“One should always know when it’s time to cut your losses.”

- Levvi Batlin

***Outer Rim***

***Levvi Batlin***

I feel like flailing my arms and screaming like a maniac, just to refresh myself and to let go of the anxious responsibility. There is a certain relaxation in doing something childish and insane. Maybe I should do just that! It certainly won’t have a positive effect on the morale of my troops, but what else can I do? We are facing an opponent who can open freaking doorways to another point in space.

It’s impossible to strategise against that. They can force us to gather our fleet at one point, then relocate all their ships to somewhere else. On the same account, wherever we might decide to attack, they will always be able to retreat when the odds are against them. Once our forces are committed, they can stack the odds in their favour and strike.

Looking up from the latest report, I watch the alien superstructure which created the wormhole through which most of the remaining Cyber ships fled. The lights in my office are darkened to allow me to take in the full view, and it is a nice one. As beautiful as it is terrifying. I find myself taking stock of the situation, admiring how the universe can create something beautiful from death and destruction.

The gateway is a gaping blight in reality, giving us no clue at what might lie beyond. The corpses of a few destroyed vessels are floating around the structure, accompanied by a cloud of countless drones and Cybers. Together, they create an expanding field of shimmering debris which reflects the light from the distant sun with many sparkles and reflections. It’s almost like the starry sky gained a multitude of new, twinkling stars which wink in and out of existence.

Those who didn’t make it through the portal kept fighting in the mindless manner of machines.

Their remaining troops used every chance to attack us, even if it just meant to futilely drift towards our ships once we took positions around the gateway. The clean-up operation wasn’t much more than a massacre, the defending ground-troops which were stationed on and around the superstructure didn’t have the means to put up an effective defence with their ships gone.

We still didn’t achieve the result I hoped for.

This battle was meant as a decisive victory to probe the enemy’s strength, but the Cyber managed to extract their remaining forces. At least the important ones, their capital ships and other resources which I would’ve liked to be destroyed. What’s worrying is that they didn’t even try to defend the system properly. It wouldn’t be the first time for a strategical command to cut their losses and to retreat.

Still, what worries me is that they didn’t destroy the gate, wormhole, tear in space, whatever it is. Our scientists are completely out of their territory, unable to explain its existence. There are theories on how to create a gateway between two points in space, but nobody ever managed to actually do it. We are looking at a completely different science from ours, but that’s not what frightens me.

Enough so, that I immediately sent a message back to the core worlds. I only hope that they will take the warning seriously because I no longer believe that we can contain what’s growing out here on the fringe.

The fact that the Cyber didn’t take out their gate can mean only two things.

The first is that the damned machines are fairly certain that we won’t be able to copy the technology just from having a close look at it. At least not within the limited time-frame during which we are going to hold this side of the portal.

We already sent several probes through, but none of them returned. I assume that they suffered the same fate as the Cyber probes which appeared on this side: immediate annihilation. It seems impossible to take the other side of a gateway if there is a mentionable force in place.

My second prediction derives directly from the first. Namely, they intend to take this system back and there won’t be much time for studying the gateway. The thought makes me want to cringe, but after looking at all the information which I have available, it’s very likely that I’ll have to retreat with my forces soon.

At least I don’t expect the attack to be coming out of the gateway. While we were accelerating back towards the alien superstructure, we had plenty of time to observe its function while the Cyber retrieved their forces. Its capacity seems to be limited. Only one Cyber-ship at a time entered the gateway, and there was an interval of ten to twenty seconds between each ship.

No. It’s much more likely that they will gather a fleet outside this system to retake the gateway the traditional way.

I cross my arms and try to analyse the Cyber’s behaviour. When we engaged the superstructure, we were attacked by all sorts of small drones and local defence stations. Without proper drives, they weren’t able to put up much of a fight. Their purpose was probably to repel incursions by small commando teams. The destruction of the drones was only a natural result of facing our ships.

During the A.I.-war, our people learned plenty of drone technology and swarm strategies. It also led to the creation of our greatest weapon.

