From the outside, the Dragonslayer III didn’t look like much. In the real world, it was roughly two kilometers long; appearing to any outside view to be something akin to a heavily armored warship. It had laser weapons, plasma weapons, particle beams, missile launchers filled with ordinary ordinance, and looked as if it were built for a short-term duel, as the number of missile launchers it had; five hundred of them; would be impossible for a ship that size to carry more than a single volley.

  In reality, that was just an outer shell; inside was an 8-kilometer-long tube that would contain not just the living space enough to keep a village comfortable for years, but enough missiles to wipe out an armada; and over the year-long voyage, it would be replacing those warheads slowly over time with things that weren’t too resource-intensive, but took time.

  Collapsing extradimensional space warheads. Hyperdrive-equipped warheads. Warp-drive equipped warheads. She carried thousands of them; and by the time she arrived in the Milky Way, she’d have enough munitions of such devastating power that, if she needed to, she could kill a copy of the Emperor.

  Because, deep down, Eyeball was worried thats what was waiting for him. This was probably a new universe. From a distance, the Milky Way looked exactly like it did back home.

  What if thats what was there?

  What if Cronos was still running the earth, and the Emperor ruling the galaxy?

  What if none of the nations or people of the earth or galaxy he knew existed, and it was all new; he and Svetlana the only humans in this universe?

  Ascension could make female and male humans; they’d need to be raised from childhood, and all of them would be the product of, essentially, cloning. If not….

  He’d brought over volunteers from three species; two of which were almost extinct in Andromeda. A few dozen Forstagers; the beautiful insectoids learning quickly, as were their children. A mere six Jernal; the super-fast humanoids would likely have at least a dozen children by the time the voyage ended.

  Aside from that, he’d accepted a handful of the Shoork; the only descendant species he’d been willing to bring along, because they’d formed a symbiotic relationship with an extremely non-founder race before reaching back out to the stars.

  All of the crew knew that, most likely, this was a one-way trip. Their home galaxy was devastated. Svetlana, Eyeball, and Ascension had, between them, wiped out the overwhelming majority of life.

  If there were no humans, he’d probably refrain from making more, and just help these three establish colonies in the milky way. Help the Jernal and the Forstagers overcome the genetic bottlenecks from having so few surviving family lines.

  Build something new. Hell. Even if there were humans, he’d probably do that.

  As the vessel launched into the void, he looked back at the rendezvous point, the enormous construction project, the hundreds of ships preparing for missions of malice and mercy, to halt species preparing to take advantage of the Republic’s weakness, and salvage what could be salvaged.

  This galaxy definitively would’ve been better off if he’d never arrived. He’d turned it from a galaxy of tyranny, into a galaxy of Death.

  He sighed… and stepped back onto the bridge. Ahead of the vessel, the smaller satellite craft had already launched, hours before… energy fields emerging, starting to create an oversized channel through which the ship could safely pass… and then, in paranoia, re-create it. Twice more, just in case.

  He wasn’t certain now whether his paranoia about that had been because something bad would happen; or because he needed to wait there in-system for that one specific enemy to arrive, to either stop something terrible from happening in Andromeda, or stop it from following.

  He should be used to the quirks of his power by now, but it would always be confusing.

  ***

  Three months later, Jason was laying back on a bench, relaxing in artificial sunlight but real air, naturally made by plants instead of synthetic, processed stuff; it was as close to earth as could be managed under the circumstances, and he was laying back wearing athletic shorts and a tank-top, just existing. Calm. At peace. Waiting for a meeting with the senior crew; an important one, relatively speaking. They always wanted big things at the monthly meetings, and tried to make it sound great at both of the last two.

  The ship had three contained parks on-board; attached to each other, able to be freely traversed; but with a thin, permeable force-field preventing air and water from crossing.

  One of them contained the closest simulation of earth life that could be managed; no animal life, unfortunately; merely variations on the potato plant, heavily modified. It wasn’t really grass, they weren’t really trees; but it was a green glade, with a small pond in the middle, that Jason could relax in.

  The pond was connected to the second park; an underground, aquatic place, where the off-duty Shoork crew often spent much of their time; attached directly to the bottom-most deck of the ship, which was kept permanently flooded.

  It was nice. The ‘Terran’ side was very simple, mostly just various sizes of broad, leafy plants… but the Forstager side was splashes of color and brilliance, as were the underwater sections of the Shoork. Fish, insects, tiny animals; everything needed to maintain a stable biosphere….

  While the terran side needed drones to do the job. If earth was intact, they’d likely want to implant some real soil, earthworms, that sort of thing. Unless he just stayed behind and left the ship to the aliens.

  He heard a soft beep. The time had arrived. The Forstager and Shoork representatives were ready… and the Jernal would show up as soon as he did.

  He stood up, stretching… and turned to their usual meeting spot; a neat table setup next to the pond, with what amounted to a hot tub at one end so the Shoork could relax.

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  As he settled in at the end of the table, the beautiful form of the mostly-red, jewel-like Setting of the Midnight Sun seated beside him, the curved, feminine blue form of Qacori wearing what appeared to be a one-piece swimsuit leaning back in the hot-tub beside him, he nodded at each of them… until Doshrey arrived, with one of Ascension’s clearly robotic drones accompanying him; the dull red metal and yellow hammer and sickle symbol now likely familiar to the entire Andromeda galaxy.

  Doshrey was a tall, thin, lean figure, with rough brown hide that seemed clear, clean; no scars, no malnutrition… he looked so much better than the first Jernal Jason had met it was crazy.

