Suboptimal

Out on the twilight colony of Argilla, a single encrypted burst fractures the dawn: the alien Teegari have razed Humara, twelve light-years away. The Alliance answers with one asset—the heavy-missile leviathan AAS Curie, hastily refit as both warship and ark. Cruising at 0.08 c, the voyage will last 155 years; those who ignite the engines today will be folklore when the guns finally speak. Curie is a flying contradiction: rail-gun magazines share bulkheads with orchards, VR war rooms echo beside classrooms, and embryos sleep in cryovaults next to torpedoes. A salt-water nuclear rocket will burn five relentless months at 1 g, then the ship will drift through a century of star-cold silence while generations are born, age, and train for a battle they did not start. Will steel, soil, and spirit survive cosmic dust, equipment fatigue, and creeping cabin politics? Will the Teegari even remember their first strike when humanity arrives?