Time Gone Awry

{Science Ship One: Marshal, we discovered the United Nations of Earth's missing colony ship [Hyacinth] in the [Amat Eiro] system. There are exactly 114,514 people still aboard. Its engines are damaged, making any space travel impossible. Requesting rescue.}

"Huh?" Xi Yan sprang straight out of his chair and stared at the communications interface before him.

What had he just seen?

The Hyacinth!

And there were still people alive aboard it?

The history of the colony ark Hyacinth stretched back many years.

(Stellaris has no official storyline in the strict sense, so we can only infer things from its trailers. I've made a few small changes here to fit it into the story better.)

Ordinary people had no access to this history, but Xi Yan, who had played through the Hyacinth event chain many times, knew it very well.

In the twenty-first century, humanity discovered a small wormhole in the Oort Cloud. However, the wormhole was extremely unstable, and the United Nations-sponsored Ulysses Project began soon afterward.

The Ulysses Project involved building six enormous arks in low Earth orbit, each capable of carrying 250,000 people, and sending them through the wormhole to explore new worlds.

But disaster followed. After the six crewed arks entered the wormhole, it unexpectedly collapsed, cutting all six off from the United Nations of Earth.

Two of the arks, the Autumn Chrysanthemum and the Hyacinth, parted ways with the other four and plotted a new course together.

The Autumn Chrysanthemum found a new home even better suited to human life than Earth. The colonists named the planet United Star, and it became the Human Federation's homeworld.

The Hyacinth, however, was lost in space due to circumstances beyond its control. It had originally been scheduled to reach United Star three years later, but ultimately disappeared en route. Over the years, the United Nations of Earth had never given up searching for it.

Yet the Hyacinth had clearly been missing for nearly a century by now. According to the events in the game, the United Nations of Earth should only have discovered its wreckage several decades later, by which point no life remained aboard.

Why had he discovered it now, with more than a hundred thousand people still alive?

That sounded downright terrifying.

"Maybe they happened to get lost in some wormhole where time flowed abnormally. By the time they came out, over a hundred years had passed."

Beta took it in stride. When in doubt, blame some bizarre wormhole.

After getting lost in the wormhole, the Hyacinth had wandered around until it ended up here, where they discovered it. Yes, that had to be it!

Xi Yan convinced himself, then sent a reply.

{Xi Yan: But it's been almost a hundred years since the Hyacinth went missing. Didn't you know?}

Heh, I can't be the only one getting a shock!

{Science Ship One: Huh? (Terrified)}

Aboard the science ship an unknown number of light-years away, Mardun shuddered.

He only knew that the Hyacinth event existed. Nobody knew its exact timeline.

If what the Marshal said was true, the Hyacinth currently talking to them had actually been drifting through space for over a hundred years. What on earth had happened?

{Science Ship One: I-I'll ask them what's going on.}

{Xi Yan: All right. Whatever the case, I'll send help.}

After all, they were ready-made labor-no, fellow humans in need. Of course he had to rescue them.

Xi Yan opened the database of real-time statistics to check their current food reserves.

One unit of food could feed a hundred million people for a month. They currently had over four hundred units in storage, only enough to feed the entire nation for four years.

And with their reserves shrinking every month, the actual supply would last no more than two years.

Fortunately, even so, they could easily spare enough to feed the hundred thousand people aboard the Hyacinth.

Contact the transport ships in orbit!

{Veronica: There aren't any. We haven't built any faster-than-light transport ships.}

What? None?

What the hell were those useless idiots at Military Headquarters doing? Just because there was no need for foreign trade, they hadn't built any faster-than-light transports?

Xi Yan scratched his head, trying to think of another solution.

{Xi Yan: How many more days will their food last?}

{Science Ship One: One month. Two if they stretch it.}

{Xi Yan: No, building a transport ship now and then sending it out would take too long. There's no way we'd make it in time.}

Building a transport equipped with a basic hyperdrive alone would take half a month, and the journey would take at least another month or more. By the time his savior arrived, the Hyacinth would be long gone.

But we've still got warships!

