To some of the crew of the four ships, the voyage had seemed to last years; the first few aboard had as much as a decade of subjective time spent on the mining and refining of the chunk of rock the 'seed' that would grow into Outreach 13 into the tiny flotilla. The reality was a very different story. Eighty-seven years of transit, crossing tens of thousands of lightyears to reach another spiral arm of the galaxy, going slower by the day on an ever-diminishing bow wave.

They'd long crossed the point where the detonation made hyperspace unsafe. They could have dropped out over a decade before; but the loss of momentum would have added centuries to their journey. The core region around Sol would be impassable to hyperspace for decades to come; a region that, if all went well, would include the entire Enemy empire. Even if hyperspace became passable again today, however, and the enemy knew where the 13 had ended up; it would take centuries to reach normally. All part of the plan.

On the bridge of the Tisiphone, Shiraki studied the starcharts. "Sir, we are go for emergence in thirty. If you wanted to change your mind and go for the heart of the cluster, this is the last chance to switch."

"No... you were right. An isolated system, outside the cluster, is the best place to start. We'll get a good look at the place before we dip our toes in."

On the screen, the heart of the 13's hyperfield was shown; seconds left to go. Ten. Nine.

A loud metallic pop sent vibrations through the deck.

"Sir! The Meg just blew its mooring supports and is detaching prematurely! Its."

Suddenly, the ship shuddered. The screeching and tearing of metal as support girders twisted and the Alecto and Tisiphone suffered a low-velocity collision, scraping against each other as the vivid lunacy of hyperspace was replaced by a relatively normal starfield. The scoutship and the destroyer remained vaguely attached to the 13; and a light-week away from their target system; a pair of beautiful stars in glowing white and blue-white, surrounded by a halo of debris.

The Meg; representing a quarter of the personel and about a sixth of the firepower of the flotilla; was nowhere to be seen.

***

"It was deliberate, and planned carefully... but not hostile. They'd planned it in advance... Jacobs and half of his team were forcibly underclocked so far that they never noticed anything went wrong... and their bodies had been strapped into place so that they wouldn't go far when we emerged." Security Officer Reynolds; someone who, frankly, Peterson hadn't expected to need for months or even years; was going over the irregularities on the board.

"They deliberately fed improper construction algorithms into the squids; the Megalodon's left missile battery reported as full, but instead of two hundred and fifty missiles, she'd had a fabricator installed and a copy of the 13's computer core. Give them enough time.. longer than it will take us, but not a terrible inconvenience... and they'll be able to start a colony almost as well as we can. If we'd been looking, it'd have been obvious; she weighed about seven tons more than she should; but nobody was looking. We all thought we were working together on this."

"Any patterns to the people who arranged this?"

"Predominantly Chinese and Russian nationals. The motivation... well. I'm not sure if the Survivor was racist or simply anti-china, but while chinese nationals made up over a quarter of the UN navy, they made up less than two percent of the databse we'd received. We only woke up two of them, which was even worse in their mind. They didn't destroy anyone; just hid their cores and underclocked them. I've got one of the crew who they secretly woke and attempted to enlist, and he's revealed quite a bit."

Commodore Peterson held his head in his hands. Even without a real brain he felt a headache coming on. Was that even possible? "I don't supposed the thought occured to them that each ship likely held people who knew and worked with each other as much as possible?"

"Somehow they got the master list. The one each ship only received part of the database on. Whatever criteria he used, he filtered out nine out of every ten chinese sailors. About half the russians. A quarter of the americans. A tenth of the europeans. And simply didn't save enough of their data to bring them back."

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"Well, fuck. I'm assuming they thought I was in on ths?"

"Essentially, yes. While their actions piss me off, I can understand where they're coming from."

"And their plans?"

"Take off. Keep riding the bow wave for a while, establish their own colony using what few chinese minds we had. Multiple copies, if necesary."

