NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC:
Go here first (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=465919&page=4)

IC:

The Frozopian ship pushed through space, its mission that of exploration. Once again the Frozopian's were looking for a planet that could suit its needs, and after years of desperate searching through various star systems, Conrad finally thought he had found a suitable planet. A planet he would call Trulon. From various scans he had found the planet to provided acceptable living conditions, its atmosphere no that different from Frozopia as was the Gravity's strength. But where Frozopia was brutal and harsh, this planet was rich and plentiful.

Worrying however was that Conrad thought his ship was being followed, as other ships kept appearing on the edge of the Frozopian ships scanner. And whoever they were, they were not Frozopian.

Worse the Exploration craft was not ready for combat, with very few arms due to its relatively small size, Conrad doubted he could drive off a determined attack. At best the Exploration craft would fire off its small armoury of missiles. This craft was designed for detection and manouverability purposes, and was ill equipped for battle.

Turning to his pilot crew, he gave the orders.

"Send a transmission back to Frozopia, give them the co-ordinates of this planet and order them to send a Colonial ship."

"But sir! At this range the transmission we wont be able to encode the data much! Anyone could hear it with a slight amount of work!"

"I dont care damnit! Do as you are ordered. I think people already know we are here anyways."

"Yes sir."

"Also land on this planet. I want to see whats down there."

"You sure sir? The Scans have not completed their search for sentient life, although everything seems clear."

"We have better chance fighting off any aggressors down their. Now land."

"Yes sir."

Once the transmission was sent, the craft entered the atmosphere, pushing down towards the new planet......

"Are you sure we should be listening to this, Sir? After all, the Frozopians are supposed to be our allies."

"That's exactly why we're listening. As allies, they don't have anything to hide for us, now do they? Anyhow, we already listened to is, and deciding if it was the right thing to do won't change that. Now contact the High Command, they must be informed about this at once."

Within the hour, the High Command had forwarded this case to their leader, and it was decided that with the size of the planet, the Frozopians would be likely not to mind them placing a colony of their own on the other side of the planet. Two ships would be prepared immediatly, and be sent out the next day. Even if the Frozopians did mind this colonization attempt, something could possibly be worked out. In the worst case the Exodians would have no choice but to litteraly smash their colony on top of the Frozopian one, and in the best case they would simply ignore eachother.

The space armade wouldn't be used yet, as there was no need for hostilities at this point. It would be held prepared, just in case something went wrong here. The same went for ground and atmosphere based armies.

The Hulk named Dumeklees sped through space at it's relativly slow speeds, they had no mission persay simply to find junk which could be incorperated into the Heap.

"Kap'in, we's got a tranzmishun from a humie vessull not far frum 'ere."
((Captain, incoming transmission from a human vessel close by))

"Putz it on, I wanna see whut they's up to."
((play it I want to see what it is they are up to))

In Toopish mythology Humans had been portrayed a distrustful and dishonorable working on a system of rank rather than strength.

The message began to play around the vessel, much to the annoyance of the Goblins on-board who practically despised noise if it wern't created by a machine, several of the greenskins had kicked the speakers off the walls and began to bash them in.

"Thatz enuff, set in a korse for tha ship, they make a foine addishun to tha heap."
((that is enough, plot a course, that ship will make a fine addition to the Scrap-heap.))

tag for interest

After a day of preparations, two Exodian colonization ships were sent out towards the Frozopian discovery. Two small colonies were to be set up far away from the Frozopian one, using force to succeed in this if necessary. The final numbers were entered before the FTL-drives would take the ships to the Trulon system. The travel would take almost a week itself, but it would be absolutely worth it.

The first two days of the travel nothing happend, space was just it's boring empty self, and travel was going the same as it always did. On the third day however, things changed a bit...

Unexpected and suddenly, one of the two ships got scamped by a rock that just happend to be there before aybody noticed. Although this didn't cause any structural damage, one of the FTL-drives was knocked out, the remaining two sending the ship in a wide arc away from the normal path. While the first ship was flying about helplessly, and expected to be lost, the other ship continued its path to Trulon, not being able to help the lost ship.

Several days later, it arrived at Trulon, and it was really looking as good as they had been told. The only thing that could have been better was the absence of the Frozopians, but unfortunately those had managed to arrive here before them.

"Where are we setting up the colony?" one of the officers asked the ship's captain.

"As far away from those icy creeps as we can, so somewhere on an entirely different continent if possible. Preferably that one there, it looks like it has some sort of forest on it."

Slowly the giant rock started to make spirals around the planet, coming closer to the planet with each circle. The impact would leave quite a dent in the new planet, but that wasn't really any of their concern. All that mattered was that the Exodian Empire needed a foothold on this planet which could be useful later.

OOC: I'm assuming the Frozopian colony has also arrived by now. :OOC

"Bad news sir. Unknown space crafts entered the atmosphere several hours ago." Conrad's assistant spoke.

"Where?"

"The continent far to the east of here."

"Damnit! Ok I want you to greet them."

"Me? But...but....but I'm only...."

"Shut your mouth! Take 6 fighters for protection, but make sure you broadcast before you arrive there."

"Yes sir!"

The man spun on his heel, marching out of the room. Conrad hoped there could be compromise found with whoever these people were. But If there could not be any compromise found, if they did not accept Frozopia's right to this planet, they would be destroyed. Conrad had sent a transmission for a Frozopian Dreadnaught, and surprisingly the counsil had accepted. They had also stressed the importance of the new found colony, and all strings were being pulled for Frozopia to dominate.

Already several Colonial space crafts had landed, setting up in what looked like the lushest continent of the planet, and many more were on their way......

"Great...they just have to send someone over here to probably start a problem..."

Cogar had been Captain of this ship, and was now the leader of this colony. That meant it was him who had to explain to a bunch of Frozopians what exactly they were planning on doing here.

During the past hours, five of the ten armoured construction vehicles had exited the 'rock' and were busy changing the big crater it had made in the forest when 'landing' back to something flatter. Right now it was still looking like an asteroid that had fallen down, but within a few days, it would be more like the colony it was supposed to be.

Meanwhile, at Calxion V, the situation was being monitored with high interest. If things went wrong, they could always decide to leave that colony, and just take the other system that was accidentially discovered. Two more colony rocks - one to each system - had been sent out and would arrive in several days. Several A-ships were also being readied, and their respective 'pullers' charged.

The Hulk slowed just a few lightyears from the planet, the Captain could see it on his big screen, it was a lush green environment but that had little interest to him, he was looking for FTL civilisations who could be raided for loot, nothing had appeared so far, a scan had revealed a crashed meteor and another vessel on it's way, maybe to help, the planet was however rich in the materials needed to make Orkyzite (OOC: made up name, possibly titanium or another hard metal) the armour used on Ships and Tanks.

"Navigayshun, tayk us too tha Orkyzite depositz!"

Somewhere on one of the moons of Buenos Aires hundreds of men listened in on all the transmissions that were picked up by spy buoys positioned throughout known space.
“Sir,” one of the men called out, “I think you should hear this.”
A man walked over to him and plugged in a spare set of earphones that he carried with him into the computer.
“Hmm…” the man sighed, “this is definitely something we should look into. Go and contact Commodore Armandez, get him to meet me in my office in ten minutes.”

Commodore Armandez arrived in the second man’s office exactly ten minutes later.
“You wish to speak to me, Admiral Leonardez?”
“Yes Commodore, sit down.” replied the Admiral.
“Thank you, sir”
“We have found out, via a spy buoy, the existence of a new planet. I want you and your frigate squadron to go there and check it out. Do you want to go?”
“Yes sir!” came the quick reply.
“I knew I could count on you, now head of A.S.A.P.” the Admiral commanded.
Commodore Armandez stood up, and left.

