HAT WEARING AUNTIE

How's it looking?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Not good. Their tech went a different direction and whatever they have make them able to stand up to anything but the BOLOs and the Jaegermeks, and most of those are either on Planetary Defense duty or in the Atrekna Contested Zone.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Any idea of what they look like yet?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Nothing firm. Mostly we've got some XNA scraped from disabled or destroyed vehicles.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Brr. XNA creatures are weird.

Are they still refusing to communicate?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We know they can communicate, they just don't want to. They have communication with themselves, and we've been able to ID that they do use UHF band communications between military units.

We've been able to disrupt their attacks by jamming the VHF and UHF bands.

Once you disrupt their communications, their attacks go to shit, so there's that.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

What about their stellar assets?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

They don't use standard stellar formations or attack matrices, but it looks like they might be learning. They've tried moving up their heavier starships to cover for their lighter ships, probably in hopes of taking the C+ cannon shots on the heavier ship's shields.

But we just shoot through the formation and blow up the lighter ships first.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Who are we talking about?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Species 138.

They're fairly new on the scene. Last eight months. They're coming in from the Perseus Arm.

They've hit the anti-coreward systems on the boundaries of the Confederacy's territory.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS

Wait, we're under attack from someone else?

But we're not done with this war!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Because we're at war means others feel free to jump us.

Are they baryonic or not?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

They're bayonic. Thank the Digital Omnimessiah.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

But what are you going to do about these other guys. Species 138? I mean, aren't you guys almost defenseless?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

No.

We've got a lot of military forces held back and were training up replacements for the casualties incurred in the Terran Xenocide Event.

They just surprised us.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TUKNA'RN RACIAL OPINIONS

How?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

It looks like they hit a few colony worlds, grabbed a few ships, made some decisions based on the data. There's been some incursions, but beyond moving the alert stage up by a tic or two, there wasn't really any reaction.

Ships would drop in out by the Oort Cloud, past the resonance zone, sit there for an hour or so, watching what was coming at them, then jump out.

They were using dual jump-core models, so that even when they jump right in, they've got a charged jump-core ready to go.

They're using jump-space.

It also looks like they either chose to disregard the data or believe it's fake about how big the Confederacy is.

We're over 120,000 stellar systems still populated.

Of course, that's not counting the 30K or so Terran Tomb Worlds.

They've made some lighting fast attacks, usually hitting lightly defended worlds, and are digging in.

They probably think they can handle a protracted fight.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

They aren't the only problems though.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Like what?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

There's about two dozen species at the edge of Terran Space. Most of them had learned to back off real quick once TDH put a fist in their face a couple of times. They didn't want to be part of the Confederacy. Most of them dream about destroying and conquering the Confederacy.

Now that TDH is gone, they've been moving in on the Tomb Worlds.

To be honest, it's still under discussion whether or not to try to hold onto those worlds or let them go.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Not to mention, someone's using phasic gates to move millions of Atrekna servitor species members into Tomb Worlds the last few months.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Nature abhors a vacuum.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

But what if the Terrans come back? Won't they want their worlds back?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

You never know. They might, they might not.

If they do, well, then that's a 'them' problem for the people who jumped those worlds and grabbed them. That would be an act of war.

Technically, it's an act of war that they're snatching them up, but the Confederate Senate is still at odds with declaring it a war.

You actually have brainlets arguing that it's illegal to declare two wars at the same time. Then you have the cabal that just thinks if they appease these guys, then they'll get left alone.

Some of these guys were bad news. Not technologically, but socially and culturally.

They were held back by TDH, mainly because their society and culture could feel fear.

Now they're grabbing TDH worlds, both to grab territory and resources, and to see if it's some kind of trap and the Terrans are actually gone.

They've been really careful to use armed force to escort Confederate citizens to ships and move them to non-Terran territory, so we can't use attacks against Confederate civilians as a reason to go to war.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL

That's kind of rules-lawyery.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

It sucks when your opponents know your own laws and use them against you.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So, the Confederacy is still at war?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

When you're as big as we are, kid, someone is always trying to slice a chunk off for themselves.

Since we don't need to mine the gas giants or asteroid belts for rare elements, thanks to the creation engines, other star nations see the Confederacy as this vast untapped wealth just sitting there waiting for anyone to take it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM CONSENSUS

There's been over a dozen species that thought, because we don't mine the rare elements, that we lacked the technology to make use of them.

Which meant they thought our war-fighting ability was lagging behind theirs.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Right up until they caught that first C+ volley to the face.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

There's quite a few of those guys out there that still haven't figured out the C+ cannon.

They can't figure out how the laws of physics were bypassed. They're looking for a hack or a workaround for your most basic physics.

The idea that we just strapped a hyperdrive to a big fuckoff chunk of mass never occurs to them.

