Her name was Dreams of Something More and she was watching all of her dreams turn to ashes. A diplomat all of her life, a natural negotiator with empathic senses and the ability to be empathetic, she had seen the scars that war left upon the world and the soul. She had toured the silent empty streets of the Cursed Earth where the rage and hatred and madness had seeped into the very ground of a planet in a dozen different spots. She had went to where the Mar-gite had denuded entire worlds and then been wiped out and the planet reduced to bedrock to remove the silicate based plant life.

She was capable of suing for peace, for negotiating peace talks between belligerents with thousands of years of blood and betrayal between them. She believed in equitable peace that required effort on both sides.

She had honestly dreamed of something more.

A galaxy at peace, lifted up beyond scarcity, lifted into paradise that the universe could provide.

Now she could taste the ashes of her dreams as she sat on the hard-light recreation of a moss covered rock and petted her companion. The Pacific Northwest Blue Ringed Tree Octopus sat in her lap, enjoying being petted, munching on a chunk of smoked Pacific Northwest Woolly Salmon that had been caught and prepared by the Pacific Northwest Sasquatch tribe of Snoqualmie Pass.

Worse yet, Speaks was coming to visit her.

Talking to the Savashan had been an exercise in futility.

Oh sure, they had 'deplored the assassination attempt' and talked about 'rogue elements in their own society' that must have been responsible.

They had denied her request to land, denied her request to dock at a station, denied the Terran Confederacy much more than the right to communicate with them and then leave.

The did not want to take sides in the war that was already raging.

She had requested that she be allowed to take the frozen in stasis Savashan diplomat to Terran space as 'proof' the race had no hand in the attack upon Dreams's person and thus the agent of the Confederacy.

They had almost fallen over each other to comply.

Now she was in hyperspace again, heading for the Tnvaru home system, hoping that she could convince them of the truth.

That the Lanaktallan had used biological based nanotech to control assassins to try to kill Dreams and have the Terran Confederacy destroy those three races.

All three races were part of the Unified Civilized Council, all of them were 'older races' who had been accepted for ages.

Except for the Tnvaru. The Tnvaru were "Near-Civilized", with colonized worlds of their own.

Dreams nibbled on the tip of her bladearm, still petting Mister Rings with her hands.

Two races on the edge of 'expiring' and one widely spread Near-Civilized race at the edge of the civilized Inner Sphere and the Outer-Sphere.

Three targets that might be considered hard to crack, or, if attacked, had dozens of systems that could be used to mount offenses from.

She idly stared at the map of the systems.

The Lanaktallans possessed thousands of systems, easily five times what humanity and all their allies possessed. They were surrounded by layers of systems that the percentage of Lanaktallan in the population went down in direct correlation to the distance from the Core Systems. It also seemed that the amount of manufacturing and resource extraction was in inverse to population of Lanaktallan.

She knew what she was seeing.

Dreams knew it was a herd effort. The more she looked at it, the more sure she was. The herd had depleted all the resources but food from the Core Systems and the Inner Sphere, so it mined and farmed and extracted from the Outer Rim and Outer Sphere and poured it inward to support the lifestyles of the Core Worlds and Inner Sphere.

An excellent tactic and almost textbook herd mentality.

Dreams knew she wasn't any kind of warrior, no type of tactician or strategic genius. She knew enough about the military to understand how it worked and how it should be interlocked with the diplomatic efforts, but nobody would ever accuse her of being a titan of military theory.

She personally hoped that the people in charge of the Confederate Space Force could see something she couldn't. A way to combat the Lanaktallan herd strategy before the Lanaktallan came up with a way to win through genome and biological warfare.

The memory of having her thoughts subsumed and overwhelmed by the Speaker still chilled her and more than anything Dreams feared returning to the Tyranny of the Queen.

The door chimed, sending Mister Rings to the 'upper' branches of the simulation where he could hide and try to decide if whatever walked in was delicious looking or not.

Dreams sighed and signaled for the being to enter.

To be honest, she was hoping for another attempted assassination.

Instead, Speaks the Words We Fear moved into her room, weaving around the trees, waving a bladearm at the Pacific Northwest Sasquatch camouflage of her guards, and eventually sitting down next to the stream. He leaned over and stirred the water with one bladearm for a long moment before looking at Dreams.

"Did you check the download from the message torpedo?" Speaks asked mildly.

"You mean that the Confederacy has moved to Total War footing with the expressed intention of occupying Lanaktallan worlds, overthrowing their government, and imposing Confederate laws on the entire system?" Dreams half-snarled at the black mantid.

Speaks nodded slowly. "Yup. There's a bit more to it than that. Exit criteria, planning for literal centuries of occupation, genetic and genomic rights, all kinds of interesting stuff."

"Is it true?" Dreams asked. "Is it true they're just going to let the LARPers and the Idiots run free?"

Again, Speaks nodded slowly. "With what happened in Harmony and other places? The Confederacy doesn't want to be fighting itself at the same time. As long as the 'Irregulars' keep to the newly minted Rules of Engagement and Rules of Land Warfare and Laws of Space Warfare that have been sent to all of them, they're free to even carve out feudalistic kingdoms."

Dreams shook her head. "We're looking at the end of the Confederacy, aren't we?"

