>>6337935The unnamed and undiscovered system was obscured from most of the galaxy by its proximity to a black hole which both obscured it from the most dense areas and warped how those on fringe systems perceived it. It had only caught your attention from the faint chirping of a colony ship's decade old beacon. The bright blue and green planet was speckled with signs of what would be an advanced civilization, only it seems to lack a sophisticated space program. Perhaps one nation is able to send out a vessel every few decades, maybe. A handful of sites in the northern hemisphere catch your interest; a gold city at the subarctic region, a black expanse of basalt pillars that have the unmistakable signs of a seaport, a bustling topical city that preliminary examinations have fascinating biodiversity on some of the most fertile soil in your empire's records, and a tree that breaches the vault of the sky, the largest of its kind you've seen on this side of the galaxy. Those from the gold city seem to share the same language of communication as Zarus, making observations and study of that region in particular a relief. All of this, and they are all carbon-based lifeforms that breathe oxygen and consume hydrogen, same as you. It is <span class="mu-i">technically</span> safe to land.
There are a number of factors that prevent you from communicating with the capitol about the discovery. The most obvious of which are the raw logistics of the idea. The speed of light is barely sufficient for global communication networks, and your hypralight communications are slower than turning the ship around and delivering the message with your own mouth. Further, there's always the possibility there are other elements capable of intercepting the message and arriving before a response from the top can even be sent. Lastly, and most personally of all, you know for certain that your naive elders would command you to uplift them into the galactic community as their first command. Not that you are flirting with genocide, but they pose a danger that it would be tactless to ignore, like introducing boars unto an unsuspecting world.
Such a hypothetical global assault is a task your fleet is not capable of performing. You are not commandeering a capital-class ship capable of any viable amount of orbital bombardment, let alone shattering the planet like you imagine you would need to kill a million men like Zarus. So outright violence is not the strategy here. The fact that you are as of yet unknown to them is your ally.
You, <span class="mu-s">Fleet Captain Ygdrun of the Second,</span> have to work with what you have.
