cry. His words carried upon the Solar Wind, as he sank into the stars. [1] Message ends.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Clean recording, translating and transmitting now.¡± ¡°Helm, take us out of here.¡± Chapter 16 Part 4: Sea Changes Eighth Year of the Splintering, Third Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Thirty Third Year After the Battle of the Sol System Admiral Supesu looked down at the planet beneath the Solar Wind. It was not a large world, nor a particularly rich world. But its atmosphere was not actively toxic, it flora and fauna not particularly predatory, its temperatures stable and tolerable, and its gravity approached the near-mythic standard of one terran gravity. Its sun was a comforting yellow in an off-blue sky. Already the habitation domes were going up for the vast bulk of the one billion humans who had slept away the three year long FTL flight. They had decided to call it Refuge. But a not insignificant portion of the original Colonizers wanted something else. Not all of them, not by a long chalk, but enough. They had watched the recordings of the battle of the Sol System and the TRAPPIST-1 system. They were sick and tired onto death of being kicked around, chewed up and spat out. Many, if not most, of them had lost friends and family in TRAPPIST-1. They wanted payback. Admiral Supesu counted herself among them. Her father may have been a hatred-blinded idiot who had gotten three and a half million people killed for no good reason, but her grandfather had died defending the Sol system. She felt the need to make some lasting mark on the Twisted, to leave a lasting racial memory that humanity was not only hard to kill, but a foe to be wary of. The Solar Wind was busy chewing on asteroids and raining down habitation domes and the other things the colony needed. But she had also produced some basic scaffolding to build a few smaller ships. It was not as good as a full shipyard, but it was much faster to build. The new Nomad Fleet was starting to shape up, and Admiral Supesu had already but a great deal of thought into it. Each ship would be able to support itself at a minimum, but would need the other ships in the Nomad Fleet to have an excess of anything. Broadly speaking, the fleet could be broken down into three divisions. Provisioner ships would be focused on food production and population housing. Being population heavy and brimming with hydroponics, they would need the other two divisions to supply fuel, water, and defense. Producer ships, like the Solar Wind, would be centered around resource collection and refining. They would be tasked with harvesting and refining all of the fuel, distilling all of the water, and building the bulk of the replacement parts and ships, when needed. And Protector ships would be the military formation of the Nomad Fleet. Optimised for combat above all else, they would be unable to sustain or replace themselves without the ships that they were tasked with protecting. The Solar Wind herself was also undergoing refit. The cryosleep array was being removed to make room for more hydroponics bays, more storage spaces, crew accommodations, increased life support equipment, and all of the other odds and ends she would need to support her increased crew size and production activity. It would take a few years, but at the end of it¡­ Amidral Supesu shook her head. At the end of it was an utter unknown. She knew the Twisted held Alpha Centauri, Sol, and presumably TRAPPIST-1, but she had no idea how many other systems the had or where they might be located. Information was her first need, and would be the lifeblood of her operations.
Polo¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta gazed out across his command area with a mixture of sadness and pride. Pride as his new command and the exemplary work that they were performing. For his efforts in capturing the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, he had been appointed to the rank of Polo¡¯Liekki and tasked with commanding the cleanup efforts in the system. The reclamation of his own ships and their dead had been almost enough to break his hearts, but the number of dead locals was truly worthy of despair. He had no clue how they had managed even their crude translation of their language into Empire Common, nor how they had managed to survive on worlds whose air they could not even breathe. The tragic loss of life when one the locals experimental, titan-sized colony ship had suffered a catastrophic reactor failure was both a shock and a warning about the necessity of maintaining proper maintenance procedures and safeguards. At least, that was the official story. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had never really believed the Fleet Archives as to just how much the Empire¡¯s Bureaucracy had covered over down the Crown World Orbits. This was the second time that the Empire had faced the Fanatical Purifiers of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. This time they actually had not one, but two Titans, and one had just up and run. Moreover, there was new evidence of a fractured race, splitting into multiple parts. The transmission from the surface of one of the worlds made explicit mention that Titan one had been ¡®pirate.¡¯ Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was fairly sure that was a translation error, and the intended word had been ¡®rouge¡¯ or ¡®insane.¡¯ Its decision to conduct a self terminating attack that had essentially killed everything in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system was the act of an utterly and totally insane sentient. An incoming missive broke into his mauldin thoughts. ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. We have found the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa.¡±Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Disbelief pulled the words from his throat. ¡°Say again Reclamation Command?¡± ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. I say again, the wreck of the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa has been located.¡± ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. Not Possible Reclamation Command, I am standing on her bridge right now.¡± ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. Apologies. Clarification: we have located the wreck of the CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa embedded in the surface of the seventh world from this system¡¯s primary star. First impression is that she crashed and was scavenged some time later. There is evidence of excavation efforts.¡± ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. Well, at least we know how the locals were able to construct FTL drives. Mark her for recovery and write up your findings.¡± ¡°Polo¡¯Liekki, Reclamation Command. By your will.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta rubbed his one remaining grasper across his two remaining eyes. The CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. Second ship to bear the name, commanded by Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta. The Vanha¡¯Verta of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. The Empire¡¯s Bureaucracy may have hidden his Titan kill, but they could not hide this!
Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku, one of the historians and linguists attached to the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma Reclamation Command, was thanking his lucky stars for his habitual kelptomancy where old and outdated Empire technology was concerned. Recovery Command had pulled him off of his usual boring shift of parsing through wreckage looking for data storage devices with a special assignment: unlock an old storage volume that they had found. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku had taken one look at the device, recognised a 453 series storage vault, and had gone to his cabin to hunt down the needed connectors. The Empire used the new 16840 series vaults nowadays, dense cubes of minute atomic circuits laced with data-trails and instruction lattices. But the old 453¡¯s were a printed circuit design, needing actual physical connectors to interface with. It also had actual screws to hold components into place, instead of everything being a single slab of nigh indestructible atoms. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku had already pulled out the relic tablet from around the same era that he kept running as a hobby, as it was probably the only device he had with a slow enough processing speed and the approximate connectors needed to interface with the 453. Three satav later and Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku was back at his workbench laying out his parts. Several of the technical types had gathered, both to stare at the 453 data storage vault and to gawk at the ¡®nutcase¡¯ historian who just happened to have the knowledge and tech needed to open up said vault. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku engaged the sterile field generator, the real reason he had requested the bench, and set to work with a screwdriver. The external screws took a bit of persuasion and a few drops of anti-corrosion compounds, but the 453 eventually opened up. Inside was the expected slabs of printed circuits along with the severed cables of the interface connectors. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku cautiously disconnected the connectors and examined the sockets. Almost all of them were right out of the old 453 series manual he was using as a reference, but three were not. Two of the three were wide twenty five pin data bus input connectors, the kind that might come from a ship display. The last was a nine pin data input connector, much more common to personal terminals at the time the 453 was in service. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku stepped back from the sterile field and grabbed a nearby tech. ¡°This thing is a proprietary Fleet model, so I¡¯m going to need some old Fleet documentation.¡± The tech widened his eyes, wondering what fresh weirdness was going to land in his graspers. ¡°Like what?¡± Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku spun his arms, ¡°wiring diagrams for a start. 453s were capital ship exclusives back when they were in service. This one has three extra data inputs, and I need to figure out what they fed from. If one of them was a security terminal, then I¡¯m going to have to request the old Fleet security codes. Probably the old general override code, which is going to be a pain the the grasper to get.¡± ¡°I can try, but I don¡¯t have much hope. They pulled this one out of an old CAG, a heavy guided missile cruiser. Does that help any?¡± ¡°Some. An early-build CAG would have fewer things to feed into a data vault due to fewer backups and redundant systems. Where was this one found?¡± ¡°Flag quarters.¡± ¡°That¡¯s strange. Really strange. I would have expected only the standard inputs for a diary or similar unless¡­ Which CAG was this 543 found on?¡± ¡°The VLE, if the rumors are true.¡± ¡°CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa? No way!¡± ¡°It¡¯s only a rumor, but if it¡¯s true¡­¡± Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku spun his arms and poked three grasper claws at the 453 sitting on the workbench. ¡°I think we can all but confirm it. We won¡¯t know for sure until we crack the data vault, of course, but let us do some thinking. We have a non-standard, but Fleet proprietary, data vault. It was mounted in a CAG known to be commanded by a Vanha¡¯Verta, found inside the command accommodations. The Toinen¡¯Maailma Vanha¡¯Verta, the one responsible for establishing the secret Fleet Archive. Said data vault has three extra inputs, two of which would fit a feed from say the Scopes display or the Battle Information Center display. Either or both could be used for capturing raw data for later analysis. The third input is suitable for a personal terminal, probably used to input copies of reports and the like. Add all that up and what do you get? A secret, personal archive module intended to go into the new secret Fleet Archive.¡± ¡°Tulipalo¡¯Ja¡¯Armo!¡± ¡°You said it, not me. Forget the wiring diagrams, I need you to get a message to Polo¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta that I may have a family artifact here. If this is true, It¡¯s going to be locked down tighter than anything in the Fleet. Tighter actually, because the security codes are probably lost too. I¡¯m hoping that the Polo¡¯Liekki may have some sort of family relic key or passphrase or something that may get us in. If not, he may know who to contact, or who I¡¯m going to have to courier this thing to.¡± Chapter 17 Fifth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Thirty Fifth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Polo¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat in his ¡®work¡¯ office in the Vanha¡¯Verta estate on Salama¡¯Maa in the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. He had been transferred back to the Toinen¡¯Maailma system almost as soon as the relic on his desk had been found. Ostensibly, he was assigned to the Ship Museum Project and in charge of getting CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa in a condition suitable for display to the public. In actuality, he was assigned to the Fleet Archive and tasked with opening up the relic. To that end, he had requisitioned the historian Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku for his insight into old Empire technology. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku sat on the other side of the desk, arms moving slowly and graspers tapping delicately. It had taken over thirty Crown World Orbits for Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku to come up with a connector that would let the relic of a data vault connect to a modern terminal. It had taken Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta nearly that long to get access to the old Fleet security programs and codes. He found it ironic that the only place where they could be found was in the Fleet Archive itself. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was also equipped with a pair of old Fleet Archive files. One simply named EVV Known Passwords, which he presumed related to his ancestor Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, and another marked TKS Personal Log. some small research had shown this was in reference to Taivutus¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku, the first Fleet Archivist and Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku¡¯s ancestor. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could only twist his head at the irony of the situation. Two middle aged sapients attempting to decipher the workings of their ancient ancestors. Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku tapped a final command and stood back, ¡°that does it Polo¡¯Liekki. The 453 is connected and ready, the old Fleet security programs have opened it up, and it¡¯s asking for a password. No user id code, just a password.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta hissed in frustration, ¡°I have two files of what might be passwords, but no way of knowing which one it is. Do we just guess?¡± Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku rapped his graspers on the table, ¡°we could, but we should try to make a smart guess. Are there any passwords that show up frequently? Any that date to shortly before Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta headed out for the last time?¡± ¡°Nothing that I am seeing. I wonder if the two shared any passwords?¡± ¡°It is worth a check, but I would not expect it.¡± ¡°There is one match on the lists, or rather a close near-match. Try either ¡®Laatikko¡¯Avaa¡¯ or ¡®Laatikko_Avaa¡¯.¡± Kertomus''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku tapped his graspers on the terminal keypad, twisted his head, tapped again, twisted again, tapped a third time, and punched a grasper into the air. ¡°Got it. The password was ¡®Avaa_Laatikko¡¯. Felt odd that they would both use a passphrase that was backwards of how it would be spoken, so I tried that. Now let us see here. Three folders it looks like. Raw scopes data, tactical display, and log backups. Where do you want to start?¡± ¡°I¡¯m guessing that the first two are just raw input, and I believe that we would need the matching programs to display that?¡± ¡°Almost certainly. That leaves the log backups.¡± ¡°Last entry would probably be good to check.¡± ¡°Alright, here it is. One moment while the writing program opens it up¡­ got it. On the terminal now. While you read that, I¡¯m going to start the backup process. 453s may live for damn near forever but this one has been through hell so I don¡¯t know if it will ever switch back on once we shut it down.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta bobbed his head, not really understanding what KKS was on about, and scrolled the terminal window down to read the last log entry.
