“It won’t get rid of all of them, but it’ll get rid of a bunch.” Not having a few trillions or quadrillion goblins around would only be helpful, although that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be whole worlds of them left behind breeding up another conquering fleet, in time.

“What do you intend to do about the Federation?” she inquired, while the Strategos doubtless had a few zillion scenarios planned out.

“Wipe anything AL-infiltrated from the genome, and suborn the rest. Maybe after a generation or two when the hate falls down.” I frowned. That meant wiping out two of the races entirely, since their genome was entirely contaminated. If we wanted to bring them back, we’d have to find ancient remains for DNA and reboot the races with Vatted.

But with the AL forcing them into obedience, the Federation was going to crash and burn, being the puppet of the AL as it was.

Them now being on the Warp’s radar meant a lot of the softening up was going to be done for us.

I would have loved to start a counter-movement among the Kappa, overthrowing their Way Masters from below, but the Way Masters would be very quick to sense and quash it, using their absolute control over the other subspecies.

Unless...

Anatolia glanced at me as my jaw hardened. “A new idea?” she asked, without judgement.

“What if we took a page from the book of the drow, and stole a bunch of them?”

She thought that over. “As long as we don’t have ones with AL links, that should be fine. We’ll need some very good genetic scanners mixed with transpionic sensors...”

-DAMMIT MOM!- a few of the Fantastic Ranthas /piped up cheerfully when the request got sent their way. I already had the basic schematics drawn up for them to improve on...

“So we need to infiltrate their worlds, get some of the untainted DNA, find a world to raise some normal and/or Vatted on, and steal huge portions of their population who haven’t been contaminated.” Anatolia worked that over, sending off multiple scenarios to kids and Tens with Talents in practical application of zany schemes. “It is far more merciful than genocide, or outright conquest.”

“With the added happy coincidence that we can fob it off as the work of other species, and not take any blame until it is too late to do anything.” I rolled my eyes. “You remember that Star Trek episode where the Enterprise stunned half a city from orbit with their phasers?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t design weapon tech. You want a planetary bombardment device that can incapacitate, but not kill, massive amounts of civilians? I’ll agree that it would be great for subduing surface populations outside, but there’ll still need to be boots on the ground.”

“To do it full right, we’re going to have to have very effective stunners, at least equal to killing tools.”

Ronnie /popped in, -We’ve got the tech level to do it, and if they are specifically calibrated to a chosen physiology, they should be incredibly effective. The only problem would be armor, and Sun Shots would blow right past that.-

“Meanwhile, they are shooting back with lethal rounds.” Anatolia sighed. “Being the Good Guys can be a total pain in the ass, Mom.”

“Any crew doing this is going to have to be in Power Armor and elites, to minimize casualties. We’re basically saving a whole species. It’s completely against Imperial policy, sure, but that IS what makes us the Good Guys.”

“I concur. I’m going to put this one right in the lap of the Briggs’ to handle. The big duffs totally go into missions of mercy like this, you know, saving species and everything. With Sources behind it, and Nulls in support, it should go off without a twitch.

“I suggest making it known to some of the Voids. I believe the Land is not pro-AL, what with their genocidal tendencies,” Anatolia commented. “I think they would be excellent in determining where to strike.”

“Needlessly complex and unnecessary hoop-jumping to go through,” I wrinkled my nose. “Such a total PITA!”

“We’d have to be Damn Good to pull it off,” Anatolia agreed calmly.

“Oh, Heavens yeah.” I held up my fist, we bopped, and looked back at the Gardeners eating some very big meals. “You know, I bet the Gardeners would help, too. Putting a big thumb in the eye of the AL would be just wonderful. How long you think before we can get a Gardener-usable Sun Gun system up?”

Her eyes flickered. “Hulkamania is putting up its own right now, and the second will be going up around Janus. By the time that work gets done, we’ll probably be able to fine-tune things and make a third set the Gardeners can use. The only planet we’ve got with TL 19 production is Kyovo, our upgrade world, and its currently focused on making the stuff for TL 20 production. Once we start getting that in place and start disseminating it, difficulty goes up, but relative cost goes down...”

“The wonders of high TL.” Everything got quicker, smaller, cheaper, even if it wasn’t that much more effective. “What’s your take on Colby’s pet project there?”

“The Elvar?” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “We have no problem accepting them, of course. As for them being bridges to the Elvar themselves... I am not sure. Certainly the exposure to a bunch of Good souls staves off the Warp’s influence far better than rampant shooting of other species does. Bringing the Elvar on board with the Ruk would be momentous...”

Colby and the hyn had been befriending the Elvar on the hyn’s ‘homeworld’, which had promptly been dubbed The Shire. The Elvar were alternately alarmed at all the little people coming out of nowhere, wary of their excessive speed and competence, and amused by their being so short. The hyn were carefully forgetting their interactions with the shadovar and the drow in the Underweb and seeing about forging a whole new understanding here... and Marks were part of it, carefully isolated from the rest of the Markspace for now.

