"While the private sector rushes to profit, we, my fellow generals, are burdened with a much higher purpose."

The voice of a young man rang in the silent atmosphere of the briefing room where everybody was gathered. The individuals gathered in the room were each dressed in military attire with the logo of the Gaian Alliance and the Unified Gaian Forces embroidered on the chest of their attire.

They were each generals of the Unified Gaian Forces, recently established after the creation of the Gaian Alliance. Each of them was older and distinguished, yet they gazed with respect at the young man who stood before all of them.

Supreme General Rasmarck had been appointed by the Emperor of Water himself, and for good reason. He was an immortal sage blessed with a tremendous intellect and talent for strategy and command, particularly in large-scale battles like spaceborne battles.

"I have been personally informed by the Chancellor of Gaia regarding the importance of our mission over the next decade or so," Rasmarck declared with a serious expression. "We, too, will partake in the expansion of Gaian Civilization and the expansion of the Gaian Alliance into the stars. However, our goal is not to conquer as many stars as we can against the private market, but rather..."

He sent a command to the screen behind him with his neural implant, causing it to feature a map of all stars within a hundred light-years of Gaia. "...to target the most important star systems that will allow the Gaian Alliance to maintain control over the expanding Gaian Civilization."

BZZZT

The image shifted to focus highlighted stars in different colors, along with a list of star systems appearing in several labeled categories, correlating with a color each. What was immediately noticeable to all of them was that the labeled stars were stars that were close to a number of other stars that were otherwise not connected by anything in the large distance between them. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"Our goal is to conquer transit connector star systems," the young Supreme General clarified with a serious tone. "Transit connectors, as you all already know, are star systems that serve as among the few paths, if not only, paths between some stars and others. They are of strategic importance because, without them, it is impossible for a star empire to expand very well, restricting the amount of power that they can amass and maintain. At the same time, it gives us a tremendous amount of leverage, allowing us to use it to keep interstellar colonialists in check, because they will need to pass through these transit systems that we control if they want to get anywhere."

There was a limit to the distance that even cutting-edge long-range negatronic warp drives could travel. It was not possible for them to allow a spaceship to travel massive distances in space without a refueling stop in between. And fundamentally, even if there were warp drives that could do that, they would be far more expensive than just simply refueling in transit systems.

Warp drive technology was not new, but negatronic warp drive systems were certainly much newer, allowing the range and the speed to increase drastically. While Interstellar Gates and negatron-empowered wormholes allowed for instantaneous travel, the reality was that it was too energy consumptive, and that warp drives were likely going to be the true means of travel between star systems.

Their limitations and the expenses associated with them meant that transit connector star systems would always be extremely significant; no matter how good such negatronic warp drives could ever get, it would always be cheaper to simply use transits than to bypass them.

"And it is precisely because of this that the Gaian Alliance must be the one to control them," Rasmarck declared with a serious tone of voice. "And out of all of them, these two hundred—"

He pointed at the stars marked in red, comprising two hundred star systems or individual stars in total. "—are crucial. These connect entire star groups with each other, making travel much more restrictive without them. These we have decided to call hubs and are an absolute must-have for them."

Star systems that connected entire star groups to each other as the sole means of travel were designated as transit hubs and were expected to experience a tremendous amount of traffic.

Star systems that connected two or more individual star systems to each other were known as transit nexuses and were expected to have a significant amount of traffic, even if not nearly as much as transit hubs.

Terminus systems were designations given to the star systems that were within the travel range of just one star system.

Isolated systems were those systems that were quite far from every other star, making travel back and forth challenging and not worth it.

These were merely stars categorized by connectivity, rather than other strategic values that they could hold, such as terraformable worlds, resource-rich worlds, or worlds with alien civilizations that had research value, or star systems with a lot of energy to offer.

These were not deemed as politically strategic as much as having a stronghold over the nexuses that connected different segments of stars with each other.

"There are two hundred star systems that meet the standard of transit hub, and around one thousand five hundred star systems that we have designated as transit nexuses," Rasmarck explained with a serious expression. "The two hundred transit hubs are absolute locations to get our hands on. Simultaneously, we must get access to as many of the one thousand five hundred star systems as we can. However, given that the Gaian Alliance does not have the mandate to wage an offensive attack without authorization, we will simply be the fastest organization."

His eyes sharpened.

"The race has already begun. Already, many private and state actors have raced to amass their fleets. But unfortunately for them..."

The man grinned. "We have a head start. With this, we can ensure that the Gaian Alliance controls the most strategic transit hubs and nexuses to ensure that we maintain a hold on our system despite giving them the liberty and sovereignty to do whatever they want."