Dreams of Something More had been trained as a diplomat since she had been in early schooling. She had a natural aptitude for understanding Terrans, understanding their political philosophies, and most of all, understanding their motto of: To Secure Peace One Must Prepare for War.

It was a strange paradox, but Dreams understood it in a way that many other species did not. With the Great Filter of More than One Hive having devestated her people for millions of years, she could understand how humans felt that the only way they could obtain and keep peace was to be the most heavily armed species in the galaxy.

To the Terrans every battleship, ever warborg, every suit of power armor, every rifle, was an investment in protecting the peace they so greatly desired.

Dreams knew that Terrans would prefer to be left alone. Realspace Wargaming kept those who were naturally aggressive occupied competing against those who wanted to have vast inter-system and interplanetary wars. Exploration kept those who wanted to push the boundaries occupied. Enhanced Virtual Reality could provide the necessary stimulus for those who wanted other things that might infringe on the rights and desires of others. Left alone, the Terrans would just, to use their phrasing, dick around and have fun.

She also understand that Terrans were, in a strange way, lonely. They had strong pack bonding to the point that Dreams had seen a lonely Terrans pack bond with maintenance robot to the point of naming it and giving it supposed motives and emotions.

That was why they had come up with Artificial Intelligence, enhance Virtual Intelligences, designer creatures, uplifting creatures from their own world and others.

Then you had the fact that Terrans liked to experience other cultures. They devoured, adopted, and took from other cultures and societies, not because they disliked other civilizations and thought they could do it better, but because they felt like adopting parts of other cultures enhanced their owns and let them understand the other cultures better.

The Treana'ad did the same as did the Mantid.

After all, she was sitting in an eVR construct of a glade in the Olympic National Rain Forest, wearing a denim jacket with fleece lining on her thorax, an abdomen covering done with the Warrior People of the Plains designs, and a jaunty hat.

While she examined Vuknaraan history, culture, and society. She ignored anything longer than a thousand years ago, preferring to study their recent culture.

It was largely placid. The birth rate was roughly 1.7, the doubling time for their species was in the negatives and had been slowly diminishing. Dreams checked older news source archives, looking for certain keywords that explorers had found in the news archives of extinct races.

Happiness Gene Discovered. Yup, just over a million years ago.

Criminal Gene Found! Yup, thirty million years ago.

Is Intelligence a Factor in Depression? Yup, fifty million years ago.

One by one Dreams was able to check off each of the points that every extinct race had hit. Genetic alteration to maintain happiness and contentment, right down to supposed scientists claiming that too much happiness would lead to depression.

The Vuknaraa had slowly become a stagnant society. For millions of years they had done little more than exist on the edges of Lanaktallan Space, the Vuknaraan territory encompassing a 250 light year bubble tacked onto Lanaktallan Space, almost like a cushion, but the space had slowly shrunk over the last 20 million years. The species bordering Vuknaraan Space had all been accepted into the Near-Civilized races over the last few million years and their territory had expanded into the Vuknaraan Space as under-population had led to a retraction of Vuknaraan society.

Dreams could see where it was going. The Vuknaraan were 'exhausted', culturally and as a species, and the Lanaktallan were replacing them with a newer, more vigorous species to protect the Lanaktallan borders.

Dreams wondered how many species over the last hundred million years had gotten the same treatment.

She sighed and leaned back slightly, watching Mr. Rings slowly stalk a Pacific Northwest Furry Snail.

It made sense if you held the basic premise that the Lanaktallan were the only thing worthy of existing in the universe. That all the other species needed adjusted to act as little more than a buffer and a mobile resource extraction unit for the Lanaktallan to enjoy safety and quality of life.

Something about the whole thing bothered Dreams on a basic level.

Sighing, she summoned up images of the various races, staring at them for a long time, then bringing up the Great Agitator.

The Lanaktallan should not have even been in the running for any kind of dominance. Four arms, four legs, long lower body, large torso, big head. Crests around the back of the neck, back the head, down the spine, on the abdomen, all obviously placed to keep any predator bites from penetrating vital areas. Tendrils on the mouth, flat chewing teeth, six eyes to watch in a complete circle. Three hearts, five stomachs, two sets of lungs, two livers, four kidneys. A large circulatory and nervous system.