¡®Log Begins. ¡®Date: Uncertain. Ship power depleted, ship chronometers no longer functional. ¡®Location: Unknown system, surface of the seventh world from primary star, star chart reference 7Y4S 6216149 1077668. ¡®Status: beyond the reach of the light. ¡®The ship¡¯s reactor ran out of fuel a few Kymme ago. Possibly a Crown World Orbit or two by now. Terminal is on last gasp of life, batteries running down. Must make log entry brief. ¡®Shipkeepers found the cause of the fault in new gravity drive. Programming error. Ship would not slow down enough when leaving FTL speeds, leading ship to ram into stellar masses. Sabotage suspected. ¡®Without power life support is non functional. Atmosphere slowly leaking from rents in hull. Cryostorage nonfunctional, preserved food is now rotting. Liquid consumables are starting to freeze. ¡®Many of the crew have chosen to embrace the final sleep by over consuming sleep or pain medications. Unsure if I will follow. ¡®Log ends.¡¯
Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat back in his chair and stared at the terminal. CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. Saobaged. His own command, the BCG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, surviving by a thread, only the weight of the Vanha¡¯Verta clan name saving her from being condemned to the breakers. His recall to the Fleet base in the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, his assignment and cover assignment. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s relatives always butting heads with the Empire¡¯s Beuracracy.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The reason the Fleet Archives were so well hidden, and so thoroughly secured, began to become clear to Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta. The Bureaucracy considered itself the true masters of the Empire, and the Emperor and the Politicians as their puppets. But the Fleet still swore their oaths directly to the crown and the Law, not to paper-pushers, and the Vanha¡¯Verta clan was always a Fleet clan. So if push came to shove, as it often did in the Empire, and the Politicians could not control a crisis, the Emperor might actually move to reclaim the powers that the Law said he had but that custom denied him the usage of. Such as being the head of the government in fact as well as in name. If the Politicians resisted, as they would to protect their own power, and that of their puppet masters the Bureaucrats, the Emperor would call upon the Fleet to support himself as he had the right to do so under the Law. And when that happened, it would come down to how the Sapients in charge of the Fleet reacted. The Valo¡¯Haltija was a Vanha¡¯Verta and the Emperor¡¯s sapient, as were many of the Kokko¡¯Liekki and Polo¡¯Liekki. Were the Emperor to face down the Politicians and if the Fleet sided with the Emperor, then the Bureaucrats would be out of power. And the Bureaucrats would hate that. So quite naturally, they would have tried to sweep any achievements made by the Fleet, and especially by a Vanha¡¯Verta, out of sight in order to keep their power and prestige. After all, anything that improved the standing of the Fleet could only come at the expense of the Bureaucrats and their standing. The Fleet¡¯s actions indicated that they were aware of this. They had moved him to a public assignment (restoring the CAG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa) that the Bureaucrats could not object to, and at the same time had put him in a location that was secure against attacks. After all, if the Bureaucrats were callous enough to destroy an entire CAG and her crew to cover up one unfortunate story, then they could easily clean up a second one. He had already seen it in action: the Bureaucrats had stolen his Titan kill. But there had been Titan two, back in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system. It had made that one transmission, telling Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta to beware, and then gone to FTL speeds. Where it had ended up, and what was inside its hull, nobody knew. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta suddenly had a sinking suspicion that his life was going to become rather complicated in the next few dozen Crown World Orbits, what with avoiding the Bureaucrats and Titan two lurking in the wings. Waiting to cause a crisis the likes of which the Empire had never seen before. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could only think of two other times when the Empire had faced serious opponent with a void capable fleet. The Battle against the Fanatical Purifiers of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, where there was fragmentary evidence, only present in the Fleet Archive, that the Fanatical Purifiers had launched a Titan-class ship that had gone missing. And again at the Battle of the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, where one Titan had been slain and a second one had fled. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta pressed his grasper to his eyes as an utterly terrifying though stuck him. What if the Fanatical Purifiers and the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma ¡®locals¡¯ were in fact the same species?
Admiral Supesu stared at the two ships as they loped back into the system from their pre-acceptance trials. The Yurt was the first ship of the Tent class of hydroponics and accommodations ships that would make up the Provisioner branch. With a total crew compliment of ten thousand people, they were enormous cylinders packed to the brim with people and food production. Each Tent class ship was capable of feeding thirty thousand people in addition to their own crew, and as many as sixty thousand at subsistence rationing levels. The Vanguard was the first of the Hunter class frigates that would serve as the Protector branch¡¯s long-range scouts and outer pickets. She was not very large, nor particularly heavily armed. After all, the extra rations had to fit somewhere. The Hunter class did have two things going for it: an impressive passive sensor suite, and their size. Hunters were small enough to be built onboard the Solar Wind, requiring no external scaffolding or other semi-permanent constructs. The Vanguard had been built both as a test of the Hunter class ship design, but also as a test of the Solar Wind¡¯s own production facilities. Everything on and aboard the Vanguard had been made aboard the Solar Wind. Raw materials brought in by mining craft had been smelted down, refined, cast, machined, and assembled into the final ship. ¡°Solar Wind Actual,Yurt Actual. Pre-acceptance trails complete. We have some small issues, but nothing the engineers can¡¯t fix in a few hours.¡± ¡°Yurt Actual, Solar Wind Actual. Good to hear! I think they are waiting for you at the Scaffolds, so I¡¯ll leave you to it. Out¡± ¡°Solar Wind Actual, Vanguard Actual. Pre-acceptance trials complete. All systems green, all inspections passed. We are no longer sheep in the pasture.¡± ¡°Vanguard Actual, Solar Wind Actual. Once the Hawkwing class ships start coming online, perhaps. Out.¡± Admiral Supesu turned to look at the Scaffolds. The Solar Wind was free of hers, but ten other ships were under construction. Eight more Tent class ships for the Provisioner branch, and two of the Hawkwing class Carriers. Humanity had learned from its wet-navy past, blue and brown water both, and decided to skip over the entire idea of Battleships in favor of going directly to Carriers. With a limited pool of manpower and high levels of automation, a single Hawkwing could launch a full one hundred and forty four strong wing of strike craft with a crew of just over three thousand five hundred people, counting the crews of all of the ships in one big lump. The Hawkwing itself would only have a small number of long-ranged missile tubes for offensive weapons, but with rotating launch cells and onboard missile and strike craft construction facilities, a Hawkwing could reload itself in the field with only minimal support form the Producer branch. The strike craft themselves were still on the design board, but each was projected to have as much firepower as the old Isoroku class of ships her grandfather had used at the Battle of the Sol system. Compromises had been made to cram all of that firepower into such a small hull, such as having a crew of only eight humans and enough life support for no more than two weeks of independent operations. Admiral Supesu grinned and stretched, popping her neck. Another year and the Hawkwing class CVs would be ready. Three years after that, and the Twisted Empire was going to get a nasty surprise. Chapter 18 Fifteenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Fifth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Polo¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta braced his shoulders to attention as the briefing room door closed behind him. This meeting did not appear on anyone official calendar, and never would. That made it no less important, and the other three sentients in the room no less influential. From left to right was Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Valo¡¯Haltija of the Fleet, Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona, the Heir to the Crown, and Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku, the Heir¡¯s primary advisor. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona took the lead, gesturing to a chair, ¡°Have a seat, Polo¡¯Liekki, and we will get started.¡± Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta sat down, interested that these three great sapients would be waiting for him. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona swiveled his neck, taking in the gathering, ¡°As all three of you know, this meeting was arranged through the office of my father, the Emperor. As you may not know, he deliberately set it up so that he would not attend and would be seen elsewhere at the same time. This is because he, and therefore I, are in possession of certain bits of information that would be of use to all of you here. These facts, when put together, mark the beginning of a crisis the likes of which the Empire has never seen before. ¡°Valo¡¯Haltija, Polo¡¯Liekki, you both know of the Titans of Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma. How one of them fought to the death and beyond in an attempt to deny the Empire of that system, and how the other fled to an unknown destination. That the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma ¡®locals¡¯ were in fact the descendants of the Fanatical Purifiers. Perhaps only second or third generation descendants, as it turns out, given the distance between Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma and Toinen¡¯Maailma and that race¡¯s use of cryosleep colony ships. ¡°Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku also knows of certain reports that he has brought to my attention. Reports from shipping and industrial concerns on the edges of Empire space, duly filed with the sector and crown Bureaucracies, that were either ¡®lost¡¯ or flagged as insignificant. These reports detailed disappearances of freighters, small industrial platforms, rich asteroids, and other valuable resources. All vanished without a trace. Until now. ¡°What the Valo¡¯Haltija knows, and what you are finding out now Polo¡¯Liekki, is that someone has been preying on on the Empire. The evidence was finally found amongst the wreckage of a freighter. It had been hauling ferrous ore to a forge station when it reported an emergency. When the station missived back for clarification, there was no response. The station had already dispatched a rescue ship to investigate, which managed to catch a glimpse of something on its scopes. Multiple ships, capital class or larger. ¡°The freighter was found, attacked and abandoned, stripped of its cargo. Etched into its walls and corridors, left in the only file on its terminals, was a single message. The same message that Titan two sent you just before exiting the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system nearly five hundred Crown World Orbits ago.¡± Polo¡¯Liekki Vanha¡¯Verta sat back in his chair and blew a plume of air out of his mouth. ¡°They are back then.¡± The Heir swiveled his head in agreement, ¡°Indeed. Which is why you are here. You are the only flag officer the Empire has that has both killed a Titan and won against these Fanatical Purifiers. My instructions to the Valo¡¯Haltija are to get to the bottom of this quickly and efficiently. The Politicians are pushing for control of the Fleet again, using the reported losses as examples of the Fleet not doing its job. My father the Emperor wished to have a strong Fleet, and cannot afford the risk of this order being delayed or misinterpreted, so he sent me as his messenger. The Valo¡¯Haltija already has his orders, and has helped to shape this one. The BCG Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa has already been quietly designated as a museum ship in order to free up that honorable name for a new ship that will be leaving the Toinen¡¯Maailma shipyard within the Crown World Orbit. As for your orders, ¡° ¡®By order of the Emperor, Polo¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta is hereby appointed to the rank of Kokko¡¯Liekki. He is to take command of the Void Carrier (CV) Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and her attached battle group. His instructions are to bring your battlegroup to combat readiness, and to hunt down these Fanatical Purifiers for the good of the Empire.¡¯ ¡°I don¡¯t expect the hunt to be easy, but if you managed to kill a Titan with only a BCG¡¯s meteor cannons, then I and the Emperor have faith that you will be able to hunt down and slay a second one with a CV.¡±
¡°Solar Wind, Hawkwing. Scheduled status update. No new arrivals to this system. Out¡± ¡°Solar Wind, Raptor. Scheduled Status update. Orbital refinery still unloading the freighter. No other activity at this time. Out.¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°Solar Wind, Hunter. Scheduled Status update. Twisted sensor sweeps still below detection thresholds. No reaction at this time. Out.¡± ¡°Solar Wind, Vanguard. Voidstrike mines deployed. Returning for reloads. Out.¡± ¡°Solar Wind, Hearthfire. Scheduled Status update. Tentkeeper Squadron reports no unknown activity near the tents. Out¡± Admiral Supesu frowned down at the display board showing the signal traffic. She wanted to page Engineering and ask how soon they would have that last load of ore smelted down and secured for transport, but held off. Paging them would not speed up the process, only annoy the engineers while they worked. At the same time, she really did not want to be in this system any longer then she had too. With the Protector branch being so short on hulls, she had to keep the Tents close to defend them. And with that orbital refinery in the system, she had to assume that her presence was suspected. The longer she stayed near her tenth prize, the more time she gave the Twisted Empire to get a response force together. ¡°Admiral, Engineering. Refineries operating at 100% capacity. Estimated time to smelting completion is seventy two hours. Will expedite if possible. Out.¡± Admiral Supersu nodded in satisfaction. Shew would have liked to have broken down the Twisted freighter too, but the Solar Wind¡¯s holds were already full. So she had decided to leave some mines around the freighter as a surprise for whatever showed up to chase her off. The Voidstrike mines weren''t anything too fancy, just a missile in a single-use launch tube with a simplistic set of sensors. Once armed, they would attack anything moving under power within their range for about three days, after which the batteries would run out and they would self-destruct. ¡°Solar Wind, Hawkwing. New arrivals. Total of nine ships. One capital ship, type unknown. Four light cruisers. Four destroyers. Projected vector is towards the orbital refinery.¡± ¡°Solar Wind, Hunter. New scanner sources detected, military grade, well below the detection threshold. Out.¡± ¡°Hawkwing, Solar Wind Actual. Maintain emissions control, recall your scouts, and form up with Raptor.¡± ¡°Solar Wind Actual, Hawkwing. Maintaining EmCon, Recalling Strike Craft, forming up on Raptor. Out.¡± ¡°Hunter, Solar Wind Actual. Maintain emissions control and fall back on Vanguard.¡± ¡°Solar Wind Actual, Hunter. Falling back on Vanguard under EmCon. Out.¡± ¡°Vanguard, Solar Wind Actual. Go to EmCon. Expedite your mine deployment, arm the field, and fall back on Hawkwing.¡± ¡°Solar Wind Actual, Vanguard. EmCon set. Current mine pattern thirty percent deployed, will expedite.¡± Admiral Supesu frowned. The Twisted were faster showing up then she had hoped. At least there sensors were useless at this range. Better yet, they had not figured out that they sensor sweeps could be detected from further away than they would provide a useful return. As far as the data collected, both by Hunter and from previous raid, indicated, Twisted civilian grade sensors were good to about three light-minutes. Twisted Military Sensors were better, good to five light minutes or so. Both could be detected by human ships at twice the range at which they were able to detect the human ship in question. Going to Emissions Control (EmCon) shut down as much outgoing signals, including waste heat, sensor sweeps, and communications chatter, which made a human ship even harder to detect. Twisted passive sensors only had as much range as their ships active sensors, which was (in Admiral Supesu¡¯s Opinion) a foolish idea. By going to EmCon, a human ship outright knew how close it could get to a given Twisted ship without being spotted. Against unsuspecting Twisted ships that were not using their active sensors, that range was ¡®killing close¡¯.
