Streaker
That was the slang term among pilots for a ship so badly damaged that it was sent hurtling clear of battlespace on a vector that would take it into the cold and empty Beyond. Connor knew there would be no SAR vessels, no search and rescue to track her course and come to pick her up. The Slan, her telemetry told her, were breaking through everywhere. Huge vessels that most likely were Slan troop transports were entering the atmosphere and closing with the Silverwheel colony.
Her AI did suggest that at least some repairs were possible. She directed the damage control systems to focus on repairing the quantum tap array, with a view to bringing her main power systems back on-line. With enough power, anything was possible.
Without power, she was dead …
For Brea, who made it all possible
Table of Contents
Prologue
Agletsch Data Download 783478
Extant Galactic Civilizations
Classification: Red-Alfa
Civilization Classification Code: A548B7C
Polity Name: Sh’daar
OTHER NAMES: Sh’daar Empire, Sh’daar Network, N’gai Cloud Civilization
HOMEWORLD: Unknown, but assumed to be a number of planets located within the core of Omega Centauri T-0.876gy, a small, irregular galaxy located roughly ten thousand light years above the plane of the Milky Way’s spiral arms and 876 million years in the past. This dwarf galaxy was absorbed by the Milky Way approximately 700 million years ago, and exists now, in vastly reduced form, as the Omega Centauri globular star cluster, some sixteen thousand light years from Sol.
HISTORY: In the remote past, the N’gai Star Cloud was dominated by the ur-Sh’daar, a collective of advanced, star-faring civilizations. At a time estimated to be between 876 million and 900 million years in the past, the ur-Sh’daar went through the so-called Vinge Singularity, when accelerating technology effected a still poorly understood transformation that brought about the collapse of the ur-Sh’daar culture. While a majority of the sentients comprising the ur-Sh’daar seem to have vanished—translated, perhaps, to a parallel universe, an otherwise inaccessible higher dimension, or even a virtual reality of their own making—many beings were unable or unwilling to make the transition. Known as Refusers, these remnant groups and cultures rebuilt their civilization after the galactic catastrophe that became known as the Schjaa Hok—the “Transcending.” These Refusers ultimately became the Sh’daar.
GALACTIC CONTACT: The ur-Sh’daar created a number of artificial wormhole pathways between their galaxy and the Milky Way, variously known as gateways, as Sh’daar Nodes, or as TRGA cylinders—for the Texaghu Resch gravitational anomaly, the first such device discovered by Humankind. Since these pathways traversed spacetime, meaning
