As much as I have spoken of the human consciousness, I feel that I have yet to properly illustrate how... dynamic their minds can be. Yes, there are plenty of humans that are fairly simple affairs to manipulate, albeit requiring a little bit more effort than most species, but there are some that prove to be far more troublesome than most.

Perhaps it would be better to use a personal example.

Conflict between Thulus is a fairly rare event, but is something that does happen among my species, generally between two Thulus that hold a certain vested interest in their dealings throughout the galaxy. Given the vast nature of space, these dealing do not intersect with one another very often, but when they do we deal with them like we would anything else, through the shadows. Such was the case when I found myself in conflict with a younger member of our species, Byateh. Now to say Byateh was younger doesn't mean much for such a long lived species such as us numerically, but there is still a more noticeable difference in mindset amongst the younger members of our species. They tend to be more aggressive, more likely to manipulate through their gifts rather than through negotiations like myself and the older members of our species. Such bullheadedness has been the source of our inner conflicts, though we of the older generation do get sick of each other from time to time leading us to... address that problem in our own way. Regardless of who we are conflicting with, both sides generally come out relatively unharmed. In this particular instance, that was not the case.

My conflict with Byateh occurred some months ago, deep in the Loph System. To call this particular star system barren would be an understatement, as the only two planetoid shapes hovering near Loph were too close to be habitable. That did not mean they did not serve as valuable caches for our goods, should we ever need to... protect them from outside forces. Each Thulu held their own caches in similar barren systems, but to find out the location of these caches is an arduous task to say the least. Of course, I happened to... let us say stumble upon the location of Byateh's cache in the Loph system, buried deep into the planet of Pholes. He had been storing up quite the collection of Palladium, a crucial element in the construction of the Life Support functions on spaceships. Recent improvements to Life Support designs had been made, and with a little bit of... suggestion of Byateh's part, had been pushed through without much testing. He also leaked the documents out to a number of the developer's competitors, which in turn caused them to develop and rush out their own version of this new Life Support system. The key resource needed for all of this was, of course, Palladium. It was a smart move, if not hasty as these new modules had a much higher failure rate than the last model, but any blame for such designs was placed on the manufacturer, not Byateh himself. If anything it benefited him more, for the resulting recall and replacement of these failed devices made the demand for Palladium all the more higher in the Poros systems, something of which he was prepared to capitalize on.

I was of the same mind, having discovered the Thulu's intentions far before his machinations began. I may have even assisted with the process a little bit, though I must admit that my intent wasn't purely economical in this instance. Byateh had grown far too aggressive over the last few years, coming into conflict with his fellow Thulu more than what was considered normal. He seemed intent on sabotaging our operations, hoping to sweep up and take a profit afterwards. More often than not, however, it resulted in a series of scuffles that left both parties worse off than they originally were. I could not fully blame him, for his desires were normal among the younger generation, but action needed to be taken. I had only intended to... let us say deliver a message when raiding his storehouse, but things did not go as I thought they would when the operation was executed.

Normally when fighting amongst ourselves we Thulu use the Ivallu or Migou as our ground troops. Both possessed enough physical strength to hold their own against most in the galaxy and our familiarity with the workings of both species' minds made it simple to... direct them to where we saw fit. For this particular mission though, I opted to hire a group of human mercenaries led by a man who went by the name of Elijah Sammad. Much to my disappointment, however, all them were the same.

Perhaps I should rephrase my statement, the ones among Elijah's crew all held a very similar mindset, and that was the pursuit of money, regardless of what needed to be done. It is natural for such things, if I were to be honest, as like-minded people have a habit of collecting together, even us Thulu, but what was disappointing about this crew was how similar they all thought to one another. While this meant that their dynamic as a group would most likely be cohesive and effective, they in that aspect were not so much different than the Rezenaga in that regard. If Byateh could break one, then he could use the same methods to break the rest, and this particular crew didn't look all that difficult to break.

No offense to them, of course.

As with any group, there were a few exceptions amongst the crew, namely what I identified to be the squad leaders. There were five in total, leading ten men each. Elijah himself, from what I could read of the man, shuffled his leadership among the different squads as a way of reminding his crew of who was in charge. His squad leaders were Glenn, Bradley, Aurica, Leo, and Dorun. None of them presented any individual threat as far as I could tell, but their thoughts were more guarded, calculated than the rest of the men that they led. I suppose this was the result of any hierarchy, but from what I could tell of them they all appeared to have different methods to their leadership. What little I could delve from their minds, without alerting them to my presence, Glenn and Leo were the so called "swords" of the crew, leading their squads in a more offensive manner than the rest, while Bradley and Dorun were the "shields" who followed a more defensive maneuver. Aurica herself seemed to be more of a wildcard, switching from defense to offense when needed, though it appeared that her squad was often used more for recon than anything else. I had hired Elijah's crew due to the stories of their constant shuffling tactics, and perhaps this variation among his squad leaders were the reason for it. There were, however, two men outside of Elijah's crew that caught my attention.

