A couple of weeks after the collision, a single ship emerged from warp not far from the Neku homeworld. However, no one noticed its presence. A powerful cloak having hidden it from view. Melia found it rather surreal to be seeing thousands of Neku warships and have none of them heading her way.

She knew it was the cloak that was responsible for that. She herself was currently on the now restored main bridge of the Constellation. It was built in the traditional Solean style that had been used for countless millennia. To the point that the designer of the original base design was long forgotten. The captain’s chair was placed on a balcony overlooking the bridge, behind her chair was a door that led to her ready room, and a conference room for the officers. Below were the bridge stations. On the left were the tactical stations, on the right the engineering station. At the front of the room was the helm. In the center was the strategic display station. At the rear just below and in front of the captain’s balcony were placed the ops and science stations. Under the balcony was the entrance to the bridge. A ring of viewscreens occupied the walls at the height of the Captain’s balcony, and the dome of the ceiling was another view screen. The helm console had its own separate viewscreen in front of it for the pilot to see where he was going.

The controls, however, were a bit strange, and none of the Erali on board could operate them. Instead of the interactive screens, and simple buttons used elsewhere, here each console had a simple sphere where the controls should be. A separate display gave each crewman all the information they needed to do their job. Melia had to look through Megumi’s database to learn that the controls were called Lightning Spheres, and they apparently worked via electrical input. However, they were also coupled with a basic neural interface. They were considered to be a superior control method to traditional controls. Unfortunately that also meant that her own people were simply unable to operate these controls. Fortunately, they didn’t need to yet, but she also knew that Megumi was unwilling to adapt the mechanisms.

She turned her thoughts away from the bridge and turned around to see Megumi’s avatar standing behind her. This one was an actual Biomech instead of a hologram. Her palm was outstretched, and floating about half a meter above it was a solid metal cube. She stared at it a moment, and then realized there was nothing about the cube that should allow it to float, and she didn’t see any tractor emitters or antigrav devices acting upon it.

“How is that cube floating?” asked Melia as she wrinkled her brow.

“Magic,” replied Megumi with a smile. Melia frowned, she had not expected such an unscientific answerer from the advanced AI. Then Megumi elaborated, “It will be a little difficult to explain, so I will give you the for dummies version. I am altering the space around the cube, and thereby nullifying the normal forces acting upon the cube, and then imposing my own force to make it move the way I want. In short, it is telekinesis. This is one of the easiest mental powers to learn, and I am doing it to practice control.”

“I uh thought machines couldn’t have Psionic abilities,” said Melia remembering her own people's studies into psionics. She hadn’t yet looked into the Solean notes on those, however, as their database was vast. She had not had the time to read the entire thing, and had been focusing on what seemed to be important.

“It depends on the machine, but the key is that the machine must have a soul before it can use magic,” said Megumi. Melia frowned again, and shifted in her chair before saying, “Why do you keep using the word magic. That doesn’t seem very scientific.”

“When taken to its ultimate goal, Psionics is effectively just a fancy word for magic. You see the first stage is ‘mind over matter, then it is ‘mind over energy.’ What do you think is the ultimate extension of that?”

Melia returned a blank look. At first, but after a few minutes of thinking it suddenly dawned on her, and her face brightened, “you don’t mean ‘mind over reality’ do you?”

Megumi excitedly bounced on her feet, and replied, “I knew you could figure it out. Yes, that stage is what we call Transcendent Psionics. At that point, it is a simple matter to will something to happen. Not for free, mind you. We call Transcendents, mages because it is far easier to use than other proposed terms. A mage will look a lot like those you see in stories. Spells are mental programs that a user writes that execute an effect upon reality at a cost of energy called Makaiju. Which is a purer more primal form of the energy that non-transcendents work with. Which we call mana, but that energy can also be used to execute a spell. Mages first have to work with mana, until they can learn to refine their energy into Makaiju.