Three frigates waited at the edge of the Buenos Aires system. The stars shone through the view screen. The three ships were the BAS-SFF-Elisa, the BAS-SFF-Carmen and the BAS-SFF-Paulina; three grey constructions each 250m long. Their FTL drives grumbled to activity, and as the ships lurched forward, Commodore Armandez looked at the point of light directly ahead of them.
“A new world,” he murmured to himself, “But not ours... yet!”

The FTL jump receded and allowed the patrol and expansion fleet a view of the star system, they had expected to find empty skies over the new proposed site for the Spizanis first interstellar colony. What they found was dozens of unknown alien ships.

Klaxons blared on the bridge of the Patrol Cruiser Vigilant, the Commodore in command shouted at the comm for the other ships to come to red alert.

"Defence plan bravo-9, have the gunships take point, bring all railguns to full power, load all torpedo tubes, stand by boarding Torpedoes"

OOC: Dozens of alien ships? There's a seemingly crashed asteroid, Frozopian colonies, a Toopian "Thing", and that's it. I don't see where you're getting the rest of the dozen... :OOC

OOC: Artistic licence, the captains pannicking and exagerating

"Another ship......."
Conrad sighed. More and more ships were beginning to appear upon the scanner, and the Dreadnaught was still light years away from the planet.

Luckily 2 more colonial ships had arrived, but none of them brought any ant-space craft guns. However the Frozopian land force had swelled. 800 men and women were going about their daily duties, of which half were soldiers. There were 30 Land crawlers and and 30 fighters to assist the colony, so that the Frozopians had explored further and further. As of yet there were no other sentient life other than the intruders. Speaking of the intruders.......

The 6 fighters and a transport accelerated through the air, shooting above the water that was obviously an ocean of some sort. In the transport Jame's Gore the leader to the operation sat talking to two military looking men, each with some sort of SMG thrown over their shoulders.

"Exodians." One of the soldiers spoke, a grim look upon his face.

"They are a long way from home. You sure its them?" James frowned. He wished they would call him sir.

"As sure as hell. Only their crafts land in a crater like that." The other soldier spoke, grinning at the man he considered a pen pusher's discomfort.

"We know their language?" James spoke, ignoring the grin.

"The translator computers, do if thats what you are asking."

"You sent out the signal?"

"Yep. It goes something like: We are Frozopians, we advance your colony in peace blah blah blah."

"Good. How long till we arrive?"

"5 minutes."

"Good, good....."

"Don't bother giving me the translation, I assume they're telling us they come in peace and the like. I still don't get it, if they don't want any problems, why do they come over here and start them? It's not like they couldn't have ignored us or anything like that."

"A big asteroid crashing down on a planet tends to attract a lot of attention, Sir..." the translator spoke up from behind Cogar.

"I know that, but if something like that happens, you don't go sending out half the universe its races to it, that appears to be happening up there."

Cogar looked at the growing dots in the sky, wondering how those Frozopians actually looked. Couldn't be too much different from a human, or they wouldn't fit in those aircraft...

"Well they aint firing." Spoke the Co-pilot
"Good. Prepare for landing." Leo released the control stick and then tapped the V-land button. As the transport craft slowed down, it began a vertical landing "Harrier Jet" style to the ground. The 6 fighters would have to remain in the air for now, there was no flat landing space for them to land onto so instead they just circled the forrest.......

"Is there any point of them doing that?" the translator asked Cogar.

"I don't know, it's not like there's anything wrong with our crater, or do they expect us to have mined it already?"

While the two of them were looking at the aircraft flying about, the construction vehicles had finished clearing the piles of earth, splintered tree, and some other unidentifiable mess that had covered part of the rock. Now a round exhaust was visible, as were several large hatches. These led to the small production center of the asteroid, with which simple machines and other things would be made.

The Hulk hovered over the Island which glimmered as the sun hit the viens of Orkyzite, a brief splutter from the vessel and it crashed down onto the surface, to many onlookers this would seem like a crash or major malifunction, but the Toop could not have dreamed of a better landing.

"Get tha Boy'z ready, we'll defend this here patch til more Hulks arrive!"

The Kap'in's voice boomed out across the bridge, Goblins began to prepare weapons and taken them down to the Transport hold.

(OOC: only around 1,000 men, and they aren't experienced, just the creme of the crap.)

The three frigates appeared at the edge of the system, their FTL drives deactivating with a sigh. Turning on their sub-light drives, the ships started to manoeuvre towards the new planet. The scanning systems were activated and soon it became apparent that there was a lot of activity around said planet, and these frigates would soon be part of it. Although soon constituted around twelve hours. The Commodore sighed and sat back in his seat. It would be awhile till they got to the planet but they appeared to have the greatest presence in the area. He pulled out an LCD touch screen from the side of his seat and started going through the data he had on the civilizations here, although he kept looking at the view screen to see how long they had till arrival.

"More contacts on the edge of the system, three signatures, there heading towards the planet!"
"Get onto fleet command, tell them well need a heavy cruiser at the very least out here!"
"Yes Sir"
"Turn us onto an intercept heading, launch a probe"
The light cruiser and its three attendant gunships turned off and in a blase of ion engines accelerated towards the new arrivals, a probe was launched towards them, accelerating to high speed.

OOC: I would probably be funny if you thought it was a torpedo

The FTL drives of the Strike Cruiser Kapella abruptly cut out. The large ship rapidly decelerated back into the usually bland background of space.

‘What happened?’ enquired Captain Lathain, jumping up from his seat on the bridge and walking across to the view screen. Outside a planet loomed in the distance, barely a few thousand kilometers from his ships current position.
‘That did,’ replied the navigational officer from his console as he pointed out past Lathain to the planet, ‘it’s not on any of our charts. It’s gravity cut in the safety features of the engines.’

Lathain did not reply, instead he continued to stare out towards the planet. In the silence the navigational officer continued to make his report. ‘Long-range scanners report several ships in the vicinity. What are your orders?’

Turning from the window Lathain expelled his thoughts. ‘Well it’s not our intended objective but we cannot leave it behind us. Take us in closer.’ As the ships sub-light engines hummed to life, the Captain returned to his chair, leaning back into it as he watched the planet grow ever closer. ‘Lieutenant Adans?’

From behind the ships command chair, Lieutenant Adans, a physically built man, stepped up next to Lathain. ‘Yes, Captain.’

Without even a glance towards the Lieutenant, the Captain issued his orders. ‘Ready your men for landing and call the Kahul Bane back, they cannot continue without our support.’

‘Of course, Sir’, Adans replied before turning to leave, a small smirk across his face. It has been far to long since we last shed blood. Almost a week I think.’

“Sir,” called the scanner operator, “Long range scanners show a large spaceship moving towards us, it appears to have launched something”
Commodore Armandez thought for a moment. “Wait until it gets in range of our medium range scanners and tell me what it is.” He pulled out the screen by the side of his chair and pushed the ship up to yellow alert. He wanted to be on the safe side.
“Comms!” He shouted
“Sir?” came the reply
“Send a message to the Carmen and the Paulina. Tell them to get up to yellow alert.” Then, as an afterthought, “And tell them to hold fire too.”

"It's getting a bit crowded in here, Sir."

Cogar and the translator were interrupted in their watching of the aircraft by the person that had been watching the scanners all the time.

"What do you mean crowded?" Cogar asked him.

"It appears there are now eight spacecraft out there, or rather seven and one incoming. They appear to be of five different factions, so I'm doubting this will end up without a fight."

"Well, you know how this is, as long as they're not shooting us we don't care about what's happening, and otherwise were in trouble. If they think we're in trouble, they'll send us some support. Atleast I hope so..."

