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Later that day Riu is standing in the command center when they receive the signal that the Gate is starting to power up in preparation for a new message. He was hoping that the message coming in from a Gate would be one that would either refute or confirm the one they got about the Coreward theoretically heading their way. But immediately Riu notices something wrong as does the communications officer. The direction the Gate is aiming to be able to receive the message is nowhere close to where they would be expecting it, but in fact almost the exact opposite direction. Meaning that it might be unrelated but as the signal finally starts to arrive the header seems to be the same and it's also pointing to the fact of another Coreward changing directions and this one is also heading to the station. On top of that, this is from another station itself with all the authenticated dressings to make it quite clear that this signal is truly legitimate. The signal is apparently a delayed signal, where someone else sent this signal to the station, the station verified that the information seems to be correct. And when they input the data it turns out that there is now another Coreward set to arrive at the station shortly after the first. With a second Coreward showing up as well as that tip Anon had gotten regarding a potential smuggling of a Consortium Tech Riu feels he has no choice in the matter.

He takes a deep breath and then calls Carol. "We're going to need to go ahead and issue an evacuation order to get as many out of the station as possible to a place of safety. We're also going to go ahead and lock down the Gate. Tell all the nearby Gates that we have a confirmed Coreward situation and that all traffic to Foznetal is to be temporarily suspended until further notice."

"Understood," Carol responds back after a short delay due to her communicator translating his speech for her.

Riu rubs the bridge of his muzzle. One Coreward is bad enough. Two is a serious issue. Just what all do they think was stolen that they felt the need to send two of those monstrosities to them. The last time he can think of them having sent more than one Coreward to deal with a problem was with the Consortium War almost a hundred years ago, and then only because of the fact of a fleet actively fighting against the Coreward. The Consortium has proved in the past that they are more than capable of dealing with their tech being stolen in a surgical manner, of just going into a location and killing and destroying only what was responsible. If they wanted they could just send someone in with their own scanners and telepaths, do an entire sweep of the station and kill anyone that is responsible and destroy any data that may have been gathered. It's usually only when the ones in charge do the crime that the facility is destroyed. And one Coreward has always been enough to accomplish all of that in the past. For them to send a second means they're expecting a fight. Corewards aren't invincible. They can be destroyed. If every military asset that Riu has access to is used, they may be able to handle a single Coreward. And thinking on it he realizes something. If it's a weapon that's being sent over and they installed it right away, a single Coreward would not be enough to handle the threat.

"I want you to contact Captain Toreselia," Riu says. "Tell him two Corewards are coming. Means they're expecting a fight. Let's make sure we have everything set up to be as non-threatening as possible."

A moment later he gets a reply back from the habenceun's ship. "Do you want me to have the fleet be absent?"

Riu thinks on this for a moment before making his response. "No, they'll probably just think we're offering up a sacrifice to appease them and just destroy the station and move on. On top of that if the fleet were to leave we'd have no means of stopping whoever is trying to smuggle Consortium tech from getting onto the station. No, for now assist in evacuating the civilian ships as much as possible and help them get out of the way. Then when the Corewards show up, have the fleet go weapons off, engines off. That should do well enough to give the impression that we aren't abandoning the station but also trying not to be seen as threatening."

"Understood."

Riu definitely doesn't envy the habenceun's position. He's in as much of a bind as the station is. But the station is doing everything it can to try and minimize damage and so long as he can prove they are doing everything in their power to not harbor any Consortium Tech they may be safe from all this, or at least as safe as is possible against Corewards. But the fleet is in even more risk. Because not only do they have to make an effort to be seen as non-threatening, but with needing them to assist the evacuation they need to be active right up until the Corewards show up. And then they have to find a way to not only be non-threatening and not trying to blatantly protect the station, but also make it appear they aren't trying to protect whoever is coming with the Consortium tech. If nothing else, though, he just wishes that this whole thing were to come and go quickly and without conflict so that they can go back to operating like normal.