It's so basic, that even the concept of it escapes them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

That makes no sense.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

GREAT LANAKTALLAN GREAT THOUGHTS, GREAT IDEAS, GREAT OPINIONS, AND GREAT MEMES

Oh, come on. That's just outrageous.

Actually, it makes perfect sense.

See, the Terrans came up with the C+ cannon, and if you look at their technology, it's frighteningly obvious.

The concept of an artillery rocket booster has been in their arsenal since before atomic energy. All a C+ cannon round actually is, is taking a massive artillery round and strapping a hyperdrive to it as a 'rocket booster'.

It's a direct progression that's obvious.

Strangely enough, the stranger the Terran Descent Human technology is, the more likely if you look at their ACTUAL technological progression in micro rather than macro, you'll see how blindingly obvious their technological advances are.

Take nanites.

The Terrans were already adept at large construction devices. The desire for smaller and smaller circuitry for space saving, when most species would call it good, led to the development of the concept of ultra-small machinery.

Nano-machines, son.

Wait... what?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Don't worry about that. It's some kind of weird hardcode.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

GREAT LANAKTALLAN GESTALT OF GREAT GREATNESS

As I was saying. Their drive for miniaturization led to the concept of nanites. From there, they expanded to push the limits of nanites, going in directions that none of us saw because they were looking to see just how many ways nanites could be applied.

When they cracked the 'sticky fingers' problem, the logical next step is pulling apart a molecule and rebuilding it. The next step is pulling apart an atom and rebuilding it without 'cracking it' and accidentally ending up with a kiloton level explosion.

Once they did that, the creation engine, matter to energy or energy to matter, is little more than the next step.

Where my people made the mistake, is they looked at Confederate technology in macro, unable to understand how you jumped from jumpspace to hyperspace when it's obviously just a byproduct of learning about how the 9D Stack is formed.

Hyperspace, jumpspace, all of that, is just discovering those realms during 9D Stack research and then trying to figure out how to make it useful.

But if you look in macro, there's no reason to develop anything past jumpspace travel because jumpspace travel is good enough. Which means not developing hyperspace travel. For accurate hyperspace travel, you need a temporal lens, which is just a spinoff technology of astrophysics and astronomy for the Terrans.

No hyperspace, no temporal lens, no C+ cannon.

That's why other species see the C+ cannon, get obliterated by it, and then figure that somehow the Terrans are breaking the fundamental laws.

Because they aren't.

Bending? Yes.

Twisting into a knot? Yes.

Breaking? No. In some ways, Terrans use those hard limits to do the things they do.

A C+ cannon shell hits at 95% of lightspeed when it exits out of hyperspace and into the enemy craft. That means its mass, thus its kinetic impact, is absolutely devastating.

But, if you're on the reeving end, and my people can attest to this, you don't look at relativity except to go "THE LEMURS ARE VIOLATING THIS!" They miss just how much mass, and kinetic output, is increased by that speed. The idea that it's simply having the round exit hyperspace inside your shields and armor doesn't occur to you. The fact that the round is more a particle wave at that speed than a physical mass of matter doesn't help.

So you spend time researching how they bypassed your shields and armor, how the shell has that much impact, since the ballistic profile is just massive, trying to figure out how they broke the basic universal laws.

Except, they didn't.

They used them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Um, OK. I think I got all that.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

So, like the Lanaktallan learned, our tech base is so widespread, so diversified, that it gives the one-trick ponies absolutely kitten shitting fits.

These other species, that got rawful-stomped by the Confederacy, or by the Terrans, in the past, are now convinced that the Terrans are gone, so we're defenseless.

Our tech-base might as well be magic to most species. The Lanaktallan just stared at our tech like a non-uplifted primate watching a magician and couldn't even understand how hilariously outclassed they were.

Which is pretty much where everyone is.

They can't figure out how its done, so... nobody can do it.

Yet, the Confederacy is doing it.

But it can't be done.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Our people call that a 'meat-space runtime error."

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So, with about a third of our military forces at the Atrekna Contested Zone, the Terran Xenocide Event creating the Terran Tomb Worlds, old enemies have jumped back in to slice chunks of the Confederacy off for themselves.

Then these new guys, coming in from the other galactic arm, they want a piece.

Their tech went a different direction, but we're winning more than we're losing, and that means we're getting wreckage and collecting up enemy dead. We're getting battle experience against them.

They say that dead men tell no tales, but that's wrong.

The dead are downright gossips if you know what you're doing.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TUKNA'RN RACIAL OPINIONS

Once you understand their doctrine they can be defeated.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Precisely.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So, you think you'll force them back?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That, we're sure of. It might take a few years, depending on just how much material they're willing to commit to this fight, but we'll force them back.

