NationStates Jolt Archive

President Bastidas sat in a leathery black chair over looking an oak desk, his smooth tannish face and brown eyes peering down at super thin paper like computer reports, the white and blue glowing paper thin images flew around the paper, as the presidents tan hands moved up slowly and fluidly on to the table, they were some what rough but not overly so, he sighed expelling breath. His eyes panned an invitation and report of a sol nation he raised his head his smooth skin gleaming in the white yellowish light peering through the oddly shaped windows in his office, he looked around peering at the blue carpet and oak lined white alls he raised his hand and tapped on a flat intercom button, he started to speak in to it with a professional confident voice saying “Delores send in Bester for me, there’s some thing I need toe to go discuss with him..” A soft woman like voice spoke back to rob “Yes sire right away sir...” Suddenly the two dark red oak doors bursted open, In walked a rather tall salt and peppered haired man walked in, his rather normal build shimmering in the white yellowish light. “Mr president you called?” he asked in a rather curious voice, he usually wasn’t called in to the oval office on such short notice he raised an eyebrow and figured some thing was up, But he did not want to assume things. The president responded with his twiddling hands and fingers saying “We have received a rather interesting message from Tannelorn, they are inviting us with a huge fleet of ships to establish a presence over mars, I want to seek your opinion on what we should do about it?”

Bester sighed and thought for a moment many, many options running through his head in the split second pause between words his lips began to twitch again as he started to speak saying “I think it would be an odd idea, I mean it would open opportunities in sol for us, but I’m afraid of the diplomatic consequences, though it might gain us some military respect, there’s a fifty, fifty chance this might go down or up hill , so its risky..”

Rob nodded a bit his hand moving to his smooth face he sighed rubbing his chin slightly leaning back on his leather chair. “All right, I’m going to accept this rather odd invitation, it seems like a good chance of things opening up for us if we do, but the risk is some thing we will have to live with, you have to admit its tempting although I’m still weary of this, I wonder if they have ulterior motives, but we cant let a little caution get in the way of our advancement, I want you to order some fleet deployments, call up some reserves as back up, and bester make sure we don’t get shot at we don’t want to do any thing stupid”

Bester sighed and grumbled in his head a little, he didn’t like this at all, he thought it was to risky, and the risk was non negligible, ho nodded reluctantly, he said before turning “Sir You do realize if all this is a rouse or if some thing goes wrong, our diplomatic relations with sol will be utterly damaged beyond repair, and there will be no way to redeem it what so ever?”

Rob responded quickly his hands folding together in front of him , sitting on the oak table he looked up saying “Yes I realize that but we have to take risk in order to gain respect and in order to exercise true power and keep every thing in check, while many may not agree on our methods we are not there to start a war, simply to back up a friend and securing a zone of control ..”

Bester sighed deeply his chest decreasing as he let hot breath out, his some what toned stressed looked face twitching up with a little cautious disappointment. He swiped his body around almost like a solider would and walked out , rob observed him and knew he disagreed strongly but this was a game of chest rob though a game of guts and wit, if some thing went wrong its because we went wrong sol is the ultimate system for many with positive force and positive influence over it the union could exercise power and order on the galactic scale , he was planning out all the details in his mind as the split second pass between seeing bester exit and the doors closing , the marble blue carpeted hall closing in to the red oak doors light shining upon them, he had another bright idea suddenly in his head, he would contact an ally one of his closes to make sure they would have a fall back incase things went wrong…


He taped his smooth hand on the panel again speaking quickly “raise the Chronosiain diplomat at our embassy and send him this message.

[I] To whom it may concern, we the people senate and president of the union request that you aid us in our quest to rid sol of arrogant narrow-minded individuals and to liberate it from tyranny and self destruction, we are sending a war fleet and a diplomatic fleet hand in hand to mars in sol to establish relations and base of operations in the area, we welcome you if you shall grant our request.. thank you brothers” ..


He tapped the button again sitting back he moved his hand rather fluidly and quickly over to a cabinet he slid the oak piece open, he moved his hand inside the rather shadowy area , he dug in quite a bit and finally pulled out a long sleek glassy white bottle of clear liquid ,he dug in the area once more and pulled out a clear fragile crystal glass, he put it up right on his desk, the light slightly gleaming off of the glassy cover shining and reflecting his image slightly, he opened the black quark of the bottle, and poured some of the liquid in to the cup, the liquid poured out in stream of glossy clearness refracting Roberts image ever so slightly, and the light around him as well as the seamy, he lifted the bottle up again stopping the liquid from continuing to pour, thick watery like globules slightly dripped ever so slightly down the side of the glassy bottle, rob picked up the glass and put it to his supple dry lips, he took a long rather exasperated sip the liquid flowing in to him his body charging and shivering at the rather odd taste of it, he sighed rather loudly….



Tryian fleet bases Later that day….

Ominous floating behemoths flew silently in to the dark depths and voids of space there engines streaming white blue particles in back of them and there hull lights flashing off and on, the hull of the ships where grayish white, dark grey and black they varied with some classes, there ominous bodies shimmered in the bright white and yellow light of the near by tryin binary star, there bodies where well lit up and down , there sheer massive size could be seen from even the ground as bright stars in the night sky.

On the bridge of the URS Battle star stood a rather experienced and some what old admiral, his face was toned and had a rather pale appearance to it, his hair was grey and pulled back and his eyes blue, he shifted a little moving his head fluidly over to the AI floating over head, and asked “Is the fleet ready for departure?” in a clam but friendly tone , the AI responded after fluting right over him yes admiral, all ships report ready for departure, and I’m detecting increased wishes of luck from the polito brats.. the admiral chuckled and held back a full blown laugh “Now, now there’s no need to insult those.. corrupt politicians my friend, even if they make stupid choices , well lets get this show on the road engage faster than light jump drives, prepare for mission start in 5…. 4…. 3…. 2…. 1… NOW!”


Suddenly the fleet of ominously floating ships started to shimmer out of the universe there rives engulfing them in blackness as they left empty space in there wake, one by one then two by two and so on the ships disappeared there streams of white blue particulates dissipating ever so suddenly where they once where. It would take them an hour or so to get to sol but it would be worth the wait. About an hour past the admiral was on the bridge smoking a rather medium sized oak/whick pipe thankfully the AI had engaged filters in order to suck up the smoke before it affected the crew, he looked out of the large holo view port , looking at nothing but pitch blackness and bleakness, The AI suddenly floated over head stating “admiral we have reached our destination , shall I bring us out of U space?” The admiral nodded shifting his head to the AI his pipe some what flickering as well in a mouth full but clam voice “Yes please do..”


Suddenly ships began to appear several hundred kilometers from mars orbit , there large husks and hulls shimmering in to the light of sol, the yellow reflecting upon there plates, the ship floated ominously as they all appeared, there engines emitting the swift white and blue particle thrusts as they moved closer and closer to mars, it was a massive fleet numbering over a thousand or so, small and big ships, the admiral was wafting on the bridge for a message from mars welcoming them he chuckled a little and waited for responses of other nations as well, his skinny body shimmered as light poured in from sol in to his holo port, the red planet shimmering in front ever so slightly as they moved closer and closer…..

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Mars is a happening place right about now. The appearance of another thousand warships a few hundred kilometers outside of the local gravitational sphere of influence is, surprisingly enough, not quite as notable as it probably should be. Still, more blips appear on plenty of sensor units, messages get bandied about on the transmissionless tacnet, and a few options are weighed. Right now the TYCS Fleet presence around Mars is intentionally light; the current situation doesn't demand more than two or three dozen front-line combatants. That leaves the Guard flotilla stationed permanently around Mars and its surroundings; of this, dispatching a whole squadron would be, once again, overmuch. It would also take a few moments given that the Guard forces that aren't currently overhauling or refitting at Deimos are intentionally scattered on region patrol.

Mutterings over the tacnet continue and it falls to a particular heavy carrier to take up the call. The Fedral Union's been seen around the area before, so the assumption is that they won't be immediately hostile. Nevertheless someone has to make the call and it may as well be the ship currently on stationkeeping over what used to be Ravenspire as its attached Ground Forces deal with what is now a relatively minor and common contamination emergency on the surface.

"This is Flag Captain Gohring of the Triumvirate of Yut Heavy Carrier Arsai Mons to the Fedral Union force new to the area." The Flag Captain is an aging man, a touch heavyset with age but still fit under the layer of baby fat. White-haired and harsh-visaged, he speaks with that curious tone people get when they are somewhat annoyed but trying very politely to cover it up. The fact of the matter is that given the current issues concerning the new Sith on the block and who exactly they're annoying he wants to jack into the stratnet and watch the fireworks, especially if Deimos decides a more active participation is in order--for the good of Mars, of course. "Is there anything we can help you with?"

The URS battle star floated ominously over mars, its engines white blue particulate like streams of engines thrust dimming slightly as it came to a crawl, the sensors of the ship started to detect the incoming carrier. The AI floated over the now heavily smoking admiral, the smoke suddenly stopped as he put out the pipe in a swift motion of his rough pale hand, the ai floated over head its blue rather mosaic like glow in its sphear flew across the room as it floated above saying “admiral we are detecting a ship on an intercept course” the admiral blinked and responded as he looked up his head smoothly and fluidly looking over “ Put it on the holo viewer “ the AI did so suddenly a large almost 3D large glowing screen went up, the unknown carrier on screen, suddenly the AI said “Sir they are sending us a message I’m playing it now”

The AI played the message, the admiral stood forth looking at the ship his eyes narrowing upon it his body shimmered ever so slightly as he heard the last words uttered over the loud speakers he looked up to the AI and wittingly said “Raise those old beans, its about time we got a bloody response” he said in his marked British accent, the AI opened a channel its sphere glowed different colors as it opened up a frequency, admiral Odessa started to speak “This is admiral Odessa of the republican ship Battle star, its about bloody time some one responded to us, now we are here under the invitation of some old beans we are allied with, we don’t know all those silly astounding particulars, since I have misplaced them in my cupboards, but that shall not stop us, if you have any qualms about us entering mars space I shall suggest you argue with our friends, I do hope they have Marian takeaway on there station, I did not want to travel those ridiculous distances to eat rations… we aren’t here to start a brawl it is unbecoming, unless we are shot at we know bloody well we wont shoot at you unless you do shoot at us, wait a moment that’s confusing, ohh posh at any rate I shall not dilly dally on the subject If you wish to meet with me I shall be available in several hours to talk .. thank you” Odessa smiled his wrinkled lips quivered up in his smile as he stood shivering slightly in the light. His eyes peered out in to the mars atmosphere and in to the space around it the beauty astounding him.,

***Sky Fortress***

Prefect Montgrove was in charge of the sky fortress, amazingly he was sober. They had decided to wait on his transfer, as there may be an even less stressful position then the cluster. One without foreigners at all. For now the Prefect would have to greet the newcomers. The Fedral Union had come to the cluster where they had met representatives of Tannelorn. Their martial spirit and idealogical convictions had impressed Space Lord Abarrakh and he had suggested to the fleet commander that they may come to visit mars, perhaps even set up a colony.


"Patch us through on coms, lets speak with our new friends shall we?" Prefect Montgrove stated rather flatly. His temples were throbbing now with a rather painful migraine most likely caused by the sheer amount of alcohol ingested the night before. He waited looking around the chamber. He never did like the tall vaulted ceilings of the command room of sky fortress, but he had gotten used to it. Today however he particularly disliked it.

"Greetings from Tannelorn and Vascilia Admiral, please approach the southern hemisphere and Sky fortress through these vectors. We have much to discuss in the coming days. Alsol you may gain an opportunity to watch a..spectacle..you chose a lovely time to show up." he grinned to himself.

"Please approach and disembark so we may give you a tour of our lands and holdings, as well as allow you to see the planet below you for the first time. Though you may want to bring a radiation suit."

Two detachments of Tannelornian einhander destroyers went to meet the fedral union flagship, to escort them to the sky fortress and the reception that awaited the new comers.

ooc jolt ate my screen name. >.<

The AI floated over admiral Odessa once again changing color , is sphere rain bowing colors all around, the said “admiral We are receiving a message from our allies “

The admiral was smoking again by this time, his hands where on the table looking over a tactical display and in-depth sensors readings of the area his body was slouched and his blue uniform gleaming in the light from the holoport and chrome white lighting of the ship. He looked over and sighed saying “About bloody time those lazy blokes got off there fat bums, patch them in” The AI did so suddenly the message from Tannelorn played. Admiral Odessa looked up his eyebrows rising in interest, he chuckled smoke billowing from his pipe he stood up his skinny form shimmering and his blue uniform un-wrinkling at sight, he looked up to the AI and said “Well lets do what they say move towards the southern hemisphere, and get my shuttle ready.”

The AI nodded transferring commands to the holographic course console that the helm officer was taping on.


Suddenly the fleet of ominously large and small ships started to move there engines and thrusters adjusting there positions with bursts of white and blue particulate matter spraying out, the battle star slowly floated towards the southern pole, several minutes passed as the ships cut though the Marian orbit and sky like hot flaming swords there hulls gleaming red and reflecting the crimson red sky of mars like beings of pure might the ships floated towards the fortress, majestically dwarfing most things in there path.
The admiral looked forth at the holoport as the red planet became clearer and closer suddenly half of it shifting suddenly and ominously in to the dark void space . half the crimson red iron oxide glow and half the glow of space amazed the bridge crew …. Ever so sudden and quite, as well as ominous here lay the god of war that they were visiting mars…

The ships had finished shifting orbits, there engines cut off and they started setting up geo synchronous orbit, admiral Odessa nodded to the AI and said “Teleport me to the shuttle bay” the AI nodded and said “Good luck sir, before the AI transported him he looked to his XO and stated “Tim your in charge if you scratch her Ill have your bum!” the Xo nodded as his brown eyes looked upon the admiral as he suddenly was engulfed with a bright blue flash of light, he suddenly reappeared and instant later in a personal shuttle bay, it was rather medium sized only huge ships like the Battle star had them , he looked around the bay admiring the utilitarian chrome white look of it, then he peered in to a neo upgraded design of a space shuttle, it was a lot smaller than the space shuttle and had a lot of modifications to wing structure landing gear and engines for VTOL. He looked at the white and black body of the shuttle and smiled the smooth surfaces being enhanced by the lights in the bay, suddenly a side door opened with a whoosh and a mechanical noise finally clanking on the floor , reviling a ramp he started to walk aboard his body shimmering and getting darker as he walked inside the door starting to close behind him locking him inside the shuttle, he quickly stepped over to the controls jumped on the leathery black seat and put his hand on a holographic panel.


“This is Shuttle craft command” The communications array bleeped “you are clear for lunch”


the medium sized bay doors began opening the force field dropped in a whoosh, he took his rough hands and started tapping on the shuttles controls, it suddenly lifted up with a jerk as the white blue inertia-less drives started up, he taped another control slipping his hands over the shuttle whooshed out of the bay quickly white and blue particles rushing out from behind it started to descend, admiral Odessa’s eyes looked upon the engorging red planet with awe his eyes focused and peered with sheer admires to the god of war , his mind was filled with paltuides of colorful beauty and images, and other such things of honor , he shook his head suddenly his hair some what ruffling as he sent a communications down to the planet.

“This is Battle star shuttle 01, requesting bloody permission to land, please respond..”

as he waited he looked upon mars once more admiring it his eyes and body taking up the red light…

The only sharp sound in the command room is the audible click of the transmit switch being toggled safely into the off position. With the AV feed disabled, officers and technicians look at each other with a look of mild concern, then to the Flag Admiral.

He knows what they're thinking. They're thinking Lord Odessa Babbage-Cartright-Hampstead-Ogleby The Third is absolutely mad. The mental equivalent is akin to actually meeting, oh, the personification of Mister Bones crossed with Golliwog and mixed with some of the spicier racial propaganda hiding behind the guise of literary work concerning the heart of deepest dark Africa written sometime in the nineteenth century. Still, if that's how he is, that's how he is and that's what we have to deal with. "I'll take that as a 'no.' Interesting that he's so impatient that the two minute delay between his arrival and our call somehow bothered him. Stand by to transmit."

The switch clicks back on.

"Admiral Odessa, message acknowledged and, with effort, understood. No hostile intent was or is intended." He is somewhat less successful at hiding his annoyance this time. "Simply be advised the situation is not as stable as we would like it and I'd recommend a careful touch. Please don't hesitate to call us if you need anything. Gohring out."

The switch clicks off, and the flag captain settles into his chair to watch things evolve on the situational awareness monitor in the front of the cabin. Back in the technician's gallery, a spaceman dutifully announces the transactions between the Tannelorni and Republican assets.

"Ah, well, that explains a bit." The Tannelorni are not quite friends yet, but the effort is being made. Decent sort, so long as you don't argue with them. "Send a message to the Sky Fortress, standard fare about how we're willing to help with anything concerning our new guests should they need or wish it. Be friendly."

"Friendly, sir. Got it." And so it is.

How you get rude and reckless?
Don't you be so crude and feckless
You've been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can't fail
No no

The appearance of a grand imperial ultimate hypersupermegaultrapowerful battle warfleet in MarsSpace is nothing new. The person in command shift of USFMARSCOM, upon hearing the news, doesn't even bother to look up from her paperwork- the NCOs want a new color scheme for the workout room, so she'll have to make sure that the colors actually blend. Trust an accountant with color schemes and you'll end up living in Pee Wee's Playhouse.

I know that my life make you nervous
But I tell you I can't live in service
Like the doctor who was born for a purpose
Rudie can't fail

A few words are idly entered and sent on their way. A text message, of course, since she can't be seen checking over a proposed paint job while conversing with the Supreme High Ultimate Grand Consolidated Lord and Federated Something-or-other.

May we help you?

I went to the market to realize my soul
What I need I just don't have (oh no)
First they curse, then they press me 'till I hurt
Rudie can't fail

On a side note, it's interesting to see how Mars has increasingly become the community staging ground. Rather ridiculous... whatever. Excrement has not yet hit the thermal regulator, so no worries.

Still, she preferred "Spanish Bombs" to this song.

The song in question is "Rudie Can't Fail", by the Clash. "Spanish Bombs" is by the same group. Both are on the album "London Calling".

Intelligences in Kajal Mars - artificial and not, in some cases - watched with a detached interest as yet another 'doomfleet' appeared in orbit. Ultimately, those who were watching for only their own interest quickly lost interest and ceased their observations, and those who were currently tasked with and receiving renumeration for such activities continued in their detached observation.

Detached being the key word.

One of the intelligences, a SODAN (Sentient Organic Data Access Network), somewhat abused due to a certain similarity in naming, idly shuffled about the systems of the station, activating comms equipment and sending out a brief databurst.

Attached is data pertaining to no-fly and restricted zones over Kajal Mars. Crossing into these zones will be considered a territorial violation, and will garner a response appropriate to the deviation.

Recognizing that orbital mechanics may eventually lead to deviations in course that may bring craft into violation with zones specified, the flight through the aforementioned zones is permissible above $altitude.

Questions may be directed to Asgard Orbital Command, Kitharmani, Kajal Mars.

The shuttle neared the Tannelornian destroyers now headed towards the TFU armada over mars, The vessels deployed 4 squadrons of morgenraetes to escort the shuttle to Sky Fortress. At the same time Het captain Rhal opened a channel to Fedral union forces.

Strange they may be, but they are good people we have been assured, a little zealous but still good.

"Greetings friends, and welcome, your diplomatic delegation shall be escorted to Sky fortress to meet with Prefect Montgrove and his staff. Welcome to mars and please follow these vectors en route to orbital space over Vascilia south. There is a battle going on at the moment over vascilia north and we cant grant access at this time."

The squadrons of fighters quickly approached and reconfigured their varibale fighters in to high maneuver mode and took up positions around the shuttle. They then directed the shuttle to sky fortress as quickly as they were able. Who knew where and when the battle with the Revans would travel next. The safety of those not involved was of majour concern to Tannelorn, and in fact was the reason they had sallied forth from orbit to face the massive fleet in the open...

The shuttle slowed down to a crawl slowly moving in its engines streaming white bluish particles behind it in a rather short cone shaped stream. Odessa sighed his body shimmering in the light of the shuttle as it went forth, his hands fluidly gliding over the control he looked out of the holo view ports, he chuckled to him self his lips quivering slightly then he said “About blood time lets get this show on the road” he looked to the AI who was in a box floating slightly and said “Send them a reply for there greeting, say Good to finally here from you ole chaps , its about bloody time you responded, maybe we could talk over some roselya eh mates?, well cheery’o till docking old friends”


The shuttle moved with the fighters as the battle star floated behind it, the fleet was large and ominous its engines trailing a huge white blue stream of particles ending just as they moved out of the engines , and slightly wiping around due to the gravity well of the planet. The bridge of the battle star was rampant with busy officers, tom looked around then looked to the long range over stellar object sensor sweeps, he saw a major what seem to be like a battle going on, he sighed and leaned onto the glassy 3d holographic table his smooth hands on the marital, the chrome white light gleaning around the ship.

The AI floated over head as it always did when some thing came up, its sphere of blue greenish energy swiveled around it, the message from Kajal and then from Tiburon was played tom raised an eyebrow and said in a rather friendly clam voice ,” send a mutual message to them..” the AI responded opening a frequency , tom started to speak “This fleet is here under the invitation of Tannelorn, we do not intend to cause any harm or attack any nation or ship unless we are attacked first, you need not worry, as for considerations for air space, we would like any other maps of other nations pertaining to that, so we do not make a mistake, thank you” He said that in a diplomatic professional voice, his hands where on the table he looked down upon mars via scanners, he was much more stiff and uptight than the admiral, but he would loosen with battle experience and time on the job, his blue eyes and black hair reflected off the glassy table some what, his face was a little smooth…



The ships continued to float orbiting over mars with there engines adjusting ever so slightly, the republican flag in plain view of any body, the hull lights illuminating the eagle on one side and the republican flag on the other each ship had its own motto and quote, they were written under the eagle…

The State department sent a message careening on to the battle stars communications array, the ai floated over tom again glowing urgently yellow and green, he looked up his head smoothly bucking as his blue eyes focused on the AI, his hands where still on the holographic battle screen, and his body was still slouched over it the AI spoke “Commander, The Republican state department has sent a message to be relayed to all mars nations currently in contact with us or others who wish to have contact, it is to be relayed to them as soon as possible..”

Tom blinked and shrugged saying “ok send it down” his black hair gleamed in the chrome white light , slightly shimmering through the blue green, and white holographic panels. The message to nations read rather professionally,
“To all mars nations, we apologize for our inconvenient jumping of a fleet in to your orbit , it was not our intent to cause any hostile responses, we would like to assure you we have no intention of attacking you, nor do we have any intention of blackmailing you nor causing damage to your nations, if you wish to meet with our diplomats we would gladly send a diplomat down to meet with you and see how to work things out, we want you to have assurances and trust in our intentions, we want peace not war, we would also like friendly relations, as this letter stated before this fleet is here under the request of our allies, and if it finds a permeate home here we wish for you to trust that we are not like other warmongering countries”


United Republic state department
President of the United republics


Tom sighed he looked out of the holo view port his mind adrift with boring platuides , he was no longer slouched on the table but standing up tall looking out of the port, the red gleaming light shimmering over his skinny smooth uniformed body, the light of the ship amazingly mixed with the red light…

He sighed his eyes focusing and panning the outside area…

"I can't help it," Sky Marshal Fani-Kayode says, smirking as she reads the text scrolling down an auxillary monitor.

"Don't say it," Senior Diplomatic Officer Jennifer Ngabese literally growls as she sits at the console next to the standing flag officer, typing up her reply.

"'Like other warmongering countries,'" Tandra chuckles. "Doesn't give me very high hopes, especially with the appearance of yet another fleet of doomcock."

"'Fleet of...'" Ngabese looks up curiously at the ranking Combined Services officer. She's only a few shades lighter than Tandra, but still possessing a decidedly African build.

Fani-Kayode coughs quietly. "Missile Frigate Skippy's phraseology has caught on in some circles."

"That's it," grumbles the Trium's chief diplomat in the theatre, "stop distracting me."

"Either way, methinks they doth protest too much."

To whom it may concern:

The Triumvirate is always interested in fostering better relations with its neighbors and so we would like to take you up on your diplomatic offer. While your unexpected appearance has concerned several inside and outside of Triumvirate interests in Mars Theatre, your most recent message has done a great deal to allay these concerns.

With this in mind we cordially invite whatever diplomatic envoys you would wish to send to the diplomatic sector of the Triumvirate of Yut Combined Services Fleetbase on Deimos. I expectantly await their arrival and hope that through the establishment of friendly discourse we can become better informed about each other and thus grow closer as peoples.

Respectfully,

Senior Diplomatic Officer Jennifer Ngabese
Triumvirate of Yut Diplomatic Corps
TYCS Fleetbase, Deimos

"You're inviting them here?"

"Yes."

"And if they follow this current trend of sending a diplomat surrounded by an armor column?"

"Well, we're going to have to hope that their diplomatic corps is slightly more professional than whatever logistic numbskull figured that hiding a diplomatic mission inside a thousand-strong warfleet wouldn't raise eyebrows."

"Have I already registered how uncomfortable this whole thing makes me feel?"

"Yes, but have some faith."

"No."

Behind the Escorting vessels one could easily make out the first shots of the Revan conflict now occuring in orbit. Tannelornian ships had engaged, this much was obvious. Very few peoples inside sol or out of it made as prodigious use of as massive of grasers as were now being fired in to the great host of Revan ships. Great streaks of brilliant light were now flashing past, far in the distance but close enough to be easily observed. The morgenraetes gently guided their craft towards sky fortress and the waiting diplomatic envoy under Prefect Montgrove.


The flight was uneventful except for the strange tone of silence that hung over mars. Not a true silence as it were but a lack of activity as civilian vessels stopped much of their activity to let the warring fleets clash.

It was a rather strange way to greet the Fedral Union forces, amidst the backdrop of a battle the likes of which mars had not seen since melkor had invaded and the Tyranids came. Still it promised new friends for the future. No matter how strange they might be.

The squadron finished its approach to the Sky fortress, its massive spires and cannons glinting in the distant light from the sun, gargoyles and other sculptures adorned its 15 km diameter surface, at once a work of art, a wonder of mars and a defensive weapon system without parralel.

It was also the main focal point for tannelornian diplomacy until the completion of Sky fortress. The squadron quietly slipped in to one of the cavernous launch bays and to safety.

Inside the diplomats were attended by the welcoming commitee of the Prefect and escorted quickly through the aesthetically designed space station. Murals, statues and other iconography was everywhere, large open spaces with massive vaulted ceilings served as barracks and mess halls, recreational areas and simple places for quiet.


The delegation approached the massive multi layer doors leading to the command room, holo projectors ringing the massive nearly 1 km long corridor leading to the center of the station projected a constant real time image of the surroundings. It was as if one was standing amongst the stars themselves.