There were just too many parts to make sense.

When it came to open warfare, they were slightly more massive than Terrans, but they weren't as dense or compact. They weren't particularly maneuverable, they required special chairs for vehicles and relaxation. They required more resources for armor. They had a low anxiety threshhold.

They beat you,Dreams thought to herself. They burned the hyperatomic plane. You built Electronic Warfare Intelligence Machines, they matched you. They beat you and the question is... how?

She sat back, studying the Lanaktallan. They were vulnerable to psionics, they needed 22% Oxygen, more than 19% nitrogen was hazardous to them, more than 23% carbon dioxide was a problem for them. They weren't built to handle any gravity more than 1G Terran. They could swim, but that didn't really matter that much.

The only thing she could reach for was the fact that their life expectancy was between four and five hundred years.

She slowly sharpened one bladearm between her mandibles, staring at the image of the Lanaktallan.

If only the Overqueens hadn't let the More than One Hive problem lead to our history being destroyed so often. If only we knew what they were really like back then, then maybe it would make sense, she thought, staring at the image.

She knew it shouldn't bother her. She should be able to set it aside, but she couldn't.

She hated puzzles with missing pieces, she hated missing datapoints, and she hated it when there was no way to even determine what the missing pieces might relate to.

Staring at the hologram of the Lanaktallan Dreams kept sharpening her bladearms, her hand reaching down and picking up her donorcycle chain and swinging it back and forth as she thought. There was suggestions that the Lanaktallan might have adjusted their genome, but she couldn't see how, even with adjustments, that the Lanaktallan could have slowly but surely come to dominate the entire sector of the galaxy, the entire bottom of the Orion Stub.

One thing she knew, without a doubt, was that the Lanaktallans had, over a hundred million years of steady, solid resource consumption, had virtually denuded thousands of systems of everything from the asteroid belts to the gas giants to even the Oort Cloud.

Frowning, Dreams considered just how much the Lanaktallan society needed to function. They needed agriculture and industry, but not on the level that the Terrans both consumed and created resources. The odd thing was, to Dreams, it looked like the Lanaktallan had managed to achieve some kind of perceived homeostasis and then had never bothered to advance it at all.

Humming to herself she looked up, watching Mr. Rings swing through the trees from branch to branch. She could feel his happiness and contentment as he pulled himself up on a branch and began to slowly moved toward one of the Pacific Northwest Wooly Snails that was sitting there eating moss.

She wished she could figure out a way to reconcile the Lanaktallan she had seen with the Lanaktallan that had forced her people to flee to the far end of the Orion Stub.

Looking over the eVR her eyes stopped on the stream.

Pebbles, the cracked granite that made up the small stream bed, the water that was crystal clear and ice cold that had run down from the glaciers...

...the glaciers.

Curious, she brought up the timelapse of the estimated effects of the glaciers on the Pacific Northwest and watched them. Pushing down from the Arctic Circle, pushing the dirt and boulders ahead of them all the way down the continent. Then withdrawing, leaving behind dirt and boulders after completely remodeling the landscape.

That's how they do it, she thought, slowly scraping the bladearm through her mandibles. Slow, steady, just a relentless advance then they slowly pulled back.

Bringing up the Lanaktallan vital statistics she took a good look at their birth/date rate, life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and all the other factors.

Their population doubled every eighteen thousand years.

The statistics from the medical databank showed that a Lanaktallan female could give birth once every three years. She looked at the hologram of the female Lanaktallan carefully. No udders. She nibbled on the tip of her bladearm and considered the female. No mammary glands on the upper torso, no udder structure on the lower abdomen. Children were fed through mechanical means.

Looking at the hologram she wondered just how far they had modified their genome.

She knew it was next to worthless but she brought up Terran bovine stats. A heifer could have eight easily, some as many as 20 over their lifetime.

