Jack of Harts

The Branan targeted the closest of Betelgeuse’s companion stars with their first interstellar, slower than light, rocket propelled colonization craft. It took decades to cross the relatively tiny interstellar gulf in sleeper ships carrying a few thousand individuals, but their crews found that interstellar space was far safer to navigate than that found in the depths of the Betelgeuse system. More colonization ships took to space in the decades and centuries that followed, until every major and minor rock in all six of Betelgeuse’s systems was colonized. More sleeper ships followed, filled with immigrants who wanted to live a new life under new stars, and their colonies thrived as time marched on. The total population of the dozens of small worlds, scores of moons, and untold numbers of asteroids in the Betelgeuse systems numbered approximately one trillion souls when we finally made Contact. That was more than every human being alive on every one of our 23rd Century Core Worlds combined.