But why have such a force in place to begin with? The gateway must have some sort of weakness against an infiltrating force. It doesn’t help us much without understanding the technology, but there must be something. Maybe there is some sort of control station? A possibility to destabilize the gateway as a whole...

I really wanted to refrain from using it too early, but as things stand, I will won’t have much of a choice. The existence of the gateway makes me wonder if the Cyber can be contained at all. They already have a large presence in this region of space. What if they spread out even further and have several gateways. Is there a counterpart on the other side? Or can this superstructure open a gate to anywhere? We may destroy this nest, just to find out that the entire region is already infected.

Shuddering, I send the orders to place mines on the gateway. There is no way to tell what will happen when we blow it up, but I won’t allow the enemy to use it again. It’s probably a useless gesture, but every little might help us to survive until help from the core systems arrives. There are countless solar systems in the galaxy, but the G.S. control the most resource-rich area in the galaxy. In the core, the stars are much closer together, allowing for a lot more cooperation between the races and for easier trade. There is still some hope.

“You have a new report.”

The Assistant’s emotionless voice shakes me out of my thoughts and I call up the roster with the new reports. It concerns the newest activities of the Demons, the strange race who I chose to ally with – for now. I really wonder what happened to their homeworld. For a whole species to develop the lifestyle of space-nomads, that’s almost unheard of. There are other races like that throughout the galaxy, but they are all barbarians who were uplifted by more advanced species.

Actually, receiving more evil tidings wasn’t very high on my list of things to do. But, things wouldn’t get done otherwise, and I really wanted some time for myself to sleep. So I open the file and allow the hologram projector to display it in front of me.

It concerns the newest information regarding the Demons’ technology and was collected by one of our information analysts. Right in the header, the author points out a seemingly ridiculous detail about the spacecraft which is employed by our allies.

They vary hugely in size and technology and judging by their state, they are all fairly new.

Now, this may not seem very suspicious on its own, but together with some little observations which the analyst listed below, it paints a very strange picture. What the report essentially tells me is this:

Somehow, none of the ships and colonies which we observed are older than two, or at a maximum, three decades. Their oldest ships were observed to have fusion torches as drives, while the largest and newest ones almost solely rely on warp-tech to create local gravity wells which propel the ship.

I huff at the mere thought. Does this imply that the whole race appeared out of nowhere two or three decades ago? That their technology leaped from fusion drives to gravity propulsion within a few decades? Though, they did mention that they had dealings with Hob. It wouldn’t be the first time for the lawless entity to uplift a species with new technology.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Hob is already spread throughout the whole galaxy, and therefore almost impossible to wipe out completely, I would suggest for the G.S. to issue an extinction warrant.

A couple of minutes later, I order Assistant to close the report. As far as I am concerned, there isn’t much more I can learn from it. If the analyst is right, then the probability that the Demons are actually the Humans just skyrocketed. But… there are also the Cyber. Is it all just a diversion?

I suddenly found myself in a tight spot in the semi-darkness of my office.

But even if I was tricked, do I have another choice but to play along for the time being? The doubt was needling away at the back of my mind. I needed confirmation. “Assistant, is it possible to investigate the remains of this battle? I want to know how old the oldest ship is, the oldest drone. Things like that.”

“That is possible, although it would divert resources from our science division. You ordered them to invest all their time into researching the gateway.”

Indeed, I did. The question is, would the resources which it will take to investigate the Cyber-remains, be the resources it takes to understand the gateway? I study the alien superstructure, reminding myself that any detail might result in a deeper understanding of the technology. At the same time, it’s almost impossible to think that a few resources could gain us that little bit of understanding. In any case, this technology is so far beyond us that our scientists couldn’t even provide me with a sensible theory of how to open a gateway with just a few warp-emitters.

On the other hand, researching the debris will almost assuredly get me a definite answer to the question of how old this Cyber colony is. They must have been here for a while to warrant building the gateway.

“Divert the resources.”