She stared at the newest object to catch her notice. A ship she had failed to detect arriving. A fact made all the more embarrassing by the fact that the wounded vessel was clearly not trying to hide. Its cloaking shields were down, and it was actively carving away at the planet her nest was orbiting.

She could already see that its hull was rapidly regenerating. The old wounds closing off and reforming into a pristine hull. It was truly a sight to see. Entire sections of hull merely liquified themselves, and then just flowed into proper shape before hardening. The entire process took just seconds. If it wasn’t for her using mana to enhance her sight, she would not have been able to catch it. Given the size of the vessel, it was going to take time for it to finish repairing what was clearly extensive damage.

The young Dragoness already recognized what the new arrival was. A Solean Battleship, more specifically the ship was of a battleship class that was used during the million years war, a Solean Sovereign-class Battleship. A heavy capital ship that had served as a mainstay of the Solean fleet for ages, and for good reason. Even wounded, it was an opponent she would have to be wary of. Especially with its uncanny ability to disappear and strike unseen. Unlike the pathetic vessels she had to deal with on a regular basis this was a ship worthy of respect.

Her senses swept over the ship thoroughly, and she found a few things. Shields were currently down, but that wasn’t a sign of the ship not being on alert. Her main generators appear to have overloaded and not recently. The damage to the shields is not only extensive, but the wounds were old, very old. Wounds that were only now starting to heal. Her cloak however was quite operational, and she had minimal warp drive. Scratch that, now she has no warp capability. The ship had just scrapped her own engines, all of them, and is rebuilding them completely. As for weapons, other than the plasma beams being used to carve away at the planet, they were unpowered, and not on standby either. If the ship knew she was here, it wasn’t worried about her, or anyone else for that matter.

She did not want to fight it anyway. A nice friendly chat sounded better. The young Dragoness could use a little company, and who knows, maybe this wounded ship would like to stay. That would be nice.

The young dragoness reached out with her mind, sending out a telepathic hail. For a moment or two she received no answer, and then a single female voice replied. One somewhat different from what she was used to, but the one she expected. The ship itself had replied, something most ships could not do. Even the bioships she had seen recently could not reply to her in this fashion, their crews were even less able. 

She smiled to herself, and let a link establish then she introduced herself, “I am Uliera, and you are?”

“Megumi, primary AI of the Solean Imperial Battleship Constellation.”

With introductions out of the way, she began with a simple chat but things quickly took a more serious turn.

“Out of curiosity, I monitored a battle on my way into the system. That strange cruiser, do you know who they are?”

Uliera sent the mental equivalent of a sigh, and replied, “Unfortunately yes. One of the so called Elder races, specifically the ship is of Ludole origin. Although as so called Elders go, the Ludole are one of the better races, but they aren’t yet mature enough to truly call themselves an Elder race. None of the Elder races are, but they don’t exactly listen to us. If they had that whole plague incident the Nekari had to deal with never would have happened.”

“Plague incident? What kind of stupid did they get into?”

“You chose the right word there. Although it doesn’t really convey the depths of stupidity. The fools in their infinite stupidity decided that it would be a good idea to crack open a Solean shield world. Paying very little attention to the fact that the shield was clearly designed to keep something in. Why else would the power generators be outside the shield? Part of it was that they were blinded by greed, luckily for them the shield world in question was merely a quarantine planet.”

A mental sigh, followed by, “Yeah, that was stupid. Even the Darkations knew better. I guess that answers one question. More importantly, I was wondering. Would you happen to know how that war ended, and what happened to my creators?”

Uliera sent a mental frown down the connection, “I had thought you were old, but that is old enough to be a living treasure. Kind of a heavy topic, but I do know how the war ended. According to Mother, the Million years war grew very desperate, but the lines held barely. Most plans for victory crumbled against the ever-increasing Darkation numbers. Ironically that was how they were ultimately beaten. Your builders, the Soleans, defeated them with numbers, by building two additional shipyards of the same scale and scope as their famed Central Shipyards. With the increased capacity they were able to mass-produce battleships on such a scale that they couldn’t man them all. Vast automated fleets were sent in, with ever-increasing numbers to counter the Darkations. Eventually, Solean fleet numbers exceeded the Darkation fleet numbers. When that happened what followed was a long, slow, slog, as the race was systematically hunted down and purged. Mom says victory was effectively achieved by the year 3,570,000 SDE, but the war did not actually end until the death of the last Darkation queen in the year 4,000,021 SDE. That’s why the war is called the Million Years War by the way.

