Chapter 1: Rebirth

Forecast of the 2^nd Conquest by Shadow Prime around 15000 years ago

Prophecy of hope, discounted by most as the ravings of a madman

2^nd Madman Prophecy, giving rise to the Madman Protocol amongst believers

In the beginning

Every civilisation has its gods and devils, myths and legends. What everyone tends to forget, is that no matter how outlandish the tale, all of these tales at one point in time had a kernel of truth, a smattering of fact, from which the tale grew.

20,000 years ago in an area of what human astronomers would come to call the Crux-Scutum arm of the Milky Way galaxy, hidden from the Sol system by the observation shadow of the Galactic Core, one such myth had its beginning.

Records show that this period was the time of the great cataclysm, when the existing civilisation, spanning thousands of worlds over hundreds of solar systems, disappeared almost overnight. What little remains of the records show an almost utopian society and highly advanced technology, but little to no evidence of what caused the cataclysm, the only clue being a new type of sensor array which appeared to have been developed by the survivors, and the insistence that it never be switched off and must be included on all spacecraft of any design.

The few data crystals recovered from the ancient ruins appear to show people disappearing into thin air and air vehicles exploding for no reason.

The most famous of the recovered artefacts gave the name to the apparent terror people were experiencing at the time.

On a badly damaged and degraded data crystal, there appeared to be the personal diary of one of the scientists who developed the sensor array.

Multiple fragments show his reminiscences of death from the shadows, and people being taken by the shadows. Hence the legend of the Shadows was born.

During the following 20,000 years, civilisation slowly re-emerged from the ashes of the cataclysm.

Initially, planets were cut off from each other, though originally they knew of other worlds. Eventually, even this knowledge was forgotten as each world strove to survive.

As civilisation grew, and technology was rediscovered, individual planets became united systems, until, 4,000 years ago, 5 great families ruled over the majority of space once claimed by the ancients.

War broke out between 3 of these families as each strove to take over the whole sector. Despairing for any hopes of peace, the ruling lords of the 2 remaining families decided that by unifying their space, they would prove a buffer between the 3 warring factions, and their combined strength would be enough to enforce the peace and stop incursions into their space.

The Prime Lord Cald and the Eminent Lord Eldar signed the Treaty of Alteria, which promised the eldest son of Cald to the eldest daughter of Eldar in marriage; hence the Calderian Union was born.

Over the next thousand years, the Union kept the peace throughout the sector, and over time absorbed the other families either through marriage or annexation of systems abandoned by the families as there power and influence waned. The only time over this period when Union forces were openly attacked was during the treaty conference to bring the last family into the Union. As the current Lord Cald and the Lady Endymon were approaching the conference site, rogue elements of the Endymonian fleet attacked both ships, killing both rulers and their entourage.

Elements of the Union Fleet attacked these rogue elements of the Endymonian fleet and were on the verge of wiping out all Endymonian presence before the council confirmed the current eldest son as new ruling Lord Cald.

The new ruling lord immediately called a ceasefire and negotiations were restarted between the new ruling Lord and Lady.

The treaty was renegotiated and the treaty was sealed with the marriage of the Lord Cald to the Lady Endymon and the Calderian Empire was born.

The almost 3000 years following the treaty signing was a time of great prosperity and growth for the Empire, research moved from being militaristic in nature to the more peaceful pursuits of medicine and exploration.

On the medical front it was discovered that certain frequencies stimulated the atrophied pineal gland in the human brain, and after decades of research it was announced that this stimulation increased the bodies defences against all known diseases and extended human life by halting the ageing process (apparently dying or decayed cells were treated as a disease and replaced by new cells after the pineal manipulation), although there was nothing to say how long the process would last and what would happen to the human body if the benefits accorded by Pineal Manipulation Therapy suddenly stopped.

Another benefit of this therapy was that it appeared to create new neural pathways in the brain, allowing full access to areas long dormant, and increasing memory storage, retention and recall to almost total recall of any event experienced by the individual.

