Taelon Mothership
The Taelon Mothership is a type of starship that features in Earth: Final Conflict.
Contents |
History
Early events
The mothership was created at unknown point in the past and was a product of Taelon engineering. "She" was tasked with caring for not only the Taelon crew onboard but the unborn embryo's of the Companion's offspring. As such, the starship was created with the intention of serving as an ark with its mission being to rescue the Taelon species from extinction. Her mission directive included the objective to arrive around the planet Earth in order to make peaceful contact with the native humans. Upon its construction, the mothership was to preserve the Taelon race when they entered into death stasis. If that time came, the vessel was to remain above the Earth until humanity had evolved into an advanced species with the drive and innovation needed to solve the Taelons core energy crisis. Thus, the mothership was to preserve the race until that time came though despite this being the case; its objective was compromised when elements amongst the Taelons sought to dominate the human race instead. (Episode: Phantom Companion)
Its existence remained a closely guarded secret from the inhabitants of Earth and remained outside visual range by being located behind the moon. There it remained in orbit around a Companion base that was being assembled there. The existence of the Taelon Mothership came to the attention of the Liberation movement when rogue IASA pilot Paul Chandler stole a Taelon shuttle and used it to travel to Mars. (Episode: Horizon Zero) Later, when Companion technology on Earth began to be effected planetwide by a computer virus, the Taelons dispatched their mothership from its position above the Moon to the Human homeworld. Once there, it arrived at the North American embassy where it used an energy beam to purge the effected systems from the central processor. After which, the mothership engaged its interdimensional drives and returned back to its original position. The event highlighted the advanced capabilities the Taelons had to the Human race and left many in awe as well as terror at the potential of the Companions using their starship against mankind. (Episode: Wrath of Achilles)
Later, when Lazarus turned against Zo'or, he had one of the test subjects for the warrior implants released in order to sabotage the mothership. The individual was a Russian scientist who was part of a research team to enhance the effectiveness of virtual glass technology. Gaining access to a computer terminal, he managed to destabilize the virtual glass matrix leading to numerous failures across the mothership where its virtual glass skin ruptured and closed. This led to chaos as numerous crew men were thrown into space due to the cascade. (Episode: Moonscape)
When Joyce Belman was transformed into a near god-like being with great psychic power, she decided to purge the Earth of both Taelon and Human life. To do this, she used her mental abilities alone to send the mothership into a crash course to the planets surface. The rupture of the ships interdimensional drives would have scattered the planet into several different dimensions thus devastating its surface as well as bringing about the extinction of the two races. The ships conventional drives were insufficient for the task but Lili Marquette was able to activate the vessels interdimensional drives allowing it to enter FTL before it crashed. This allowed them to escape destruction and return back in orbit around the Earth. (Episode: Between Heaven and Hell)
In an effort to improve their public image, the Taelons allowed for Human journalist Abby Franklin to come to the Mothership and show a positive light to the Companions. However, during this time, the mothership was hijacked by a Jaridian Replicant who had been masquerading as a Human crew member. Taking over the navigational control of the ship, it intended to take it to its creators - the Jaridians in order for them to steal interdimensional drive technology from the Taelons. In order to prevent the ship from falling into enemy hands, Da'an ordered the ID engine to be jettisoned and destroyed but this did not stop the ships travel through interdimensional space. (Episode: Hijacked) Later, when the Taelons orchestrated a world wide crackdown on the Liberation movement, a desperate Lily Marquette intended to overload the motherships engines in order to destroy it. She managed to create a chain reaction in the fusion drives but was stopped by Volunteers who ended her attempts at sabotage. (Episode: Crackdown)
Final Conflict