The Hulk Gritsnak which had been observing a sattelite with possible colonisation habitat had recieved an encrypted message from the Hulk on the planet nearby, rather quickly it recalled it's scanning pods and made the jump into FTL.

**** **** ****

Shortly after it arrived at Toophium, emptied it's hold and picked up some heavy duty mining equipment and some proper fighting forces if they were needed on the planet, another quick recall and the vessel was off to find it's sister ship.

The Dreadnaught Night Hawk finally arrived, as it slowly decellerated over the planet.

"Ships everywhere....." Spoke the Captain Daniel, sitting uncomfortably in the ships main deck. He was worried. He had 25,000 men and women onboard, and the might of the Frozopian empire relied upon these people being transported to Trulon, or whatever that idiot Conrad had called the planet. If a conflict situation was triggered, the passengers would be very much at risk. It would be better if they began transportation as soon as possible.

"How long till we can send down the first wave of transports?" He asked the crew in general.

"35 minutes sir. They were completely ready half an hour ago but one of the transports prooved to be faulty, so we had to carry out tests on all of them."

"Ok." Looking at the alien ships, Daniel shuddered.

"Prepare all weapons. One hostile manouver made by those space crafts, blow them out of space! You hear?"

"Yes sir."

“Oh… dear… god!” exclaimed Armandez as he watched the huge ship appear.
“Comms, tell Captain Marcez to take the Paulina back home and deliver this message:

‘Arrived in system – much activity – powerful vessels have been deployed – we require backup – please send more ships.’

And pray to god we don’t get blown up before help arrives.”
The commodore tried to relax back into his chair but couldn’t. He spent a minute or so shuffling around in his chair before realising he would not feel comfortable not doing anything. He stood up and walked to the door:
“I’ll be motivating the troops, if anyone wants me.” He proclaimed moodily as he left. The door of the bridge closed with a slight whirr behind him.

"Probe is good and is accelerating... Will attain objective in fifteen seconds."
"Con, sensors report multiple inbound contacts, damn theres something huge thats just appeared"
"Damn it, call fleet command tell them i need reinforcements NOW!"
"Sir"
"Stand to battlestations, evacuate all critical compartments and flood with Nitrogen"
"Con, Command reports taskforce Gemstone responding ETA 12 minutes"
"Probe will attain objective in ten seconds, still accelerating."

The sub-light engines of the Kapella pulsed as the ship drove towards the atmosphere of the new planet at maximum speed. Lathain watched from his chair as the increasing size of the planet slowly pushed more and more of the blackness of space from his view screen. Directly ahead, standing in the middle of the ships flight path lay an unknown vessel, though it was undoubtedly much, much smaller than his own six hundred and forty meter cruiser.

A quick flash of reflecting light off to the left however quickly caught Lathain’s eye. Where he looked now held a ship that was even larger than his. A slight feeling of concern filled him, but he hid it beneath his usual emotionless expression. ‘What is that Lieutenant Eraus?’

The navigational officer looked flustered. ‘I have…,’ he paused, finishing the sentence could prove unwise but what choice did he have – it would be far worse to ignore the Captain’s question, ‘I have no idea, Sir.’

Lathain turned to face Eraus, amused at the fear he contained at being unable to identify the new ship. He couldn’t help but laugh as he glanced back to the view screen. ‘Make sure you keep us clear of it then.’ While some ship commanders would have killed or at least punished an officer for such incompetence, Lathain knew better, there was no one else who could have given a better answer, and replacements were difficult to get outside the Empire’s space.

A moment later the appearance of another ship a few hundred meters off to the right broke his thoughts. It took him only a second to recognize the vessel. ‘Well I’m sure you can tell me what that is Lieutenant,’ he jested, taking full enjoyment out of the discomfort of his subordinate.

With nervousness spilling into his voice Eraus replied, ‘Yes Sir, it’s the Kahul Bane. Captain Nalath is hailing us.’

‘Give him the co-ordinate of our first target,’ Lathain responded with an evil grin spread over his face, ‘he may engage at will.’

While it would take some time before the Kahul Bane was within range, the target ship now lay only a few hundred meters away from the Kapella. Lathain sat forward in his chair, ‘Bring all weapons online.’ He waited several seconds as lights came to life all over the bridge consoles and the humming of the reactor grew noticeably louder. ‘Target any frequency emitters (communications) and weaponry. Fire.’

From across the length of the Kapella, turrets rotated into line with the target ship and multiple blue darts of energy streaked out from the forward weapons emplacements towards the unknown vessel.

It's targeting your ship Spizania (divide and conquer, you were on your own but the others will follow - not that they know that - although it should be reasonably easy for them to work it out.)

The commodores personal communicator beeped at him urgently. He sighed as he picked it up.
“Commodore Armandez here.” He stated.
“Commodore, we require your presence on the bridge – URGENTLY!”
Armandez closed the communicator and started running down the grey corridors of the ship, in the direction of the bridge.

The doors to the bridge slid open and the out-of-breath commodore stepped in. He quickly walked over to his seat and sat down into it.
“All right, what happened?” inquired the commodore.
“Look for yourself.” Replied the lieutenant who was on duty.
The commodore looked at the viewscreen, and saw what was happening to the cruiser that had been moving in on their position. The bolts of energy flashed blue between another ship and the cruiser. It was an awesome and frightening spectacle. The commodore held his breath as he watched the fight, finally he released it.
“Move up to red alert, all men to combat stations. I want communications opened with both ships.”
Sirens wailed and men ran to their station. A message was sent to each ship, asking them to open communications.

"Now they have started fighting eachother Sir. Are you sure our other colonisation rock is safe? It should be arriving about now..."

(OOC: Imagine the first colony being almost straight under the group of ships, and this one coming in on almost the other side.(As planets still turn, right?):OOC)

High above the planet, and still far away from the other ships, the second rock appeared. It ignored the fighting parties that were practically on the other side of the planet from their point of view, and slowly moved towards the planet. It would crash down in another continent, this time one which looked to be a place filled with minerals in rocks. The rock would take a steeper angle down, meaning a rougher landing, but also meaning it would only have to pass the other ships twice instead of many times.

***Meanwhile***

General Gazarg was looking in awe at the construction of the Battleship that was decided to become his. Because of his success in getting something useful from the Toopians in return for almost nothing, he had been promoted, and was now one of the three Generals allowed to own a Battleship. He watched the Gougers work on the rock with a lot of interest, as with all the things happening on Trulon, it wouldn't be too long for it was needed for real. Half of it was complete by now, but the other half - the back one with the engines etc. - was yet to be finished.

Gazarg sighed. "Why do those other races always have to fight about every single piece of rock, it's not like it's worth risking two or more perfectly habitable places for just one..."

***Still Meanwhile***

By now Cogar and the translator were getting fed up with watching the Frozopians circle around, and returned to their normal work. The translator continued doing nothing, while Cogar asked for a report on how the colonising was getting on.

All external hatches, exhausts, and various other openings of the rock had been uncovered by now, so it was now fully operational. The construction vehicles were currently digging up rocks, cutting trees, and dumping the material they gained into one of the hatches. From there it would be seperated into its different components, and used for the creation of new machina.

‘Captain, we are being hailed,’ called out Lieutenant Thanan, the Kapella’s communications operator, ‘it’s coming from that trio of ships.’

Lathain did not look impressed, nor even interested. ‘And they want what?’ he demanded.

‘For us to open communications with them,’ Thanan explained, shifting in her seat to face the Captain, ‘shall I respond?’

