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.”

“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.