Quoted By:
“W-wait! Let me think. Okay, okay, the Consortium cares only about money and building up their trade empire. Consortium Credits are already a defacto currency for this quadrant of the galactic community. They'd probably only want to attack someone directly if they were a threat to that; the Consortium already borders your empire- some brown dwarfs and distant stellar objects to Hazaar space already have colonies or listening posts. To be honest, I don't know if the Consortium would ever declare war against an equal power; they much prefer to use economic pressures to get what they want.”
<span class="mu-b">”Give some examples.”</span>
“I mean, in the past the Consortium have stolen away small colonies and underdeveloped alien species into the fold from other empires by promising them independence and better living standards. They also like to invite high value individuals to leave their societies and join the Consortium instead as a form of brain-drain... but I don't know much- I'm not an economist, okay?!”
<span class="mu-b">”That's alright. I believe you.” Now then, I think you've been a good boy, so I've decided to pardon your torturous execution- but you need to do a little something for me.”</span>
“Oh, really?! You will! Okay, I will!”
<span class="mu-b">”Look right at that camera- AI good enough to fake video gets good at finding the fakes too, so let's make this a real confessional. Now I want you to admit that spying on the Hegemony was wrong, and that the Jaxtians are a proud and powerful people, and that I am so merciful for ending you with a knife instead of what I could do to you....”
With the spy interrogation finished, you have the body sent away to cold storage. Hwat will have at least two living samples of this species back on Jaxt in much better laboratory conditions- you won't need the extra risk and hassle of keeping this one around. You slip into your suspended animation and after a flight of several real-time months, you finally arrive in Baalathi space, the second length of your journey.
Much expected; the <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">Esaal</span></span> beat you here. They seem to have had a much longer and more bitter fight against the Baalathi then even you did- and counter attacking them would make sense. In that time, they've spread into the Baalathi systems with military scouting and colonization fleets; but it is still mostly loosely defended space. With territory markers only barely set up or turned off to give the appearance of a “no man's land”, the Esaal were sneaky, but it is clear that this region of space belongs to them now and they won't give it up without a fight.
Your three cruisers will not be even close enough to fight the Esaal fleet. That's a losing battle. Instead, you need to focus on what matters- getting to the Baalathi homeworld and finding whatever precious data you can, before quickly moving on to the <span class="mu-i">GSA</span>. This may just be the last artifact you need to finish Eoba II's secret lifelong project- the <span class="mu-i">Threemind</span>!</span>