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta rubbed his grasper against his eyes. This was the fourth disabled freighter call his battle group had received. The first three had indeed been dead ships, stripped of their cargo. Often disabled by a single meteor cannon salvo or a single grasper-full of missiles, the hulk was then etched with the same message over and over again and left to drift. He hoped this one would have some clues instead of the same enigmatic message. He had a little hope this time. The forge facility had not waited to relay the distress call. Better yet, they had forwarded it directly to the Fleet as well as the damned Bureaucrats. It had only taken the battle group two days to get to the outpost which meant that the humans, as he had learned the Fanatical Purifiers called themselves from the Fleet Archives, would probably still be in system. He spread his light cruisers out into a picket formation, pairing them off with a destroyer each. The CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa had enough missile defenses to look after herself, at least against any salvos the size of the ones Titan one had launched at him. The light cruiser on the other hand would need all the help they could get. But Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was not overly concerned about Titan two. It was likely a colony ship first and combat ship second. What concerned him more were the persistent reports of multiple capital ships in company with it. Some of them, perhaps all of them, had to be replenishment vessels and therefore not threats in combat. But they represented a construction capability, established from nothing and producing capital class ships in less than five hundred Crown World Orbits. Estimates put the number between two and ten, with perhaps twelve smaller ships in company. The numbers were much fuzzier then Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta would have liked. Some of that was inevitable, of course. No one had perfect information in war, much less in a ghost hunt like this one, but the hulks of the freighters had even worse sensor data then he would have expected. The recovery teams had come up with dozens of scope recordings. On at least half of them, the first warning the freighter had gotten was a launch signature. On the other half, it was a meteor cannon round striking the hull. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta exhaled and shook in frustration. His battle group was spread out to extend the range of their scopes, and the forge facility had given him the last known vector of the freighter that had sent out the distress signal. All he could do now was close on the wreck and try to find some new information. Chapter 19 Fifteenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Fifth Year After the Battle of the Sol System ¡°Hawkwing, Solar Wind. New arrivals have shifted to a search formation and are headed for our prey. Estimated time to arrival six zero hours. Estimated time until they can detect the flotilla is seven five hours. Out¡± ¡°Vanguard, Solar Wind. Mines deployed and armed. Falling back to the Raptor. Out¡± ¡°Hunter, Solar Wind. Escorting the Vanguard back to the Raptor. Out.¡± Admiral Supesu nodded in satisfaction. She had time to get her ships out without being detected. The Twisted were getting better, but not better enough. ¡°Communications, Admiral. Message to all ships. Standard scramble, standard encryption, normal priority for orders from the Flag.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Fleet orders, standard encrypt, standard scramble. Ready to record for transmission.¡± ¡°Message begins. All ships, maintain emissions control and form up on the system north extraction point. We are ghosting this system. Out. Message ends.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Clean recording, transmitting now.¡± ¡°Thank you Communications. Helm, make it so.¡± ¡°Admiral, Helm. Drifting to system north extraction point. Estimated time to arrival is seven zero hours.¡± ¡°Admiral, Engineering. Smelting Process is at five three percent completion. Estimated time to completion now three for hours. Out.¡± Admiral Supesu sat back in the command chair with a smile on her face. The extraction was going smoothly, the Twisted battle group hunting her nomads was about to get a bloody nose, and best of all she would get to watch it all happen.
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta frowned as the disabled freighter began to appear at the fuzzy extreme range of CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa¡¯s scopes. There was an excessive amount of debris floating about the ship. Either it had been a passenger smuggler instead of an ore hauler, or the humans had left the cargo just sitting there. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta rubbed above his eyes with his grasper, pondering. The humans were sneaky sons of unwed mothers, so they could have decided to plant a trap this time. His missing eye and arm aches in sympathetic pain to the last trap the humans had sprung on him. ¡°Cryer, proclamation to the battle group.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Ready to record for transmission.¡± ¡°Proclamation begins. All ships to battle group missile defense formation, centered on CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and oriented against the derelict freighter. Preliminary close scope scans of the derelict freighter and the surrounding debris will be carried out by light attack craft. Proclamation ends.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Clean recording. Transmitting proclamation to the battle group now.¡± ¡°Flight Control, prep and launch a squadron of LACs in the scout configuration please. I want then to go in first and sweep the wreckage for any unpleasant surprises.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Flight Control. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. Twisted capital ship is launching strike craft. Designating it as a carrier at this time.¡± ¡°Understood Tracking.¡±
Voidstrike mines may be simple minded, but that makes them no less effective. They had rudimentary targeting criteria: a target had to be moving under its own power, and not be a human ship, and be within two thirds of the onboard missiles maximum range. If all three conditions were met, then the missile would lock on and launch. The Vanguard had managed three complete drops, each time emptying out her missile racks to do so. At forty voidstrike mines per drop, that left a minefield of one hundred and twenty single shot launchers, each armed and looking for their own target. It was nowhere near as effective as a one hundred and twenty missile salvo, as each missile was looking for its own target and launch solution, instead of coming in as a concentrated hammer blow. The voidstrike mines would launch as they found targets, resulting in a ragged salvo irregularly scattered across any and all targets in range. Empire light attack craft were versatile things, mounting an integral meteor cannon and a number of fast change hard points for additional missile racks, meteor connons, power cells, scope packages, or extended use life support equipment. The CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa was equipped with the Empire¡¯s newest and best, the Taistelija¡¯Lakko forty one, which had six hardpoints. In the scout configuration, two of those hardpoints were filled with extended life support packages, another two with expanded power cells, and the last two with high powered active scope arrays. By the Empire¡¯s reckoning, this configuration let a light attack craft see a foe coming and evade before being able to be brought to combat. The eight ship squadron moved out to englobe the derelict freighter, and in doing so brought themselves into the outer perimeter of the voidstrike mines at roughly the same time. The communications channels erupted in confusion as light attack craft after light attack craft found itself locked up and launched on by mine after mine. A ship would maneuver to evade one missile, and in doing so enter the attack range of two more mines. Of the eight light attack craft dispatched to probe the derelict, three managed to limp back to the CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, trailing atmosphere and despair the whole way.
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta nodded in satisfaction. He hated to lose ships and sapients, and the loss of five light attack craft and their twelve sapient crew members each was rather painful. But it was far less painful then losing one of his destroyers and its two hundred and fifty sapient crewmen.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Battle Information Center, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Analyze the data from the scouts please. I want the mines tagged for elimination by the destroyer squadron before we approach the derelict any closer.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. By your will. Passing targeting data to the destroyer squadron for prosecution.¡± ¡°Good. Recovery Command, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Start prepping your sapients. The Fanatical Purifiers have set mines outside the derelict, so expect more traps inside the ship too. I would prefer to lose a remote rover over a sapient if any losses are unavoidable.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Recovery Command. Heard and understood. We are preparing boarding teams now.¡±
Admiral Supesu shrugged. She had hoped the voidstrike mines would get more than just five strike craft, but it seemed her opponent was wary of traps. Admiral Supesu supposed that she could respect that. After all, the Twisted had been burnt by a ¡®trap¡¯ before, if you could call The Third World¡¯s suicide a trap. And it would only make sense for them to send out a command officer who had survived that fight to come hunting for her. ¡°Combat Information Center, Admiral. Any sign that the Twisted have picked up on or location?¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Negative indications of couterdetection at this time. We are well outside the range of known Twisted sensor systems.¡± ¡°CIC, Admiral. Time until Nomad Fleet is ready to FTL out of this system?¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC.Three hours for all ships to complete FTL preparations.¡± ¡°Thank you CIC. Guns, are we in missile range of the Twisted fleet?¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. No ma¡¯am, we are not. Mass drivers have the range, but hitting a mobile target at this distance would require a cooperative target with a predictable vector and velocity and / or acceleration.¡± ¡°Very well Guns. Get with Tracking please, and set up for a single mass driver salvo on the Twisted battle group. I intend to only fire the Solar Wind¡¯s guns once, just before we FTL out. No other ships will be firing.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Affirmative. What are your targeting priorities?¡± ¡°Focus the salvo on the carrier. I¡¯d like to kill off some of the smaller ships, but they are more likely to evade the incoming rounds. The Carrier will probably live, but crippling it will send it back to the shipyards for repairs, which will make them lose out trail.¡± ¡°Guns, Admiral. Understood. I will inform you when I have that firing solution.¡±
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had an itch in the back of his empty eye socket. The recovery crews had found nothing unusual. No traps, no unexplainable bodies. Just the single crippling meteor cannon shot to the drive array, the hull breaches were boarding craft had made forced entries, and dead sapients in the corridors. Some had managed to fight back, but there was no indication that they had met with any success. The main cargo hatch had been opened, and the ore had been dumped out of the hatch on its pallets to be picked up by waiting ships. But the itch in Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s eye socket would not go away. He did not believe in fate or foresight, but Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was starting to believe in instincts. And his were prodding him now, warning of another trap he hadn¡¯t seen yet. ¡°BIC, Koko¡¯Liekki. Any sign of FTL transitions?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Null sign of FTL transitions into or out of the system since our arrival.¡± ¡°They are still here¡­¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Say again?¡± ¡°BIC, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Disregard my last.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. By your will.¡± ¡°Cryer, send word to the battle group. All ships are to go to evasive pattern Kiertamalla¡¯Kaarme at this time. Expect meteor cannon fire incoming from unknown vectors until we detect FTL signatures exiting this system.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡± ¡°Steersman, go to evasive pattern Kiertamalla¡¯Kaarme.¡± ¡°Kokko,Liekki, Steersman. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. Target ship is no longer cooperating.¡± ¡°Guns, abort the salvo.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Standing down to FTL transit stations.¡± Admiral Supesu blew out a frustrated breath. The Twisted had figured out that something was up in the nick of time. There was no point in pushing her luck any further. ¡°Communications, send the farewell. Helm, get us out of here.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Farewell sent.¡± ¡°Admiral, Helm. Willco. Engaging Distortion Thruster Assembly.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. FTL signatures! System north, mass estimates indicate one titan class ship, ten capital class ships, and twelve frigate class ships.¡± ¡°BIC, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Clarify. Are the ships in question entering the system or leaving?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Apologies. FTL signatures are for ships leaving the system.¡± ¡°Heard and understood BIC.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming message, text only. Broken Empire common, machine translation. Message begins. Quote ¡®I make methane in your area. Your mother was a vermin, and your father smelled of prostitutes.¡¯[2] End Quote. Apologies Kokko¡¯Liekki.¡± ¡°Cryer. Heard and forgiven. The Fanatical Purifiers taunting us as they cowardly turn and flee. Pass a proclamation to the battlegroup. Maintain evasion pattern Kiertamalla¡¯Kaarme for the next three hours, then return to normal station keeping procedures.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡± ¡°Steersman, the proclamation applies to you as well.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Steersman. By your will.¡± ¡°Tracking, you have the watch. If anything come up, I will be in briefing one catching up on paperwork.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Tracking. I have the watch. By your will.¡±
The Solar Wind slowed back down to reasonable speeds as she approached a nameless, planetless red giant of a star. There was absolutely nothing in the system of any interest aside from a few water-ice asteroids, and it lay far off of the Twisted Empire¡¯s known trade routes. All of which made it perfect for Admiral Supesu¡¯s purposes. It was a convenient chart reference and gravitational anchor to hand the Nomad Fleet on while the Solar Wind set about its next construction project: building a third Hawkwing class carrier. The Tent class ships of the Provisioner branch dropped into stellar orbit and spread their solar arrays to drink in the light of the star. The Protector branch set up a rotating patrol for the Hunter class frigates, setting the Hawkwing to keep a close watch over the tents and the Raptor to watch over the Solar Wind as she set about her work of erecting a scaffold to house what would become the Crane. It would take almost an entire year to complete the Crane and her attached hunter class escorts, but a fifty percent increase in the fighting strength of the Protector branch was worth the delay. It would also give the Nomad Fleet¡¯s Research and Development teams tome time to tinker and experiment. Admiral Supesu did not expect any radical breakthroughs, but even incremental improvements would be worth consideration. Designs were in the works for a semi modular destroyer that could be built almost as quickly as a Hunter class frigate, as well as for a more substantial mobile shipyard vessel for the Producer branch. The shipyard in particular would mean a substantial reduction in the construction time of capital ships, as the Solar Wind would not have to set up scaffolds for each individual ship. Admiral Supesu leaned back in her command chair and brought up some paperwork for review. She had plenty of time to wait, and her people would have plenty of time to train. Chapter 20 Part 5: Returning Home Seventeenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Seventh Year After the Battle of the Sol System Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was beyond angry, though he did his utmost to hide it. The Politicians were panicky enough, demanding that each and every system in the Empire receive its own carrier to counter the Fanatical Purifier raids. While it was true that they had fallen back every time CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and her battle group had showed up, Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta knew it was not because they feared the Fleet of the Empire. Far, far from it. He knew that the humans were fighting for information, looking to inflict as much damage as they could with as little risk as they could manage. The reason was obvious to any sapient with half a brain not clouded by blind panic! The Human fleet may have as many as twelve capital ships and a titan, but more than three quarters of that fleet was support ships of one sort or another, including the titan itself. They were undoubtedly armed in some fashion, but they were by no means combat ships. But the Politicians, and their Bureaucrat masters, did not see that. All they saw was report after report of the Fanatical Purifier fleet withdrawing after no more than a single exchange of fire with a single Empire CV and its accompanying battle group. From there, they extrapolated that stationing a single CV battle group in each of the seventeen inhabited systems of the Empire would shield those systems against raids. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had spoken himself horse at meeting after meeting, in front of endless and pointless committee meetings. The Emperor sat aloof from the whole mess, the Heir worked feverishly behind the scenes making the Fleet dance to the Bureaucrats tune. And the whole time, Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta and his crews grew more and more disillusioned with the whole mess. His dissatisfaction, though never spoken of, had not gone unnoticed. So here Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was, back in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, overseeing a set of mining operations and being overseen in a distant sort of way, by a Bureaucrat. He hardly recognised the place. All of the orbital debris had been reclaimed and shipped off to be made into other things. The habitation domes had been erased from existence, and the massive shipyard had been remade into an orbital housing complex and smelter. The Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system was just small enough for CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa¡¯s scopes to cover, so she was forced to sit stationary above the primary star of the system. Her battle group was dispersed about the worlds, plugging holes in the scope coverage and presenting a show of force. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had wanted to keep his battle group concentrated and mobile, sweeping about the system on irregular patrols, but the damned overseer had overruled him, citing ¡®fuel wastage.¡¯ Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta felt like a target on a range, just waiting for the meteor cannon rounds to come streaking in from out of the void. In the silent depths of his mind, Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta seriously debated attempting to talk to the humans instead of simply shooting on sight.
