2,661 years prior
Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (326 A.D.).
The Shelgol Swarm had devoured almost all the sentient lifeforms that existed on the outer fringes of the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, despite the heroic attempts of the Grand Coalition to stop them. Once a great civilization spanning over 10,000 worlds with a battle fleet that numbered more than 500,000 ships of the line, nothing they did could stop the Swarm. Now, the last vestiges of their great empire were reduced to a pathetic remnant of less than one thousand refugee ships. They were heading to the Throne World, the last remaining stronghold of a once vibrant, peaceful civilization that reigned supreme.
There, the few remaining theoretical physicists that had not been devoured by the swarm were feverishly trying to complete their last hope, an artificial wormhole that would allow them to escape to the nearby spiral galaxy 25,000 light years away.
The refugee ships arrived a month later to find that the wormhole was open, and the scientists were sending probes through for testing. The refugees were ordered to assume a holding pattern two million kilometers from the opening and maintain stationkeeping. As they started towards their assigned positions, the Shelgol Swarm started arriving on the outskirts of the system, creating mass panic. The last of the remaining Coalition warships fired their thrusters and headed towards the swarm to fight their final battle and buy time for the refugees to escape.
A contingent of some two hundred Khotak and Qhin ships broke away from the refugee fleet and made a mad dash towards the wormhole, ignoring the desperate pleas of the scientists to stop and cut off their engines. There was a certain speed that needed to be maintained, or the reactor output from the engines would interact with the exotic particles at the threshold and cause a catastrophic rupture in spacetime.
The Khotak and Qhin ships shut down their communication systems and increased their reactors to 115% in a mad attempt to escape the Shegol. Sixty-five ships made it through the threshold before it collapsed, creating a gravitational singularity that trapped everything in the inner solar system within the event horizon that was formed. Only a few thousand of the almost one million Shelgol vessels that were still transiting through the heliopause were able to escape the disaster in time. They slowly turned around and resumed their hunt for more spoils on the outer fringes, unconcerned with the losses they had just suffered. These things did not matter to them—only sustenance.
The sixty-five ships that made it through the opening were discharged out of the exit point into the Orion-Cygnus arm of the nearby galaxy. The violent ejection was far beyond the stresses their hulls were rated for, and most of them imploded immediately upon exit. Only seven Khotak and five Qhin ships remained, all warships.
After spending weeks carrying out what repairs they could and compiling astrometric charts of local space, they headed to the nearest viable habitable world and founded their new homeworld of Larit. Using a combination of cloning technology and birthing creches, they rapidly expanded their population from a few thousand to tens of millions within a generation to repopulate their new world.
Much of their technology was lost, either damaged beyond repair from their transit or beyond their means to maintain due to the lack of the necessary scientific and industrial base. As they started slowly expanding outward from Larit, they found that, despite the technological regression they experienced, what they had left was more than enough to reign supreme over the species they encountered in their sector.
Taking advantage of the lack of a peer adversary, they quickly conquered a dozen species and utilized the expanded industrial base, resources, and manpower of their newly acquired dominions to accelerate the development of Larit into an industrial powerhouse befitting the capital of their new empire, The Interstellar Hegemony.
Chapter 8
Yiel'oh Homeworld, Year 38 A.C.-Earth Year 2376 A.D.
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The pup woke up in a panic, having had a nightmare about dark creatures trying to catch her.
“Bad dream, little one?” Father asked from the corner of her stall, scaring her even more. He was fiddling around with her viewer, which still had one of the data chips he gave her plugged into the port.
“How many of these did you watch?” He asked without looking at her as he pulled out the data chip from the port it was in.
"Father, I didn’t watc-“
"Quiet!" Her father yelled. The pup cowered, staring at the grass on the floor of the stall. “What do we say about speaking falsehoods, little one?” He asked her, speaking softly. The pup, tears streaming down her face, answered quietly, “For every lie told, a truth dies.”
“Yes, and what else?” He quietly asked her. The pup, her lips quivering, tried hard to remember the next part. “We are born... into a world full of lies and endangered truths. To save what truth remains, I must not lie.” “Very good, little one. Do you know why I am mad at you?” He asked the pup. Still looking at the floor, she nodded.
“Then all is forgiven and forgotten.” He got up and handed her the viewer. “How many did you watch?” he asked her. “I watched the first three.” She looked up from the floor and looked him in the eyes. “Greatfather doesn’t like humans.”
“Assumptions, little one, based on limited data. Go wash up and eat, then join me in my study.” Father walked out of her stall. The pup just sat there in shock; she was not allowed to go into her father’s study. She trotted out of her stall, her prior tears all but forgotten. A little while later, wearing her best dress and slippers, she tentatively knocked on the study door.
“Come in and close the door behind you.” Her father answered from within.
The pup turned the handle and stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind her. She stood there in the dim light, taking in all the strange smells and looking wide-eyed at all the books filling every wall, from the floor to the ceiling. “Come over by the fire, little one.” Father called out from where he was resting on a half couch. The pup trotted over carefully, scrupulously avoiding knocking anything over.
Her father smiled when he saw what she was wearing. “Very fancy, little one!” The pup smiled and curtsied as her mother taught her to. “Make yourself comfortable.” He pointed to the other lounging couch across from the one he was already reclining on. The pup carefully laid in it, making certain not to wrinkle her best dress. “So, you think your greatfather doesn’t like humans, do you?” He asked her, a small smile forming on his face.
She nodded. “He called them mentally disabled.” Father brayed and pulled out a holo album that was under the half couch. “That he did, little one. Do you know where your name comes from?” The pup shook her head. “You are named after a human, your greatfather's best herd friend.” The pup didn’t understand what her father was saying, but she nodded as if she did.
Father handed her the Holo album, and on the cover was Yiel’oh script and another strange style of writing that she had never seen before. “Open it.” Her father told her. She opened the cover, and a hologram of her greatfather popped up. Then another one, this time with a human standing next to him with his arms around her greatfather's shoulders.
More holograms came into view as the last one disappeared, all of them with greatfather and humans—many different humans. He was smiling with all of them, happy. As more holograms popped up, she realized that most of them were of a particular human. “Who is he, Father?” the pup asked, still watching the different holograms change.
“That is Jak-sun, the human you are named after.” The pup started crying, though she didn’t know why. Her father gently closed the Holo album and took it from her. “Go look at the books, little one.” The pup got off the half couch and trotted over to one of the walls of books. As she tried to read the titles, she realized that they were all in strange writing. She turned around and looked at her father in confusion.
“This library, and a few others like it scattered throughout Yiel’oh space, are all that is left of the stories of the human herd, little one.” Father said quietly. “They exist only because we Yielo'oh have taken it upon ourselves to remember them, to make sure that they are never forgotten.” The pup started crying again, overcome with grief she didn’t understand.
Father continued, as if speaking to himself. “After the Great Betrayal, we scoured human space, with thousands of our ships searching for survivors. We found nothing but death and smashed cities; entire planets were glassed. All their habitats were smashed. The worst was when we tried to go to their home world. Where there was once a beautiful blue jewel in space teeming with life, there was nothing there, just a rapidly spinning ball of molten rock. Even after all the humans had died, they still had to make a point.”
“They used mass drivers and bombarded the planet with thousands of asteroids from the belt, ensuring that life would never arise on their homeworld ever again. So, we tried to salvage whatever we could to ensure that there would be some spark of humanity that would never be extinguished from this galaxy.”
“Your greatfather came back a broken Yiel’oh, and he died of broken hearts.” The pup was staring at the floor, her own hearts breaking. “Was it the Swarm, Father?” the pup asked quietly.
“No. It was the Hegemony.”