At some point six months ago, the mothership was responsible for saving the life of Companion Protector Jack Malley and "annointed" him as her defender as well as to return the Taelons back to their mission. The former lieutenant would live a shadow existence deep within the bowels of the mothership where his existence was unknown to anyone. (Episode: Phantom Companion) It's eventually revealed that the Mothership was infact shrinking in it's form as the Taelon's have begun to shut off section's of the vessel in order to reclaim their energy for their conservation efforts. (Episode: Limbo) When a Jaridian battle fleet was seen to heading to Earth, the Synod decided to abandon the planet with all Taelons escaping to the mothership. Zo'or intended for the Jaridians blood lust to destroy the Earth in an act of vengeance thus giving the mothership time to flee through a wormhole at Sirius B where they would manage to evade their pursuers. However, they uncovered the truth that the Jaridian battle fleet was an illusion and the mothership returned to its orbit around Earth. (Episode: The Second Wave) Shortly afterwards, the vessel began to suffer from a number of errors and malfunctions when the mothership began resisting the commands of the Taelons. It was eventually learnt that Lieutenant Malley was responsible for these actions which ended when he was involved in the accidental death of a Taelon embryo. Enraged, the mothership terminated his existence thus ending his control over the vessel. (Episode: Phantom Companion)
Sometime later, an asteroid composed of dark matter struck the mothership and froze decks 111 to 153 which were completely sealed as a result. Furthermore, all Companions onboard the vessel were frozen as their energy based bodies were dampened to the point that it was not flowing. Scans indicated at the time that the ship contained 43 Taelons, 220 Humans and 600 Drones. If the dark matter was not removed in time, it was expected to kill the ship. In the mean time, Ronald Sandoval remained in charge of the mothership whilst the Taelons were inactive and he decided to revolt against his masters and exterminate the ships. His intentions were to execute each paralysed Taelon, pillage the ship of useful technology and send it on a course to the Jaridian homeworld. (Episode: Dark Matter) When agent Sandoval attempted to defect to the Atlantic National Alliance, Zo'or threatened to destroy Washington through the use of the motherships weaponry. (Episode: Atonement) Following this event, the Taelons managed to successfully integrated Jaridian weaponry onto the mothership to prepare it for conflict with their ancient foes. In order to combat this threat, the ANA launched a sabotage attempt of the weapon pod which led to the saboteur being caught by the Taelons. In anger, Synod leader Zo'or banished all humans from the mothership. During this time, the sheer number of Taelons that had surrendered to stasis meant that the Volunteer corps were essential in the manning of the vessel. (Episode: Hearts and Minds)
When six Taelons were killed by Companion Protectors, Zo'or used the attacks as an excuse to create anger amongst his people and was authorized by the Synod to annihilate Earth. However, the core energy depletion meant that Zo'or reversed this decision when help was needed to combat threats to the Taelons. A Jaridian probe after reprogramming Ronald Sandoval caused him to take over the ship and allow a Jaridian strike team led by Vorjak onboard. There, the ship was sent through ID space to Jaridia where the Taelons were to stand trial and be executed. However, the actions of Liam Kincaid, Renee Palmer and a freed Ronald Sandoval managed to escape the Jaridian plot and return the mothership back to Earth. (Episode: Dark Horizon) In its weakened state, the Atlantic National Alliance decided to remove all Taelon presence from Earth and decided to destroy the mothership. Thus, they launched nuclear based ICBM warheads at the mothership which struck its hull though the vessel survived. Unknown to anyone, the Taelons had left the ship in order to travel to an Atavan regeneration chamber in Southern Asia to save their species. Thus, the ship only contained a Jaridian boarding party who were assisted by Ronald Sandoval. As the warheads struck the ship, Sandoval was critically wounded and the Jaridians abandoned him to travel to Earth in order to confront the Taelons. However, it was decided for the six Jaridians to merge with the six Taelons in order to save both their species from their impending extinction. (Episode: Point of No Return)
New Masters
Following the apparent demise of the Taelons, the United States launched a space shuttle in order to board the Taelon mothersip and claim its advanced technology before any other nation on the Earth. However, as the shuttle was beginning docking operations, the mothership fired under the direction of the wounded Ronald Sandoval and destroyed the shuttle thus preventing anyone from boarding it. Sandoval used the mothership to observe Renee Palmer's attempts at rescuing Liam Kincaid from the Atavan regeneration chamber and learnt that the Atavus had been restored. Seeing a potential ally to bargain with, Ronald Sandoval used the motherships tractor beam to pull the regeneration chamber complex from its resting place on the ocean floor and transport it to the Taelon vessel in order to form an alliance with the Atavus. (Episode: Unearthed) At this point, the mothership was slowly dying as a result of lack of energy. (Episode: Pariah)