Admiral Supesu stood on the bridge and stared out across the TRAPPIST-1 system. So much had changed, and it saddened her. Her birthworld was gone, its domes shattered, excavated, and carted off to be recast into other buildings, other ships without a sings damn given for the people who had lived and died on its surface. The shipyard still existed, but now it was also a massive refinery, chewing away at the rock of TRAPPIST-1d and -1e. ¡°Admiral, CIC. Twisted carrier battle group spotted in system. They appear to be sitting at anchor. Signal signatures match known Twisted ships in the database, specifically the ones from the orbital refinery two years ago. Out.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Send the taunt if you please. let us get the Twisted formed up away from the shipyard.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Taunt sent.¡± ¡°Guns, Admiral. Stand by to execute Skyfall on my command. Target is the shipyard and refinery station.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Skyfall standing by, target is TRAPPIST-1 shipyard.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming human message. Empire common, text only, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®You are a stranger, I am a native.¡¯[3] Message Ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, stand by to transmit text message from my terminal. General broadcast on the bearing that human message came from, no scramble, no encryption.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡±
¡°Admiral, Communications. Incoming transmission. Text only, human standard. Message begins: ¡®I am going to try to raise my voice, not to strike fear, but offer a choice. So we''ve come this far. This is where it starts. It''s a wake up call for what is true. I''m so betrayed by those too afraid to fight for the goals we pursue.¡¯[4] Message ends.¡± Admiral Supesu sat back in the command chair, unsure of her purpose for the first time. It was a fever dream to imagine that the Twisted Empire was fragmented. But perhaps, just perhaps, there were cracks in the foundations. ¡°Guns, Admiral. Continue plotting for the Skyfall strike, but hold fire until I give the firing authorization or the Nomad Fleet is fired upon.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Warm up the human-Twisted translator. Latest stable version please. We have a message to send.¡±Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku, overseer of the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, paced furiously. He knew the Fanatical Purifiers were in the system, no scope could miss the energy spike of a ship reverting to STL speeds, but he had no idea where they were. Moreover, his carrier battle group was just sitting there, doing nothing. They had formed up on the carrier, and then¡­ nothing. No sailing forth to drive of the Fanatical Purifiers, no firing of meteor cannons, not even raising battle screens or launching light attack craft. Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku was worried. If he lost the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, or even if its infrastructure took significant damage, then the Empire would suffer economic hardship on a scale it had never experienced before. Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku had seen the reports, knew just how thin the Empire¡¯s budgets really were. He wanted to know what was going on. More precisely, Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku wanted to be asured that the commander of his carrier battle group, whomever the Fleet brained sapient was, had the situation under control. Finally, Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku had had enough of wondering and waiting. ¡°Cryer, get me a priority missive channel to the carrier. I want to speak with the commanding officer of the carrier battle group.¡± ¡°By your will sir.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming priority missive chanel from the shipyard. Overseer wants to jog your elbow if I had to guess.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Dump him to the terminal in my sleeping quarters. If he wants to ask questions, he can leave a message and I¡¯ll get back to him¡­ eventually.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer.Done. The Overseer is now talking to your message box. Incoming transmission from the human titan. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®We remember the past, the battle of the yellow star system. Do you?¡¯ Message ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Stand by for a text reply, I am composing it now.¡±
Overseer Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku was regarded as marginally competent by his superiors, although well connected enough to avoid demotion or termination. So he was given an important post that was predicted to be stress inducing enough that Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku would either snap under the strain or quit. Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku¡¯s mind snapped under the stress. In more peaceful times he would have been quietly institutionalized and removed. Unfortunately for the Empire, this was not a peaceful time. Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku slammed his grasper on his desk in rage. The priority missive channel had gone through to a message box. The commander of his carrier battle group was not even talking to his superior! The damned Fleet was betraying the Empire. But he would put a stop to that, by force if he must! ¡°Cryer, forget the missive channel to the damned traitors, get me a link to weapons control.¡±
¡°Admiral, Tracking. The shipyard just fired mass drivers against the carrier.¡± ¡°Guns, Admiral. Execute Skyfall on the shipyard. Communications, Admiral. What is the latest from the Twisted fleet?¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Message interrupted mid transmission, probably by the carrier rolling ship against incoming fire.¡± ¡°Very well Communications, stand by for text message to the Twisted carrier. I¡¯ll have it typed in by the time you are ready to transmit.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Shipyard has fired meteor cannons at up. Designating weapons platforms as targets now, flagging civilian housing and life support as non targets.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming human transmission. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®A male learns who is there for it when the shine fades and the walls fall. Because out of that debris, what stands can only be that which is true.¡¯[5] Message ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, heard and understood. Weapons, engage the shipyard, fire at will. Hunam fleet is to be considered not hostile at this time.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Weapons. Engaging betrayers, ignoring human ships.¡±
Fire Plan Skyfall was ridiculously simple. Ships could change their vector, and thus dodge mass driver rounds at extreme ranges. This is particularly true when the ship in question can see the mass driver round being fired and has an accurate prediction of the projectile¡¯s flight path. Military orbital installations such as shipyards, on the other hand, were far less maneuverable. As a result they tended to be lavishly equipped with defensive screens and point defense batteries. But as powerful as those defenses were, they still had their weaknesses. Empire screens are vulnerable to concentrated mass driver fire, and point defense needs to see the incoming projectiles to be able to target them. Skyfall called for all mass driver equipped ships in the Nomad Fleet to fire on a single target from beyond detection range. When the Solar Wind, twenty four Hunter class frigates, twelve Stalker class destroyers, and four hundred and thirty two strike craft fired a time on target mass driver salvo from beyond the Empire shipyard¡¯s sensor range, the defenses were about as much use as an umbrella in a tornado. A total of six hundred and fifty mass driver rounds, the smallest of them twenty kilogram slugs from the strike craft, the largest one thousand two hundred and twenty five kilograms from the Solar Wind, smashed into the Empire space station within a two millisecond time frame. Deprived of pre combat in depth reconnaissance, the Nomad Fleet had chosen to target the drydocks and material refineries. Screen generators either blew out or went into emergency shutdown in the targeted sections of the shipyard. The drydocks were worked over by the lighter mass driver rounds, their comparatively delicate construction equipment mangled and torn by dozens of projectiles and high velocity shrapnel impacts. The refineries choked on the Solar Wind¡¯s heavy mass driver rounds, spilling molten material into airless passageways. Secondary explosions and sympathetic incendiary detonations started chain reactions as chemical tanks ruptured, spilling corrosive liquids and reactive gasses into an already hellish environment.
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta felt chills ruin down his spine as the human meteor cannon rounds ravages the shipyard. His own scopes hadn''t even seen the launch transients, despite knowing the general bearing of the human fleet. They clearly lacked either the precision or the scope reach to target the defense weapons emplacements directly, but that single salvo had already done far more damage and caused far more casualties than the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa battle group could do in ten salvos. Even if negotiations did break down in the wake of the fighting, the Empire would be seriously crippled. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was even more shaken that he did not consider this damage to be a bad thing. After all, the Empire had already betrayed him, had it not? So what did a little breakage matter when it was visited upon his foes? Chapter 21 Seventeenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Seventh Year After the Battle of the Sol System Admiral Supesu found it hard to keep from smiling as the satisfied growl echoed around the Solar Wind¡¯s bridge. The human Nomad Fleet had achieved its primary objective in the TRAPPIST-1 system without having to fight the Twisted Fleet. But now they had a new decision to make. Or more precisely, Admiral Supesu had a new decision to make. The shipyard had fired on the Twisted Fleet, which had returned fire. She did not know the inner machinations of the Twisted Empire, but that looked a lot like either a revolt or a revolution in the making. And that meant she needed to keep the Twisted fleet alive. ¡°Guns, Admiral. Hammer that shipyard. I want its weapons destroyed before they can chew up our new friends. Communications, Admiral. Pass orders to Raptor Wing Lead and Crane Wing Lead. They are to provide missile defense for the Twisted Fleet.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Wilco. Retargeting now.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Raptor Wing Lead and Crane Wing Lead acknowledge orders, but request rules of engagement clarification.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. they are free to engage the shipyard, but are to only fire on the Twisted Fleet in self defense. If the Twisted Fleet does fire at them, I want then to fall back on the Nomad Fleet in good order.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Raptor Wing Lead and Crane Wing Lead copy rules of engagement.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Human light attack craft detected. Estimated two five zero ships at minimum. Projected vector has them passing between the Fleet and the shipyard.¡± ¡°Cryer, proclamation to all ships. Do not fire at human light attack craft unless fired upon!¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Proclamation issued.¡± ¡°Scopes, Kokko¡¯Liekki. BIC, Kokko¡¯Liekki. do we have any indication of the human fleet presence? Where are their carriers? And where is the titan?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Nothing on record since the FTL arrival signature. Estimate titan, one two capital ships and three zero plus escorts. Meteor cannon strike did not come from the same location as the FTL transit. In summary, the humans are in system, undetected, and mobile.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Scopes. I have faint, very faint, scope ghosts at the edge of active scope range. Plotting on your tertiary display now.¡± ¡°Scopes, I see them. What are they?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Scopes. If I had to guess, I would say that they represent the human fleet. The scope ghosts are about where the human light attack craft came from.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. I concur with Scopes¡¯ guess. The scope ghosts appear to be massed returns from light attack craft screens. If the titan or the capital ships are in that mess, we can not spot them.¡± ¡°Scopes, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Heard and understood. BIC, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Heard and understood. Continue to refine data as it becomes available.
Overseer Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku hissed and spat as he stared at the schematics of his shipyard and refineries. The traitor Fleet had left him defenseless before the guns of the Fanatical Purifiers, and because of that the Empire was going to be short crucial resources. His hatred overflowing, Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku howled nearly incomprehensible words to the commander of his weapon platforms. In response to his orders, or rather because the weapon platform commander was wise enough to ignore the proclamations and fight his own battle, missiles were launched.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
¡°Crane WIng Lead, Raptor Wing Lead. We have missile defense, you swat the launchers.¡± ¡°Raptor Wing Lead, Crane Wing Lead. Affirmative. Consider the launchers swatted.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Scopes. The shipyard has launched missiles. Estimate two zero zero incoming. Human light attack craft already firing in missile defense mode.¡± ¡°Scopes, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Heard and understood. Steersman, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Fleet movement. I want to move away from the shipyard towards the human fleet. Maintain defensive formation against the shipyard.¡± ¡°Steersman, Kokko¡¯Liekki. By your will.¡± ¡°Cryer, try to re establish the missive channel to the human fleet. I want to let them know that we do not intend to attack them.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. By your will.¡±
Of the two hundred missiles launched at the two hundred and eighty eight human strike craft, not a single one made it past the outer defensive perimeter. Twenty eight were actually struck by stray mass driver rounds, while another nine malfunctioned and detonated prematurely. The remaining one hundred and sixty three missiles met their ends in a hail of two kilogram ¡®scatter shot¡¯ mass driver rounds fired by the Raptor¡¯s strike craft wing. The strike craft wing from the Crane was unconcerned with missile defense, trusting their brothers from the Raptor to handle the threat. Instead, they targeted the weapon platforms that had launched the missiles and returned fire. It took a full squadron several full broadsides to reduce a single weapons platform to orbiting debris, but the Crane¡¯s strike craft wing accomplished the task with precision and panache.
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. Space station has no remaining operational weapons platforms. Human light attack craft are withdrawing to the human fleet.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. I have that missive channel to the human fleet. They are repeating their question about the events in the yellow star system.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. I am composing a response now. Stand by to send a text only reply.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Heard and Understood. Standing by.¡±
¡°Admiral, Communications. Incoming message. Text only, human standard. Message begins: ¡®Under the light of the yellow star, mistakes were made. Sapients died before shots were fired. I have no intention of shooting now¡¯ Message ends.¡± ¡°Thank you Communications, stand by to transmit my reply.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Standing by.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming human transmission. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®We did not kill on purpose until screens were raised and hostilities were declared by actions. But the past is past. What will you do now?¡¯ Message ends. Attached datafile includes a large volume of text documents. Passing them to BIC for analysis.¡± ¡°Cryer, BIC. Good copy of your data transfer. Beginning analysis now.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Stand by to send my reply, I need to think on this.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Heard and understood. Standing by.¡± Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta slumped down in his command throne. What was he going to do about this? What choices did he have? The humans had not killed the overseer, that much was obvious by the shipyard¡¯s raised screens and intact civilian sectors. The overseer had fired first, which made him they betrayer. The problem was who would believe whom. The Bureaucrats would believe the overseer, who was related to the Heir¡¯s principal advisor and thus had the ear of the Emperor. The Fleet would believe his scope recordings, but they too answered to the Emperor. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta owed the Fleet and the Emperor an attempt at a peaceful resolution, but if that failed, he had no desire to die for a corrupt system run by balance watchers and number eaters. In the end, he really had only one option, and one likely outcome.
