The Pheonix Initiative.
That was what the upper echelons of the Morningstar Admiralty were calling the newest project which it was hoped would provide for the assured survival of their nation, their peoples, and their cultures.
The core of Pheonix revolved around the recently recovered Tliel technology: the ability to force grow an adult body in a maturation tank, while the mind was allowed to grow and mature within a time-accelerated dataspace construct. Tliels had been the key to bringing the numbers of certain species onto par with their more numerous fellows, while also allowing for the introduction of species and cultures from the home universe, but which were not originally present in Morningstar. Though at first facing stiff resistance from the Kursta and Moh'ghai people, Tliels had allowed those devastated people to double their populations in the first year.
Pheonix would take the technology behind Tliels to a whole new level with the Seedships. Dwarfing even the Homeships, these vessels taxed the limit of what Morningstar Harborships could possibly construct. Seedships combined all the core elements of a Home Fleet into a single vessel: mobile colony, shipyard, harvesters, manufacturing, food production, and the creation of Tliels. Each Seedship, of which a full twenty were planned, would be overseen by a Conclave in miniature. Even now, digisapes with minds patterned after each member species of Morningstar were being nurtured in the Datagrid of the Home Fleets. These new Shipminds would act in concert to oversee the operation of a Seedship, with each Seedship gifted with a full Conclave of such Shipminds.
As each Seedship was completed, it would be stocked with supplies and resources, then dispatched to a different corner of the universe. The first three Seedships were scheduled to depart for the rim of the Milky Way, the rim of the Galactic Empire's galaxy, and the rim of the 'Home Galaxy' from where their Xiscapian and Alversian allies originated. By scattering the seeds of the Morningstar Coalition, the Admiralty hoped to prevent the extinction of their nation should any of the expected wars end in their annihilation. Once on their way, the Seedships would begin gestating Tliels from all the member species, holding their bodies in stasis while their minds lived on in the local Dataspace environments.
Contact with the Home Fleets would come once a year, and should this contact be missed, the Seedships' missions would be activated. The Tliels would be woken from their 'dreamscapes'. Their mission then would be to rebuild the legacy of Morningstar in whatever fashion they chose, but the dispersal of the Seedships would hopefully ensure that no enemy would be able to find them all, and totally eradicate Morningstar.
It takes a Harborship nearly a full year to construct each Seedship, but there are currently sufficient Harborships to construct five at a time. The Admiralty has assigned the production schedule, and there are sufficient resources in the stockpiles to complete ten of the proposed twenty Seedships. In the closing months of Morningstar's tenth year, five Seedships are nearing completion, and another five have begun construction.
Even in the face of death, Morningstar will be resurrected from the ashes, a Pheonix among the stars...