Lathain sighed. ‘Well this does pose a dilemma – to respond or have the Kahul Bane wipe them out.’ He gave it a moments thought before making his decision. ‘No, I will hear them out, it could prove to be entertaining.’

He leant back into his chair and pushed a button on the console built into the right arm of his seat, opening a channel to the ship that originally sent the message. A small screen in front of the Captain would transmit his image and vocals as he spoke. ‘State your business.’

"That's it. Begin transportation. Immediatly!" Daniel yelled, watching the conflict unfold.

"But sir! It puts them at risk!

"If they lay one finger upon one of our ships, fire back on the aggressor with every gun we have!"

"Yes sir!"

Minutes later dozens of transports and surface fighters were "Dropped" from the dreadnaught, using their boosters and the gravity to pull themselves towards the surface. More transports followed them, and more. Frozopia was dropping an whole army on the planet, and the transports were coming in waves.......

Meanwhile on the surface
The Transport had landed in a small clearing, and as the men disembarked they scanned the surroundings about them.

"10 Airbikes should do it (OOC: Those things from the third star wars, I dont know their names.). We double up on each bike and head towards the crater. Meet these weirdo's." Spoke one of the commandos.

"Yes sir." Spoke a private

And they progressed towards the crater........

"Sir, those Frozopians have finally landed, and are now coming towards us, fast."

"How fast?"

"Very fast, Sir. They'll be here in a few minutes."

While he was imagining what the Frozopians were using to get here that fast on ground-level (OOC:Speed isn't in the Exodian dictionary.) Cogar prepared a small group of soldiers to meet them. He didn't expect those Frozopians to be hostile, but if they were, they would get themselves some problems.

Meanwhile the other colonisation rock was passing underneath the combatting ships above the planet, completely ignoring them while 'slowly' descending down to the planet.

*Tremors shake the ship*
"Energy weapon impacts amidships!, armour is holding"
"Who fired it"
"From the impact area and the beam scatter id say it was that ship off the port bow"
"All main railguns track on that target and fire as you bear, helm bring us to a new heading towards them to minimise our target profile"
"Sir"
"More weapon impacts, microhull breach on deck 3, between frames M and N, frame and deck bulkheads are holding, no reported casualties or missing, main comms damaged, going to auxilleries"
"We are on a direct heading for the firing enemy ship"
"All forward torpedo tubes FIRE and reload."
"Gunships requesting instructions"
"Pull them back into our shadow, they need to get closer before they can pull a slashing maneuvre"
"Torpedoes away"
48 Mk.24 Torpedoes lanced out towards the enemy ship accelerating to over three kilometres a second and then going almost totally dark accept for occasional nudges from their thrusters.
"Task Force Gemstone ETA is now three minutes"

OOC: My Mk24 torps are about ten metres long, first two metres in a Depleted Uranium/Tungsten superalloy, next two metres is guidance, then 2m of warhead in the middle, then the last 4m is the NERVA/ION engines.

The Gritsnak pulled out of it's FTL and slowly drove itself toward the planet, it was barely within visible sight of the battle raging on and had little interest in getting involved, maybe it could use the battle as an excuse to practice targetting later on.

The Hulk made it to the peninsula where the first Hulk had touched down, bringing the vessel around the Hulk slowly crashed onto the surface, almost instantly Goblins began to move the heavy mining equipment towards the viens of Orkyzite.

When the second ship was almost down to earth, one of the bridge crew noticed that they weren't the first to be landing at this site. What had looked like a crashing ship, appeared to be a Toopian attempt to copy their landing style. This could mean problems with them, although it was doubtful the Toopians were a danger to anyone but themselves.

"Are you sure we can land here?" the crewmember asked "This place seems to be occupied already."

"None of our business, if they mind us, that's their loss. And besides, it's too late to get back up by now."

Less than half a hour later, another crater had 'appeared' in the planet surface, and again an Exodian colony ship lay inside it. The constructors moved out straight away, gathering the minerals that had been thrown about by the crash. At the horizon, the Toopian 'colony' was visible.

Because the Exodians still didn't trust these Toopians, the colonists trained as soldiers prepared their armour, knowing that there was a good chance of them having to use it soon...

The lined up troops hidden behind a ridge saw the asteroid crash into the planet, they were surprised that they had not been all killed, in other cases an asteroid had destroyed Toopish colonies, but this one seemed different.

"Tha's tha Exojunz, they's traded Botnikz Armz fur some Orkyzite a while bakk."

One of the troops from the Gritsnak told the other Toopish fighters, they looked over towards the crashed meteor, they might come to fight them for the Orkyzite but telling a Boss about this could enrage them about being told the obvious, instead several troops went back to the ships to get some bigger armour.

Boss Scabtoof noticed the increasing amount of troops arming themselves and got worried, they might have noticed somthing out in the distance which could fight.

"Mobolize tha Tankz!"

"It looks like they're doing something over there, Sir"

"Define 'something'..."

"Well, it looks as if they're sticking metal plates to themselves, and are trying to stuff junk into those weird guns they showed us before. I think they're preparing for a battle or something like that. We'd better tell the boss..."

Several minutes later, Rade was told that the Toopians were preparing for a fight. Rade didn't look very suprised, and told that he had expected such a reaction. To show the Toopians no real harm was meant, a 'diplomat' and his escort would take one of the constructors and go to the Toopian ship. There he would make clear to them that the asteroid hadn't been an attempt to attack them, and wouldn't be one either.

At last the airbikes entered the clearing. Their presence was not unnoticed. Approaching the nearest Exodian, James nervously spoke into his computerised mouthpiece:

"We come in peace. Take me to your leader."

Kilt looked at this stranger who apparantly wanted to see Cogar. He figured this had to be one of those Frozopians that were supposed to get over here, and decided it would be best to take it back to Cogar.

"Alright then, follow me." he said, then turned around and started walking back towards the asteroid.

James and his soldier followed....

Kilt entered the asteroid through one of the many hatches leading to a hangar for the constructors, not even checking if the Frozopians were actually following him. The next time he looked around was when entering an elevator at the end of the hangar, waiting for the Frozopians to enter.

After a short ride upwards, he led them through a hallway where artificial greenhouses could be seen to both sides. After three other hallways, these without anything but doors to the sides, they finally reached the command center where Cogar had already been informed of their arrival.

In there, Cogar was waiting in the middle, with a group of armoured guards standing at the walls of the circular room.

"I assume you are those sent by the Frozopians?" Cogar asked...

"Yes. I am James of the Frozopian's, I am here to discuss the current situation."

"Frozopia needs this planet, and will not stop to take it. We found it first, we have sole right to its resources."

"But you have landed here. So we have thought this threw. We do not want war."

"So maybe we can split the planet between us? Have you seen the skies? Random alien ships everywhere."

"Let us combine forces. And smite them! And when they are gone, when they have learnt the power of the Exodians and the Frozopians, then we shall split this planet for all its wealth between us...."

"Boss, there is someone komin' from tha Asteroid!"

Scabtoof turned to look at the worn out small Goblin, quickly he left his cabin walked down to the front line, the troops were almost excited to see the Boss who stayed relativlely far from the line, he took some binoculars from a nearby goblin and looked at the group of men walking towards the ridge.

"prepare to fire, if they do anythin' suspishus shoot 'em!"

Cogar smiled slightly when he heared the Frozopian speak. The proposal was almost identical to his own, the only difference being that the Frozopian one seemed to ignore the Toopians being here too.

"That all sounds very reasonable, but I have been informed that the Toopians are also on this planet. They are a relatively harmless species, so I assume something can be arranged for them aswell?"

"I do fully agree with your opinion on the aliens above though. It won't be long before they turn on us too, and we can't have that happen..."

