Starship Engineer

We were all stunned when Bel'Fer delivered the news. The expedition to the galaxy's center had been completely annihilated. There was no time to grieve for everyone who had been lost. An entire Sylvan city ship had not withstood for long; how would we fare? The only hope was the single ship that had been destroyed by the swarm that erupted from the World Ship.

The Sylvan sending ability allowed the sender to archive what they saw for future generations to learn from the receivers. Bel'Fer and all others with the ability got this archive sent to them. Bel'Fer took time to recreate the short fight in VR for us meticulously. She promised to work on the scientific data the beacon was transmitting, but the battle seemed more relevant at the moment.

The rest of the extrapolated data was not much better. The Malevolent ship was much faster in subspace than we hypothesized. It was much stronger in combat than we theorized, although we had no baseline of its power before this. We knew we needed to commit to a plan of action. Only two options seemed available to us. We could follow the quadruped's example and flee, abandoning all technology and hope we remained undiscovered. Or we could try to fight them. There was also no guarantee there was only one World Ship in our galaxy.

The Squirrel scientists seemed to think there would need to be on the order of sixty World Ships to purge our galaxy over a span of roughly a thousand years. Their model was predicated on whether each World Ship could deploy the two thousand drones, the number it used to attack the Sylvan city ship. Also, all those drones would need to be capable of subspace to cover the region.

We focused on the single ship they had destroyed by using a mass of Sprite fighters. Unfortunately, the archive did not include the tactical reports, just the image from the holo tank located on the city ship's bridge that the First Citizen had been viewing. Possibly, their success was due to the high-density kinetic micro missiles the Sprite's carried. The War Chariots favored energy weapons, and they had little effect on the swarm ships.

I requested Admiral LaRoche from the Human Federation to come to Bradbury in person to discuss options. The Godfather Organization was still picking up the pieces of humanity's core worlds and couldn't offer much, but I sent a request for them to participate. Admiral Ghullor from the Alien Alliance was already visiting. The Alien Alliance had started to fray now that the threat of the quadrupeds was eliminated, and the Malevolent threat seemed too far away to hold them together. Admiral Ghullor was trying to convince the Arcadian Collective to join it to stabilize its politics. That would never happen, but Suruchi was diplomatic and listened to their request.

Bel'Fer, with the Sylvan First Citizen communication ability, turned all her attention to interpreting the beacon's messages. Fortunately, the expedition team had gotten the key and did most of the message. It was two weeks later when Admiral LaRoche arrived with his entourage. Samantha, now a civilian advisor, was with him. We replayed Bel'Fer's model of the battle for them and then started discussions on a course of action.

Admiral Ghullor wanted to try negotiations but also start the process of sending micro-colonies into hiding. Admiral LaRoche pressed to accelerate technology disbursement from the Arcadian Collective and use the Federation's manufacturing to build the largest war fleet the galaxy had ever seen. Uncharacteristically, I snapped at him. That was exactly what attracted the Malevolents and their exterminator ships. My nerves were frayed, and the stress of the coming disaster was not helping me think clearly. I was also missing my usual counsel and felt abandoned and isolated.

After my outburst, my PerCom beeped with a message, and I looked at it. Nova and Venus had been monitoring the meeting and had an idea. Lure the Malevolent ship somewhere it could be destroyed. It didn't really matter where we fought it; I didn't think we could win. I presented the idea to the group anyway, and Admiral LaRoche sunk his teeth into the idea of creating a trap for the planet-sized ship.

Admiral LaRoche thought we needed even bigger ships than the Sylvan city ships. I was certain it wouldn't matter against the World Ship. Also, a Sylvan city ship took decades to build, and we would not have had time to build even one if the Mavelovents were headed to Bradbury next.

The discussion quickly became unfruitful, and I dismissed both Admirals for a recess. I thought the recreation of the battle would help get all three powers to align themselves on a single path. After the Admirals left, my daughters Nova and Venus entered.

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Nova told me Admiral Ghullor was going to immediately send diplomats out to try and treat with the Malevolents. I laughed, as they most likely would not be able to find it or catch up to it if they did. Even then, I doubted the Malevolents would be in a talkative mood.

