-The thought humanity may owe its existence to the Warp Gods does not inspire great faith in me for some reason,- she /mused.

-None of the Warp Gods have their roots in the human race. Their essences existed long before humanity rose, as War, Survival, and Intrigue existed long before us. Only Amourae is a recent rise. We aren’t responsible for them... humanity is being used by them, no more, no less. Any attempt to blame humanity for their expanding power is pure idiocy. They are fed by all races. We’re probably just easier to influence... and at the same time, we’re defying them.

-After all, we’re here, aren’t we? You could say the Ranthas coming in are a profound summons to the rest of the human race in all spheres to find a solution to this.-

-Well, the stoner on his throne of glitter is certainly doing this right,- she /huffed, rolling her eyes.

-Well, go console Cantor. She’s got to tell the Ruk that their Dark Matter Cores might inspire the Anti-Life to say Fuck It All, and trigger the Tekrons for a Purge.-

I could feel her face twist. -The Ruk’ll want to declare war.-

-And we wouldn’t possibly need anti-Dark Matter and anti-Tekron weapons for what reason?-

-Dammit, Mom!- And our thoughts went careening down some nasty paths...

----------

“Kiiripawa Deltaspace coming up, Captain,” Lieutenant Collister announced, totally unnecessarily, and he knew it, and he did it anyways, because it was his job, and he was my navigator, and by gum he was going to do his job.

The fact I only went by Captain on my ship is something they appreciated, too.

The system had another designation in Imperial charts, but “the river of the way flowing into the unknown delta of the stars” was just a lot more poetic, and only Mekkers liked referring to systems as alphanumeric designations.

“Give me a local scan of the neighborhood. Pay attention to the Omega bands in particular.”

The sensor techs looked at one another, and recalibrated down the scale towards the Mock Gravity heavy bands. These were typically indicators of...

“Captain, we’ve got definite Anti-Life presence outside the heliosphere, 250 AU’s from the phlo intersection.”

I let out a long, slow sigh, looked at the direction and strength. “Multiple presences. Within 10% of the shortest distance to the inner planets.”

Lieutenant Jorwa twitched at my eerie tone, confirming that observation. “Yes, Captain...”

“It makes it easier for them to communicate with their pawns.” They all turned to look at me, imagining the implications to that. -I need as much confirmation as we can get. Has there been any Warp storm, field, break, rifts, events, or other influence of the Warp exhibited in the area of the Federation of the Way in the past two thousand years, and specifically I want notes on exits from Helldiving in this region.-

The Goldilocks went on the case, blatantly invading every database they could find, but were naturally hampered by the fact that many such databases were slow, just to foil this kind of inquiry. When a human had to actually go fetch your data and plug it into a server for you to read, and that datacore was just one in a vault the size of a city, and it had to be retrieved by hand...

However, the Corunsuns also had a pretty extensive assembly of data, and we’d spent the past few years undertaking a blizzard of compilation, data-mining, and streamlining with TL 18 tech. Founding was very cautious about expanding his scope of activity, but TL20 Angeltech certainly did perk him up, and the Corunsuns had so much shit in so many places, just learning everything they had, and asserting control over it, was a monumental task that was occupying a lot of kids and Tens eager to put their stamp on stuff.

“Do we break the heliosphere, Captain?” Lt. Collister asked calmly.

“Scoot us away from the phlo and any markers in the Omega bands. Let’s casually do a phlo survey of this sphere while we wait for some compiled data.”

The Dojo came out of Tachyon Jam, but kept its Bubble up since we were outside the heliosphere, and there were a lot of distances involved when zipping around a star. Light speed just wasn’t going to cut it.

------

Vivi had long ago started taking control of our data centers and references, and the slow speed of information retrieval profoundly irritated her. It took three days to get my questions answered to satisfaction, and she personally swore that she was going to get absolute control of at least six different archival centers just because of how long they took to get back to us.

I let her go to it. Librarians and archivists could use a little excitement in their lives, and secretly onlining all their data would definitely be the most exciting things they had ever done in their lives...

Oh, Warp Storms, Helldiving re-entry...

There had been no registered Warp signatures on the psychic or physical level witnessed in this area for over two thousand years. Coincidentally, that was about the time the Masters of the Way united the Kappa, and they began to move up and out into the stars and the galaxy.