Lieutenant Gilchrist and Diego Escobar, visiting from Neptune, thumbed through transmission after transmission. "Well, I wont lie to you. They have very little finesse."

Gilchrist eyed Escobars rather large build and commented, "I wouldn't think you to be one to discuss finesse over brute force."

"We'll see how funny you are when your patrolling nursing homes for the rest of your life." Gilchrist decided it best not to press the issue.

"Well sir, is it worth it?"

Diego though for a moment, shrugged, and then said, "Why not. Theres enough crap going on here that establishing some trust couldn't hurt." Gilchrist looked over and saw him glance skyward. Obviously thinking about the Revan conflict. There were certain times when serving in a country ridden with more internal conflicts than external ones payed off. Being isolationists wasn't all that bad. "Send a transmission to the Trium on Deimos. Ask permission to send a delegation to sit in on the meeting, possibly become involved if the situation warrants it. If the answer is yes have my shuttled prepared as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir."


>>>To: Triumvirate of Yut Combined Services Fleetbase on Deimos<<<
>>>Standard Diplomatic Link<<<

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to our attention that in light of recent events a diplomatic meeting between the Federated Segments and the Federal Union will take place on Deimos. Given the location and series of events leading up to this meeting Largenitan officials on Mars fromally request to take advantage of this opportunity to attend the meeting in order to forge better relations with the new-comers to the planet.

Respectfully Yours,

Lieutenant Marcus Gilchrist
Marte Largenti Naval Command
Marte Largenti

As Odessa walked in to the looked around he blinked a little and wowed, the first time he was impressed with any thing in years , his eyes panned around, his head fluidly moving around in amazement thoughts ran though his one track mind, about what to do and what I say, it wasn’t difficult for him usually to conjure up some thing witty and friendly it would brake the ice easily, but the affect of the seen was such that he was distracted, he quickly shivered his head around in a jolt his thoughts returning to normal, he sighed a little , breath coming out ever so slightly as his shimmering skinny body walked towards the doors, he looked around once more and in the split second before the doors opened his mind went through what he was sent here to do, and how he was going to do it, time seemed like it stood still ever so slightly, his body shimmered in the light of the fortress as he watched as the doors opened ever so slowly, at almost infinitesimal rates as his mind conjured up what to say, his eyes focused in on the opening doors and his mind was damped by a hint of memories from the past, he shook his head free again the near pause in time speeding up as the massive doors whooshed open in a quick motion, his lips quivered ever so slightly as he walked in his black polished boots taping on the metal floor under him he looked around gazing upon the massive bridge with distracted eyes yet again, his mind quickly snapped him back in to reality, he looked around at an officer yet unknown to him, that officer had let out a sigh, some thing was up with him but Odessa did not know what, he stood there his mind pausing time again for a split second, he reviewed his greeting, and platuides of diplomatic contact, he was snapped back in o reality by his brain once more with the assertion of a job to do, suddenly he looked over his head shivering in the light as it peered over to the man in the chair looking upon him trying to read the expression of his face, his lips quivered and opened ever so slightly as he began to speak .

He started speaking in a rather professional friendly voice; his body was rather stiff, as it always has been for meeting friends or foes on battle fields, he uttered loudly in this voice “About bloody time you responded, good to see ya mates, how are you doing old bean?, I am admiral Odessa, sorry for the rather odd entrance but any way , your fortress is rather astounding, I have never seen any thing like it before, you bloody tannys know how to design some rather pleasing things for the eye, well…”

As he was speaking his body relaxed a little, his brain was chuckling but was and calling for his body to relax in to a casual state, his eyes where focused but not to focused, his hair was a little messy but not noticeable accept at close ranges..

On the URS Battle star tom was flipping through monitors on the bridge, his hands were placed forth on the panel once more as the AI floated over quickly its spear bleeping and beeping as it moved close to tom, right over his head, tom jumped almost hitting the floating AI, he looked up and said in a loud startled voice “don’t do that?! Jeez your liable to send me to the grave early..” he chuckled a little after, his heart returned to normalcy after the startling action, his skin gleamed in the rather white chrome light as his black hair palely reflected it back he looked up at the AI who was already starting to speak in a soft voice “Commander we have an incoming message from Triumvirate representative, shall I play it?” Tom nodded and said with a brisk but friendly voice “Please do..” The AI responded by playing the message promptly.. the message was played on the local 3d speakers, tom blinked his eye lids batting ever so slightly as his lips quivered up to a grin, he looked around and up to the AI and said “Send the diplomatic officer over he should do well on them” he spoke loudly but not to loud his voice had a hint of clam command presence.. The Ambassador stepped on the bridge, his body was a little built, he was shorter than tom by a foot though, his uniform was red and blue because of his position, and he looked around the bridge as his glossy dress shoes tapped on the chrome metal deck he looked around tom started at him from the holographic table witch was panned on the reaver battle , Winston raised an eyebrow at tom he walked over sighing his built rather short body shimmering in the chrome white light he said “I am ready to be beamed over, commander”
Tom looked back to the ai and said “Tell them we are beaming Winston over “the ai complied sending a simple message…
We are beaming a diplomat to your station, I hope you wont be to startled we are sending this in advance to avoid confusion“
Tom blinked and said “all right then, computer give a count down of ten seconds…” the AI floated above yet again its sphere of energy glowing bright blue and green Winston looked up at the ai and bowed slightly his body shimmering suddenly as a bright white and blue light engulfed him on the bridge, time all but stopped for him as the light engulfed him completely sending bright white and blue streams of light thorough the bridge, it suddenly dissipated after a split second , tom the ai and rest of the crew went about there business, as suddenly in the Triumvirate a bright flash of light similar to that of the bridge appeared and the figured shimmered in to view as it disappeared his blue and red uniform pressed clean and his look professional, he peered around his face rather stiff and emotionless, this is how he was at first, but he would loosen up as time went on any one who knew him knew that, he sighed his built rather short body shimmering as slight puffs of breath poured out of him his chest deflating… he waited …

First, a quick response.
Lieutenant Marcus Gilchrist:

You and your government are quite welcome to send a delegation to meet the Fedrals with us. Please send over a delegation at your earliest convenience.

Senior Diplomatic Officer Jennifer Ngabese
Triumvirate of Yut Diplomatic Corps
TYCS Fleetbase, Deimos

* - * - *

The Fleetmind Gestalt Controller stationed at Deimos Fleetbase sighs. Or it would sigh, if it were a oxygen-sucking squelchy meatbag. The twirl of internalized semantic and emotintellectual emotions inside its primary data loop could be considered deflating, if any sort of physical 'realspace' adjective could apply, and is certainly analogous to the near-universal sign of fatigued annoyance. Originally hailing from Zero-One, the FGC originally carried the moniker R-Robert 56A4E2. When it joined the TYCS and got this cushy Fleet Captain-grade slot on Deimos, it played word association and pop culture history to come up with its Fleet name (unlike the poor saps suckered into being SMI cores on grandfather ships due to said ships already being named and all).

"Battle Star, this is Dread Pirate Roberts of Deimos Fleetbase. In response I will lower the transport and displacement inhibitors at grid coordinates [XYZ numbers]." What it wants to say is 'thanks for the heads up and the assumption of ignorance, Charlie' but only continues with "Hopefully you will be pleased with the statement that we would not have been 'too startled' in any case. Deimos Fleetbase FGC out."

After cutting the connection, Dread Pirate Roberts flashes the mechanoid equivalent of the Agincourt Salute and goes about making sure the Fedral diplomat doesn't get noised or rechanneled. Those particular euphemisms, quite descriptive in the data environment of cyberspace, don't quite suggest the fact that in meatspace they either result in the transportee ending up as a foul-smelling carbonized organic goop that has to be scraped off with a vibrospatula and several industrial-power cleaning solvents or cast into an alternate and probably very squid-scented alternate fractal reality respectively.

In a more physical reality, Ngabese, a junior civil servant taking notes, and a Fleet ensign watch the ambassador come in. The ensign takes notes in his mind concerning the transporter technology, the junior civil servant is on apprenticeship and scribbles more quickly than the students in the opening of Brave New World, and Jennifer just waits quietly until the noisy lightshow is over. "Welcome to Deimos Fleetbase's teleportation reception area," she says with a polite bow, "I am Senior Diplomatic Officer Jennifer Ngabese of the Triumvirate of Yut. The tramway to the main base is this way; if you'll just follow us, please..."

The TRA is a tiny armored shoebox of a room well seperated from the actual fleetbase. Apparently some of the architects and area planners were from Treznor and the Dominion, so paranoia seeped in a bit. Seeped in a lot, apparently, if the camera domes and the armored archway ensconcing the currently open blast doors are any suggestion. That the archway also has a dedicated starship-grade scanner capable of detecting guns, swords, knives, tacnukes, laser Phalanx, bombs, brass knuckles, dentifrices, hangnails, bows, the clap, slingshots, fresh fruit, and sonic electronic ballbreakers (as well as instantly vaporize any water in the unfortunate person carrying the device if the sensor went to full juice) is not at all mentioned or even suggested by either the architecture or the Triumvirate officials.

Beyond that is a little tram station with a little tram car. The tram line is essentially one nominally low-power linegun that nominally pushes the tram car around at gentle, friendly, and pleasant accelerations. If things are not nominal... well, let us just say that there is a general order straight from the CINCTYCS himself that the TRA linetram may not be used in particle acceleration experiments, especially for the construction of singularities. None of this is of course evident from the minivan-sized tram with its soft plush seating and little underlit coffee-table in the middle. The Yutties sit on one side, and Jennifer politely indicates to the ambassador to sit on the other. Small talk is unlikely given the nature of arrival, so there may as well be some cutting to the chase--discreetly, of course. "Welcome to Deimos and welcome again to Mars, I suppose. What brings you here, if we may be so bold as to ask?"

The small craft Diego Escobar stepped onto was anything but subtle. In stead of a standard paint job, the hull of the craft was a Largentian Flag. Diego wondered who in the hell would order something like that as he took his seat. His own shuttle, a far more tasteful one at that, was refueling from the long trip to Mars so it would seem he would have to manage for the next few days.

The craft took off and minutes later was closing in on the TYCS fleet base. Escobar was just finishing thumbing through a report of all that had gone on, including communications. Meeting these people--The Fedrals--would at least prove interesting...amusing perhaps. Moments later he could hear the pilots requesting permission to land.

TYCS Fleet Base, this is HMDE Nicator requesting permission to land as well as landing instrustions, over.

The ship then reduced speed and awaited confirmation.

"Nicator, Deimos Fleetbase STC. Cleared for landing; follow vector hacked to this signal. Onboard guidance should be able to direct you from here. Over."

The fleetbase consists of several low armored domes that have grown into each other like soap bubbles; bricklike hangar bunkers jut out here and there either from the central domes or the moon's rock. The bay Nicator is directed towards is slightly apart from the rest of the complex and, as the shuttle closes, the crew can see that it is clearly labeled as the Civilian Access Hangar. If one can imagine a brick with a hole carved out of it, with smaller bricks making up what appear to be revolving doors, then one can reliably imagine what the CAH looks like, except it would be less a bricky substance and more a metallic armor substance.

Nicator is directed to land on a square patch of deck lit up by a series of lights, placing it neatly in the center of one quarter of one of the massive circular turntables. Upon landing, magnetic (and physical) clamps lock on and the revolving door turns one quarter of the way around, pulling Nicator inside. Pistons lock the system into position, the quarter-cylinder chamber pressurizes, and the curved inner door rolls up to reveal a compartmentalized hangar. A taxibot rolls up and hooks itself to the shuttle before the clamps disengage and allow the drone puller to guide the shuttle to a parking space where smaller clamps once again engage as the inner door rolls back down.

Waiting for the Largentian delegation is another nondescript ensign in Fleet green-and-blacks and a DiploCorps lackey in blue-and-charcoal. "Welcome to Deimos," says the diplomat, a young looking Caucasian with unusually white hair, "I'm Diplomatic Officer Alexander Layton. Senior D.O. Ngabese will be arriving with the Fedral ambassador shortly; I'll take you to the receiving lounge to meet them if that fits in with your plans."

The prefect turned to meet the delegation and practically jumped out of his chair.

Well, at least they arent from mars Montgrove thought to himself and grinned. "Welcome friends to sky fortress, I hope you rather enjoyed your trip and the naval escorts werent to gruff with you." He poured two fine flasks of vodka and approached the fedral union delegate. "Drink up and enjoy, we have much to discuss as well as much to learn from each, yes?" He filled the cups a mite bit more then someone who didnt imbibe vast quantities of alcohol might, a little spilled out of each.

"Besides until the resolution of this battle we are to simply engage in conversation and discussion about any questions you may have on sol or the reason for your invitation." he grinned softly looking behind him. One of the walls of the sky fortress was showing them a close up view of the battle. Massive flashes of light and fire lit the sky as tiny explosions blossomed around the two fleets.

Massively powerful energy beams were erupting every minute or so from the vascilian side every minute or so in timed volleys. It was an impressive sight and little wonder that the crew of the sky fortress seemed more interested in watching the show then looking at the strange new foreigners. Still they were getting the odd stares here and there.

Prefect Montgrove nodded to his new found drinking partner and pointed at the massive screen. "Perhaps a little entertainment before we start the discussions then?" he also nodded towards a massive globular holo projection, inside of it was a representation of mars and its surrounding space for millions upon millions of kilometers. Most interesting however was that it depicted every ship in martian orbit and it highlighted those of Tannelorn in red and those of the enemy in green.

"After this we shall discuss the matters that we brought you here for, a possible colonisation venture over the bloody tear [Jupiter]." he grinned softly. "A presence in sol means much bounty in trade and economics, as a presence in the greater galaxy means more resources and space." he tipped his glass to the federal union delegate and turned his eyes to the battle.

Sky fortress would play no part in this conflict, at the distances they were at and with the high energy cannons mounted upon the battle station it would be likely that civilians would die in the process of assisting the vascilian fleet. It was simply an unnacceptable risk.

Odessa blinked slightly his mind filing with some mundane confusion as he turned quickly over to the monitors his eyes focusing on the bursts of fire, only paying attention partly and gathering important parts from his new friends speech, his mind paused time again as he pursed it then he looked back over his head fluidly moving his hair some what glossy fashion. Odessa picked up one of the glasses and put the cup of clear liquid to his mouth, globules of glossy clear liquid flew in his mouth as he tipped the glass his lips quivering around it, it seemed like an eternity but was merely a few seconds of shot, he quickly put the glass back to normal, half the liquid still left he smiled and He looked over to Montgrove and nodded a bit, responding “well it’s a bloody fine show and this is a blood fine glass of vodka , and I’m not to much for formalities my self old chap, I have been dying to try the culture of mars, I was wondering if the stories are true about Martian food products , he chuckled a bit sighing as he walked little closer to Monty, and stood next to him watching the screen, commenting with a confidently observant voice “Good show chap, nice tactics there, I just hope our fleet wont have to jump in that rather dastardly fire with you and help you, but I’m sure you old beans can help your selves. His skinny body shimmered in the light of the fortress his uniform of mundane common Tarren colors blue and grey…. He looked at the battle and several other screens his head moving fluidly along in the air. He moved the glass up again his hand grasping the clear smooth crystal material, he put it to his lips, and they quivered around it taking in another sip…. His mind was thinking of what an interest this person was, and of what an interest mars could be to him, he was debility avoiding the subject of Jupiter, so he would not seem so forward… his mind scanned the situation as he released the next shot of the liquid from his mouth
Winston
Winston raised an eyebrow relaxing a bit in to a more causal state, he looked to the main representative, then quickly glanced at the other aids just as he sat down, he had admired the scenery before hand and was rather astonished about it, his mind raced with plain attitudes about diplomacy but left room for creativity. He fluidly sat down across from the TOY diplomats and smiled a little, in a friendly way, his mind was going through his response to the question posed he smiled and looked up his lips quivered ever so slightly as he spoke in a confident friendly voice , “well to tell you the truth, where here under the invitation of our ally, but we have secondary goals, one of them is to establish friendly relations with nations of mars, its unfortunate that you misconstrued our fleet to be hostile, then again we could have done a better job of handling it, I must say you have a beautiful area you have here I cant wait to see more of it, at any rate my government is here to make friends as I have said we don’t want to offend any one or start a fight, mean while on the other hand I’m surprised you have accepted our offer usually nations would either ignore it or become rather aggressive towards us . “
Winston smiled his lips quivering up ever so slightly in to a grin then smile, his smooth white skin gleaming in the light of the facility as his eyes narrowed upon the other diplomat, he watched the others out of the corner of his eye being attentive to behavior, his hands were to his sides placed on his legs slightly feeling the martial of his blue and red uniform.

Tom was on the bridge looking towards the battle he took notes on tactics being used as sensors scanned every ship around it, looking for tactics and new exploits of some nations incase they ever had to face them, he placed his arms and hands back on the holographic 3d panel and looked over to the renditions of the battle , he thought for a moment as the AI floated overhead.

Jennifer smiles with perhaps excessive sincerity, easily manipulating the gesture into a mask of polite tolerance. "So we heard. Unfortunately I must point out that you have read us incorrectly; we did not and do not consider you to be hostile so much as perhaps on guard to an extent not generally conducive to engaging in sincere friendly dialogue."

The Academy-fresh ensign looks out the tram window at Winston's canned line about 'a beautiful place.' All he sees are the unpainted rough rebar walls of the tram tunnel, their granular grey only broken by line impellers regularly spaced every few dozen meters. Being Academy-fresh, he may be able to subdue the shrug but the look of dismissal still gets through as he barely shakes his head. Good for him that he's to the side of all this.

"We are also glad to hear that your interests are wholly peaceful as evidenced by your assertions and a thousand-strong armada of peace in high orbit," Ngabese continues, "and we are glad to say our commitment to peace in that regard is qualitatively equal to yours. We have not been forced to intervene in a negative military fashion in Mars Theatre yet and it is our aim to prevent the need for such an intervention for as long as possible." The 'surprised' remark also seems to garner a reaction. "While we can understand why perhaps you would be surprised by our reaction, given the tendency of our neighbors, it is a point of pride in our history that for the most part we have worked to the utmost to make diplomacy our primary tool of international relations and to try and maintain pleasant and mutually beneficial relations with as many of our peers on the international stage as possible.

"Still, we find ourselves in the position that despite having exchanged mutual statements of a lack of interest in conflict there is still the fact that just possibly current force concentrations in the immediate vicinity suggest interests beyond merely establishing a presence or combating an enemy already faced by thousands of warships and, by last report, already withdrawing. I am certain that as a professional diplomat you can see how such a... dramatic deployment of military assets could be seen as vaguely counterproductive to the interest of stabilizing a region known for already being well beyond sufficiently militarized for its own protection."

Winston had always enjoyed plain utilitarian looks, ever since he was a boy playing around rather odd factory areas on Tyrian, he crossed his leg over another one and moved his hand slightly over them before smiling again this time a little more plainly but in a friendly fashion, his mind conjured up responses in a split second that seemed like an eternity for him in his head, his hands where causally placed on his crossed legs as he looked at the diplomat. His response was rather quick and was made in a friendly professional voice saying as his somewhat dry lips and white rough skin quivered open to utter our words in a tasteful manner his body shimmered in the light as he slightly let in and out breath, his fingers twirled with each other at the instant words started to come out. Stating “I can see how you feel that way, that fleet is merely there as part of a bigger plan to support our allies, and its not intended to attack or look aggressive even though it might seem that way, and for all intensive purposes the only reason we would ever intervene on mars is because our allies requested it or we where attacked with out reason, mean while what dose your government need in order to trust our words of peace? We like I said have no interest in fighting a war and we are willing to show it “
Winston’s mind was focusing on how to break such suspicious platuideds about his country and its ways of doing things, he mind ran words through it pausing time again for an instant until he had finally came up with the words to say, his lips quivered roughly again up with words coming out in a friendly but serious tone “I’m sorry that many nations find us suspicious we don’t intend to come off that way, on the other hand we are a bit suspicious about some mars and sol nations due to there history and stories we have heard, then again we have to take all stories with a grain of salt in order to establish new relations wouldn’t you say ?” he smiled having undertones of rather focused reasoning towards the diplomat, although not overly so, his mind wandered again as he sat back grinning relaxing a little more his hands still placed on his crossed legs, until he switched from the left blue red lined clothed leg to the right one placing his hands on that one again.

Winston was rather confident that he would be able to establish at least a friendlily dialogue, His uniform and body shimmered in the light a little more as he sat back his form being emphasized by it.. Winston wondered if the TOY had any hidden agenda he was trying to read them focusing on there words and what they were saying, he didn’t want to seem overtly observant as he didn’t want to offend them so he kept his mouth shut some what waiting for a reply, and waiting for the right time to ask questions, his nature and feeling was cautious but not harmful or malicious in any way, he was there to establish diplomatic ties.

Winston was rather confident that he would be able to establish at least a friendlily dialogue, His uniform and body shimmered in the light a little more as he sat back his form being emphasized by it..

'I've spoken to Navarrone...' said Fleet General Ituenza, commander of the Aumanii High Fleet, to a man in an immaculate burgundy suit.

'And?' said the shady figure, a government agent representing Special Unit...Auman's elite intelligence gathering organization.

'He gave you a free hand...' said Ituenza, with a nearly audible shudder. Special Unit were spooks. Untrustworthy, backstabbing, spooks. The fact that Navarrone was so completely overrun by the details of running a nation at war to allow a group of power hungry malcontents to handle diplomacy was horrifying.

'Then I assume you've spoken with these new comers? The Federals, or what ever they call themselves...' the Agent trailed off just before taking a drag of his cigarette.

Ituenza nodded slightly, 'We sent them a message asking for dialogue. Being as they are aliens, however, I don't expect much.'

The agent fired off several smoke rings from his cracked lips before harshly responding 'I never asked for your opinion, Trooper.'

Ituenza scowled at the Agent, knowing that if he were to strike the insolent civilian, he'd likely face the firing squad.

Diego smiled. "Nice to meet you mister Layton." He bows slightly and continues "As of now almost anything would fit with my plans, so I suppose meeting them in the receiving lounge would be a good idea." He began following Mr. Layton, glancing around the structure begining to think ahead to the meeting.

Transit Car

Despite her best efforts, Ngabese gets the mental image of a old cracked phonograph record made of osmium. "Please understand, military matters are not my specialty. I do know enough that given the relative ease with which modern military forces can move strategically over long distances the presence of such a large force in such a small volume serves only one real strategic purpose, assuming of course the admiralty assigning such a duty are game theorists trying to optimize their outcome. Note how even in this latest little incident quantitatively massive amounts of materiel--including a wet firecracker--were able to be popped in with mere minutes of notice. With such a thing as a given, the presence of such a numerically impressive force can suggest in the military mind only the presence of a plan for immediate action. Presence can be maintained more efficiently, cost-effectively, and diplomatically with a small contingent. Allied support, the same--again note the response times in this latest from nations not exactly on the forefront of modern military technology. No, it pains me to admit this but it is the leaning of my associates de guerre that such a presence, tied with its relative (initial) inability to distinguish the attempt to make friendly contact with some sort of threat, is by its very nature destabilizing. Either it is destabilizing in one sense--an indicator of immediate action--or it is destabilizing in another sense, that being that such a force density would be a most reasonable target for surprise attack by your adversaries and thus quietly inviting such a thing. Because it would be most rude of us to suggest that your military commanders failed to consider this last and, historically, quite obvious concern, it is the doctrine of the Combined Services (combined with a healthy paranoia, I'm sure you understand) to lean towards the theory that your forces are prepared to do something in the immediate future that is already known rather than establishing a presence or providing some sort of undetermined assistance in the future. Do you think that is a fair estimation, Ensign?"

"Err, yes, ma'am," the bloodspot replies politely, resisting the urge to scratch the back of his neck. "It is rather peculiar, all told."

The civil servant continues to scribble through all of this. Jennifer glances over at him, silently sighs to herself, then turns back to Winston. "What we are looking for is a sign of acknowledgements of these realities of the Martian theatre and probably a redistribution of material in agreement with the same. Good walls do not perforce make good neighbors, no matter what the old proverbs say, and good walls with battlements and gunports certainly do not. You may also find that your allies were not quite expecting such an... enthusiastic response to their invitation and as such they may be somewhat strained in trying to play host to such a large party of unexpected friends. Such strain can not help but show up in relations eventually--if not now, then some time down the road--and so we are of the firm opinion that perhaps a less resource-intensive presence in the area would probably be in the best interest of all parties directly involved in their upkeep and support. As this latest event shows, Martians have a very distinct and generally rather predictable reaction to very large force concentrations that make them nervous. Such a reaction would be generally harmful to the Triumvirate's interests, which is one of the more cynical reasons we invited you here."

The tram reaches its destination, another station more or less visually identical to the last. Brutalist fortress architecture, armored doors, concealed armored sensors, armored blisters that could serve any sort of purpose, armored trash bins (well, they look armored) arranged neatly against one armored wall. The diplomatic officer and her party politely lead the Fedral representative through a few more systems that oh so subtly do things that would make privacy pundits literally explode from increased blood pressure until they reach...

Hangar

Rewinding a few minutes, Officer Layton nods and leads the Largentians through an archway decidedly identical to the ones at the tram terminals, through a nondescript corridor of bluish metal and into...

Receiving Lounge

...a rather nice room, with carpet on the floor, paintings on the walls, and comfortable-looking furniture neatly arranged about. The place screams 'lounge' and demonstrates that simplicity of form, conservation of line, and suggestion of mass can look good too. The chairs are graceful yet solid-looking ovoid affairs, the seat cut into them and upholstered in a sort of leather, either something artificial or something that came from an animal with blue skin. The coffee tables, clean except for neatly-displayed magazines, are essentially solid wood-paneled cylinders. Niches in the walls suggest nanolathe galleys, and blues predominate the decor whilst wood tones break things up slightly. Soft faux-natural light drifts down from the three-plus-meter ceiling, which appears to have a happily blue sunny day with puffy clouds out beyond the thin wood beams that make a loose lattice above.

Of course there is no sky; the wood beams are simply the framework that holds up the screens of the millimeters-thin holotank above. It's the thought that counts, though.

The parties lead by Layton and Ngabese intercept in the middle from doors on opposite sides of the room. "Sir," Layton says to the Largentian, "this is the Fedral representative and his party--Senior Diplomatic Officer Jennifer Ngabese, Ensign Espen Able, and Junior Civil Servant Maximillian Zhao."

All those Yutties introduced bow in turn, and then Jennifer takes her turn. "Sir," she says to the Fedral, "this is the Largentian envoy and his party, Diplomatic Officer Alexander Layton." Layton, of course, bows politely.

Unreadable glances exchange between the two diplomatic officers; they remain pleasantly smiling throughout, despite the fact that neither of the visiting teams have bothered to tell anyone their names.

haha, wow. I can't believe I forgot to give his name...

