The issues with the Jedraston have no end in sight. Whatever it is that is going on in the background, the UE would really like it to stop. It also would really like it if at least some form of discernible and, more importantly, publishable progress was made. Because the propaganda necessary for the UE citizenry to decide that to stick the head into the sand would be a good idea is currently, thanks to the weird and unique situation, difficult.

Which meant that it was time for more aggressive negotiation tactics. The UE needed either war or peace, and it was not too picky about which. Peace would be, of course, preferable, but unless current estimates of the technology of the Jedraston were off by a lot, war would not actually be dangerous. Annoying? Yes. Dangerous? No. Because while Canios was a very populated world, currently only garrison troops were remaining on it. And the UE was fully capable of dealing with a refugee crisis of that size. In fact, it was less than a single percent of the normal movements that happened anyways, and while more expensive for the UE government directly, it was not all that much in the end.

The Jedraston meanwhile had a slight internal issue. The alien forces were not offering battle, which meant the expansionist supremacy faction could not get their nice, defensive war. On the other hand, the group preferring peaceful expansion and cooperation did not have the capability to force the talks to be actually meaningful, which kept those same talks in a sort of limbo. Existing out of necessity, because if they did not exist, and it Ould not be proven that they attempted them at leas, it would be an offensive war, which would in turn be more stringently controlled and not allow the activation of the emergency laws the supremacist wanted. And thus the talks needed to continue, hopefully slowly infuriating the other side, so that those shot first, all the while preventing anything that might make it seem like they themselves shot first.

It was a complicated situation, not made any easier thanks to the other side, which was slowly showing more and more resources from somewhere. Which in turn meant that they might actually be capable of fighting, which was bad news for the supremacist faction. Because needing to deal with an actual enemy while sidelining their entire economy did not sound like a smart move. It was even obvious to their planners, who had not realised that this was not a smart move in almost any conceivable situation. And thus they were thinking about ways to salvage the situation, without giving cause to the cooperation faction to close the loopholes they had been planning to abuse to push through their agenda.

And thus the standoff continued.

The UE was getting more and more antsy about the Jedraston behaviour. They needed more information, and by now they did not really care about how that information was acquired and if it would lead to war. They just wanted that issue dealt with, and they wanted that to have happened yesterday if possible. Considering that was sadly not possible, the political masters of the UE were accepting if it was dealt with right about now.

A command, which the military interpreted as: “Instead of merely attempting to listen to their communications passively, we will now try to actively hack them.”

Which worked surprisingly well, considering that the Jedraston did seem to have an issue with computer security. A different issue appeared quickly, however.

While communicating went well, although there was not anything happening there beyond building a dictionary, that did not mean that the Jedraston used a all that compatible computer system to the UE. Nor did they use the same encoding. Which meant, yes, the UE had now gotten all that data, but it was useless, because no-one could read it. Figuring out the basis of the alien computers was not that hard, but the encoding was. And it would likely not be considered good style to ask the Jedraston how their basic encoding worked.

Of course, with their data about the other sides language, which was steadily growing, as well as having a general idea were the communication from the UE side were stored in the captured data, meant that they would decode it. Having a Rosetta Stone was always helpful after all. But it would take time, especially because they only had a general idea where that data was stored. They did not know which exact bits, or rather the Jedraston equivalent, where that data.

…Something very interesting about those attempts at gaining information: The Jedraston cooperatists would actually have offered the decoding freely and happily. If the UE had asked, all those decoding issues had been solved. Of course, the UE had no way of knowing that fact. Was it the correct decision to a) steal that data and b), after they had already done so, not to ask how to decode it? Especially considering that the cooperating loyalists on board of that fleet had purposefully deactivate the computer security systems? Of course, once again, the UE had no way of knowing that beyond actually decoding the data. Or so one might have thought. The fact of the matter is, that those same loyalists had helped guide the humans to the correct data archives and, because they were loyal to the Jedraston, although not to the supremacist faction, prevented them from gaining access to more important and secure data, like the location of each and every world in the Jedraston realm.

Now, the UE hackers did not realize that. Mostly, admittedly because of the odd, at least for them, systems the Jedraston were using, but also because the cooperatists needed to be careful to prevent discovery on side of the supremacists. Although, addmittely, because computers were not glamourous by Jedraston standards, the supremacists had very few personal of the actual Jedraston species being in cybersecurity. Beyond the supervisor anyways…

- Exzerpt from a textbook regarding the Jedraston first contact.