Speaks looked back down at the water, musing for a moment, then looked up and flashed an emoji for shrugging from between his antenna. "Could be. There's an outside chance it might collapse, but it's not like the Confederacy is anything but a loose aggregation of roughly aligned systems agreeing to some basic laws anyway."

"So back to the Great Collapse," Dreams said softly. "Hundreds of systems all with a different leader, all struggling over now scarce resources, all preying on one another."

Speaks laughed. "No. Post-Scarcity will keep it from being too bad. But hundreds of systems? Probably. They'll have to band together though if they want their gestalt to be recognized by the TerraSol Gestalt and nobody wants left out of that."

"Like we did," Dreams said. "Sixty different worlds, no queens, and we grew a new one."

"Who promptly jumped the Terrans and got us 1%'d," Speaks reminded her. "It took us thousands of years to recover," he tapped his abdomen. "We had to find a way to control ourselves, control our instincts, and our answer was The Wire."

Dreams held out her arms and nudged Mister Rings, who had grown bored waiting for something delicious to wander into the grove and was now swinging from branch to branch. Mister Rings dropped down into Dreams arms, shivering in anticipation of being petted.

"This could still be avoided," Dreams said.

"So could have the Human/Mantid War," Speaks countered. "It was too late when we attacked Earth and it was too late when the Lanaktallan attacked Harmony."

Dreams frowned as she realized she had no comeback.

---------------

Gergy looked up, the face shield of the bio-suit smeared with ash, at the massive Terran body armor. The plates were thicker than his hand was long, it hissed and purred with hidden mechanicals, it was discolored here and there, some of the plates cratered or bent. Beside the one in power armor was another, this one with green skin and what looked like chunks of metal stolen from a recycling lot attached to its very skin.

The beings looked down at Gergy.

"Doki. Doki doki doki. DOKI! Doki," the round faced primate with cat ears and pink hair said solemnly. Icons and emojis appeared over her head, too fast for Gergy to understand.

Gergy's translator clucked and chuckled for a moment then gave up.

"Doki doki. Joan. Doki. Kawaii doki," the pink haired warrior in pink power armor said, nodding and crossing her armored arms. A smiley face was above her for almost a full second.

"Um, yes?" Gergy guessed.

"WAAAAAAGGGGH!" the green skinned one roared. What came next was just a barrage of harsh syllables and bellowing. Icons flashed above its head, where it wore what appeared to Gergy to be at least four wigs or scalps taken from others. It socked the pink haired on in the shoulder and the pink haired one had, somehow, beating hearts overlay her eyes for a moment.

His translator gave up with a slight whine and a thin tendril of blue smoke.

"Yes?" Gergy guessed again.

The two slammed their chests together, the pink haired one suddenly waving pompoms that still fired bullets in the air while the green skin one fired off his weapons into the air. Beyond them the thousands of identical soldiers did the same.

There was a weird fzzzzt feeling that made the back of Gergy's teeth tingle.

The field was empty. Just ash raining from the sky.

Having no clue what that was all about, but grateful for the two strange species assistance in destroying the out of control plant life, Gergy waddled over to his government skimmer.

The High Packguru would be happy to know the Terrans had (apparently?) defeated the biological plague.

--------------

Admirals Log

The Lanaktallan forces so far have been no match for my Armada. The casualty count on Harmony Worlds where the Lanaktallan forces have made landing and attempted conquest has been from light to extreme.

Bioweapon use has occurred on at least fifteen of the twenty planets we have liberated so far. In six cases the Lanaktallan military forces fled before we arrived but left behind a bioweapon that seemed to, well, zombify everyone exposed.

The Lanaktallan do not subscribe to any code of warfare for their own actions but expect the Federation to obey rules that they themselves had decided should be enforced.

For a belligerent to make up rules that only the opposition has to follow is the height of warfare hypocrisy. To insist that no CBRNAN weapons be used by anyone opposing the Lanaktallans while they freely engage in it makes all of their other demands and complaints instantly irrelevant.

We are about to break orbit after dropping Soup Generators. A 1.1 billion population planet reduced to 850,000 after only a few months of Lanaktallan occupation. Thankfully we've seen this kind of bioweapon before on three different worlds.

My crew is currently undergoing psychotherapy.

At Warp 6.6 my armada should reach Beauty-38 in thirty-one hours. The Lanaktallan forces there will, of course, outnumber us by nearly a thousand to one but the Romulan Attack Group 97 and the Klingon War Force 318 will be meeting us enroute.

I will finish this. I will drive the Lanaktallan out of Harmony Space.

Admiral Jeff Picark 8873

-------------

The atomic clocks, all synchronized off of the Bongistan Big Bonger, all reached zero.

Across Lanaktallan space, across the Outer Sphere and Inner Sphere, the roar was heard from every speaker, every flat surface, from the air itself.

Across thousands of worlds it rang out.

SPACE FORCE IS HERE!

Across these worlds, all of them military, industrial, or resource storage systems, hundreds of ships dropped from superluminal flight and into realspace within the exact nanosecond the others did.

------------

CONFED

Probing attacks and recon has ended.

The counter-attack has started.

Repeat.

The counter-attack has started.

Operation Kingfisher had been initiated.

All Gestalts prepare for incoming war sensory input.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oooooh, this is gonna hurt.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

And here...

we...

go...

////////