Chapter two

We have found many ancient structures, but what baffles archaeologists and historians is that we have yet to find a single space-faring vessel, or even a single depiction of one. Nor have we found any production facilities for them, or anything related to them. Why?

Connecting to the vast arrays of sensors, he saw the space around the ark.

It was filled with spaceships of different types, huddled into separate groups. He saw 5 separate groups.

One with giant, round ships bristling with turrets; one with jagged, menacing looking wedge shaped ships; one with large, skeletal ships covered in smaller craft; one with long, tubular ships and large, domed ships and lastly a big group of ships of all shapes and sizes. It looked like there were four main organisations and then one group of everyone else. It was these large concentrations of energy that had woken him.

As he looked he was not idle; he hacked into every ship there and completely took them over, delegating a few of his many SAIs to replace the rudimentary AIs he removed.

He then spent a bit of time looking through the history and assorted information of all the races in this galaxy. It was pretty much a carbon copy of what his race had predicted would happen if they weren’t around to influence new races.

The four main races had come first, and after a few wars formed the Galactic Union, mostly to stop the constant squabbling over territory. The Union was also a convenient way to suppress the various younger races, at least those that weren’t enslaved. But, eventually the younger races had enough of being suppressed and banded together into the Galactic Republic, while the older races formed the Galactic Federation as a result. They fought a couple of wars, then decided it wasn’t worth it to fight, so they just tried to ignore each other. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary.

Their technology wasn’t too advanced, with the oldest races having gained space flight in the same time period approximately 5 thousand years ago. What was interesting was their use of “conduits” and “hubs”. He immediately recognised these as the tracks and stations his race had built long ago. It seemed that these structures had engaged their emergency protocols to jump into the Between and had survived the disaster.

Their ftl technology was still quite primitive, and they wouldn’t have met for a long time if they hadn’t found the conduits and hubs. All of their technology was at a similar level, but they had branched off into different directions in an attempt to gain advantages.

The Borond Herd had gone for a mainly defensive mentality, being the owners of the giant, round ships. The Grent Empire had gone for a much more aggressive, predatory mentality, building the wedge shaped craft. The Sythren Conclave, being avians, built many small, agile craft and large carriers. The Spiril Enclave specialised, building long, tubular ships for offense and large, domed ships for defence.

The Galactic Republic had a huge variety of different ships from all the races in it, but they all mostly focused on being all-rounders, trying to be okay at everything.

Their weapons too were fairly standard, railguns and missiles for the most part, with lasers for point defence. Nothing exotic yet, though they were being researched.

As he finished looking through the various historical and military files on the ships, his SAIs notified him of orders being received by the ships.

Their governments had ordered them to more closely investigate the planet due to their radars not being able to penetrate the planet. They were ordered to land troops there and were given permission to “deny the anomaly to the enemy if required.” He snorted. As if mere railguns could even scratch the ark.

He told his SAIs to act like their primitive AIs so as to not arouse suspicion, and then sat back to watch as dense clouds of drop ships detached from the fleets and flew down.

It would be an interesting distraction to observe these being, and watch them react to his defences.