Homeworld - Plot

Plot

For thousands of years, the Kushan survived on the arid planet Kharak, corralled into the temperate geographical poles by a vast hot desert. Scarcity of arable land and natural resources had colored Kushan history with near constant warfare between the many clans. One day however, everything changed: a satellite detected a huge spaceship under the sands of the Great Desert. It carried advanced spaceflight technologies. More importantly, a stone with a galactic map bearing two coordinates was found: One, located at the outer rim of the galaxy, was Kharak. The other, located near the center, bore a name so ancient it was common across all their languages and dialects: Hiigara.

The discovery united the people of Kharak. They worked for nearly a century on building the "Mothership", a vast ship that would bear 600,000 of them to their destination. Technologies that never existed before were developed. Central to the Mothership was Karan S'jet, the scientist who integrated the Mothership's control system into her own nervous system. She became the core of the Mothership and was known as Fleet Command.

The maiden voyage of the Mothership turned into a tragedy: As scheduled, the Mothership performed its first hyperspace jump, disappearing from its location near planet Kharak and appearing outside the Kharak solar system where it expected an engineering crew on board a support ship, the Khar-Selim. Instead, it found a hostile alien fleet known as the "Turanic raiders", which had destroyed the Khar-Selim. The Kushan managed to defeat the raiders and return to Kharak, only to find it in flames. Those left on Kharak were all dead. The chosen 600,000 were all that had survived.

The Kushan began their journey with an act of revenge on the fleet that had destroyed Kharak. Having captured an enemy frigate, they learned that their enemy, the Taiidan, were rulers of a tyrannical interstellar empire. The Taiidan Emperor had ordered the destruction of Kharak merely because the Kushan's development of a faster-than-light drive was a violation of a treaty signed four thousand years before – a time that predated Kharak's known history. The ships that had destroyed the Khar-Selim and attacked the Mothership, were mercenaries in the service of the Taiidan Empire.

The Kushan become aware of huge Taiidan outposts along their way and set out to circumvent them. Their course took them through many hazards: A dangerous asteroid field, a turbulent nebula in which a huge fleet of zealous adversaries lay in ambush and a mysterious ship that took possession of whatever capital ship that approached it. Occasionally, they were visited by the Bentusi, a benevolent race of space traders who sold them advanced military technology. The Bentusi promised to summon the Galactic Council and help establish the Kushan claim to Hiigara.

The Emperor saw the Bentusi as a serious threat and ordered their destruction. He would have succeeded, had it not been for the Kushan fleet that arrived in time to rescue the Bentusi mothership. In return, the Bentusi told the Kushan about how their ancestors were exiled to Kharak four thousand years ago and how their return was prophesied.

The Kushan later gave sanctuary to a defecting Taiidan rebel, Captain Elson of the destroyer Kapella, who rallied others to his cause. With the help of Captain Elson and his rebellion, they penetrated the Hiigaran system blockade and engaged the massive Taiidan fleet, commanded by the Emperor himself, in one last epic battle. The Emperor mysteriously lashed out at Karan and put her into a coma, leaving the Mothership paralyzed. But despite the loss of their Fleet Command, and the superior numbers and strategies of the Taiidan fleet, the Kushan managed to destroy the Emperor and emerge victorious. The Galactic Council arrived shortly thereafter and approved the Kushan's claim to Hiigara, which turned out to be a beautiful lush world. Karan S'jet, who awakened from her coma after the Emperor's death, survived the extraction from the Mothership, and was the last person to set foot on Hiigara.