[BeeDee10]

(Sorry about splitting the posting in two like this, had to leave the terminal for a while)

Part 2: Diaspora

We spent the next few years getting settled in to our two new homeworlds, rebuilding our infrastructure and erecting an understated defence grid around them. Our allies were understandably surprised and unsettled by what had happened, especially the Zynarra and the Praetorians, and we didn't want to cause further offence by building fortresses inside systems which were still their own territory. Fortunately our neighbours forgave us readily enough; we'd established a good enough reputation in our previous relations. It looked like perhaps we _could_ return to our previous state of secure serenity, in two systems instead of our original one.

And then a war broke out, between the Zynarra Holdings and the United Flora Empire. We never learned what caused it, exactly, but it must have been grevious; the United Flora seemed bent on exterminating the Zynarra entirely. Naturally, we were quite dismayed; the Zynarra had graciously allowed half of our population to take refuge in their system, and on top of that their philosophy of neutrality had always been close to our own. We pleaded with the United Flora, we offered to mediate, we even _demanded_ that they cease their attacks, but despite their own alliance with us they refused our requests.

The Zynarra were hopelessly outmatched, and we had no significant warfleet to help defend them with in any case. Certainly no match for the United Flora. I regret to admit that we panicked, and saved the Zynarra species in the only way we could think of; we requested that they surrender their autonomy to us and declare themselves a part of our own governance. It must have seemed like a bitter betrayal, but the Zynarra had no choice; their homeworld had already been heavily bombed by the Flora and their other colonies destroyed.

It was at this point that we finally decided that, even though we were on excellent terms with every intelligent species in the galaxy, it would be a good idea to construct a defensive fleet sufficient to conduct a war. With the entire Zynarra system now under our administration, we had a good foundation upon which to build real fortifications again. The United Flora had proven themselves to be unpredictable irrational savages once already, after all, who knew when they might turn on us to finish off the surviving Zynarra under our protection?

It was only shortly afterward, while our society was still reeling from the shock of what had just transpired, when our researchers made another deeply disturbing discovery. Since our sun had mysteriously exploded much of our effort had gone into attempting to understand the science of stellar manipulation, perhaps one day to give early warning of another such event or even find some way to stabilize an unstable stellar core. We had expected that any such results would take centuries to achieve, it was a very long-range goal of ours. But instead, we discovered stellar manipulation techniques that were surprisingly easy. Theoretically, we had discovered a way to build a device that could fit onto a starship and induce a catastrophic instability in an otherwise perfectly stable star.

We already knew that it was possible to build devices that could obscure a starship from our most capable sensors; we'd researched such a device ourselves only a short time earlier. We also knew that our sun had apparently been perfectly stable until only a few years ago. Although there was no direct evidence, the implications were too important and frightening to ignore; some intelligent agency could have been responsible for the explosion that destroyed our home.

Someone out there had tried to exterminate us, someone who had technology far in advance of our own. This information was deemed of the utmost secrecy classification; now we _knew_ we couldn't completely trust our good neighbours. We needed a new strategy.

By now the galaxy was extensively populated by the more expansionistic races, but there were still many systems scattered throughout space that had small uninhabited planets well-suited for our kind. We began the Diaspora; seeding the far reaches of the galaxy with small colonies, fortified resupply depots and spaceyards so widely dispersed that no single agency could possibly attack them all at once. Although we continued devoting some effort to researching stellar manipulation technology, we started a crash development course on improved cloak-penetrating sensors. Soon our fleet of scout ships, long mothballed after having explored all reachable star systems, were again patrolling the far reaches. But we never spotted a single cloaked ship, even after our researchers had developed sensors capable of penetrating any theoretical cloak believed to be possible. It was unnerving and frustrating. But it would have been suicidally foolhardy to return to our old state of blissful neutrality; we knew better than anyone that there's no going home again.

We eventually had outPosts and colonies scattered almost _everywhere_, and our agressive population dispersal program resulted in rapid expansion. We had become exactly what we resolved we would not. But even so, we never claimed the systems we planted our colonies in; they were outPosts, not posessions. We never crowded our allies when we could help it, and tried to keep our military understated. It seemed to be working well; our allies remained brotherly and seemed to accept our assurances of peaceful intent.

Until, over the course of three dark months, every civilization in the galaxy suddenly turned on us as one and declared war. It was a brutal shock, even considering the other shocks we'd come to accept already in our recent collective history. There was no warning, no indication that anything like this had ever happened to anyone else before. Fortunately, nobody except us seemed to be _prepared_ for war; we had almost a full year after the great betrayal to prepare and try to figure out what had happened.

Our researchers came through for us again, discovering techniques to subvert and confuse other empires. It became clear what our mysterious enemy had done; unable to exterminate us any longer by destroying single star systems, they had executed a massive communications mimic operation and turned everyone against us.

But who _were_ they? And how could we find out with everyone in the galaxy at war with us? Frustration, frustration. But at least we were prepared to face the challenge this time.

The Great War was essentially won in the course of only a single year of actual fighting. Each of our far-flung outPosts had its own garrison of warships and troops, and each was behind enemy lines; the only "border" we could be said to have was the Zynarra's home system. Almost simultaneously, our troop ships landed on and captured the core worlds of every empire. Without a common resource base, none could maintain a large fleet on their own; they rapidly fell. As we captured each, we very carefully interrogated their leaders and searched their planets for signs that they were the ones who had destroyed our homeworld.

Finally, the only species left unconquered were the Sagella. Their home system was remote, in a far corner of the map beyond a string of nebula systems and a black hole. They'd never expanded far beyond it, and we'd never set up an outpost inside it due to a lack of suitable unoccupied planets.

Nebula systems and black holes; the perfect inspiration for researchers working on cloaks and star-destroying weapons.

We began massing a combined fleet just beyond the black hole. It was time to make the galaxy safe again, once and for all.