The so-called Blobs, the Tslek, were a recent enemy to the loose federation of planets that made up the Islendian Confederation. They were dark, soft creatures with no fixed form, that extended pseudopods for manipulation. So far, not many humans had seen a Tslek up close. At least not to report back afterwards. Several remote colonies had been lost, their administrative centers smashed into incandescent vapor by what were reported as kinetic weapons but seemed to pack more energy than simple rock falls. As with nukes and antimatter weapons, such devices were forbidden among the civilized races, especially among humans. The shock of the attacks had rippled through space with the first reports. Reconnaissance and special operations craft had been sent out to determine the nature of the threat. Some had come back.

The Tslek occupied an undetermined number of planetary systems near the fringe of human exploration. So far the humans had only found one planet that had a Blob “civilian” presence. Or at least a moderately large presence, because it was difficult to tell the difference between Blobs that were military and civilian. The human task force commander had dropped a series of kinetic strikes in retaliation and retreated. At the moment the situation was something like a “phony war” with both sides probing forward. One could get just as dead in a phony war as a real one, though. The front was insubstantial and shifting, but very real.

So far the Blobs had gotten the best of it; the frontiers in that direction had been hammered with millions of dead colonists as a result. If, or more accurately, when a Blob raiding force got through to the more heavily populated worlds the civilian casualties would be enormous; on the order of billions.