Suddenly it hit him. Diego had completely forgotten his name. Momentarily horrified he quickly turned to D.O Layton "I'm terribly sorry, I have completely forgotten to give you my name. I am Diplomatic Officer Diego Escobar," he bows again and then turning to each of the three others he was introduced to introduces himself and bows again.

He then turned to the Fedral, "It may seem that my manners have completely escaped me, because I'm afraid I didn't catch your name. I'm Diplomatic Officer Diego Escobar." After bowing once more he gave apologetic glances to the ToY representatives in the room as he waited for the Fedral's response.

"Well mr..Odessa thats right, pardon me i sometimes have trouble with remembering names. There were several reasons you were here, one is simple our invitation to come and set up several orbital colonies over mars, the other is our invitation to join us in colonising and exploiting the many moons around the bloody tear which remain unclaimed, opening her treasures up to sol and the rest of the galaxy." the prefect smiled grimly. He had just recieved orders to betray the DCNT. He hadnt fought one civil war to start another, so he simply ordered his forces to ignore the practical joke, it was in poor taste.


He was negotiating now for Tannelorn, despite the fact no one was really in charge. In this case he supposed that made him in charge..so he was going to take advantage of it. The revans were still fighting over vascilia north, a large amount of the vessels had already retreated and it was pretty much just those that had engaged tannelornian and new havenic forces remaining. That was only because the Tannelornians had not let them run.

"So Odessa, you had other reasons to meet with us here, in the safety of mother sol away from prying eyes and ears that may reside in the cluster?"

He turned to him, his short cut black hair framed his angular wide set features. He gave Odessa a rather grim smile.

Last time they made me a prefect, I really hope this time they dont make me king Prefect Montgrove thought to himself. The vodka was already getting to him.

Odessa looked over to the prefect smiling a little in a diplomatic way grasping the glass of vodka in his hand as he took another sip, slipping the glass between his quivering lips as some more of the glossy clear liquid slipped in to his quivering mouth as he gulped it down, his neck shivering as it went down in to his stomach. He looked at Monty and blinked in the split second before swallowing time had slowed down and he had absorbed what the other had said. He looked over his head fluidly shifting positions to Monty he stared at him for a split witch felt like an uncomfortable amount of time to be staring at a man second and said with a rather confident rather diplomatic voice “Well it seems your country is a busy one prefect, our government is fairly familiar with the asteroid belt area, but we don’t mess around with sol politics, this is really the first time contacting any prominent sol nations ” he smiled diplomatically, his left arm flinging down fluidly against his seams, before he closed his mouth a split second of entirety time passed he had just remember that there was a project that the United Republic Star navy wanted him to preach , he shook his head quickly and picked up where he had just stopped “at any rate , our governments military sector believes that we should start a joint… project, it involves a stealth drone fighter bomber… now I know its no bloody kosher to pose this question to you, but my word wouldn’t it be grand if we got an answer? I a man who likes to go strait to the bloody point at times, unless it involves the fine ladies and liquors…” Odessa quivered his lips up and opens as he smiled in a rather professional manner his mind racing on certain facts of the conference he had forgotten some of his diplomatic training but replaced it with friendly flaunted laughter and hands of friend ship and personal relations…




Winston admired the industrial bleak simplicity of the architecture he smiled a little professionally as he walked in to the hall commenting on the entire affair and reception “this is rather elaborate, but much appreciated, our country is willing to compromise, at any rate it’s a pleasure to meet you all” his lips quivered ever so slightly as he spoke his mind was on going about general platitudes of diplomacy and his training from long ago . he stood there momentarily pondering things just as another odd delegate walked up, Winston moved his head to look at him as the delegate began to speak, his own slat pepper hair and rough face being enhanced by the light, his lips where shivering and quivering in an odd grin like pattern as he relaxed his body, it shimmered in the light slightly as he breathed in and out his uniform gleaming ever so slightly as his eyes panned the back round and new delegate, all this in the split second between answering. Winston spoke up saying, my name is diplomatic officer Winston O’Leary, from the united planetary republic it is a pleasure to meet you, our nations do not know much of each other, I’m here as a cultural exchange officer as well as a diplomat so that we understand each other better.” He went in to a full blown diplomatic smile, holding up his hand professionally in a swift fluid movement. His mind observing and racing with ideas and new words for his relations and connections to folks here, he noticed slightly that the new nations diplomat seemed in experienced and rather eager, but it was ok to him since he had dealt with all kinds of characters, this new diplomat wasn’t annoying though or agitating, to Winston so it would make things easier.

The fleet was still in orbit , there engines flowing behind them as several large construction ships from the near by asteroid colonies began to arrive, they were tugging materials and equipment to set up and orbital fleet base, they were dispatched by the United republican navy space construction command. There gleaming red glowing bodies shimmering along as they pierced the sky of mars , there bowls and bodies began opening up as they slowed in to a position in orbit of mars, drones and worker bees began pouring out in masses and swarms dragging materials and frames , large nano construction tethers and cranes where also being set up, it would be a while before the mass of equipment would be seen to form any sort of order out of the chaos ensuing …. I was hoped no nation would get the wrong idea and attack.

The broken osmium record image only gets more firmly implanted in Ngabese's mind when it comes to this Winston O’Leary, whose title is a unwished-for mimicry of her own corps. "We are glad to hear your government is willing to compromise. Perhaps we could discuss the terms of this compromise?" There really is no more diplomatic way to suggest her thoughts, best summarized currently by 'Nek ni, just get to the point already.'

That quivering lip is also beginning to bother her. The only time that lips generally quiver like that is when someone is so tense that their muscles start spasming or they are extremely aroused (as generally referenced in extremely bad erotic writing). "Where are my manners? I am not being a suitable host--let me get you gentlemen something to drink." She beats a measured tactical withdrawal to one of the niches in the wall, and orders something quietly in Arabic. Sekanjabin is a minty drink, traditional to the Arabs, that not only refreshes but makes an excellent carrier for masking the taste of the mild muscle relaxant and antiarousal cocktail added into one of the cups by the nanolathe at Jennifer's request. Normally such doping is against regulations, but this is an interesting issue.

She returns with three glasses and hands one to each of the delegates, taking especial care to hand Winston his first. The Largentian diplomat seems relaxed enough already.

Martian Orbit

The amount of sensors watching the fleets every movement was probably far too great a number than any other massive fleet would have received, but one could argue that the monitering of this fleet was far more relevant to Largentian--specifically Diego's--safety than say some fleet that had been reletively inactive over the last twenty four hours.

Hundreds of probes and sensors in Martian orbit bombarded the fleet with Radar, Lidar followed by the outputs of your average Neutrino Scanner. The point was to obtain and produce an image of every ship, drone, building material and bowl movement and never let it get out of their sight. Of course the Fedrals would notice this, servailance specialists had planned it this way. It was more of a political move than a militant one. It was basically sending a subtle message of were watching you so dont try anything funny.

Following the active sensors were the sensors that Largentians were far more interested in using and keeping quiet about. Neutrino Sensors searched for any emmissions from reactionless drives to asses Fedral technology while Mass Detectors and SQUIDs which would asses probably firepower and scan for any magnetic or gravitational anomilies to make sure the Fedrals weren't hiding anything. Finally, more secretive sensors would watch for bio/nano technology that would otherwise go undetected and could cut off all sensors watching the fleet at a moments notice.

Nothing terribly alarming showed up, but protocol was protocol and all the information was immediately relayed to the Cyrano Mod within Diego's collar which would relay the information straight to his brain and keep him up to date on the situation should anything wrong.

Receiving Lounge

Diego took the glass with a smile and a thank you. He then returned to inspecting the most peculiar character the Fedrals had sent to the meeting. 'Most Peculiar' was the only term he could really think of to describe him. There was something just odd about him. Maybe it was the quivering lip which he noticed others were becoming slightly irritated from and laughed inwardly. It was damn annoying, he would give them that. But the only way he would ever be able to undersand Winston any better would be to get him talking.

"No no, Ms. Ngabese, you are a most gracious host. I am most interested to hear more about this proposed compromise as well Mr. O'Leary. I must admit your presence has me the least bit confused and the terms of this compromise might well help me to clear everything up."

It goes without saying that the Universe is a wholly unpredictable place. Even those who have glimpsed the machinations of Tzeentch, the Master of Fate, the very Architect of Destiny, find themselves unprepared for the labyrinthine twists that the very fabric of reality can cast up. So too was it when Remiel De Drakan, sovereign Master of the Chronosian Imperium, rightfully deified God-Emperor, received the message from the Federal Union, long friends and allies, inviting them to Sol.

To whom it may concern, we the people senate and president of the union request that you aid us in our quest to rid sol of arrogant narrow-minded individuals and to liberate it from tyranny and self destruction, we are sending a war fleet and a diplomatic fleet hand in hand to mars in sol to establish relations and base of operations in the area, we welcome you if you shall grant our request.. thank you brothers

“He rather handles himself more like a drunk attempting diplomacy, does he not?” Remiel let a sly smile creep across his almost alabaster features, smooth as though wrought from marble. “To rid Sol of ‘arrogant, narrow-minded individuals and to liberate it from tyranny and self destruction.’ He couldn’t have phrased it worse had he tried, it shows utterly his lack of regard for a collection of cultures he knows precious little of.”

“Nor do we, esteemed Lord.” Turel, his First Captain, bowed lightly before Remiel as his master languished upon his throne. “We have not had true contact with Sol since we left the Cradle, since your father guided us, Chronosian Man, towards its glorious Destiny.”

“However, we know that there is power to be had in influence over Sol, that there is…Amusement to be gleaned from dealing with them. Robert’s men might lack in finesse or tact, but they do present an interesting opportunity. A chance to establish ourselves but a stones throw from Hallowed Terra.”

“If that is your wish, my Lord, I shall deploy the finest Companies of the Nero Angelus to full –“

“No.”

“-No?”

“No.” Remiel rose, his cloaks falling about his armored form, silhouetting his glory in finery. “Send Cabot.”

”Your brother, My Lord?”

”Aye…Send Wolfsbane.” He grinned, an almost feral grin, like a wild thing, hungry and cunning. “Send the Warmaster”

Some distance behind the original entry point of the Federal Troops, Mars Orbit

Time has no meaning in the Warp. It mattered not if they had been traveling for days, weeks, even months. Most Warp travel within the Imperium, refined and perfected as it had been by a greater affinity to Chaos, had allowed for shorter travel times. But these routes were unfamiliar, and the Warp was alive with mourning. Memories danced upon the minds of all of the III Legion, of hallowed Terra, of exalted Mars. Of what had once stood for them as the memory of the Imperium of Man. They had stood for those old ideals once, they had venerated the Emperor, beloved by all, as a power grander than them all.

Before the Fall.

Before Chaos.

Now Sol, and its comprising planets, stood merely as a curiosity. This was the Cradle of Mankind, this was the heart of human history and civilization. It was only fitting that its most impious, prodigal and bastard, sons return.

Cabot De Drakan stood upon the bridge, a huge wrought iron thing that gazed out over the scheme of the undulating Warp. He saw servitors and uniformed personnel swarm below like mice through a maze, watched countless tasks undertaken to ensure the safety and continued efficiency of the Ship, and indeed the Fleet. Below, the Navigator guided them through the thrumming heart of the Warp, towards their goal. He turned, softly, shaken from his contemplation by the frail form of the ships Astropath. Blind eyes seemed to stare straight through the Warmaster.

”We draw near, Lord Warmaster. The Warp speaks to us….The Cradle revisited.”

“Excellent…Excellent. At first chance I want a message relayed to the fleet that they are to enter into neutral formation and await my orders. I then want a message relayed to the Emperor, informing him of our arrival.” It nodded, its split tongue flickering over its pale lips.

“As you wish, Lord Warmaster.”

Reality seemed to split like the skin of rotting fruit, disgorging the putrefied innards of the Warp. Vessels forced their way through the flailing maelstrom of coruscating energy, like maggots through diseased and pestilent flesh. Softly, the 1000 vessels of the Expedition came to a rest, paused, waiting, before Cabot’s voice boomed out on every frequency they could muster.

We come in the name of Remiel De Drakan, the Emperor, Beloved by All. We are his servants in this glorious undertaking. We come here in peace, by wish of the Federal Union, who extends his own invitation in lieu of our own. We are the Chosen and the Faithful of the Chronosian Imperium. We are his Servants, and I am his Hand. I am his Emissary and his Representative. I am the Eye of Chronosia and the Vigilence of his Will. I am Cabot.

I am the Warmaster.

Even as the last, ponderous, weighty and meaty title left his lips, each ship deactivated its weapon systems. Shields and Gellar fields still crackled and hissed with leftover energies from the Immaterium, the dancing fires of the Empyrean snuffed out against the archaic technological might of the Imperium, waiting, watching as each vessel deferred themselves to the judgement of Sol.

OOC: Just out of curiosity, as it will... inform my response, Chronosia, where are you re-entering realspace? Technically, chaos warp-drives are required to drop out about three days travel and many astronomical units from a sun, or risk horrible implosions. However, I suspect your intention may be for the post to be taken as appearing near Mars itself.

Opening Move Mars Orbital Space

"The defensive power of a pinned piece is only imaginary." - Aron Nimzowitsch



Lhi Rho Alpha O’Vandie (twice decorated with the citizens award for personal valor and three times imprisoned for triggering mass moments of indecent exposure) was unhappy with this turn of events, its stock in happy happy freeze dried breakfast fun bars had plunged 34% percent that morning as the companies directors scandal of allowing real hog fat into there instant deep fried happy ham products (such as insta commander ham bars for kids now only 23 cents!) had hit the newsies data nets like so many outgassing organic garbage recycler modules in a filth filled prole neighborhood alley. O’Vandie, originally a forth generation data pusher AI at its old and humble self was somewhat old for a synthetic citizen, its 340 gallon liquid computronium core containing sections that mimicked designs that dated back to before the gestalt had risen to power over 400 years ago. O Vandie was also even less happy as this had been its interval being the prime member of the fleet Overwatch gestalt for the mars sub theatre when this had occurred not the least because the god awfull job paid enough to try some attempt at balancing its books for the day.

It was at best displeased, at worst rageing as it requested data streams with the other Martian powers even while having an argument with one of its later iterations on the aesthetics of the protein strings in a fourth generation random artificial life construct designed to clean drain lids for metallic hydrogen tanks presently being generated in a platform somewhere in the dark cold of the cometary halo. O' Vandie quietly but quite firmly saw to it that turning the planet bound assets of the state into some semblance of operation even as its request agents to central battle fleet arced there sub sentient selves out across the data net to meet the minds of central fleet command somewhere above earth in the massed flotillas of self same battle fleet.



OPEN WIDE BAND TEXT ONLY COMMUNICATION

Origin: Sub com Nexus platform 34, Martian high polar orbit
Attached: Happy Happy freeze dried breakfast fun bars catalogue

To Exo Solar Assets approaching Mars, your presence in Sol in such a manner is both unwanted and unasked, while your actions have been peaceful and showing of good will the presence of such a large number of armed and known hostile vessels is utterly unacceptable and there expedient removal from our sphere is not only implied but in all frankness necessary for continued civilized dialogue. It should not be necessary to point out to you given your own behavior that hostile actions this close to the central worlds of sol is simply not tolerated.

While we welcome conventional diplomacy the incorporated state cannot and will not stand by the damage your continued presence and implied threat is generating to sol wide markets and shipping and given your past actions can see no option but to remove your presence by force if its requests are not met.

To all commerical traffic in the martian aproach vector, given present events we issue a class four warning of possible conflict and give notice that insurance policies rates in the area now reflect that.


This message has been sponsored by :

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Authored:
Star Marshall O Vandie (SI) CenComCon Mars





A filtering stream of incoherent photons streamed onwards, the process which had berthed it having occurred scant minutes ago. It would in the course of things have simply glinted of some minor hull section of the vessels now beginning to filter into the hideously crowded mass of mars orbital space. Now it was joined by the harsh slash of ultra violet as countless LADAR sources filled the Martian sky in a multi terrawatt cathedral of light scathing across the fleets who had so casually strolled into there baleful soulless search light like watch. A watch which would have scorched a skin suit to ash as the beams one by one switched between dazzle and search even as more exotic radiation’s reached out and began to aggressively probe and even rip at the edges of the outputs and information the vessels were creating as the massed electronic warfare arrays of hundreds of heavy battle stations and tens of thousands of armed drone platforms went into operation quite literally trawling the space between the inbound vessels for the tiniest scrap of useful data. The huge smart dust cannisters remained closed, the BP and kinetic harpoon launchers silent and cold as the grave as did the blast doors covering the stations gunnery arrays, the countless missile pods remained firmly attached to there dispensers, looking like so many hanging metallic grapes. The great siege guns however lay like great multi kilometer strings of beer cans, there armored hulls strewn with gravitics arrays, distortion generators and countless laser heat pump output spires. They did not stay silent as there energy sinks unfolded like so many mirrored flowers and there targeting beacons began to casually inform the flagships of the incoming fleets that the had been illuminated still further.

“Ah, scopa,” a tired-looking Vasco Patroni, recently appointed Dominion representative in the NDA outpost on Mars, mutters, rubbing his temples slowly as he looks over the more recent reports. His new assignment had been, as expected, a less than pleasant venture thus far, and it wasn’t looking to improve. At least they hadn't had to leave all the comforts of home behind.

Mars was a notoriously touchy planet in the best of days, what with all the various factions and long-standing contentions that existed in an uneasy state of ‘truce-by-necessity’ more than anything in most cases. Add a mess of offworld fleets whose posture, and numbers, suggested anything but peaceable intentions, in spite of their words, and it was a recipe for disaster. Who had invited them in the first place wasn't readily apparent, but if this was the sort of response such invitation incurred, it was certain future relations would be strained on account.

“Doesn’t anyone in all this vastness of space possess any sense, let alone manners anymore? Honestly, who waltzes into a hotbed like Mars with big fleets and arrogant expectations of responses when they’ve offered no explanations of their actions on their own beforehand? Viggo – some wine, per favore. The Aleatico di Portoferraio if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, sir,” his assistant said, going for both glass and bottle, with an additional glass for himself and a small plate of cheese and grapes for good measure. “Perhaps they misunderstand their importance in the overall scheme of things. It’s something many nations have been guilty of, ourselves included in the past,” Celso continued, shrugging and pouring for them both. “You know, in thinking, haven’t the Feddies expressed an interest in formalizing relations before?”

“Mmm, yes. Small wonder it’s been avoided thus far, eh?” Patroni said, accepting the offered glass, and gesturing to a free chair as he takes a sip, sneaking a slice of cheese as well. “Good neighbors with honorable intentions tend to not see how many sparks they can ignite at any one given time. I’m not sure they’ve ever managed to grasp that concept. Interesting company they choose to keep, all things considered, what with the overtures they tend to make towards other nations seemingly at odds idealistically. Words and actions, my friend. Words and actions.”

Celso shrugs and takes the offered seat, enjoying a slow sip of his wine before speaking. “Subtlety and style, it would seem, are becoming lost arts. A pity.”

“Well, home has been alerted to the situation, and we’re simply waiting on a response from them as to what, if anything, we should do. I believe the Novaculae squadron from the Cruentus Machaerae is due in on their regular rotation. Should there be a need …” Patroni shrugs eloquently, then takes another sip. “I’m quite certain other more longstanding and easily-prodded nations will be making responses long before we do. Until then, we watch, and we wait, and hope that this latest incursion doesn’t set off yet another planet-wide conflagration, blast their scaly hides.”

“Pardon if I don’t hold my breath,” Celso mutters, smiling wryly. “Feddies and historical Mars responses combined do not lend themselves to ‘reasonable negotiations’.”

It had been sometime since the fiasco in mars orbit, and the Lul-Tuln War Fleet had pulled back into deep space idling in debris and going back to their original tactic of pirate action, needless to say, this did not satisfy the warrior spirit of those onboard.
To follow any possible avenue of breaking the rut they were now in, Jintaka, Obsidian Warrior Lord, Mouth Piece of the Council of City States, Warrior of the Jaguar Caste and Commander of the Lul-Tuln War Fleet had authorized a large spread of deep range scouting missions, in the hope of picking up something interesting.
It was one of these that cruising at maximum sensor range, not so much stumbles into, but is almost flatlined by the vast amount of sensor contacts.

Squadron Leader Copoc swore lightly to himself, his squadron of six Kopetl Scout Fighters (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19626010/?qo=34&q=by%3Adevildalek+sort%3Atime+-in%3Ascraps) were rigged for silent running and even though sound does not carry in space, he still found himself whispering at these times.

"By the Jaguars teeth! there’s more capitol ships here than there were skulls after the battle of Kecketcha!"

The low glow of his sensor readouts reflected off of his snake helmet as they continued feeding through information from the passive scanners, every now and then different coloured readouts pinpointing other fleets and their reactions.

"Squadron ,we will hold here in powered down mode and maintain a discreet watch on proceedings, I will send a report back."

A few seconds later a tiny data torpedo, stealthed like its parent ship and with no trace of e.m. to give it away, accelerated into deep space.

'We here in the Great Co-Prosperity Sphere of Auman welcome our respected friends from the Federal Union and the Chronisian Imperium. As it should be known to all, especially the inhabitants of this great place, Mars is a free and open society which embraces any opportunity for diplomacy and trade.

So, if you're willing, dock your ships at our facilities and let your troops down to Auman and Greater Vascilia to enjoy our vibrant, exciting and prosperous societies.

Enjoy the beaches, the beers and the babes.

~Aumanii Ministry of Tourism and Trade.'

A more discrete transmission to whom ever was in control of the ZMI

'It would be much appreciated if you shut the fuck up.'

~General Sheikh Navarrone.


----

General Navarrone was, for once, relaxing in his personal study...a comfort he was by no means accustomed to in his days as a field commander, or Diplomat for that matter. The response of the international community to the Port-of-Call of foreign warfleets was just silly. May'be it was just the Aumanii, renowned for their non-chalant diplomacy, who saw the opportunities...of course, this was probably because it was a Vascilian who invited these warfleets, or possibly because the Colonials were just assholes.

It was the general Vascilian concept that if you didn't have anything nice to say...we will tell you to shut your traps, whose right was it to turn back friendly nations? There was no organized body in the Martian sphere to right to do anything of the sort. It's not upto The Concordat, MIDAS, MDI or Yut to interfere with foreigners in the name of Martian interests.

Citing previous xenophobic attacks by the Colonial members of the Martian Community, a large portion of the Aumanii fleet had been recalled to Mars, not to defend against the Federals or Chronosians, but to erect a barrier to prevent the ignorant peons that huddled in the equatorial regions from harming good intentioned people.

Encoded classified broacast from the office of theUnder-Secretary for Martian Affairs Pro-Tempore

Our dear friends, the Chronosians!

We have long been allied to your wonderful nation, and as such, you know that we are on your side and wish you no harm in any way, shape, or form. But the current situation has us ever-so-slightly concerned – we know, from our own dismal experience, that trying to bring warships to a planet named after a god of war is just like bringing proverbial coals to Newcastle.

On the other hand, we would love it if you had a trade city in the Northern Ocean (assuming the Illithid like it), or in orbit of Mars (assuming it’s not too big). Indeed we think the Chronosians would be a wonderful addition to the Red Planet.

However, as a representative of the United States Government, we feel that your military presence in Sol at this moment is slightly destabilizing, and could provoke some less-then-balanced members of the global community (those less tolerant and progressive then the United States of Allanea) – to attack you, to which the entire Extra-Solar Union of Systems, and other alliances in which you may or may not be a member will be forced to respond. It would be extremely unpleasant to everybody, and the United States Government would not want to be forced to fight such a war.

We recommend therefore you send away those ships for the duration, perhaps to park at the various Allanean fleetbases. If this course is taken, we will pay you ten billion dollars in compensation for any discomfort. We recommend you then proceed, with a fleet of nonmilitary vessels, to establish a completely peaceful settlement on the Red Planet or around it.

The United States insists, in fact, that it is this course that is taken, and not the one which you seem to be inbound upon – or our aid in any coming conflict may consist only of the proverbial ESUS sandwich.

Yours,
the Allaneans.

O’Vandie did a mental blink, before half a dozen psycho analyst sub agents came up with the possible outcomes of various responses based on a profile of the general in question. They came up in the end with well meaning militaristic thug. O’Vandie then considered such a persons response to weakness and promptly requested DOFA permission for direct messaging. Given his present extraordinary powers in being CenComCon mars these were for DOFA promptly granted and after the request was put on hold for 23 minutes by an errant assistant secretary of state who was more interested in the young gentleman from data slate repair and logistics presently on her 320nd story white marble office floor.



Narrowband point to point transmission to aumani signal source
Origin: Sub com Nexus platform 34, Martian high polar orbit

Your advice has been taken on board and promptly thrown over the side.

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Star Marshall O’Vandie (SI) CenComCon Mars

Enjoy the beaches, the beers and the babes.
Hooray for public transmissions and, in some places, highly public access to data. When some of those people happen to have an already understandably placed mistrust in particular other people, and others a rather broad dislike for entire classes of other people, sometimes the two combine for interesting results. From more than one pirate transmitter the following public service announcement emanates:

"To our visitors in orbit: you may not wish to take up the Aumanii tourism board's suggestions on account of false advertising. Given that the Volarian Impact not so long ago irradiated the entire planet, the beaches are particularly 'dirty' as a transfer point between groundwater, runoff, and oceanic radionucleides, compounded by the carcasses of dead sea life rotting away that would pose both a biological and radiological health risk. If we didn't know any better, we'd think it is a trap.

"Besides that, Martian temperatures have never been what one would call 'tropical' and at the extreme latitudes one can usually find Aumanii beaches perhaps 'arctic' would be a better approximation. We have heard the beer is good though; perhaps you should order a case or two. No reason to go planetside, however.

"This public service announcement was brought to you by the Escher's Star Information Desk."

(OOC to Auman: Let me know when I start telling other people what to do in a manner as unwarranted and unasked as you suggest. Failing that, perhaps it would be in the best interests of fair play if you not sling mud unecessarily.)

Cabot sat in the command throne that seemed to dominate the bridge of his vessel, his hand teasing through his thick blonde hair as he pondered the various messages and chatter. Some had been welcoming, others seemed fearful, worried and cautious. The Allanean reply had, however, proved rather interesting, to the extent that Cabot felt he would have to address and clear up any misgivings between the Expedition and those native powers.

Friends, those we have known before and those we only begin to know and understand. Many hold views of the Imperium that paint us as a race of savages, conquering at whims, destroying for the mere pleasure of the kill. We come before you, here, now, to display our intents upon Sol. I mean no harm in saying that we have some vested interest here, yet it is clear that the presence of the Expedition in its current form poses problems for those of you who fear us.

