If you find mistakes, pls tell, thx. I don't like mistakes.

Also feel free to ask for more background information on the world. I am somehow running out of interesting points regarding the small comments at the beginning of the chapters.

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“

The Forlorn Empire is one of the so called civilised powers in the Milky Way. They joined the collective of intelligent races after they managed to unite their people under one government. Though due to the fact that their worlds are located a long way from the collective's main assembly location close to the Milky Way's centre, they don't pay them many visits.

”

-Galactic History

***Kaus Australis***

***Gideon***

A strange bouncing motion wakes me up and I shudder as I have a very unfortunate accident. Damn! It's one of those annoying nights when your body does what it wants. But why does it feel like something heavy is on top of me?

I open eyes. “Cyla? What are you doing?”

“Relieving stress.” She answers with a satisfied expression while circling her hips on top mine. A certain someone pulled down my pants and... why do I feel so used?

“We are hiding here since four days and working in shifts to keep the cockpit manned.” She sighs like something heavy was lifted from her and smiles at me with a weak and tired expression. “When I returned to wake you up I couldn't help myself after seeing your sleeping, defenceless expression. So I used the opportunity which presented itself to me.”

She gets off of me and rolls herself into the blanket on the bed. “Oh, it's your turn to watch the IMs doing their thing. Good night.”

I take a look at the clock and realize that I should be on watch duty since ten minutes ago. Cursing simply because it feels appropriate to do so, I rise and dress myself. Then I hurry to the cockpit.

Upon connecting with the ship I realize that none of the Drazi ships are nearby. Hiding inside the asteroid swarm worked out really well so far. Whatever the aliens are using to detect us, it can't distinguish between our ship and rocks. The chances are high that they are working with really good mass detectors.

It would explain why they can find us despite the information barrier. Hiding the gravitational effects of our drive completely is almost impossible.

I call up a map of the system and request the computer to share the newest results regarding the enemy's communication. Sadly there aren't any new results.

Our new position allowed us to intercept much more of their communication, but it didn't help much to decode their language. At least we could make out how they call themselves and how they look like.

The Drazi are about a metre tall and arguably humanoid. They have two joints on each appendage and are covered in fur of mostly brown and reddish colours. The legs are short and stubby while the arms reach to the ground and have strong claws which aren't of much use when it comes to manipulating small machinery.

Their dexterous, hairless tail makes up for that. Though their flat faces are reminding me of hamsters, their general demeanour is more like that of rats.

I frown while watching another intercepted video stream with the killer-rat-hamsters going about their business.

If the translation of their way to measure time isn't completely incorrect, then they are also reproducing like rats. They settled the world under us just ten years ago and according to their closest thing to a news-channel, they started the colony with just a few hundred settlers.

Yet the town on the planet's surface is bursting with at least three hundred thousand of them. Their numbers seem to twenty-fold every three years.

Everything that comes to my mind after learning about this is that they are vermin. They seem to be unable to control their population, spreading randomly across the stars. There must be trillions of them out there.

We didn't stay idle while gathering intelligence and thinking about ways to increase the fighting power of our ship. Though I still have no foolproof idea on how to guard against such powerful lasers. Even if we had a huge mirror which is able to reflect ninety-nine percent of the energy, the rest would still melt it down like nothing.

I switch my attention to the IMs which we let loose on the surrounding asteroids. The swarm is slowly growing while gathering materials and creating a hidden network of surveillance platforms.

It's a lot of work to set up a computer that is capable to create a working connection to the quantum net, but the IMs are workers who don't know sleep.

The only issues which are limiting them is finding the needed resources and providing enough energy for them.

After establishing a direct link home, Sanguin instructed us to use all means necessary to gather intelligence, then retreat and return home. It's really beneficial to us that we set up a line of relay points for our quantum network.

Though Sanguin was very vague in how we should acquire the information, dropping the responsibility of thinking something up on us.

In the end we decided to put the IMs to the test. Together with Cyla I set up a swarm structure which is controlled by a set of hidden computers. The hollowed out asteroids which were left by our mining operations came just right for that purpose.

Afterwards we covered them additionally in information barriers and sent them on random courses through the system.

It should be safe to assume that at least some of them will survive to control the behaviour of the IMs. Our last action was to send a few small asteroids which were crawling with IMs out on slow trajectories.

If everything goes according to plan they should land on the planet and the stations. As soon as they touch ground or metal, they'll start to reproduce and attempt to hack the Drazi's computers. I wonder what the Drazi will think when their systems start having malfunctions and they encounter the IMs for the first time.

A cackling escapes my lips and I force myself to control myself. Losing control over my body like this feels strange.

It would be really cool though if we get a look at their means of generating power. The FTL technology isn't really that interesting to us.

I watch our plans unfold until Cyla joins me in the cockpit a few hours later. She seems to have slept well.

“Are you ready to go home?” I ask.

“Yes.” She answers without hesitation.

“We could teleport directly from here, but I don't want to show them what we can do. That's why we'll sneak out in a way that shows them that we left.” I explain.

Cyla starts grinning. “You mean we'll use my trick?”

I nod and engage the drive. At the same time I launch a set of rockets which are duplicating the signature of our ship. Many are flying towards important targets, like the planet, mining facilities and ships. Others are on completely random vectors.

The Coeus is escaping downwards from the ecliptic while the Drazi start chasing false targets.

At least the Drazi are bad at thimblering, none of them chose the right shell.

***Forlorn-Homeworld***

***Admiral Tulius***

My nostrils flare and I use my third hand to call up the information from the spy drone and the message drone. This situation is bizarre and not at all in my interests. Especially because it now looks like I withheld information from the Emperor and the Senate.

