(Posted on 02-06-2001)
(This data has been retrieved from the Council Station Library Network via Agent 357, priority clearance one one one green delta gamma eight. Any redistribution of this data by any entity other than Agent 357, also known as Ketayron, Epsilon-Grade Pilot, or Akron, Commander, will be sufficiently dealt with by the Council.){Note from the Temporal Editor: If this story directly contrasts with your interpretation of the past of EVO, then think of this as events from a different timeline or universe.}
Chapter One - The Kadee
The first year of the Second Calendar began disastrously - with the destruction of the Daragiz people's homeworld, a planet in a system at the very eastern rim of the galaxy. On the other hand, as the Elders had evacuated nearly the entire population onto the great Trans-Hyperspace Freighters, there were only a few thousand deaths - a small number, considering that the entirety of our civilization consisted of over twelve million.
The destroyers of my people's home were called the Kadee. We knew very little about them in the year 1 S.C., and did not know much more in the year 87 S.C., where my story begins. I am called Ketayron, son of Kerassad. In the year 87, I was fifteen years of age, an apprentice engineer on board an Anti-Kadee Irdazag, commonly known as the AKI. This particular AKI was called the Resilience, part of Defense Group Three. We had five such groups, each comprised of six AKIs, war vessels approximately the size of Tsillameneth. Translation: Tsillameneth was a small island on Daragiz, approximately the size of a Miranu Heavy Freighter.///
Defense Group Three's duty was to scan for Kadee vessels. During the First Conflict in 8967 F.C. (First Calendar), when the Kadee scouts first began to bomb our planet and we sent forth the first bulky Daragiz Starfighter (which, of course, was crushed rather quickly), the scientists of our world detected trace elements of ventrenium in the armor of the Kadee Warships. This compound, exceedingly rare on Daragiz, was also easily detectable. Thus, after the Final Conflict, when our planet was destroyed, our scientists began employing a bulky device approximately ten cubic feet in size to detect any ventrenium. The entire defense group, when positioned correctly, could detect ventrenium within a radius of three hyperlinks.
Hyperlinks were the inventions that saved our civilization. Our Propulsion Engineers Guild had become puzzled when our long-range sensor probes detected the Kadee's homeworld many light-years away, and yet their flagship - the Merciless - was observed several times during a seven-month-long period in orbit of both our world and theirs. Obviously, they had to be using an engine that surpassed the speed of light (which is, of course, impossible) or that warped reality in some way. A few weeks later, a series of lucky shots by a ground turret installation, we captured a crashed Kadee gunboat. It was a daunting task for our scientists to make sense of the technology - the ship was one hundred chilliveks Translation: Daragiz unit of measurement equivalent to a meter./// in size. Eventually, however, in the year 8982, by which time the attacks were becoming heavier and the death toll was mounting to the thousands, they had unlocked the secret of hyperspace drive. The engine we produced was capable of accessing a another dimensional realm, sending the ship into it for a millisecond, and then propelling it out through a hyperlink into a nearby system.
It was almost too little, too late. In 8985, the full Kadee fleet arrived and pummeled our shipyards. We lost half of our ship-building facilities in the first week of the orbital bombardment. Hundreds died. Then, at long last, our scientists, secured in bomb shelters, gave us something more powerful than the hyperlink - shield codes of six Kadee warships in orbit. Using this new data, Military Commander Kendrenneck planned a daring raid.
A fighter, manned by a famous pilot named Kalkous, was sent up. It broadcasted the codes, leaving six of the warships defenseless, and disabled one of them entirely. Then, leaving the rest of the fleet enraged, the fighter hyperjumped into the heart of the enemy - their homeworld. As their entire fleet was at our planet, theirs was defended by a mere three defense platforms, which Kalkous evaded. He then proceeded to vaporize the Kadee's oceans, until the fleet got word of his attacks and left the orbital bombardment to find him. He was killed in the resulting battle, but took two of them with him.
Kalkous was an example for my people, and most notably my grandfather Kirochen. Kirochen created a slightly faster hyperspace engine in 8986, just as the Kadee were starting to come back again. When our first Trans-Hyperspace Freighters were equipped with my grandfather's brainchild, the movement for exodus begun - many felt that we would be slaughtered if we remained there. The Elders listened, and composed another brilliant plan.
In 8987, the last year of the First Calendar, one thousand freighters launched from Daragiz's surface, carrying as many people and equipment as they could hold without literally bursting at the seams. Nearly our entire fleet, seventy interceptors (quicker than their starfighter counterparts, though not by much), escorted them. The remaining six engaged in a kamikaze war against the Kadee fleet, now bombarding our planet again. The distraction worked, and the fleet escaped into hyperspace. No one stayed long enough to learn of those six pilots' fates. The only thing we did know for certain was that our planet was gone - just as we jumped, it crumbled, imploded, and disintegrated from the constant Kadee attacks.
We had bought only a temporary reprieve, however. The Kadee would be on our trail in a very short time. We needed to do something, and fast. Very fast...
Coming soon: Chapter 2 - The Bomb
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 02-06-2001).)