Meanwhile, pacing calmly on the bridge of a ship that (to her eyes) is unmoving around her, ship operating on low power and minimum acceleration, Jinye Attani Cocoon addresses her crew.
"Officers of the Empire, let me survey the situation. We are trapped in an alien universe, in which we are the only Attani - the only representatives of Imperial culture, the only members of our species -" (the colloquial misstatement - Attani are not a distinct species from humanity, no matter how much they might call themselves homo sapiens attani, irks her, but she doesn't let it show on her face) "- and our first mission is to find a way home. Our second mission, should this fail, is to do our best to bring the Attani Empire here. To build it, as best we can, with the people we meet."
She turns to pace. "You are the best of the Empire." You are time-servers who were cleared for important information purely because it was believed you'd keep your mouth shut and report upwards to higher authority instead of spilling, if questioned. "You are the best of the universe." Excepting of course that there are ordinary humans as smart as Janos von Neumann, or the name-dead heroes who built Central Computing. "You have survived the imperial academies, and flourished, and triumphed! You have survived the imperial service, and flourished, and triumphed!" This should not be a hard bar to pass! "In this mission, we have two weapons. We have you yourself and through your works - and the ship that you and yours - Veninheim and Suiyan, Guival and Centaurus - built and have captained, the technologies you and yours have discovered, the strategies you and yours have devised." Mostly yours. Not you, in particular.
"And we have them. I don't want you thinking that we have their weaknesses, though we do. We have the fact that they are, by and large, not that smart, not that strong, can barely see, can hardly withstand acceleration, and need twice as much sleep as any of you." And there are several orders of magnitude more.
"No, we have their strengths. Their ambition. Their intelligence. Their desire to strive. All these things will make them want to live up to the standards of the Attani, and the best of them? Will succeed. They will join us, and they will make our empire greater and stronger than it has ever been before. Our ancestors made the Attani Empire out of humanity. We can do the same. When you look at the men and women of Earth and Mars, I want you to see in each of them what I do - an Attani-to-be, and father and mother of Attani-to-be. They are not our enemies. They are our brothers." She smiled. "They just don't know it yet." Fortunately.
She nods.
"The Empire is born from our strengths, and triumphs through our devotion. If the Attani Empire was not superior, it would not be great. All that we need, we can accomplish."
She hesitates a moment.
"Now. We're going to have some unusual problems to solve, if we're going to achieve either victory condition. Let me discuss our plans..."