New Frontier

My greedy tentacles quivering in delight I began preparations for an insane journey into the unknown my ship a pioneer of sorts built to the maximum capacity of a wormhole to transport it was in comparison fairly small only about a heavy cruiser in size and mass but sporting every ounce of technology that I could cram in its hull. I established another respawn point aboard my massive omega class warship as I had decided to name it because there would never be another like it.

I approached the send off point with some trepidation but hope glimmered in my sensors as I sent the first of the trailblazer ships ahead into the great void and waited for their return signal. It took an entire year before I received a signal from my distant trailblazers half of that time was taken up in the wormhole the remaining half a year spoke volumes of just how far they had traveled I had conducted my own tests and the FTL com was extremely fast but if you used it on two opposing sides of the galaxy there was a slight lag of a couple seconds so Extrapolate that to 6 months and you can see that it was a good ways off.

All of my pathfinder ships had successfully made the trip and opened a new beachhead in another galaxy and now because we had a gate at both ends I could make use of the technology I originally had come to the stars to deploy a variation on wormhole technology that creates a temporary instant portal between two points the only requirements are there be two different points to send it to and that distance is calculated by a complex equation that boils down to 1x2 in infinity though there's a few variables including the type of stars that they orbit which goes the more energetic the star the less energy you require on a percentage scale and I had calculated the distance and the stars carefully and even then it only gave me a 3 hour window to get my larger ships through.

I brought a couple hundred planetoid aegis ships for defenses and a few thousand assorted vessels for general purposes as I didn't know what I'd find in this new galaxy. It was a few hours after my fleet arrived when a massive fleet of well odd ships appeared all looking like glass bubbles filled with goo and when I hailed them I received the sounds of screaming in a million different voices it was quite disconcerting. The starships all had bio mechanical systems and apparently were all similar to myself except that they still had a biological brain and trillions of exposed nerve endings and they couldn't die some had even watched as their alien masters harvested their own race to extinction.

After much probing I came up with a solution and started patching into their systems and literally sucking the brains out of them and into my multitude of minion bodies yeah this was probably a bad idea but I was not going to let them suffer anymore. The only reason I could communicate with the alien systems as quickly as I had was a shear dumb luck idea that worked out fairly well a universal translation system though it still took hundreds and even thousands of words to translate correctly but when all of those brains were screaming shouting etc they gave the system the equivalent of a month of intensive information mind you the data was far from complete.

I locked the alien minds in their robotic shells for now so I could deal with the now totally defenseless fleet which I made short work of as their ships were indeed made of glass something that should not be possible but these creatures that looked like wiggling snot were indeed in glass starships which brought up the how do they move question so I tried to study their ships and well I was surprised. The slime ships used a micro lattice of nanotechnology that ran every function they had or needed and things could be created or changed on the spot sadly I saved the data but I was not ready to attempt using this technology yet.

After dealing with the threat I had all of my new citizens come to the main storage hanger I say the citizens came well they did but not under their own power as my ai's were still controlling everything they did. The first thing I did was shut off their mental pain simulation that they had all come up with because they expected it and then I released them to speak. Exhausted moans escaped the group and then a few started to speak asking questions which I quickly shut down and then I began my own version of introduction to their new situations it went quickly they were now independent and did not rely on anyone for anything they were free to which they seemed grateful yet they still seemed to think I was insane and expecting something from them which I quickly corrected by opening the bay door and saying that any who wanted to leave could now do so to live out their days however they so choose most of them left many headed straight or the sun in the system but I wasn't going to stop them I'd seen what they were living through and I didn't blame them for their choice.

The remaining few wanted to join me in my endeavors opting to join my 'crew' though each did choose to individualize their bodies after I showed them how to. I was becoming a race into myself and that was a new one on me but I was not going to complain as they brought their knowledge of the gelatinous aliens technology and shared it and all they knew about it which was surprisingly interesting considering that the entire time they were connected with it they were in extreme pain and agony though I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I assigned my new crew to take some time off for themselves and that I would send them word when I needed them back and not to dismantle anything on the ships but they could have at any of the spare resources that were available as long as they shared it.

This was the most exciting thing I'd ever done even if it had started as an altruistic act I now had a people who would willingly work with me and possibly come up with new ideas thus expanding my influence on the universe at large. I made a resolution to free this galaxy from the slime menace and rescue every single enslaved sentient being I found and so another war starts a war for freedom and I was going to win whatever the cost it was time to build a new fleet.