“Do we have data on the influence?”

“If we don’t,” meaning we didn’t, “I am sure we could get some speedily.” Meaning lots of interested psions were mobilizing on a new intellectual problem with galactic ramifications.

I nodded to nobody in particular. “Ronnie, how’s the breakdown on the Gatherer tech coming?”

-We’re working with Mika’s Line on the reverse engineering,- Mika being the senior Reverse Engineer Talent. -It’s an air/water synthesis tech. If the Elvar existed before the last purge and went bad, this is the kind of shit they’d make.-

Elvar didn’t have evolutionary markers, i.e. extra stuff in their DNA that didn’t have any use. Even though a lot of that stuff had been purged from core Humanity (and then a bunch of other stuff jammed into the empty spots opportunistically), we still had traces. It meant the Elvar were not a ‘natural’ race, they’d been spun whole cloth from... something. By someone. Just who that was didn’t seem to bother them much at all, as their makers were clearly gone from the galaxy.

Air/Water meant a fast and fluidly adaptable tech, like nanites, molmechs, and fluid drone tech. It had its vulnerabilities, but if you weren’t prepared to hit them, robotic forces with corrupted AI were terrifying foes.

I had no doubt the Great DM would have fun making use of them, once it could purge their AI and keep the Warp out of their systems. Merging some Tekron tech into them would be interesting, indeed...

Humans were good on the Water tree, but the Air side would give us problems, being at TL 20 like it was. Getting some Elvar in there would take care of the problem, but in the meantime we’d just have to deal with the -20 check modifier for non-affiliation as we could.

“Planet Eaters are big hulking monstrosities made out of neutronium,” I frowned. They didn’t fit the schema.

-Those things are suborned pre-Ruk tech,- she /sniffed. -Whoever made the Ruk made those things, and they ended up either working with or were taken over by the Gatherer tech. My guess is those things were designed to eat Tekron creche worlds during the last Purge.-

And now they just ate whatever worlds they stumbled across bearing life that was alien to the makers. Freaking AI corruption...

Like the Elvar, the Ruk also had no evolutionary markers. They’d likely also been a subservient, created race to another, greater power, probably acting as their mining and manufacturing servants. The Ruk remembered nothing of them, other than their myths of the Smith-Father giving them the secrets of steel, having clawed their way up out of the barbarism they’d been pounded down to, and back to the stars.

They had evolved since then by pure happenstance, as races are wont to do, but they hadn’t come up from bacteria like humans had.

Heck, it was entirely possible that humanity as a race owed its existence to the Gardeners tossing off base organic material to jump start evolution. Given how long ago that was, probably even the Gardeners wouldn’t know if that little yellow star was on the migration routes.

Well, the Great GM was helping with the tech suborning. There were no details on the races involved among the Tekrons, nor indeed on most of the races Purged away in galactic cycles. Obviously, the AL didn’t want their minions to retain knowledge of technologies which might threaten them, just in case.

There were records of the Purges, generic information of the races wiped, and not all that much more. The fact Gatherer tech had continued on, and some of the Planet Eaters still survived, was a testament to how advanced those races were when they fought the Tekrons.

It would be freaking hilarious if the Elvar and Ruk used to be subordinates of the pre-Purge Goblins, but nobody thought that was likely. Goblins were full of some really weird genetic markers, making them both susceptible to mutation and always devolving back to their base code in the end, as if mutations just couldn’t stick on them and carry down. The Tekron records indicated that Goblins had been around a long, long time...

“I brought the Ruk on board. Perhaps it is time for diplomacy for the Elvar.”

“On which side?” Anatolia asked, looking ahead.

“The Elvar know that I’ve worked on both sides of the Rift, one way or another. There’s too many Ranthas around. That they haven’t shared it with the Empire just shows how amusing they think the situation is.”

“The family is dealing with a lot of drow assassins,” Anatolia noted.

“High Karma, those,” I agreed, both of us nodding. Getting important enough to be noticed by the Drow was like a rite of passage now. We were always happy to return the attention in kind, and there were a lot of semi-powerful drow who were not getting reborn like they once had. It was putting something of a damper on the risks the most powerful drow were willing to take. Imagine that?

“The Void Osmium trade is still ongoing. Would you like to ask for a meeting through that channel? We’ll put tulip flowerpots in the ore containers this time, just to mess with them.”

“Get that data on spiritual degradation, and we’ll set up a meet. I think it’s time to shake the Elvar up... a lot.”

“They have a nasty conservative branch, and tremendous racial pride, and they scale to Fifteen and higher. Their psions are probably the best in the galaxy, as a whole. How are you planning to impress them?” Me being a measly Seventeen and all. ExLite. Functionally a 21+.

“Well, I thought that being escorted in by a Ruk King might shake them up some.”

Anatolia actually smiled widely. “Oh, yes.” Her eyes glittered as new plans began to percolate. “An actual alliance of three major powers?”