The mothership's Admiralty convened in one of the briefing rooms, seated round a table to discuss the next move. Each admiral represented each of the major kiith involved in the mothership project – Nabaal, Sjet, Paktu, Soban, Manaan, LiirHra, and Sagald. They were trained to be responsible for the huge logistical structure of the mothership, and yet in this time of crisis, it took all seven of them to tackle the possibilities of their people's future. A holographic projector on the table showed details of the attack on Kharak, gleaned from the interrogations of the captured frigate's crew and various logs from the frigate's computer core. It detailed a massive force that arrived and systematically destroyed the missile defence system, the Scaffold, and then immolated the surface of Kharak with some kind of large missile weapon. Admiral Paktu had watched the visual recordings and had felt sick to her stomach. These were a completely different race from the raider ships they had previously encountered. They were, as the interrogators had learned, part of a far-spanning empire that dominated huge tracts of the galaxy. And their names?
The Taidaan.
"So," Admiral Nolek Manaan, a handsome man in his late forties, asked in his bass timbre. "The Taidaani fleet has destroyed all vestiges of our culture, from both the planet and orbit. The Scaffold is gone, meaning that the mothership will never be entirely complete. Where do we go from here? Half a million Kharakid depend on us now for survival. Where can we take them? What if the mothership runs out of resources?"
Admiral Ferreli Sagald shook his head. "You ask too many questions, Nolek. We need to be calm and controlled about this. I grieve as much as the rest of us for the lives lost on Kharak – my family was down there when it was burned – but I can't imagine how worrying will accomplish anything." He sighed. "Logic dictates that if there are hostile alien races, there is a high probability of friendly races existing as well. That is why we constructed the Ambassador craft. As for the question of resources, the resource collectors can harvest some of the asteroids in the outer regions of our system."
"But where will we go?" the Manaani shot back. "The Taidaan will no doubt plague the path to Hiigara, and the mothership is not equipped for military conflict against anything larger than a few fighters. We must have vengeance for what was brought upon us, but we cannot allow the cost for our revenge to exceed the cost of our lives."
"Why did the Taidaan attack us in the first place?" Sagald mused.
The answer came from Admiral Kabaal Soban, a man with close-cropped hair and eyes black as obsidian stone. He frowned before speaking in his soft but vaguely-menacing voice. "The Taidaani empire have subjugated other races before, and apparently, we fall within their jurisdiction," he said. That in itself was hard to believe, given that the Kharak system was only barely within the outermost regions of the galaxy, but the admirals ignored that fact for the time being. "The captain was very proud of his people's ability to maintain control over those in their power. They simply restrict technological development among the constituent species of their empire.
"For four thousand years," the Sobani continued, "an edict has been in place forbidding anyone from developing hyperspace technology. There are exceptions, of course, but we are not among the privileged. A deep-space probe or a passing vessel must have detected one of our earlier tests of the prototype hyperdrive module, because the Taidaani fleet responded within weeks. I do not think it is a coincidence that the aliens in the outer system destroyed our support vessel just as our world was being immolated. These aliens are most likely a lesser race that the Taidaan have assimilated into their military. We determined that a large carrier-class vessel launched a missile that was responsible for our planet's death." He blinked, and his eyes were as black holes, drawing the attention of the other six admirals into them. "The punishment for violating this edict is the destruction of their world. We have paid the price for our supposed insolence."
Admiral Sjet gasped, one hand covering her mouth. "The Khar-Selim warned us to abort our hyperdrive test…" she whispered.
"And what of the Taidaani captain?" Admiral Manaan asked.
Kabaal Soban smiled enigmatically. "The subject did not survive interrogation."
From the opposite side of the table, Kirana Paktu repressed a wave of disgust.
"Our comrades in Fleet Intelligence have tracked the hyperspace signatures of the remaining Taidaani fleet to another sector, further inside the local spiral arm," the Sobani admiral said. "They seem to have paused to gather resources. It would only be a slight deviation for us to construct a strike fleet and exact vengeance. Moreover, this would send a concrete message to the Taidaan Empire – that Kharak may be gone, but the Exiles live on, and that we will not stop in our quest to give up the dream of Hiigara."
The other admirals nodded in agreement at this idea.
Kirana Paktu pushed one of the toggles on her control panel, and the table's projector switched to a life-size image of Karan Sjet from the neck up. Entangled in cables and wires, she appeared to be the result of a freakish meld between a Kharakid and a serpentine machine, but she was peaceful now. Earlier, when she had first laid her mechanical eyes upon the destruction of Kharak, her violent upsurge of emotions had caused hundreds of systems to erratically flicker on and off. "Fleet Command here. How can I help?" she said.
"We need a brief status report on the current status of the mothership," Paktu said.
"As requested. One moment…"
Karan's eyes darted imperceptibly backwards and forwards as she gathered information from the length of the ship, then inclined her head slightly.
"The mothership is currently incomplete, as you know, but operational. All major systems, such as resource collecting, construction, life support, and defensive shielding are on-line and fully functional. However, we do not possess the heavy weapons we require to mount a direct assault, which transfers that responsibility to vessels we construct on our journey. Additionally, the mothership's sublight drives are unable to generate any form of propulsive energy. The Scaffold was in the process of constructing the initiator coils and attenuator components, which would be necessary for the production of thrust. Currently, the hyperdrive is our only means of travel, and each use of it will undoubtedly agitate the Taidaan."
"What do you recommend as our course of action?"
"To stay here is to die," she said simply. "We are all that's left of our world, our culture, our people. There's nothing left for us to return to or to bind us here. Our mission was to follow the path etched into the Guidestone, and this is what we must do. Finding our ancient world of Hiigara is our only hope left to us in this time of trouble."
The hologram faded before anyone else could interject.
"Well," Admiral LiirHra said, her token pessimism filtering through in her tone. "It appears that our ship has had its say. I think it's safe to boil down our options into two courses of action: we can head straight for Hiigara, with a slight detour to destroy the Taidaani fleet; or we can head out into the galaxy and take our chances before assuming a more or less indirect path towards Hiigara. Any takers on the second option?"
No-one volunteered.
"No, I didn't think so. Fleet Command, this is Admiral LiirHra. Note in the logs that the Admiralty has voted unanimously to continue on a path towards Hiigara. Part of this journey will be the destruction of the Taidaani fleet in an act of retribution for the immolation of Kharak. End log entry."
"Log entry noted and recorded."
* * *
