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.

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.