Among the ruins of Rha, along with their Personal Deflector Shield and Fusion Bomb designs, a clever if hopelessly outdated way of building factories with Improved Industrial Tech 7 and Improved Robotic Controls III, and Uridium Fuel Cells which would actually advance my state of the art if I couldn't already reach every planet in the galaxy, I find the evidence I sought, so horrible and manifest, it needs no explanation:
They have developed Death Spores on Rha, the first step toward true biowarfare, and were working on expanding the technology in ways even the ancient Humans had never contemplated. All their protests against dealing with bioterrorists were the merest self-serving hypocrisy. I immediately present the evidence to Monch ... and he responds by declaring war on me! Deep scans by dedicated Nexus systems soon reveal that though the Psilons have not shared their death spore designs, they and the Bulrathi are working together to engineer plagues on nearly all their worlds! I was so intrigued by the details of galactic history, I forgot that our ancestors are not - with the exceptions of Nexus, you, and in some sense myself - the same as the modern peoples of the galaxy. The kindness of Psilons who lived on Cryslon and Rha centuries ago is no proof that Zygot will live up to his honorable reputation ... and the deadly efficiency and power madness of the Human masters of Orion tells me nothing about Lasitus (who I'm convinced is merely, though completely and dangerously, insane). There is only one way to recover from this error; the Bulrathi core worlds all have bioweapons labs up and running, as do all the Psilon worlds but their ancient home of Cryslon - kept apart perhaps for the same reason that the Humans long ago kept Sol clean - and I dare not wait while they work out designer plagues. I'll never build a death spore myself, but another weapons design I picked up from Rha will be quite efficient for cleaning up biolabs in once-allied-now-enemy space:
Yes, we're looking at ten fusion bombs on a single fighter-class Termite 6.0, compared with 3 on the Psilons' (far slower and far less accurate ... but hey, theirs have zortium armor and class 1 shields!) destroyer-class Star Blazers. No, there's nothing these aliens can do to pretend to stand a chance. Yes, I love technology. With the development of a cloaking device, for instance, I amuse myself by trying to devise a Class XV Planetary Shield, in part to distract me from the necessity of violence.
It always makes me sad to see the collateral damage that inevitably accompanies the destruction of enemy war infrastructure...
... though of course some things are more saddening still. I wish I didn't have to do this at all their biolab worlds, but as Zygot warned me himself...
...it's the only way to be sure!
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Next: The End of the Story
