Chain 161: Homeworld

Chain 161: Homeworld

Location: Kharak System
Age: Old
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [+1000] The Greatest War
Scenarios: The Long Journey Home, Horrors In The Dark, Stories Of The End Times

[50/2000]   Adaptation
[350/2000]  Unbound
[450/2000]  Ace
[650/2000]  Coordination
[750/2000]  Driven Focus
[950/2000]  Leadership
[1150/2000] Capital Ship: Carrier
[Scenario]  Kadeshi Multi-Beam Frigate
[Scenario]  Bentusi Ion Acolyte
[Scenario]  Progenitor Dreadnought
[1350/2000] Advanced Phase Telemetry
[1550/2000] Inertialess Drive
[1750/2000] Naggarock Conversion Beam
[1950/2000] Great Core
[2000/2000] The Guidestone

History has forgotten the precise details of the expedition that was sent to the deep desert that discovered the ancient wreckage of the Khar-Selim. All they can really say is that a hundred years ago, the Guidestone and the Great Core were recovered. It took nearly four decades to create the Scaffold itself, and almost sixty years more to build the Mothership within it. But in truth, there were other needs that underlied the project - while most of the designs in the databanks were theoretical, a great deal of it was tested in the first Carrier that was created, the Imperator. Its construction was handled by a part of the Scaffold that wasn't yet working on the Mothership, and the intention was to not only be a test-bed to get the bugs out of the processes that would be built into the Mothership, but also to have a separate platform for rapid construction and prototyping.

And for a time, it was good. The Imperator theoretically had a working hyperspace drive to be used in case of emergency, but never utilized it - most of what it did, aside from helping finalize the functional design of the fighters and utility vessels of the fleet, was harvesting resources. A fusion engine, when running at full burn over a period of time, can get a ship to a distant location at quite an impressive speed - even if that distant location is only the asteroid belt to get the needed materials for the Mothership, shuttling resources back to the Scaffold. But it tested other technologies too - while most of them were not notable, one was: the same cybernetics that Karan S'jet would use to control the Mothership. While this was kept very quiet, there was a particularly aged scientist who had the prestige to convince her to permit him to undergo the procedure... and ONLY him.

But all good things come to an end, and the Mothership was launched with the hopes and prayers of everyone on the planet. It underwent its hyperdrive test... and a matter of minutes later, a Taiidan battle group jumped in. The fleet at Kharak was surely more impressive than it might have been at other times... but in the end there's only so much that a fleet of scouts, resource collectors, and salvage corvettes can do. Even if what they did included latching onto the destroyers and shoving them into each other at full speed. And the carrier... it was still in the asteroid belt, though it had been returning back toward Kharak itself at full burn. In fact, it arrived at the same time that the Mothership did, after the decision was made to engage hyperspace - only to find a quintet of Taiidan assault frigates waiting, having been left behind to mop everything up.

The carrier interposed itself while launching its salvage corvettes, and the Mothership launched its fighters to harass them. But they were inevitably towed to the Mothership itself, and the crews were ... interrogated. Their ships were stripped and repurposed, the technology behind them used to upgrade the Mothership's production capabilities as well as the carrier's, and together they set off for Hiigara.

On the way they encountered many strange things. An offshoot of the Exiles - and it took quite a bit of negotiation and fast talking to be allowed to leave the nebula, though a forewarning not to harvest resources was helpful. A ghost ship, and when it was neutralized, the derelicts around it were taken by salvage corvettes and repurposed. The Bentusi, traders, who were nearly destroyed by the Taiidan for having the gall to speak to the spaceborne exiles and who told them more of their past in gratitude for being saved. And as things approached, the fights got worse and worse, the defending fleets more and more massive, and ekeing out a victory grew more difficult no matter what upgrades and technologies we had. At the final battle, it wasn't just Karan S'jet that was taken out of commission, but myself as well. But in the end... things turned out for the best, even if it was only barely a victory. We were roused just as the Emperor's flagship was annihilated and the Galactic Council appeared.

I'd like to say that I got to enjoy the peace and quiet, but really, my own goals after the settlement was established on Hiigara was to take a carrier fleet back to Kharak to see what was left. No one else thought anything would be, but... I reminded them of the paranoia that had creeped up in the times approaching the Mothership's launch. The massive vaults built under every city. And so we returned to the charred world, Mothership and all... and returned with hundreds of millions who had fled to the vaults as soon as the warnings went off. It was quite shocking, but over ninety percent of the civilian population survived. Not only were the vaults were designed to withstand a great deal, but the pylons that had drained heat from Kharak to produce power were able to mitigate the worst of the atmosphere deprivation weapons' damage. Sure, the air outside the vaults wasn't breathable, but it never reached a peak temperature that was a danger to the vaults' integrity.

After this, I spent much of my time 'asleep' in cryo - I was a very old man, after all - until I was thawed in response to Kiith Somtaaw finding an unknown device that went... sideways on them. I returned to my carrier and joined them, only to find that another carrier had done so previously - and it had been subverted by the entity known as the Beast. And so I deployed in support - they shared their designs with me, and I was able to not only produce them but also utilize the technology they used for unmanned vessels to produce unmanned versions of older ships such as fighters and bombers, with an expectation that I would be able to adapt it later. This proved very handy, as well - subverting unmanned vessels was impossible, and I ensured that the carrier was kept well away from any Beast vessels larger than a frigate. And while the infection spread rapidly, being able to utilize wings of multi-beam frigates helped burn out the infections in larger Beast vessels, while Somtaaw acolytes shredded Beast-infected fighters. And for those things that were a bigger threat... well, Kiith Somtaaw were inventive, and their dreadnought was very impressive.

When it came to the Naggarock and the staggering Taiidani fleet defending it... well, that was a fight as formidible as any against the Taiidan, as it seemed they'd invested everything into being able to take advantage of this extragalactic visitor. The Somtaaw were nothing if not clever, though, and they pounded on the Taiidan with everything they had. And when things kept getting more bleak... the Bentusi showed up, sharing a fighter design that proved very effective against the Beast. Between the Ion Acolyte and the multi-beam frigates, there was little that could stand against them.

Ah, were it only so against the Vaygr. That whole campaign was a damned nightmare. I tagged along with that as well - though in the end, Karan S'jet had me move from the carrier I'd been using for so long to the Progenitor dreadnought. Sure, we needed the Bentusi to upgrade it so its weapon was capable of firing repeatedly, but it still was capable of independent hyperspace movement - and though its beam cannon was far less effective than Sajuuk's, once S'jet herself had attained it, it was still able to cut through the missiles being launched toward Hiigara and help keep anyone on the planet from being killed.

And as far as the anomalous technologies I had... other than unmanned fighters, they were shelved.

They'll be integrated into my own fleet later, once I've left this world.