We live in a time of grave suspicion and danger. The galaxy is not as safe a place as it could be, nor as predictable as we would like. As such, this expedition will be accompanied by a primarily military component. We can, of course, send some of the vessels away, but for the time being some semblence of military power must remain with what we consider to be a precious endeavor.

I myself, precious and integral to the Imperium, would not be content to travel without the company of those marines I call sons, nor without the support of the Imperial Army, or any number of the Mechanicum's mechanisms. However....If it eases those tensions that would otherwise divide us, ally from ally, brother from brother, man from man....Then I would gladly send away the vast majority of the Expeditions military component. I find the Allanean offer most generous, yet no reparation need be suggested. I would almost suggest that we ourselves gift you, for we have disregarded your ways, and I fear, left a mark against our honor.

You have my word, and my vow, before the will of the Emperor, beloved by all, that in our current capacity we mean you no harm. We simply respond to an invitation.

Yours, Cabot De Drakan.

Warmaster.

This was intolerable, the forces of the Ruinous powers would not be allowed anyfurther access to sol, to Mars, or else like a cancer they would spread throughout the system, tainting all they touched as they went.

Alone deep within the capital building of the Kionash administration on mars, Badb Trill-Gorath sat alone in meditation, the room was a cleansed, every part of this room was kept pure. Dreamstone and ancient rituals kept the taint of the Ruinous powers away, it was an extrvagent expense, only Three such places where maintained by the Kionash away from Tor Yvresse itself, one here on mars, one on earth and one, onboard a small personal craft. These where the chambers of the Farseer's places they could communicate with each other, and let themselves fully embrace their powers without fear.

Right now Badb was in communication with the other Inner council Farseer's Iyanna, Galdern and Darvins. The issue was obvious.
We must move cautiously, the fools in the league have invited this disease here, we must cut the infected limb, without starting a full-scal war. Her thoughts floated freely across the vast distances seperating the four, Badb was furious, the great enemy was coming to HER world.

Agreed, but in the end we cannot tolerate their presence if you cannot find a way to get rid of the enemy without stiring the full hornets nest... then Destroy them, utterly and totally. I will be directing the totality of our fleet Asset's to Mars. if a solution cannot be found then you are authorised to use whatever means neccersary to achieve the complete cleansing of the world. If that means genocide... well that world already suffers under the weight of a nuclear winter... I doubt anything you could add could make the situation worse. it was done by inviting the force of chaos to Mars, the league had passed beyond any rules of warfare, or any hope of diplomacy, public relations or anything else.

In the end the war between the Kionash and the Ruinous Powers was a total one. badb had but a brief while to try and find a diplomatic solution. Even as she broke contact with the other Farseers her mind sought out another. Cetuchman Nais, ambassador to the ENN-Empire, they would need to know who they could count on after all.

Command Room, Deimos Fleetbase

Really, the Triumvirate is nowhere near the space police force people tend to think it is. If it were, a lot of nations would be smoldering craters or bubbling magma pits instead of going on their own way, being militaristic and rude and occasionally threatening others. If it were, it would intervene more often than it does when giant warfleets come out of nowhere; still, that last time the locals had it well in hand and, for reasons no one in the minimal Trium bureaucracy could figure out, it was happening to people who hated the Yutties anyway so there's no real reason to get involved, is there? No, the Trium is mostly interested in things being generally peaceful around its neck of the woods; the Combined Services exists not so much to prevent warfare but to prevent warfare from becoming a threat to the well-being of Triumvirate citizens.

Still, the Combined Services is not perfect and, occasionally, the concept of preemptive warfare is bandied about. Take this situation for instance: not one but two warfleets in orbit, one of them being Chaos. From previous experience, Chaos is bad and so instant vaporization would seem to make sense. In the affectionately-named War Room of Deimos Fleetbase, Sky Marshal Tandra Fani-Kayode gives it thought as, through the benefit of her augmented-reality implants, she tries to take in two disparate streams of reality for once.

The human mind is not built for this.

One stream of consciousness is virtual; she sits at her red-lit station at a glassy black rectangular table, corners truncated and edges smoothed. The CINCTYCS sits at the head, bathed in white light; the other Sky Marshals of other Theatres sit in their color-coded seats and 'place settings.' Despite being a Solar affair the extrasolar Sky Marshals are also in attendance; Gregor Pandousco sitting in the red and tapping his fingertips nervously on the desk, crimson light streaming through the gaps in his hands; Raphael Farentino bathed in green and clearly thinking about how this will affect his handling of the Antaran Menace; the stern features of Ignatiev Zolkin in violet, sitting dispassionately as always; and the firm Oriental schoolmaster lines of Dieu-Hien Manh Cao in orange. Closer to Tandra's station are the Sol theatre commanders: Sky Marshal Rico with his barrel-chested tanklike bulk in yellow, frowning meaningfully while orbiting Earth somewhere; the more aquiline and fair features of Charles Blair sitting in a pool of blue, in his office on Titan; and finally Sky Marshal M'sha's felinid form in indigo lighting while she reclines in her quarters aboard Battleship Vinegaroon on patrol around Io. No one looks particuarly pleased as they look over the 'hologram' hovering over the middle of the virtual table, displaying the strategic situation around Mars, zoomed in on the Chaos fleet. All else is deepest black.

This is in an inset in Kayode's field of vision; the hologram there is mirrored in the 'real' holographic strategic indicator board sitting in the middle of the circular fleet headquarters of the Triumvirate of Yut Combined Services Mars Theatre Fleet. All steels and metal, the room follows the exact same utilitarian brick philosophy the Services hold dear. The chairs are comfortable to sit in if not really to look at; the consoles have switches and buttons because those are less likely to be accidentally toggled, and technicians sneak glances over their shoulders from the gallery to watch the drama unfold.

Oh yes, the drama. Mystic-Colonel Jakupcak of HELLSING stands behind and to the left of the Sky Marshal as customs and courtesies dictate, much like an adjutant. Unlike an adjutant, though, this hardy warrior, made of muscle and resembling an old ironclad in more ways than one, booms in a commanding voice--the kind that Mobile Infantry are stereotypically supposed to have. "Ma'am, the presence of tainted agents of fractality in such force is a clear and immediate danger. It is my professional opinion that we gird our armor and put them to the sword immediately and cleanse space of their foulness before we suffer another Break--here and now--on Mars."

Minus the pseudoreligious diction and in a softer voice, he would make a good adjutant. Fani-Kayode holds up one dark black hand, frowning as she peers at the display, listening to the virtual voices in her head.

"Well, I know we've dealt with Chaos before," Pandousco was saying. Somewhat boyish with curly brown hair, one would hardly imagine he was in his forties. The cabal of Marshals had given the floor to him out of deference to his experience in the last metanormal emergency, the one where Queen Amihara disappeared in the Shogunate. "Sky Marshal Hayes could say more about that, but as I took her place I took the Arda watch. Save Kalessin, Chaos doesn't deal like this. It's too structured, you see."

"Yes, but Kalessin is made of sneaky Machiavellian bastards," Rico replies with characteristic bluntness. A Fleet job has given him a very slight set of jowls, but it only makes him look more like the bulldog everyone thinks he is. "We'll just be giving ourselves another goddamned fractal agent to keep tabs on to haich-dee-em into powder if they step out of line."

"I can't help but remind you that the Kalessini were trading partners of the Cetagandans and still reasonably interested in letting bygones be bygones," Blair offers with the sort of quiet superiority generally reserved for the landed gentry. He isn't landed gentry, but he hails from a line that used to be. "If these new Chaos folk are willing to play ball and not step on our toes, it is not our duty as the protectors of the Triumvirate to simply vaporize them because we don't trust them."

"Initiating hostility would dishonor us," M'sha, the kzinrret, growls. "Our actions are public and to attack them when they show no obvious hostile intent would only put the onus of aggression on us--no matter their actual intent. It is better to put them under watch... but it is your theatre, Tandra." Yellow eyes glance over at the dark chocolate face of Fani-Kayode. "I do not envy your position."

"Well," Tandra replies after a moment, forcing herself to remember to think it just so she doesn't say it aloud to the room she's really in, "I've got HELLSING breathing down my neck saying to kill them now and I don't really disagree on that account. I don't really want to invite evil forces in for tea on my watch, but I also don't want to get ourselves into a war just because some people have no sense of scale or propriety when it comes to assembling a diplomatic mission." She looks over at the CINCTYCS. 'I know it's my theatre, sir, but the strategic implications demand your call."

The CINCTYCS nods slowly, mirror-polished MacArthur sunglasses flashing in the white light that pools around him. The old Asian man, a Chinese general long past having a real name, simply sits motionless as he peers over his arched hands. "We wait. Deal with the situation as you see fit, Marshal Fani-Kayode, but do not resort to preemption." He does not turn to look at Tandra; he does not waiver. He speaks softly but firmly. "M'sha, Rico, I want your forces on alert to support if things go poorly for us. Farentino, you are not to get involved. We need your forces on the Antaran front just in case."

"What about HELLSING, sir?" Tandra frowns in reality and cyberspace. "'Zeal' doesn't even begin to relate."

"Make them useful," the CINCTYCS answers quietly, putting his hands on the table. "That is their purpose."

Fani-Kayode nods physically, then speaks softly with her real voice. "Colonel-Mystic, please report to StratCom and work out war plans with them." Louder now, to the balconies. "FleetCom, put the Theatre at Alert Condition One. Defensive posture, guns warm, but not targeting. Given that we've only two dozen front-liners in the area it should get drowned out in the wash. Let the other ships on patrol know what's going on, coordinate through the stratnet. Tell Fleet Admiral Bhaskar to stay on the opposite side of Mars so if things do get nasty, we can come around and take them without worrying about the local horizon."

The Mystic-Colonel stands at attention, growls a short "Acting, ma'am" in acknowledgement, and stomps off, sword tapping against his leg as he lets off his anger in his stride. "Finally," Fani-Kayode continues, not missing a beat, "someone let Officer Ngabese know what's going on. Get one of her DiploCorps lackeys to let the new guys know our line in plain and simple terms."

* - * - *

Warmaster Cabot,

We of the Triumvirate of Yut are glad to see that you realize your current military presence may be overly excessive for your purposes. With the late arrival of an equivalent number of Fedral starships we can commisserate with the possibility of a misunderstanding of the current situation around Mars. With tensions being what they are, we agree with and support wholeheartedly your suggestion of a reduction in force, drawing down your current presence to reflect the realities on the ground, as it were.

We are only interested in the stability of the local area and so would appreciate such a move without delay as a gesture of good will.

Diplomatic Officer Zhao Stephen
Triumvirate of Yut Diplomatic Corps
Deimos Fleetbase

Letting his fingers drum across the arm of his throne, Cabot gazed out at the stars, at the worlds of Sol and all that lay within them. Within the confines of the Cradle, the system which had first borne humanity, first allowed them to journey forth amongst the stars, he almost felt at peace. Softly, he tapped a button upon the side of his gauntlet, the crackle of vox immediately about him.

"Put me through to the Master of the Fleet."

Matthias Amano Vikus was a man who had seen too much war. A stately, almost dignified figure, clad in black dress uniform, his white hair adding to the air of a jaded elder statesman, though his flesh seemed unwithered by age, the product of varied and expensive rejuvenat treatments. Such were the spoils for those who served before the Black Throne with both faith and fury. He himself knew too well the demands of the Warmaster, the black wrath that could govern him at a moments notice, but he knew also that the Warmaster was not one to plunge immediately into war. Given the mixed receptions they had received in this corner of space, he could scarcely anticipate which would rule the Primarch's choleric countenance.

"Matthias?" The voice seemed to reverberate through the earpiece as the Master of the Fleet paced nervously about his quarters. "Matthias, are you there?"

"I am, my Lord. I await your decisions."

"I get the feeling that the number of our fleets are making the locals a tad nervous. As a result, I want you to take the majority of the fleet out-system. I wish for half of them to return to Chronosia Prime and appraise the Emperor of our situation, Brensis of Second will see to it that he is personally informed."

"As you so wish, my Lord. And the rest?"

"The rest are to wait at my leisure, to either be escorted to Allanean bases, or to move at my notice. I don't like to be under so many eyes without knowing that I'll have help at my back and black steel in my hands."

"A wise decision, my lord Warmaster. A most pertinent observation."

"Now, I shall be keeping forty nine vessels of the line, with me to ensure my personal safety as well as composing a unified front. We cannot allow them to suppose that they have put fear into us, rather that we have graciously removed the perhaps....Overplaying of our hand."

"I see. And this shall aid us in garnering their trust?"

"We'll make do with what we can salvage from this rather...Amusing debacle. It shows, I suppose, what we can muster. What we can do, should it ever come to that. War, slaughter, carnage, these things we have pursued in the name of Khorne and Arioch and how many lesser names, for generations...But truly, the letting of blood holds a far sweeter satisfaction with some sense of purpose behind the blows. Some divine pronouncement behind each strike, each bloody battlefield and each glorious Compliance, offered to our Lords of Blood, sanctified by the knowledge that each killing is a gift."

"You speak wisely."

"Make my will so, Matthias. We have business to attend to."

Cabot sighed softly as the Vox went dead and Matthias doubtlessly went about the duty of mustering the fleets. He next opened channels which would address all of those within broadcast range, mostly Mars and the associated parties who had taken offence or delight at the Chronosian Expedition's appearance.

I have come to a decision. Having consulted with the majority of my inner circle, I realize that such a grotesquely muscled overplay of power must seem rather abhorrent to you. I have evidently pushed myself upon you and yours, too suddenly, too directly. It is in our nature to be overzealous in action and devotion. Our humors are more choleric and sanguine than our hubris allows us to drown in melancholy.

I do, however, respect you, for you have made your views upon us clear, though what you have heard may largely differ from what we present. We have different ways, different customs. We speak in the vulgar argot of battle and give praise to beings beyond the scope of language to describe. Yet we are still sons of Terra. Removed, distanced, true enough. But we have blood that binds us to Sol, and to hallowed Terra. Blood that might bind us to Mars, should they be willing then to take us.

I have dismissed the majority of my vessels, keeping a small force; perhaps a more appropriate force for this brave new venture. And it truly is such a venture. We stand on the cusp of a new era for our civilization, and we would wish that we allowed to explore it in peace. Thus do we graciously tender our requests.

We shall seek to pursue a territory upon Terra herself, a place for the Chronosian people within the Cradle, that we might mingle with you, know you, become a part of this undertaking. We would also broach the subject of establishing, for purposes of trade, a city of limited arms, either in the Northern Ocean of Mars, or in orbit, to act in neutrality to those who would do us service. The only vessels of military intent would be light convoys to proposed Rogue and Endorsed Traders, and military response to any threats towards any proposed Chronosian Holdings.

These are my proposals; these are my requests.

Mars

It's a very dumb machine, having no mind of its own, nor the capacity to develop one.

It orbits sol's number one waste of time, the irradiated junkyard called Mars, its reflective casing drawing pretty patterns of radiation upon the occasional microasteroid getting close.

And it watches, emitting and receiving pulses of negligible energy, interpreting them, and drawing pictures. Links to other machines like it, located in decidedly less relativistic states than 'Conventional' space, provide it with further information, and allow predictions on the movements of assorted thousands - well, more like tens, or hundreds of thousands - of objects. Objects like it, and objects quite a bit bigger than it.

When the radiations emitted and/ or reflected by the arriving absurdly huge number of ships are intercepted by it, it doesn't think much about it.

It just interprets them, adds them to the greater whole, and sends the results of this work off to rather more complex, and concious machines elsewhere in what is commonly termed the 'Martian Sphere'.

There, the new arrivals are run through several databases, and identified. The message transmitted by the same vessels has by this point reached 'the name of Remie-'.

And then the proceedings accelerate.

The one previous contact with the Chronosians, as well as the general information about them floating around, suggest that they're not the kind of guest one would like one's neighbor to have. Similarily, it suggests that the Chronosians can be vaguely diplomatic - that one envoy did, after all, return alive.

Tainting by chaos is a comparatively low risk - being offered immortality by a god in exchange for eternal slavery is a somewhat less attractive proposal when one can achive the same by way of transferring one's mindstate into a new body, or a machine. This isn't to say that the risk is unextant - there's always a few fuckheads who like it the hard and freaky (And dangerous) way - but it's limited.

Yet, a thousand ships suggest boomity on an absurd scale.

Orbital weapons platforms and seeded munitions start targetting procedures. The eighteen warships within the Martian sphere begin preliminary analysis and maneuvers to bring them farther away from the Chronosians, attempting to gain a (Presumed) range advantage. Fleet assets at Earth - sadly not quite on a straight Sun-Earth-Mars line, which complicates things a bit - start shifting-countdowns.

It's at about this moment that Warmaster Cabot's message ends, and reaches the receivers on assorted 'Listening' assets.

Countdowns on the engagement continue for a few more seconds, but upon the reactions by assorted Martian neighbors, they are, eventually, aborted.

Strategic Engagement Unit Gunpoint Pacifism

"How long do you think?"

"Dunno. Four and a half minutes?"

"Hrm. I say five - the Yvressi aren't exactly the quickest."

"We'll see, I suppose."

The largish general-purpose hangar on the ship was filled with all kinds of, well, stuff - a couple missiles, some autonomous area-denial munitions, several black-body cased bombs, half of them disassembled, MA-warheads (All disassembled), empty drone casings and casingless drones, expensive black suits, drone-plushies, water pistol mockups of J-1000 Humanoid-Bias rifles (The ship was somewhat endeared to the concept of merchandise), real J-1000 HBs, and a whole fuckton of crates.

Within all the rubble, two humans were sitting, with one of them - a medium-sized male approaching the colour of snow - attempting to wear a rather odd-looking suit of... Well, it appeared to look somewhat like PA, although this was very much arguable.

"I say three," the disembodied voice of the ship interfered, trying its best to sound hollow and scary. "Still not done?"

"No. Couldn't you just have bought a bloody Sunseti one? I'm human, not a bloody drone."

"Well, excuse me for trying to improve my skills a little," the ship replied, sounding hurt. The second human - a female attempting to help the man into the armour - giggled.

"There... See? it works. Now the helmet."

"Ugh."

"Hrm. You look kind of like the aliens in those fifties' flicks..." She tapped the transparent plate in front of the man's eyes. "Was this one necessary?"

"No. But it looks cool, don't you think?" the ship conceded.

The plate went black.

"Now stop being so annoyed! Anyway. Ship? Where did you put the- Ah, there."

The female walked over to one of the crates, careful not to trip over a few of the vaguely military-related pieces of machinery littered on the ground, looked a little closer, giggled again, and took the absurd-looking gun from it.

"Here it is, mon cheri."

"That's Francois to you."

"Isn't that the name this Sanglanti gave you after the treasure hunt?"

"Yes. Anyway... René. How does it work?"

René shrugged. "Ask the ship."

"It's a multipurpose, particle manipulation based full-spectrum rifle. Your backpack-"

"This stupidly oversized satchel massing a metric ton and inhibiting almost every movement I'm trying?"

"-doesn't provide the power, it does the particle manipulation bit. And no, it doesn't mass a 'ton'. Only 165 kg. The rifle itself-"

"Looks as if you ripped it straight out of Ghostbusters."

"Well. I do like the film."

"... And YOU stop laughing, René. So... I SAID STOP LAUGH- Oh, forget it. Anyway. So... You gave me a 'Proton Pack'?"

"Well... No, not quite. I mean, not exactly. I mean, I used the film as the basis-"

"Oh my god."

"But I ignored its technobabble. I mean, I used tested concepts."

"Tested concepts?"

"I tested them. So, yes. It works. Um. Should work. I did simulations with non-physical phenomenons we've information on - we've had a daemon running wild in Daedalia, after all, and we have reasonable contacts with Burning Mountain -, and it should work. It did in the simulations. Which I can assure you, were perfectly viable and befitting scientific and engineering standards."

"And you never actually tested it against a real opponent of the slightly creepy, not-entirely-within-the-laws-of-physics kind?"

"Well... No. Not yet. But in case that the Chronosians make planetfall, and in case that things get a little bit, ah... Violent, you might be able to do that for me."

"... I'm speechless."

"In any case. Operating it works like this. Um. Are you listening?"

"Yes, yes I am..."

"So. This red button there is for..."

Today it was the turn of the necrontyr starship Telissath to be ‘responsible’ for Mars. It was quite an enjoyable job, actually, for a creature designed for warfare. And so, it scrutinised the incoming fleet of chaos ships. Exceptionally crude, by its standards, it could imagine crews of sweating ratings and cyborg servitors already. Of course, this was entirely odd. Not only were they rather too close for comfort, but these were behaving in an organised fashion that did not match with previous encounters with the followers of the young Chaos Gods.

Even as it did so, it was loading up with pariahs. Nevertheless, the leadership of these Chronosians must be truly… interesting.

Chaos is the antithesis of sanity. Chaos is insanity, and to kowtow to it is to become insane in short order. These are facts, chaos is born of and breeds psychosis. The only viable conclusion is that the Chronosians are in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, disloyal to their deities.

This warranted further studies. High-level discussions flitted between Mars, Earth, Duat and Naogeddon itself. Sometimes civilians, slow, meaty civilians, were even included. At last, consensus was reached. An experiment would be preformed, to see just how odd these Chronosians were.

Signal Origin: INS Telissath
Signal Destination: Chronosian Fleet, Warmaster Cabot.
Encoding: Null
Signal Type: Clear EM

Perhaps we’re capable of improving your intended plan a little. Would you prefer some solid ground under your feet instead? We have a rather large area of metals that can be offered for such a trading city. Say, one hundred year and a day lease with an option for renewal at a nominal cost, with full militarism. No strings attached, hell, we’ll even build you some buildings if you like.

Now to see if they’d bite…

"Gnn."

Stephanie Chou isn't given to exclamations when she's on duty, but the datastreams go ever so slightly bonkers. Small claws dig into her shoulder, a bit of pain to help her focus and...

The sensation is decidedly beyond the human, following many many tracks, interleaving with other conciousnesses, splitting around fractal paths and collapsing from Many into a One that dances on a stage in the far future, personification of beauty, ideal of war...

Munitions get their marching orders and the thirteen destroyer-class ships presently assigned to Marsspace shift slightly, subtly. The Fedrals and the Chronosians become the target of a great deal of attention, the passive massive and the active shaped to complement that of the TYCS and friendlies, to produce synergies of intelligence.

The eye opens and looks on the invading fleets, an eye greater than planets and smaller than atoms, observation collapsing quantum states into a moment of appreciation. There's a hint of some great being's pleasure, aloof, a claw briefly unsheathing, observation.

Data pours across the lightspeed quantum nets. Understanding materializes in sentients dispersed across the sphere.

Soft voice in ear. Claws on shoulder, gentle.

"You'll probably have to go to the surface. I'll mind the fort here."

Rasp hoarse from a lifetime screaming rage. Lava under foot.

"Khorne? Putito."

Languid purr. Fingers setting pieces into motion.

"At least the freaks can form coherent sentences."

To say Badb was angry was, untrue, she was beyond such things, she was rage personified, for a full minute she allowed herself to just feel her frustration and fury. Then with mearly a thought she shut it away, the ENN-Empire would offer the great enemy land... LAND here on Mars. It was beyond comprehension, beyond anything she had suspected. It changed everything she had planned and plotted for, simply put she could not now force the issue, the Yvresse fleet would have to stay out of this. Too much rested on the peace with the the Yngir Ranisath, too many plans and hopes.

My friends we have a problem... her mind reached out to the others again, carrying with it the knowledge f what was occuring, it was ot well recieved by the others. slowly through the rage began to fade if they could not attack the disease, then they would at the very least punish those responsible for bringing it to this world.


Slowly the plans altered and changed, they would teach the Mo-keigh a lesson, the peoples of the League had once more brought disorder and chaos to Mars. Protecting a warfleet in orbit of Mars numbering in a Thousend ships was not something they could tolerate. On top of this the warfleet had been of the Ruinous Power's, it was they felt a deliberate staged affair dsigned to create war and tension above Mars. Something the League seemed to thirst for, as they repeated endlessly the same pattern.

So be it if it was death the League wished Death they shall have, but not through the gun, or the sword, not by the clash of ships in space and men on the ground... The Yvresse would not give the League the war they so desperatly sought, they would give the league something unexpected, un-looked for.

With a nod the Four minds agreed as one, the future was set in motion, the League would pay for it's actions this day. The price would be higher than they could have ever suspected. It would take time, the tools had to be forged in secret, but the methods of it's creation already existed.

OOC so of I go now to begin the long process expect the first post in a day or so.

A message from the lead ship was sent to Chronosian forces , it was short simple but welcoming. “Welcome to mars let us hope our alliance will remain strong and we grow in strength” The fleet floated over mars in an, there bodies overflowed with red dull ominous glowing ,and reflections from the surface of mars, they calmly swept forward there engines pushing them with dark streams of energy witch slightly curved because of the gravitational pull of mars, they pressed there tips and bodies along ,they where in a condensed packed formation, there bodies looked like they over lapped from afar, there reflecting white and grey amour plates painting an image of the surface and reflecting off each other, the steams of black particles combined several kilometers off there aft sections all in to a large river of ominous blackness that flowed behind curving slightly in to a distant point of disappearance. The commander on the lead ship flung his hands fluidly waving through the air around to the AI and said in a rather commanding voice, his lips moving and opening words pouring out loudly “ Put some music on… classical , ignore these threats, if they shoot at our friends make sure they get hell, we wont do any thing until our diplomats get back to us “ he suddenly turned to his second in command who was ironically the third in command of the ship and said in a friendly but swift talking loud voice “Brian get me, It seems most mars “powers” seem to be rather annoyed with our presence since Chronosia came in, why the hell did Union city invite them any way, they only caused more problems for us” the second officer replied blinking slightly and rising his hand his mouth opening and lips quivering as he spoke a little afraid to speak his mind in front of a senior officer, the commander looked down upon him and said bracingly “damn it boy spit it out you don’t have to be nervous”
Brian was young early twenties, just out of the Advanced academy on Tarren prime, he was afraid of pushing the envelope so he had to be prodded so to speak for some Opnions, he finally broke after he shook his head quickly his blonde hair rushing around as his blue eyes peered professionally at the commander he responded rather quickly. “Well sir it seems to me that we should kind of make sure we don’t do any thing wrong either, I could understand why they are annoyed, I mean 2 mass fleets is a lot to have over mars, lets just hope our diplomats will figure this out…” his hand moved down to his side as it slapped back in to position his blue and grey uniform gleaming in the white chrome light of the ship, music starting to play, the relaxing tunes of Beethoven , playing and reverberating Through the busy rather noisy large bridge. The noise seeped away from most of the crews ears, they worked on there panels and walked around with paper thin reports handing it in to AI’s and androids, the loud beeping and reverberating noises of ship activity seeped in to the darkest cracks of there minds they worked diligently, the commander looked at his second officer and nodded in confirmation, rather proud of his officer pushing the envelope, when admiral Odessa returned it was hoped that this second officer would proud him with his comments at the right time. The AI floated over head in a globe of blue and green, its woman like appearance slowly shimmering as it floated over the crew..

