Here's my idea....
The Kafers through sub-light exploration, discover a local wormhole in the Gamma Serpenti system. They explore the wormhole, only to discover the other end opens somewhere around Saturn. A scout is sent to do orbital scans of the one inhabited world in the system...and lo and behold, they find a world equivelent to the tech level of the Kafers on or about the cusp of the 2nd Kafer World War (their first nuclear war). Striker of Stars was right! New worlds and new races to conquer! Starting with this one...known as hu'mans. And oh, look, they kill each other too! These will make EXCELLENT opponents, plenty of mind-enhancing violence!
To our POV, the Kafers arrive ca. November 1995 1st ed timeline...The Soviets are hip deep in China. NATO's on alert, and the rest of the world is holding it's breath. The Kafers unknowingly speed the inevitable process along by dropping deadfall nuclear devices in the high kiloton range on the capitols and C3I centers (the ones they can detect from space) of the superpowers. Superpower paranoia results in them blaming each other and a short nuclear exchange results, with a broken-backed conventional conflict following. The Kafers soon land troops in Africa and Latin America and build "Safe-Places", then they begin to branch out...finding conflict wherever they can. Soon, word gets around what is left of the telcom networks on who really started the war, but the human armies are crippled due to the nuclear exchange.
The Kafers aren't all powerful either. Not all the Suzerains are on board with invading Earth, and are happier killing other Kafers. Moreover, the wormhole is a logistical bottleneck, with only two Kafer warships or freighters able to transit the wormhole at a time. Thus, the Kafer buildup is slow and limited, and soon, much of the Kafer advance boggs down due to a lack of men and supplies....
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