The Starship Theseus

It was called by its creators the "Aurora Drive." Quite beautiful, the drive pulls creates vast ripples in the electromagnetic fields which trigger an aurora in the atmosphere of any planets near either the source, or the destination. It had been theorized not as an improvement to the previous method of faster than light travel, colloquially known as the ‘skip drive,’ but as a way to render all other forms of FTL travel obsolete.

It exceeded all expectations.

Unlike the skip drive, the initial velocity of the spacecraft was irrelevant. Unlike the skip drive, which requires the craft to accelerate to an appreciable percentage of C, the Aurora Drive could be engaged from a dead stop. And most importantly, unlike the skip drive, the Aurora Drive delivered its passengers to the destination instantly. While the activation energy to engage the Aurora Drive is one of the most energy intensive controlled reactions known to science, the net cost of the reaction is only slightly higher than the energy cost of any alternative method. While the skip drive itself is fairly efficient, the entire energy requirement for the Aurora Drive is less than the acceleration cost of simply reaching the velocities required for the skip drive and then decelerate from relativistic speed at the destination.

Once the initial cost is met, a craft with the Aurora Drive may cross vast distances in a heartbeat. The first view of the Milky Way from the outside came from an observatory launched ten thousand light years above the galactic disk, for an energy cost of only three hundred seventy percent more than a jaunt between sol and proxima centauri. For all beings of earth decent, space exploration, travel, and colonization would never be the same.

Not always for the better.

Early colony ships arrived began to arrive at their destination to find their homes already terraformed and populated. Conflicting governments and claims to habitable planets gave rise to the seventh space race. Interstellar war, once assumed logistically impossible, suddenly seemed not only possible, but inevitable.

The United Earth Origin Sapience Council was established in 2687 AD with the express purpose of resolving conflicts in matters of resources, migration, and governance before they resulted in violence. Modeled after the historic United Nations of pre-diaspora Earth, the UEOSC’s influence expanded rapidly, with six hundred signatory colonies within thirty years of founding.

The UEOSC does not establish interstellar law, but rather works to mediate conflicts, with the express purpose of preventing violence, and improving the quality of all sapient life forms, and establishing both rules of engagement and mutual defense treaties for all members. The UEOSC grew exponentially alongside the spread of earth-descent life throughout the milky way galaxy, with rumors and talks of sending expeditions to Andromeda and the other proximal galaxies.

All of that came crashing to a halt in 2874 when a decommissioned earth space force craft known as the ‘Elizabeth’ reported first contact with intelligent life of non-earth descent.