I say they were outside of Elijah's crew due to the fact that they seemed so out of place, both in personality and mentality. They went by the names of Christopher Keagan and Tycho Brennan. Beyond that I could not acquire anymore information from them. Much like Steven Henry, they kept much of their thoughts guarded, but how they did so was drastically different from one another. When a human puts their mental guard up there is a certain... awareness about them that tends to manifest itself in different forms. For Steven, his guard took the simple form of a wall. A strong wall, as we were unable to break it before he left, but the simplest manifestation of a mental guard I have seen. With Chris and Tycho, however, the was something... off putting about their protectiveness. It was not the act itself, as that was expected due to the proximity of my ship next to Elijah's, but rather how their mental blocks took shape.

Tycho's took the form of what appeared to be an empty void. Jokes about empty-headedness aside, it felt more like my gaze into his psyche was redirected somehow into a blank space of his subconscious, one that operated more off instinct rather than thought. There was, of course, nothing of use to be found there, but I could not manage to delve into any other spot of the man's mind, which, I admit, befuddled me for a moment. It was a defense of misdirection, not outright resistance. Chris's defenses, on the other hand, took the shape of something far more... interesting. When I delved into his mind, I was met by a barrage of mental imagery that was... erotic to say the least. I do not wish to be explicit, but to say that it was merely images of naked women would be putting it lightly. Moral questionings of the man notwithstanding, the torrent of images that met my curiosity was enough to make me pause momentarily. It was fully unexpected, and perhaps that was what made it so effective. You would be unable to guess such a mental defense from the man, as his outward appearance took a more casual facade then his mentality suggest, so to be met by that barrage of imagery was jarring. He must have felt my presence in his mind, for the moment I left it I caught him smirking.

In reality, I had only figured out the two's names due to the fact that I had bribed a number of Elijah's men into wearing transmitters that relayed audio and visual information to my ship. I mainly did this in order to monitor the crew during the mission, but it proved to be fairly useful as a small study into human interaction. Chris and Tycho, in particular, kept most of my attention during our flight to Pholes, and that was mainly because of the reasons I have already described. They were the ones that perhaps met my expectations the most. I could not predict their behaviors, and their mental blocks gave me little to infer from other than the fact that it meant that they were particularly strong-willed, even moreso than the squad leaders. Their interactions with the crew, however, suggested that they were men that didn't have much to hide in the first place, as they were quite sociable with the rest of Elijah's men. If I were to merely judge them by their own outward interactions, they seemed to be the least threatening of the group. However, their apparent mental strength made me somewhat wary of them, though in a way it was reassuring, as their opponent was also another Thulu.

The possibility of Byateh being on Pholus was low, however, as the information I... acquired from one of his agents indicated that Pholus was currently operating under a skeleton crew that amounted to the number of men that Elijah was leading. Granted, equal odds were not the most reassuring of situations, but perhaps I had put more stock in the stories of human combat prowess than I cared to admit. I relayed most of the information I acquired from Byateh's agent to Elijah, who in turn outlined the plan to his crew. Their duty was to conduct an assault on Pholus with the purposes of extracting or destroying the supply of Palladium that was stored within. There would be better pay if the Palladium was just extracted, of course, which Elijah took as the only course of action. The logistical problem with that, however, was that thousands of tons of Palladium was stored within Pholus. While I was aware of the Thulu's machinations, that amount suggested that he'd been far more subtle than I had realized, which impressed me in some ways. Chris and Tycho were especially skeptical of their ability to move so much Palladium in a reasonable amount of time, but beyond a few voiced concerns, they did nothing.

I should note here that conducting any sort of combat operation in the Poros systems requires a certain amount of preparation on part of its combatants. Due to our large presence within the systems, many of Elijah's men were equipped with dampeners that lined the insides of their helmets. These dampeners functioned much like a Faraday Cage, if I were to use a human example, in that they prevent interference from our own powers due to the compositions of their materials. It was a shockingly simple defense when discovered, but it is also due to that simplicity that makes it possible for us to slip our way past such defenses with just a little bit more application of... effort than we would normally require. Still, for the purposes of combat it was effective in delaying any possible manipulation on part of another Thulu. Of course, it would also help to have your own mental defenses like Chris and Tycho had developed, but most of Elijah's squad leaders had a certain degree of resilience on their part to put up a steady defense. In this case, the dampeners were not really necessary due to Byateh's absence, but I was in agreement with Elijah's crew in this instance to err on the side of caution.