***Meanwhile***

Rezz had been the unlucky officer appointed to do the "negotiating" with these Toopians. While his escort was safely inside a lot of armour, he wasn't wearing one, as to not intimidate the Toopians. The construction vehicle and its driver had been left outside the assumed range of the Toops, and now the men were slowly walking towards the ship, trying to look as unsuspicious as they possibly could.

"The Toopians are a simple kind. They may proove themselves of some use, but otherwise they have no right to this planet and we will not share with them. Perhaps if we give them rights over whatever metal they use, maybe then they will assist us. But that is all I shall share with them."
James relaxed a little. Things were going well.

"To be honest, if you just give those Toopians some of the trash lying about at the scrapheaps on your home planet, I bet they'll do everything you say." Cogar said with a small grin.

"But now to more important things." he said while walking to a big circular screen at one of the walls.

"As you can see this planet has four continents and our rocks are located here and here." he said while pointing at a crude map that had appeared on the screen.

"The Toopians are also on the same continent as our second colony, and yours are on the third, meaning the fourth is still empty. I propose you keep yours and the also take the last one, while we stay on this one, and divide the second one between ourselves and the Toopians. What do you think?"

(I hope you don't mind I just made that up, otherwise let me know and I'll edit it.)

James nodded. Conrad had said the same thing, without the Toopians but he wouldn't mind.

"Now these crafts up there." James looked upwards. "What do we do about them?"

"Yes, those are a small problem, aren't they? I suggest we arrange a fleet close to here but not yet within range of scanning. If they kill eachother without the need for us to do anything, we won't have to risk any ships, and otherwise we can just pick off the remains afterwards. This is all assuming they won't actively attack us down here, in which case we would be forced to actually take part in the conflict immediatly."

"I don't really know your tactics concerning fighting in space, but I assume our tacticians could work something out that's beneficial for everyone."

‘Incoming ordinance, Sir,’ reported Eraus in alarm, ‘multiple torpedoes.’ By now the bridge crew joined him in his concern as the weapons were rapidly approaching and the Kapella continued head on towards them. ‘Six seconds to impact.’

Around the ship, klaxons blared to life warning of impending impacts, but Captain Lathain sat, undaunted in his chair. Projectile weapons, how crude he though to himself even as he issued his commands. ‘Ready all secondary and emergency drive, angle for maximum down thrust.’

As torpedoes continued to home in towards the ship, Lathain watched there approach through the view screen, his forward guns still spewing forth there blue energy darts in ignorance of the formidable threat that was coming. ‘Prepare to fire AO missiles, proximity settings.’

The Kapella careened on towards the enemy vessel. Eraus could do nothing but watch on in anticipation. It was his first combat as an officer in a capital ship, and he disliked the lack of control he had over the situation – he was used to fighting as a soldier, where his life or death were dictated by how well he could do his job. ‘Three seconds to impact.’

At that mark, every star drive on the Kapella fired up into the darkness of space, sending a jolt through the vessel and plunging it in a steep downward acceleration, all the while keeping it close to level so as not to expose the rear of the ship to the torpedoes. As it maneuvered, a volley of AO rockets shot out of the top launchers towards the torpedoes, taking only a second to reach them given the speed that both weapons were traveling. As soon as the torpedoes entered the proximity radius of the missiles they detonated – a wall of explosions and shrapnel shielding the Kapella against the attack – shredding a large percentage of the reasonably close together volley of enemy weapons instantly. The detonations would also serve to cause disruptions in the torpedoes tracking abilities.

The torpedoes that managed to survive the firewall were now almost at their target or at least, somewhere above the rapidly descending craft. Given their altitude above the Kapella and the high speed they were traveling, the torpedoes found it almost impossible to make sharp enough corrections to their flight path. Only two were somewhat able to accomplish their goal.

The first torpedo slammed into the mid-aft section of the vessel. The vector at which it had to travel to hit meant that the charge of the weapon was not focused directly into the vessel but at an angle. Against the blast, the Tiranaide armour of the strike cruiser greatly able to withstand projectile weapons and explosions, compensated massively for the hit. A chunk of armour was blown out but very minimal damage was caused to the interior. The second one was barely able to catch the ship in its decent, exploding over the craft hull and not actually impacting - the resulting fireball leaving a black scoring over the hull but not causing any worthwhile damage.

Lathain gripped the sides of his chair as the vibrations from the impacts drifted throughout his craft. After a few seconds they subsided and he finally managed to release his grip, a small laugh of relief escaping him, although it had an edge to it that boasted arrogance. ‘Take us underneath them,’ he demanded. Today we crush yet another group of pathetic life forms.

The Kapella leveled off far below the altitude of enemy vessel, still traveling at maximum velocity as it closed in on the underside of the opposing craft. From where it sat now, Lathain could bring over half the ships weaponry to bear against his target, and he did not hesitate to do so. ‘Bring all guns to bear. Maximum firepower.’ Every gun turret along the port, starboard and bow sides of the Kapella, as well as the ones position across the top hull of the vessel, opened up on the enemy, streams of blue energy bolts lancing out towards the target.

"Two Impacts, minimal dammage to enemy vessel, we have some weakening in one area of the hull but thats it"
"Damn, load another 48 Torpedoes in the forward launchers"
"Enemy closing in on our underside"
"Arm all underside weapons launchers"
"Weapons armed"
"FIRE"
12 More torpedoes lanced out from the launchers on the ships ventral surface.
"Gunships, commence slash, repeat commence slash"
The three gunships rolled out of the shadow of the cruiser and accelerated to speeds that any capital ship would find hard to match. They slashed over the upper surface of the enemy ship, spraying railgun fire from their ventral battery. The fire, rendered slightly inaccurate by the speed of the ships involved was aimed at the ships main energy weapons.

"Hull breach, deck six, between frames A and B, number one turret is out of action"
"Continue firing, whats TF Gemstones ETA?"
"Three Minutes"
"Roll us to present our minimal target profile to the enemy ship and continue firing on his main weapons. All torpedo tubes, fire as soon as you have a shot and keep firing"

The Kahul Bane closed rapidly with the enemy craft and as it did so Captain Nalath watched the battle intently. He knew Captain Lathain was a brilliant tactician and ruthless warrior, but better yet, he was an experienced one and his maneuvering in the ongoing battle more than proved that. He may even be better than me, but unlikely.

As he watched the battle, he was surprised that the enemy had not run yet. His only guess could be that these people had no knowledge of the Yallakian’s existence in the universe, because those few who did know (and hadn’t been conquered yet) would run at the first hint of even the possibility that one of their ships would show up.

As Nalath wondered in his own thoughts, he still absorbed every detail of his surroundings and more so the engagement going on before them. ‘How long to weapons range?’ he inquired.

‘Thirty two seconds, Captain,’ came the reply from somewhere behind him from the bridge’s command area, where his officer sat at their station monitoring and controlling Nalath’s giant strike cruiser. A single one of these vessels could, and had done so on many occasions, break through a planets defences without support and land the first of soldiers to the ground. After that a full invasion force would follow. Such tactics meant that if the planet was too heavily defended, then only a single ship could be lost in an ambush and not an entire fleet. It served the Infinite Empire well and would do so as they seized each system one by one.

Lathain stood from his chair as the enemy ship began to start disappear from the edge of his view screen as the Kapella got closer to the target vessel. As he began to cross the bridge towards the window a cry from Eraus stopped him before he could make it.

‘Yes, Lieutenant?’ asked Lathain. No doubt it is of little consequence

‘They have just fired another twelve torpedoes,’ the Lieutenant exclaimed.

As I though. ‘These people may be more primitive than I though, they are trying the same tactic again, just with less firepower. Cut all port engines, then launch the second bank of AO’s.’ Time to end this quickly.

