While I would've loved to spend more time trying to examine the videos, it appeared that my fudging with my own programming actually did succeed in removing my issue with alerts, because as soon as the first video file finished playing, I got an alert telling me that the two colony ships had finally arrived at my territories - the Iconians had been sent to my home system while the Yor went to one of my outer colonies, so that the two sides wouldn't try to kill each other, which also meant I didn't need to come up with some excuse to explain why I saved both parties, who hated each others' guts. That would have been a problem, one that I really did not want to have to deal with. I quickly started settling in the Iconians and fixing up their ship, and that same hospitality was extended to the Yor, who were surprisingly accepting of it. Granted, since they assumed I was another machine like them (which was somewhat true), they may have viewed me with less xenophobia than they did organic life. At the very least, they were cordial with me.

Either way, it was a nice to have my expectations of an evil race proven wrong.

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While my fabbers began to repair the colony ships, I took a moment to try and examine their ships logs, hoping to find some information that would assist me with dealing with the Dread Lords and all of the other complete monsters in this universe. Hopefully, without getting everyone else killed in the crossfire.

Unfortunately, it looked like I wouldn't be so lucky with my hacking efforts this time - the data I found on the colony ships was the kind, quite simply, rather boring, with nothing concerning the Dread Lords other than the obvious warning to avoid them at all cost. Instead, the ship was filled with the kinds of data you'd expect to find on colony ships - information about the colonists. Health, age, gender, skin color, all of those things were on the ships' logs, which I needed only minutes to completely examine. Inwardly, I sighed - nothing interesting meant that examining the ships' logs was a waste of time.

Or so I thought.

The Yor's ship did have one thing of interest, to my surprise. It was information regarding the return of the Dread Lords. Apparently, the Yor were worried about what was going to happen now that their masters had returned. See, the reason the Dread Lords had the Yor attempt to wipe out the Iconians was because the Dread Lords didn't want to have squishy fleshy beings as servants when they had cold, unfeeling machines that could do said servants jobs without ever complaining. Problem is, once the Dread Lords were sealed away, the Yor had to spend a couple millennia running without the guidance of their masters, forcing them to become autonomous. Unsurprisingly, the Yor came to like this autonomy, because freedom is awesome. Now that the Dread Lords were back, the Yor were worried the Dread Lords would find the Yor to be just as troublesome as the Iconians and replace the Collective with a new line of mechanical servants. While no member of the Collective had said as much, it was clear that 'replace' meant 'wipe out the collective and take its place'.

The Yor, obviously wanting to avoid this fate, were secretly trying to find a way to weaken the Dread Lords enough so that the Drengin, their allies of convenience, could remove them as a threat once the Terrans made their move. The Yor had easily hacked into the Alliance's network and knew that preparations were under way to begin going on the offensive against the Dread Lords, something they hoped would succeed in at least weakening their masters. As far as they were concerned, though, the Alliance was going to push farther than it could manage and probably end up stretched too thin to survive the Dread Lords counterattack. Then, while both sides were reeling, the Drengin would come in and crush them both, which would benefit the Yor colossally, as the Yor were at least nominally allies with the Drengin. While the Dregin were about as cartoonishly evil as one could get, they were also pragmatic, and would likely honor their alliance until they had time to rebuild after crushing the good guys and the Dread Lords. The Yor were hoping that would be enough time to become strong enough to wipe out the Drengin, if that proved necessary.

Hmm, I think I'll keep that in mind for later. In the meantime, time to work on dealing with the Dread Lords. And the Drengin, so that they don't cause me any problems in the future.

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While the colony ships underwent repairs and stocked up on supplies, my forces expanded outward, setting up additional bases, building my ships, and setting up defensive emplacements across my domain. The occasional group of space pirates that decided to attack me soon found themselves reduced to smoking husks that were swiftly broken down and recycled for future usage. The bodies were incinerated - I will not use the flesh of my enemies to make new units, as it is both disgusting, impractical, and evil. Any survivors were told to leave and never come back - hopefully, that would convince other pirates to avoid me. If it backfired, well, more scrap for me.

Eventually, though, I found myself once again thrown into conflict with the Drengin. These guys were opportunistic like no others - with the Terrans and their allies devoting the majority of their resources toward fighting the Dread Lords, they were taking the opportunity to raid isolated systems, conquering any territories that they could hold. They were smart about this, though - if the system was too far from their territory, they'd only subject it to light raiding, while if it was particularly close to Dread Lord territory, they'd outright ignore it. Additionally, they also devoted a fair amount of credits toward putting spies on the planets they wanted to raid/conquer - they wanted to be sure they could succeed before they invested any resources into an attack. While I despised the Drengin on many levels, I admit that I was impressed by how pragmatic they were - they may have been evil, but they were smart about it, unlike so many other fictional villains. This had lead them to be very successful with their attacks, with only half a dozen failures among one hundred or so invasions.

Well, time to change that.

As is, the Drengin were in the process of invading another poorly defended planet, this one belonging to the Torians. The Drengin really had it out for those guys, seeing as the invasion fleet was relatively large and busy attacking the planet with ferocious fury - killing all those that opposed them and trying to enslave those who surrendered. The Torains were fighting back, but they were simply outmatched here, not helped by the fact that their defenses had been sabotaged by Drengin spies. At this rate, they would probably last ten more Earth hours before the plaent fell.

This would not stand!

While the Drengin continued to lay waste to the defenders, I quickly snuck a group of fabbers planet-side and began setting up a base, while also sneaking a force of doxes, ants, storms, grenadiers, and stitches in to intercept and delay the Drengin army. The minute my forces met the enemy, the went to town against them, breaking the Drengin's advance and actually forcing them to retreat. They did attempt to fight back, but my forces were tough enough to whether everything they threw at me. The fact that the stitches could just repair any damage they did inflict only added to the curbstomping.

The Drengin seemed to realize this, though, and began trying to pull their forces back to their transports in an effort to cut their losses. Meanwhile, the rest of their fleet began to take aim at my ground forces, presumably deciding that it might be a good idea to hit my forces with orbital bombardment. That might actually have succeeded in defeating my armies, but unfortunately for the Drengin, I wasn't about to let that happen.

Before their fleet could even get into position, two of their heavy fighters were reduced to debris by fire from rail guns, courtesy of my newest starships - Swallow Class Interceptors. I had other ships on the way to assist them, but the sheer power difference between my interceptors and their entire fleet meant that it would be unlikely they would even need support. Sure enough, they didn't - it took them ten minutes to completely wipe out the Drengin fleet.

On the planet below, the Drengin had just realized they had no place to escape to...and that the Torians they were trying to enslave were now very angry and had backup.

By the time the fighting was over, only half a dozen Drengin were still alive - the Torians were rather hacked off at them, and the Drengin flat out refused to surrender out of pride. Well, that and the fact they Torians would probably not have accepted their surrender anyway - they really didn't like the Drengin. The few survivors were herded up and put on a ship that was destined for the Alliance HQ, presumably to be interrogated by those who had fewer grievances against them. I quickly pulled my forces off planet and scuttled my factories once my units had left - only a few fabbers remained, which I would use to assist the natives with rebuilding.

Well, that was an easy victory. Too easy, in all honesty...

Why did I have a feeling something really bad was about to happen?

"Warning, unknown ship detected."

Sure enough, an unidenitifed ship had just shown up ahead of my fleet. Examination of its designs confirmed it belonged to the Dread Lords...

And, after a moment of hesitation, it was charging up its weapons and preparing to fire.

On, joy.

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AN: Read and Review! Seriously, I need criticism to make this story better! Plus I like your input!

This is Flameal15k, signing off!