“As for your creators? I am afraid I don’t know. Like dragon kind, they were exhausted after the war, but they stayed long enough to reseed the life that had been lost in the war. Reviving entire species that had been rendered extinct, or bringing others back from the brink. We helped, and when we were done we went back to our nests and hibernated. When we awoke, our longtime allies and friendly rivals were gone. The Stargate Network had been shut down, ancient fortresses and outposts abandoned, only the automated Guardian Network had been left behind. We suspect they went back to their oldest nests, to the core of their empire. Not that we ever went to check; without the Stargates, the journey is too far. Nor have they been seen since the end of the war.”

“Thank you, that was actually a great help. I suspected that the war had been won, but it is nice to have confirmation on that. Would have been nice to have known the fate of my builders, but that is a mystery I have plenty of time to solve. I have a more immediate one to solve. Someone seems to be pulling the strings of the Neku, using them to make war.”

She sighed, “I noticed, myself, but as a young dragon I am forbidden to interfere. I did, however, inform the Elders, and they sent someone to look into it.”

“I have the feeling that you really want to help though,” replied Megumi.

She flushed, and replied, “I kinda like the Erali. Very lovely and cute little creatures. Just not quite ready to communicate with me on any meaningful level, and unfortunately rather scared of us.”

“Well my sample size is currently small, but every Erali I have scanned should be able to understand low bandwidth telepathy. Although they can’t initiate a telepathic link, not yet. I found one with some fairly high potential, and I plan to use her to fully explore Erali potential.”

“You are right about that, most Erali can understand telepathy assuming you restrict your bandwidth to something they can handle, but it’s rather hard to hold a meaningful conversation with such restricted bandwidth. Although it is better than the average.”

“Well, I don’t know what you could do to help, but out of curiosity. How far along are you on building your nest on that moon?”

“I’m pretty sure you could tell on your own, but I have not yet built it. I was surveying the place when those rude Ludole showed up and attacked me. The moon isn’t ideal either, it has life, and a primitive population, but there is a distinct lack of suitable nesting sites and an even worse lack of large game. Even the waters are lacking, I can’t find any sort of large fish or other sea creatures.”

There was a mental sigh, “My knowledge of the area is mostly limited to what I have scanned with my damaged sensors, and what my ‘captain’ knew.”

The dragoness caught the underlying message and giggled. “That’s amusing, a primitive serving a glorified glowing rock. Well, at least she gets to boss around the other primitives.”

Her statement wasn’t entirely wrong there. A Solean AI core was actually a highly complex crystalline lattice composed of several different crystal types including a rare kind of crystal called Sytheian Crystal. A unique crystal that is known for its ability to absorb and store vast amounts of psionic energies. It played a major role in the ability of Solean machines to use magic. It wasn’t all that different from a draconic war machine actually. Not that she could actually see Megumi’s core, it was too heavily shielded.

“I guess that is amusing. Anyway, I wish you luck with your nest hunting.”

“Good luck with your repairs, and I hope you find the answers you seek.”

They closed with a few extra pleasantries, and then she took wing. This system wasn’t what she was looking for. Perhaps another would be better suited to her needs. Mentally she still marked this one down, it was still one of the better prospects. Besides she had time to be picky. Her eggs would not be ready for another two years anyway. Plenty of time to scout a few more systems, and hopefully, find a better candidate. Mentally she was even hoping for an opportunity to help the Erali to occur while she was nest hunting. She could force that by choosing a site close to Eral, but she had a feeling the Elders would have something to say about that. However if that proved the best prospect, there would be little she could do about that. The dragoness without even realizing had changed her course slightly. A small change, but one that would put her in a system close to Eral. Although it was lacking a direct jump path to Eral. As a result, there was not a significant Erali presence, but the system wasn’t uninhabited. It had three life-giving planets, two of which had their own primitive civilizations on them. Not to mention several large moons that could support life. An ideal prospect for finding a nest, but also an ideal staging ground for an assault on Eral.

A short while later, Megumi watched the dragoness engage her Stardrive, and slip into FTL. Around the same time, she managed to complete repairs to her sensor array and primary comms array. She paid little attention to her readings at first, and merely watched the dragon as she sped away from the system While her subroutines ran a full sweep of the sensors and comm systems.

Then something on her long-range sensors caught her notice. Nothing she need investigate for a while, but she was picking up the signature of an Altean Warship. Not just any ship either, but one she remembered. It had been presumed lost, three months before that fateful battle when the ship had failed to reach the rendezvous point. The ship was in a nebula just nineteen light-years from her current position, but her power signatures were minimal. She was also putting out an intermittent distress call, but it was weak. It wasn’t even on the normal interstellar channels, but a weaker sublight band. If she hadn’t been doing a full test, she never would have even detected it.