The Brazwell class Jump Scout entered the Delta Pavonis system on the 18th of November, 2036, at 2:00:11 PM. The 500-ton ship's sensors detected a habitable planet in the inner stellar system, and began traveling at 2512 km/s toward the planet. Exactly two days later, 34 750-ton ships with a thermal signature of 160 appeared on the Brazwell's sensors just before the Brazwell was destroyed in a barrage of meson strikes.
The Shining Garden has determined that this implies that the Delta Pavonis aliens have exceptional detection and speed, and so have decided to build the response fleet around a doctrine of slow ships with overwhelming defensive firepower. However, the technology for such a fleet still needs to be researched, so the fleet construction will likely require several years. It can only be hoped that the Delta Pavonis aliens are not aware of jump point theory, as otherwise Earth would be open and defenseless against the aliens and their meson weapons.
Meanwhile, colonization of the Jovian moons continues on schedule, with 0. 81 million colonists each now on Io and Europa. The short-term goal is to set up a detection and fleet resupply base, with a secondary purpose of providing markets for interplanetary trade to bolster the Garden's economy. The long-term goal is to terraform the moons and install hundreds of mines to extract the plentiful duranium, boronide, sorium, corundium, and to a lesser extent gallicite and mercassium.