¡°Admiral, Communications. Incoming message. Text only, human standard. Message begins: ¡®I owe my former masters an attempt at a resolution by words. If that fails, as I expect it will because of who owns whom, then it will mean war. I would not choose to stand alone. Where might I find your messenger to discuss our alliance should my words fall on bought and sold ears?¡¯ Message ends.¡± Admiral Supesu sat upright in her chair, hardly believing the words she had heard. The Twisted Empire did have a dissident problem in its war fleet. And if a Vice Admiral or Admiral was discussing an alliance with her against his own ruler after he was forced into exile¡­ ¡°Communications, stand by to transmit a response.¡±
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming human transmission. Text only, Empire common, machine translation. Message begins: ¡®The red star closest to this star. Blood for freedom. Raise the banner, fight your war. Break the silence, have no remorse.¡¯[6] Message ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Heard and understood. BIC, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Plot that star system and send the star chart reference to my personal terminal before cleansing the search and the results from the records.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, BIC. By your will.¡± ¡°Steersman, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Set a Fleet course for the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. We have something to discuss with the Valo¡¯Haltija.¡± Chapter 22 Seventeenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Seventh Year After the Battle of the Sol System Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Valo¡¯Haltija of the Empire¡¯s Fleet, was an elderly sapient. Born at the peak of a dust storm on the surface of Salama¡¯Maa, he counted just over two thousand nine hundred Corwnword orbits, or just shy of forty nine Salama¡¯Maa orbits to his name. In that time, he had commanded every kind of ship the Empire had produced, from light attack craft to massive carriers and their attendant battle groups. For Most of the cycles in recent memory, he sat at a table and commanded the Fleet. This cycle there were two printed missives sat on the table. Two printouts demanding explanations, demanding answers, demanding action. Two missives that would end the Empire as he understood it. The first was from Overseer Typerys¡¯Kielen¡¯Sanahaku, decrying the Fleet¡¯s defense of the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, the massive damage to the shipyard and forge station there. It called the Kokko¡¯Liekki a traitor and demanded his career, his honor, and his head. It was also counter signed as the verified truth by the Emperor and the Heir, and included the needed documents for a summary execution. The second was a much more detailed missive from that same Kokko¡¯Liekki. It drew together dozens of memos, missivers, and documents, all clearly references in the Fleet Archive and attached as verified copies. It laid out the history of the humans, their wants and desires, and showed how the Kokko¡¯Liekki had tried to find a peaceful resolution before being betrayed and shot in the back. It even included text documents from the humans themselves, translated into Empire common. All it asked was for the truth to be told, and for the results to fall where they may. Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta placed his face in his graspers. He wished that this was someone else¡¯s decision to make, that he was simply a young sapient again listening to the howl of a dust storm against the roof of his hidden place in the dunes around the Chana¡¯Verta Compound. But that was in the distant past, and nothing Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could do would change that which was in front of him. He pressed the button on his terminal that sealed his office door and activated all of the anti-listening device devices. ¡°Terminal, create recording for an all star systems public broadcast at a later time.¡± ¡°Recording for broadcast Valo¡¯Haltija.¡± ¡°My fellow sapients, this is an Orbit like no other. It is an Orbit in which the true past will see the light of the stars once again, and in its telling, the Empire can never be the same. ¡°The telling begins twenty eight thousand one hundred and six Crown World Orbits ago when the First Scout-Claimant Fleet, as we now name it, arrived in what is now known as the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. On that Orbit, the Empire and the humans made first meeting, and the first mistake of many was made. Both the First Scout-Claimant Fleet and the human Fleet attempted to communicate with each other, reaching out under First Meeting principles. Neither could understand the other, for they both used different cryer systems that could not understand the other. Neither side understood the other, or could even be sure that the other understood what was being said, so when ships and movement was detected in the asteroid belt the First Scout-Claimant Fleet sent a scout-destroyer to investigate. The movement was an automated mining ship that had never been instructed to consider the possibility of iron sided ships in its work area. The scout destroyer was lost to all hands before either fleet could act. ¡°In response, the First Scout-Claimant Fleet made the first and gravest mistake of the meeting. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta proclamed that First Meeting Principles had failed, that the Toinen¡¯Maailma system was inhabited by pirates, and that screens were to be raised and weapons armed. The humans saw this through their scopes, and drew the only conclusion that they could from those actions: a battle was coming. The humans saw that was to be no small skirmish, that this was to be a battle for their Crown World, their birthplace, and their only home. They prepared to fight unto the death, for they had nowhere else to live. They also fought for time, in the hope that their one and only slower than lightspeed cryosleep colony ship might escape. ¡°The battle was fierce, and the humans used every weapon that they had in defence of their home. Including many that they would never otherwise consider using. We sapients call these weapons ¡®world breakers¡¯. The humans call them ¡®planet killers,¡¯ and only ever used them when they saw no other option, no other solution. In the end, a salvo of world breaker missiles was damaged during launch, and destroyed the human fleet. Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, in the face of the detonation of so many world breaker weapons, and with the Purifier incidents fresh in his mind, Invoked the Maail''Man''Loppu Diktat upon the humans home system.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. ¡°Ottolu¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had not seen the human¡¯s colony ship leave the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, because it used a non-inertialess slower than light reaction drive. That ship would spend the next twenty six thousand five hundred and forty five Crown World orbits in transit to a system that we sapients now call the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system. ¡°While the survivors of humanity slept, the Empire swept the past into hiding. They promoted Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta to the rank of Kynttilan¡¯Liekki, gave him a new ship with a sabotaged FTL drive, and sent him to what we now call the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system. Traveling at FTL speeds, Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s ship arrived over twenty six thousand Crownword Orbits before the humans did. Because of the sabotaged FTL drive, his ship did not decelerate properly and crashed into an uninhabited and uninhabitable planetary body. No sapient aboard the ship survived. ¡°In the thousands of Crown World Orbis since, the Empire gave the greatest insult possible to the humans: it ground their homeworld into dust, harvested it, and used it to build up the Great Palace of the Crown World. The Empire defecated upon their memories and tried to erase them from the passages of time. ¡°The Empire failed in this task. ¡°Once the human colony ship eventually arrived in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, and the colonists arose from cryosleep, they learned some of what the Empire had done to their homeworld. The humans discovered the wreck of Kynttilan¡¯Liekki Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta¡¯s ship. They built their own inertialess drives, their own screens, their own FTL drives. And the humans sent a scout ship back to the Toinen¡¯Maailma system just as soon as they could manage. It arrived just in time to see the final planetary consumption of their homeworld, and managed to collect a few relics from an out system outpost before withdrawing. ¡°The return of the scout ship and its news split humanity into three factions. One wanted to stay in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, meet the Empire when it finally arrived, and come to some sort of peaceable agreement that was beneficial to both sides. One third wanted to go further away, to leave the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system and travel to the far edges of the galaxy for a truly new beginning. And one third, led by the son of the human¡¯s Kokko¡¯Liekki at the battle of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system, wanted war. ¡°When the Fourth Squadron of the Twenty Seventh Scout Flotilla re-discovered the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, the three human factions all reacted differently. The ones who wanted to leave left in a second titan-class colony ship. The ones who wanted war attacked with a titan of their own. The ones who wanted peace sent a warning and then stayed on their planets and in their orbital habitats to ride out the battle. ¡°That battle was a long bloody pounding match. Both the human warmonges and the Fourth squadron launch missiles. Neither salvo of missiles had any effect, and it came down to a slow ponding meteor cannon fight. The human warmonger titan was tough, but she had her weaknesses, which the Fourth Squadron seized upon. When it was clear that defeat as inevitable, the warmonger commander executed a self terminating attack. The result of which was the near total destruction of all sapients and humans in the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system. Only the command ship of the Fourth Squadron survived, though it too suffered heavy casualties. ¡°And once again the Empire swept the truth aside. It denied the honorable members of the Fourth Squadron the recognition due to them for their bravery in confronting a titan, their glory in slaying it, and their sacrifices in surviving its deathblow. The Empire denied the peaceful humans their place in the empire, writing away their memories by grinding up their orbital habitats, their colonies, their planets, and their very bones to expand the Crown World Palace yet again ¡°The wandering humans have every right to be angry with the Empire. More than angry, they have the right to righteous fury at the Empire. And yet, they have poked and prodded. They have raided, sparring for information, for time. And when the wandering humans finally returned to the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, they found someone in authority willing to talk to them, to exchange histories and to set right old wrongs. ¡°The Empire shot that sapient in the back. The Empire¡¯s space station and shipyard, responsible for grinding up the worlds of the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma system, opened fire without provocation on one of the Empire¡¯s own carrier battlegroups. That carrier and its battlegroup only survived because the wandering humans intervened to save them. The wandering humans pulled the stations¡¯ teeth, wrecked the drydocks and the forges, and then left. ¡°That carrier battle group has risked much bringing back not only the truth of their betrayal, but also the truth of what happened to Ensimmainen¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta. They do not ask for forgiveness for defending themselves, despite how the Empire calls for their blood. Despite how the Emperor and the Heir themselves countersigned the execution orders. They ask only for the truth to be told. And so it has. ¡°This is my last act as Valo¡¯Haltija of the Empire. I cannot in good faith serve an Empire, an Emperor, or an Heir who would betray their most loyal of servants to avoid the truth.¡± Valo¡¯Haltija Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta took off his rank insignia and placed them on his table. He drew his honor blade, forged with his name at the time of his induction to the service of the Fleet, and snapped it in half against is sheath. Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, no longer the Valo¡¯Haltija, instructed the terminal to end the recording and to schedule the broadcast as a priority one (interrupt all other programming), all star systems broadcast, to be transmitted in one tuhan. That done, Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta left the office behind, to go and see if his secret place was still there in the dunes outside the walls of the Vanha¡¯Verta Compound. Chapter 23 Seventeenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Seventh Year After the Battle of the Sol System Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta looked around the bridge of the CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa. His crew looked back in stunned indecision, wondering what the message from the Valo¡¯Haltija meant for all of them. They had expected something, but this¡­ for the Emperor himself to sanction their executions? For the Valo¡¯Haltija to tell The Emperor, in front of every sapient in the Empire, to pound sand? For the Valo¡¯Haltija to proclaim that both the Emperor and the Heir were unworthy of the throne? Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta twisted his head, and looked about the bridge for a second time. All of these Sapients looked to him as their leader. They all were waiting on him to make a decision. ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Make an all ships missive channel. I would speak to the crews of all of the ships at the same time.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. All ships, all sapient missive channel is live.¡± ¡°My fellow sapients, we stand at the decision point. As the Valo¡¯Haltija said before he left his post, the Empire will never be the same again. You know this. I know this. We will not lie to ourselves any longer. ¡°In many ways, we stand with graspers in the shadows already. We stand condemned for doing our duty, for defending ourselves against the insane. I propose that we willingly go beyond the reach of the Empire¡¯s Light. I purpose that we travel to join the wandering humans, to join with them in their cause. ¡°I know that not every sapient on these ships is willing to do that. Those that do not wish to go with me will take to the escape boats. There will be no violence, for there is no need for any. There will be no coercion, for there is no purpose in it. In one tuhan, I and the CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa will be leaving the Toinen¡¯Maailma system. Any ship that is willing to follow will form up in FTL formation. ¡° ¡®From now on these eyes will not be blinded by the Light.¡¯[7] ¡± ¡°End Missive.¡± Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta looked about his bridge. The officers and ratings looked back at him, unblinking. ¡°Is there any sapient here needs to leave?¡± Scopes twisted her head, ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Scopes. I think that I speak for every sapient here when I say that I wish to stay. Better a free life in the Darkness then a death in the Light.¡± ¡°Thank you Scopes. ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Incoming missive from CV Tuho¡¯Vuosi¡¯Tuuli. Missive begins: ¡®We would follow where you lead. Battle group forming up for transit.¡¯ Missive ends.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Did you send that missive link to every ship in the system?¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Yes I did Kokko¡¯Liekki.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Heard and forgiven. Missive to CV Tuho¡¯Vuosi¡¯Tuuli and her battle group. Missive begins: ¡®Standard FTL formation, if you would follow us beyond the Light.¡¯ Missive ends. We have a messenger to meet.¡±
Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona, the Heir to the Crown of the Empire, glared at the terminal in a mixture of disbelief, anger, horror, and raw fury. Disbelief that the Valo¡¯Haltija would dump this information onto the uneducated public in such a manner. Anger that the resulting confusion and outright chaos would cause such a disruption to the Empire. Horror that the Bureaucrats who saw to the smooth running of the Empire would forge both his and his father¡¯s signatures. And raw fury that the Fleet, that stalwart guardian of the Empire, the Sword of the Emperor himself, would inevitably see this as a total betrayal by their lawful civilian commanders in the face of the enemy. Word had already filleted back that things were seriously amiss. Carrier battle groups were reported as suffering internal damage and casualties from mutinies. Two of the peaceful client races were rioting en masse. The Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma shipyard and forge station was beyond salvage. Repair would cost more then simply tearing the whole thing apart and rebuilding, and while that was going on the Empire would have very limited raw resources with witch to build and grow. Most disturbingly, two entire carrier battle groups were outright missing. The Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma battle group was bad enough, with the CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, four light cruisers, and four destroyers gone missing. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona was not surprised, given that the CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa and the Kokko¡¯Liekki that commanded it were the targets of the forged execution orders. Far more concerning was the fact that the Toinen¡¯Maailma battle group was also missing. It only had one CV, the Tuho¡¯Vuosi¡¯Tuuli, instead of the usual four that were assigned to the system. But it did have eight battlecruisers and twenty destroyers in attendance. All of them had up and vanished, leaving a glaring hole both in the Fleet¡¯s order of battle and in the defense of two critically important systems. The most dangerous concern for the Heir was not the current weaknesses in the Fleet or the unrest in the Empire. Ships could be rebuild, sapients retrained. Rebellious planets without navies could not stand against an attack if it came to that. The Heir¡¯s real concern was the wandering humans. Outsiders with no stake in keeping the Empire intact, no reason to trust it now that their ranks would be swollen by the betrayed portions of the Fleet, and a history of using world breaker class weapons.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona looked out on the grey skies of the Crown World and, for the first time in his life, afraid of what the future might hold.
