Jack of Harts

The AI Council probe ships and swarms that spread out into the galaxy were far smaller than the colony ships we used to send thousands of biological humans. They were smaller, faster, and had a greater range than anything else we had. And so they were able to see the stars before the rest of us arrived. Years. Decades. Sometimes more than a century. Some systems we have never followed at all. They rated every system they arrived at, you see. And they passed that information back to us so we would know what systems were most promising.