The first Sophon carrier shed her moorings and entered the Endless.  By the standard of the Curium she was a technological marvel of the likes never seen by any of the known endless races.  Equipped with a full suite of AI controlled battle  coordinators, and the new dreadful Adamantium weapons she took centre stage in a drama that would ripple throughout the great void that made up the Endless.  

Astoranus had seen this, the first Singularity had revealed it.  He turned and thought of his closest kin.  Velma had returned to the endless taking one of the new constructs as physical form.  The concept repulsed him and it was more than he could bare.  He returned his gaze to the elegant leviathan as it fired up its thrusters before creating a warp field that would send it on a trajectory towards the fleet of the "First Transdental Warden".   Velma had emancipated from him a long time ago and had considered her lost.  Her spirit fused with a machine.  The Riftborn had never envisioned such a monstrosity.  The purity of the Eternal must be maintained.  Now the rift had changed everything.  

The first wave had returned through the rift and colonised a planet in the Vanguard system.  The singularity had been established and the first constructs became embodied.  Within the time sphere they were safe from the prying eyes of the endless.  Here they multiplied.  Preparing, gathering, understanding.  They had studied the rift as it grew and stretched across the void.  A gateway that polluted the dimensional current that separated two versions of reality.  Astoranus had pointed to the Sophons and there meddling in a technology they did not understand.  Their experiments had created a quantum entanglement that had resulted in something that was neither the endless or dimensional.  A state of space that defied all understanding.  The Riftborn could see its effects and for the first time they began to grasp the concept of fear.  

Over the endless the Riftborn had spread, several colonies became viable and Velma had been given the task of intrigation with some of the minor spices that inhibited these outlying systems.  She watched mesmerised by the enormous gas giant that had now become home to millions of her kind.  Science stations littered the landscape while in the distance she could just make out a thin line that was the rift.  A luminous rip in the fabric of this endless universe.  Like all things horrible and threatening it was beautiful.  Light erupted cascading outwards into the darkness that was for now containing it.  Behind and beyond were the Sophons.   

The treaty had been ratified and the second primitives were extended colonial rights.  Velma had worked hard to secure a lasting treaty that provided a platform for integration.  It had been a long road made easier by a common threat.  The Hissio had seen the rift and the planets that it had consumed.  Velma had taken their delegation deep into space where the rift now stretched.  They had been shown the devastation.  Gravity wells distorted and intertwined producing intense fissures where sub atomic particles collided.  The Hissio were horrified at the level of destruction.  Planets had been ripped from there orbits, suns had imploded producing more gravity wells. The Hissio had seen enough.  Velma had shown them but this was only the part they could understand.  What they did not know or were unable to comprehend was what was happening on the other side of the rift.  A place where insanity reigned supreme, a place where the universe and thought became entwined in a exotic dance of particles and oblivion.  

The Sophons occupied the core of the Endless expanse known as the Curium.  Their  technological prowess had become revered throughout the Endless.  They were as a race a monument to scientific and cultural development.  The Curium consisted of seven primary systems housing well over a thousand billion souls.  An empire of enlightenment and discovery unequalled by any of the other primary races that made up the Endless.  The core worlds had become an entwined matrix of trade routes ferrying exotic spices and goods to an ever demanding populous.  Huge ships manoeuvred and jostled for entry through the many hyper gate networks that sped them onwards and outwards towards their destinations.  Occasionally one of the Curium battle cruisers would exit back from patrolling the outlining systems that had become the feeding ground of pirates and desperados.  Slender, battle scared and in need of repair and replenishment, they would make their way to whatever port they had been assigned to.  Observers would note that other smaller trading ships would adjust their trajectories to give priority.  This had been the way for countless cycles.  Trade commerce and expansion the living breathing life blood of empire.  