Lathain quickly sat back down in his seat and moments latter the Kapella make a sharp bank to the left, drawing the torpedoes up as they followed after the part of his ship they were tracking. As they did so, the mid-dorsal surface of the Kapella sent off another flight of AO missiles. The rockets screamed out and took the incoming torpedoes head to head, though this time the AO’s outnumbered the torpedoes and annihilated the threat.

Before he had time to make a sarcastic remark regarding the inabilities of his opponents, Eraus called for him again. ‘Three more hostile vessels detected, Captain. They are very small but fast. Yes, definitely gun-ships and I think they are trying to take our turrets out.’

Lathain was not happy; he enjoyed the moments where he could berate the inferior. ‘Forget them, there is nothing their simple projectile weapons can do to us.’ he ordered as the Kapella rocketed underneath the hostile vessel, the front half of his craft now in the intended position.

Outside the enemy gun-ships slashed across the hull of the strike cruiser but their fire, which was weak enough on its own against his armour was made more so by the inaccuracy of their swooping style attacks at great speed. Blue energy bolts from the cruiser swept past, ignoring the little ships and pummeling the enemy’s large ship. ‘All forward guns to target their drives, keep the rest targeting that new hull breach.’ They will need weapons of our class if they intent to stand their ground any longer. I will demonstrate true firepower.

Slowly the Kapella turned back to starboard, its current position now allowing every side and top gun a shot at the target. The forward guns began pouring fire into the enemy’s sub-light engines in order to immobilize them, while every other gun fire at the hull breach they had recently been blown open in the enemy ship. They were determined to rip into the interior of the enemy vessel and failure was not in their vocabulary.

Now only a few hundred meters off to the top right of the battle the Kahul Bane reach firing distance. Captain Nalath studied the diagnostic readout of the enemy ship before him with one of his Lieutenant’s.

‘The communication to those three small ships came from here, Captain,’ declared the officer, pointing to a section of the enemies ship.

Nalath smiled. ‘Then that would be their bridge, Lieutenant, or at least some point of command. Target all forward weaponry at that point.’

The Kahul Bane now joined in on the assault. Its forward guns directed at the enemy’s bridge while any other weaponry with a clear shot fired in at the target wherever they could.

At the arrival of the second strike cruiser, Lathain knew that the imminent victory that was his was beyond any shred of doubt now. He activated his communication system and began transmitting to the enemy vessel.

This is Captain Lathain of the Yallakian Strike Cruiser Kapella.

You have put up a resistance better then some in the past, but you must know by now that to persist will mean your death, along with the live of every other inhabitant of your vessel.

The Infinite Empire lays claim to this world and a fleet will soon arrive to claim it. If you choose to join us then we welcome you and will spare your ship.

And with that Lathain cut his transmission and while he waited set about informing the awaiting Yallakian fleet about his current position so that they could make all haste into the area to secure the planet.

The Captain listened to the message from the enemy vessel in disbelief, "Il like to see their faces in about" he looked at his display "twenty seconds!"
"Hull breach on deck eight, between frames G and H, number one engine off line, were venting plasma!"
"All nonesential crew stand to your escape pods! Ensign are the breaching pods inline with the enemy ship?"
"4 of the port launchers are sir"
"Let em have it"
"There hitting the port bridge armour sir!"
"Everybody out to the secondary bridge!"
The captain and bridge crew ran to the aft elevator and descended to the backup bridge further inside the ship.

The four breaching launchers each emptied 8 tether torpedoes at the enemy ship, who was now almost so close that it would give the enemy no time to react. The torpedoes were much smaller and faster than the larger capital ship torpedoes that were proving so ineffective. They had no warhead, only a huge penetrator and grappling system, which allowed them to peirce the enemy hull and allow the Carbon Nanotube composite cables attached to their ends to pull the ships closer together.

"Multiple FTL signatures, twenty-four vessels, Its Gemstone sir! Three Halcyon class Heavy Cruisers, eight Stryker class Frigates, twelve Gunships and another patrol cruiser"

The Halycon class cruisers opened up on the enemy vessels with their massive railgun mounts, although the cruisers railguns were no match for the enemy ships one-on-one these weapons were orders of magnitude more poweful. The ships of the fleet launched over one hundred and fifty torpedoes at the enemy ships as they raced to engage.

OOC: This is about one fifth of my space-worthy navy.

OOC: Sorry about the OOC posts but just two things: How do your ships arrive in perfect position to all begin firing torpedoe type weapons on mine which a very far apart. And secondly my first cruiser has not moved in closer than a distance of a few hundred meters beneath your ship.

Woktak stole one last glance out of the rear porthole before returning to the bridge. Fifty years, fifty and he was the lucky one to captain this mission. The mission being the first "mass" space mission undertaken by his race. His goal was simple, find another inhabitable planet.

The small planet of Lamehk, now slowly getting smaller as the sub-light engines hummed away, had always provided in bounty for his people the Lamehkens until the time of the great understanding where, it is said, his race took their first painful and slow steps on to dry land. From that point forward advances such as electricity, fire, metal and industry were soon found and utilised. Purpose built wetsuits allowed his people to explore further than the beaches and into the few small forests that dotted the volcanic island of his aquatic home world.

Now approaching the bridge Woktak pondered their chances of survival let alone finding another planet. Exploration of the dry had only brought new challenges and new enemies to his ancestors. It was said that they had fought fierce battles with large haired creatures that although looked very similar to themselves possessed greater strength on land though it seemed lacked the intellect to harness it correctly. The only remaining population of hairies now existed as slaves to the lamehkens and provided a manual workforce on dry land. Now with the population of Lamehkens reaching critical number risks had to be taken.

Entering the bridge his officers stood until Woktak took his seat.

"Status report." Woktak spoke his command firmly yet causally not addressing any one particular member of the twelve officers present.

"Rhincodon (whaleshark) systems fully operational sir, it should be smooth sailing from here." Came the reply.

"Good, send a transmission back home tell them that we will be sending good news back soon."

"Done sir, any other requests?"

"Yes have the Sphyrna's (Hammerheads) follow close by. We do not want to be separated."

"Yes sir."

Woktak relaxed back into he chair and settled in for what he knew would be a long journey. With limited FTL capabilities it would be at lest 5 weeks to get to the nearest star system.

OOC : I hope no one mines me joining I was only recently told about this thread and wanted to post asap. Any problems I will be glad to change.

James nodded. It made sense.

"We have a dreadnaught above the planet, but I think we can pull it out of the scanners range despite its size once it has finished transportation. We are calling up another dreadnaught and a few gunships to aid here, but I will give them their new orders."

The Boss walked out past the front line to meet with the diplomat, he took with him three of his finest warriors in-case things got a little hectic.

"Wha' are yoo Boyz doin' in Toopish Territory!"

He shouted out to the diplomat who was safely tucked away inside a construction vehicle.

"Excellent, one of our Battleships has been sent out already, and will arrive here with it's escort soon enough. Our fleet can be hidden almost anywhere because of the likeness with mere asteroids, and I believe the Battleship would even be big enough to hide your ships behind - naturally excluding the Dreadnoughts."

Cogar smiled. This success with the Frozopians was likely to get him a higher rank, meaning he wouldn't be stuck on this planet for the rest of his life. All that was needed now, was the removal of those annoying other ships above the planet. He didn't like them the slightest bit, and the fact they were already fighting eachother there didn't make it much better.

***Meanwhile***

"We are from the Exodians, we mean no harm." Rezz told the four Goblins standing in front of him. He didn't know if they actually knew what he was saying, but he assumed they did. It was a lot easier that way...

