A month after the initial diplomatic contact, the frantic period of activity in the protostellar forge finally came to an end. Ten billion VR pods had been rolled off the production lines in the space of four short weeks; the fleet engineers had truly lived up to their mottothe impossible had been accomplished, it had just taken a short time.

Birch and the other treefolk had been invaluable to the herculean task, delaying the birth of their children and ensuring their safe transfer to the pods may have been easy for them, but without their aid, the entire effort would have failed.

As the pods were filled with occupants, they were activated on stasis mode, waiting for the quantum superclusters to come online to generate a VR environment conducive to raising and educating them. And during the wait, the researchers of the task force were practically driven insane by the wealth of data generated by their scans. After the initial building and transplantation efforts, it fell to the scientists to determine what key points they would need to take into account once the system was in place and ready to be fully activated. After all, it was only to be expected that different species would have different requirements in terms of environment and so on.

But they could take their time. Each VR pod had been fitted with a fusion battery that would allow for up to fifty years of uninterrupted power before the pods themselves would need to be connected to a power grid. At least in stasis mode, anyway; it would require more power to have the inhabitants consciousnesses transported to virtual reality, tailored or otherwise. That said, however, time was their most valuable resource, so having such a surplus of it was quite a luxury, allowing them to focus their attention on developing the virtual environment rather than forcing them to rush the completion of an infrastructure that would allow them to accommodate the newborns.

And the entire process was handled with care and attention to detail. Every bit of their actions were recorded, verified, and dug through by others to catch anything the initial groups missed. Then, once the peer review was completed, the AIs of the task force took their turn and resolved whatever issues remained. The three-pass procedure ensured maximum results with minimal errors at the cost of redundancies in data collection artificially inflating the total amount collected.

Virtually every member of the fleet was spending every waking moment on the project. There was a truism in life that went something along the lines of Good, fast, cheap. Choose two. The fleet had obviously chosen good and fast, with the cost measured in man-hours rather than Earth New Dollars. And that choice was working well for them, as measured in the constant discoveries being made practically every day, which provided motivation for the workers as they would receive a bonus in END once the project was completed, as well as bragging rights for being included in it to begin with.

Two weeks after the initial transfer had been completed, the initial simulated environment was available and debugged. In addition to that, enough quantum superclusters had come online to allow for a 2:1 time dilation rate, so at the two month mark, ten billion infants had been alive for a full month of subjective time, under the care and supervision of their human nannies and living in a virtual copy of the buildings and cities that were planned in the next stage of Operation Raising Cain.

Protostellar forge.

The machinery of the forge had been operating at max capacity for two months, and would be operating at that rate for at least the next two E-years. Most of the capacity was dedicated to Operation Raising Cain, while the remainder had been devoted to constructing a second protostellar forge. If all went to plan, it would be just enough, running two protostellar forges at 80%, to ensure the successful completion of the operation and build cities on the planet to house the new graduates, who would then be expected to fend for themselves as any adult citizen of the Terran Empire would.

In addition to those two ongoing projects, small automated courier ships were being constructed in order to reestablish and maintain contact with Earth. They were tiny, hardy things, all armor and shielding strapped to the engines of a much larger class of ship. Each of them was little more than a sphere of about thirty meters in diameter, with just eight meters at the very center dedicated to housing a quantum supercluster, warp bubble generator, and fusion reactor. Theoretically, they would be able to maintain a speed of warp ten without the need to drop out of warp every few days to recalibrate their warp bubble generators. Needs must when the devil drives, and the task fleets engineers had gone above and beyond to design and manufacture the tough little meteor-class messenger ships.

And today, their efforts finally bore fruit as the first meteor-class messenger rolled off the production line. The final checks were completed without issue and the vessel, designated TFM-001, immediately engaged its gravity drive and headed above the system ecliptic at.75c, its maximum n-space speed. Normally, the fleet maintained all traffic along the ecliptic plane, but Fleet Admiral Bianchi had approved the messenger boats to operate above the ecliptic in order to avoid other traffic that was held to a much slower top in-system speed.

Once TFM-001 reached a clear plane, it reoriented itself and flew toward Proxima Centauris heliopause in the direction of Earth, carrying dispatches from the fleet to headquarters and letters from the crew to their families and friends they had left behind.

About eight hours later, the first messenger boatdubbed little meteortransited the heliopause and engaged its warp generator, blinking out of n-space and rocketing back toward Earth at ten times the speed of light.

Contained within little meteors databanks was a copy of every research project that had come to a conclusion, along with a detailed report of everything that had happened on the surface of Proxima Centauri b, with an emphasis on the discussion theyd had regarding the new Proximans joining the Terran Empire.

The second most highly flagged message was regarding the five researchers and two marines that had been crushed by roots. Everyone in the fleet had spent hours, days, or even weeks of the trip out to Proxima Centauri agonizing over what to send home in case they died. Fleet Admiral Bianchis chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Botha, had ordered every member of the fleet to record a message for posterity to be sent home in case the worst happened. And for those seven people, the worst had indeed happened.