The most amazing discovery occurred however when one of the research scientists mistook one of the test subjects for another and set him a test which in his chosen life discipline he should have been unable to answer. However, he was able to answer everything. Analysis showed that the subjects' father worked in the same discipline as the correct recipient of the test and that the subject was able to access all of the information from his father.

It took further years of research to bring this subconscious action to the conscious mind, and from there the realisation that this was a remnant of the parental teaching bond and that the young man had in effect copied all of his fathers knowledge and experiences since birth.

This discovery led to a revolution in teaching as research was carried out to ascertain whether this sharing of experiences was only familial or whether it could be triggered from master to apprentice, or eventually from master to AI data bank.

Eventually a process was developed allowing exactly that and anyone was soon able to learn anything they wanted from the knowledge and experiences of the foremost masters of any known subject.

Now the growth and successes in medical research is what triggered the boom in exploration and colonisation, after all, if humans can now live extremely long lives, you are bound to run out of space for them on their native planets at some point aren't you?

So it came about, that as Imperial Fleet ships were decommissioned, most were converted to exploration and colonisation duties and never replaced on the front-line, the argument being that if everyone is at peace, we don't need the Imperial fleet any more. The Emperor however refused the complete decommissioning of the fleet and eventually came to a compromise that for every 10 ships decommissioned, 1 was to be built to replace them, thus by the present day, the Empire encompassed almost all of the worlds once colonised by the ancients, and even some it would appear that they hadn't touched, with a fleet 1/10^th of that at the end of the Wars of Union.

During these almost 3,000 years of peace, the Shadows sat back and waited for events to unfold as foretold in the prophesy of Shadow Prime almost 15,000 years ago.

Working through puppets, it was they who urged the exploration and colonisation of new planets, and it was they who forced the decommissioning of most of the Imperial fleet, as they saw that with the fleet at full Union strength, research and development would advance to the extent that they would have no option but to put off the 2^nd conquest indefinitely.

Now human nature came into play on the side of the Shadows, with the fleet so reduced in size, the military was no longer seen as an attractive career, and as such intake was drastically reduced meaning that although the ships in space were still fully manned, the number of marines available for ground defence duty was no longer enough to provide ground defence stations on all of the new planets, and eventually, the only planets fully manned were those in systems providing homes to members of the Imperial family.

This in no way put off the new colonists, as after all, with near universal peace, there was no need for all of those troops causing a drain on local resources and higher taxes to pay for the maintenance and upkeep of military installations. It was this attitude, which Shadow insurgents used to force the refusal of even a remote unmanned sensor station on planet, hence none of the newly colonised planets had the unrealised, all important sensor station, which was the final sign for the Shadows to begin preparations for the 2^nd conquest.

500 years ago, Alterian System, Calderian Empire

The Royal Starcruiser Perseus was supposed to be the fastest, most advanced, most powerful and certainly the most controversial addition to the Imperial fleet.

Rather than the standard AI to control the majority of ships functions, it had the brand new and largely untested Sentient Organic Computer Intelligence, working in conjunction with a host of sub AI each monitoring various ship functions. The theory behind this compartmentalisation of ships functions, was that in the event of any system failure, there was little or no chance of a cascade failure through all ships systems, causing catastrophic malfunctions leading to the death of all crew and the eventual loss of the ship, a scenario which has happened slightly more frequently of late in older ships coming up for decommissioning.

Another new innovation was the first full-scale slip drive to be used on anything other than unmanned test drones. This drive came about after researchers investigating the known higher dimensions, noticed discrepancies in their test results. Further investigation of these discrepancies led to the discovery of the space between the dimensions, in which absolutely nothing seemed to exist, and the known laws of physics and nature appeared to be negated.

Years of dedicated research led to the development of a reliable system to create a portal into this null space.

It was extremely difficult to investigate this space as once a drone was through the portal; there was no way to communicate with it. Eventually it was arranged that drones would be pre-programmed to carry out various tests, and they would have there own independent portal generator to return to normal space once the tests were complete.