A Lanaktallan female normally had between six and twelve over a five century lifespan. They were paired up by a computer system and either six to twelve years of breeding or six children to exempt them from their breeding requirements.

Dreams brought up a tray of treats and began nibbling at the synthetic food.

Prey often use breeding as a defense mechanism. The first thing they would do to reduce resource consumption is to lower the birth rate. If it's artificially lowered maybe what my people, and what other races soon afterwards, faced was just endless waves of Lanaktallan. They show little to no concern for others of their species, another herd trait where individuals didn't matter compared to the herd, she thought. Even the warriors would get tired. Endless waves of Lanaktallan with body armor, neural weapons, steadily advancing.

Their tanks and aerospace fighters were build strangely due to Lanaktallan body design, requiring three pilots for aerospace and six for armored vehicles.

They haven't been challenged in a hundred million years. The Terrans haven't been really challenged since they managed to start cheaply and easily colonize other planets,Dreams thought to herself. Unlike the saying, the Terrans aren't the immovable object. The Lanaktallans are both the irresistable force and the immoveable object.

Bringing up what she could access on her secure terminal she called in 117 and Speaks, changing the parameters of the simulations to examine multiple scenarios.

117 arrived first, flashing icons of curiosity. When Dreams had explained her scenarios and how she needed his help he flashed icons of eagerness. Speaks just nodded slowly and sat down, applying his knowledge and practiced eye.

Dreams knew she was banking on 117's years as a Terran Marine Combat Engineering Technician. He made adjustments that Dreams would have never thought of, moving the Terran military to full swappable loadouts. She kept trying to get 117 to change several parameters until Speaksthe Words We Fear reached out with a bladearm and pushed Dreams hand down from where she was pointing out that 117 had added a chaos generator seed that made the Terran commanders slightly intoxicated.

"This kind of simulation is how people end up losing wars," Speaks said quietly. "Let 117 do his work."

Dreams sighed and leaned back, looking up and watching Mr. Rings swing back and forth on the branches.

--you won't like this is ugly ugly ugly shows Terrans how they are in battle take sedatives before start the sim-- 117 flashed.

Neither of the other two Mantids argued, just tabbed up anti-anxiety tabs and took them.

--ok computer run no Terran strings just numbers numbers numbers-- 117 flashed.

The scenario assumed unlimited Lanaktallan reinforcements and no reinforcements for the Terrans with the Terrans making a forced landing onto the planet.

It took less than 100 simulated days before every last Lanaktalln icon on the planet vanished.

No matter how Dreams suggested the simulation be changed, the Terrans won every time in two years or less.

--ugly ugly sim next very ugly ugly-- 117 said after the last of Dreams simulations went through.

This time the Terrans took horrendous casualties, often attacking each other, with supply dumps being ignored as groups of Terrans roamed the countryside. The Lanaktallan won, but after several years. Time after time the Terrans lost after several years, with an additional part showing Terran worlds going black.

"What was that?" Dreams asked.

Speaks leaned forward slightly. "Bioweapons. Diseases and genetic alteration. It's assuming that the Lanaktallan crack the human genome far enough to figure out how to weaponize it against the Terrans without the Terrans being able to counter it and strike back."

Dreams sighed. "Now run what happens if that causes the Terrans to go MAD."

117 flashed a few icons.

"No, not angry, their theory of Mutually Assured Destruction," Speaks said quietly. "With both sides using planet crackers and other forbidden weapons. Factor in Terran aggressiveness and lack of concern with preserving resources."

117 made some adjustments to the programming.

"Now add all the Confederacy backing them, including us," Speaks added.

117 made a few more adjustments then leaned back, flashing icons of pleasure. He moved the view from a single continental battlefield to show the entire Orion Army Stub.

Stars vanished with little flashes, other ones went dark, still others were marked "Life Extinct" as it slowly spread out.

At the end of it, the entire Cygnus-Orion Arm Spur was nothing more than scattered pockets of stars here and there that all had life extinction tags on them.

Millions of stars.

Just gone.

With a flourish 117 stepped back, flashing pleased icons.

For once, Speaks was speechless.