What, nothing for an entire day? This can't go on! Here, have an Omake.
Serras in general, likes technological advancement. She may not be obsessed with it, like the Adeptus Mechanicus is about finding so-called "Archeotech", but she considered it a necessity for the human race to advance. For her, too much stagnation means inevitable death. An Empire could be as large as it wanted, it will still die to a thousand paper cuts, if it didn't progress while others did.
So of course, she is intrigued about finding old technologies and inventing new ones. Very much in fact, she encouraged it even. A bright example of that were the Stellar Bellows and the planned Singularity Bellows.
But still, her core tenet is to invent new technologies, make humanity independent of other entities. A big entity in that way was the Warp. Not just the Gods of Chaos, but the Warp in its entirety. So she tried to search for alternative means of traveling faster than light by other means. Still, her search proved fruitless at first.
Then she got a notification, that her Explorer Corps contacted a Polity to the west of her holdings. Alltogether, they weren't that big. It was only consisting of 30 Planets when all was said and done.
A curious thing about them though, was their fleet size. For 30 Planets, it was huge. They possessed a total of 500 of what would be Escorts, their so-called "Battleships" and even more numerous smaller craft that certainly didn't lack the punch to deal with any enemy. But that wasn't it, further they possessed around 100 Cruiser-sized ships, their so-called "Capital Ships". And if that wasn't enough, they had 10 Dreadnought-sized ships in their backhand, their "Supercarriers", if she was told correctly.
Still, the largest force multiplier were 5 ships of what they called "Titans". No, she didn't mean the Titans made by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Though the equation would be not far off. They were all at least 13 kilometers in axis length, some even longer and were generally hulking monstrosities in space.
What made Serras shudder about them, was their equipment. They could bring to bear Doomsday weapons. The name was very appropriate, or so Serras thought, they could wipe the life off a planet in a single shot, or so their data suggested anyway.
Their technology was what got Serras really curious though. Some of their main armaments were Railguns, and their short-range equivalent, the "Blaster", that could fire Antimatter charges. They even mastered Nanites, going so far as repairing their ships mid-fight without impacting the fighting ability of the ship. This went further, in that they are able to do this remotely too, with an entire of their so-called "logistics wing" dedicated to each of their fleets to keep their ships alive while under attack.
Serras was officially intrigued, when they mentioned their FTL method. They didn't have to enter the Warp, they could do it by entering so-called "Subspace". They explained, that it was like a 4th dimension, where quick travel in system and between systems was possible. Though the technicalities escaped her for now, she would have to sit down and buy some of their "Blueprints" for their technology.
Still, what made Serras concerned was their leaders claim of "Immortality" of some of his citizens. Appearently, they were Infomorphs that would get their conscious transfered to a new clone just waiting for them upon death. That way, they could gain much more experience than the regular ship captain. Appearantly, they are directly connected to their ships by means, that he wouldn't yet explain, making most of the crew unnecessary because the so-called "Capsuleer" could do most of the functions of the ship on his own. Though Serras didn't know what to make of their claim of comming to this place via a wormhole. But it scared her, that where they come from, such a military was considered small for such a small amount of planets.
Another curiousity was their industry. If her calculations and their claims of the speed of their industry was right, then the building of ships would get accelerated by a factor of ten. What really scares her is the output of their "Sotiyos". Large Engineering Complexes, that could build 10 of their Titans at the same time and only needed 3 months to complete a batch of them.
Whatever the matter, she had to come out of her swooning about the potential technologies and continue the diplomatic talks with them. She hoped to integrate them, though they have a very independant streak. They only wanted an alliance. She hoped, she could get them into the bastions with the promise of a little more autonomy than other polities enjoy. They were very valuable after all...
[AN: So, I'm done. For your information, the leaders of the polity are capsuleers. Everyone who knows about Eve Online will know what I mean. I just want to see them together with Serras' polity, that would be very nice in my opinion. But this is just my fantasy.]
