Excellent Excellent! You sir are win! Ill edit it soon.

Ron can now do the Charlie Brown dance!

"My Lord", said a Lesser Psion, "There are multiple Phase Lanes leading out from this

world, the lanes are long enough that we cannot scout the Lanes within a reasonable

amount of time."

"Damn." said High Commander Salator. "I cannot allow the the High Mindlords to discover that the Return has stalled after our first battle. The prisoners still refuse to talk?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Damn, alright tell Farala and the other Flayers that they have my authorization to use, rigorous, techniques on the prisoners."
"Yes my Lord." the Lesser Psion's face was completly expresionless, as befited one of his rank, only the lower ranks and castes, imperfects(cripples) and headblinds(those who had no Psionic talent) showed their opinions on their faces.
"Sir", it was Salator's friend, High Psion Dorsain, " Do you think it wise to give that sadist Farala free rein?"
"I will remind you that however much the High Mindlords may object, however much I may object to torture, both the High Mindlords and I object far more to the Return stalling. I would die far quicker and far easier if I shot myself in the Head with a plasma rifle than to fail with the Return."
"I understand my Lord, partly I am worried what they will do to our personal if we torture theirs, and what if that world that you so casually annilated was not a Military world but a Civilianone."
"High Psion, only fools would put a Military world this close to the edge of what they believe to be unexplored space."
"Perhaps it was partaly Military, partially Civilian."
"What fool would not separate the types of worlds so as to achieve maximum efficiency, return to your post, High Psion."
"Yes my Lord." Dorsain bowed his head in acquiescence and walked back to his duty station.

Several hours later Salator recieved information on the systems that were the endpoints of the Phase Lanes through his Mindlink( a small crystal embedded in his temple). One of the systems was highly populated and was the administration center for the others in the surrounding area. Four hours later all that was left in the Tal system was the spinning hulks of the Cobalts and the flash frozen remains of the prisoners. Several hours later the seconded element of the Return arrived and begun to construct defensive platforms and crystal mines.

The assualt into the Taklidan system took barely four hours. As the first wave of frigates Phased into the system, three merchant vessals were about to leave through the same Phase Gate. Beams lept out from the frigates and two of the merchants evaperated in clouds of debris. The third, trailing atmosphere and bodies managed to evade the frigates as they spread out in system. As soon as the frigates had moved away from the Phase Gates a carrier Phased in, disgorged a mass of fighters and bombers. Behind that three capital ships entered the system. The frigates had cleared most of the space ajacent to the Phase Gate when the cap ships entered system with Salator's Mindblade in the lead. The Advent forces swept through the system with light resistence, the few Gauss Cannons defending the planet were causully blotted away and the reasearch labs died soon afterword. After the fighting in space was over High Commander Salator sent a broadcast down to the planet demanding their unconditional surrinder.
"My Lord, the so called TEC," the Lesser Psion invested the word "TEC" with sarcasm, "have rejected your generous offer and continue to offer resistence. Their message was starteling in its...crudity."
"Thankyou, you may go," said Salator. Then, turning to his communication's officer, he said, "Order the Mindblade, the Exile, and the Lost One to begin bombardment of the planet."
"Any particular location sir? Or a general bombardment."
"Yes I do have a particular location in mind, I think this planet's capitol should do nicely."
"Yes my Lord."
Salator watched as the puffs of smoke, so benign from space, blossemed on the planet's surface. The puffs of smoke that looked so harmless from space marked the location of a massive holocaust, a holocaust that was centered on the main population center of the planet.
"Sir", said the communications officer, "the planet is hailing us again."
"Put them through to my Mindlink."
"Yes Sir."
"We were discussing unconditional surrinder before you so rudely terminated the link, do you have anything more to add to conversation?" said Salator to the TEC representitive.
"You BASTERDS! How could you do this?! You've murdered millions of people!"
"If all you have contacted me for is to swear........." Salator let the sentence trail off into ominous silence.
"No, as much as I would like to, I have a duty to the people who are dieing down here. You have our surrender."
"Unconditionally?"
"Unconditionally."
"I will be sending a shuttle down for you at 1300 local time to Casatejal mountain, can you be their by then?"
"Yes" defeat filled the man's voice.
Salator hated himself in that moment with a passion that surprised him, but he had his orders and little things like absolutly destroying a man could not interfere. His thoughts wandered to again to the unwelcome idea that the city he had just annialatted could be Civilian, but no it was impossible. Still, the thought troubled his mind.

First the edited second to last part:
This is the second to last part of the CONTACT chapter(I know very short I suxors!):

Ensign Bajiro was smart..or so he thought. He had requested a quiet position at a listening post on the outskirts of Centauri prime. Ya right! if you could call them that, this was a main world! There had never been any pirate attacks on this system nor had the unidentified enemies approached. He had a cushy job and more importantly he was safe. 'Yep, best job ever' he thought as he leaned back in his chair pushing the sensor screen out of his view. Had he been paying attention he would have noticed the small sensor distortion that appeared.
*****
*This is Probe, in position* the vasari device had a rudimentary AI allowing it to make small decisions of no consequence, turn here, look there, pay attention to the planet, and then report its findings. It was simple and something any race including the humans could do. *Probe, planet is all clear for assalt*

*Roger Probe this is Spiro control, activate phase node* The probe did as it was told, and the planet became the first target for Vasari harvesting.
*****
"Thats odd? the monitors never done that before, better check the manual" You see bajiro didn't even know what a sensor distortion was let alone what it looked like. Slowly the distortion grew bigger and bigger, he still hadn't found the book. By now he really didn't need to as the proximity alarms started to blare. "What the hell was that!" he snapped his head up and started crying "Why me! This was supposed to be easy!"

Even in the last seconds of his life he remained true to himself, incompetent. He had been performing some maintenance work on the phasecom(stealing cable) and it was still off line. The emergency beacon tried to send off a message(it had AI too) but it was stumped, for some reason the phasecom was off.
*****
The vasari fleet slowly moved through the system, destroying every structure and harvesting every bit of scrap. The system only had a few cobalts defending it, they had depended on two things, first was the outer ring of systems that defended it and second was the listening post giving them advance warning of the assault. Alas the vasari never went through the outside ring and the listening post never gave them advance warning.
*****
"This is Lt. Wright to control, repeat this is Lt. Wright to control!"

"Roger that Wright this is control"

"The advance warning never came, they are here!"

By this time everyone knew who they were. The protocol was strictly followed, every single ship available took off carrying civilians to the designated shelter worlds and all transmitters started broadcasting a call for help.
*****
Six hours later(someone give me a more sensible time!) the seventh combined fleet, the only one that had fought and lived(barely at that), jumped into the system.

"This is AP-1, looks empty chief!"

"This is CC roger that AP-1 sending out a flotilla of cobalts to look for survivors"

The 5 cobalts searched the system and only found one thing. "Sir we have what looks like a small alien transmitter!"

"Roger that, keying into the frequency now...well atleast now we know their names" for the transmitter was programmed to repeat one thing: "We are the Vasari. We will harvest your resources. Surrender them, or die as these fools did."

"Ensign what frequency was that!"

"Standard hailing for trade ships sir!"

"Did we have to run it through the translator?"

"No Admiral, it seems to be flawless common, they know it better than I do!"

"I see, they've been watching us. They've learned a lot about us, and now they can learn even more, all we've learned is that we are helpless!"

AN: next one will cover the first "victory" over the vasari by a couple of modified cobalts, and will reveal the pirates!.

sweet! keep writing!