  Midnight gave her species version of a smile, and nod at Doshrey; before turning to Jason. “The program appears to be a success, Seer! The usual degradation of our bodies has not manifested at all, and has, in fact, reversed! I do not know how long we will live; the oldest living Forstager on record was three hundred and two years old; but reaching the third stage is no longer a death sentence. Wherever we arrive, whatever colony we make… our new children will have longer, healthier lives than they ever did back home, and spend most of them at the elevated level of capability that we usually only had during the Doom.”

  Jason nodded. When he’d blown up the ‘Foreshadowing of Doom’, he’d ensured that the Forstager life-cycle would never be the same for any that remained… so a change like this would be needed for all of them. This… wasn’t really news, though.

  He didn’t mind the wasted time; the way they spoke sounded like some of the greatest music he’d ever heard. “Thank you, Midnight. You said you wanted to update us on something, Qacori?”

  “Well, Jason. As you know, we’ve had a variety of projects to pass the voyage. We’ve been concerned about possible programming, where it comes to what the Founders did when they created us; and we were right. Thanks to Ascension’s scanning technology, we’ve determined that our ancestors were built to view anyone not of our species as innately inferior, and to try to dominate and destroy them; and that programming was somewhat broken. We’re looking at removing it completely to avoid future problems, and will be sending our findings back home.”

  “Well. Thats good to know. I’d hate for us to end up having to kill you once you get settled.” He smiled. He was serious, but it was best to put that in as a joke.

  Doshrey nodded. “We would be the ones to do it, most likely. We have forgiven… but we will not forget.”

  “Well. Any new developments from your people?”

  Doshrey shrugged. “Everything is going well. A new generation will reach a useful adulthood by the time we arrive… and our own lifespan will likely stretch on for decades to come. Our future is uncertain. So few of us survive, and most of us are the product of genes taken from the ashes of our homeworld. We are getting better at handling the stasis. I am unlikely to die of boredom by the time we arrive; I will sleep through most of the journey.”

  “Fair enough.” He was half-tempted to put himself into suspended animation. Ascension could do it, that was for certain. But, no. He could relax for a while.

  “In that case… anything important we need to deal with?”

  A soft beep. Ascension spoke up. “Negative. On a positive note, the cloning program has managed to produce both more variations on the human genome from what little material is available, and I have successfully extracted Walnut, Rice, Mitten Crab, and Cockroach DNA from the ration bars. These will be introduced to the Terran section of the park over the next few weeks, and will be useful should there be no human civilization on earth when we arrive.”

  Walnut DNA being in the ration bars wasn’t too surprising. A bit of variation in the plants would be nice, and if he recalled correctly, they grew from trees, which would mean he’d have an actual forest of sorts on-board. Crab and Cockroach DNA, though? “...Could you skip the Cockroach DNA?”

  “Affirmative.”

  He’d be willing to accept some biodiversity issues to never have cockroaches again.

  ***

  At the ten month mark, the park looked dramatically different. A modest forest of black walnut trees surrounded the pond, there was a form of grass in the ground, and even crickets chirping; though he wasn’t completely certain they weren’t just deliberately mutated cockroaches, Ascension claimed they were cricket, but might be trying to make him feel better.

  Either way, they were most of the way to the Milky Way; and one of the shields had actually failed a few days ago, a tiny fragment of debris had sent bits of the first shield scattering across a region light-years across.

  If it hadn’t been for the triple redundancy he’d insisted on…. They would likely still have been fine. Only the first two layers had failed; the third had never even been approached. The final field generator in front of the ship had never even encountered the debris.

  The ship was filled with life; there were at least a dozen Jernal children running about the ship at a breakneck pace, everyone was taking turns running the bridge, the instruments, running through simulators…, fortunately behaved enough not to cause damage… but the speed with which they were growing up was astounding; and the way the adults were putting them through constant combat training was a bit disheartening.

  It was a bit strange; he was feeling antsy now, as if there were something he should be doing, but…. A nice, steady, nine months of vacation, and maybe a month of actual work in there. Nothing serious going on. Tinkering with armor. Practicing a bit with a duel against a Jernal; demonstrating that the only way he could take a Speedster was by hitting them before the fight started, repeatedly.

  Discovering just how nasty the Forstagers were in a fight; not that they could take him, but the beautiful creatures would likely brutally dismember a typical human soldier in fractions of a second.

  It was now merely hundreds of thousands of light-years; they’d crossed the million threshold over a month before. But still…. It would be two more months. Sixty days.

  Then they could pull up in the Milky Way, and have themselves a listen.

  ***

  The Dragonslayer III emerged from Warp roughly six hours after the last of the satellite vessels stopped; roughly fifty light-years from earth, in the void, far from anything that should be paying attention.

  There were no known species that should be out here; and even if there were, this was the void. Nothing out here that mattered.

  He was sitting on the bridge, clenching the armrests. A handful of the crew; one of Ascension’s drones, one of Ascension’s latest batch of fake-humans, built, of course, to be an attractive human female… quite possibly to try to tempt him, considering…. Alongside a couple of the forstager and Shoork crewmen… were there, ready just in case.

  Weapons were primed; but really… they were all watching the main screen.

  The first of the shield drones had arrived a day before, and the last, six hours ago. By now, they would have a full day’s worth of recordings of any signals, FTL or otherwise. He should know, immediately, if the Empire existed, and if humanity did as well; this was within range of classic radio transmissions.

  A few moments after the universe resumed normalcy… the screen lit up.

  A few words were listed over it… ~Transmission detected~. Beneath, after a few seconds… music started to play. And then… video. The opening theme to some TV show, a soap opera… broadcast back on earth in the seventies, arriving here, now, in the depths of space.

  Normal, human people. English words on the screen.

  There was still a chance this was some alternate universe. But…. he was home.