Mean while Winston had just realized his lips where quivering uncontrollably, he subtly jerked and they stopped, he relaxed and looked around the room his stance was rather normal, he raised his arms fluidly his skin rather pale and white, his blue and red lined uniform cuffs riding up his arms slightly as he spoke his mouth opening quickly and swiftly, he said “Where willing to make you a deal? Since we don’t want to annoy any one or start a war we are willing to move at least half of our forces out of mars space to asteroid colonies, all we want is a chance for trade and embassy relations after wards, how would your country feel about that?” he smiled his tone o voice was clam and relaxed his hair was smooth and laid back. He looked around again slowly and spoke again in a friendly brisk tone, his hands attending to some paper work he pulled out of his belt. “Well it would be nice to get to know you, as I have not had much experience with solers before, if you would excuse my term” his body language had changed, ever since that accident several years ago trying to negotiate some thing he was rather nervous and had some minor damage that couldn’t be repaired at that time and had become Permanente to some nerves. So it wasn’t obvious to him that his lips where twitching, he had just realized it after the look from others.


Mean while the fleet base was slowly progressing, ships and supplies had begun to move and come in, they where starting to erect at least a partial fleet base construction frame over mars, the next step would be colonization, as soon as the construction frame was 50 % complete they would send a message to colony ships or to gather colony ships for an expedition to the northern ocean on mars. The Interstellar Map Commission (IMC) would want to gather territorial maps and trade maps before any venture was to occur.

"It's a start, at least," Jennifer says with polite enthusiasm, sipping her minty drink. "At the current point in time, I am not sure about the viability of trade relations although I will pass it along to the various governments of the Triumvirate. Given the importance of effective communication in smoothing relations--as these latest events have shown--we would be interested in exchanging embassies for formal diplomatic relations. I think there should be a time of mutual learning before we attempt anything beyond that to prevent any additional unfortunate misunderstandings.

"Is there anything in particular we can assist you with while you're here? Any questions you need answered, perhaps? We may as well start learning about each other now while we have the opportunity."

***Sky Fortress***

The Prefect turned to the TFU representative. "Mr. Odessa, I am simply a bureaucrat, I cannot speak for certain on the willingness of my government to share their technology in joint projects, however i can ensure you that our government is in the business of learning." he flashed a wicked grin. "One of the best ways for two peoples to learn about each other is to work together, of course the best way, well is to fight together but thats something we rather hope to avoid at the moment."

Montgrove stood and took a few steps. The fighting had stopped, both in tannelorn and over the north. However the active tannelornian flotillas around mars had not cleared their alert status.

"I believe it would be a rather good idea all things considered and i will bring it to the attention of my superiors as soon as I am able."

Warning klaxons started to light up across the sky fortress, the station was entering full battle alert. The Prefect simply smiled, preparing to entertain his guests even though the station was now actively choosing targets.

The ZMI battle stations and defensive satellites within reach of the fifteen kilometer diameter battle fortress. That was pretty much anything in the southern hemisphere and equatorial regions. The fortress rocks seemed to follow suit, angling themselves to bring the most amount of Loengren fire to bear.

***The Eternal: Tannelornian forces over mars***

After the rather terse messages and obvious threats from the ZMI ortillery and fleet assets in the system, Space Lord Tsaratov had ordered every available tannelornian ship to acquire targetting data on the ZMI flotillas in orbit.

Those ships that were too damaged to fight had already returned to Tannelorn but that still left almost one hundred capital ships in orbit of mars and almost one hundred and fifty of the beowulf and woglinde attack ships.
Fully half of the einhanders were armed with the massive Loengren reaction cannons. Needless to say if the ZMI fleet over mars attempted anything..foolish, it would cease to exist in a rather blinding and brutal flash of light.

In a rather obvious display the Tannelornian flotilla's that were now targetting ZMI assets swivelled the massive ultra heavy turrets containing strategic level grasers and heavy anti ship pulsar cannons towards the Merchant-navy of the ZMI.

The fortress rocks picked targets, primarily the many ortillery satellites and battle stations that the ZMI forces had over mars, presumably to hold nations hostage as defensive satellites were never as useful at defense as they were at hitting ground targets. In fact that could be the only purpose for them in the eyes of the Tannelornians.

Each ship picked a ZMI counterpart, preparing to level a full power volley in to the ZMI vessels the moment they fired upon the chronosians. Needless to say at this range missing was not really a high percentage factor, nor were the chances of anything with a ZMI flag and a weapon surviving the volley.

However in that unlikely occurence, waves of attack ships and morgenraetes were forming up alongside a huge number of lowes. The moment they fired upon Chronosian forces, if that was there intent they would be hit hard not only by every large gun the fleet had available, but by every strike armed and available strike craft in the fleet.

Most of the damaged ships had already been sent back for repairs, though there were less ships in orbit now then there were an hour earlier, there were still more then enough to deal with the ZMI contingent.

***The bridge of the Eternal***

"Let us send our friends in the chronosian imperium a message, as well as one to our friends in the ZMI merchant marine, I mean navy." The bridge filled with uproarious laughter at this comment. "Friends of Chronosia, we welcome you from Mars, as we welcomed you in the cluster, please enjoy your stay on mars and rest assured we will do our utmost to help you find anything that you desire while here in sol, as well as assist you in perhaps setting up a viable infrastructure upon one of the worlds of this divine and sacred system."
He grinned now, ever so slightly. "Do not mind those more..belligerent types, Sol has always been plagued by such rowdy bullies. They should be of no more concern to you then dust upon a stellar wind."


He ordered the channel closed and another immediately opened to the ZMI garrison. "Merchants should not play at the task of warrior, silence your nattering machinery and bow down to those whose judgement is better then yours. These men have done nothing to deserve your scorn nor your fear, silence your terror for the stench of it sickens me from across the void, if you do not power down your weapons we will not be responsible for the loss of.." He paused, he was about to say life but he knew merchants respected nothing but power, money and property, so he appealed to their greed.

"Property that would ensue, silence your ignorant protests, they are neither appropriate nor tolerable." he paused, everything would now rest upon this moment. "The chronosians are honourable people, despite some groups distaste of their religious practices, in our experience they have shown themselves as nothing but courteous and polite..you could learn much from them."

The Space lord smiled now. "So if you wish to show yourself as the barbarian's you allude to being, then please do open fire. If however, you wish to show yourselves as civilised reasonable beings then understand that there are such things as different cultures."

The Space lord laughed softly. "If the greetings of two warriors dismays you and causes you to react in instinctual fear merchant, then perhaps it would be best to duck down with your tail between your leg's and stay out of it. Even civilians can appreciate the finery of discourse between highly trained and dutiful warriors, if merchants cannot then so be it, avert your gaze and your fears shall disappear."

The bridge of the Eternal was filled with laughter.

"More comm chatter, ma'am."

"Put it on, of course."

She regrets that one as it plays over the command room's public address speakers, bowing her head and holding the bridge of her nose with one hand while she counts backwards from a hundred in Malagasy. "Can no one on this curse'd rock have any manners while pointing guns at each other? My gods, aren't warrior cultures supposed to at least be civil?"

"I dunno, ma'am. The put-down and the dirty dozen are time-honored traditions of various sub-Saharan tribal warrior cultures. If one can win through insult and shame, it keeps one from expending valuable resources. I believe you're thinking more along the lines of feudal and feudal-like cultures, at which point courtesies evolved as a way for towns too distant to be tied by clan but still united by more-or-less similar culture to maintain a sincere dialogue without angering the other over petty disputes that would shake the foundations of a larger fief-based culture."

"Thank you, Roberts, for reminding me of my anthropology course." Fani-Kayode's posture remains unchanged. "Wasn't the gun supposed to change that somewhat?"

"Only by lowering the bar of 'nobility,' so to speak. Instead of the warrior class being dependent upon a lifetime of training, any common mook could be handed a gun, taught for a few weeks, and sent out to fusillade knights off their horses. By that time customs and courtesies had already trickled down to the lower classes but they reasserted their original meaning for a time. As weapons technology progressed, eventually the historical upper classes had to at least give apparent respect to the lower or be deposed--reference Antoinette and how naivte got her the onus of 'properly disposable autocrat's whore' for a century or two until academia decided she really was just that dense. In cultures that never built up a structure beyond tribalism, the gun simply lead to tribalism becoming more lethal more quickly. Again reference sub-Saharan Africa in the street violence era. While the typical personal strategies of firing into the air and holding weapons in awkward positions while shooting were a natural evolution of the shield-banging and yelling of previous tribal conflicts, bullets still tend to kill people if they happen to be sprayed sufficiently. With no real intertribal 'civility' except that imported by outsiders universally hated, there was nothing to cause said warrior-lauding cultures to become civil."

"Stated as fact," Tandra quips in a deadpan tone.

"Yes, it is admittedly merely anthropological theory and not a particularly popular one for reasons of social preferences. The concept of social evolution being based primarily on violence and using this evolution to make distinctions between ethnic civilizations tends to aggrivate those of a more pluralistic bent. I ascribe to it because I exist outside the continuum of human ethnicity and by pointing to a scientific system that explains these changes and rather clear distinctions all moral 'this is better than that' onus is avoided. After all, while the sub-Saharan Africans of the street warfare period may have just been extremely well-armed tribalists, genocide was relatively unheard of in tribal cultures until it was imported from Europe, who got it from Asia depending on which scholar one asks. I know it is an oversimplification, but a detailed discussion on these studies and concepts seems inappropriate for the occasion. It's also not as if we're always polite to people we point guns at either, after all."

"I know. Perhaps we can delay this conversation to another time?"

"Of course, ma'am."

"Silly question." Fani-Kayode looks up. "Doesn't such a servile remark bother you, given the evolutionary background of your culture?"

The room pauses in its speech, perhaps just enough time for a smirk. The change in the clearly artificial synthesized voice suggests such a look. "Customs and courtesies, ma'am. If I weren't willing to take orders from organics I would've joined the QACF instead."

"Fair enough. I'm going to get some tea. Keep me posted over headware."

"Understood, ma'am."

Transmission Via CyranoMod

Lt. Gilchrist: Sir, a Chronosian warfleet has just entered Mars space
Diego: Well, its Mars afterall
Lt. Gilchrist: True, but they have an expressed intention of ridding the sol of the Fedrals
Diego: How has the local response then?
Lt. Gilchrist: Well, you said it, sir. 'Its Mars afterall'.
Diego: Well, hows it look like it will turn out. Will the fleet be looking for a fight or will they listen to reason?
Lt. Gilchrist: I doubt this situation will be much of a problem. They have admitted their powerplay was a little unecissary and my guess is they will stand down if you can help to clear out some of these damn Fedrals
Diego: Well, that shouldn't be a problem, they've already offered to remove half their fleet and now wish to discuss trade. I take it that your sensors haven't turned up anythin unusual given the tone of our conversation.
Lt. Gilchrist: Nothing you need to be concerened with. However, it does look like they may begin colonizing.
Diego: Interesting. Relay all information regarding a colonization attempt to me along with all updates involving the Chronosians.
Lt. Gilchrist: Aye Aye, sir.

Following the exchange Largentian eyes turned from the Fedrals to the new local threat. Radar, Lidar, Neutrino scanners and sensors, Mass Detectors, SQUIDS, and others watched the Chronosians with the utmost interest. Just waiting for them to make a move or stand down. Meanwhile, the Martian fleet and MarteNet Early Response System were kept on high alert. It was generally the Largentian way to stay out of conflicts that were not aimed towards them or caused by them, but an attack on a peacefully force who so far were entirely compliant and only wanted embassies and trade was pushing it.

Receiving Lounge

Jennifer had covered all the basics. Her response had been the one he himself would have given, but it would probably be best to express a willingness to establish embassies as well. "I would just like to add that Largent would be equally willing to exchange embassies if you are interested, and should you ever obtain a foothold on Mars we would be more than willing to engage in some sort of trade. I must also thank you for your willingness to reduce the size of your force. People around here seem to be...touchy for lack of a better word and it is usually best just to avoid moving large fleets around and not give them any reason to mobalize.

"Now, I must ask you a question if you don't mind. Do you have any plans of colonizing the red planet, and if so, would you mind sharing them with us?"

O’Vandie did not and had never liked barbarians, outie or otherwise, warrior cultures he could tolerate given there usually present feudal or tribal based ostensible codes of conduct, chaos lacking these usually couldn’t be trusted further then the glowing end of an orbital gunnery array and if anything the rational actions of the Chronisan fleet were even more unnerving with there lack of for want of a better term insanity, but needs must and market pressures and the cargo ships due for mars insertion with full insurance demanded it and there response had been quite within the estimated acceptance percentage, however this ..idiotic and insane response from what appeared to be a cackling crowd of maniacs hovering over the “let everyone die now” button was not his idea of fun. By his estimates it would escalate swiftly into a system wide war. A short one to be sure given the force imbalance available with the estimated moral upper hand but still a war and as such to be avoided.

When dealing with a crazy man with a bomb strapped to his forehead and holding a trigger it is best to just back away, get a large gun and pick up the smoking pieces later, as for the Chronisans


OPEN WIDE BAND TEXT ONLY COMMUNICATION

Origin: Sub com Nexus platform 34, Martian high polar orbit
Attached: CARVIN CATERS! Instant window fluid! For all your glazing needs! Catalogue,
DOFA Approved diplomatic contact list, public level strategic analysis of vascillan military readiness and capabilities.

Your reasonable and most helpful actions and presence are most welcome, please find all appropriate diplomatic ZMI facility lists attached and on behalf of the citizens of the incorporated state welcome to sol system. It should be noted at this time that possible strategic level exchange is still within the 13 percentile of occurrence so low orbit should be transited at best possible speed if you are visiting the Martian planetary surface.

This message has been sponsored by :
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Authored:
Star Marshall O’Vandie (SI) CenComCon Mars




With that the wave of EW stopped as suddenly as it had started, the massed military LADAR winding down to a slow standard gentle brushing and the embrace of the siege guns targeting beacons vanishing into the ether, there huge heat sinks folding up like giant umbrellas after a shower. As for a military response to the tannelroni actions there simply wasn’t one. Just the same scans that passed over there assets as every other day.



OPEN WIDE BAND TEXT ONLY COMMUNICATION

ZMI
DOJ


Court Record VV.923.00
Sol wide immediate dispersal via all relevant data links.
Origin: Sub com Nexus platform 34, Martian high polar orbit

A Public address to the Government of Tannelorn:

Targeting the innocent merchant spacers and civilians aboard liners [data flash, Liner Green Palace Class ZMM C23448 Apex,] and freighters (risking mars wide devastation as high speed multi megaton loads impact the planetary surface [data flash, bulk ore transport ZMM O43493 Koriv].[data flash, estimated planetary damage from the Koriv alone] is a criminally irresponsible act on your militaries part. Given the legal and limited nature of the incorporated state to an obviously possibly hostile force it is also quite obviously ridiculous.

As the actions are criminal in nature Group Law Holdings PLC. is as of this time formally bringing a case against you for criminal reckless endangerment valued at 13.9 trillion rungs and risking manslaughter on the megadeath scale 503.3 trillion rungs against the quite obviously dangerously irresponsible personnel in your executive positions at that time. Failure to respond to these charges shall of course automatically issue court bounty for them as fugitives to be captured given the nature of their crimes dead or alive of no less than 4 trillion Melenmacari credits for Space Lord Tsaratov and 400 million Melenmacari credits for each member of his staff on duty at that time. Bounty will be paid on receipt of their persons alive or dead or public beyond reasonable doubt proof of their demise.


This message has been sponsored by :
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Covin Tarnick (SI)
Chief Justice





OPEN WIDE BAND TEXT ONLY COMMUNICATION
FOR PUBLIC RELEASE FOR PUBLIC RELEASE FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

Origin: Earth, Megacity One, ZMI MiliComCon , Sub platform Five,

As of midnight GMT four task forces of ZMSF “battle fleet” shall enter Martian high orbit above MegaCity four. They are to be joined in the coming weeks by a threefold increase in the number of siege guns in Martian orbit that given present events is obviously long overdue and a full strategic heavy system capable missile network to be installed throughout our Martian territories.

All Tanelorni flagged vessels entering our aerospace territories shall be actively scanned and inspected, there personal to be actively investigated by all legal and non invasive means available to the state, there citizens and representatives if any within our borders are to be ejected after processing to the full rigors of the law in a similar time frame and any and all Tanelorni assets within our ability to do so frozen. Further actions of this nature shall not be tolerated.

We will act in our own defense within reason as you and any other nation state is free to do so. We will always only fire in response to fire and we will never fire upon nor target civilians.

Do not try our patience again.

This message has been sponsored by :
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Authored:
The Gestalt

FOR PUBLIC RELEASE FOR PUBLIC RELEASE FOR PUBLIC RELEASE





Point to point plain text message to Space Lord Tsaratovs personal home family com,
No known origin point.
No known author

We live in a dead desolate desert of fall out in many places tens of meters deep. You should have pondered this before your actions.

There is no and never has been true honor in war and our people an leaders do not fight “wars” out of choice as we know all to full well there real meaning, anything less is an insult to the lives lost in there futile affairs. We interdict in police actions, we defend ourselves abroad, and we defend ourselves at home. We do not start wars and we do not fire first shots. In all of these things we do not and never will target civilians.

If we suffer a single megadeath however it will not be war as warriors know it. It will be something else.

Those we do not kill in the opening minutes shall be normalized added to our markets and resettled, your culture, your history and your homes erased and over time the memory of your peoples passing shall be scattered to the solar wind.

For those who live in the grey dust desert by the black dead ocean in the shadows of a past strewn with countless true deaths survival holds no fears.

You call us merchants, we are not at our core, we are survivors and nothing else, however in deference to our present outward activities:

All debts will be paid.

Your life is and forever now shall be forfeit.



Deep in the cometary halo it received a signal. It was a 4 kilometer long black body fully automated strategic munitions dispenser, and it and its brethern would never have a name. Deep within the icy mass of a cometary body it lay, a black dagger amongst others, relays and devices were tested, the frigate and cruiser sized weapons dotted along and through its body carefully checked by a veritable horde of drones. Massive spindly real space drive nodes dozens of times larger than those used in conventional shipping were carefully tripped over at settings so low they barely disturbed the passage of the drones hovering over there surfaces. You could if you were carefull note the lack of the huge FTL systems that a vessel of its size would have ordinarily required. It simply sat waiting for a signal.

Squadron Leader Copoc murmured with gentle surprise, he had expected the posturing to escalate swiftly, and the fact these Chaosians had made concessions intrigued and worried him. Here they were with an obviously powerful fleet, and they had just cut it down to a fraction of its size..
He was worried indeed.

"What is there game?"
He mused to himself, a frown growing beneath the armoured hood of his helmet.

Then his eyes flickered, data streams of the other nations responses were fed into his mind.

"Ah, ZMI has rolled out the welcome wagon, and they seem to have their attention diverted with these Tannelorn.."

He nodded to himself, make a decision.

"Rukutl, Kipo, Catli, I have chosen to go in to ZMI areas and see if we can get a closer look at these Chaosians, maybe even meet some, furl your colours, transmit civil mask codes, and look as inconspicuous as possible.."

As one the squadron flittered and changed colour, their cruise drives taking them into a standard civilian approach route, their destination, ZMI and wherever the Chaosians choose to put down in their territories.

Winston’s lips moved in to a grin as he smiled, his hands moved fluidly to an animated mode, he started to speak in a rather friendly but quick voice

“Well I would like to get to know your food and culture, it seems rather interesting, id also like to get to know your history some what”

Suddenly on Winston’s black leather like belt “excuse me for a moment” he said a small pocket sized crystal/ plastic device began to deep in short successive loud beeping bursts. Winston quickly looked down his face cringing slightly wondering if some thing had just happened in orbit, he needed to talk to them any way because of the comprise he proposed, he looked up to the other diplomats before they answered, the split second between the reaction was almost an eternity for Winston, his finger tapped the glassy panel of the communications device with haste, the commander of the battle star came through in a rather clear non static channel. Winston spoke “this is Winston, what’s wrong?” the commander responded his hands on the table as he spoke through the communications array, his feet spread slightly out on the chrome white floor, as the AI floated over ominously over its sphere blipping with slight blue and white his voice was confused and slightly odd… “Winston what the hell is wrong with this place, we have people pointing guns and weapons at each other, well at least one, then tanny here is pointing guns at civilian assets? You know what Union City said about when things started escalating right?”

Winston responded with a slight confused look “Yes, I know listen I have made a deal or comprise that might help us out, I want half the fleet to move out side of mars orbit, just out side, keep five hundred or so ships with you, lets make our force less threatening.. Also I want you to move in front of both the targeting factions” The commander winched and blinked with a sudden dismay and fear “WHAT!” he yelled in rather loud reaction…. Winston said “Do It, its an order” the commander looked back up to the AI and then to brain and nodded the communications array of the ship went online in a reverberating energy like sound the lights of the ship dimming, he began to speak in a loud professional but commanding voice “fleet alpha omega two split in to alpha omega three and alpha omega two, alpha omega three is to proceed outside of mars orbit in to asteroid field gamma theta, fleet alpha omega two is to proceed in front of these lunatics” the entire communications single was scrambled and encrypted to the highest degree…


Suddenly five hundred massive small and medium war ships began splitting off from the main force, there engines pushing them along as they maneuvered to move just out side of mars orbit, there gleaming hull reflecting mars slightly on there aft sides as the light from the sun hit there amazingly grey hulls. There engines pushed them like ominous beasts waiting for any thing to happen. The remaining ships began moving towards where the entire issue was being held there engines revved up in harsh but massively powerful bursts of black particles, reflecting off of the out side view of mars, the particles bent as they moved forth quickly, the ominous stream of medium large and smaller war ships splitting in to a guard like position making sure if either side shot they would hit some or one or two TFU ships. The commander sighed suddenly he cringed again and looked up to the AI who was floating above, he said “Send a message to Odessa informing him of what’s going on… the AI sent a message, on the fortress Odessa’s COM link began beeping in rapid succession, indicating an urgent message he taped on it quickly with his hand before responding to the prefect and heard a recording on what happened he cringed slightly and sighed looking up at the prefect.
He said in a professional respecting voice to my dismay I have been informed of actions of certain factions of mars, your government included, I want to let you know right now targeting of civilian vessels will not be allowed while we are present neither will unnecessary conflict, how ever by that token we do not like the reaction of certain mars nations with aggressive patterns, we should not make any aggressive moves unless provoked wouldn’t you agree? Well back to business then in light of recent elopements I think it will be in all our best interest to move our fleet out to there objective as soon as possible we have caused enough diplomatic damage” he sighed and chuckled a little “while our country will support you in most ventures including showing mars that we aren’t threatened by them and such, it is not wise to do it in such a blunt manner, furthermore, we should not stoop so low as to target civilians, now the other side seems to have backed down, I suggest we let cooler heads prevail prefect.”

Sheikh was still sitting at his desk, listening to the radio chatter going back and forth across VASCOM. As usual, the Tannelornians were piping up, but this time the rhetoric being passed along to the ZMI Warfleet...no...The ZMI Merchant Marine as his friends had relabelled it, was hilarious to Navarrone.

Navarrone picked up the reciever of his red telephone and asked the operator to get him Fleet General Ituenza.

'Fleet General, pleasure to speak to you again.'

'Pleasure is all mine, General Navarrone. What can I do for you, sir?'

'Seems folks are wanting to present themselves as military threats. Posturing like they have a pair...especially, from the looks of it, The Merchant Marine.'

'So, you've been listening to the Tannelornians?'

'Yes...which brings me to why I've called you. Our honoured allies have chosen to raise the stakes, why not. The Concordat have been fucking us around for awhile now, not to mince words. Collect as much intelligence on ZMI as possible. Conduct hardscans, I don't give a shit if you fry half of their systems in the process.'

'Sir, yes, sir.'

And once Navarrone had completed his conversation with Fleet General Ituenza he had asked the operator, once again, to connect him to the ZMI consulate...where it was hoped the Ambassador would speak to him. Of course, while this was going on, Aumanii warships, orbital platforms and sattelites, including the power GENESIS cannon, would be collecting as much intelligence from Concordat warships as possible...The Fleet rearranged itself as The Federals and Chronosians seemed to be able to handle things on their own. The Aumanii Fleet prepared to fight an obnoxious foe:

ZMI, Self proclaimed Sheriff of Mars.

XLINK: NODE 0 - NODE 44,028 - NODE 48,773
XUSER: Fractally Integrated Distributed Operator (FIDO)
XUSER: Skree Psyops Newbreed of the line of GM-0 (SKREE)
XUSER: Leader Body Augmented (LEADER)
XUSER: Beacon Machine of the line of Phoenix (BEACON)
XCOMM: PLAINTEXT
XCRPT: Direct Quantum Noach Link (Entanglement) (Encrypted w/ 68,719,476,740 bit key)

FIDO> Hello everyone.
LEADER> This is related to...?
FIDO> Chronosian warfleet problem.
LEADER> Ah. And the problem is?
FIDO> Increasing probability situation will blow; consequently increasing possibility of acquiring benefits from resulting conflict.
LEADER> So?
FIDO> Request reassign others now-present Marsfact soonest. Request begin armament production.
LEADER> Affirm. Skree/Beacon, affirm?
SKREE> I don't see a problem with it. Would be nice to get back on the ground for once, with an atmosphere.
BEACON> I am quite OK/with this decision made now/I will go as well
LEADER> The haiku is unnecessary.
BEACON> As you well do know/I have a speech difficulty/Hard to quickly fix
FIDO> Very well. Downlinking armamentplans Marsfact soonest. Upstepping Judas ditto.
SKREE> So, when do we leave?
LEADER> Now.
BEACON> It will be better/to feel atmosphere under wing/than languish spaceside
FIDO> Excellent.
SKREE> Someone get Beacon a speech upgrade before she heads down there. I don't think I could stand a crazed poet on the trip to Mars.

XLOGS: Transport by shuttle is arranged. No other outward action taken.

"Nek ni." The way the Sky Marshal says it, with a modicum of surprise and no small amount of irritation, means the Arabic requires no translation. Situation board quickly analyzed, she does what she's paid to do: take action. "Roberts, plot vec tween Tann commbs, targs. If't intsec Mars send ships intsept strays. Act."

Needless to say, the battlespeak does not catch the fleetmind unawares. "Acting, ma'am."

"Comm, prep trans open all." Sighing silently to herself, Tandra snatches her green wheel cap off of the console in front of her and claps it on her head while the communications officer she just ordered to put a call to everyone in the area gets to it, working his console like a piano player during an expert solo before. "Stanby, ma'am... all go."