I am sure you have heard that mages in stories use silly chants to cast their spells. Well, that actually has a root in reality. A spell is a complex mental program, and requires focus to execute. A chant is a crutch that helps a mage learn a new spell, but once they have mastered it they don’t actually need one.” Melia almost laughed out loud as she realized they were having a discussion about magic. It was even stranger to realize that those stories about it, actually had a root in truth. Megumi paused and watched her expression of obvious mirth for a moment or two, and then continued, “Magic may be capable of bending reality, but it does have its own rules as well. Those rules are complicated, and would take all day to explain, but they do limit what someone can do with it. Anyway it is probably best if we get started on that investigation.”

Melia tilted her head, and said, “you never did tell me how this investigation was going to work.” Which allowed Megumi to steer the conversation away from magic, and complicated topics like the soul.

“It ain’t complicated. I will deploy a few drones to the planet. I will then have them construct a stargate complex under the local oceans. Then I will use the complex to transport a few infiltrators to the surface. They will be tasked with finding information that we could use. I’ll have them looking for any references to the Irini and the Vorinae. I suspect that the two are not entirely unrelated. So looking into one, may yield results for the other. I do not expect this to go quick. We are going to be here a while. So while we are here, I am also going to tap their military communications, and bug their governmental facilities. I’ll beam all that interesting stuff to your people. That should help them with their own war efforts.”

Melia stood up and asked, “that sounds useful, but wouldn’t that require equipment not normally on a battleship?”

Megumi scratched her cheek thoughtfully and replied, “While it is true that battleships don’t normally conduct spy missions, I do in fact have the needed equipment. It comes standard on all ships equipped with a cloaking device. I’m going to start deploying my drones to the planet. Why don’t you get started on setting up those comm taps.”

Melia nodded and headed down the balcony while using the mental link to get started on what Megumi asked her to do. She was aware of cloaked drones launching from the ship’s underbelly and making their way to the planet.

The drones made it to the surface without incident. A single Neku monitoring station detected a slight disturbance when the entered the atmosphere, but they chalked it up to a sensor glitch. As it only showed up on a single scanner, and a subsequent sweep failed to pick up anything out of the ordinary. As such the drones splashed beneath the waves with no one aware of their presence. As soon as they reached the ocean floor, they began construction of a stargate complex.

It took them a couple of days to get it up and running, and while down there they built a couple of submarines to deliver infiltrators to the surface. As soon as the complex was ready, Megumi dialed the new gate at the center of the complex, and her team of trained infiltrators went through. Immediately delivered to the complex. Then she turned her attention to the data she was getting from her comm taps.

She may have been conducting the normal duties of a spy cruiser, but she had not been kidding when she had said that the equipment for such a mission came standard with cloaked ships. While so far none of the communications were particularly interesting to her, she had already gained a far clearer picture of the extent of Neku-Erali war. The Erali were as she already knew on the back foot, but they weren’t so far behind in tech that they didn’t stand a chance. So along with the comms, she was beaming to the Erali her own simulations and tactical assessments. She hoped they would take her advice and make the moves she suggested. They would have to sacrifice a couple of colonies, but it would put them into a position to take a major Neku world. Taking it would allow them to get their hands on valuable pieces of Neku technology, and force the Neku to pull back on multiple fronts. It was the linchpin of the Neku advance into Erali territory.

She could only guess that the Neku commanders were overconfident, and didn’t think they would need multiple avenues of supply. A rookie mistake, one that the Empire knew better than to make. They were experts at raiding enemy supply lines, and protecting their own. It had a lot to do with their own nomadic origins.

Using the tapped comm data she was also able to deploy sensor satellites throughout the system without being detected. The sats would alert her if any cloaked ship entered the system, and they were only visible to someone if they were scanning subspace. They were deployed into the first layer of subspace, where they stayed hidden sending low energy scan pulses. The pulses were tuned to a frequency that the Neku sensors couldn’t detect. The satellites themselves were mostly sensors and comm equipment, but they also contained a large warhead, two low yield plasma cannons and a class one shield. The warhead was part of the self-destruct mechanism. Something that would be useful in case they were discovered.

