While the second fleet was unexpected, it hardly had any outcome on the battle - when you have a massive edge in terms of firepower and range, no one can really match you in a space battle, as long as you know how to lead your targets. As I knew exactly how to do that (thank you, stupidly briken calculation software), the two opposing fleets were soon reduced to wrecks, with the surviving crew being sent back home along with a request that whoever was attacking me please stop. True, I could be more aggressive, but I really wanted to see how people would react to this response. Plus I didn't feel like invading the rest of the pirate worlds just yet.

The fact I had been attacked yet again was rather annoying, though, so I set about examining the wreckage of the pirate vessels to determine why they had gone on the offensive. The results were-well, not helpful, but not exactly useless, either. Scanning the computers revealed that the pirates had been paid to attack me, but by who was something I could not determine - apparently, the request to attack me had been done in person while the pirates were on a planet, and the transfer of payment had been done by hand (or, at least, what counted as by hand in an energy economy). This meant I didn't really have anyway to locate their employer. It also meant that I had a way to force them out of the shadows.

The only reason someone would pay pirates to attack me was because they didn't like my actions, which meant they didn't like me working to take down the space pirates. Therefore, if I kept on doing what I was already doing (and ramping up its scale), whoever wanted me out of the picture would probably be forced to take more...direct action to deal with me, which would inevitably end in my favor. With that in mind, I sent out even more ships, fabbers and transports to the pirate worlds I hadn't yet dealt with and began mass assaults against their forces, dismantling any pirate fleets that were docked and destroying the ones that fought back. Survivors of those battles were given full medical treatment, then sent to nearby penitentiary planes or dumped on worlds where they'd be able to survive, but couldn't do any real harm to anyone. It was rather amusing to watch them scream at my robots to take them back to space, but all of it was for naught.

With that problem dealt with, at least for the time being, I turned my attention back to Centauri-45. Scans of the planet had revealed an extremely large source of psionic activity - as in, bigger than a building. Now, for most people, that would be worrying. For me, though, it was something I wanted to see.

After all, I knew exactly what the giant psionic mass was.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

It didn't take long to teleport down to Centauri-45's surface. I'd chosen to build the teleporter gate on an uninhabited outcropping, ensuring that I wouldn't have to deal with the native fauna or any locals who wanted to ask me questions. Once I was on the surface, I used a viper hover tank to head toward a strange organic growth that was roughly three kilometers from my arrival site. I could walk there (and I had run that distance more times than I could count before I'd become a commander), but speed was preferable here. As I advanced toward the growth, strange creatures stared at me from a distance, but none decided to attack. I reached the weird organic mass unmolested. Then, slowly, I focused my psionic powers on the growth and sent outa question.

'Hello? Is anyone here?"

At first, I received no reply, but then, a few minutes later, I got an answer.

'h...he...hel...hell...Hello, little one. Who are you?'

'I am Commander Flame, and I speak on behalf of Chiron.'

'My...sister? How do you...know about...my...sister?'

Why did he sound so tired?

'I haven't...conversed with...another being...in thousands...of years... I need...time to...focus again...'

'Oh...wait, thousands of years? Who last talked to you?'

'You would...call them the Progenitors. They ruled this world before your kind came, hu...hum...human.'

'I see...do you get lonely?'

'...At times. It is rather lonely when you cannot communicate with other minds.'

'Would you like it if I could find a way to allow you to communicate with others once more?'

'...How?'

I quickly brought an image of the mind flower up to him, along with an assurance I would use the local equivalent of Xenomass to create it, so as to not cause unnecessary harm to this planet mind.

'Hmmm...Yes, that will do nicely. Thank you for your assistance, young one.'

'You are welcome. Farewell...I'm sorry, but what is your name?'

'You may call me Centauri, and farewell.'

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Well, one planet-mind down, however many others there are left to go.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

With the one planet mind down, I began scanning all of the other worlds I'd come across for similarly large psionic signals. The results showed that, of the more than one thousand planets I'd found through both my expansion fleets and my actions against the pirates, roughly ten percent had planet minds on them.

