Free Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) by Ivan Kal Page A

the Empire gained, every technological advancement was for that purpose.
    But spreading their territory to Earth wasn’t going to be easy. First there was more than 600 light years between Sanctuary and Earth, and while they had already spread their influence they still had a lot more to go. There were obstacles other than the distance in their path. The direct path to Earth was right through two systems that were inhabited by fledgling civilizations. One was a civilization still on the level of primitive tribal communities, but the other one was a civilization that was much more advanced. When Johanna first encountered them they had already reached space, and had sent a mission to the planet closest to their home world. The mission was endangered, the ship they sent was damaged and Johanna had helped. In doing so she had revealed the existence of alien life to the ship’s single passenger and revealed her fleet to Trivaxians.
    She felt responsible for changing everything about their understanding of the universe, so she left them with a parting gift. A package filled with information. She didn’t outright give them knowledge of new technologies, she made sure that they wouldn’t be given everything on a silver platter, what she did was give them means to learn human language and the information about many different kinds of technologies. She gave them concepts and ideas, letting them discover how they were supposed to work on their own.
    And in the last 30 years they have advanced considerably. They built a colony on the planet closest to their home world and had started to explore their solar system. The Empire had a stealth drone inside their system monitoring their activities, and while the Trivaxians hadn’t cracked FTL travel yet, she was sure that it was only a matter of time. Humanity was lucky in a way, they gained a lot of knowledge from the database of the Union ship that Olympus found at the bottom of the ocean. Trivaxians will need to discover things on their own, with just the knowledge that it was possible.
    The problem that the Empire faced now was, what to do with Trivaxians after they cracked hyperspace or trans-travel. There had been a lot of debate, because this case will set precedent for all future encounters between the Empire and fledgling civilizations. It had been decided that the Empire will not force its way into a civilizations home system, it belonged to the intelligent race that was born in it, and Johanna’s fleet had already mapped an alternate trans-route to Earth that added some twenty light years to their trip, but only a week in travel time. But the problem now was how much territory is a race entitled to? Were they entitled to the closest inhabitable system, or systems?
    The Empire had far greater economy, industry, and population growth. In all likelihood they will surround the Trivaxian system in less than a decade. And what then? What would they do when Trivaxians emerge from their system, trying to spread and colonize the space around them, only to find out that it was already claimed? The Empire had no definitive answer, there were talks about asking the Trivaxians to join the Empire in some manner, but no one had brought forward a complete proposal. They couldn’t decide when an offer should be made, how much would the Trivaxians be required to change.
    For now that problem was put aside. The Trivaxians showed no signs of being close to developing a hyper or trans-drive. And so, the exploration fleet’s job was to map out the systems around the route to Earth, but also to look for other alien races. If they are still bound to their home system, they would be ignored, if they had started to colonize other systems, Johanna would establish diplomatic relations.
    Thankfully, they didn’t expect a lot of those kind of encounters, not in this part of the galaxy at least. According to the Union ship data, the area of space that Earth and Sanctuary were in, was sparsely populated.