* - * - *

There's not much a diplomatic officer can do in a military affair, so Ngabese simply nods at Winston's request and goes to the nanolathe system to order some light food for everyone. During Winston's impassioned call, Dread Pirate Roberts easily intercepts the communication and then routes it through its own systems, rebroadcasting out so there isn't any issue of bad signal. Meanwhile, listening to what is being said and comparing it to what is being transmitted yields what would be, if nothing else, the cryptographic scheme used in that particular communicator set. It could be universal, or it could be personalized either by something like a serial number or simply randomized (more likely the former if complete paranoia doesn't rule the day). In any case, it could be useful. For now, the fleetmind gestalt-controller decides to just sit on it for now and do its job. It enjoys geometry, after all.

Two points are all that are needed to define a line. This line has a point of origin and a direction, so it is technically a ray, not a vector--it has no particular magnitude. When this ray impacts the surface of a sphere, that ray becomes important. Collate all rays and determine where one could best place combatants in order to intercept those rays. Make the problem slightly more interesting and realistic by assuming a Circular Error Probable cone. Rack-and-stack the risks and then assign orders by component, which breaks up from there to individual ship.

This happens more or less naturally because, in all fairness, Dread Pirate's not doing all the work. Officially, all the shipminds on the local tacnet are contributing to this particular example of massive parallel computing. Unofficially, the shipminds have also hijacked the idle cycles of their somewhat willing commanding officers' brains (being jacked in is required at any condition over AC3) to add just a little extra oomph. They all make the decision collectively and assign tasks collectively. The ruins of Mallberta on Phobos would be proud.

A measurable fraction of a second later, mostly taken up by increasing the front-liners to Event Condition Two and spooling up the tesseracts, the twenty-odd WarShips in question take the opportunity of there being no active interdiction in the area to give spacetime a miss and pop out from infinitely finite distances between the Tannelorni spacy and Mars. If the situation were some sort of weird layer cake shaped like Nefertiti's headdress, Mars would be the base, followed by the thin dusting of TYCS ships, the ZMI spacy, TFU, and then Tannelorn. Chronosia is off to the side in a bowl of snickerdoodles.

* - * - *

The communications officer opens a channel with the audible click of a switch. The Sky Marshal takes up her cue, speaking quickly but steadily.

"Local area, this is Sky Marshal Fani-Kayode of the TYCS. We have redeployed some of our forces in a defensive posture over Mars' surface just in case things go poorly. I'd very much like to see them not go poorly and thus offer our services at the Fleetbase as a third party for negotiation. We've all been surprised today so it's best if we all start letting bygones be bygones instead of dusting each other over unfortunate misunderstandings.

Over." A sharp nod to the comm officer gets him to snap the circuit open, breaking the transmission. "Comm, prep trans to Fedrals. Act."

"Acting, ma'am." Another click.

"Deimos Fleetbase Actual, Fedral Fleet. We're backing you up here, believe it or not. You try to keep the civilians from getting fragged; we'll make sure nothing reaches the surface below. We would be in the front lines helping but I don't think we can engineer coordination that quickly. Over."

Another crack of the switch, and then machine-smooth bustling as everyone attends to their stations.

Kazansky-Island, somewhere off the Allanean coast

“What?!” – Alexander Kirillovich Kazansky sat straight up in his bed. He was still naked - his wives were lying at his sides, and it was clear that what he was engaged in tonight had nothing to do with governing Allanea.

“That’s just in, Sir. The standoff is developing further, and it seems the Aumanii may attack the Zeppelin people, triggering local conflict.”

“A local conflict? You’re mad.”

“Why so, President? Why do we care?”

“First of all, the Aumanii are our allies. I don’t want any of them to die. Second, I suspect people would use the chaos to attack – Chaos, pardon the horrid pun. And Chronosia is our ally, and then we would have to defend them. And all of ESUS and the Galactic Empire would turn out. And I don’t want a huge war.”

“But third, as ethical individuals, we don’t want to have any pointless violence at all if we can help it.”

As he said it, Kazansky got out of bed, ignoring the fact that secretary gazed wistfully at his body, and reached for his cell phone.

He then made a call to a certain Aumanii official.

“Sheikh! Sheikh, it’s me, Alex! Listen to me, Sheikh! Please!” – the boy-President’s voice was nearly frantic – “Please, for the love of all that’s holy! Don’t provoke them! Please, stand down! It’s not needed! Listen to me, Sheikh!”

***Sky Fortress***

The Prefect looked confused. "Odessa my boy we arent going to shoot at civilians, or anyone unless the ZMI forces fire upon our chronosian friends." The prefect brought the diplomat to a large holo display showing mars and all of the shipping above it. He isolated the Tannelornian and ZMI fleet assets from the rest and showed Odessa very carefully the targetting information from each vessel. "See my friend, we would never do anything as abhorrent as target civilians, however we would target the terror weapons the ZMI keep in orbit to bully and threaten those who live on the surface in to doing as they wish."
Prefect montgrove smiled assuredly. "You have my word that we would never through intention let a civilian of any side come to harm, the term merchant is what we use to describe the ZMI government, as that is what they are." he put an arm on Odessa's shoulder. "Relay that to your government while we have a few more drinks, and please tell your ships to get out of the way."

The Aumani initial transmission had raised a few eyebrows – Mars wouldn’t qualify as a ‘great vacation spot’ for years to come since the Volarian incident – and caused more than a few to wonder if the radiation hadn’t gone to the Aumani’s heads. That was to say, they sounded more like they’d been smoking the crack more than usual in any case.

Zero-One’s PSA had been posted on the office board with a picture of Admiral Akbar attached, with the phrase ‘It’s a trap!’ scrawled on the bottom.

No one was concerned about the Trium response – they were usually the clear-headed ones in these pissing matches, and confirmation from home backed that up. No action was to be taken save in defense of selves, or allies should the need arise. Nevermind the fact that Trium resources were more than capable of taking care of themselves, quite effectively. Conclusively one might say.

The Tannelorn actions caused more than a little concern, and only served to cement the image of unthinking cretins with no interest in diplomacy, and no regard for conventions, or the sanctity of life. Deliberately targeting civilian targets, especially in a time of supposed peace, simply was not done, save by madmen and lunatics. General consensus leaned towards the latter. Still, orders were orders, and no actions were taken as yet on account – though a close eye was kept, with a ready line via Spook to Devras, giving a play-by-play as the situation played out. Given the talk, it was not unlike watching the village idiot trying to recite Shakespeare thus far … it might be amusing were it not so painful to watch.

Demands for reparations weren’t entirely unsurprising, all things considered. The arena of diplomacy and negotiations were one where historically, the Tannelorn and Aumani representatives had always fallen short in. In fact, most incidents on record could be chalked up as ‘disastrous’ and ‘complete failures’, resulting in them becoming less and less respected forces on Mars, and more the laughing stock of it. A separate poll was up on whether or not ZMI could actually collect on all or part of that – most opinions leaning towards ‘when hell freezes over’, with a side of ‘stfu’ and yet more posturing and hypocrisy. ZMI did have a point, after all. With so many independent nations, whenever one took any action, another would invariably think it’s toes were getting trod upon, whether they were or not. Targeting civilians however … that crossed the line entirely.

What took them all by surprise was the Feddies, of all people, moving to block their own ally’s efforts. No one had seen that one coming. Whether it was an act of bravado or heroism remained to be seen. Perhaps they hadn’t thought the situation all the way through … perhaps they were starting to rethink their choice in allies. One could only hope that were the case, though no one was willing to take that bet.

It came as no surprise to anyone that it was again, when everyone else seemed to be working things out and trying to soothe a tense situation that it was the Vascilicans who chose to try and escalate the situation. They seemed to take a perverse joy in seeing just how much they could stir the pot, most likely just to spite everyone else. The tactfully quiet joke at the local office was that Aumanii penis size was in direct proportion to their need to look as big and loud as possible – the smaller they were, the more rawring occurred. Unfortunately, the novelty had worn off, and by now, the typical response was nothing more than tiring.

“Remind me again why we’re even here?”

Vasco Patroni shook his head in disbelief. It was the same nightmare all over again, and again, the same idiots were at the root of the problem. And the newcomers, for all their flowery speech, were no comfort. It was quite possible they could be worked with, but only so long as backs were thoroughly covered.

“Ah, that would be because our dear allies, the Kaeneians, did us the ‘favor’ of granting the NDA as a whole land here on Mars, and being one of the three founding nations of the alliance, it behooves us to do our part in maintaining a presence here,” Celso Volonte responded, straightening his suit jacket and taking a lecturing aire, complete with smug smirk.

“Very good. Remind me to send along a fruit basket with my personal heartfelt thanks on account. Now I suppose you have an answer as to why this planet seems to suck the intelligence out of some nations, and why historically xenophobic nations like Auman are now welcoming offworlders with open arms, and screaming at everyone else for a change?” Vasco asks dryly, already typing up a response of his own to certain parties.

“Of course. One of the pre-qualifications to this position was to have an answer for everything, after all,” Celso quips. “Chaos makes many nations nervous. Auman has a history of xenophobia to be sure, but more to point, it has a history of going out of it’s way to irritate it’s neighbors, whom it has always loudly proclaimed to be beneath it. This is an opportunity to up the ante and attempt to bring pre-existing hostilities to a head. To get their guns off, so to speak. Unfortunately, if our betting pools are any indication, they’re doing a piss-poor job of it.”

“Yes well, we can’t all be smart, or talented, or subtle, or diplomatic one supposes. Still, it’s amazing to see such a lack of all those qualities and more in such abundance. One might suppose it’s a racial weakness,” Vasco mutters, still typing, pausing on occasion to re-read, mouth moving silently as he does so, then continuing.

“One might think they would get tired of being the laughing stock of Mars, but there’s no indication of that happening any time soon,” Celso says, grinning shamelessly and making hip-thrusting movements. “I swear, I can’t avoid the image of them standing in front of their comm systems saying ‘Fear our doomcocks! RAWR!’ every time this sort of thing comes up.”

Vasco nearly chokes on the wine he had paused to sip at that particular visual. “Il dio, Celso! At least give me fair warning!”

Broadcast over unsecured frequency
Warmaster Cabot,

On behalf of the Dominion, and the Non-Democratic Alliance, please accept our thanks for having made such an enlightened decision in alleviating the concerns of the natives by repositioning a good portion of your fleet. And with said thanks, our introduction.

It is our hope that the in spite of the offtimes indelicate approach of some of the locals, that your stay here will be both pleasant and if so intended, lucrative. Given your intentions for trade, we look forward to seeing how the situation develops. Perhaps we could be of some assistance when the time comes.

Best of luck in your endeavors here. With perhaps the friendly suggestion that you avail yourselves of what intelligence resources you have to do some checking into the backgrounds and reputations of those you’re looking to settle down with and make neighbors of. We’re certain you’ll find it enlightening.

With regard,

Vasco Patroni, Dominion Representative, NDA Mars Outpost

Odessa sighed and nodded taping his crystal comm. Badge, he relayed the recorded message to the ship and down to Winston, who heard it and nodded at the hall his stance relaxing and sighing hoping this won’t escalate any further. Odessa smiled and put a hand to the side, the hand with the glass raised and he said in a split second reply with a rather friendly tone “I’ll drink to that mates” The entire affair with the five hundred ship fleet shielding one side against the other was to actually keep one side from firing against the other, of course the union would support Tannelorns forces, against a faction of hostile xenophobes if they shot first, but on the other hand if Tannelornian forces where to shoot, it wouldn’t be a possible situation since they would not fire on there own allies. The commander on the battle star looked around his body shimmering in the light of the white chrome busy bridge, his blue and grey uniform gleaming ever so slightly his head over looking the tactical holographic panel, he looked up to the AI and said “Send a message to hostile forces…” The AI responded with a nod of her woman like grace, the sphere of data around her lighting up she said with some odd emotion “all right sir, comm.’s have been set up” the commander nodded and sighed he coughed and cleared his vocal cords, he looked around brain nodded and his crew nodded in quick response of support, he started to speak in a professional clam collective yet bracing voice his face looking at the recording and or live feed monitor his smooth face appearing throughout the broadcast, his black hair and blue eyes looking into the screen ”All hostile or offended forces against the United republics and its allies please hear this, we mean no harm, half our force has pulled back in order to give you breathing room and our allies may be willing to do the same if we talk to them, we mean no harm, but we are also warning you, any un warranted xenophobic aggression against our ships will result in immediate declarations of hostilities and retaliations from the United Republican star fleet in rather large force, as for our allies we have a simple message, let us not become hostile towards these naïve people, it is not there fault that they are so paranoid, as for nations who have offered a diplomatic hand we thank you for hosting us, and will continue with diplomatic talks and efforts , in hopes of resolving situations peaceably, thank you and god speed and good luck for peace.”


The commander sighed as the comm. Cut and the ships floated in there positions, he looked over to Brian in a rather ridged some what tired look, his hands resting on the table once more as deep scans had now begun of all hostile intentioned nations and forces. He asked Brian in a mundane rather monotone tired voice, one witch was well earned in this incident

“Brian make sure our fighters are at the ready and raise shields, if things get hairy, we make sure we are ready”

Brian nodded in a quick enthusiastic but tempered fashion, he looked around and rushed over to the tactical officers console witch was filed by a lonely ensign, they began to converse, the commander looked on as time slowed in his tired mundane mine the AI making sure shields where running, a power build up could be detected across the board because of shield activation.
The large small and medium ships floated ominously there shields powered up in a defensive stance, they hoped to preserve peace even if futility prevailed.

Winston sighed he was more relaxed than the admiral or commander on board the ships mainly because he knew he would be safe or at least he hoped in the back of his mind he would be, his thoughts where filled with mundane reasoning’s and plauides of peace and war, reminding him of novels he had read, it was rather odd for him to think such things in this sort of a situation but no matter he thought, there’s always a first time for every thing .

The commander was leaning slightly on the holographic panel thinking some of the same tense thoughts, his mind focusing on home the fleet and the situation at hand more evidently, he could not get his what ifs of his mind this was rather unnerving for an officer, because know one could know what could occur in such instances and short amounts of time, his eyes shimmered as he looked through sensor scans and the port view, the light gleaming off of his tired waving eyes, his eyelids drooping ever so slightly, the light reflecting back.

DD Nagemaki

"You'll probably have to go to the surface. I'll mind the fort here."

The kitty flows, kitty-like, through improbable channels; into the ships of the Marsspace groups, into his friend's hardware, into the growing Mars truthmines.

{beamcomm, commercial encryption}
x Guards Major Chr'rowl Diplomacy
o Appropriate Authority, Dawn Paragons

Gentlebeings,

As the person in charge of the Mars situation on this end, I find myself lacking in knowledge re: these "Chronosians". Aspects of their nature worries me, and I would learn more. I would consider it a personal favor if my associate, Guardsman Stephanie Chou, were to learn about these matters from an appropriate source.

"For my sins?"

"You'll enjoy it."

The Nagemaki is already maneuvering to shield a sneakship launch.

Io

"You... challenge... me... you... fucking... boywhore!"

The words are inaudible - there's not really enough air to carry here in the mountains. The woman, unremarkable, dressed in sulfur-yellowed camos.

Unremarkable except for looking like a baseline Territorial, unlike the shellskinned Ioans around her.

She kicks the near-dead one off the ledge. He'll live or he'll die. She issues orders. Again, the words are inaudible, but the Tigrans obey anyway.

The diggers labor in the lifeless Tcho-Tcho tunnels, clearing the debris of abandoned works.

Mars

Deep under Industrial Carcinoma Three, diggers go to work. Triphammer noises beat like hearts to seismographs. But the rhythms don't add up, somehow, when they're analyzed.

Casual Conversations

The place appears to be devoid of life. It's also black and white, even the fires burning in the background, the lakes on magma and the mushroom clouds in the distance are just that - black and white. And a bit of gray in between.

"Creepy."

"Well. It striked me as appropriate."

"If you say so..."

The two individuals talking are skeletal, their bones fractured. They walk over the devastated landscape, slowly, carefully, so as to avoid other skeletons on the ground, some of them begging them to end their misery, others just weeping unextant tears, again others just staring at them with their empty eyesockets, and trying to crawl closer.

"And I thought it's just the ships being creepy. But no... Anyway. Predictions?"

"Unsure - the higher echelons appear to be pretty happy that they didn't remove the seeded munitions in the belt - they're pretty handy, now. It's unlikely that they'll be used, though. The Vascilians may have mouths the size of the sun, but everything else they have is measured in micrometres. They've never really acted on their verbal threats, and usually back off. One figures that it'll be the same this time. ZMI's 13% figure strikes me as excessive - our minds seem to suggest a 1% probability, which I'd think is closer to the truth."

"Hrm. Neat."

"Of course, aforementioned minds still decided to go for militarisation-"

"I noticed. I'm not keeping the entirety of my consciousness in here, you know."

"... Weak. Anyway- Oh, nevermind. You might want to look for yourself."

The Higher Echelons

If there's anything annoying about multipolar universes, it's the absurd number of bi- and multilateral ties, of interests, silent agreements, hidden dependencies, and god alone knows what else. All of which tend to result in one guy pointing a gun causing a mexican standoff of stellar proportions.

In this particular case, the Tannelornii - and subsequently the Aumanii - targetting ZMI assets - whether they're civilian or military in nature is irrelevant, if one disregards propaganda purposes - are inadvertently alerting assorted DA minds who happen to have rather friendly, profitable, and generally useful relations with ZMI.

What follows are seconds of chaos. Lacking a strict hierarchy, the discussion as of what to do next takes a little while - but eventually, conclusions are reached.

Military and politics-related minds - the former tending to be machine, the latter tending to be human - re-establish old links with ZMI hierarchies while others poke around the networks of other, at least tangentially involved friends, relaying information, and receiving the same. Deployment structures and potential political actions are shaped based on this information. And eventually, virtual decisions become physical reality.

Which doesn't amount to much - if there is anything the politicians (And the public) want to avoid, it's looking like a Vascilian in the process of whacking off.

Ships continue to move around, changing their positions so as to avoid as much fire as possible, while causing as much damage as possible, should a shootout begin. Hulls change their colours, taking on characteristics to reflect at least part of the gamma- (Less) and x-ray (More) spectrum.

But no missiles are deployed, and the number of subcraft floating around remains identical to peacetime standard. Whether this is casual disrespect for the military capabilities of the Vascilians or simple courtesy remains an object to discuss - it may as well be both.

Only in the belt, many, many millions of kilometres further out, sleeping beauties awake, and listen to the chatter directed at them, and only them. And they wonder whether their services will be needed.

But even they do nothing but listen, their purposeful movements restricted to the bouncing of photons in their computronium.

In the meantime, time to have a little talk. It's somewhat annoying that there is no such thing as a secure link to the Aumanii - as such would entail formal relations with them -, but as everyone seems to prefer open frequencies for everyone to listen in, anyway... Why not.

Dear Sheikh Navaronne & Prefect Montgrove,

I think we're all aware of the somewhat hostile atmosphere around here - and I wont deny that we, too, have taken certain precautions, just in case.

As it is, however, I'm somewhat dismayed by your, ah, shall we say, hazardous maneuvering and lack of tact - while I can sort of understand your move to target ZMI assets in response of their targetting of Chronosian assets (Although I'm utterly unclear as of how you can consider the Chronosians an ally, given their history), your verbal excesses - or, in the case of the Aumanii, the lack of anything even remotely representing a desire to talk - strike me as somewhat misplaced, considering that total warfare (Which strikes me as the most likely course of events, given the designs in use by the Vascilians) would presumably involve the death of approximately ten billion Vascilians within the first phase of said total warfare, whereas the casualties on the ZMI & Angstian side of things would presumably be limited to several hundred million, owing to their much greater population spread.

Regardless. While you do not appear to be interested in anything but senseless violence, this reducing my hopes of being heard, I do still wonder whether you'd be able to, lets say, quit pointing guns - esp. as ZMI has now stopped doing this, though this hasn't stopped Auman from doing it, anyway.

After all, we do have guests here, and I'm sure that you, as self-proclaimed Martian natives, have no interest in looking like the somewhat demented rednecks of Mars while said guests are here.

At least I thought that you considered yourself civilised. Maybe it's time to show that you are? You see, it's rather sad to see the Chronosians showing infinitely more restraint and common sense than you.

Sincerely,

~ Huan Yue, Daedalia Administration

The battle platforms sat silent, there weapons systems cold and mostly there emissions down to a bare minimum which in many ways made there presence and function harder to extrapolate, the rest of the weapons, the kinetic harpoons and missile pods were still as they had been, unchanged, cold and in standby, as for the siege cannons there reactors had never engaged there crash ignition programs and they too lay cold. None the less O’Vandie while he was quite willing to play chicken for most probable strategic and geopolitical high ground was not overly willing to have the ZMSF assets exposed to this wash of brute force scanning. So he decided after a 40 second interval of analyzing the radiation’s the aumani were using to send something back to them.

They were huge, the energy projector alone easly the size of a battleships spinal weapon, the altered force wall generators each weighing 2300 tons and powered by individual reactors that were normally found mounted in 3 megaton ore hauliers. They were also on every minute of every day save for passage over melenmacari and associated territories. The biggest ZMSF asset in theatre now came into play. The orbital bill boards. The huge devices multi bandwidth transmitters were designed to reach out to alien ships, rush find a bandwidth, any bandwidth that they were accepting data on and blast an endless stream of commercial pap down it. It was rarely liked, It was also more often than not effective, if there was one thing almost every society be they 45 tentacled super intelligent beings who lived in oceans of liquid ammonia or sentient rocks had in common it was that If they had a commercial culture they had commercials. O’Vandie pondered ..may as well go the whole hog. The massive boards immaterial force screens changed positions with a flick of a projector array to directly in front of the primary aumani orbital assets, the glaring 50 kilometer wide paper thin walls of photon altering force glimmering as they altered the starlight before one by one the tubes of the projection units lined up. There were over 450 of them, jockeying and repositioning to line up there arrays over aumani territory, to reposition so there screens would directly block the conventional optical vectors of the major aumani stations and vessels.

There was a flash of light across each board as the projectors checked the return and then …10,000 channels blaring out across every known reproducible Aumani frequency be it scanner or otherwise at maximum output of objects whose sole purpose was that output, advertising everything from hoof warmers to self erecting car jacks with a mix of garish sit coms based around “how many social stereotypes can we fit in one show” with a rash of third rate comedians to back it up, nauseatingly happy made for datanet release only family movies starring your favorite underdog sportsteam, workers alliance, and or family. A half dozen cop shows where the detectives glittering teeth or overblown personal transports (usually in horrifying primary colors) could cause spasms in those not used to exposure. Infomercials, glorious infomercial’s stretching endlessly on in hosted by a horde of inane fifth rate actors with names and reputations that would have made Troy Mc Lure seem like a byword for quality. All of this now filled the aumani skies, the billboards slow stately orbit around mars halting as gravitics thrusters pulsed of there distortions of space time as the great flottilla of projectors began slowly but surely to build up within the time of a single orbit.

“This is Jason Winters and this is Cary Narin and this is the Tuesday night variety SHOW!” the theme music 30 years out of date as was the rerun variety show it featured in. Amongst other things its 30 minute long segment featuring dancing cats, a man from megacity ones sub sector 33 who could stick a pipe through his ears and full continuos flashing sub conscious adds.

The transmissions were building up and up with military aumani scanner output up against the might of such vocal organizations as network 29 the news network for your pet, or such sensual delights as the paprika channel after all given the target audience it wasn’t as if high brow reproductions of greek tragedies by conceptual low g modern dancers would have been appropriate.

This was electronic counter warfare “merchant style” from the one group that had first invested in space so very heavily and it was loud and it was very very vocal. It was also neatly acting as a mass dazzler hashing up segments of outbound sensor returns like so many poorly made medieval mirrors.

ooc place holder for now, as well. Tannelornian forces never targetted civilians, we jokingly on the bridge of the Eternal call the ZMI spacy the ZMI merchant marine, while preparing to talk to the ZMI spacy. In fact in the thread we quite openly targetted every Military asset ZMI had in orbit and destroy it in a first strike if they fired on chronosia.

Amongst the growing orbital standoff, approximately nine hundred vessels of the Imperial Navy, turned to begin a slow sub-light acceleration to further beyond the now treacherous Mars orbit. In accordance with the Warmasters orders, and further consultation from Chronosia Prime itself, four hundred and fifty sovereign vessels would idle just out-system, while the rest returned to Chronosia itself, to appraise the Emperor on the situation brewing even now in Sol. Cabot had, himself, spent hours preparing the varied documents, sealing and approving logs and reports for the Emperor’s Eyes. Servitors had filed through the almost dazzling array of paperwork, checking and double-checking that each bore the sigils of the Imperium, and the correct rites were observed. Red ink glimmered dully like blood in the candle light, as Cabot prepared his personal address to his brother, In it he would inform him of the initial hurdles, the seemingly welcoming parties, as well as those who seemed to remain veiled or guarded as to comment upon the Imperium’s presence.

Other notices, including those offering land upon the surface, would have to be double-checked by the Emperor himself before Cabot could competently make any sort of in-theatre decision. When it came down to it, he was a Warrior, not a Diplomat, and the most recent of events had taxed him to no end. Yearning to tread open plains, to know combat against the hated enemies of Man and God, to stand proud and tall, blood pooling at his feet as it fell in scarlet drops from the whirring teeth of Wrathchild or Gorefiend, twin chainaxes that symbolised his ever present hunger for the slaughter.

It was days such as these that he was thankful for the Arenas.

Vast rings of steel contributing to the training facilities in the bowels of the vessels that kept the Marines of the Solar Expedition in peak physical condition. Some fought each other, other duelled to the bitter death with captive beasts, or slaves who had been brought along. Cabot had watched his Marines, his sons one and all, as they practiced and of late had even attended. Whether with the sharpened wooden edges of training batons, or with the well-oiled blades of a chainaxe he had taken forth the fight, bare-chested and glimmering with oils and ungents, each painstaking movement seeming the rippling strike of a marbled God. The sparring, the indulgence of the art of battle, eased his frantic bloodlust, the bubbling cauldron of almost liquid rage that boiled and seethed within him.

He forgot it at his peril. Yet even now, preparing himself for the next moves of the intricate game that he had began to realise that Solar diplomacy involved, he began to question the actions of those who stood in opposition to him. Should they be so compliant as to trust in them utterly? Even with the one hundred ships under his command, the four hundred and fifty waiting just out system seemed as a reassurance that they would not be left here to die, alone and outnumbered.

He sighed softly, opening his eyes as the door to his chambers slid open. Achaeus, his First Captain stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the dim light from the corridor, candlelight accentuated the scarlet glow of his armour.

