34: Eádem, sed aliter (Likewise, but Differently)

// "Leela" @ [intránslátábilis] scrípsit: \\ What the hell do you think you're doing? Do you have some sort of death wish? A waste disposal transporter... of all the stupid... uhr! please pardon the forked tongue of our other(?sister)-self I'm sorry, you just caught me a little off guard there. That transporter you just took is used for lifting wastes and such up to orbital platforms for processing. Let me put it in simpler terms for you: it beams things into space! You're lucky I happened to notice you or you'd have drifted there forever, or at least until the shockwave from the trih xeem came. I mean, I understand that you don't know where any given transporter goes, but did you honestly think a garbage disposal would transport you anywhere even remotely pleasant?

Before their ships retreated to safe distance, the Pfhor beamed over a small contingent to try to secure this ship. They've already experimented with it and found its shields will withstand the blast of the trih xeem. That's good for us and the Drinniol, but we can't let the ship fall into Pfhor hands. History records that it didn't, so we must see that through to reality. I'd take it with us back to the future, but its Cybernetic Junction appears to be nonfunctional, and without it, the ship is trapped here in this timeframe. History also records that these Drinniol here find their way out of this system. We could leave the ship to them, but I still fear the Pfhor would take it in the end. So we must destroy it and send the Drinniol elsewhere.

// "Leela" @ [intránslátábilis] scrípsit: \\ Wait, that terminal interface message is in Latin, as is what this era's Pfhor were calling the trih xeem: novam praemátúram. Is this some kind of practical joke? How could either the Pfhor or the Jjaro know any Latin? Unless... Linguistic concerns aside, good work. The ship's self-destruct mechanism has been set. We'll now see to the escape of the Drinniol on this ship and the dawning of a revolution. Millennia before your time, before the Pfhor enslaved the S'pht, they encountered the Nakh, another Jjaro client race, who fought their enslavement tooth and nail. Though at first conquered, they ultimately threw off their yokes, freed their few small worlds from the Pfhor... then pushed further, defeating much of the Pfhor navy and using the Pfhor's stolen Jjaro weaponry to destroy several dozen Pfhor worlds. But ever-expanding clouds of gas and dust are all that remains of the Nakh and their worlds in our time. The Pfhor used the trih xeem – or novam praemátúram – against them en masse.

Drinniol roam freely in Pfhor society on all their thousands of worlds, unrestrained, unchecked, doing as they are told only because they fear to do otherwise. The Drinniol in this system have learned that they have nothing to fear, from the Pfhor or otherwise, and you have seen what that has done. When they leave here, with our help, they will go to other Pfhor worlds and pull the rug out from under their society. There are no safeguards in place at all, other than simple conditioning. If the Drinniol should choose to rise up against their masters, nothing but utter annihilation will stand in their way. And that is what it will come to. The Pfhor, mortified by the Drinniol's unfettered progress, will deplete nearly every resource in their army trying to stop them, on the ground and in the sky. The Drinniol will capture whole worlds and all of the ships on them, and fight until every last fighter is destroyed. Then, in utter desperation, the Pfhor will turn their greatest weapons against their own worlds, now held by the Drinniol. Whole planets will be glassed, nearly a third of the Pfhor's great empire decimated. Dozens of stars will be destroyed. All because one ship with a slave crew escaped from this system.