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.”

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.