The Sophon scientific council had assembled.  Unable to comprehend the magnitude of failure their delegates had erupted into chaos.  Qua shifted his slender frame in an effort to deflect the tirade of accusations that had been levered against him.  Each one a dagger that struck at the core of his pride.  Many had come from his colleagues and some he had even called friends.  The great experiment had failed.  Not just failed but had produced the single most greatest threat to the existence of the endless.  They had pondered and deliberated over the projections, many of the Curium refused to accept what the network had told them.  It was unthinkable.  Some even accused the network of falsifying the data.  Qua knew that it was right.  He wished he was wrong yet deep inside he knew the worse.  

The planet Jerell Prime scribed a gentle arc through the Garran system.  A small terran body teaming with life and diversity.  It was well hidden and considered isolated by all but the determined traveller.  Together with her sibling planets they produced a unique gravitational field that emitted small anomalies.  One such anomaly tinged the planets oxygen rich atmosphere changing the light spectrum so that it produced a vibrant crimson colour.  It was here that Khanic now called home.  He had arrived here as a personal protest, seeking to put as much distance between himself and the Academy.  He often thought of those wining simpletons that made up the adminotors.  He had done much for them and the endless in his long but contentious tenure.  Yes he had been belligerent and yes he had  indulged himself with many of his colleagues partners, many of them at the same time.  The fact that he had multiple appendages and a more than healthy libido was not taken into consideration at his dismissal.  Still he had felt unfairly treated.  Now he had found a home on this back water planet.  A home where he could freely pursue his extra curriculum activities in peace and obscurity.  He had taken many wives, who had in turn given him children whose names he could not remember.  He simply referred to them in the singular syllable of a remnant language long since forgotten.

Khanic had been a hero for hire.  A whore to the Academy.  For sale for rent it did not matter to him.  He had served his employers well and his deeds became the legends of the endless.  As a result the academy had turned a blind eye, or several blind eyes to his more questionable activities.  Now he was a forgotten hero.  A hero who only exists in the minds of those of the eternal consciousness.  

The Sophon carrier Azerium punched a hole in the void.  Few had ever witnessed the sight of a mechanical leviathan as it majestically completed her manoeuvres.  Azerium took command of the flotilla taking the total number of ships to eight.  Five attack Kilo class, a Giga class hunter and a Peta class coordinator, formed her escorts.  The network had assembled an attack group.  The first such undertaking in Sophon living memory.  The rendezvous point was Epsilon nine, a cluster of asteroids that once formed an outer colony on the edge of Sophon controlled space.  The system was now home to debris ranging from billions upon billions of dust particles to several planet sized remnants.  It was the legacy of Sophon scientific progress.  Shattered planets told the story of technological blunders on a galactic scale.  It was a side of history the network wished to forget.  Now in secret and away from the trade routes the network was finalizing its next big blunder.   

Velma encased in her magnetic field gracefully occupied the ships science post.  After the ratification of the first consortium treaty the Hissio crew had boarded the vessel.  It was an exchange program that would foster trust and commitment from both sides.  A sharing of information and philosophy.  The divide between the two races was as great as the rift that now separated these realities.  The Riftborn higher consciousness embodied in machine and the Hissio primitive culture embodied in organic flesh and bone.  The ship had to be modified to accommodate them.  It was a simple process of adjusting the thought matrix but the cultural divide, well that was something else entirely.  It was a start, a step on the road of consolidation and understanding.  

The Riftborn had initiated a negative singularity on the edge of the rift.  The rift now spanned several star systems and could be seen from a distance of five light cycles.  It was not the fact that the rift had ruptured the fabric of space time that particularly alarmed the Riftborn, they had ways of repairing such things.  What concerned them was that particle accelerations had slowed and stopped within the rift.  Something that they had never seen or had knowledge of.  They were masters of time and space having chosen long ago to leave this endless existence and pursue the spiritual essence of conscious purity.  

