Jet Lag

Siweisi took longer than I had expected to compile this Timeline, because there were far more Empire ruins in this universe than we had initially guessed. After Sandora provided an ancient Star Chart, we discovered tens of thousands of Old Empire-era wrecks across many shattered star systems. The largest might have been an entire Colonial Star transformed into a mechanical body, while the smallest might have been nothing more than a nonfunctional drilling probe. Siweisi dispatched nearly all the probes in storage to determine when these things had been destroyed, eventually producing a Timeline that matched the Star Chart, accurate down to the minute.

Because the Empire Army moved at terrifying speeds, even when facing weak resistance, they could crush defensive positions at many times the speed of light. A one-hour discrepancy on the Timeline could shift the recorded movements of the Vengeance Legion by several light-years.

I linked the Timeline to the Holographic Projection, and everyone immediately gathered around, curiously examining the image now covered in countless time markers. After some adjustments, the Star Chart and Timeline had merged into one. This colorful Dot Matrix Diagram was packed with dense numbers everywhere, forcing me to distinguish them by color and then remove a great deal of data on smaller wrecks before I could make out the general picture.

When we sorted them by the time of attack and used transitional colors to mark this "Doomsday Map," we immediately noticed something interesting: the Star Chart before us looked like water with drops of oil on its surface, covered in many colorful spots spreading outward in concentric circles.

"The Vengeance Legion launched its attacks simultaneously from more than a dozen points." Sandora pointed at the Star Chart, occasionally enlarging certain patches of color or moving them into the annotation area beneath