[Glyn]

The Irideans quickly used there influence to force the Ant’s to declare war on the Atlanteans, and somehow forced the Ant’s to hand over colony after colony to them. In an effort to stop the whole sell absorption the Ants by the Irideans, Atlanteans were forced to use troops to capture as many colonies as possible.

Atlanteans attempted several attacks against the Irideans space, mostly in the systems acquired from the Ants, due to the fact that the Irideans were working to build a cocoon of warp points through their space in order to protect it from sudden attacks. Atlantean usually managed to glass a hand full of colonies before the Irideans would counter attack with a larger fleet. The Atlanteans were reluctant to use more than a third of our ships due to the need to prevent a counter attack on the Irideans part into Atlantean space.

The most successful of these hit and run tactics were when the Atlanteans attacked with two fleets of thirty ships having modified the support ships to lay mines. They attacked as usually but dropped mines at the end of the first attack run. Instead of making a second attack run they stayed in position and dropped more mines. The Irideans predictably counter attacked with double the ships against both the invading fleets losing 120 ships to the mines. The Atlantean invading fleets then split into four smaller fleets each with their own attack run. The Irideans lost a month in positioning mine sweepers with there next counter attack fleets. Next month the Atlantean fleets split into even smaller fleets of six ships each for their attack run. The Irideans counter attack fleets with mine sweeper only stopped half the attacking ships, and had to break down into small fleets themselves to intercept the rest of the Atlantean ships raiding their space. All told that attack had glassed about half of the Irideans planets and ring-worlds. Unfortunately the Irideans had finished cocooning his systems preventing the Atlanteans from making more raid attacks.