Peterson shook his head slowly. "Alright, Reynolds. If anybody is under suspicion as part of this, let them know. I, at least, am fine with having chinese crew. If they're worried about counts, put a priority on reviving some of their friends from the service if any of them are useful. Now... lets get back to work. We've got half the scout ships to do the same job that two wasn't enough for. Shiraki, whats the story about this place?"

"Well sir, we've completed a survey. Looks like one of these stars had a fully planetary system millions of years ago; which is now a debris ring forming an elliptical pattern around the pair. Honestly, it looks promising; we have everything we'd need here to build a fleet bigger than we had on earth, given time. It'll take thousands of years to process it all. Tens of thousands. Unless we find someplace more promising, I'd highly recommend building a shipyard here."

He glances at the central console. "Thompson. How far are you on the survey of the cluster?"

"Just a low-grade survey so far, but the results are... a bit troubling. Either some sort of enormous interstellar dust cloud is intersecting the cluster from the rimward side, something caused a solid chunk of the stars to lose much of their energy, or we're looking at something completely unknown. This system here..."

An image of the cluster; 187 stars all within a few dozen light-years in a rough sphere around a single black hole, making transit time between them an extremely short thing; and making this an excellent place to start building humanity up once more. Two images appeared; one showed what almost looked like a bite taken out of the rimward side of the cluster.

"This one star on the edge has approximately thirty percent less brightness than expected. The next several stars, about ten, fifteen. And then about a dozen more that are only a few percent lower. We really need a closer look at these systems; any sort of dust cloud intense enough to muffle a star that much might cause problems trying to live here."

"Hmm. Well, we needed to check the cluster out anyway. Captain Smith."

An image of Leanna's face popped up in the center. "Commodore?"

"Double check everything, make sure our recent departures didn't leave any surprises; and then head to one of the systems that has lost just a little light. Don't come out in-system, just observe for a few days, and come back. Ichika?"

Another face appeared; Captain Amari leaning back in the chair of the 13's bridge. "I'll have the fabricators put together the best telescope package we can fit in the Alecto's hold. Should be done by the time they finish their checkup."

"Perfect. Everyone else... lets scout this system out. Find the best spot to start... and we're going to go ahead and deploy those station pre-fabs. There's definitely enough raw materials here to make it worthwhile, and even if we find something better... a nice, isolated base of operations sounds perfect if we find something hostile. By the time Alecto gets back from scouting we might have the keel laid for a replacement Megaera."

"Isn't it bad luck to name a ship after one we just lost?"

"As Jacobs will insist, it was never the Megaera, it was the Megalodon. And yes. It'd be terrible luck to name the next ship that."

***

For Amari, this was almost business as usual; aside from the capability and quantity of resources she had for the job. She'd already picked out a chunk of rock big enough that it had gravity; granted, only about 0.08G; but enough to keep things together. As the Alecto prepared for her 85-lightyear journey to the proper region of the cluster; a trip that would take amost 70 days each way; the 13 was moving into position to start yet another building project.

Squids swarmed out across the open space, moving in to scan the rock; now apparently called the Anvil due to its odd shape, somewhat more narrow in the middle, bulging at the top and bottom. Soon, she'd be blasting a few nice new holes in it.

Thompson glanced up at the scans of the Anvil, continuing his survey of the nearby systems; counting planets, using the ship's extensive sensor suite to estimate orbital positions and chemical components. As the Alecto gave the characteristic flicker of vibrant light, and vanished into hyperspace, he noticed something odd.

A pattern in the background radiation. Something that shouldn't be there. Something almost like... radio signals. Millions and millions of radio signals, so many overlapping that it was difficult to make them out. He wasn't sure whether this was just a natural phenomenon of one of the nearby stars... or something vastly more important.

He glanced across the secondary bridge at the empty Comms station; only the actual bridge always kept its positions filled, and the secondary was in a different part of the ship, just in case the main bridge was taken out. He tapped his interface for a moment. "Officer Murphy, could you switch over to radio and check this signal for me? I'm not sure thanks to the sheer quantity of them overwhelming each other... but this looks like it might be radio broadcasts."