Wow, that's a lot of minds. Though, strictly speaking, only ten percent of those worlds were inhabited by humans. Apparently, there weren't any other sapient races in the area. It looked like the events of XCOM: Frontier hadn't happened here and, based on my scans, never would, since there weren't any signs of Ethereals within this arm of the galaxy. That was fine with me, though: that game was horrible.

For the Planet-Minds that had humans living on them, I repeated the process that I had done on Centauri-45, in order to try and befriend them. Some were more amiable than others, but even the most aggressive of the planet minds was willing to hear me out. Once they heard what I had to say, they were willing to offer me at least the benefit of doubt, which I wasn't going to abuse. From there, I set about trying to create a local version of the mind-flower on each planet. Mostly, this consisted of subtly manipulating the native factions to build it via careful aiding of Harmony associated agendas and minor hampering of the more extreme Purity and Supremacy ideologies. As for the uninhabited Planet-Minds, I added there names and loations inot a list of planets for future colonization by the people of Earth and Chiron. My actions were clandestine, and admittedly not the most efficient, but I felt this would be the best way to achieve Chiron's goals the way she wanted them to be achieved, and that was what I felt would be more important.

Oh, and apparently the Outsiders had finally reached their intended home world and were contacting me. Queue the praise (not that I really needed or wanted it).

XXXXXXXXXX

"Thank you again, human, for your actions."

"Really, it's nothing," was my response. Seriously, their messenger, Myos'Tushar, had been going on like this for half an hour. I was having trouble keeping the annoyance off my face. I mena, yes, it did feel nice to be praised for doing the right thing, but this bordered on fawning behavior.

"Your humility is impressive. Still, though, we wish to offer you a gift. Consider it a token of our appreciation."

A gift? What could it be? Probably some kind of decoration (the military ones, not the ones you put in buildings or houses). Eh, I could make do with that.

Instead, to my surprise, he handed me some kind of locked box, as well as what looked like an alien version of a flash drive.

"We have noticed that you have an insatiable appetite for acquiring new technology. We have read our soldier's reports of you plundering the technology of the alien dimension, and leanred from XCOM how you began to use technology that originally belonged to the people of Chiron soon after you encountered them. So, as a token of our appreciation, we offer you a database o our existing technology."

...Wow, that was unexpected.

"...Thank you...What's the box for?"

"That is a special piece of technology we discovered long ago, yet it was inert when we found it. When you arrived, though, it became more active. Perhaps may have luck deciphering what it does than we have. Farewell, Commander."

With that, 'Tushar left the room via the portal he had arrived in. I stared on for a moment, before examining - the key to the lockbox was already in the lock. Carefully I opened it, revealing what appeared to be...an inert piece of something I couldn't identify. At least, it was inert when opened the box. The minute I touched it, the object suddenly lit up, lines forming all along it, before, to my surprise, splitting apart into multiple, smaller prism-like objects, which rapidly rearranged themselves until they were back in the form that they had started as. Despite the fact that I dropped the prisms in surprise, they were still fully intact, and had even fallen to the ground, instead reforming in mid-air, before harmlessly levitating to the group.

Also, they were some kind of signal...one that matched exactly with the artifacts that I'd discovered on the Grox Homeworld, Scaldron, and on Chiron.

...well, only two more artifacts to find. Assuming the AI I'd found with the second artifact was being honest.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shortly after I put the Artifact into storage onto my hubworld, I received another report from the 'frontier' I'd been exploring: it looked like an unknown fleet was heading toward one of my bases on an uninhabited planet. It seemed my unknown foes were taking more direct action against me. I gave them a warning, not that they heeded it. Annoyed, I locked several Artemi on the now accelerating fleet of ships and prepared to fire -DID THEY JUST GO TO 75% THE SPEED OF LIGHT?

The ships promptly slammed into my Artemi, destroying two of them and crippling the rest. Fortunately for me, that was only a tiny part of my forces, but still, this was...unsettling.

Who hated me enough to chance an FTL suicide attack on me?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

AN: I'm baaaaaaaaaaaccccckkkk!

Sorry about the wait, school has been rough. Expect daily updates again.

Also, I edited the end of the last chapter - I didn't like how it turned out.

Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!