"To put it really simple," he continued, "we propose that you take everything on this side of our Asteroid all the way to the water far behind the horizon that way, and we keep the smaller part on the other side of it. The rest of the planet is already Frozopian or ours, and this is the only place you're going to get that err.... whatever you were looking for here."

It wasn't his best diplomatic attempt ever, but he had to put it as simple as possible because he was told Toopians weren't too smart.

The Boss thought this plan over, he already had the largest deposit of the Orkyzite, figuring that the Exodians did not realise it's value in Toopish culture, he looked over at the rest of his Boyz and then back at the Exodians.

"Deal! But if's tha Exojans or Frozopeens come neer us then yurll be makin' an enemies of the entir' Toopish race!"

"Don't worry, we'll probably just put a big fence or wall between the parts when we have the time."

Rezz was suprised this had gone so simple. He had expected more problems here, but the lack of them wasn't really a bad thing. Now there was only one thing he had almost forgotten...

"There's one more thing though." he told the Toopian. "We and the Frozopians are planning on doing something about all those ships up there who will become a problem to us soon enough. Can we count you in on this?"

"Ownli 'f we's get 60% of tha scrap an' all tha wurkin' FTL drives."

"Although I don't really see what you will able to do with what will be left, that's fine with us. I'm sure nobody will mind you cleaning up the space around here."

Rezz knew the only thing that could be of interest in the enemy ships were the weapons, and those would not be very likely to survive the battle anyhow. Letting the Toopians clean up the mess the battle would make sounded like a relatively simple way of solving the problem of falling debris.

***Meanwhile***

Gazarg and his Battleship 'Evincer' were flying at maximum speed to get to Trulon as soon as possible. Around the ship were four carriers, each dragging along two small A-ships as cover and support. The planned destination would be on the far side of the planet, were they would remain outside scanner range untill it was neccesary to intervene in the conflict. While travelling, Gazarg and his officers were discussing the enemies and the required tactics.

"Lets start with the Spizanics or however they should be called. Are they any threat?"

"No Sir, all they seem to be capable of is launching piles of torpedoes at long range. Point-Defence systems on the Carriers and the Evincer should be more than capable of handling that."

"We will deal with those last in that case, the Yallians seem more dangerous however."

"Indeed Sir, it looks like they are also on the winning side at the moment. Their ships are the best targets for our main weapons around here. If that doesn't give the wanted result, we will simply have to ram them out of this plain..."

Gazarg smiled, this was his kind of fight. Challenging, but victory assured by force of numbers and other factors. Trulon would be conquered swiftly, ensuring the safety of Cogar and the others down there.

OOC: Yallak i understand what you mean, these are self guiding long range torpedoes, and in space they can go on nearly for ever, they might take a long time to get there but they will. And about my torpedoes acceleration, they have EM launch assist to accelerate them to extreemly high speed. And the grapples are small, unguided and lit only by thier exhause plume. They move quickly, they have a short specific impulse and accelerate quickly in a straight line. And the ship is holed in one of the reactor assemblies so is starting to drift and spin, unless i cut the engine, which is difficult to do, theyl also be a cloud of every element up to Argon forming around there.

As the Rhincodon passed the last planet in the Lamehken solar system Woktak hailed the captains of the near by Sphyrna's.

"Captains on my mark well will proceed with the first of our five FTL jumps. Wetalk and Wartok position your ships on the flanks, Captain Watek manoeuvre your craft directly below us. We have only two hours of FTL travel time but at that speed even the slightest miscalculation can lead to serious problems."

"Understood sir." The simultaneous reply from all three captains' evidence of their years of training.

Woktak sat back down in his chair and watched the movements of the other three ships on a small screen in front of him.

Once each ship was in position Woktak gave the order to engage FTL engines and the fleet surged forward into an unknown future.

"Sir. We are approaching the outter rim of the system." Kalwak, paged the commander using the ships intercom system. "We are awaiting your orders."

Woktak had just finished having a swim in his private pool and was donning his command wetsuit when the message from his second in command.

Woktak harried to the bridge and found it much the same way it was when he left it. Once again his officers stood on his arrival.

Without waiting to reach his chair Woktak set about issuing orders.

"Raze the halgerda sensor array. I want to know what planets are out there and what if any other craft are flying about."

Before Woktak had even reached his seat his order had been carried out and the immense sensor array lurched through a opening on the top of the Rhincodon and began a sweep of the star system.

Woktak took his seat and pulled up the sensor's scan results on his personal screen.

What he saw did not please him in the slightest.

There clearly was an inhabitable planet within this system perfict for a new colony however it appeared that Woktak was not alone in his opinion.

As he studied his screen he could identify at last 30 different spacecraft of varying sizes. On top of this it appeared that three of the four landmasses had colonies already established upon them.

As he considered his options Woktak beamed the readout to the Sphyrna captains.

"Watek take your Sphyrna back to Lamehk and notify the council of our position." Woktak hoped that his discovery would not result in the disbanding of the mission. "As for you other two we are going to land in the ocean only we are going to make it look like a crash land and thus hopefully not draw attention to our presence on the planets surface. Captain's Wetalk and Wartok prepare for one last FTL jump we will disengage thrusters just above the planet surface and use the water to slow us down. The deep pressure hull will allow the ships to maintain integrity as we hit the water's surface. Once beneath the surface we will head to the geographic hot zone near the planet's equator."

It wasn't long before Cogar's colony noticed that another ship had appeared around the planet, and soon Gazarg and his officers knew about it too. This required a short meeting to decide what to do with them.

"What a suprise, another alien ship has arrived. Now we have over thirty of them over there. There's thirteen of us here, nine meant for real combat and four for support. I hope those Frozopians have something battleworthy too, as we might not be the majority anymore."

"Should we send out a call for reinforcements to Calxion, Sir?" one of his officers asked Gazarg.

"Tell them to prepare a second fleet, but also tell them to have it positioned further away than us, so they can act as a suprise attack."

"Isn't that what we're doing already, Sir?"

"Ofcourse it is, but they won't expect us to do it twice in a row. Now just do as I said."

It was done immediatly, and after the request was approved, another group of carriers began charging. This time a small group of specialised 'Piercers' would be with them to quickly get rid of the bigger ships around Trulon. While the second fleet prepared, Gazarg would position his fleet and await how the situation would continue...

The Rhincodon and the two remaining Sphyrna's exited FTL speed too close to the planet's surface, the perfect location. With the gravity of the planet now taking effect there was no possible way any of the three ships would be able to land on the planets surface. Woktak however had other plans. Just as had trained for time and time again on Lamehk, Woktak had set the ships guidance systems to position them above the longest straight stretch of water.

This also had an added bonus as it was believed that the largest bodies of water were also the sights of volcanically active subduction zones important as a source of power and heat for the future colony.

As the waters surface came racing towards the Woktak paged one of the Sphyrna Captains.

"Captain Wartok. Have your ship pull up slightly, we want to make this a good show. Once you are behind us and have entered the water fire off all of your rear port and rear starboard torpedoes and have them intercept each other at you point of entry. We need this to fool everyone watching if we are going to have any chance of remaining undetected …at lest for as long as possible."

The Rhincodon hit the water's surface at a tremendous speed however it did not immediately break up. Instead it maintained integrity and continued through the water exerting not force of its own. The two Sphyrna had also completed the manoeuvre without fatal consequences.

Behind them Woktak located the twenty-four torpedoes on his sonar screen just before impact.

"Damage report." Although Woktak knew there was no point asking he believed in protocol.

"You are not going to like this sir." One of his officers replied in a regretting tone.

Woktak was shocked. There should be no damage. Every ship in the Lamehken fleet is streamline and designed for water entry and exit at speed.