One of the final tests was to determine whether engines would work in null space and to ascertain what effect this had on the drones location in normal space once the portal was re energized. It was discovered that sub-light drives had little or no discernible effect, and plus-light tests were going the same way until someone made a mistake in the drones programming. This error led to the plus-light drives being initiated prior to the null space portal. The researchers noticed a difference in the event horizon of the portal before the drone disappeared and it closed. Immediately, sensor stations on the outskirts of the system reported the appearance of the drone at the exact coordinates set in the navigation console on-board.

Needless to say, the scientists were extremely excited about this accidental discovery of instantaneous travel, and a new range of tests were formulated to determine the viability of this discovery as a practical space drive.

Once it was ascertained that a drone could reach any location in known space and return safely, further tests were carried out to determine what effect travel through the event horizon would have on organic matter, and whether, although travel appeared to be instantaneous, there was any noticeable time discrepancy between entering and leaving null space.

Only once these tests were completed successfully did the council of scientists allow the construction of a full size slip drive to be used on the Perseus.

Planet side, the Lord Juno and Lady Alica Cald Imperia were patiently awaiting the shuttle, which would transport them to the space dock and eventually to the Perseus to join the skeleton crew of 1500 volunteers and specialists selected to put the new ship through its rigorous trials, which in itself was a vast improvement, as normally a ship of this size would require a minimum of 5000 people to fully man and maintain ships systems.

In essence the Perseus was a test bed for new innovations in ship, computer and drive design, and if the trials proved successful, these new innovations would be included in the new ships built to replace decommissioned ships of the fleet.

As the honorific and the Imperia extension implied, the young couple were members of the Imperial family, although far removed from the line of succession, however, this couple were not concerned with status as each was famous in their own right, one for innovations in starship design, and the other for advancements in the field of artificial computer intelligence. The Perseus was the ultimate collaboration between the young couple, and the might of the Empire was awaiting the outcome of the space trials soon to commence.

Whilst awaiting exit clearance from dock control, Commodore Manx, the veteran commander pulled out of semi retirement purely to put the Perseus through its paces, decided to give the young couple a final tour of Perseus now that it was fully on-line, fully intending to shock them with a last minute addition to the ships complement, the royal yacht, which as far as they were concerned, was the next project and only due to begin construction once the Perseus trials were complete. The Emperor however had different plans, once he learned of the plans for the yacht and the fact that the Perseus had a docking bay purely for its use, he called extra construction crews to the project to get the yacht completed in time to surprise his relatives. The hardest part of the project was building the framework to house only the 3^rd SOCI to exist after Astor on Throneworld and Perseus himself, with the help of those 2 however, the project was completed on time and the SOCI designated Helios by the Emperor, was brought on-line mere moments before the couple were led into the massive royal docking bay by Commodore Manx.

"Commodore, when was this done and why?" asked Lord Juno.

"It's a gift from the Emperor my Lord," replied the Commodore "he thought you might like to do a little exploring on some of our stops, and the yacht you designed, would give you a little more flexibility and security than our standard shuttles."

"Is it complete?" asked Lady Alica.

"Yes my Lady," replied the Commodore "SHE is on-line and became fully aware a few weeks ago. She received the designation Helios from the Emperor himself. Named I believe after his favourite granddaughter, your grandmother."

"May we board her Commodore?"

"Of course my Lady. Helios, Commodore Manx requesting permission to board, authorisation code Alpha-1-Gamma-0-4-6-Epsilon"

"Permission granted Commodore and welcome aboard"

With that, the boarding ramp extended and the Imperial party boarded their new yacht for the first time to take command.

Once on board, Commodore Manx led the company to the bridge and initiated transfer of command to the Lord and Lady. Lord Juno immediately began poring over the design specifics of the ship, mentally comparing them to the schematics he thought were still on his console back home and found several surprising changes, it appeared that someone had authorised increasing the engines and had even included a slip drive fully as capable as the one now installed on the Perseus. Further investigation showed why the power output from the engines had been increased; the weapons systems and shield were now the equivalent of a front-line battle cruiser.

