Spent part of the day mentally re-running through events over events (recent and old) and thinking about the significance of the last 48 hours. In addition to things like the Rift and UA/UP type mysteries I've always been very interested in all the kickstarter books. I re-ran through them all (at least mentally) today and they mostly have one common them, somebody who is trying to make humanity stronger to meet a coming threat. The one story that actually involved Thargoid's had the antagonist fleeing in the direction the Pleiades at the end.
The final culmination of Salome's story is confirmation, or at least a stated opinion, that the major powers only appear to be against one another as a smoke screen to justify a military build up without terrifying the 100's of billions of inhabitants. If everybody runs into panic mode engineering, construction and science would grind to a halt. It does make some sense if they're aware of such a massive threat.
Given the maneuvering that's arranged to put several large ships in Merope with surprisingly little escalation, coupled with some new USS findings in Maia it seems to me that both the Feds and Empire are positioning their ships for an initial event in Merope and/or running from Maia. At a guess I'd say things are likely to heat up in Merope in the coming weeks or months. Think I'll head back there and see what there is to see.
I'd be quite disappointed if the Feds and Imps are secretly on the same side. I would make the game world that much more flat and black and white, EG Humans vs Aliens. That would be very tired and boring. I'd be perfectly happy with the idea that a hidden group is pulling the strings to push them into conflict for the same end result, but still have all the varied Human organisations and powers be genuinely competing and often hostile to one another.