LF Friends, Will Travel

Why we said yes - Hatil

"Wait, let me see if I understand this?"

Zantari asked the question with a level of confusion, their mammalian form's little brown floppy ears waving in a questioning motion. They weren't quite sure exactly what kind of story they were expecting to hear from the Hatil sat in front of them, but it hadn't been the one that had been told.

The little cream-coloured teddy bear like Hatil diplomat was dressed in a nicely tailored navy blue suit.To the other Hatil, she looked distinguished and professional. On the other hand, any Terrans around would have considered her absolutely adorable, with a near irresistible urge to give the walking plush toy a hug. Zantari personally didn't care what the Hatil wore, considering the Ghirlinn were a race that could now change their biology at will, with clothing as barely an afterthought..

"So, the Terrans reawakened from their stasis, and without doing any proper research, your people started a war with the explicit goal of killing every Terran you found.""

"Yes, much to our eternal shame. We ignorantly feared the rise of a new AI race."

The Hatil were nothing special in the galaxy, hardly considered a FTL capable species. There is a flaw with the early type of FTL travel most species use, that while folding space to create a shorter path to travel through was efficient, there was nothing stopping you from appearing in the middle of something, often destroying both things.

Most species realized the danger of any idiot with a warp engine being able to reappear within the core of your home world, and quickly developed disruptors to pre-fold space within certain locales to stop such a thing from happening. The Hatil had decided upon a different strategy: aggressive isolation, and demanding all other species avoid their small patch of space. After a thousand years, nothing really changed for them on the galactic scale. Sure, governments, language, and culture shifted, but all within their unmoving territory. The only reason they hadn't been conquered by another race was simply because nobody else wanted to risk being neighbours with an unknown AI species.

"So then you launch a surprise attack against several outposts and their diplomatic vessel, your only victories in the war mind you, as pyrrhic as they are. The Terrans, unsurprisingly considering that their AI had been researching and upgrading their technologies over the last ten thousand years, completely trash your armies, including destroying one of your colonies."

"Completely justifiably of course, we were the aggressors against those who just wanted friendship."

That brought them to their next topics: among which included their technology. The station Zantari was at was a lot nicer than the Ghirlinn had expected from a Hatil maintained creation, with a far higher standard of technology than they remembered the little teddies having.

Setting up the meeting itself had been slightly annoying, the military outpost at the edge of Terran Alliance territory being one of the few Hatil locations that didn't have a major Terran presence. It was also a relatively new addition, proof of the Hatil's increased power and logistics to create such a place within the last three years. Zantari was just glad that the general power of the Ghirlinn meant that most diplomats would meet them at any place of their choosing, whether that was their homeworld, or a random isolated outpost.

"So after you attempted a war of eradication against the Terrans, and lost, they..." Zantari gave a sigh as they tried to get their head around it. "Left you with full autonomy, provided aid for the war you started, shared their technology with you, and created a major galactic alliance around the pair of you, of which you are currently the second-largest military power?"

The Ghirlinn were not sore winners, as they had plenty of experience with various weaker aggressive species who had tried to take them on for various reasons of religion, culture, or just pure arrogance. Slavery or eradication was more effort than it was worth, but at the very least the Ghirlinn would take their weapons and put them under new administration. For a few generations, until they learned 'Not to do it again'. Sadly for the Ghirlinn, the fact that so many either didn't seem to learn or got worse in regimes afterwards didn't seem to connect in their mind.