The same probe that had its communications start malfunctioning, suddenly sends a signal...
The tacterians are detected, but mysteriously, they arent being escorted like the charulians.
One of the communications starts sending just weird glitch sounds tuning sounds and all sorts of sounds that are errors/warnings/connecting/tuning sounds.
The portals are studied by sensors, along with how they work and... They appear to teleport into an alternate universe - Albeit a small one, only big enough to fit maybe a dwarf galaxy.
Stop searching for weapons technology, and if possible, find where the portals lead to. Also continue searching for the alien faction's intentions and sensor technology.
Some sensor tech is found - It detects every force-carrying particle, some of which all ships HAVE to have anyways to stay together. It would be impossible to hide from them - as soon as you enter there galaxy, your going to be detected.
The tacterians seem oblivious to this hyperrace.
It is clearly built by, and kept stable by, the aliens. The system is aproximently 1 LY radious total. And has every type of object theorized, or proven, to be true within it. Except the ones which are normal spheres. - But even they exist here, morphed into a different shape. Each planet has rings, and a few of the moons have rings, too.
The chances of such a system are so low, that the amount of 0's after the 0. before you reach the one - Generously estimated to be lower - Is a number more than the amount of plank-lengths that span the observable universe (wich at this point is about 100000 times the size of the IRL observabal universe. Not only that but it'd take merely an earth-mass planet passing 10 lightyears away to upset the balence and eventually cause the system to go haywire.
The orbits dont seem particularly circular eithor - Or ellipse-like, They creat patterns, Clovers, Single circles, All sorts of unique orbital patterns that would take billions of years to produce one of by chance naturally each. Yet this system has plenty of them. Not only that but the shapes of the objects dont seem natural eithor - A black holes event horizon appears to be a donut shape, Planets/stars with all shorts of unique shapes, but none are normal spheres that would be likely to form.