Admiral Supesu looked up as Tracking cried out in alarm. ¡°Tracking, Report!¡± ¡°Admiral, Tracking. Multiple incoming FTL signatures, multiple Twisted capital ships. Ship count as follows: two Carriers, four battlecruisers, four light cruisers, and two four destroyers.¡± ¡°Admiral, CIC. Twisted Fleet formation is in keeping with standard transit patterns, not attack formation. Out.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Incoming message, text only, human standard. Message begins: ¡®Words had fallen on all ears. The banner is raised in regret, the silence has been broken in sadness. We should speak, you and I. Face to face and eyes to eyes.¡¯ Message ends.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral. Send them the meeting place, and remind them that environmental suits would be a good idea.¡± ¡°Admiral, Communications. Wilco.¡± ¡°Flight Control, Admiral. Notify the diplomatic team and prepare my cutter if you please.¡± ¡°Admiral, Flight Control. Cutter will be ready in boat bay alpha in one five minutes. Diplomatic team is being notified. Out.¡±
The meeting place was an oval disk of metal floating in space halfway between the two fleets. On one side was a minimalistic gravity generator and a solar panel array to power it. On the other was a pair of landing markers, one human and one copied from the Empire, set at the far ends of the oval. There was nowhere to hide, no atmosphere, and no shielding. It was not a place for deception, nor for prolonged discussion. It was also a clean place, both in that there was no dust or debris to clutter the deck, and in that it was a place for new beginnings. Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta and Polo¡¯Liekki Sata¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, the commanding officer of CV Tuho¡¯Vuosi¡¯Tuuli, shrugged on the heavy survival suits that the humans had suggested. Both were not in favor of wearing the suits, and their security detail even less so. They restricted movement and any breach signaled the imminent death of the wearer as life sustaining breathable air vented uncontrollably. But the atmosphere less nature of the meeting place required them for any sapient walking its surface. Both officers and the security team took grim solace in the fact that the humans would be in the same position as they were. As they exited the shuttle and took their first tentative steps onto the meeting place, they were surprised to find the gravity comfortable. It was slightly on the low side, but not by an uncomfortable amount. The security detail quickly spread out, heads twisting atop necks, eyeing the empty areas of the meeting place with ingrained caution. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta stopped to take a good look at the human shuttle. Empire shuttles tended to be short cylinders that took advantage of the way sapients flowed between horizontal and standing positions to minimize the need for ¡®extraneous¡¯ corridors and compartments. The human shuttle, on the other hand, was a blunt wedge shape. The rear of the wedge hinged open and Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta saw a human for the first time. They had the same two legs, two arms, one torso and one head of a sapient, but the joints were all wrong. They hinged and swiveled, with only the neck and hands twisting they way a sentient¡¯s body did. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was instantly envious of thier enviromental suits. Where his was bulky and inflated with atmosphere, the humans suits were sleek and hard. The human protective detail that fanned out, matching his own security detail, wore suits with layered plates of some non-reflective metal over a tight body covering. The human officers wore suits with less hard edges and metal plates, but the human second in command had legs that seemed as hard and agular at the human protective detail¡¯s suits. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta shrugged this off and stepped forward with his one grasper extended in greeting.
Master Chief Petty Officer Donn MacBrash stood at Admiral Supesu¡¯s back and watched the twisted walk across the meeting place. His artificial legs ached in the environmental suit, but it no worse than his aging bones ached just from being old. By all of the old Terran United Countries Merchant Service and Void Guard regulations, he should have been retired long since. But Admiral Supesu valued him for more than just his skill as a small-craft pilot, she also valued him for his experience and steady mind. As he eyed up the Twisted Admiral, or whatever they called their carrier commanders, he could not help but notice that Twisted medical technology could use some improvements. The second officer of the two was whole and healthy, but the officer in the lead was clearly missing an arm at the shoulder, and the strip of cloth visible through the environmental suit¡¯s vizor indicated a missing eye as well. Donn keyed her personal com, ¡°Ma¡¯am, I wonder if medical aid might be a good opening offer?¡± ¡°Along with helping then convert or build some logistical support sips. I don¡¯t know how much you know MCPO, but they don¡¯t have a single support ship in that fleet. It¡¯s all warships.¡± ¡°Sounds like they took everything that was ready to sail and left Ma¡¯am. Did not even wait to take on supplies, just upped anchor and split.¡± ¡°That also means no no-combatants MCPO, which at least means fewer mouths to feed. Depending on their automation levels, they may even have the bodies to spare to man logistical support ships.¡± The leading Twisted extended its ¡®hand¡¯ in greeting, so Donn fell silent and let his Admiral take the lead.
Admiral Supesu took the outstretched hand feeling the small, unsure trembles in the Twisted¡¯s grip. She extended a portable terminal in the other hand, the words on its screen in both human standard and Empire common proclaiming it to be a prototype Empire-human voice translator. ¡°Greetings Admiral. I do hope this translator works.¡±
¡°Greetings Kokko¡¯Liekki. I do hope this translator is functional.¡± ¡°It does, Daughter of the Void. And well indeed for a first prototype.¡± ¡°Thank the stars, that will make this discussion much more useful to us all.¡± ¡°It makes it easy indeed. The heart of the matter, of course, is on what terms we will work together Daughter of the Void. Do we sail parallel courses? Or do we forge ourselves into a single fleet?¡± ¡°You have no home to go back to, and we have left ours behind three times. Whatever else happens, we should both have the option to walk away. To sail into the depths of space and make a new beginning. I see that you have brought only warships with you?¡± ¡°I had thought to bring only my own battle group, but my Cryer spread the message just a little further and my relative decided to follow me. We are, or rather were, both Empire Fleet officers, and so we commanded no food carriers. Our warships carry enough food for a hundred crownworld orbits, but I see that you think this is not enough.¡± ¡°That is impressive indeed, but no, it is not nearly enough to sail freely. If you would forge your fleet with ours, I would offer to help you build the food grower ships that you would need, as well as sareing healing works. I see that you are missing a grasper and an eye. It may take some thinking, but that should be healable.¡± ¡°I thank you for your offer. Should we stand around here to discuss the details, or should we go back to our ships and sit in comfort?¡± ¡°Back to the ships I should think. And take the translator with you. We can make another if we must.¡± ¡°Thank you, Daughter of the Void.¡± ¡°Thank you Kokko¡¯Liekki.¡± Chapter 24 Part 6: World Breakers Nineteenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Ninth Year After the Battle of the Sol System Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona, Emperor of the Empire after his father¡¯s abdication, lived in fear. Two years had passed since the day the last Valo¡¯Haltija had vanished. After the recording had gone out, no one had been able to find Miekkailija¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta for over a Crownwordl Orbit. He was eventually found near the Vanha¡¯Verta compound with a bullet wound in his head. Officially, it was a suicide. Unofficially, it was an execution: no sapient could suicide by shooting themselves in the head three times. The Fleet was reduced to a network of System Defence Forces, bolstered by whatever units could be produced locally. Three of the client races were in open revolt, and had effectively won independence when the System Defence Forces assigned to their systems were withdrawn to the Crown World. Two more client races had been bombarded back into the stone age. The Empire¡¯s economy was stable, but only because so many of its works had been paused or abandoned. And there was still no sign of the wandering humans or the ex-Fleet units. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona believed that they were still out there, waiting to strike, but none of the Bureaucrats that actually ran things would believe him. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona wanted to ramp up production at the Toinen¡¯Maailma shipyard, but no such production was forthcoming. The Bureaucrats believed that the fifteen remaining carriers would be enough to ward off the wandering humans. With only three of them guarding the Crown World Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had his doubts. At least two Fleet carriers were still unaccounted for, and the wandering humans had at least one carrier of their own. Equal numbers of ships may favor the defender who has armed stations and weapons platforms in support on paper, but Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had at least a modicum of Fleet experience. More importantly, he still had tenuous access to the Fleet Archive and the studies it contained. With so much free time on his hands, as his ¡®work¡¯ only consisted of signing whatever papers the Bureaucrats brought him, Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had delved into those studies and the math behind them. Fixed defenses, which is what armed stations and orbital weapons platforms were called in the Fleet studies, were only as good as their defenses. Once detected and localized, they were vulnerable to bombardment. Active defensed like missile defense batteries and screens would help, but were often not cost effective. Most importantly, the wandering humans had already demonstrated that they understood how vulnerable fixed defenses were at the Kuud¡¯Estoista¡¯Maailma raid. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona saw and knew that the Empire was crumbling. He would be its last Emperor, though his distant siblings may claim the throne, or have it forced upon them, with his death. But Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had one last trick up his sleeve. The Crown World defenses, like all System Defense Forces, needed the authorization of the highest ranking non-Fleet Empire representative present to leave orbit. For other worlds, this meant the system governor. For the Crown World, this was Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona himself. All he had to do in order to end the Empire was say ¡®no¡¯ when the time came.
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta flexed his graspers. The feel of the new ¡®titanium composite augmetic¡¯ one was still slightly off, mostly in how¡­ sterile the sensations of the air pump blowing on his arm felt. His natural arm and grasper felt one thing, the new artificial one felt it slightly differently. He could not put it into any definitive words, nor could he describe it too well. That being said the ability to do two grasper things again, like dressing oneself properly without assistance, was a gift beyond value. And his new eye! It faithfully duplicated everything his natural eyes could do and a little bit more. That ¡®little bit¡¯ being the ability to display a plot or terminal window directly onto his vision, which Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could then manipulate with ease thanks to his new hand. It was incredibly useful in his day to day paper work, despite being not quite as good as the ones humans made for themselves. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was not jealous in the slightest in getting an ¡®inferior¡¯ model, given the reasons for it. While he would have liked the low light, thermal, telescopic, and combination options found in human artificial eyes, it came down to the number of eyes in his head. He could have had those functions, but it would require replacing all of the eyes in his head, the way human boarding party members did. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta felt no need to change himself beyond what was needed to return to being a fully functioning sapient. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta looked out across his bridge on the newly refitted CV Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa, his new eye automatically acting as a relay to display the essentials of whatever Officer¡¯s plot he was looking at. Half of the ratings and assistant officers stations were vacant, their jobs taken up by vastly improved support terminals. The steady glow of green readiness lights in the dim compartment brought a twist to his head. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta could hardly believe that the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa¡¯s launch bays now held ninety six new generation light attack craft, up from sixty four. The Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa¡¯s number of missile silos had not been increased any, but each now had an attached six missile ¡®ready magazine¡¯ and a small assembly bay that could build and load another eight missiles. In total, the Viimein¡¯Laiva¡¯Elossa still had only a thirty two missile salvo, but could fire a total of four hundred and forty eight missiles before running dry. It¡¯s meteor cannons had received improved tracking and traverse speeds, and the missile defense batteries in particular had received a hefty rate of fire boost. The new build light attack craft were also quite an improvement overall. They sacrificed some of their total life support capability compared to the Empire models that they replaced. The crew had been shrunk to a third of what it previously was, so their life support endurance had actually gone up by half. As an example, the Empire built light attack craft carried enough air for ninety Crown World Orbits of use by a single sapient, but carried a crew of thirty six sapients, resulting in only two and a half Crown World Orbits of life support endurance. The new build Light attack craft carried only sixty Crown World orbits of life support and had a crew of twelve, resulting in five Crown World Orbits of life support endurance. The new build light attack craft were no more heavily armed or armored. However, they kept the same power and propulsion systems as their predecessors inside a smaller, lighter hull, which made for a vastly more maneuverable craft. In fact, it was possible for a new build light attack craft to perform maneuvers in excess of what the crew could withstand unassisted.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The battlecruisers in the Remnant Fleet, as Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta referd to the Fleet Ships that had followed him beyond the light of the Empire, had received a more substantial overhaul. They had been stripped of their twelve medium weight meteor cannons, firing what the humans called a ¡®three hundred kilogram¡¯ projectile once per tuhan. In their place, six ¡®titan light¡¯ meteor cannons had been installed, each firing a ¡®one thousand kilogram¡¯ projectile at a rate of three for every two tuhans. The increase in throw weight per tuhan was not huge, only two thousand or so ¡®kilograms¡¯ every three tuhans, but the impact of the projectiles was immensely more powerful. With the ¡®titan light¡¯ guns a Remnant Fleet battlecruiser could expect to enter a meteor cannon duel with, and win handily, against any Empire battlecruiser. The heavier projectiles would just rip through Empire screens, armor, and critical ship components alike. The sentients freed up by the reduction in ship companies had been put to valuable use. An entirely new class of ship, the Viisas¡¯Tila¡¯Maatila class fast fleet provisions ship, had entered service with the Remnant Fleet. It carried only token weapons and screens, but was capable of putting out a truly stupendous volume of consumables to feed and fuel the rest of the Remnant Fleet. They were also semi capable mobile forge and repair ships. Getting more performance in that regard would require a much larger, more complex, more crew and resource intensive design, like the humans own Solar Wind and mobile shipyard. The humans had not been idle in their own ship constructions and improvements either. Their fourth carrier, the Reprisal, was set to enter service, along with a curious carrier sized ¡®orbital artillery ship¡¯ called the Harmony Bringer. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta found the ship strange in more ways than one. Human carriers were boxy affairs, all hard edges and sharp angles. The Harmony Binger was much ¡®smoother¡¯, long and pointed like a hunting spear or a grasper claw. The human titan Solar Wind carried a total of twelve heavy meteor cannons as her primary armament, of which she could bring at most nine to bear on a single target. The Harmony Bringer carried twenty seven such heavy meteor cannons as a part of her secondary armament. They were not backed up by any missiles, but their arrangement and rate of fire made for a rather effective long-range weapon. The Harmony Bringer¡¯s primary armament was three of something the humans called a ¡®Cee Fractional Kinetic Energy Projectile Launcher¡¯ in prow firing spinal mounts. From the decriptions that Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta had been able to read, they sounded like meteor cannons that had been enlarged to the point where the difference in size also became a difference in kind. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was unsure how such massive weapons could ever be brought to bear on a mobile ship, but Harmony Bringer¡¯s designation as an ¡®artillery ship¡¯ indicated that the humans expected her to bombard stationary targets like shipyards. Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta was not sure what to make of the Harmony Bringer, but he knew that he never wanted to have to fight against it.
