It was time.

They sent out the signal, a five-minute recording of random stellar noise which had occurred forty-seven years ago. Then the Group Mind waited.

When it was ready, the drone nearest to the pre-dead world would start its attack run.

When it succeeded, the Fleet would be attacked, be converted.

The Group Mind had spent quite a lot of time thinking about this group of pre-dead. Only three other pre-dead species had built military ships and sent them out with colony ships.

Two of those species had been at war with each other; one had been in the midst of an interplanetary civil war.

In all three cases, it had taken decades rather than months or years to convert them, even given the complete surprise which they had achieved in their initial attack.

The other pre-dead had had a rational reason for diverting so much productivity into their military.

These pre-dead had no such reason, they were not at war with anyone, had not ever been at war with a species close to their technological equal.

Even for pre-dead, it was irrational to divert so many resources to ships which seemed to have no other purpose than traveling from place to place and constantly drilling.

As best the Group Mind could determine, they built their warships because their Master had told them to do so.

It appeared the Master had expected to run into some serious threat sooner or later and wanted the Mastery to be prepared.

Given this, the Master certainly had other plans, plans which the Group Mind could only speculate about.

The Group Mind found this to be worrisome in the extreme.

Thus, it was even more vital than normal that no ship escaped to spread a warning, to carry knowledge about their strengths, their weaknesses to the Mastery.

To the Master.

So the Group Mind, in addition to crafting asteroid drones, built warship after warship, more warships than they had ever devoted to exterminating any other colony fleet.

When the Group Mind decided it was time to strike, they outnumbered the colony fleet by more than five to one.

The Group Mind would have preferred to have more warships, but this should suffice.