Astranous initiated a thought construct.  All around him his environment shifted and mutated to form the inside of the great temple chamber of Yedesh.  It was his personal favourite, a reminder of the lost times.  A place before the ascension into the eternal dimension.  Here he communed with the curator Primus.  He had been summoned to report his findings and discuss the impending contact with the Sophons.  Not that Primus needed to be informed.  Riftborn shared a common link.  A mutual understanding of ancestral time.  Unlike a hive mind they only chose to share the common law of consciousness.  Personal ancestral ties remained private and required permissions to access.  Astoranous was now going to ask for such permissions.  It was no coincidence that he had chosen the temple of Yedesh as the venue for such an undertaking.  The temple was the oldest in the endless.  A place constructed from the time the Riftborn had brought the dust into existence, a time where life had been created where there was only environment.  

Primus entered the sphere of neutrality that had been created.  It was here that the two most influential minds of the Riftborn melded to form instant awareness.  They had both felt the ripple that the rift had created.  A gentle yet disturbing force that was utterly alien to the dimensional conciseness where the Riftborn resided.  

Primus had instructed Astranous in the development and formation of anti AI contingences.  The Sophons had throughout their time in the void created a technology that was simply referred to as the network.  A total transition of autonomy in the form of artificial intelligence.  The network controlled everything.  Citizens of the Curium were provided for and in return all autonomy had been given over to the network.  It controlled the Sophon trade and war machines and had been this way for countless cycles.  A symbiotic state of acceptance.  Astranous had created the first anti AI tactical commissionaire.  An elite group that had been tasked with infiltrating rogue artificial codlings.  Conscious de sync constructs that would hunt down and remove or change complex AI coding.  It was the first in a series of countermeasures that the Riftborn had employed before returning to the endless.  

As with most first contacts it was a short affaire.  The Sophon flotilla had crossed the expanse towards what was the test site of the Curiums great experimental undertaking.  The network had detected the advancing  Riftborn and there singularity.  From its scans it was a distortion in space that had become indistinguishable from the localised effects of the rift.  It had never seen readings like this before and as a precaution took up position well outside the influence of both.  By contrast the Riftborn chose to enter the negative singularity that they had created.   The network opened up firing the first salvo of adamantium high yield torpedoes.  Scores of missiles arced through the void leaving streams of super charged plasma in their wake.  It was a blitzkrige of death.  The network had no ego to congratulate as it monitored the ensuing battle from remote drones that it had deployed for analysis.  The missiles entered the influence of the singularity and the Riftborn watched as they slowed yet continuing onwards towards them.  The Riftborn battle coordinator created a second smaller singularity.  A singularity within a singularity, only this time a positive one.  Time for them sped up allowing for the deployment of countermeasures and evasive manoeuvres.  This tactic reduced the first salvo to almost no effect.  The missiles that did hit impacted upon their shields and were instantly absorbed.  They had closed the gap to mid range before the next Sophon barrage was unleashed.  This time the network augmented missiles with a frontal laser deployment.  It proved more effective against the fast approaching  Riftborn.  

Velma adjusted the shield matrix to compensate for incoming fire.  The dance of death had begun.  Several Riftborn smaller ships took the brunt of the incoming salvo.   Two ships disintegrated in front of her cruiser.  A third had been crippled and was already attempting to withdraw.  The Riftborn cruiser had a clear line of sight and immediately opened up.  Her ionised cannons shredded four of the networks ships including the Giga class vessel.  There was a fleeting moment of stillness as three Riftborn cruisers came in range of the leviathan Yotta class carrier.  Velma and the Hissio watched in strange fascination as the carrier now unprotected manoeuvred sideways revealing her broadside armament.  At first the Riftborn thought it was attempting to withdraw.  Then the super charged slugs errupted outwards.  

Khanic  watched in helpless fascination as his youngest, or was it the second youngest, he could never remember vomited over his face.  He had picked the child up and swung him upwards and around in circles as he had done countless times before.  Only this time he had not realised that the boy had eaten racxon eels for lunch.  Quickly and gently placing the boy down on the ground he wiped his and his sons face before returning him to his mother, who was also his seventy eighth wife by succession.  Khanic left the room and collected his thoughts.  They would be coming for him soon enough.  One of those piss weak types who the Academy got to do their bidding.  Something was up he knew.  He had heard nothing from the c