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(7x19) Nurbal Enemy: Part 1, Episode 1

Only a few years of his own waking life but nearly a century of outside time later, Amouch is awakened from stasis prematurely, not on the scheduled day of the ecumenical council meeting. A religious official of the ecumenical council awakens him, but only to say that he has done so at the behest of members of the Nurbal government, who have been urgently directed to do so by the Machine, because of a crisis that the Machine thinks Amouch will be necessary to handle. Upon awakening, the Machine itself presents the relevant information directly to Amouch: its automatons on the furthest fringes of the reactivated wormhole network have encountered an alien enemy, combat has begun, and the Machine is losing quickly and expects to be defeated shortly, though it continues its best efforts to counterattack and to defend the Ehrban. Expecting its own destruction, the Machine has had Amouch awoken as part of a coordinated plan to have the Ehrban as ready as possibly to handle themselves in the Machine's absence.

Everyone scrambles to figure out what the hell is going on as the war rages nearly incomprehensibly quickly to the meager organic minds of the Ehrban. The Machine's automatons and the enemy make quick and total war on each other, but strangely, both sides seem careful to protect the Ehrban from collateral damage: the enemy seems to be targeting only the automatons. Amouch and an assortment of other Ehrban leaders try to figure out who is behind this attack, some suspecting the anti-automation worlds who have still not yet joined the Alliance, only to be set straight by the Machine that it is an alien threat from newly discovered worlds where it the enemy was ruling over the local Ehrban.

Amouch telepathically reaches out to Niarba to warn the homeworld that, perhaps, they were right not to go poking around the galaxy again, and it seems that the old enemy that destroyed their ancient empire still exists out there and may be about to destroy them as well. Then the war reaches Entu, where Amouch still resides, and The Machine is destroyed, along with most of its space fleet. The enemy is nearly destroyed in the battle as well, and their survivors then... retreat, or abandon the fight, their few stragglers completely ignoring the civilian Ehrban settlements and ships that remain, and returning to their original worlds, leaving the whole Alliance bewildered.

Next: Nurbal Enemy: Part 1, Episode 2