Lady Alica was finding just as many surprises in her investigation of the computer systems on board. Not only was Helios a SOCI, she was fully as powerful as Perseus and Astor, which, considering the size of the ship she was controlling, left massive amounts of computational power and memory. Also surprising was her data storage capacity, which appeared, if she was reading things correctly, to be larger than the Imperial library on Throneworld and the Imperial archives on the third moon of Throneworld combined.

"Helios," asked Lady Alica, "how can you have so much storage capacity in such a small place, even my must advanced compression algorithms cant account for a tenth of your reported capacity."

"Actually my Lady, the figure would be more like 0.1% of storage space, the reported space is what is currently available." reported Helios. "Investigating irregularities discovered during the testing phase of the slip drive, it was discovered that it is possible to permanently place the majority of an object into Slip space whilst still having a portion in real space. This still allowed full communication with the portions in Slip space and meant that we could have massive storage facilities in a fraction of the space, unfortunately, the practical applications of the technology came too late to implement them on the Perseus, but I now have the largest data storage capacity ever known, and as a result, I am now currently in the process of downloading the combined information from all of the major, and quite a lot of the minor, data archives in the Empire. Once complete, I will cross check and remove any duplicated info and I should then have virtually every major piece of information available anywhere in the Empire, and I anticipate having remaining space for almost as much again, as the Royal archives will surely contain the majority of the information contained in other archives."

"Helios, you said that this technology had so far only been implemented for data storage, has anyone investigated whether we could use this with the framework for computers? For example, a basic computer should not be affected by the data transfer between slip dimensions, but how would it affect an AI or a SOCI like yourself?"

"Good questions my Lady, and from the scientific information I have collated, not one which has been considered, after all, you are considered the leading light in computer advancement and if you have not heard of this technology, then no one else will have either, however, basic assumptions are that if the personality matrix was left outside of slip, and all computational needs were moved into slip, then this should work as efficiently as a basic computer in slip."

"Thank you Helios, this will give me something to think about and a new project to work on after the Perseus trials are complete."

Perseus trials, Fleet manoeuvres, Sensor anomalies

Whilst the young couple familiarised themselves with the actuality of a dream which they were only distantly hopeful of ever achieving, Commodore Manx proceeded to the bridge to initiate departure proceedings, so that everything would be in readiness for the trials to begin.

Not much later, departure clearance was announced throughout the ship, and all extraneous personnel were now returned to the spacedock, and the Lord and Lady, although much intrigued by new innovations discovered in the yachts construction, were at their diagnostic stations on the bridge, overseeing the performance of ship and SOCI.

Lady Alica turned from her console and announced "Perseus reports all ship AI on-line and reporting systems ready Commodore."

"Thank you my Lady," said Commodore Manx, and turning to Lord Juno, he asked, "My Lord, how does she look?"

"All systems in the green and operating within optimal tolerance Commodore, sub-light engines ready for departure," reported Lord Juno.

Manx acknowledged the reply then turned to his hand-picked bridge crew, " Comms, pipe this ship wide please."

"OK people, I know that like myself, you thought that this was all behind you years ago, and I know that you have never served on a ship with this few crew, but I know that you are all top men and women in your field, and right now there is more experience and knowledge on this ship than any 2 fleet front liners. At this moment, the eyes of the Empire are on us, and the future of the Fleet is in our hands, so, all hands to duty stations for departure. Helm, manoeuvring thrusters only and take us out. Navigation, plot a course to Out System 1, best sub-light speed. Sensors, prepare for calibration test at the Haystack."

Amid wild celebrations dockside, the Perseus slowly manoeuvred out to clear space in order to begin sub-light engine tests.

"Manx to Alteria control."

"Control here."

"Perseus reporting on station at Point Alpha, awaiting permission to begin run to Out System 1."

"Permission granted Commodore, and may the gods grant you success."