Bianka's birthday was a nice day, but all good things must come to an end, and once it was over, I was back to work dealing with the problems of the Gal Civ universe.

So far, that was proving to be less difficult then imagined - I was having great success with dealing with the Drengin, my markets were finally starting to give the Korx noticeable competition, and I'd managed to take a world from the Dread Lords. Resistance was dealt with, harshly, but those who surrendered were treated well. On any worlds that I took from the Drengin, I made a point of releasing the slaves, as well as recommending psychiatric help for them and offering schooling. If I freed them but provided them with no aid in finding decent employment and breaking them out of the slave mindset, they were very likely to go back to be salves, or worse. George R. R. Martin taught me that well enough in his books.

Eventually, though, I turned my attention back to my recurring sense of annoyance/interest on my journey - the artifacts. I had little doubt that their would be at least one in this universe, if not more. If I wished to learn more about the artifacts and the weird biological/biomechanical/robotic enemies they depicted, then it would be prudent to find as many as them as possible. It would be preferable to find all of them before I actually met whatever they were depicting, though ultimately, that didn't happen.

I sent out my scouts to search for more signals resembling the ones I had already encountered. I made a point of avoiding the systems where the aliens with Arnor biotech were, though - while the reports that I got back still reported that they were nothing out of the ordinary in this universe, part of me wasn't so sure about that anymore. The fact that all of the images showing those aliens was always a little fuzzy was starting to set off warning bells in my mind. Hopefully, it turned out to be nothing to worry about (it didn't). Just in case, though, I started preparing bigger ships for future confrontations, so that if I had to fight these aliens, I wouldn't be caught with my pants down.

But enough about the aliens, back to artifact hunting.

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It took a while, but eventually, my scouts located a signal similar to the ones the previous artifacts had emitted. The good news was that the system was not formally owned by any empire, meaning that I could claim it as my own. The bad news was that, unofficially, the Drengin had a research station in the area, and apparently, that was where the artifact signal was coming from. Great, I might have to deal with another incident like I did in the Civilization Universe. I really did not want Melissa bailing me out again like last time (for the record, she didn't). Guess I'd need to work on more organic warriors.

Cautiously, I loaded up a transport, modified it with optical and sensor impairing camouflage, and set a course for the research station. Trying to destroy it outright could destroy the artifact, so best to try and take the station. First, though, I hacked its network with my ludicrously long range sensors and disabled all self-destruct features, ensuring that the Drengin couldn't scuttle it to deny me a victory. Unfortunately, this seemed to provoke a response in the facility, and in the artifact. The minute I hacked into the facility, the alarms automatically went off, and as soon as I shut down the self-destruct mechanisms, my ship lost its camouflage. Oh, and the Drengin immediately launched a transport of their own to evacuate the scientists, which quickly jumped out of system. Oh well.

It seemed that the artifact brome through any forms of stealth I could derive and could detect signals from Progenitor derived technology. Could it do anything else?

The answer, as it turned out, was no, it couldn't. All it did was get rid of my stealth and alert the Drengin to my hacking attempt. During the battle between my fighter drones and the Drengin's fighters, and the subsequent boarding action that followed, it did nothing else to impair my forces. Aside from being unable to do the artifact recovery successfully, the missin was a complete success with no unexpected setbacks.

Great, this was gonna backfire on me in the future, wasn't it?

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Once the artifact was safely behind my borders, I scanned it with my Spore scanner, bracing myself for another vision. That vision never came. What I did get, though, was a schematic of some sort, which included this artifact, as well as two other, similar ones. I assumed these three needed to be used to assemble the device I had been shown in order for the vision to occur.

Well, one down, two to go.

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