[Glyn]

The Irideans were embarking on a tactic of chipping away at the Atlantean empire and denying them access to undeveloped systems by systematically creating a new black hole once a month in one of the outlying system, which usually contained a few new colonies. Thus the Black Hole Machine was started. Also, due to the Irideans placing the opening of the only warp point into their space in a system with random ship movement, it was imposable to intercept his black hole ships as they left Iridean space.

Ant’s Empire was no more whether it was due to Atlantean attacks or Iridean lobbing black holes is hard to say.