of Sh’daar activity within our own epoch around twelve thousand years ago, with the extermination of a race called the Chelk, somewhere in the vicinity of the Texaghu Resch star system and the TRGA cylinder.
Over the next twelve thousand years, numerous other technic species within Sol’s galaxy were either destroyed or forced to abandon or curtail certain lines of scientific research or technological development—notably the so-called GRIN technologies: genetics, robotics, information systems and processing technologies, and nanotechnology. Among these are Sh’daar client races with which Humankind has been at war since 2367, including the Turusch, the H’rulka, the Nungiirtok and their Kobold symbiotes, and the Slan. One other Sh’daar client species within our own galaxy with which Humankind has been in contact since 2312 is the Agletsch, a mercantile race that has provided Humankind with much of what it knows about the Sh’daar.
SH’DAAR POLITY COMPOSITION: As noted previously, the Sh’daar properly is a grouping of numerous technic civilizations, none even remotely human in appearance or psychology. Some, including the Sh’daar Refuser remnant, appear to exist now solely in electronic form, occupying computer networks or artificial bodies mimicking their ancient existence as ur-Sh’daar. Other Refuser species still exist in corporeal form—including the Sjhlurrr, the F’haaz-F’heen swarm symbiotes, the Adjugredudhra, the Groth Hoj, the Zhalleg, the Baondyedd, and numerous others. The total number of distinct species within the Sh’daar Network numbers in the thousands.
TECHNOLOGY: Though the Sh’daar seem determined to limit the technology of other species in certain key areas, their overall level of advancement is somewhat beyond that of Humankind circa 2400. This seeming paradox is best explained by their desire to prevent Transcendence in other technic species, a process that appears to be linked to GRIN technologies but not to gravitics and drive technologies, military weaponry, or energy. The Sh’daar seem to fear those technologies that bring about radical change in body or mental processes within both artificial and organic intelligences.
According to Agletsch sources, the Sh’daar possess the technology necessary to detonate stars and obliterate entire star systems.
Whether the Sh’daar xenotechnic paranoia is religious or philosophical in nature, or based on the Sh’daar equivalent of hardheaded practicality, is at this point completely unknown …
Partial extract from Agletsch data transmission
14 March 2420
Chapter One
25 September 2424
TC/USNA RSV Endeavor
The Black Rosette,
Omega Centauri
16,000 light years from Earth
1330 hours, TFT
Nothing like it had been seen ever before, even in a galaxy as strange and as wonder-filled as the Milky Way. The USNA deep-space research survey vessel Endeavor edged as close to this particular wonder as her captain dared, as clouds of drones and AI reconnaissance vessels probed the outermost fringes of the Rosette’s twisted central vortex.
They called it the Black Rosette—six black holes balanced in a tight, gravitational embrace and whirling about a common center. Each was slightly larger than Earth; each possessed a mass of some forty times Earth’s sun and was moving at almost 26,000 kilometers per second … better than 0.08 c. A total mass 240 times that of Earth’s sun, rotating that quickly, twisted the fabric of the spacetime within which it was embedded and did unexpected things to the geometry of local space. From the perspective of the crew on board the Endeavor, organic and otherwise, it appeared that the central void between the whirling black holes was filled with soft white starlight. As the Endeavor drifted past the open face of the Rosette, however, details of that light shifted and changed, revealing, it seemed, a succession of starscapes, densely packed alien star-clouds and constellations flickering from one to another … a gateway into myriad alternate panoramas of thick-strewn stars.
At certain angles, Endeavor’s sensors detected fierce storms of radiation emerging from the gateway; at others, the emerging radiation was at normal background levels, though a certain amount of hard gamma continued to flood through local space from the six mutually orbiting black holes. The whirling sextet appeared to be enmeshed in a thin, hot cloud of gas drawn from surrounding space, and the planet-sized black holes were made somewhat visible as the resultant blue-violet plasma was greedily devoured in shrieks of gamma and X-ray radiation.
Endeavor’s commanding officer, Captain Sheri Hodgkins, checked the ambient radiation levels on the research vessel’s skin and decided that they were quite close enough. In fact …
“Pull us back a few hundred kilometers, Mr. Colger.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Maneuvering …”
Hodgkins was linked through her cerebral implants to the ship’s AI, and in the window open within her mind she could see the Endeavor pulling back slightly from the massive whirlpool ahead. Like most large star-faring vessels of Earth, Endeavor was mushroom-shaped, her labs and drives within her axial stem, her hab and command modules rotating about the stem, and both tucked away within the shadow of an immense mushroom cap. The water within the shield cap both provided fuel for her fusion drives and protection from sleeting radiation at near-c velocities. The shield was serving now to deflect or absorb most of the radiation from the Rosette ahead; her magnetic hull shields provided some protection, but she didn’t want to take chances with the radiation storm outside the ship’s hull.
Endeavor’s two escorts, the destroyers Miller and Herrera, maintained their formation on the survey vessel. No one was quite certain what the Sh’daar response would be to a survey probe this deep inside their cluster. For sixteen years the Omega Treaty had held. And yet …
“Captain, we’re detecting movement inside the vortex.”
“What kind of movement?”
“Multiple targets at very high speed! Closing vector! …”
“Helm! Pull us back! Comm! Alert our escorts!”
But the Miller was already breaking in two, its central spine and portions of its mushroom cap dissolving in a smear of white hot plasma. Herrera had time to lock on and trigger her main particle beam weapons, but within seconds her grav shields had overloaded and she was being pounded into fragments by a storm of relativistic particles snapping up out of the vortex.
Endeavor was hit, her shield cap ripping open and disgorging a vast and glittering cloud of gleaming crystals as her water reserves hit hard vacuum and froze. Hodgkins grabbed the arms of her command chair as the bridge shuddered, then tore free, tumbling wildly into space.
“Comm! Emergency broadcast! …”
… and then the bridge was engulfed by the expanding white flare of a small detonating sun as her fusion core ruptured.
Five seconds later, the AI of a robotic HVK-724 high-velocity scout-courier on station 1.5 million kilometers away noted the destruction of the expedition’s three capital ships and immediately engaged its primary program.
Earth lay sixteen thousand light years away. At its