“My Lord.” He bowed his head, noting the smirk etched upon the Warmasters features.
“Come in, my son. Come, sit.” He gestured to a bottle of wine which stood, waiting. Achaeus tentatively picked it up, pouring his own into a goblet that lay at its side. He raised the cup to his lips, drinking deeply of the rich fluid.

“You seem troubled.”

”Ah, it’s nothing. I simply…Miss the Crusade. The Campaigns I’ve been forced to leave in order to undertake this. The sooner we work out a solution, the sooner I can appoint a proxy and return to what truly matters.”

”We’ll be done soon enough. We all have faith in your abilities, Lord. We simply await such time as we will be able to enforce and execute your will more totally.”

“I know you do. That is why I kept you here, at my side. Brensis is a warrior born, and I trust each of you in equal measure, but he has another path to tread, that is why he is my messenger to the Emperor, and why you- you stand at my side.”

“And I thank the Gods that you consider me worthy of the task, Lord.”

“There are few finer” Cabot smirked, rising to embrace the First Captain as he would a son, “Even Remiel’s pompous Lord Commander Turel could never equal one of the sons of Cabot. None even amongst Lucian’s morbid brood. Now come, we have much to do.” He moved past the First Captain, smiling lightly. “We have to gain their favour. The sooner that is done, the sooner we can leave.”

General Communiqué to the Martian Powers.

As you may have noticed, the majority of the Chronosian Solar Expedition has departed as we have promised. The Emperor sent me not to cultivate war, but to broker a return to the hallowed Spheres of Sol. We stand at the dawn of a new era, the return of Chronosian Man to the Cradle of Humanity, and as I stand here I can think of none finer to usher it in than we, The III Legion.

I have kept a small number of vessels in my retinue with which to support my efforts, as I reach out to commune with you, Powers of Mars. Let any who wish diplomacy know that they are welcome aboard the vessels of the Expedition, and that any who wish to know us, shall have that chance.

I ask you now, might you accept some form of permanent co-habitation? Might we be brothers-in-arms? For there are worlds here that each speak in legends, soil that is rightly hallowed to us. Even if we are denied Mars, there are other spheres…Might we know them?

Not many messages are sent from Tiburon to any of the various powers. Neither the Chronosians nor the Federal Union have settled on Mars, and thus bilateral planetside relations are yet to be established. In any case, this can happen after everyone just cools it. Tiburon is naturally linked to the Trium nets, so the fact that the appropriate messages have been sent to the appropriate people has already been established. They're no longer a member of the Concordat, but they still have good feelings towards them (and, thanks to the Cocentrican SSP, are able to maintain the same low costs). All that is done now is to continue to raise defenses on Tiburon Mars and chatter along the Trium nets. Messages are sent to the appropriate counterparts on the various national forces and the TYCS fleetbase, essentially confirming Tiburon's support-ready nature and asking politely if they can help out (assuming, of course, such help is needed).

Oh, and MARSCOM prepares several divisions and NAFs for rapid response. It's not a question of numerical and technological superiority so much as it is numerical and technological dominance. Nothing is pointed at anything specifically- but the capability to fire in any direction at less than the drop of a hat is key.

This is the borehole.

Machines the size of skyscrapers, self-assembled from the rock face that they are attached to, dangle above the three-kilometer-wide pit. Their sole purpose is to house the massive, arcane mechanisms of the distortion engines which keep the hole open, impossibly, against the pressure of the Martian crust.

This part of the factory isn't listed on the original plans. The missing chunk of the crust has been metabolized, converted into energy and products, and the excess carefully and quietly transported into deep space via microscopic wormholes thirty light-years long. A second set of skyscrapers (or corescrapers, as they are over ten miles below the surface) maintains a illusion of mass and substance over the gaping hole.

Eventually someone will notice. But until then, the hole grows deeper.

******

Liquid, irradiated magma is pumped from the core and vaporized with terrible energies. The vapor is sorted, filtered, condensed into blocks of uncontaminated elements, then shuttled into million-gallon tanks of industrial nanotechnology, which mixes it into highly specialized molecular forms - everything from Kaha Smeltings Corporation "Invincisteel" hull composite to the latest iteration of Augmented black-ops computronium to a fourteenth-generation evolved version of Imperial molecular explosive compound to a ton of weapons-grade gray goo.

Banks of AI-controlled waldo arms finish the task, assembling the materials into a carefully calculated selection of armaments. Combat drones, EW antennas and multi-megaton nanobombs take shape under the careful touch and electronic eyes of the machines.

******

One among many, a shuttle approaches the Martian surface, unique only in its destination: the Augmented Technocracy Vertical Factory (Mars).

It's at times like these Falco wishes he wasn't as convincing a speaker as he is.
Things would be so much simpler if Abbadis had swayed the Light's crew to declaring Exterminatus on Mars.
It would certainly have lessened Falco's workload, of that much he's certain, leaving him no need to concern himself with an incursion by "Chaos".
"Chaos", because Chaos doesn't come in with weapons powered down, asking to talk.
Chaos, especially Khornate Chaos, as these particular devil-worshippers are supposed to be, come in and start killing people and generally don't stop till there's no one left, or they are broken by the Adeptus Astartes.
If they're not doing this, they're not really Chaos.
Still filthy heretics in need of shooting however, so the opportunity to get the message out to these Territorials is pleasing to one green-eyed Marine Captain.
Falco scratches the brown stubble of his scalp and ponders a reply, the Adeptus Mechanicus approved technologies that have flooded the Paragon's Keep making it a rather more secure process than the vox-messaging that used to be his only option.
Thoughtful grumbling echoes as the Marine hunt-and-pecks at his new-fangled keyboard, oversized hands limiting his facility with the human-scaled device significantly.
Eventually however, after a few re-writes, he drafts an acceptable missive and fires it off to the Territorials.
Then, because however much he sometimes wishes the three Cyclonic warheads the Paragons have squirreled away were only two, he gets on with the never-ending tasks inherent in commanding forces who struggle constantly to protect the ungrateful, brawling, "nations" of Holy Sol from the darkness that lurks outside the Home System.

++Message Begins++
++Thought for the Day - Wisdom is the Beginning of Fear++
++Direct to : Guards Major Chr'rowl Diplomacy++

As always, the Adeptus Astartes welcomes any who wish to aide in the battle against the Ruinous Powers and their never-ending assault on the unity of Man.
It is not without some measure of disquiet that we find their foul presence in Sol causing such immediate division, the ignorance displayed by some implying the swifter we can educate more on the threat they present, the better.
Your Guardsman Chou may join us as soon as she can, attached are the transponder codes to find welcome within the Keep's hangars.

Captain Falco Valetudo
Master of the Irondeeps and Marshall of the Companies based therein

Curioser and curioser.

Minds covering the entirety of Sol, from Neptune to Jupiter, to Mars and Earth, discuss the matters at hand. Figureheads of the political scene, the economically minded successors of the megacorporations that once ran DAs society, and the military are arguing, insulting, providing evidence, joking, and eventually, coming to conclusions.

Some of the conclusions are concerning Vascilia.

Vascilia, once considered a somewhat pointless Martian shithole, nasty but irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, quite simply because it was essentially limited to Mars, and therefore not worth any more efford than occasionally arguing with it or verbally supporting it when it happened to desire conflict with the Valinonese.

Now, however, Vascilia happened to be a somewhat pointless Martian shithole that brought presences of the decidedly undesirable kind into the subsystem. Which automatically included the overall system as well.

The hypocrisy involved - the Vascilians tended to 'Welcome' every new arrival with a not-so-friendly 'Get the Fuck Out', courtesy of their believe that they were the 'Natives' of Mars (A notion some of the minds considered likely - the Vascilians did occasionally appear to have evolved from Martian microbes thrieving in the post-terraforming environment. Sadly, they didn't appear to have evolved a lot) - caused a few amused smiles, but that was about the only 'Good' thing the Vascilians caused.

That the Vascilian claims to be a force of 'Stability' (Two revolution-attempts in Tannelorn, and one coup d'etat in Auman in the recent past kind of put the lie to this claim) and 'Peace' (Nevermind the constant Aumanii threats, their war with Pilon, the unprovoked bombing of civilian targets in LRR) were lies, just as their claims to be 'Honourable' and not people who'd attack civilian targets, was obvious.

That their societies had ceased to develop sometime during the eleventh century was similarly obvious. That one couldn't really 'Discuss' issues with the political equivalent of a spoiled ten-year old throwing a tantrum was obvious, too. Rather more heavy-handed approaches would be necessary to make sure that the mildly retarded kids in the neighborhood would understand the message.

And eventually, the minds in question - Human and Machine, organic and up- or download alike - decided that a policy change was in order.

Vascilia fucking with Mars was okay. Annoying, but amusing in a way, and not really a problem, given the lack of importance that was Daedalia's most striking feature. But Vascilia fucking with Mars on a scale that equaled an attempt to fuck with the whole system was... Not. And it was unlikely that the Vascilians would stop with Chronosia.

Information flowed from the sphere within which this matters had been discussed outward, sharing analyses of the situation (Worded in rather more academic terms - 'Shithole' was inappropriate, so were 'Spoiled Ten-Year Old' and 'Retarded Kid', and quite a few other of the informal terms used during the discussion; replacing them with terms like 'Disproportional Lack of Socio-Political Development', 'Erratic Behaviour' and 'Irrational Policy Decisions', and a number of other, similarly shiny terms was rather preferable -, intended policy changes, potential outcomes - ideally an internal collapse of the targetted entities with minimal direct influence from the outside, although more influence was at least one possible outcome -, cost/ benefit analyses, potential risks and the likes with the trusted and reasonably secure policy-making institutions found in ZMI, Tarasovka, The Territory... Largely in order to learn more about their opinions, and whether they'd agree with the ideas tossed around within the upper echelons of the Angstian sphere.

Other entities - primarily those who, though not particularly closely aligned with DA, have a beef with the Vascilians - are considered as well, but for now left out.

Other conclusions are concerning Chronosia.

Amusingly enough, 'Chaos' appeared to act rather more rational than the Vascilians. Which raises questions, as well as possibilities. Most importantly, it really doesn't hurt to take a closer look before vaporising them (Which, given the size of the ships, would take a while, anyway - nevermind the relative lack of assets in the Martian sphere, which would make vaporisation rather difficult, and maybe mildly suicidal).

First of all, where the hell is the diplomat who paid the Chronosians the first visit, a while ago?

Inquiries are made, information is transferred over distances measured in kilolightyears. The result - four kilolightyears, corewards, at a low-velocity searchtrip - is reasonable.

Honoured Warlord Cabot,

While our immediate reaction to your arrival was along the lines of calculating just how much energy would have to be provided to vaporise your fleet within a reasonable timeframe, your rather surprisingly civil attitude - as well as previous, comparatively civilised experiences - lead us to consider a somewhat more civil approach, too. This isn't to say that we'd consider you 'Friends', for we are not. Nor are we welcoming you. But we are interested in learning, and maybe accepting the idea of 'Co-Habitation' as you put it, and therefore wish to as you once more put it, 'Know You'.

As mentioned above, we've had previous contacts with you - very limited ones, and at a time before your present Emperor ascended to the throne, if my information is correct, but still. Our envoy from back then, Maria d'Estring, would like to accept your invitation. If nothing else, it may at least grow some sort of understanding.

Sincerely,

~ Huan Yue (Daedalia Administration)

About four kilolightyears corewards, echoes of not-quite-radiations begin the long journey back home, carrying with them the information that makes up a mind.

The free market is a wonderful thing, baby.

Let's take vehicles first. An old insystem robot bulk hauler of Zeppelin Manufacturing Industries, long past her prime, changing hands and companies with constant depreciation in value. Eventually her deed, were it ever written on paper, would be crumbling with yellowed age and grimy hands and repeated staplings of additional signatures and her Blue Book value, or whatever the hell the space equivalent is, is nowhere near the amount she's worth in basic resources. So she gets sold for scrap, picked up for a song, and still flown by a dinky little independent company apparently headquartered somewhere on Earth... but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The interests that purchased this ship needed to keep things quiet, you see, and so flying it under the flag of their own nation would've been somewhat counterproductive. Liberty and freedom are not really common where they're from and they're all about freedom. So they decided to nip on down to the local bar/strip joint/secret brothel/Moneylaunderingstani consulate and buy a place on the merchant marine registry. No fuss, no questions asked, baby, just sign on the line and we'll be just fine. Just kidding. No signatures needed here. You want to headquarters your little business front here too 'cause we don't tax (just skim off the top, y'know, fees for service)? Sure. Put the pen away, we don't need the paper trail. And so our little consortium happens to be based in a thatched hut in the middle of Economicdisasterstan. Legal internationally, with none of those annoying little caveats that citizenship usually come up with.

This hauler's been running jobs criss-crossing Mars, staying on the right side of the law. Stay to the right, pass on the left, stop on the red and go on the green. Slow down and stop on the yellow, hands at ten-and-two. Go the speed limit, give or take the error on a rusty old speedometer. All legal and aboveboard. When this whole thing started, it continued plodding around in its orbit. When active sensors and guns started getting pointed, it kicked out a box on a particular trajectory to make sure orbital mechanics would take its course and put it where the operators wanted.

The box itself is made of wood, cheap pine to be exact. Wood doesn't have a particularly good radar signature, especially when unvarnished. Who would varnish a crate? Customs would take one look at that and go "why is that crate varnished?" That's just silly. Anyway, a box floats like Kepler and Newton says while the ol' bulk freighter carries on and out of this scene. Exeunt player, as the old Shakespeare textbooks say.

Now this box. It's a custom job, made of wood and wooden pegs instead of nails. No big whoop. But inside are some not-too-old Aumanii Anti-SATtelite missiles picked up off the black market. Again no questions asked, just take the carrots for some cabbage. The corporations on Mars who buy these things always manage to 'lose' a few, and when they get 'lost' by 'falling off the truck' some concerned individual is always willing to do his part against those durned furrin turrurists and add to the local economy at discount prices.

Failing to support the economy? ... TERRORISM. But anyway.

A box with missiles. The missiles were top-of-the-Aumanii-export-line at one point, but the buyers found them slightly less than impressive. For a nation claiming it could take on all of Mars simultaneously and win for quite some time these "anti-capital" ASAT missiles didn't really have what it took to live up to the hype. All show and not very much go, just like the one-minute wonder everyone snickers about at the bar. So, using what was public knowledge in their own neck of the woods (and mixing quite a lot of The Anarchist's Cookbook, New Revised Standard Version in) they improved them. By orders of magnitude. Plural. In the very low two-digit range. Now they would actually live up to the hype of being able to one-shot-one-kill a capital ship... not to say they couldn't previously; it'd just help if they ended up inside the target right next to the reactor instead of hitting something like frontal armor.

The only after-market modification is to the warhead and the guidance package. The rest, pretty much the same. Not like the evidence is going to mean much when these puppies not only atomize but photonize themselves, but whatever. Missiles in a box. A box in orbit. An orbit that passes over the southern hemisphere in general and a well-known from public-domain intelligence Aumanii missile battery in particular.

At a pre-programmed point the everyday areocentric GPS handheld beeps in space and shoots a codeword to the missiles. The missiles' dumbsofts send a codeward through the little civilian-brand QE capsules back to their masters, who update them with public telescope imaging of what's going on above. Thus pointed, the missiles are told, in so many words, to "Sic 'em!"

The fragile aged wood of the box offers no real resistance as the dozen or so missiles streak out of the extremely rarefied and poorly defined upper atmosphere of Mars and towards their targets: a few TFU cruisers, an orbital ZMI battery that just happens to be somewhere above Auman's horizon, and some ZMI warships.

Shuttle

It's a small craft, cramped for eight and roomy for one, even with gear. Filled with foam, mostly, holding fast the one, armored occupant.

"You sure," asks the kitty. "It's just another assignment."

"What you tell me, it's more than that. I'll have to get into these people's culture."

"Overambitious. But allright."

In the mindscape, the 'tosh gets a knife out and slowly, deliberately, begins to shave her skull. In realspace, she's armored, foamed. Medical microbots crawl in the gel-layer, severing hairs. Peristaltic motion carries it away for recycling.

The craft beams ahead to Keep systems, keeping them appraised of its high-speed, quiet approach. When it lands it is with brutal maneuvering, touching down with nary a sound from splayed feet. It looks almost organic, odd flowing shape that the eye wants to slide away from. Elegant to the eye disciplined to stay on target.

The shape in the port is squat, armored, armed, not entirely unlike a Marine in shape if only because the armor is full body powered, matte grey with black leopard-skull marks on shoulders and breast, name stencil reading "S CHOU". Rifle clamped, a bulky smallbore. A sense of... not purity seals, but someting like them. Helmet something like a blunt-nosed Marine beak. A click as atmosphere clears.

The face, tanned gold, harsh bones under a young woman's healthy body fat. Clear brown epicanthic-folded eyes that take in the room.

Io

The drawings blaze blue, pulsing, great figures. Lancaster, the White Tigress, many lesser ones. Now, the Tigress begins to rise into three-dimensionality, wavering, almost there. The platform-cities buzz with sudden activity, checking, stowing, preparing... brawling as la Tigra's tribe throws its weight around.

The psychic roar is directed at the newcomer by its nature rather than its position, la Tigra doesn't conciously know.

"Khorne! I know you're there, boywhore! What the fucking hell are you doing here?"

It's a poor translation from the imagery of raw hate.

Tunnels

The tunnels are old, inhabited mostly by the dead. They were the Tcho-Tcho's once and others' before. Now the Tigrans dig into them, skew-wise to Reality. That digger machines slam away through alien dimensions from Io is barely noticeable, and a tunnel hardly a permanent fixture. The phase-shifted hammer-blows at Mars, more worrying.

The path that began to open to fight Sicarius and then fell into disrepair, is being cleared.

La Tigra doesn't conciously know, but what she really knows can sometimes be divined from what her people do.

Solspace

And in news so patently unrelated that they're really, really unrelated, squat transports tesseract insystem, many millions of kilometers out. Ugly brutes with the most marginal normalspace drives, relying on inertia to skim through systems.

They deploy containers, ingots, shepherd craft and defenders. A vast stream of materials more or less processed. It's more than just a blip, it's fractional gigatons at four hundred plus kilometers per second, precisely targeted.

The ships maneuver before they reach the target, sweeping by ZMI Meg 3 quite close in a fog of information and local defenses. Outgoing goods transports rendezvous. Cargo is exchanged, and rungs.

Business as decidedly not usual in the fringe economy. Premiums have been paid.

Earth

The rivers are warm with waste heat from millions and millions of tons of computronium. Under them, the African truth rivers, computers grown wild, home to ecologies of thought.

Here, fancy words do not survive long. "Shithole" is laid bare, and there is something between debate and battle. What emerges is mostly concerned with the geometries of casus belli.

Archduke D. Charleston Black sighed and yawned as he looked up at the sky through his high-powered telescope. "Humans." He said, yawning in disdain and picking up a piece of turkish delight from his table. He bit into it, and then turned the telescope around. "Filthy, stinking, meat-eating, humans." He looked out through his large plate windows and across at his city, looking at the raillinks, the marketplaces, the recruitment hall of the 'Space Marines', and the various embassies. His eyes dimmed and glowed in form with his thoughts, and he almost smiled.

It's a terrible thing when a Roanian smiles, as it's almost meaningless. The emotion is in the eyes, in how bright and dim they are at the time. A smile is almost a reflex, and could mean anything from happy to 'and now I will kill you.' Damien was normally a fairly easy-going Roanian aristocrat, friendly to anyone who had something he wanted that there was a possibility he could con away. Now, though, his eyes burned.

Lady Lilian Darsalin stepped into the room, and gently put her arm on the top of his back, stroking the top of his back. "They want a decision made, Charlestone." She said, kissing his cheek, her eyes retaining a steady glow. "What are your orders?"

Charleston pinched his nose. "Send an express relay back to Rudan Prime, marked FHDIIMEO. And then get a notice to Zepplin Manufacturers that we shall follow their lead." He looked up at the dusty sky again. "...may the Light bless this endeavour."

The capital punishment class Battlecruiser “Fearless Fighting Fools” and “Cantankerous Coughing Coffin” and there six strong escorting screen of stiletto class destroyers had been until now doing the SI equivalent of muttering under there breaths as they sat on there high guard positions.

They would have less than three quarters of a second to respond to the rising pack of missiles. The unmanned and sub sentient EUV laser gunnery platform that was some way below them had little chance, its death throws taking down a trio of the missiles as BP packs and point defense clusters whined for a moment before its tiny form was engulfed ending with an electronic scream as it was utterly immolated long before its single massive spinal EUV could fire.

The destroyer “Acre of big black” and its crew of 148 had slightly better luck , it had the unfortunate task of taking up squadron rear guard and the missiles were now actively categorised as extreme threats after the gunnery platforms demise. Her miniature counter missile launchers whined , decoys and the destroyers shuttle were launched even as half its water supply was jettisoned and her single shuttles gravitic drives begain to roar to a burning life that would very shortly burn them out even as the “Acre” herself engaged her secondary emergency fusion thrusters illuminating the wall of what was swiftly becoming ice behind her, all faster than its crew could hope to react, there quick ignition hopefully buying it the few tenths of a second it needed to gain enough room for its counter missiles to be of use. Acre however just didn’t have the time nore the room and as her counter missiles rushed out to meet the pack and died, her limited volley far too little and far too late.

Finnaly her main missile tubes reached charging point, six burning out at the last moment given the far too little time given to ram energy into there limited systems, the system failures they caused burning out vital point defence detection arrays as harsh uncontrolled gravitic vortices ripped antennas of the hull, the main drive field struggling to compensate even as it slowly came online. Four tubes succesfully spat the 20 metre long grandslams, there own drive fields flickering on as the discharge of the tubes warped starlight behind them protecting the Acre from there gravitic back pull. They would have scant moments to acquisition and detonate and there relatively clean warheads would eat far too few of the pack.

Four would strike Acre, the wreathed remains of there compatriots that had met there ends on her battlescreens and her dual purpose lasers striking the expanding ball of plasma and now useless last ditch BP pods that had been mounted on her hull.

Next up for the gauntlet were the Battlecruisers twins the Fearless Fighting Fools and the Cantankerous, they had had slightly more time to prepare and they had made use of it, three salvos each 120 strong of full sized counter missiles had been spat out, there simple drive on a stick forms ripping out in blue shifting waves towards the now somewhat ragged attacking pack now making its way between the massed salvos of disintegrators, heavy UV lasers and at these close quarters the massive gravitic lances.

As the lances that dotted there hulls distorting space and even as oh so too slowly the hellbore turrets traversed there huge forms already begging to crackle with energy as the tubes readied to discharge a fresh series of walls of screaming blue electric death cascaded out of ships. These were battle cruisers, there heavy reactors more than capable of generating the power for the massive infinite repeater installations on there hulls, there graviticly suspended barrels now snapping out megaelectornvolt after megaelctronvolt of charged particles in the tends of thousands of discharges a second. Unfortunately they had less than a second to do anything.

Now bays across the two Battlecruisers opened and great clouds of drones begain to place themselves in the path of the in bounds, there light and in some cases down to anti personnel weapon scale devices chittering out a sporadic wall of fire as they bagain to exit the bay doors, to add to the already flaming lines around them barely having time for the low velocity weapons to even begin to empty there clips or the drones to even start to traverse before the first missiles began to reach the cascading walls of the infinite repeaters creation. Now too they were joined by the sleeting counter missile fire from around and above them as there escorts counter missiles slashed into the fray.

Cantankerous’s drive field roared and shuddered, the 850 meter long battle cruiser jarring space time around it as the first few missile detonated within its conical drive field and her rear arc, the drive coils crackling out great discharges of raw electromagnetic radiation as they devoured parts of each blast, before finally a spread of the missiles struck her battlescreens. At this point her crew had joined her combat gestalt and her point defense capacity rose with the rising if somewhat sluggish processing power now available. For a moment cantankerous glowed, her discharge panels and laser heat pumps filling the sky like a great bomb pumped laser and then the screens failed and 935 sentient lives met true death as there cortical stacks were evaporated. For a moment Cantankerous looked like she was simply going to vanish into a wall of light now illuminating the Martian sky like an overblown and quite blinding flare then as the volatile exotics aboard her discharged as energy cascaded through them she imploded. 431 gigatons worth of energy was instantly converted by remnants of the already discoprorating drive coils and 18% of her warheads still supposedly safe in her evaporating magazines into a single terrible vortex of gravity that lasted a few tenths of a second, the small artificial moonlets effect of existing reaching down to touch the illuminated surface below her as a very real gravitc shockwave that struck the top of the atmosphere like a soft inverted toilet plunger takeing one great sucking action for just a moment. The blast then devoured the remains of the missile pack, damaged two of the escorts FTL drives and sent c fractional shards scything out into Martian orbital traffic.





Clear Text and audio Broadcast, All reporduceable Channels.

Response time: 0.3 seconds after Cantankerous’s death, 0.5 seconds after Acres Death
Author: Theatre CenComCon O’Vandie (SI)

Red Two

It has been estimated that the incident you are now seeing is not, let me repeat that not the first deliberate step in a wider conflict and we cannot in good concious blame it directly or absolutely on the Aumani leadership or people at this time. It would be wholy suicidal on there part to act in such a limited first strike and even with there proven record of instability we do not believe them to be this limited in there thinking. However we are as of this moment going to full military readyness as this cannot be entirely discounted and the unpridcitable nature of the aumani and there allies cannot be ignored.

All estimates and projections put the blame on an overzealous battery commander whatever his rank or name, and let it be clear we will not rest till this man faces justice for his or her crimes.

A single launch of what appear to be Aumani misisles from one of there batteries has aparently destroyed two of our vessels costing the lives of over a thousand citizens serving in the ZMSF.

To go to war because of one individuals misdeed to do so in this manner would damn millions to death in the falsehood and sully the names of the men and women he or she murdered in cold blood.

Those men and women shall be honoured as they should be by and we DEMAND a full and OPEN internationaly transparent investigation into the incident. We DEMAND the aumani give full acess to the battery in question within the shortest time possible and we DEMAND that they try any person at fault for this crime to the fullest extent of their law.

This is the last chance for peace the Aumani will receive and further incidents will cause weapons release to be granted.

That is all.



The Martian sky erupted as combat LADAR whined on across countless assets and battlescreens snapped up to full power even as drives begain to wind up, missile launchers suddenly repositioning as on the ground silos below them shuddered open in there tens of thousands even as at sea in the northern ocean the little brothers and ancestors of strategic munitions dispensers dived for the bottom.

The several hundred heavy ground to space guns installed around the meg began to turn like a great windfarm while the massive form of PDC bolos rolled up onto the surface, sirens blaring as they began to rumble down quickly cleared megways out of the city.

