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Naturally occurring RF. Yes the NeHaw knew we used RF on earth, yes they were shielded for it like we use sound dampening materials, but what was the difference?”
    While Patti paused looking around the room, Jake turned and rolled his eyes at Sara. Of course, no one would know this. He didn’t know the answer to this, but he gave her the moment.
    Then Patti slowly said, “H D R F. This was the time in human history where naturally occurring RF contained embedded high-density digital content. It carried four times the volume in a normal data stream, and the NeHaw were taking it in unfiltered. It fried their organs like putting 120 volts through a 12 volt system.”
    Jake wasn’t sure how many here would understand the analogy, but laughed to himself as it was her turn for the blank stares.
    “Alright, so we can now understand what happened to the first NeHaw ship and the RF bombs,” Patti continued, apparently not waiting for questions about the relevance of voltage, “so what about their home world?”
    “We presumed the NeHaw used point to point communications and thus once we knew which direction to look, we could find them. Turns out, it is not that simple. Even though they use light waves instead of sound waves, which travel much faster by the way, they still can’t reach the necessary distances in a timely fashion. What we learned from our new Treaty Partners is the NeHaw place Transmitter/Receiver/Repeater stations on every occupied world. No ship can communicate while in faster than light mode, but once they come out they immediately link with the closest receiver station. All communications relay from world to world until they reach their final destination.
    For those of you studying Computer Science, think of each planetary relay station as a router forming a huge MPLS cloud. Dropping any single node just reroutes the traffic. Whatever these Transmitter/Receiver/Repeater units use, our new allies didn’t have a word for, but they could explain how they worked. Apparently, once a station is set up, it immediately creates communication tunnels to the nearest existing stations. These tunnels can take years to establish, but once they are up, it’s like an AC power link. Rather than DC, where current has to continuously travel the circuit, it simply alternates back and forth at varying frequencies.”
    Jake could see some confused faces around the room, but before he could speak up, Patti offered, “Think of a solid pole between two people. If you push and pull one end of the pole, the push doesn’t travel the entire length, just the displacement travels. That gives them almost instant communications over great distances. And these things take no maintenance, the NeHaw just show up, set them up and leave, everyone on the occupied planets knows to stay clear of them.”
    “Finally,” Patti announced, “we have the battleship itself. This is actually a multi-issue event. First, we discovered that every time a NeHaw commander dies, his ship does a burst transmit of all relevant data at the time including video and statistical content. Why this didn’t seem to happen when the first exploration ship crashed is still a mystery, but we know the first two combat engagements definitely triggered this event. A burst from action one sent the NeHaw a log of a single human fighter ripping apart the cruiser bridge, killing her captain. Bursts from the three cruisers in action number two show a captured cruiser and several fighters ripping apart three NeHaw cruisers, killing their captains.”
    Pausing to take a much-needed breath, Patti glanced at Jake with a smile. She definitely loved this attention. She was so much like her great grandmother at this point, Jake thought.
    “The NeHaw now know we have weaponry they can’t yet defend against, so they sent the biggest thing in their fleet. We could have shot at that thing all day long and not stopped it without the RF bombs. So now, we know why they sent the