Grasp the Stars (Stellaris: Overlord)

The larger array of equipment hired on to the prospecting effort on Kore pays off almost immediately. Excited mining executives have requested an additional 1500 credit grant, which is quickly rubber-stamped by the UN bureaucracy.

Captain Wang has reported a very similar impact crater on the surface of a moon in the Einath system. The proximity in space to the crater observed in Alassia has some scientists suggesting it may have resulted from another near-light-speed collision of a ship exiting hyperspace. If this proves correct, it suggests the civilization that launched the ships may have had hyperspace travel independent of the hyperlane network.

The final reports are in - the additional grant to the Kore prospectors did not pay off. That still leaves the planet with a hugely increased reserve of accessible mineral riches.

The hollow chamber beneath the surface of Io has at last been cracked. It required the application of the equivalent of a city-scale nuclear power plant to help melt through its alloy shell, but Captain Dragomirov's team was rewarded with a cache of what appear to be holographic blueprints for lightweight space combat vehicles.

Swap Engineering research from Long-Range Mineral Scanners to Standardized Corvette Patterns?
[] (Tech) Yes
[X] (Tech) No

Another component of the hologram is a map, with a bright marker on the Neptunian moon of Triton. The ISS Maui is already en route.

More disappointingly for the scientific community, the crater on Einath IVa appears to have been a natural event. As a consolation prize, the asteroid that created the crater exposed a healthy amount of deep-crust minerals to the surface.

Sophie stares in unabashed awe at the bed-sized metal tank quietly humming in the middle of Dr. Zhivenkova's lab. "It's really working?" she asks quietly.

Katya nods. "It's been powering the lab complex all week. Next we're going to start installing them in the orbital labs, as a first step toward making them work in starships."

More dead aliens. Or at least, probably dead aliens. Captain Okada has sent back photographs of what appears to be an access hatch on the surface of an asteroid in the Ambor system, suggesting possible previous mining operations or even habitation. If any of the technology involved is still operational, Sophie plans to order an edible hat.

Beatrice Reid strides into the Exoplanetary Secretary's office door. "Hey Soph," she calls casually.

Sophie nearly drops the folder she's organizing and comes out from behind her desk for a hug. "Bea! My gosh, it's great to see you. How are you doing?"

The younger woman holds up a token stamped with a '1'. "A solid month sober, and feeling great. I got to read up on a bunch of stuff while during the in-patient phase, so I'm excited to get back out there. I'm here to formally request my appointment back."

"Of course. I already had the form around here somewhere, I'll have it forwarded to you."

"Great!" Beatrice beams. "And Sophie? When you're done running all of space? I think it would be a good idea if you took a bit of a break too."

Beatrice Reid has lost the Substance Abuser trait. Ever the type-A personality, she spent time researching theoretical physics while she has been Earth-bound, and has acquired expertise in Field Manipulation. A new science ship for her to captain is under construction.

Another habitable candidate has been discovered - an ocean-covered world in the Hratzan system. The problem is that it is only technically habitable - lower gravity and atmospheric oxygen levels mean it is only about 60% the habitability of Earth.

"Yes, we could send colonists. But they will very much not have an easy life," Katya says, exasperated.

"But think of how much we could learn," Cordelia argues back. "It looks like it was inhabited before - Captain Schwarz is already trying to get better scans of that floating structure. And learning how to live in and on the ocean may be a key step to living in space directly."

Commission a new colony ship?
[] (Colony) Yes
[X] (Colony) No

On the opposite end of humanity's reach, the hollow asteroid discovered in Ambor proves to be not a mining or habitation platform but an entire enclosed shipyard. There are signs it has been looted by previous explorers, but the construction itself is fascinating to humanity's engineers.

Galactic Situation said:

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Beatrice Reid - now once again Captain Reid - breathes in the sterile air on the bridge of the ISS Hawking. Not her beloved Einstein, but it'll do.

A fitting day for a geometrically strange discovery. Captain Dragomirov has sent in initial scans of a veritable maze of angular corridors beneath the frozen surface of Triton, kilometers of them.

The crew of the Maui has already begun to dig.

The completion of the Pesch solar arrays leaves only one final piece of interstellar infrastructure to set up before the Grunur site dig can begin. Hopefully the orbital debris field Captain Wang has identified - apparent remnants of pitched space combat in the Elnath system - will not slow down the Aldrin's return to Dimis.

If need be, Captain Reid and the Hawking could take over surveying of the Sejanis expanse, but for now she has been assigned to push coreward, and has just reached the Nendl system.