Xi Yan immediately called Ning Zhiyuan over voice comms. "Hello? General Ning, have the Left and Right Protector Ship unload half its ammunition and weapons, fill it with food, and bring the Hyacinth back!"

{Xi Yan: [Coordinate file]}

Ning Zhiyuan: Huh?

"That's it. Carry out your orders!"

Xi Yan rattled off his orders and promptly ended the call. Ning Zhiyuan stood stunned at the spaceport for quite a while before he caught up.

"So we're rescuing fellow humans stranded in space... That's easy enough. I'll get it arranged right away."

"Wait, wasn't the Hyacinth a ship from over a hundred years ago?"

Now there was one more person unsettled by the implications.

After issuing his orders, Xi Yan sat back down in satisfaction, then watched the steadily declining food resources with a face full of worry.

At his command, every food factory had completely switched its production lines to mass-produce the synthetic food Green Apple.

But "Even if everyone eats Green Apple, we still can't get a positive balance. Sigh, what am I supposed to do...?"

The great Marshal sat in his office, fretting over the statistics.

Even with the entire Empire's productivity pushed to its limit, the monthly food balance had only finally stabilized at negative five units.

It had been even worse before, with a monthly deficit of over ten units of food. The Former Marshal must have worried himself sick over it.

Research into hydroponics farming had yet to succeed. The entire Empire's food production depended on a few agricultural districts cobbled together wherever possible, leaving it precariously vulnerable.

Xi Yan's Purge Campaign the previous month had systematically eliminated over a hundred thousand people, all filthy rich and voracious consumers of food, barely reducing the shortfall.

But as the Empire's population grew, the food shortage would only worsen. On top of that, he had to maintain everyone's free resource allocations under public ownership.

Xi Yan had never needed a colony so desperately.

Even if it were a desert planet, as long as it could support a single agricultural district, Xi Yan would colonize it.

Meanwhile, aboard Science Ship One.

At the other end of the connection, Mardun hesitated before asking, "Do you know what year of the Cosmic Era it is now?"

The Old Captain instinctively looked at the ship's computer. "2103/2. Why?"

The other side immediately showed them a wristband, with the date displayed clearly on it: "2200/1."

"..."

As Mardun and the other crew members grew increasingly horrified, the expressions of the Old Captain and those around him began to change as well.

"Huh?"

"You're people from a hundred years ago!"

Unable to keep his composure, Mardun shouted, "How did you survive?"

"Impossible! We only traveled for a little over five years, and we've been stopped here for less than ten!" someone said incredulously.

The Old Captain, however, showed little emotion. Looking at the date on the wristband, he actually nodded. "I more or less suspected it back then."

"Not long before we left the wormhole, the entire hull suddenly began aging rapidly, as though over a hundred years had passed. It caused problems with a great deal of the equipment aboard. That was when I began to suspect something like this."

"Could it really have been the wormhole?" Mardun was baffled too, but he still sent a report to Xi Yan.

{Xi Yan: It's fine. As long as you can convince yourself, that's good enough. As for what actually happened, we'll discuss it once they're back and have had a medical examination.}

The Marshal really knew how to cut through things!

Mardun convinced himself and promptly put on a friendly smile. "All right, let's chalk it up to a strange wormhole. Let's not dwell on it."

"Fair enough."

The Old Captain smiled. "We'll take things as they come. Anyway, what arrangements do you have in mind for us?"

"Normally, you'd stay here as citizens of our Interstellar Human Military Junta. If the United Nations of Earth requests it, you'll most likely be sent back there," Mardun said, while thinking, But the Marshal will never let this free labor slip away unless the United Nations of Earth offers resources in exchange.

"If possible, we'd like to try colonizing this planet again."

The Old Captain looked toward the planet the Hyacinth was orbiting, a flicker of hatred passing through his eyes.

That's right, there's a new colony too!

This planet's pleasant climate could support plenty of agricultural districts.

The Marshal had been worrying about the Empire's food production lately. He would definitely be delighted to hear this news!

Mardun and the Old Captain gazed together at the beautiful green planet beneath them, their eyes burning with eagerness.