Travelogue: The Maiden of the Stars – Kavis III

There is a legend on Emperion IV, of the “Maiden of the Stars”, an unnamed solider who vanquished their assailants from beyond the stars, and brought to them the power of spaceflight. We know this civilisation today as the Electorate of Emperion, a multi-stellar polity that borders the Federation to the galactic northwest.

With tourism accounting for much of the Emperion economy, a new business has unveiled a unique starcruise. In introducing civilian slipstream travel, it has announced a new package centred on her footsteps, the elevation of the nameless soldier to deified patron. Of course, I went on the cruise.

Third Stop: Kavis III

This was the Dalarian armoury in the region, which was half a day away at slipstream. Now it’s little more than wreckage and fragments of disruptor fire from ships that fired on it, preserved by the barren world’s Luna-class atmosphere. There was nothing except rubble and disruptor-lanced wreckage.

While the Emperians were initially at a disadvantage, they were supported by another race, the Tarainians, who saw them as a vehicle to fight the Al’ar indirectly. Although modern historians regard this as revisionist romanticism, it is said that her speech was so powerful that it moved them to help her only based on feeling.

“While they might have sympathised and admired someone so driven to save her world,” Kaliona Tarsonis, a history professor at the Dauntless Academy on Saniat IV, said when contacted, “the Tarainians would have seen this as a way to inexpensively stymie the Dalarians’ expansion at the time and potentially gain an ally.”

Indeed, holodramas feature both the lecture and the scientific advisers training the warriors at the visitor’s centre on how to repair and operate their spaceship. Here, one of the legend’s peculiarities comes to mind.

The identity and face of the solider are unknown, and she is simply seen as a brilliant silhouette. Only her gender is acknowledged by historians and those of us who attempt to emulate her.

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