Cerise absolutely hated the situation she was in. She couldn't argue with procedure and her duty was with the rest of the politicians and taking care of them. She also fully understands that she would be completely powerless to do much of anything to a Coreward, let alone two of them. But that doesn't mean she has to like her situation. Forced to abandon the station to fly far enough away to be safe. Just about everyone she cared about was on that station facing down the whims of a Coreward. Even her son was still on that station. But it's not the first time she's had to do this. As they pulled away her mind kept going back to her experience when she was in a very similar status during the Battle of Mars. She was never a soldier. She could hold her own in a fight, but she was always a diplomat. And so when the Consortium showed up in the Terra system and made their way to Mars, she was considered important enough to be one of those evacuated just in case. Everyone else retreated to the subsurface caverns. All the other colonies the Consortium had gone through on their way to Terra bombed the surface to oblivion, destroying every building and then moving on. It was expected that this time would be the same. Her evacuation was more precaution just in case. Underground they should be safe but cave-ins did happen and some would die as a result of the bombing, let alone a few more before they are able to get everyone safely extracted and begin rebuilding the cities. It would set them back a decade, but they were expected to be fine. She remembers how as she was getting on the ship she was wishing her friends luck and talking about all the efforts she'd put in place to get everyone evacuated quickly. And then as her own ship escorted her to safety she had to watch as everyone she knew that hadn't the means to get on one of the shuttles be destroyed when the Corewards went about reducing the planet to an assortment of rocks. And now, almost ninety years later she gets to do the same thing. And the major concern that she can't shake is whether or not that she'll ever see anyone on that station again, and all because it wasn't her place to stay. They even packed away her familiar so that she could defend the diplomats from raiders should the station be destroyed. A small bit of electricity sparks around her in response to her agitation.

"Are you all right?" Anyol asks without a translator. Anyol is the one most often showing up to the diplomatic meetings in person and has been trying to learn Cerise's language so as to not need the orb, at least not with her. He's definitely been making a fair bit of progress, but he still sounds like he's talking with a massive accent.

"I don't like this," Cerise responds back, not bothering to use her own translator and not really caring how easily she can be understood at the moment. "This helplessness. This sense of being absolutely unable to do anything to help anyone."

"It'll be fine," Anyol adds in, staring out the window with her. The four tailed kitsune tries to be as supportive of her as possible. "We have no reason to believe that they will attack first. They've spent the entire time going through the station as best they could trying to find any evidence of the Tech being already on the station. It shouldn't be on the station at all and the Corewards never just attack without provocation. Even if someone had gotten around the sensors they'll have the means to know we have been checking very diligently the last few days. So they'll just send in a sweep team and then kill a few people on the station and retrieve their tech. Everyone that would be in a position to make them feel the station needs to be targeted itself knows enough to fear the Consortium. No one here would be tempted to try and examine Consortium tech, not in a location that cannot really go anywhere or hide what it's doing."

"Then if there is no problem why do we have to be out here and not defending the station?" Cerise complains, knowing the answer already but feeling the need to express her complaint of the situation anyway.

"Well for starters because we're representatives. We aren't a part of the station and it's the duty of the station to try and see to our safety. And do you honestly think that the Raeshael groups wouldn't be tempted to try and coerce the sweep team to kill members of their other factions?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," she half laughs. "I can think of a few that would just try to convince them of it. Like putting a giant sign saying 'Consortium Tech' on the door to the other group. Doesn't mean I have to like this. I just feel so helpless out here with no means to have any impact on anything that is going on in the station right now. I know you all are my first responsibility, but that's my home right there and I am denied any right to try and defend my home based solely on who shows up."

"I hope you don't get mad at me for saying this, but defending your home is never your responsibility. Your duty is not protecting the few on the station, or the few anywhere. Your duty is on the scale far greater than any of that. We're delegates to something much bigger than ourselves. Each one of us represents the combined interests of potentially billions of people. And I will not claim for the value of our lives to be superior to the combined value of everyone on the station. But what we represent is far more important. Given the choice between defending friends and family and preventing war that would kill millions, if not billions, it should be obvious where your priorities should lie. What we are doing is more important than a lump of metal. That mission must continue even if the station were destroyed. But if we died and the station lived, then what. How do you convince people of vastly different viewpoints to send people to such a remote location as this when we cannot even guarantee their safety? I know it sucks to be forced into the sidelines for duty, but your duty is to everyone in the sector, in leading up and helping us continue should the station fall."

Cerise doesn't have anything to really respond to the statement. She knows he's right. She has no real argument against that line of thought. She is not technically a part of the station's military staff. She has no military rank. She cannot fly a fighter or fly a ship. Unless they came aboard the station itself even if she were there she wouldn't have anything that she could do against them. And if the Consortium did come onto the station, there'd be no need for her to do anything. Her acting in any regard when they are there, regardless of who they were for would condemn everyone in the station. And if they didn't go onto the station and simply attacks with weapons strong enough to destroy a planet, there'd be nothing she could do. And so instead of responding she just stares out her window in the direction of the station, feeling a slight twitch of her magic, flexing off her anxiety and everything else it's been doing lately.

