The Martial Unity

Her conclusion wasn’t spurious. The Blood Arc had managed to capture the structure of the inner structure of the planet after the cracks occurred. The sheer difficulty of the engineering marvel that the homoarachnoids had managed to pull off was more impressive than any other she had ever come across in her entire life. Not even the tier-one Gaia planets of human civilization were anywhere near as well-engineered as Planet Amadeus III.

Although they hadn’t managed to capture too many details, they had detected the presence of a highly advanced information and energy infrastructure apparatus that ran across the entirety of the silk bedrock of the city and carried an astronomical amount of information and power.

All of these pointed to a civilization that wasn’t merely a type-one civilization or even a type-two civilization. Planet Amadeus III was almost certainly something part of a much, much larger civilization.

She remembered what the Divine Mother had referred to it as.

’An outpost world.’

Merely a fringe presence beyond the edges of a greater civilization.

And they had destroyed this outpost world in a rather loud and messy manner in a battle between two Transcendents and a subsequent supernova that led to the birth of a black hole.

There was no way that this civilization was going to simply ignore this. And there was no way to hide it from them either. It was simply not possible. In the Era of Expansion, macro-astronomical events simply couldn’t be hidden without very extravagant means that needed to be prepared ahead of time.

With wormholes, any party with the means and the willingness could examine the events that occurred in the star system in real time. If they were willing to expend enough resources, they could even get a decently detailed picture of everything that had transpired in the Strehegeld Star System.

It was simply not possible to hide it.

And it meant that eventually, the broader civilization of the homoarachnoids would discover their presence in the local bubble that Sol was in. They would discover the presence of a civilization that had managed to expand by a factor of ten thousand in just thirteen years.

And it was likely to happen soon.

It was why she was eager to get the hell out of this star system and back to human civilization.

Once the two civilizations formally made contact, there was no telling what would happen, but Arastia feared the worst.

An all-out war.

Which, from what she could tell, would not bode very well for human civilization. She had just discovered that a single Martial Transcendent’s protection was not as absolute as she might have thought. If the homoarachnoids had more Divine Mothers, then…

’Stop. Don’t be pessimistic. You’re a leader, goddamn it.’

It was hard not to be pessimistic, perhaps especially because she was a leader, because she understood how dire things could get despite her power, both battle and political.

’Rui definitely has a plan.’

He always did. From what she could tell, he had already disappeared from the Strehegeld Star System. She also knew that he had foreseen human civilization running into an opponent that it could not take on without him.

She also knew that he was most aware of alien life and civilization in the stars. She couldn’t fathom that he would not have many contingencies in play to deal with it. She would simply have to hope that whatever he had in mind was sufficient to deal with the threat that they were undoubtedly going to face.

”Madam President, we have managed to get hold of our allies in a secure micro-wormhole communication channel.”

She nodded with a serious expression.

”Connect me to them.”

She closed her eyes as a stream of data was transmitted to her neural inlay, which in turn was transmitted to her thalamus and her sensory cortex in her parietal lobe.

It generates the sensory information of a meeting around a table featuring known figures.

”President Arastia.” Sage Zentra addressed her with a more severe tone of voice. ”Good to have you here.”

She nodded at the man, directing a sweeping gaze across the gathered leaders of the various convoys. ”Let’s skip the pleasantries. Right now, we’re dealing with an environment that is inhospitable to sensors. The feed from our gravitational sensors is of low resolution due to the space-time fluctuations from the supernova and the battle between the Transcendents. I’m told that it is a matter of time before the noise clears out, and we manage to locate the nearest Lagrange point to get into FTL. We must form a convoy and ensure that we maximize our security and safety in a moment when we are at our most vulnerable.”

None of the other leaders pushed back. Their tense expressions betrayed the pressure that they were under. It wasn’t that they weren’t prepared for danger by any means. They were dealing with a potentially infected world; thus, all participating parties had made sure not to hold back on security and defense.

But the dangers of Planet Amadeus III vastly exceeded their expectations. Had they known they were dealing with an advanced civilization that had somehow partnered up with the virus?

”We must prepare for war once we get back,” the leader of the West Moridian fleet spoke with a grim expression. ”Not a war between polities and star empires. But a war between civilizations and species.”

It was a conclusion that each of them had managed to arrive at through the same line of reasoning as before.

”The first thing we must do upon returning is file a report to the Gaian Alliance regarding threats to human civilization,” Arastia spoke with a severe tone of voice. ”Our respective nations, alliances, and organizations must call upon a secret, emergency convention of various leaders and prepare a briefing on the events that have unfolded in this star system, and invoke Article Two of the Gaian Alliance Treaty for preemptive preparation for contact and conflict with a hostile alien civilization that is more advanced than ourselves.”

Not a single person in the meeting disagreed with her proposition. Any lethargy in the preemptive proactiveness on their part and of human civilization could be the difference between survival and destruction.