The big one, though, is we have to make a decision.

They haven't used planet crackers or nova-sparks, so right now those are off the table.

They use a gate system to get their forces on the ground, and their ground forces are primarily unpowered-infantry and armored vehicles. Their ships are lightly armored, but their shielding is really effective.

I'd put their shield technology slightly inferior to the Dovians.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HESSTLAN CYBERBURROW

What decision?

You said you have to make a decision.

What?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

OK, it's not just good enough to push them out of your territory. They'll just think they're clever, hiding in the bushes, and rearming. They'll think you can't touch them, that they can just hide in their little pillow fort and keep rearming and attacking. They'll keep doing it unless you take steps.

You have to go to them. Take the fight to their home systems.

Break the will of their civilian populace to support their leaders that support the war. Disrupt their government. Destroy their infrastructure. Put them on the defensive and hammer them to the brink.

Then you ask if they're ready to talk.

These guys aren't willing to talk to us.

That's because they think they have the upper hand. They think they're in a position of power, so they don't have to talk.

To get through that, you have to take some of their planets away. Take away some of their population, resources, and infrastructure.

Meet force with force.

Start to occupy their systems. Seize their resources, of which their citizens are part of the resource matrices. Show them that you can carry the fight to them and take away their stuff too.

Once you do that, they'll either come to the bargaining table...

...or you 1% Line them and hope that in 400 years they're ready to be reasonable.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

We know this species can communicate. We know they use wavelengths we can interact on.

Hell, we managed to break their battle encryption and frequency hopping algorithm on the last stellar system assault, so now we're going over all the recordings of the past battles and decoding their speech. They use audio speech. It might have pheromone, body language, or psychic accentuations, but they primarily use audio speech.

Which means they can talk to us, they just won't talk to us.

Without having Rosetta on it or a lexicon, though, it'll be tough to translate.

But we're still working on cracking the databases on their destroyed ships hoping to find a lexicon. They obviously understand our speech, so there has to be a translation program somewhere. They've obviously got a superiority problem because none of their computer cores, which use standard molycircs, had security charges.

That means they doubted that anyone could take their ships, or if they did, could break the encryption.

Or they just don't care.

Not going to make too many assumptions. Just, that for some reason, their computer cores aren't security charged and don't have a false system wrapping them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

So how are they even standing up against our forces?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Trea, you wanna take this?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE SYSTEMS

They've got a two-fold defensive system beyond their armor, which is just obsolete neutronium.

The first is a prismatic kaleidoscope looking shield. Now, that appearance may just be a byproduct of their actual shielding, but it works to deflect, attenuate, and disperse directed energy weapons up to hellbore rounds.

The second is obviously some kind of inertia compensator spinoff. It's able to absorb or re/deflect kinetic and inertial force up to a point, then the system overloads and collapses. After that, it's just solid neutronium armor, not even layered composites, with a single superconductor coating.

This suggests that, like most of us before encountering Terrans, they've mainly faced directed energy weapons on the battlefield.

Their primary weaponry is directed energy beams. They also use dimensional folding at the terminus point of one type of beam strike. We're still trying to figure out that beam weapon.

They've got almost no artillery, rocket systems, close air support, anti-air systems, counter-battery or point defense systems. Their infantry is only lightly armored. No power armor, no loading frames. Small arms are lasers and plasma weapons, low wattage. They don't use robotic drones, everything is crewed.

They depend on what we would consider light and medium armored units and infantry. Their armored units use standard H3 fusion reactors. They only use Type-III and Type-IX superconductor.

Their starships use standard reactionless thrust systems. They also use, according to the jumpspace flare profiles, the lower jumpspace bands.

They use technological gating, likely related to the dimensional folding terminal attack, to go from their stellar assets to ground-side. They also don't bother with orbital strikes.

They're just arriving in overwhelming numbers, hitting lightly defended systems out on the outer rim. They aren't killing civilians, they're largely existing to the side, with the civilians confined to the major metropolises. They're strip mining the asteroid belts, mining the gas giants, and performing agriculture.

No xeno-forming on the ecology.

Yet.

However, they haven't been seen since the Phasic Shade Incident, so they might not be back if all they can use is the lower jumpspace bands.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Well, jumpspace is haunted now.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

Not to mention we're seeing what looks like Hellspace eroding into the lower jumpspace and hyperspace bands.

If it is the Atrekna machination we believe it is, either the system is running without them or the program is still manned.

Either way, we've got to figure out how to handle that and the jump/hyperspace phasic shade infestation.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS

And here I was hoping with the end of the Atrekna-Confederacy War, we'd have peace.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

We have it good.

People want that.

And they're willing to take it.

That's why the clock has never moved past 93 days.

I'm sorry.

It's just the way it is.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

[The Universe Liked That]