In high orbit the two task forces in position broke it, the roaring distortion of starlight clearly heading out deeper into space as hellbores snap deployed , the equivalent of single use explosive charges bullying the turrets into rough firing positions, in harsh contrast to the one that dived down and sat hunkered hugging the atmosphere and the horizon with dull rumble of there drive fields distorting it barely audible to those below. These combat groups were not flagged by single Battlecruisers and escorted by destroyers but by the two six kilometer long superdreadnoughts that made up the core of the Martian heavy defense task force, there huge rotary spinal hellbores already spinning up, the 16 brand new Vander class battleships that made up there escorts positively leaping as they hit three thousand gees of solid acceleration for a solid a half second burn, there thermal discharge vanes glowing white hot when they were finished it as ZMSF ships exploded away from mars like a rising cloud of bees.

The siege guns, there heat sink vanes still folding in reversed the process, the umbrellas opening and huge CAM warhshot shells spinning around into fireing position on there revolver magazines as they took up targeting there opposite numbers in the GENSIS deployments.


And then …

Nothing.

No wreath of fire reached out, no massed salvo of missiles ripped forth to destroy the aumani. The ZMSF simply waited. Its gunnery be it on ships or platforms hot and aimed, its missile tubes ready and its crews quietly wondering why the hell they had joined up.



EARTH

The ships juddered as they awoke, the forms of command carriers now wreathed in drive fields as battle fleet quitely postioned itself for crash lunar slingshot to the belt.

The 680 strong deployment of four additional task forces already burning towards mars was now rushing to position, the long blue streaks of there distorted forms becoming less and less visible as there drive fields distorted the photons out of the visible spectrum. These ships had been sent a goodly number of minutes before and now as they rushed out to join there brethern what could be called anoyance begain to race through the minds of there SIs.


Anoyance that two of there kind were dead, anoyance that hundreds of those bound to them in that had gone with them, anoyance that this incident had occured. Most of all anoyance that there endless peace and quite had been disturbed.



Private Point to Point Text Only Com, Concordat Encryption
To:Archduke D. Charleston Black
From:Star Marshall O’Vandie (SI) CenComCon Mars

At this time we are still waiting to see the Aumani response to our message, if they openly continue wider hostilities following this incident the geopolitical bonus to our vector given our restraint in this matter would be simply too much to ignore and every moment we hold back is a moment our forces have to prepare.

In that hope we firmly believe that a wait and see attitude should be carried out but with full mobilisation ready to recieve and terminate the possible Vascillan offensive.

The problems over Mars had not gone unnoticed by the Cocentricans. They were primarily involved with finishing the colonization of their territory, part of the former TPT that had been sold to various nations. Still, they were members of the Concordat, and allied ties had to be upheld. Stationary and mobile ground lasers pointed skyward- but nowhere in particular as of yet- as Cocentrican Air Force ships slowly moved into a defensive position vis-a-vis Cocentrica Mars. A message was sent to allied forces (primarily the ZMI), asking for directions for assistance.

Two Hours Ago, Duat, Tephet-Sheta, The Imperial Palce

One of the various and sundry advantages of being a C'tan is a lack of any need for sleep - it's not outright impossible, but it’s not something they have need of, and on the occasions when it has happened, it has happened for millions, or at least thousands, of years at a stretch.

So, of the twenty-four (of course, on Duat it was a little different, but we’ll presume he’s on Earth) hours in every day, Ranisath spent between seven and twelve hours with his wife, some five of those working. It shouldn’t be mistaken for laziness, of course, other of the advantages of his species included the ability to be in two places at once, and the ability to experience time at a much greater, or reduced rate according to whim. Typically, in one hour, the subjective time that would pass for him would be around ten thousand hours or more. So, most of his time that was spent ‘socialising’ was done purely for his own enjoyment. Indeed, thanks to the ability to sustain multiple avatars, Ranisath was typically talking to at least one person at any one time, and never alone.

These persons ranged from acquaintances, friends, though there were few of those, and lovers. At this particular moment, he was with one of the latter group, Jill’nais, the Yvressi ambassador. Indeed, she had been, cynically, chosen for her assignment with that in mind. Her previous ‘careers’ had included something akin to prostitution (though, without change of money, of course), a courtesan-like role that was significantly different in its commitments to individuals, something not dissimilar to ballet style dancing (though rather more elaborate and unforgiving), and the howling banshee warrior aspect. There were a few in between there, of course. Of course, at present she was warlock, which was just as important, in its way, as her previous experience: She had to be able to stand being in the presence of a C’tan, though this was easier now that he styled himself Ranisath, rather than Mephet’ran; though she knew him as Tiarnadebeatha.

Of course, the events unfolding at Mars gave her several questions which she wanted answers for, which she asked standing in a position akin to one of ‘at ease’ in most militaries.
“Why” was one, “When” and “has someone become insane?” were others.

More pertinent were “And if they should be worshippers of the Ruinous Powers is Mars truly the best place to conduct such experiments?” and “Where exactly do you plan on putting them, and what happens if they should try and spread their 'faith' to others on mars using your lease as a missionary outpost.”

None of these were quickly answered, but rather, Ranisath took his time in answering them.

“The idea is mostly to experiment, and have a sample of the chaos worshippers of this universe there to study. Human children have them, tanks containing little ants, for curiosity or practise in study. The Chronosians are about as threatening to us, and far more curious. They have the trappings of chaos worshippers, but also, in their transmissions, demonstrate curious similarities to pre-heresy human crusaders. Perhaps they are being deliberately deceptive, or perhaps they are going to prove vastly more amusing than that,” he paused to walk behind her, picking up as he did so a holoprojector, displaying a map of the area of radioactive slag known as New Bajon, with an area next to the Tannelorn controlled former Triumvirate Protectorate highlighted in green.

“From our perspective, yes, Mars is ideal. It is heavily armed, and thus if they start aggression against others, they will be surrounded by hostile nations. As well as this, the vast majorities of our populations are not there, and in your case, no longer there, and can be evacuated quickly. And yes, I expect they will, like a cancer, try and spread out. On my side of the border, they will be corralled by a number of null-field generators,” the eldar woman shuddered a little, living on Duat was not ideally comfortable for her, for that very reason, “to prevent the spread of groundwater corruption, and chaos personnel trespassing in New Bajon, well, Asirnoth doesn’t have a ready supply of Osage trespassers any more, and he does like his snacks.”

The Eldar made a soft noise of understanding, surprisingly, that sinister plan made her feel more at ease. “Ah well that’s well enough then, I suppose, as long as it's for Asirnoth to have a guilt free snack supply our concerns are waived-” she said without sarcasm.

“Well,” Ranisath said, cutting her off mid sentence, and effectively preventing her speaking again, “That’s not the only reason. As I said, it’s partly curiosity. Of course, if they spread northwards, then Tannelorn gets itself a treat. It wants them here? It can enjoy the pleasure of their company. I’m sure they’ll learn all about vacta’tirina,” the necrontyr term for the followers of chaos; warp-worshippers. Technically Nais was one of these, but a recent addition to the language was a less pejorative term to describe her, “firsthand.”

The warlock erupted into muffled, chest-heaving laughter, a sound accompanied by the soft tinkle of chains on her garb – which typically ranged from the jewelled mithril and living metal necklace that held her spirit stone in an ornate clasp (this, a gift from Mephet’ran) to assorted chatelaines on which assorted keys for different doors usually hung.

He wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her cheek gently, “Now, onto something more immediately fun,” he declared.

---

Back in the Present, Martian Orbit

A small craft dropped from the underside of one of the larger necrontyr ships, transmitting a diplomatic recognition code, and began edging its way over to the Chronosian flotilla with a glacial slowness apparently intended to convey its non-hostility.

As tensions ratchet up an other notch, ground-based weapons begin to emerge from the tunnel-riddled ground of the Irondeeps, Nova Cannon presenting blunt noses from PDC after PDC.
The domes pushing their way up from the red Martian soil reveal rank upon rank of weapon systems, the monstrous bore of the Nova Cannon no more menacing than the disconcertingly numerous, but smaller, Lance, Broadside and Vulcan turrets, while at a careful distance the ominous shapes of Plasma Annihilator Cannon emerge from their unmanned PDCs.
Eventually, guns cease to emerge from the ground and nothing moves on the surface, but for the ever-swirling dust of the Martian surface.
Sensors very carefully do not begin active scanning, but here and there the stillness is broken by a barrel twitching like a retriever told to "Stay!".

In orbit the mobile units of the Paragons' small fleet rumble into position to protect those that aren't, Void shields flaring into life as the ponderous vessels move into a defensive formation, rather than their usual parking orbit.

Back on the surface, Guardsman Chou is hustled within the High Gothic Castle-Monastery that is the Irondeeps Keep, lead through tunnels by a plainly curious Probationer, who's oddly glittering eyes probably make him an ex-Roanian, though one can never tell given the debasement of the local genetics.
Eventually, the Probationer ushers her into a room with furniture scaled appropriately for humans, then scuttles away, or at least as close to a scuttle as a hulking superhuman can get, to find Falco, who presents himself smartly, offering a handshake and a question.
"Guardsman Chou. I'm Falco Valetudo, how can the Adeptus Astartes help?"

The eyes of the Chronosian expedition were trained upon the lone, slow-moving, craft that inched its way towards the one hundred ships consigned to the defence and command of the Warmaster. He himself had risen to the bridge, regarding the craft with a mixture of apprehension and intrigue. He had expected precious few to answer his summons, yet here came a ship. "I want a docking bay prepared, lined with Astartes. I'll have no trouble here, nor will I have the glory of my vessel dulled by inaction" He grinned wickedly. "And make sure the bastards remember to keep the safety on, Bolters holstered, blades sheathed. We want to impress them, not give away the game too early."

He whirled, cloaks flapping about him as he tweaked a relay conduit into full operation, smiling as he let his voice rumble forth, to fill the craft that was headed for them with the rapture of his magnificent voice, the booming, awe-inspiring echo of the Imperium's Warmaster.

Foreign vessel, identify yourself before the Eye of Chronosia, the honored Warmaster of the Imperium. We have sent out summons, and we would know the names of those who come before us. We have set aside a docking bay for the use of your vessel, and once there, you shall be greeted into my presence and taken to know more of our kin and kind.

We trust that you shall bring guards of some description, but they shall not bear active, unsheathed weapons while in my presence. I trust you can understand my concerns, and appreciate that I allow them upon my vessel at all.

We look forward to meeting you, as I am sure you are eager to be welcomed into our esteemed presence.

***Bridge of the Eternal***

Word had been given that some form of a deal had been reached, however as of yet the ZMI spacy had not powered down. The Space lord pondered his next order for a split second. "If this agreement is true, and not a trick the need for hostilities is over, order all ships to power down after
the ZMI do." he smiled softly. "Notify the ZMI spacy of this current situation and inform them to please power down in confirmation of these events and we shall do likewise."

The Space Lord waited patiently, after these events and the attacks on vascilia north by the Revan fleet, the Tannelornian fleet would no more lower their guard before they were assured of the removal of the threat of fighting on their sensors, then they would open fire on the ZMI spacy when they removed that threat.

The tannelornians would promptly power down the moment they detected the ZMI ships were not armed, of course they would not blame them for keeping their defensive systems up, after all the Tannelornians would not stop powering their own defensive systems even with a resolution at hand.

ooc I mean defensive systems, pin point barrier shields, battle screens and what not. :p

ooc:
Concerning my "targetting" of civilians i would like now to point out that i did not in fact target anything by name but the ZMI military targets.

The confusion comes from a characters JOKE. Not only this but from an alliteration. I asked Nathi to edit, i got this.

This is the alliteration in question

Needless to say at this range missing was not really a high percentage factor, nor were the chances of anything with a ZMI flag and a weapon surviving the volley.


Now i wrote this alliteration based on the fact that most sane people in a place like sol, would likely NOT arm their civilian vessels.Had I known that ZMI's luxury liners double as war ships i would not have made that alliteration, but would have added the line ZMI Spacy. I only specifically targetting mil assets. Everyone who mistakenly assumed i targetted civilians should edit as this is not cool. These were the specifically targetted units.

Needless to say if the ZMI fleet over mars attempted anything..foolish, it would cease to exist in a rather blinding and brutal flash of light.

fter the rather terse messages and obvious threats from the ZMI ortillery and fleet assets in the system, Space Lord Tsaratov had ordered every available tannelornian ship to acquire targetting data on the ZMI flotillas in orbit.


The fortress rocks picked targets, primarily the many ortillery satellites and battle stations that the ZMI forces had over mars

The moment they fired upon Chronosian forces, if that was there intent they would be hit hard not only by every large gun the fleet had available, but by every strike armed and available strike craft in the fleet.


Please edit accordingly. Tannelorn as a nation has never and will never target civilians. During the Revan thread we actually forced to stop firing and close with the massive fleet that outnumbered them over almost hitting a civvie liner.

The Eternal carried almost 100 squadrons of top of the line mk III morgenraetes, it also happened to carry a few squadrons of MK I morgenraete's modified to serve as S&R craft. At this point in time they were about to become one of the most crucial units in the battle. They were about to attempt to tow the beleagured civilian transport to safety if they had time.

"Order the S&R squadrons to assist the transport and get them out of there, all squadrons be sure about where you shoot under no circumstance fire if there is even a remote chance of hitting the transport, a clear shot is not worth an innocents life." he stated flatly.

Now please edit. Thank you.

“So they’ve started targeting everything with a wee ZMI flag and weapon then?”
“Yes.”
“So that means they’re targeting us as well?”
“Probably.”
“And they’ve got hot weapons pointed?”
“Yes.”
“How soon until centralized re-enforcements arrive?”
“An hour or so.”

Roe sighed and raised his eyebrow at Calhoun across from him, who shifted slightly and smoothed out a few creases in his redcoat uniform, a pith helmet sitting on his knee and a PDA in one hand.

“Well, we’ve got over one hundred ships here already what with the new Aerospace expansions, I believe out fleet total is, what? 600 ships now?”
“670.”
“Right,” he raised a glass to his lips and sipped the water within it, placing it on the desk as the ice cubes rang around and sang, “so we have enough to respond to, should it all go south.”

“There were also some silly rumours about the Aumani asking the Zeppers to sell them Martian Midlonia.”
“Yes, I found that amusing myself.”

Roe nodded, and Calhoun put his PDA back into his pocket and yawned.

“I hate these lockdowns.” muttered Roe as he shook his head. “So damn inconvenient.”

Below in the centre of the hives, weapons were also being stamped out as part of the new production facilities opened there, no longer just Biological, Martian Midlonia was being stamped into shape as a weapons manufacture plant as well as its previous situation as a Scientific research facility.

“Essentially.” barked out the instructor as he held an apparently wood-finished bolt action rifle. This is a new breakthrough here in this godforsaken dustbowl. Behind me is over 5 feet of layered armour.”

He quickly turned and shot it, snapped the bolt back and forth, hurling a white fuse from the rifle and shot it again.

He then walked around the other side and clicked on a lamp, light shone through at the awed MMDF crowd, who clapped.

“Slower ROF, better penetration, it’ll melt just about anything.”

Lights flickered on throughout the hangar as pilots made their way to the fighters. On the podium above the room a priest raised his hand and made the solemn benedictions for the assumption of hostilities. Once the prayers finished, the pilots climbed into their Wyvern Tactical Fighters and the Gryphon Heavy Assault Fighters.

D. Charleston sighed and rose to his feet, clenching his fist over his heart. His wings trailed behind him now, and his eyes were on a low burn. "Soldiers! The Divine Imperium sends you now to reinforce the fleet in orbit." His hand went forward, lifting to a thirty degree angle, and then he saluted in the more traditional style. "It is our hope that there will be no war! But if there is to be a war, then I, and through me that August Personage His Divine Illuminated Imperial Majesty, expect that you will live, and if need be that you will die, like true Roanians." He raised his hand again, and then lowered it with a swift, curt gesture. The fighters began to rise into the air and then took off threw the hangar doors.

His wings retracted with a feathery flourish, and he leaned forward, looking out through the bay-doors. "I hope the Zepplins know what they're doing." He said, his glow flickering.

Lilian stroked his upper back and lightly kissed his cheek again. "Since when have humans known what they were doing, Charleston?" She asked, resting her head on his shoulder. "The message should reach Cassander in three dawns, and for meat-eaters the ZMI are not overly appalling."

He nodded, and gently teased the skin at the nape of her neck. "All right. I suppose the best thing to do would be order breakfast, then..."


The Divine Imperial Fleet welcomed the incoming fighters in standard formation, their thick black armour gleaming in the light of the sun, moons and planet. They had rather more grasp of the situation than their theoretic political masters, and had already started to activate pre-battle stations, though it's unlikely that foreigners would recognise any such activities in the press of Martian orbital life.

Stellar Auxilia Commander Julius ran through the odds in his mind again. "We might have a problem." He said, pacing back and forth on his dias.

His Lieutenant ran a finger over the controlsphere in front of him. "I will contact Archduke Damien and inform him that the MDI might be required post-haste, informing him of the current situation."

A small vehicle consisting of two large vertical ‘wings’ cruised towards the Chronosian fleet. “I’m so excited…” a particularly whiney voice said from the pilot’s seat, where an excessively repulsive excuse for a human sat, dressed only in leather straps and a thong. This wretch was the one who had spoken the above words with a distinctly Allanean accent.

Lord Senator Edmund Blackadder frowned. “Why?” he said, drawing the word out as if torturing it on a rack.

“New people!” Diplomatic Adie (Third Rate) S. Baldrick said.

“There is only one potential reason for us to want to arrive. And that is to get out of this cockpit. Do you never wash?”

“Never my lord!” Baldrick said, banking the craft slightly to the left.

“It’s so bad, I’m almost tempted to pull this explosive bolt lever, because, disgusting and depressing as a violent death in which my lungs get pushed out of my mouth by the force of my own internal pressure would be, it seems tempting, when compared with your stench.”

“Thank you very much my lord!”

“Wonderful. Look, there they are. The space-age version of what would have happened if the most depraved of the Barbary Pirates had discovered Saxon renditions of Vikings, and said, ‘we could try some of this, too,’ then decided that Aztec religion was a worthy idea, if combined with Russian feudalism and an east-Asian penal system”

“Oh surely they can’t be that bad!” said a whining voice from behind them.

“They’re the descendants of a society that routinely lobotomises shell shock victims in order to make them fight again. They are in fact the depraved spin-off. They’re rather worse than that. Their idea of just treatment for ambassadors is to maybe hang them by their own entrails. If they come with a good tribute, that is.

“And how does our inspired leader Ranisath plan to keep these psychopaths in check? I’ll tell you George, he plans to send us to give them land. Fantastic.”

“If you think they’re so bad, why are we going?” asked George.

“Because I’ve been told to. And last time I decided to not do as I was told, some bastard assigned Baldrick as my Aide. And then there’s you. And they might make me keep Melchett there too if I’m unlucky.”

The Baron in question had occasionally run into Blackadder before, and was the subject of immense resentment, because of his ‘birthright’ as a ‘pariah’ which Senator Blackadder habitually described as ‘an excuse for him to laze about and pretend he does something useful for a living.’

“I say,” George frowned, “That’s mighty cruel.”

“Yes, the sooner I can get shot of you the better,” Blackadder snapped and stared fixedly through the window. The lead chronosian ship loomed large in the window as they headed for the docking bays.

“Wonderful. Now, we disembark, and have all our teeth pulled out to be ground down, mixed in with latex, and cast into sex toys with which we will be indecently assaulted later… Everyone have their suicide glands ready?”

“I don’t,” mewled Baldrick.

“You don’t matter enough,” Blackadder replied.

“We’re getting a message My Lord,” Baldrick said.

Blackadder looked at the text on the screen ahead of him and sighed.

“Record. Our names are, in receding order of importance, Edmund Blackadder, Lord Senator and Minister Plenipotentiary, Baron Sir Anthony Cecil Melchett, Chargé d'affaires Extraordinary and Knight of Velyshaa, George Colthurst, Chargé d'affaires, and S. Baldrick, A pointless peasant. We look forwards to making your acquaintance. Send.”

(ooc give me a chance to post guys before going to far ahead ill post around 7 or 8 pm my time tonight)

The docking bay was lit by the dull thrum of electric lighting, casting a sickly yellowed glow over the proceedings. Each marine who lined the chamber (And there were many) was cast in the red and gold armour of Cabot’s chosen Honour Guard elite. Each stood to full attention, weapons sheathed. They did not move, instead standing stationary as statuary, silent automatons, as though flesh and blood had faded into ceramite and plasteel. As though some monstrous forge had mass-produced them, churned them out from the debased fires of abhorrent industry.

The Warmaster stood at the door to the room, watching as the craft touched down. He had received the return message and so knew the names of those who would attend, those who would be in his presence. Those who had come to embrace the new age, to behold him in all his dark splendour. His armour was far more ornate than that of his subordinates. Skulls, laced in gold and bronze adorned his armor. They hung from his belt and were set into his shoulder pads. His helmet, currently being held by a scuttling servitor-thing was like an enormous skull, trimmed in gold, bronze, iron, lined with precious jewels. His cloaks were billowing carpets of red and gold silk, inlaid with the sacred sigils of Khorne. He grinned, tracing a hand over the hissing gem set in the middle of his chestplate. The Eye of Chronosia, a symbol of his position as the Emperor’s hand and his Vigilance. He had sworn his dark oaths of fealty, and was assured that he could not fail in service of the Gods and their true Word.

He thumbed a switch, engaging the vox-casters of his armour, his voice now booming forth to address those who had come before him, to witness a new era dawn, to witness the coming of the Warmaster.

“I am Cabot, Warmaster of the Imperium. You come before me with promises of diplomacy, and I have granted you a place amongst my number. You have come far, and now you shall be offered comfort. You have gone long without sustenance, and now you shall be offer succour. Come forth, let the Eye of Chronosia gaze upon you, let the light of the Gods and the Emperor fall upon you, and you shall be welcomed”

He grinned lightly, disengaging the vox links. “Make sure our guests are made to feel at home. I want no mistakes.” His guards nodded silently, merely content to watch for now. One could not look upon the Warmaster without some sense of radiant awe. He was amongst Remiel’s most trusted and most beloved. He had fought at the side of Lucian, the Plague Lord , he had disputed doctrine and dogma with Gabriel, the Master of the Faith. Radu and Hakar held him as an almost living god, a flaming effigy of Khorne’s unshakeable might. And now he came before these diplomats, to make his mark

“If he got any fuller of himself, he’d be a klein bottle,” Blackadder said, as they listened to the warmaster’s speech in the airlock. “I bet he really got bullied at school.” The airlock wasn’t necessary, the fighter’s air being essentially the same pressure as that outside, but they didn’t want to use their own ship’s air supply. As the pressure dropped, Baldrick’s response was cut off by the lack of medium through which it could travel. This, Blackadder felt, was a mystery. Air was pumped into the ‘lock from outside, and the ambassador sniffed it experimentally. ‘Musky’ he concluded to himself. The whole procedure took several dozen seconds, and pressure was applied to the un-protected inhabitants of the airlock by compressive fields, meaning they felt nothing, except a short period of coldness on their skin. Of course, Baldrick, not being a ‘local’ person, couldn’t hold his breath nearly as long, but it wasn’t, in truth, necessary.

“Now, you,” said Blackadder, pointing his finger at Baldrick, “Keep absolutely quiet.”

“I say, this is exciting!” George exclaimed, and Melchett rolled his eyes impatiently.

“Come Blackadder, let’s go and present ourselves and let the Eye of Chronosia gaze upon us. Think it’ll like what it sees?”

“We’re bringing Baldrick,” Blackadder said, “the Chronosians aren’t debased enough to enjoy that sight.” He pushed another button, and the ramp on the outside of the fighter-shuttle lowered itself on a hinge, interior doors sliding open, armoured ones first, then glassy transparent material.

Blackadder was first to stride down the ramp, black robes of leather, suede and a dozen other rich materials swaying, bare but for his personal heraldry of a crimson serpent curled into a zig-zagging shape, impaled from the head downwards by a longsword.

Melchett and George followed, and a slight feeling of nausea came from looking upon the former, though only psykers would necessarily grasp it in full.

Last, and least, came the repulsive creature called Baldrick.

Monastery

Chou chances that the silent Probationer is some manner of private, nods with due respect (nuances there, nuances) and hops to the floor (quarter ton and change striking without so much as a tap). She follows, matching his pace (more comedic now, short legs twinkling as the huge Probationer glides along). Hull plates move, and the craft is whole again.

She takes in the environment. Smell, sound, light, a myriad other impressions impinging on natural and machine senses.

As Falco enters, she is sitting, meditating. She flows to her feet unhurriedly and quickly; relaxed, inhuman speed, let your fighting stance be your everyday stance, gliding halfstep and bow in response to Falco's greeting, acknowledging him as a superior, returning the handshake, armored hand small in the Marine fist.

"M Valetudo," she replies, looking up, up. A beat as she composes herself ."You can teach me about the things behind these Chronosians, and about the Astartes, about other things the Sphere should know. If it is absolutely necessary for me to change, to change to the point where I can no longer remain a Guardsman, I have the authority to resign from the Guard and rescind Citizenship."

OOC: Shift this plot to Mars boards?

Underground

Carcinoma Three is swelling again as the ribs of a monstrosity take shape, glares and dim shapes under rising translucencies. This is Tigran territory now, anarchic. The Sphere notes this, maintains surveillance, notes that there are more Tigrans in Three than there should be on Mars.

Underneath, the triphammer noises of the diggers are fading into distances that do not fit into Mars.

(ooc: post comeing up to night sorry for the mass wait guys, my net was cut off for a few weeks, im back and ready for any thing now though)

"Friends." The Warmaster smiled almost in some small amusement. "Diplomats from distant worlds, and representatives of the world that now lies below us. I welcome you to the sanctuary of my humble fleet." He let a smirk slide across his features as he strode forth, bowing lightly. "I am Warmaster Cabot, the Emperor's hand and his voice here in the cradle of mankind, in hallowed Sol, before the sight of Mars and Holy Terra itself." He sighed. "It pleases me to be here, to have been entrusted with this grand responsibility, of ensuring peace between our peoples and gaining what is rightfully the Imperiums, a place here."

He paused, adjusting his gleaming gauntlets, allowing himself a moment of pause, before continuing, as though all was merely artfully prepared theatre. Cabot let his eyes drift from face to face, showing no reaction even in the presence of a Pariah. A servant of Khorne put little faith in treacherous sorceries that robbed away the glory from combat. The only Psykers present in the warfleet were Navigators and Astropaths, along with those sorcerors enslaved to his will who brought forth the spawn of the Warp to serve him from the base of Khorne's bloody Throne.

"We have much that we must discuss, much that must be dealt with before any true agreement as to territory can be settled, but you must be hungry after your voyage, and I would offer the hospitality of my halls as best as I can provide it." He let himself chuckle lightly. "Is there anything you wish to add? Anything you would ask of me?"