Turning her thoughts back to the surface, she watched her subs depart from the hidden complex. Both the subs and the complex were shielded against detection so she wasn’t worried about the Neku discovering her addition to their planet’s oceans. Even if they did, she already knew they didn’t have the technology to build ships capable of withstanding twenty kilometers of water pressure. That same amount of water, and the structure needed to withstand the crushing pressure made the complex, and the subs quite hard to damage. She made them of Xeos the same material as her own hull. Which meant Neku weapons stood no chance of even scratching them. Not that it mattered since they couldn’t get that deep anyway.

In a way, the depth alone was a shield in and of itself. She knew of countless races that used the sea itself as a shield. The Sylnari, for example, are a race who rose to the stars before the Solean people first learned to take flight. They were an Elder race when they first made contact with the Soleans, and being an Aquatic race the depths were their natural environment. As such they learned to use them as a shield to defend against their foes. Even the Cylovans their greatest enemy learned to avoid the depths, and when their fleets finally crumbled under the Cylovan war machine, the depths were the shield they used to disappear and rebuild.

She also knew a few other races that managed to hide from the Darkation’s by using the depths of the seas. While the seas also cloaked a few outposts that still stood deep within their territory. Being used to beam monitoring data from cloaked satellites. Which had been used for military planning. Not that any of that was important. Pulling herself from her thoughts on the water, she focused on one of the subs, as it surfaced near an isolated beach. Not far from a major city. It wasn’t the capital, but it had a large mobile population, and was a major trade center. As such it was a great place to insert a few new arrivals. No one would question the arrival of a few new faces. Even if they noticed, which given the size was highly unlikely.

Having tapped their communications had given her access to their computer net, which made it easy to set up a few identities for her infiltrators. However, her scans of their computers had not given her any information on the two races she was looking for. They did, however, give her a few leads on who she needed to look into. The most important of which was the Matriarch of the Neku. A great deal of her recent decisions and actions were suspect. Much of her actions over the past couple of decades didn’t mesh with those before the sudden leap in Neku technology, and their equally sudden shift in foreign policy. She was pretty sure that the shift came about at the same time she was brainwashed by these Irini. However given her position she was likely to have leads on the Irini.

She also had a number of facilities including a factory, in the city she was using as an infiltration point, was highly suspect. Their listed role, and her sensor data on them, as well as the activities around these facilities just didn’t match. Which meant they warranted investigation.

Kiru shook herself as she got to the shore. The sub had not provided her with any boats to reach the shore after it surfaced, so instead she and the other girls had to swim to the shore. While pulling their equipment with them. That equipment being clothing, and some money. She looked around the beach. It was nice and warm, the ground covered by soft sand. All sides of the beach were surrounded by high rocky cliffs, and to the left was the entrance of a cave. A shallow river flowed out of its mouth and into the sea. This entire region was famous for its vast network of underground caves, and tunnels. These caves had plenty of underground lakes and rivers in them, and some of that water escaped into the ocean from caves like this one.

Looking at the cliffs she didn’t see any obvious footholds. She doubted ordinary Neku could climb it, and while there was likely a way up via the cave she didn’t feel like exploring to find out. She figured with her enhanced body, she would have little trouble climbing the cliffs. A few of the other girls had the same idea, and after putting their carry sacks on their backs started climbing. She followed suit herself. Occasional she found that she needed to make a foothold, but that was simple. A couple seconds of plasma fire from her cannon, and then a couple minutes wait for it cool was all she needed. Her personal shield protecting her from most of the heat.

It didn’t take long to reach the top, and then she took stock of what she was wearing. It was still damp, and dust now clung to it. Otherwise, it was fine. It was a simple bikini-style swimsuit, that was barely large enough to cover her assets, and had a hole for her tail. She stripped it off and pulled a new outfit from her carry sack. Changing right there like the other girls. No one was there to see, and even if they were her training had numbed her to that.