(Thanks to Old Fart Li Furiously Pounds Nurglings for the donation. Bonus chapter 5/5. Thanks again!)
It should be noted that the T'au generally lived only a little over sixty years, making them a short-lived species.
By the time a warship departed a T'au World and reached its destination, several generations of its crew would have come and gone.
Commander Fengxi and the others lived in the best of times. Their forebears had already endured the long, tedious voyages and the work of establishing colonies. Now, they were enjoying the fruits of that success.
The humans on Sweet Star had all been assimilated into T'au society. There was no violent resistance, no war. Every T'au needed only to enjoy a wonderful life.
For someone like Fengxi, who operated warships, the wonderful prospect of setting foot on a planet held more appeal than it did for anyone else.
Because he understood warships, he knew that once they chose to flee, once their four warships escaped into deep space, his entire generation-and perhaps even their descendants-would very likely have to spend the next fifty or sixty years aboard!
Their T'au warships were not particularly large, measuring just over two kilometers in length and width.
Two hundred thousand people would have to squeeze into four small ships like that. How crowded would they be? How terrible would living conditions become?
Then, for forty or fifty years, they would never get to set foot on an actual planet. They would spend the rest of their lives aboard starships.
Just imagining that life made Fengxi shudder!
Would my life have to waste away aboard a warship, just like those of my forebears?
*More than forty years in the prime of my life, staring at navigation routes every day and achieving nothing-is that the life I