The plan to assault the cache would play out in the following way: they would set off an EMP on the surface to disable any perimeter defenses that Byateh has equipped his installation to, Elijah and his men would then commit an assault to break into the compound, locate the Palladium, and move it to the surface. Should Elijah and his men manage to wipe out the crew occupying the cache, extraction would be simple, but that depended mainly on their combat capabilities. I myself would be playing the role of monitor, more out of curiosity rather than any necessity. There is an unspoken agreement amongst my people, one that makes our conflicts fought between those under us, but never with each other directly. Given our low reproduction rate, it made sense for such measures to be enacted early in our civilizations development, but now it was more akin to a code of conduct than anything else, one that suited us just fine. The Ivallu and Migou were expendable, and in this case so were Elijah and his men. That did not stop us from having a hand in directing military operations, but again, I had opted to use a human crew in this case, which made such a task difficult to manage. No, this was just as much an experiment as it was teaching Byateh a lesson, and when the initial assault began, I believed things to go smoothly.

Elijah and his men met little resistance entering the Pholus compound, and in fact had cut a steady path deeper into the complex in no time at all. Some of his men fell to the Ivallu stationed in the area, but to describe what they met as a skeleton crew would be egregious at best. They could not have met with no more than a dozen Ivallu soldiers on their way into the compound, which alarmed me. Byateh may have been the stingy sort, but he was never one to leave his assets that unguarded. That and the placement of the Palladium was suspect, as it was in the furthest reaches of the deepest storage house of the complex. It was easy to see, but to place raw materials, rather than something more... antiquated in such location was strange to say the least. These suspicions were confirmed, however, when Elijah's crew came under fire.

To say that Byateh's initial assault was surprising would be doing it an injustice. Ivallu, possibly over two hundred in number, had burst forth from the storage containers in the warehouse and caught the human's off guard. Their initial assault all but crippled Leo and Dorun's squads, cutting their defensive and offensive abilities in half from the get go. The rest of the humans took cover behind other storage containers, some of the men that did this, found themselves only face to face with more Ivallu, and their resulting screams spelled out their fate. Elijah had managed to form up his men around the Palladium's location, doing so most likely upped their chances for survival. Elijah most likely did not know this himself, but Byateh's own money hungry nature would have prevented him from damaging the Palladium in any way, which meant that the use of any largely destructive weapons was limited on his part. This meant that the Ivallu were restricted to conventional weaponry, something of which was easily defended against with simple cover.

I say this was Byateh's assault, and not the Ivallus', due to the movement of his troops. They were too coordinated, too unified to be under their usual direct when left to their own directions, which mean the Thulu had taken up position somewhere within the complex itself, waiting for Elijah's assault. It did not take me long to realize that I had been tricked. Byateh's agent had been nothing more than a ruse, someone to feed me information that, in turn, made Elijah's crew all the more susceptible to a surprise attack such as this. I must admit, it was a clever ploy, especially since the agent had made herself just as difficult, if not even moreso, to find and break than anyone else, which made me all the more ready to accept such information. I suppose I could have aided Elijah's men somehow, maybe by interfering with Byateh's control over the Ivallu, but at that point I found it a futile effort. Indeed, when Elijah fell under a hail of gunfire due to this miscalculation, I couldn't help but feel impressed by Byateh's maneuver. He had won this exchange.

Or, so I believed.

By the time Elijah had been killed his men had been reduced to little more than a dozen people. Leo and Bradley had fallen as well, leaving only Aurica, Glenn, and Dorun the remaining squad leaders. However, rather than any of them taking charge after their captain's death, Chris had taken up a leadership role amongst them. They were all shaken, of course, not only from the hopeless situation around them but also influence of Byateh off from a distance. Their dampeners, it appeared, had not managed to completely shield them from his influence, and slowly but surely he had begun to inflame the panic that sat at the back of each of their heads. All except for Chris and Tycho, both of whom were strangely calm under fire. It could have very much been them merely masking their own fear at such overwhelming odds, but as the other men screamed over their coms Chris and Tycho maintained their positions, maintaining enough fire to prevent the Ivallu from advancing too close to their position. They're movements off one another, while not as clearly coordinated as the Ivallu under Byateh's control, played off one another in an almost symphonic like fashion. As soon as one went to reload the other opened fire, and they covered each other's flanks without needing to communicate their situation. It was still futile in the end, however, as the sheer number of the Ivallu would eventually overtake them, but still they maintained their position.

The other men must have been rallied by this action, for eventually all of them started to push through Byateh's mental manipulations and assist the men in their defense. They had split themselves between the two, a little more than half a dozen following Chris and the others falling in rank behind Tycho. It was then that the tide began to turn. Without much other options, the remainder of Elijah's men put their trust in the two unlikely leaders, and in a matter of minutes another plan was concocted, quickly coined by Chris as Operation Fortitude. What it entailed I had very little idea, but it began with an action that any normal soldier, even a Thulu such as I, considered to be very foolish.

Chris had taken off his helmet.