Prologue: Immersion Tank

Ta'ani was by no means an aquaticist, but she still felt that the immersion tank time slots were far too short, especially with how long it took to fill and empty again.
Not that any aquaticists would deem a stint on a space station a worthy pursuit, considering all the water-adverse technology required for space travel. The more extreme of them, in their closed-off communities in the ocean shallows, even refused fire, after all, and how would anyone get to space without that?
The water drained with a gurgling noise, tank spinning to help it find the drain in zero gravity. This part tended to make her a bit dizzy, so she closed her eyes for a few seconds. She drew a breath of air to fill her gill-lungs and blew any remaining water out through her gill slits as she breathed out through them. A quiet click signaled the end of the cycle. Ta'ani steadied herself against the tank walls with both arms to stop any remaining spin and opened her eyes again. As usual, a few wisps of water still clung to the nooks of the tank's interior structure, but nothing she'd have to take care of. The tank lid swung open smoothly.
Ta'ani maneuvered herself out of the tank and drifted lazily towards where her spongesuit floated, crumpled as she'd left it. She caught herself on the handle between the towel case and the return chute, which she wouldn't be using. She didn't quite see why some people insisted on drying themselves off after the immersion tank, getting rid of all that moisture, before then getting into a spongesuit to get moisture back on the skin. It was hard enough to keep skin from drying out in the space station air without drying it out by hand.
All it took was a bit of care when getting back into the suit and there would be no splashes into any sensitive electronics, at least not more than would happen when toweling off. And the immersion tank compartment was designed to be resistant to any errant splashes anyway. She slipped smoothly into the suit, making sure it was still evenly saturated with water. She didn't have add any this time, but her face towel in the pocket of the suit was a bit dry, so she reached back into the tank and soaked up some of the lingering water with it.
The door opened to the busy lounge area, and the next user of the immersion tank already waiting impatiently enough rush past her as she was only halfway out the door and close it behind her immediately. She paused to have a look through the windows in what a few seconds ago she'd thought of as the floor. Javico was a blue crescent streaked with white, beautiful as ever. A slight pang of homesickness hit her then, as it tended to when she set her eyes upon this sight, but she would at least visit for a while soon. Ozhi was carrying their first child, and as much as she cared about the project, she wasn't going to miss the birth.
She turned around, heading towards the office section, long strokes of the enlarged flukes on her suit propelling her forward gracefully.
The new observer was a stocky man with mottled yellow and green skin. He clearly hadn't adjusted to the dry air yet, dabbing his face and hands with a wet towel almost constantly. His office, as far as the tiny compartment could be called that, was empty except for a few yet to be unpacked soft crates.
"Mai-Faro Ta'ani? No middle name?" he asked, reading from documents pinned to the wall by magnets.
"I've been lucky," she replied.
The overseer nodded. "Shaizho Ci-Ha-Da Zosai. I'll spare you the details for now, maybe at the next ceremony here on the station. If you are a believer, I wouldn't presume of course.
"To get to the point, I don't want to be keeping you here long. Just a quick introduction, face to face, before you get on with your work as usual. My predecessor has been very positive about your work. The..."
"The spacetime metric manipulation experiment," Ta'ani completed.
"I was going to use the more colloquial name. The Faro drive, isn't that what they're calling it?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "As of yet, it is incapable of driving anything, and doing so will require a completely new experiment setup. Also, I can't take credit with the ground work having been laid over years and years by people like professor Jira of..."
"Be that as it may," Shaizho waved her off, "You're doing excellent work. I hope I'll be able to observe some of your experiments up close over the coming days. And the end results over the coming years."
Ta'ani forced herself to relax and let it go. "Thank you, sir. We'll be doing our best."
With a wave of the hand, she was dismissed.
The new overseer seemed nice enough, far better than the religious zealot that had thrown all the obstacles she could think of in her path when she was first starting up her experiments on the station.
On the way to the launch bay to inspect the probe—not something she was required to do, but she liked having an eye on things—one of her research assistants stopped her.
"Tani-Faro, good thing I found you. We've been getting some odd readings on the sensors while checking the probe for today's experiments, and we were hoping you'd have a look at it."
Following after the assistant hurrying back towards the launch bay, Ta'ani dragged herself hand over hand along the walls of the station. Worry welled up in her. Issues with the experiment just as the new overseer arrived could spell disaster, and in the worst case...
"What sensors are causing the issue?" She asked, hoping to dispell her fears.
"The microinterferometers are all reading as if the drive was running, but there's no power draw or anything indicating that it actually is."
Ta'ani stopped in her tracks. In all the nightmare scenarios she'd rapidly conjured up, none fit that description. This would mean multiple sensors failing in very specific ways simultaneously, or the drive drawing on unknown physics principles to power itself, or...
A bright flash through the window confirmed the third scenario. As everyone turned, they saw a searing blue streak race away from the planet towards the night. It matched the models of how a faster-than light ship using the technology they were working on so beautifully that Ta'ani would have been moved, if not for the abject horror at its presence. Someone else had perfected the drive before them, and they were here now. And as more flashes announced the arrival of further ships, it became abundantly clear that they had not come in peace.
The station shook and groaned in the gravitational waves as another ship decelerated into orbit close by. It was an enormous hulk, clearly constructed in orbit. Portholes studded the middle section like pores, while the front section bulged out to provide the proper surface geometry for the warp drive and the back seemed to house enormous rocket engines. Turrets also ran along the entire length in several lines. This was a warship. This was an invasion force.
Missiles silently, almost ponderously relative to the enormous distances in space, lifted out of hatches in the side of the behemoth, and Ta'ani knew then that she would never get to meet her son.