In an effort to bring humanity to its knees, Howlyn, the leader of the Atavus, attempted to learn of the failures of the Taelons and Jaridians. Through Ronald Sandoval, he learnt of the story about Jack Malley - the Companion Protector that had bonded with the Taelon mothership through his CVI. As Howlyn was denied access to the motherships weapons array, he decided to circumvent that directive. Using Sandoval, he uncovered Malley's CVI and implanted it within his own brain whereupon the mothership recognised Howlyn as Taelon Synod member Le'or. Turning the weapons sytem on Earth, he intended to level the planet and bring about the Atavus rule. However, before he could fire, Ra'jel had the mothership conduct an energy anatomy scan on Howlyn leading to the living vessel in recognising that Le'or was deceased and that there had been an attempt at manipulating the controls. Thus, it deactivated the weapons and returned to stand-by mode. (Episode: Art of War)
Howlyn later managed to circumvent the controls of the Taelon Mothership by using Zo'or who was now an Atavus. Initially, the ship did not recognise her authority as it detected presence of Atavan DNA but Zo'or managed to prove that her intellect was still Taelon which led to the vessel yielding command to her. However, before the motherships weaponry could be turned against Earth, a strike team of Human soldiers sent by Renee Palmer succeeded in destroying the weapons array. (Episode: Honor and Duty)
Background
The mothership was a organically generated lifeform created by the Taelons and thus had the capacity to regenerate itself. (Episode: Crackdown) It was composed entirely of living Taelon bio-slurry which regenerated any damage to its hull as well as expelled any toxins from its "body". However, strikes from dark matter left these portions of the ship inert. (Episode: Dark Matter) Being a living construct, the Taelons often referred to the mothership as a "she" and was involved in a perpetual state of evolution. "She" was programmed to think for herself but so long as she complied with the mission protocol. Supposedly, the mission objective called for Taelon-Human cooperation and not domination. (Episode: Phantom Companion) When deep stasis was to occur, the mothership was programmed to travel to the Horsehead Nebula and wait until humanity contacted it with the means of saving the Taelons. Its final act was to send a code in an embedded transmission which mankind was supposed to decode as a test of their evolved state to solve the core energy crisis. Once that was done, the ship was to enter into energy conservation mode until it detected an answer to the code it had sent or the active presence of a Taelon. If the latter of the two was done, then the mothership required a command authorization code within a two minute timeframe otherwise it resumed its conservation state. (Episode: Dark Matter)
These vessels possessed their own fusion generators that helped power the ship and it was these devices that were capable of being sabotaged in order to create an overload that had the potential of destroying the vessel. However, the Companions had created a means of excising this problem by redirecting the energy flow outside the ship. The loss of any generator meant that the mothership had to resort to continue to use auxilliary power systems to continue to function. (Episode: Crackdown) The Taelons also made use of a high level of redundancy in terms of fail safes with such six systems being present on the mothership to prevent any serious harm to its occupants. (Episode: Apparition) The vessel was made of living energy with some elements of core energy present. Thus, it was possible for the vessel to shrink in size as decks were shut down and core energy was reclaimed from those sections. Great amounts of core energy was located within the engineering section. (Episode: Limbo)
The outer hull of the mothership consisted of Virtual Glass; a near impenetrable substance developed by the Taelons. Through a complex Virtual Glass Matrix, the external shell was maintained but the altering of the formula was capable of causing an unstable process to occur where the glass ruptured and closed at random locations until the problem was fixed. (Episode: Moonscape) The internal structure also contained sealed rooms that only opened with a wave of the hand which dissolved the membrane and reformed once an individual entered the chamber. (Episode: Abduction) On command, this skin was able to expand and forcibly "absorb" individuals by use of tissue seams and deposit them into other chambers. Such a technique was accomplished by a "magnetic energy apparition". The walls of the mothership served as "eyes" allowing for all activity within it to be observed and it was also able to generate forcefields in select locations. (Episode: Phantom Companion) They are massive vessels that can be seen from orbit and maintained at least 153 deck's. (Episode: Dark Matter)
