The Quiet

Hey, Moth here. I've finished cracking the Quiet Database, and some of the data Snail sent us, and I've used it to assemble an overview of the local area, what used to be human space, and some stuff about the Quiet.

Interestingly, there seems to be several secret messages woven through the Quiet Datacore which can seem to have been produced by a sentient mind. I can't rule out it's some kind of hoax, as it seems odd that the Quiet wouldn't notice something like that, given their autistic hyper-perception, but it's possible that whoever made it used some kind of coding that their brains don't pick up. I'm still looking into it with spun, we might get some new stealth tech out of it. I'm also dumping the messages in wear appropriate, I don't think much of the writer's pros, but I'm still including it for completeness.

One thing I'm noticing is the lack of history. The Quiet seem to live very much in the now, what history there is seems to be a list of responses to situations.

Message Insert: There are few who remember the time before they came, the time before the Directors, the War that bought them to power, the last hopeless stand in Tehran, the fall of Malta, the day the White House burned for a second time. Only I remember"

The Nature Of the Beast

Message insert: The are more than human in every way that matters, and less in all the ways that are important.

Physically, a Quiet is based on a human, actually to a far greater extent than an Expanse person is. They're all male (breeding in exowombs), with muscles derived from those used by Neanderthal which have about five times the effectiveness of human ones, and eyes apparently adapted from various earth animal sources. Their skull shave been extended both back and forward to make room for additional brain and heightened senses of smell and taste, but their nervous system is electrochemical, and signals do not pass significantly faster across their brain than a normal humans. All Quiet are genetically male, though they do not have fully developed sexual organs. It can be assumed they are created in exowombs.

Most Quiet have significant surgical and cybernetic modification which seems to be done post-natal, speaking of gravely limited nanotechnology compared to the Expanse norm. The most interesting aspect of Quiet 'augmentation' (if it can be called that) is that they are non-sentient, their brain seems to be based on elements of highly autistic humans and to include high levels of savantism for almost all tasks.

This leaves the Quiet extremely intelligent but non-sentient, and this has (predictably enough) retarded their technological growth, though not for the reasons that might be assumed. While capable of making extreme leaps of understanding (eureka moments) the Quiet are incapable of properly backing them up with sentient reasoning, and further seem not to be particularly willing to support new technological breakthroughs.

Quiet Geography and Technology

Message insert: They would be the greatest civilization in human history, if they were a civilization, or even human.

The Quiet zone of control (It can't really be called an empire because that implies it's a political construct) is very large. Around a hundred thousand systems (102,472 to be precise) lie within the zone, each home to tens of millions or billions of Quiet. The Quiet seem to have little if any care about the environment of the worlds they occupy, with massive strip mining and ground and orbital industry.

This means the Quiet are going to have a giant fleet when we finally go after them. Fortunately, on the defensive front, two factors mitigate against the Quiet, first, a lack of technology, and second distance.

The Quiet ZoC which is centred around earth is extremely distant from the Expanse, and their drives are worse than ours. This has forced the Quiet to mostly use precursor gates to move the long distances needed to attack other human powers. It includes several areas which the Quiet list as not theirs, but it is unclear from the database we captured precisely what lies within them.

Quiet technology is not far in advance of that of the NNU, with first generation fusion plants providing power, carbon armour and magnetic defensive fields, with various lasers, masers, railgun and conventional slug throwers as weapons. They have made some advances however, most notable their ships have an extremely modular design: so modular in fact that they are virtually a collection of external equipment rather than a ship in the normal sense. This gives Quiet vessels a great degree of adaptability.

Techniques

Message Insert: They are true Zen, speed without thought, action without thought, their lives are arrows

The Quiet's tactics are not particularly elaborate, but neither are they completely reliant on brute force. Rather their thinking tends to be very direct, problems are met by the deployment of a number of resources in the agreed upon "correct" fashion, employing an approved amount of deception and subtly.

The Quiet apply their techniques with extreme quickness and precision, far more so than an NNU human could manage, though we are more able to match them. They also seem to react badly to the truly unexpected, though lessons do disseminate eventually. A truly off the wall plan will often completely flummox them for an appreciable length of time, and this has allowed the NNU to win several important victories against them. One problem however is they are incredibly perceptive, quickly ferreting out information in most instances, thus any deception plan should be carefully laid out and put all possible effort into concealment.

Goals

Message Insert: The directors hold their strings, but they are not the ones who set them in motion. Only man can be blamed for his own destruction.

The central goal of the Quiet is unknown, however they appear to wish to continue extending their control over space and remove all threats to this, IE, all other sentient life. It is known that the Quiet are programmed to obey a group that the messages name as "the directors". General data about the directors suggests that they're some form of alien, and appear to be centauroid, with 4 legs and 2 additional manipulator arms mounted on the upper body, and about the size of an Earth pony.

It appears they can also to employ a range of pheromone cues in order to communicate and produce other effects. I theorize this is one of the ways that the Quiet are kept under control.