Admiral Supesu, known to the Twisted as the Daughter of the Void, looked upon the Harmony Bringer with regret. If the Twisted or the Empire knew of her real purpose, they would either fight or cower in absolute fear. The Harmony Bringer was intended to settle the debt between Nomad Humanity and the Twisted Empire. The ¡®score card¡¯ currently sat at two systems, a homeworld and a first colony, to none in the Empire¡¯s favor. Admiral Supesu intended to balance that score before leaving the local arm of the Milky way behind for good. Perhaps she would return to Refuge, or perhaps she would wander the stars as a Nomad for good. In truth, Admiral Supesu had no plans beyond the defeat of the Empire. She had lived her entire life in its shadow, her entire career was built about bringing its downfall. And now her Nomad Fleet had helped a pack of Twisted refugees flee from its embrace. Had helped them refit their entire fleet from a pure warfighting force to something that would likely prove the scourge of colonised worlds if its leadership ever fell apart. Admiral Supesu did not know how she felt about that. She also did not know how Admiral LVV, which was as close as she could come to pronouncing the Twisted Admiral¡¯s actual name, would feel about her plans. She decided that the best way to find out was to ask him. ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Get me a private, secure link to Admiral LVV please.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Stand by please¡­ Link established.¡± ¡°Admiral Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta, Daughter of the Void. This is an unexpected pleasure.¡± ¡°I hope you think it is one when we are finished talking Admiral. I do not know how much you know about the Nomad Fleet¡¯s future plans, but I think that where we humans are going¡­ you Twisted may not want to follow.¡±
¡°... you Sapients may not want to follow.¡± ¡°Going after the Crown World and the Emperor then? That I mind not at all. The bastard signed my execution order, do not forget. And both of our spies and information raiders have captured the rumors that the Valo¡¯Haltija was executed.¡± ¡°It is a bit more than that Kokko¡¯Liekki. I will not lie to you, the Empire killed humanity¡¯s crownworld system and first colony system. I plan on paying back that debt in full.¡± ¡°I see. I see indeed why you thought that I might not follow you.¡± ¡°I will call a staff meeting to start the smooth separation of our fleets then.¡± ¡°I have another option. Help the Remnant Fleet capture our Crown World system, and then we part peaceably.¡± ¡°...¡± ¡°You are uncertain?¡± ¡°I had not thought of that. Between my Nomad Fleet and your Remnant Fleet, we probably have the firepower and infantry power to pull that off. And once that is done, we would depart, leaving you in control of your crownworld?¡±
¡°... in control of Proxima Centauri b?¡± ¡°That would be the idea, Daughter of the Void. It would be a legitimate excuse to separate the two fleets at least, and a reason for the Remnant Fleet to stay behind when your Nomad Fleet left.¡± ¡°You do realize that after a fight like that, there probably will not be much in the way of system infrastructure left, right? A fight to the finish like that¡­ it leaves a lot of wreckage laying around.¡± ¡°That is something I am willing to put up with, both to claim my vengeance against the Emperor and to separate our Fleets on good terms.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll call a staff planning meeting to start the planning going then. Admiral Supesu, out. Chapter 25 Nineteenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Ninth Year After the Battle of the Sol System ¡°Emperor, Perimeter Scopes. Large, multiple transit FTL arrival signature detected. Estimate one Titan class ship, seven capital class ships, four large heavy cruisers or battlecruisers, four light Cruisers, and one six four escort ships of all types. No estimate on how many of the capital ships are carriers, or how many light attack craft they can launch.¡± ¡°Emperor, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Requesting permission to arm weapons systems and activate maneuvering systems.¡± ¡°System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki, Emperor. Permission is hereby given to arm Weapons systems and power up inertialess drives. You are instructed to keep within the orbital defense shell at this time. Let us see if our guests are willing to talk first.¡± ¡°Emperor, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Restricting movement to within the orbital defense perimeter. Holding fire: will only open fire if fired upon. Out.¡± Emperor Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona gave a twist of his head. Even though the artificial neutraility of the missive system, he could hear the frustration in the system defense commander¡¯s voice. He wanted more room to maneuver, to be able to fire first and perhaps to score a decisive blow. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had denied him that, because he had a feeling that it would not matter in the end. Over a hundred and fifty escorts, plus an unknown number of light attack craft? No missile salvo was getting through that at anything over very short range. And if this was the human wandering fleet with the missing ex-Fleet ships to back them, then it was a titan with four to seven carriers against the Empire¡¯s three carriers, twelve battlecruisers, twenty four light cruisers, The Crown World Shipyard, and ten thousand orbital defense platforms. Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona had every expectation that the Empire would lose the battle in space. The only question was whether this was a simple raid or an outright bid for conquest. ¡°Emperor, Perimeter Scopes. Six capital class ships have launched light attack craft, redesignating as carriers now. Last capital class ship is of unknown class. Out.¡±
Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta stood in front of his command throne, graspers clasped behind his back, eyes tracking across the stations in front of him. ¡°Scopes, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Do we have a count of defending ships yet?¡± ¡°Koko¡¯Liekki, Scopes. Null count of defending ships at this time. There are enough light attack craft signatures for three or more carriers, but they are hiding inside the shell of orbital defenses, so we cannot localize them at this time.¡± ¡°Koko¡¯Liekki, BIC. There are null defending warships outside of the orbital defensive shell. Enemy intent appears to be to allow us to break ourselves against that stone first. Out.¡± ¡°Cryer, Kokko¡¯Liekki. Missive link to the Daughter of the Void please.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Cryer. Missive link established.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Daughter of the Void. The Empire doesn¡¯t seem to want to come out to play.¡± ¡°Daughter of the Void, Kokko¡¯Liekki, My thoughts exactly Daughter of the Void. Perhaps it is time to unleash the Voidstrikes?¡±
¡°... Solar Wind Actual. Perhaps it is time to unleash the Voidstrikes?¡± ¡°Solar Wind Actual, Admiral LVV. Agreed. Initiating Fire Plan Squall. Out.¡± Admiral Supesu grinned, a sinister looking thing. ¡°Guns, Admiral. Activate Fire Plan Squall. Target is the orbital defenses of Proxima Centauri b.¡± ¡°Admiral, Guns. Fire Plan Squall is active. Salvoing all Voidstrike mark two mines now.¡±
The Voidstrike mobile mine, mark two was an improved version of its predecessor. Rather than being laid by a frigate or destroyer, it was designed to be launched out of a standard missile tube and coast into range of fixed targets before arming. This used the missile enclosure as a physical barrier to prevent particle corrosion to sensitive electronics. It also had the side effect of being rather difficult to detect, as the Voidstrike mobile mine emitted no active signals until it armed. Fire Plan Squall unleashed every voidstrike mobile mine in the Nomad Fleet¡¯s magazines. A total of ten thousand voidstrike mobile mines were soon sailing through space, all but invisible to Perimeter Scopes¡¯ sight.
¡°System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki, Perimeter Scopes. Missile launch transients! Null active missile drives, unable to see incoming missiles. Unknown numbers. Unknown time to arrival.¡± ¡°Perimeter Scopes, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Heard and understood. Emperor, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Foe ships have opened fire. Activating all missile defense batteries at this time as defensive measures. Requesting permission to begin offensive fire.¡± ¡°System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki, Emperor. Offensive fire is authorized at this time.¡± Emperor, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Offensive fire authorization is confirmed. Out.¡±
The Voidstrike mobile mines slid into attack range of the Proxima Centauri b orbital defense platforms. As one, they armed, locked onto targets, and launched. Ten thousand missiles erupted out of stealth, already in terminal homing mode and on final attack sprint drive settings. The Proxima Centauri b orbital defense platforms had been searching desperately for the incoming missiles, but without a sensor trace to find they were mostly looking in the wrong places. As a consequence of this, most of the missile defense batteries were pointing in the wrong directions too. They still managed to shoot down one thousand five hundred and ninety eight of the incoming missiles through a combination of luck and computer fast reflexes. The remaining four thousand four hundred and two missiles slammed into orbital defense platforms. Screens collapsed. Hulls split. Atmosphere and crew vented. Severed power conduits sparked in the darkness. Two thousand four hundred and five orbital defense platforms were either destroyed outright or crippled beyond combat effectiveness. The seven thousand five hundred and ninety five remaining orbital defense platforms locked their missile batteries onto the Solar Wind and added their fury to that of the System Defense Fleet.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
¡°Admiral Supesu, Tracking. Many hostile missile launches. Estimate one seven five thousand incoming. Estimated time to attack range three zero hours.¡± ¡°Strike Craft Command, Admiral Supesu. Missile defense Zeta. Form up with the escorts and begin massed defensive fire. And mind the firing lanes¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Strike Craft Command. Missile defense Zeta active.¡± ¡°Guns, Admiral Supesu. Begin defensive fire according to missile defense Zeta.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Guns. Missile defense Zeta active.¡±
One hundred and seventy five thousand missiles howled through space. In theory, they were all targeted on the biggest threat in the combined Nomad / Remnant Fleet. In practice, many of the missiles lost lock and had to reacquire a target due to either sensor interference, electronic countermeasures, or particle corrosion. Even spread evenly across all nine hundred and forty eight ships, strike craft, and light attack craft in the Nomad / Remnant Fleet, that left nearly one hundred and eighty five missiles per hull. But with thirty one hours in which to fire ¡®cluster shot¡¯ mass driver and meteor cannon defensive fire from mass drivers and meteor cannons, that amount of missiles was nearly trivial to deal with. Nine thousand three hundred and seventy were shot down in the first hour alone, with an average of nearly nine thousand two hundred missiles shot down in every hour thereafter. It took twenty hours, but not a single missile reached the combined Nomad / Remnant Fleet.
Emperor Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona finished his evening meal in time to see the last of the orbital defense platform missiles shot down. He had anticipated that this would happen as soon as he authorized the System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki to open fire. He was frankly surprised that it had taken so long to destroy the salvo, but unsurprised that the Polo¡¯Liekki had fired as soon as possible. According to all of the studies that were publicly available, one hundred and eighty five missiles per target should have been more than enough to get at least some ¡®leakers¡¯ through to inflict damage. But up against an intact, unshaken fleet with that much missile defense, time to prepare, and to fire massed defensive fire? There had not been any chance of inflicting damage. The older Fleet Polo¡¯Liekki and Kokko¡¯Liekki, made wise by the Fleet Archive, would have waited and used long ranged Meteor cannon fire as an opening move to break up the foe¡¯s formation. The System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki believed far too much in the technological superiority of the Empire over the client races, forgetting that the wandering humans and ex-Fleet renegades possessed technology that was equally good if not better.
Admiral Supesu nodded it total satisfaction. ¡°Guns, Admiral Supesu. Well done.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Guns. Thank you.¡± ¡°Flight Control, Well done. And relay the same to the strike craft please.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Flight Control. Thank you and Wilco.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Hail the Harmony Bringer, and instruct her to begin Fire Plan Grapeshot, three rounds only. Target is the Proxima Centauri b orbital defenses.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Harmony Bringer confirms Fire Plan Grapeshot. Firing three round salvo. Out.¡±
The Harmony Bringer brought herself into finicky alignment with Proxima Centauri b, orienting her three massive spinal KEP guns with the projected orbit of the planet¡¯s orbital defenses. That done, the first of the three guns fired its three hundred sixty seven and a half metric ton projectiles at one hundredth of the speed of light. Fortunately for Proxima Centauri b, it was not a single solid projectile. Unfortunately for the orbital defenses of that world, it was a canister shot projectile. Upon leaving the barrel of the KEP gun, it split into three hundred submunitions, each as heavy as the man battery projectiles of the Solar Wind. Projectiles smashed right through orbital defense platforms to hit a second, third, or fourth target. Hypervelocity shrapnel patterns shredded other platforms that managed to avoid taking direct hits. Three thousand nine hundred and thirty three defensive platforms remained combat effective to one degree or another, mostly on the far side of the planet from the Harmony Bringer. Of the System Defense Fleet, there was only the cratered ruins of ships. Between the Harmony Bringer¡¯s canister shot, the hyper velocity shrapnel clouds, and proximity to exploding defensive platforms, not a single ship remained combat effective.
¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Daughter of the Void. A hole has been made in the Crown World¡¯s orbital defenses.¡± ¡°Daughter of the Void, Kokko¡¯Liekki. The hole seems to be a bit congested with debris, but I think we can begin landing troops. Our screens will deal with that chaff better than your gravity shields will, so the Remnant Fleet will take point.¡± ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki, Daughter of the Void. Works for me. The Nomad Fleet will cover your advance.¡±
Emperor Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona watched as the Ex-Fleet carriers dropped into dangerously low orbits over the Crown World Palace. They would be dropping troops as soon as they suppressed the ground based defensive batteries. Even as he watched, the carrier¡¯s missile defense batteries spat streams of small mass meteor cannon projectiles into defensive emplacements, obliterating them and the sapients manning them with terminal generated mathematical precision. Troop shuttles rained from hangar bays. Each Empire carrier carried a full brigade of five thousand five hundred infantry, complete with attached support elements. The Palace was a large facility, but had only an oversized ceremonial cohort of one thousand five hundred Sapients on duty. They would fight well, but with orbital and close air support on the side of the attackers, the outcome was never in any doubt. Emperor Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona issued the stand down order before the first breaching charges were even placed. His protective detail stacked their weapons in the entryway and took their customary positions around the edges of the throne room in preparation for the surrender ceremony. The Ex-Fleet infantry escorted the Kokko¡¯Liekki and his second in command into the throne room. Emperor Nukkua¡¯Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona did not recognise the Kokko¡¯Liekki for a long moment, with the Kokko¡¯Liekki having two arms and graspers, one made of metal. Then memory and realization dawned. ¡°Kokko¡¯Liekki Laiska¡¯Vanha¡¯Verta. It seems that you have made some unusual friends in your time beyond the Empire¡¯s light.¡± ¡°Indeed I have Emperor. But this day is not about either of us. It is about the End of the Empire.¡± ¡°You plan on killing me and the entire house of Pohjoisessa¡¯Leijona then?¡± ¡°Not at all. The Empire is already crumbling, even you can see that, though your Bureaucrats will never admit it.¡± ¡°Indeed, But the Empire is not beyond stabilization. Its Light has not yet gone out. Do you intend to take the throne then?¡± ¡°Void no. I have fought long enough, and killed enough Sapients and humans, to know that the burden of ruling the Empire would sit ill on my back. We both know that it would be best for a peaceful transition, for the Empire to step away from its Client states and let them grow freely.¡± ¡°Then you are more of a fool than I thought if you think the client states will do anything besides tear themselves to pieces as soon as the guiding light of the Empire is snuffed out.¡± ¡°I think not Emperor. We have made profitable trade with the wandering humans, why could the client states not do the same?¡± ¡°You ate with Fanatical Purifiers, used their technology to heal yourself, and you would forge this unknown ally into the Empire? Just like that?¡± ¡°Hardly ¡®just like that¡¯ Emperor. It will take Crown World Orbits of Crown World Orbits, but the Empire can be unmade with little more bloodshed. I know not what final form the new Sapient government will take, but it need not be centered around a ¡®preacher in a pulpit and blind devotion.¡¯[8] Perhaps something more representative of the wishes of the Sapients who live within the borders of what will become a new star nation.¡±
Admiral Supesu watched Proxima Centauri b fade as the Solar Wind made for the edge of the system to make the transition to FTL speeds for the Sol System. They would certainly beat any surrender or stand down message to that system, which was just fine by Admiral Supesu. She had a fleet to smash, a shipyard to kill, and a planet to break. Chapter 26 Nineteenth Year of the Nomads Eight Hundred and Forty Ninth Year After the Battle of the Sol System ¡°Perimeter Scopes, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Unscheduled FTL revision from the Crown World¡­ Tulipalo¡¯Ja¡¯Armo!¡± ¡°System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki, Perimeter Scopes. Say again your last?¡± ¡°Perimeter Scopes, System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Apologies. Unscheduled FTL revision from the Crown World. Mass indications and FTL revision strength estimates indicate one times titan, five times capital ships, and one two zero plus escort ships. Null Empire ships in the formation. I say again, null Empire ships in the formation. Please advise.¡± ¡°System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki, Perimeter Scopes. I copy your last missive. Stand by, I am informing the system Overseer.¡±
System Overseer Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku read the priority missive again. His graspers shook with shock. The Fanatical Purifiers were back, and he was squarely in their crosshairs. He looked up at the messenger waiting on the other side of the desk. ¡°This is confirmed?¡± ¡°Yes System Overseer, it is. The Fanatical Purifiers have been in system for almost four tuhan now, and they have made no transmissions. Perimeter Scopes has a firm lock on their position.¡± ¡°What is the System Defence Polo¡¯Liekki¡¯s recommendation?¡± ¡°Grant the System defense fleet weapons and movement authorizations, and then fight smart. The Polo¡¯Liekki indicates that he favors a contingency plan that involves luring an enemy into effective range of the Toinen¡¯Maailma system¡¯s fixed defenses.¡± ¡°Has there been any FTL messages from the Crown World?¡± ¡°No System Overseer, there has not been any FTL message from the Crown World System since the attack alert.¡± ¡°Then we must assume that the Fanatical Purifiers have scoured the Crown World to ashes in the void. Priority missive to the System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. She is granted any and all weapons and movement permissions that she deems necessary to defend the Toinen¡¯Maailma system from the Fanatical Purifier attack.¡± ¡°By your will System Overseer. I will have the cryer transmit that priority missive at once.¡±
Admiral Supesu watched the CIC feed on her secondary display. She was waiting for the Twisted Empire Fleet to do something, but they simply refused to do more than bring their drives and shields online and hide behind planetary bodies. The remaining planetary bodies, she amended. Earth was simply gone. Only a lonely navigation beacon sat in its orbit punching out a simple signifier: ¡®S00 - P100¡¯. CIC had checked the code against the Twisted Empire database, and had come back with the code: Special World type zero / danger level zero - total Planetary Consumption process completed: a planet used to be here. Even though Earth had never been her home, Admiral Supesu felt a trickle of rage flow down her spine. The Twisted Empire had so casually eaten humanity¡¯s birth world like it was a simple asteroid. Admiral Supesu shook off her anger. She did not have time for irrational emotions. Not when missile defense Zeta had eaten so much of the Nomad Fleet¡¯s ammunition reserves. ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Send the ultimatum.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Ultimatum sent.¡±
System Overseer Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku read the missive for the third time. It was in Empire common, which surprised him greatly. It read:
¡°To the Twisted Empire scum squatting on the fourth world of our system: You have one planetary rotation from time we calculate that you will receive this message to evacuate the inhabited planet and the shipyard. We do not care where you go or how you get there, just that you are not on the planet or aboard the shipyard at the end of that time. At the end of the specified time or of your evacuation efforts, whichever comes last, we will open fire upon and destroy the shipyard any and all developed areas on the planet. This is your first, last, and only warning. The Daughter of the Void.
System Overseer Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku set the missive down on his desk and twisted his neck. The aide looked at him, ¡°what do we do System Overseer?¡± ¡°We can not begin evacuating before the system defense fleet even attempts to defend this system. We will wait, and say nothing for now.¡±
Admiral Supesu watched and waited. The Twisted did nothing except dig in deeper and try to draw her into range of the defensive weapons platforms around the shipyard.She had absolutely no intention of playing that game. She sat back in her command chair and prepared to wait out Mars¡¯ twenty four hour and thirty seven minute day.
System Overseer Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku watched his terminal like a hawk. He was waiting for some sort of FTL message from the Crown World. He was sickly sure that no such message would ever arrive. As the sun crept through the windows into his office, he knew that the Fanatical Purifer¡¯s time limit had run out.
¡°Admiral Supesu, CIC. The Mars time limit has expired.¡±This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°CIC, Admiral Supesu. Thank you. Communications, Admiral supesu. Raise the Harmony Bringer please.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Harmony Bringer Actual is on link three.¡± ¡°Harmony Bringer Actual, Admiral Supesu. Begin fire plan Armageddon. First projectile only, please. I want to give them time to start running if they decide to chicken out.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Harmony Bringer Actual. First round of fire plan Armageddon confirmed. Firing in T minus thirteen minutes.¡±
The Harmony Bringer was positioned above the plane of the system so that it could shoot ¡®down¡¯ at the planets below it. It lined up its number one C fractional KEP gun with Mars¡¯ northern polar ice cap. The recoil of the weapon shuddered down the spine of the ship as the three hundred sixty seven and a half metric ton projectile was flung down the gravitic rails. It exited the barrel of the C fractional KEP gun at the nose of the Harmony Bringer with over forty two point eight sextillion newtons of force. The atmosphere of Mars slowed it down some, but not by enough to matter. The impact vaporized the ice cap, creating a Marsquake of truly epic proportions, and nudging Mars out of its orbit.
System Overseer Neuvonantaja''Kielen¡¯Sanahaku was thrown from his throne when the projectile struck, even though he was two thirds of the way around the planet from where it had impacted. He no longer doubted that the Fanatical Purifiers were willing to bombard the planet into oblivion with sapients still on its surface. He frantically threw open the door to his office, looking for an aide. He found one in the hallway, squiming back upright after being thrown to the ground. ¡°Quickly, get me to the Cryer. We must get the evacuation proclamation issued.¡± ¡°This way System Overseer.¡±
Admiral Supesu studied the effects of the Cee Fractional Kinetic Energy Projectile on the Martian surface. The crater was truly impressive, probably larger than the Chicxulub crater had been back on Earth. It was only Mars¡¯ artificially generated atmosphere that let life survive the impact on its surface. ¡°Harmony Bringer Actual, Admiral Supesu. Good shot, good effect on target. Hold fire at this time.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Harmony Bringer Actual. Holding fire at this time. Out.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Record for general transmission in Twisted towards the Twisted fleet and shipyard.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Human-Twisted translator online. Ready to record for transmission. Live mic in three¡­ two¡­ one¡­ now.¡± ¡°Message Begins. This is the Daughter of the Void. To the commanding officers of the Twisted Empire ships and shipyard. You have seen what our fleet is capable of. I advise you to begin evacuation procedures at once if you do not wish to die a futile death. Message Ends.¡±
¡°System Overseer, Cryer. Missive from the System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki. Missive begins: I am unable to engage the foe with any chance of success. I have signaled my surrender, and have begun evacuating the shipyard.¡± ¡°Good. that is good. Cryer, make a reply missive. Ask the Polo¡¯Liekki to relay it to the Fanatical Purifiers for us. We sentients on the planet have also surrendered and will be evacuating as quickly as we can.¡± ¡°System Overseer, Cryer. System Defense Polo¡¯Liekki signals compliance. No response yet from the Fanatical Purifiers.¡± ¡°Understood Cryer. What is the status on the first transport?¡± ¡°System Overseer, Cryer. The first freighter is lifting off now with nearly a thousand sapients on board. It has no destination though, and the freight commander is mildly frantic in requesting one.¡± ¡°Send him to the Crown World. I do not know what it may find there, but it is a known short route that he should be familiar with.¡± ¡°System Overseer, Cryer. Understood. Directing all evacuation ships to head for the Crown World.¡±
Admiral Supesu sat back in her command chair and let out a massive sigh of relief. The Twisted Empire had opted to break and run in the end, saving her from having to condemn millions of Twisted to death. She doubted that the Empire had enough freight lift capacity to move more than a tithe of the Twisted out of the danger zone in time though. ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Get me one of the Hunter class frigates that we have tagged as a courier. I have a message for Admiral LVV back in the Proxima Centauri system.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. I have a courier ready to receive that message.¡± ¡°Message Begins. Admiral LVV, I have something of a situation here in the Sol system. The Empire has surrendered with a minimal loss of life, but it could probably use some help evacuating. You probably already have freighters and liners complaining of our arrival, but anything that you could turn lose would be of great help to the evacuation effort. Message Ends.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Communications. Courrier reports clean copy of message and is departing now.¡± ¡°Communications, Admiral Supesu. Link to Harmony Bringer Actual please.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Harmony Bringer Actual. Send traffic.¡± ¡°Harmony Bringer Actual, Admiral Supesu. Secure from fire plan Armageddon at this time. The Twisted are clearing the blast zone at this time.¡± ¡°Admiral Supesu, Harmony Bringer Actual. Securing from fire plan Armageddon at this time. Out.¡±
Even with the assistance if the Empire and the Remnant Fleet, it took two weeks to fully evacuate both Mars and the Sol system shipyard. At the end of that time, and with every last Twisted and human confirmed to be clear of the danger zone, Admiral Supesu let the Nomad Fleet Demolition and Ordinance Disposal Teams lose to play on the Sol system shipyard. Simply blowing it apart with the Harmony Bringer¡¯s main battery would either be gratuitous overkill with the all up C Fractional Kinetic Energy Projectiles, or spread dangerous debris all over the system in the case of the canister projectiles. Using the heavy mass drivers would take too long, and also result in debris floating everywhere. So the Demolition and Ordinance Disposal teams were set loose to play, wreaking surgically precise damage with gleeful abandon and copious amounts of explosives. The planet of Mars was subjected to the full wrath of fire plan Armageddon. The Harmony Bringer fired its main battery over and over again until Mars was a molten ball of rock with a pair of new moonlets from oblique angle impacts throwing large portions of the Martian surface into orbit. With its tasks completed, the Protector Branch of the human Nomad Fleet turned to leave the Sol system behind for good. It left behind a single beacon too endlessly broadcast a message:
This system was the birthplace of humanity. It was also very nearly humanity''s grave. We humans have taken to the stars, never to have a singular homeworld again. We are ever moving, ever fluid. We have no head to strike off, no center to pierce. If you do strike at us, then you had best be sure to kill all of us. If you should fail, then you had best hope that we never find you, for we will repay every wrong in kind.
So far, no other species has tried to attack humanity. Not because they fear humanity''s ships, weapons, or power, but because they all fear losing all that they hold dear. Humanity laughs at this fear, because they have moved passed it and learned a more powerful truth. It is a lesson that humanity learned long ago, and illustrated to the Twisted Empire in dramatic fashion: a race with nothing left to lose is at its most unpredictable and dangerous.