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The raid goes smoothly. There is zero armed resistance. Several pieces of technology and important gadgets are taken from the ship- the physical drivers for the AI are taken, and turns out they aren't quite good enough to fully wipe themselves clean- nor could the crew have time to destroy them physically.
As it turns out- the Consortium has a very interesting form of computing. This ship's computers were quite weak and easy to hack, though quickly were able to sequester away your probing, all-powerful Threemind from its most vital controls. This is because the Consortium's AI uses nanotechnology in self-organizing computer grids and curcuits; tiny cubes which assemble into blocks and can physically detach or even self destruct from each other when one is compromised with a viral agent. Interestingly, each block is a very weak computer on its own, only about as good as personal computers from the degenerate capitalist era from your own history, but as more and more are added together they get more and more intelligent- meaning supercomputers and high level AI can be built simply by combining larger and larger masses of these smaller computer units. The Hegemony mostly uses very powerful individual AI cores- though now the entire system is united under the Threemind, meaning this technology is mostly a curiosity and in many ways already obsoleted. Oh well.
Perhaps of more interest is your captive. Only one crew member survived the attack; a female of an unknown species. She seems to have been the captain or in a position of leadership, despite the lack of ornamentation. Even more curiously, she seems to have taken to spitefully kill her entire crew as the boarding occurred- perhaps in a rage at their incompetence, or maybe even more foolishly, to attempt to win curry and “switch sides” with her new captors, as many of these Consortium traitors seem to think is possible.
You find yourself strangely drawn to this new being. You ask the Threemind to raid the data files of whatever remains on the Consortium ship- finding only traces and inferred information. Still, it's enough. This curious mammalian species is completely voiceless; no vocal chords. Even their breathing is almost silent; despite being very similar to other intelligent bipedal species, they evolved a totally different method of communication using pads on their cheeks that glow and change color based on their mood and disposition- allowing for communication in a unique language that requires a machine to translate for other species.
You ask Threes if it can tell you what they are called- and as a direct translation is impossible, you are told they are simply called <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">Mimes</span></span>.
