Kapitel 22: Obfuscation and Penance

In the void me and my son spent decades exchanging ideas and in my case molding him into a future emperor though he spent more time slacking off on his studies than I'd like he did become quite adept at tactics when I presented him with a challenge often throwing him curveballs and unexpected situations with little time to think them through. I trained his reactions to the point that he could react to a changing situation without even conscious thought and even improvised a few no-win situations where the best he could do is achieve his goal but at the cost of everything many were civilian defense simulations.

I beat it into my sons head over and over that all life organic and inorganic was precious and that every choice he made had an impact often times he was frustrated with my antics but eventually he understood my goals and why they were my goals. Our trip through the void ended in a new galaxy that was well outside of our space in fact it was so far off that it would have taken my fleets and my normal galaxy hopping system hundreds of years to explore it. We spent the first week simply enjoying the fact of our arrival and unpacking a jump gate which went smoothly and then we began exploring the new galaxy. Honestly the first couple systems we arrived in were unsurprisingly barren though data had said they would be I used them as a teaching moment and explained why we were visiting them even though they were empty.

Our sixth system proved to be rather exciting as we found an entire civilization around a dying red dwarf star. Methane breathing beings that reminded me of grunts they breathed a 90% methane and 10% nitrogen mixture that would kill nearly every other race I had encountered and they had a very rock like skin and short bodies as well as a serious population problem. The grunts were a interesting species that came from a methane world in the system and they had used every single once of free hydrogen in the system to try to boost their star it bought them a few years but now they were doomed the only technology they had were ion drives and space stations chemical rockets had long been deemed to dangerous. I offered the grunts a place in my empire and they took it so I began by building them a massive ship something that would let them survive until I found a new planet for them.

Once I had the grunts successfully saved for the time being I set off son in tow to explore and find a suitable replacement planet for the grunt race. The exploration went seamlessly though I knew of a planet or ten that the grunt race could inhabit in other galaxies I wanted to find them one in their own simply because it would be much easier to bring them to it rather than transplanting them in a new galaxy. In our searching we stumbled upon another methane breathing race though they were not intelligent they were interesting nonetheless.

Coming across two methane breathing races in the same galaxy and not finding anything that resembled oxygen breathing races made me wonder if I shouldn't transplant my grunts to another galaxy simply to reduce the amount of competition for methane worlds. It was going smoothly my exploration of the galaxy right up until a dreadnought popped out of warp and immediately started firing on us. Yeah this was not good though we easily tanked the shots on our shields and returned fire it ended up being a running battle for over an hour the dreadnought eventually succumbing to our firepower but leaving my ship at 10% shields and lightly battered.

Why had a dreadnought attacked was beyond me especially since we hadn't fired the first shots it was odd to be honest. I didn't recognize the race that had attacked us and I had no idea why they would just attack like that but I decided to keep an eye out for any ships or race that matched their description. It was a long boring search for a new planet for the grunts but we ended up finding them a suitable planet with a brighter younger star.