The one Imperial excursion into this place to put the uppity aliens in their place had indeed reported massive turbulence when exiting the Warp, such that it even damaged their Throne Fields, which made going back INTO the Warp very dangerous, and even destabilized their power cores. The delays to get the damage fixed had contributed to the Kappa’s ability to react to them and get some defenses in place, and they had put up quite the spirited fight.

They still probably would have lost, except an invasion of the Gatherers had started half the Sector away, and the expeditionary fleet was recalled to save a bunch of imperial worlds from all-conquering robot scavengers gone mad. The price to take out a Gatherers Planet-Killer was to fly a battleship or larger vessel right down its gullet, and ignite everything to blow out its insides before its anti-proton beams dissected entire worlds and began to process them...

Any encounters with the Kappa since then had generally ended up with violence, mostly started on humanity’s end...

------

We completely mapped out the phlos leading to and from this heliosphere while waiting for the data to come in. When it did, I just sighed and pointed ahead. “Fake a Helldrive signature and head in-system under faux conventional drives once we get to a logical jump point. Immediately send an opening hail under courier flag and see how they respond.”

“Yes, Captain!” three different voices responded, and we plunged into the system.

---

Popping a Helldiver signature was anything but hard, nor was replicating a Throne Field, as we had a TL 20 Angeltech one on the ship just in case. We hove to on station as all the lights and coms in the system seemed to turn on at the same time, and waited calmly for the Kappa to react to our very sudden intrusion.

Half the system fleet came burning up, ready for a fight, guns all nice and warm, and were surprised to find that yes, there was only a cruiser here, sitting on station, shields up but weapons down, waiting quietly for all of them to arrive.

They did encircle us fairly well, and were scanning like mad and getting not much of anywhere, which didn’t much help their jitters, especially with the totally new design of the Dojo.

“We’re being hailed, Captain,” Signals Lt. Nii-Kol informed me.

“Bring them up,” I said calmly, and the holo winked up in front of me.

The Kappa did indeed come from reptilian origins, and did look turtlish, with rising, flat heads, beaked faces, vestigial horns around their heads, and pebbled skin. Their hands were stubby but strong, and shell patterns growing on their upper bodies did give them the look of being naturally armored. They had assorted colors based on their lineage and Caste system, with the space-faring ones oriented towards dark greys and blacks, contrasting with their white and yellow uniforms.

The one before me had rank badges of some importance, and the demeanor of someone used to his authority. “This is Countess Sama Rantha aboard the Corunsun vessel Dojo. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?” I asked in their own language. I even had the dialect variant properly down, and could tell I backfooted him instantly.

Politeness from the savage barbarians does that to people.

“This is Admiral Sk-hawttzek of the Coastal Waters,” the officer replied somewhat stiffly. “What are you doing in our space, Countess?”

“Delivery service, Admiral. I am returning something of yours to you. Do you have a higher mathematician and fairly detailed historical records immediately available to you?” I asked calmly.

He blinked at the odd reply. “I do, Countess. What are you delivering?”

“A working Gravity Conduit Weaving drive, and the fate of the ship it was aboard, if you can prove that you are the ones that devised it, Admiral.”

His beaked mouth opened and closed in consternation. This was very, very different from what he was expecting. “Why do you require a historian and mathematician to deliver them?”

“I believe the ship’s name translated as Courage of the Intrepid, Admiral.” I noted he stiffened, despite trying to control himself. “If you can’t verify the ship’s origin, or the math behind the construct of the drive, we shall simply leave.”

“You found the Courage of the Intrepid?” He blinked at me in disbelief. “How? Where?”

“If you can submit your proof, I will inform you of its fate, Admiral. If not, you can send us off, we have no other business here.”

“That will not be difficult, Countess. What manner of proof do you require?”

“If you have serial number identification of any key systems on the ship, we did a full scan and have them available for comparison to verify that it is indeed an old Kappa ship.”

“One moment while we retrieve the data, Countess!” He turned and shouted some orders off screen, and alien numbers danced between us. I sat back, unperturbed, and waited.

---

It only took them a few minutes to dredge the data of the ancient system out of the deep datafiles from one of the worlds behind them, get it transmitted over, and put it up to verify the who’s and what’s of things.

Everything scanned in and matched up perfectly.

“Admiral, we did indeed find your ship,” I congratulated him. “However, the circumstances are such that we had to feed it to a solar furnace.” I waved a file and transferred it over to him. “Please review before making further comments.”