Venus said Admiral LaRoche planned to leverage the Malevolent's presence to increase his battleship production. Again, he did not understand the size and scope of weapons needed to harm such a ship. We needed to throw the planet ship into the sun. Or throw a sun at it. I was looking directly at Nova. She was reading my mind and nodded at my idea...when did she become a young woman? Where was the time going? Did she implant the idea in my mind? It was a good idea.

We would set a trap like the twins wanted. The trap would be to get the Malevolent ship in a predetermined system. Get it close to the star and send a massive armageddon missile into the star to trigger a supernova. The plan had a lot of variables, but even I thought a premature supernova could destroy the planet-sized ship. Attracting it and Getting it to stay put was going to take a lot of effort.

I ran the calculations and winced; any stars within one hundred light years would be irradiated and made uninhabitable. It was a sacrifice I would gladly give if it took out the Malevolent ship. Attracting the Malevolent ship with high-band subspace disruptions shouldn't take too long. That was what drew the Malevolents, according to the beacon. After a filtered search, I found the perfect star. It had a great mass and was still fairly young, with tons of fissionable material.

It was just four hundred lightyears from the Bradbury system. I ran the radiation predictions and frowned. Nineteen inhabited systems would be affected, probably causing a mass extinction events. Still, it was the best choice in a thousand-light-year radius, and we would have time to evacuate and preserve as much of the unique life as possible. I sent the list of the systems to Amos to start preservation efforts.

I renamed the chosen system Last Judgment in our star charts. We needed to get as many ships as possible there and start making higher band tracks in subspace around the system to lure the Malevolent ship or ships. I sent six Fateweavers in the initial wave with forty support ships. There was no need to protect the Bradbury system because it would be over if the Malevolent ship arrived here.

I sent the R&D specifications for an Armageddon missile the size of a Sylvan ship to start to work on. The missile was to be called the Stellar Plan. My PerCom beeped, the representative from the Godfather Organization had finally arrived. I called back Admiral LaRoche and Admiral Ghullor to convince them my plan was the only possible way to win. We needed to make Last Judgement the most appealing target for the Malevolents.

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Rae'Ver's consciousness hung in subspace. Learning how to move had taken him some time. Once he could, he oriented himself and moved toward the largest mass nearby—a star. He needed to find an anchor in physical space. He needed a mind and a vessel for him to function. It would take years of travel, but time meant nothing to him now. His speed was painfully slow.

Shadows of starships passing through subspace irritated him but also helped him chart a path. To him, subspace was an endless expanse of shifting distant masses that represented objects in physical space. He just needed to reach the right one.

He finally reached a planet orbiting the sun he had been headed for. Angrily, it appeared barren. The shadow gravity of the planet in subspace started to pull on him. He cursed as he tried to escape. If he was trapped on a planet without life, it could be thousands or millions of years before he found a host.

Alas, he was not fortunate, and gravity caught him and pulled him to the surface. He fought frantically, thinking it would pull him into the planet's core, where he would be trapped for eternity. However, when he reached the surface, he could move freely. He could even swim through the planet's crust if he desired.

He wandered the subspace shadow of the planet for months. By some miracle, he came across the only mining operation on the planet. A few of the miners even had subspace shadows, giving him an easy target. He didn't rush to choose his victim and studied them working before selecting one who appeared to be in charge. He latched onto the shadow and merged with it, forcing his control on it. He was now able to shift his consciousness to physical space freely.

He was a shift foreman named Sherona Gaskil. A middle-aged human female who liked to drink. They did six-month rotations, and Rae'Ver had to wait three more months for a shuttle to come and pick them up with the efforts of the mining. They were mining deep-impact meteorites for unique heavy metals. The cargo hold was full, and the mining crew was excited to be back to civilization. So was Rae'Ver. When the shuttle docked with the transport, he didn't waste much time before turning the captain into his puppet. The mining transport, Atlas' Journey, set in a course for the Bradbury system.

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