Toreselia, meanwhile, had his work cut out for him. The habenceun was definitely on a bit of a crunch to get things done in preparation for the Corewards showing up. He needed all of the civilian ships to be as far away from the station as possible for their own safety. But at the same time it can't look like they're trying to run away from the Corewards, or otherwise be considered even the slightest bit threatening. They absolutely can't do anything to cause any sort of aggression from the Corewards. The civilian ships are moved to orbit the other side of the planet. Toreselia had half a mind to go and take his helmet off to see if he can help coordinate things better. It was always much more liberating for when he's allowed to do so. His planet is very harsh, his kind never at the top of the food chain. To survive they became extremely aware of their surroundings, giving them faster reaction speeds than any of the other races they have ever encountered. But the strain it puts on their bodies shortens their lifespan considerably. So they created a helm that drastically reduces this ability, slowed their mind an extended their lifespans considerably. But it meant they were always having to think through a fog.

Even as they are doing so the entire fleet is already going about the preparations of when the Corewards start showing up. Though personally he is a little curious as to what the Corewards are like. It'll be his first encounter with the empire. Unlike all the others, his people have never had a single ship destroyed by a Coreward. Though most of that wasn't so much of them being any different to the other races as it was whenever one of their own ships encountered a Coreward their initial response was to simply abandon everything they were doing and run away. There is no sense in confronting a Coreward, or to have anything to do with Consortium Tech. Greed or not. Opportunism or not. It didn't change the fact of doing something incredibly foolish and a guarantee to get themselves and everyone around them killed. Of course he can't really understand why they leave the technology on the Fringewards in the first place. Thankfully everyone on the station seems to agree with that basic logic that fighting the Consortium is a foolish notion that can never be won. And with Corewards coming he's thankful that all the civilian ships are more impatient for him to give them orders rather than what is far more usual from them which is to constantly complain for not being allowed to do what they want to do, regardless of what he needs them to do. He gets a signal in his long range sensors of a ship coming towards the station at an incredible speed. He triggers the command to his entire fleet to go into Coreward mode. Shields are left up, just in case. As is life support and any of the other key systems that would cause massive problems if turned off. But at the same time absolutely no power is directed to the weapons nor to the engines. They do still have maneuvering thrusters up. Else there'd always be risk of accidentally moving to where they don't want to be, which is especially important.

The first of the Corewards show up and take on a threatening position. Toreselia doesn't dare actually use his sensors actively, but he can tell from heat signatures that their weapons are fully primed and ready to fire at a second's notice. They also send out a ton of little drones to float around the ship. But they thankfully aren't immediately opening fire. Now for them to play the waiting game and hope they don't do anything too aggressive. His sensors tell him that the Coreward has started to scan the entire fleet. Fortunately enough, Toreselia doesn't need to worry about one of the other ships doing something stupid in this situation. All of them know enough to fear the Consortium to not think they can win and have been trained well enough to not act rashly. About half way through scanning the fleet the second one arrives. This one does not immediately send out drones, nor does its own weapons seem to be charged at the moment. A minor victory perhaps.

Toreselia sits back in his chair and just watches the two Corewards. They are certainly bigger than what he was expecting, though not as menacing as he had heard. But that might be when being told about the scariest thing in the cosmos, details such as it having an extremely bland, utilitarian design and not much of any color at all. Just big, giant mobile stations of apparent death should anything get in their way. There really isn't much of anything for him to do for the time being. The Corewards would not decide to talk to him but rather the station. The tauric habenceun entertains the notion of removing his helmet again and this time gives into the temptation. It isn't like he has anything else to do and if he's quick about it he should not lose too much of his life for it. As soon as the effect of the helmet has been severed his mind flows as it naturally should, not impeded and thrown through a fog to put it on the same level as the other races at the station. But such focus comes at a cost. Without the helmet his kind are extremely short lived compared to the other races. But for a few seconds here and there it doesn't really make much of an impact. He stares out at the display showing the two Corewards and lets his instincts try to tell him what all is likely to be going on and what is the best course of action on his own part.