The only hope I have is to make it look like I did my best to confirm the situation with second sources, but I've no doubt that there will be chopped off hands. Sadly it looks like it'll be mine.

One of the guards beside the big door to the senate's hall signals me to enter and I step inside. The elected senators are sitting in four rows to my left and right, each one with a communication set in front of him to hear the speakers clearly in the big hall.

It's not the first time I am talking in front of the Senate, but this time is different. The silence is ominous and the emperor who is sitting on the opposite side of the hall is looking at me expectantly.

I swallow down my saliva and walk into the centre of the hall. “Senate, Emperor, I've requested an assembly because there is a dire situation going on.”

My eyes wander through the hall, but nobody wants to interrupt me. They seem to be more wary of what I have to say since I've requested their presence unannounced.

“Seven weeks ago one of our battleships left their guarding position to hunt a Drazi raiding group. They fled into the forbidden sector and our ship followed them against standing orders.” One of the senators gestures for me to stop and I feel a knot forming in my throat.

“And why did you fail to report this.” He hisses like the snake he probably is.

“It wasn't reported because there wasn't anything that could be done about it, except for sending more ships into the forbidden sector.” And because the admiralty thinks that it's stupid that we aren't allowed to hunt the Drazi down when they attack our shipping routes.

“A day ago a message drone from the missing ship 'Rai' returned to one of our outposts. It took the drone a long time since it was low on fuel after having used almost everything to escape. The drones don't have the ability to refuel, so we got the message late.” I call upon the hall's projector to ensure that it's ready.

“They followed the Drazi deep into the forbidden region until they almost caught up to them in 34-85-83. Then this happened.” I activate the recording from the Rai's bridge.

The senate watches the fate of the starcruiser Rai in stunned silence. The hectic moments when the Drazi engaged an unknown enemy with unknown stealth technology. And then the escape of one of the Drazi raiding ships while the others were destroyed, followed by the destruction of the Rai by inferior lasers.

The escape of the Rai's message drones and their record is just the tip of the iceberg. The explosion of the huge alien station and the bodies which are flung out into space only ensure that everyone who didn't believe this to be a total mess is changing his opinion right now.

The hall turns loud and messy as the senators start screaming in an attempt to voice their opinion.

It's only after the Emperor starts hammering the ground with his huge sceptre that the hall finally calms down a bit. He sets his grim eyes on me and gestures to go on.

I call upon another recorded log which arrived just a few hours ago. “Of course I immediately informed you when the first drone arrived at Surrk. We checked our sensor logs after the arrival of the drone and found the same strange gravity anomaly appearing at Surrk Outpost, two days before the drone arrived.” I cough. “The admiralty is relatively sure that the drone was followed by one of the foreign ships. They now know where Surrk is located.”

I shuffle through a stack of documents which I brought with me. “Our analysts are relatively sure that the unknown race has superior stealth technology, superior propulsion and faster than light communication!” Something we don't have at all. “According to the sensor recordings some of the gravity anomalies reacted to the station's destruction before the light of the event reached them. We are currently trying to adapt our sensors to their stealth-tech, but we still see only shadows of them.”

“Still?” The emperor asks with a growl.

“We are currently finding those anomalies all along our border, but so far the others haven't tried to communicate and stayed out of our reach. It seems like they are just mapping the star systems which are occupied by us and gathering information.” I activate a final sensor log to drop the hammer on my career.

“Just recently we got intel from one of the spying drones which are observing a Drazi base close to our borders. We were already planning to force them further back since the base already launched several raids against our shipping lines.

“One of the phantoms appeared in the system, half a day before the Drazi ship which attacked them got there. We identified the ship by comparing the light frequencies which its drive is emitting. They followed the Drazi and overtook them. Then they tried to sneak into their system.”

I swallow once more. “One of the Drazi tried to engage the sensor echo, which caused them to drop their stealth partly. They briefly exchanged fire with them. Unfortunately the drone couldn't make out any more than that. Then the ship hid itself in an asteroid field further into the system.”

A flick of my wrist forwards the log to another point. “They hid there for four days while the Drazi searched the asteroid field for them without results. Then twenty two sensor echoes left the system, obviously fake signatures. The Drazi engaged several of them, but obviously not the right one.”

My voice trails off. “They left something behind though. We listened in on the Drazi communication and they are talking about a disease or vermin. Their chatter never made much sense to the linguists. In another communication it seemed like they are fighting bugs and losing the battle?”

Once again the hall turns chaotic. The one who stops the noise is the emperor with his sceptre. After the senate has quieted down he turns his attention to me. “Admiral Tulius. I think you already deduced that the forbidden sector is forbidden for a reason. A few hundred cycles ago, during the time of unrest, we already encountered those phantom ships. Like today they refused to communicate and retreated as soon as they encountered us.”

The emperor draws a deep breath. “Like you probably know, the time of unrest was a great trial for our people, as we had a civil war on our hands until the Empire finally managed to unify the Forlorn. The government back then decided, hoped that this new race would stay away from our borders if we don't provoke them.

We guessed at their origin by looking at the systems in which we encountered them, assuming that they found us by searching the stars in a straight line away from their homeworlds. Then we banned everyone from adventuring into that sector.”

He puts on a grim expression. “Apparently the attack on one of their bases caused them to become active. We have to ensure that we aren't pulled into a senseless war when the real culprits are the Drazi. Ready your best ship to transport a group of ambassadors and scientists into the forbidden sector.”

.