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Your fleet approaches the Baalathi homeworld- the gas giant. Strangely enough, you don't even need a gas sample- as you had a sample of this gas from hundreds of years ago- it's surreal to see the source from which your first space war sprang; especially now that it is so silent. The super structure that surrounds the planet has been broken into pieces and is now merely floating by- excluding the stuff that fell into the planet's gravity and was lost to the clouds.
Thankfully, the superstructure here appears a little more complex. New gas-based computing systems are quickly scanned and added to your data banks. You also send a shuttle down to the gas giant to check on the Baalathi themselves.
<span class="mu-r">”They must be really angry down there.”</span>
<span class="mu-b">”Hmm?”</span>
<span class="mu-r">”Well, their brains are fucked up, right? Totally ravenous and focused only on expansion because their planet has none of the Argon they need to feel happy and peaceful, or something like that? So they're just stuck down there without any means of expansion.”</span>
<span class="mu-b">”It would appear so... Except, wait a second...”</span>
Where are the Baalathi? There aren't any. Readings are negative; the planet is dead. Not even a single tiny magnetic pulse that indicates a cluster of them. How is this possible?
The Baalathi are like a planetary virus; once they infect a gas giant, they <span class="mu-i">can't</span> be removed again. The Baalathi reproduce faster then any other living thing your species has ever discovered; they have to. Gas giants are massive and volatile- every day, planet-sized storms ravage gas giants and lightning storms hundreds of thousands of bigger and more powerful then anything on a terrestrial planet ravage the depths of a gas giant. The Baalathi would go extinct if they couldn't replace themselves by the billions very very fast. The only explanation as how they aren't here is if... they were never here to begin with, which seems unlikely, or the Esaal wiped them out. But how?
Even if the entire Jaxtian fleet flew through the clouds blasting 24/7 with all weapon systems, combing the atmosphere for every trace of them, the Baalathi would reproduce faster then you could kill them. Even if you made a thousand thousand nukes and blasted the entire planet with deadly radiation all at the same time, there is no way you'd get all of them unless you had enough to literally blow the gas giant apart. It's chilling. What are the Esaal capable of?