Back home around Sol, the archaeological team has breached one of the underground corridors and found the walls to be covered in incomprehensible alien scribbling. That is, incomprehensible at first, until one of the team's linguists recognized that each chunk of writing followed the same structure.

They are all names. Millions of them.

That 'floating structure' Captain Schwarz's sensors spotted beneath the waves of the ocean world of Hraztan III turns out, in actuality, to be a buoyant crystalline material. Images of the 'Jewel of the Ocean World' are everywhere in the news for a few days, both for its oddity and its beauty.

For Secretary Lebouef, it is a godsend to have local politicians - on all of the planets now occupied by humanity - bombarded by their people with requests for increased space exploration funding. With enough pressure, the pieces finally fall into place for funding and shipping the materials for the Dimis stellar outpost.

"Madam secretary! A report! from Triton!" a bright voice chirps from Sophie's computer.

"GAH!" humanity's most important politician shouts, almost falling out of her chair.

"Apologies! Madam secretary! I did not mean! To startle you! But this was sent! With maximum priority!"

Sophie stares at her computer screen. A small, computer-animated blue-green face has appeared in one corner of it, smiling from ear to ear. "What is happening?" she asks under her breath.

"I! Am Captain Pavel's! Assistant! He asked me! To deliver! A message!" the sprite answers cheerfully.

Struck dumb for a moment, Secretary Lebouef eventually composes herself. "Fine. Play message."
The blue face is replaced by a dingy recording of Captain Dragomirov's face.

"Ma'am, we reached the basement of the structure and recovered a crystal with the same type of holographic recording embedded in it as we've found elsewhere. It only had an audio fragment, someone's personal diary it seems like. They discuss something - some other civilization, we think - that they call 'the Relentless'. Lydia wanted to translate it as 'the Unending' but the rest of us didn't think that was quite correct. Anyway, then it mentions something about 'the precious protected ones', which we think might be talking about the children of whatever group built this place. I think we may be looking at a case of interstellar genocide."

The recording cuts out, and the blue sprite in the corner reappears, still smiling.

"...what the fuck," Sophie asks nobody in particular.

"We finally found someone else out here," Captain Okada reports, grinning widely.

"Show me." Secretary Lebouef leans forward over the conference table, white-knuckled.

The floating head of the far-distant captain is replaced with a full color image of a clearly-alien space station, in orbit around the black hole Xulbak's Maw.

"It's clearly operational," Shiori continues. We've seen small drones going in and out and picked up some radio traffic. I've already tried matching it to what Pavel's people translated previously, but no dice. We're going to have to do this from scratch. I've already forwarded what we have so far."

Sophie nods. "You'll have our best on it right away. Stay in the system but stay away from them - we need it to be clear we are not hostile."

True to her word, one Stanley Cartwright is heading a translation team within the hour.

It soon becomes clear why the aliens likely built and maintain a station here. The black hole appears to be twisting and stretching space in such a way that what appears to be dark matter - long hypothesized as a major, but unseen, component of the universe - is actually interactable just outside its event horizon.

Humanity has encountered its first LIVING aliens! Be they friends or foe??? Only time (and diplomacy) will tell... The aliens at least appear non-hostile, and your current leader also leads the Xenophile internal faction. Adopting Proactive first contact protocols will speed things up as well as make some of your population happier. Will you do so?
[X] (Contact) Yes
[] (Contact) No

With the Dimis station construction fleet still en route, Captain Wang has decided to delve deeper into the signs of battle around Elnath V. Although the combat appears to have taken place some thousands of years ago, humanity may be able to glean much from its remnants.

And speaking of learning more from the remnants of old technology, Captain Schwarz has discovered something truly bizarre beneath the surface of Hraztan IV. The world itself appears to be polluted to the point of toxicity, through a combination of atmospheric and oceanic contaminants. But it was inhabited recently enough that at least one facility remains operational - an enormous supercomputer, safely ensconced in a bunker, protected by an artificially intelligent security system.

All signs point to the system having been running for thousands of years, perhaps constructed near the same timeframe as the battle in Elnath. In particular, some consulting computer scientists on Earth have a guess that it has been running a single program, or trying to solve a single problem, this entire time. They haven't the faintest clue what, however. The captain requests guidance on his next steps.

[] (Bot) Scrap it, it has some exotic components (100 Alloys (currently 26/month), 50 Rare Crystals, 50 Volatile Motes)
[] (Bot) Divert its computing power for our own purposes (+10% engineering research for 10 years)
[X] (Bot) Let it continue, we don't know how important its work may be. (+2000 Unity (currently 65/month))

Galactic Situation said:

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