Armaments for this class of vessel were largely unknown. However, it was capable of firing energy blasts on a planetary environment that were perfectly able of inducing powerful tidal waves that had the potential of destroying entire islands within a ten minute timeframe. Such an act was accomplished without even alerting native primitive races. (Episode: Abduction) Another weapon system were pulsar cannons which were red beam blasts that were easily able to destroy small shuttle craft. (Episode: Street Chase) It also possessed internal defenses that when a subject was read as an enemy within the ship, the mothership initiated actions to purge the intruder as if it were a virus. This led to energy blasts being emitted designed to kill the intruder. (Episode: Phantom Companion) The vessels cyber anti-bodies were used to resist any forceful attempts at taking any restricted data. (Episode: Trapped by Time) It was stated that the starship possessed enough firepower to pulverise a planet such as Earth. (Episode: Keys to the Kingdom) Proton missiles were another form of weaponry available within the motherships arsenal. (Episode: Atonement) In the final days before their end, the Taelons managed to integrate Jaridian weaponry onto the mothership thus giving it the capacity to fight their ancient foes on equal terms. Such weapons provided the vessel the capacity to annihilate an entire planet in the blink of an eye through the use of particle weaponry. (Episode: Hearts and Minds) The ship possessed a tractor beam allowing it to latch onto ground based targets and pull them up to the mothership. (Episode: Unearthed)
Control elements on the mothership such as the bridge were located on the command deck. (Episode: Second Wave) Another crucial location was the Ops Deck. Whilst mostly automated, it was possible to turn the ship to manual control. (Episode: Phantom Companion) Typically, only the leader of the Synod was capable of complete control of the ship but it was possible for Jaridian Replicants to reprogram the navigational control of the vessel and take it over. Under the orders of the Synod, it was also possible to jettison the ID engine core which was typically only done in the gravest of circumstances; such as preventing its capture by the Jaridians. In such circumstances, the mothership relied on its conventional drives for movement. (Episode: Hijacked) A number of thrusters were present throughout the ship in order to stabilize its descent. (Episode: Phantom Companion) The ship also possessed a number of security cameras secreted across the vessel allowing records to be taken of any unauthorised actions. (Episode: Hijacked) The ships sensors were sophisticated enough to keep its crew aware of most activities occuring on a planetary surface. (Episode: Pariah)
One of the most important locations on the mothership was a location sometimes known as the Womb. It was in this location where Taelon embryos were kept in a partially living state. The programming of the mothership meant that it considered these Taelon children as "her" own and the vessel aggressively sought to protect them. Due to the importance of the chamber, the womb was the most secured deck on the starship. Whilst monitoring their development, the mothership prevented the embryos from growing to adulthood until the Taelons had found a means at solving their core energy crisis. As such, the embryos were kept locked in this state permanently until such a time arose. When the time came, the core energy would be used to infuse the offspring and allow them to grow to adulthood. (Episode: Phantom Companion)
The ships possessed a number of cryogenics laboratories that were tied to a separate power grid on the ship allowing them to function even if their was a power loss. (Episode: Gauntlet) Such laboratories were designed with the capacity to study deadly diseases with the appropriate isolation as well as containment tools and other such means for analysing viruses. (Episode: Sanctuary) The mothership in addition possessed an entire medical wing with the capacity to treat Taelons. (Episode: Abduction) This location contained its own specimen portal that was a restricted portal with special authority required to access it. (Episode: Dark Horizon) There existed a hidden chamber within the ship that was the location of the stasis wing where Taelons entered into a hibernative state that was designed to preserve them whilst they waited for the renewal of their core energy supplies. These Companions were left lying down on beds and stacked in a domino style fashion. This part of the mothership was sacrosanct and forbidden to outsiders as it showed the Taelons at their most vulnerable. (Episode: Limbo) The deck was able to hold hundreds of Taelons within a state of stasis and preserve their lives until they were revived. (Episode: Dark Matter) An important aspect of the design was the stasis control module that contained the secrets of deep stasis technology. (Episode: Trapped by Time) Deck 9 was a high security area that was inaccessible to humans and contained a weapons pod. (Episode: Hearts and Minds)
Certain decks and chambers onboard the mothership were configured to serve as large portals that allowed for the mass transportation of cargo. (Episode: Motherload)
Notes
- It should be noted that the first appearance of the mothership was in "Wrath of Achilles" where it had a different appearance which was more armored though much smaller than its future appearances; this could either suggest a size discrepancy or the fact that as its organic it can change size or that it might be a separate smaller version of the mothership.
Appearances
- Earth: Final Conflict:
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