"Well go on. We need to know what went wrong in order to fix it. It is better we found out now instead of when we are in battle."

"One of the Sphyrna had their forward facing port and starboard guns in attack position. The starboard gun it still in position and will require maintenance, the port side gun however was completely ripped off during impact."

Damn it. Woktak thought. That would explain it any object protruding from the main ship body would create extra drag and as in this case would get damaged. He was surprised that Wetalk would have been so careless.

"There is more sir"

More.This sudden statement surprised Woktak even more and quickly snapped him out of his train of thought.

"We still had our halgerda sensor array in active position. I am afraid to report that it has been totally lost along with all long range communications, sensors and scanning systems."

This subdued Woktak entirely. Slumping in his chair for a brief moment Woktak quickly regained his composure and gave his orders.

"Seal off effected areas and continue to our target location. Once there begin repairs immediately. Also once a suitable geothermal location has been found establish the power and mining pods. Once a flow of power can be maintained we will set about establishing the colony."

Secretly Woktak was glad that the damage had occurred. Lack of communication with the council may prompt them into a sufficient response to his findings and the presence of weaponry and sensory equipment might add to his deception of the other aliens present.

'More incoming, Captain,' yelled Eraus, 'two seconds to impact.'

Lathain, sitting in his chair ignored the comment, though he counted the remaining time down to himself. Two, one, now

The Kapella shuddered faintly under the impact of the tether torpedoes as they rammed into the starboard armour, burrowing into the hull adjoining Laithain's ship to the vastly damaged and unclean enemy ship.

'Target all weapons against their hull breaches, Lieutenant,' demanded Lathain as he sought to invent a strategy to detach the cumbersome metal deposit now connected to him. Though his concentration was interrupted moments later.

'FTL signals detected, Captain,' said Eraus, his previous distress now abated by the proven skill of his new Captain, 'and they are engaging us, Sir. I'm counting twenty-four vessels. Incoming torpedoes.'

Lathain relaxed back into his chair as the first railgun shots impacted into the port armour. 'I think it's time to leave, Lieutenant Eraus,' said Lathain calmly despite the more noticeable shaking off his craft, 'it would not be good for us…'

'But what about that attached ship, Captain?' the Lieutenant reminded, cutting Lathain off in mid sentence.

'We will just have to take them with us won't we,' the Captain replied smugly, 'they may have ignored our offer to save their lives but they will be joining us anyway.' He stood from his chair and walked over to Eraus' workstation. 'Override all safety protocols and engage FTL drives,' he ordered.

'As ordered, Sir,' Eraus replied even as he carried about completely the order, 'but will the hull integrity hold, Captain?'

''Of course. There are thirty-two separate attachment points on our hull, the force will be distributed quite well. The other vessel may or may not be so fortunate given their limited contact points. Now, send our target to Captain Nalath and then activate communications jamming - we don't want our guest to be abusing our hospitality.'

Even as the new wave of torpedoes sped in, moments from their target, the Kapella surged forward, its FTL drives at maximum output. The Kahul Bane, quite some distance away followed seconds later after receiving the route co-ordinates from Captain Lathain.

"Let me guess, our landing style is suddenly very 'in' and those aliens have tried to copy it too?" Rezz remarked when he saw three alien craft disappearing into the sea. With their own style of landing, and that of the Toopians, Rezz wouldn't be very suprised if this was supposed to happen the way it did.

"This looked like it was a real accident, Sir. an officer replied, Perhaps we should help them? I'm sure they'll be grateful for that..."

"If something floats up, go and 'rescue' it, we're not going down into those waters untill I know what kind of things live in it."

***Meanwhile***

Above the planet, Gazarg was constantly being briefed by the other colony on how the battle was proceeding. He just thought he was finished for a while, when report came in over the 'disappearing' of three of the alien crafts.

"How do you mean they are 'just gone'?! They can't just vanish in thin air, can they?"

"It appears the Yallakians have fled the battle with FTL speeds, dragging one of the Spizanic vessels with them."

"Oh, did they? If they stay away, and as far away as possible, I don't think we will care about it then. Continue your work now..."

"He jumping to FTL captain!"
"Jettison boarding lines!"
Across the hull the four connected boarding pods started dumping their lines, which were paying out at alarming speed in an attempt to prevent the pods being ripped off. Three of the pods ejected all thier lines before the cable ran out, the last pod had jettisoned all but one of its lines when it snapped taut and swung the ship around and dragged it after the enemy ship. Five seconds later the launcher gave way, ripped off the frame of the ship by the huge force exerted on it. The compartment decompressed, fortunately the crew in that area were wearing space suits, preparing as they were for a possible boarding action, still one was sucked out into space and had to be picked up by one of the gunships.

The ships spun around as the remaining engines fought to regain control amongst a cloud of rapidly diffusing light elements from the engine breach, when they finally won out, the ship was over a hundred kilometres from where it had been a few seconds before.

The ship limped towards the newly arrived taskforce and docked with the lead heavy cruiser as the squadron moved into a geostationary orbit over one of the colonies detected on the surface.

A standard greeting message was broadcast as the ensign in charge of Damage Control took his preliminary report to the Captain of the Vigilant

"There sir. Our short range heat sensors indicate that this area would provide suitable geothermal power for our plant to harness." Kalwak happily reported.

After confirming Kalwak's analysis on his own personal screen Woktak gave his orders.

"Set down here and power down all unessential systems. Deploy the power plant pod, once it is running attach it to the ships batteries. Begin repairs on the Sphyrna's weaponry, the halgerda can wait until we can better defend ourselves."

"At once sir," Kalwak replied as he quickly notified the required work groups of their tasks.

***Elsewhere***

Watek landed his Sphyrna into the water and immediately left to attend his meeting with the council. His request to meet with them was an urgent one so all previously arranged council matters had been put on hold.

Watek knocked on the chamber door and was summoned in.

"Welcome back Watek, you have news from captain Woktak?" One of the elders addressed Watek formally.

"Yes your Elderships. Woktak was successful in finding a suitable planet to establish a new colony on."

"That is good news you bring to us," Another of the Five Elders began, "But your request to meet with us seemed more urgent than just needing to deliver this message"

Not sure how the council would react to the news he was about to deliver Watek began again, less confident then before.

"The planet we found had already attracted thirty other ships from different races and four colonies were detected on its surface."

"This is most distressing Watek," The third council member spook up, "we had hope on finding an uninhabitable planet for our future colonies. What is the current situation with Captain Woktak?"

Upon mention of Woktak's situation Watek stiffened slightly before answering.

"Woktak attempted to stage a crash landing into the planet's ocean." Watek paused briefly. He could feel the councils eyes focused more intently on him now. "No communications have been heard from him or the other Sphyrna captains since."

After hearing of Woktak's fate the council dismissed Watek so they could convene and deliberate an appropriate cause of action.

A short while later Watek was summoned once more to the council chambers.

"Captain Watek you shall be in charge of this next mission. Have two of the remaining Rhincodon's and their Sphyrna escorts prepared for a search and rescue mission. Prepare loads of full military and defensive pods as well as scanning equipment. You are to communicate with the three colonies already on the planet and notify them on your intended rescue. You are only to continue with the mission if you receive permission from two of the three colonies present. You are not to engage enemy vessels unless firstly fired upon or unless there is significant evidence to support the theory that one or more of the alien life formes had anything to do with Woktak's disappearance."

Watek bowed and exited the council. The rescue party would launch on the hour.

“It appears the Yallakians have fled the battle with FTL speeds, dragging one of the Spizanic vessels with them."

OOC: Just a note: You shouldn’t really have any idea who the Yallakians are, as they completely conquer any world they come across and few, if any, survive to tell tales.

IC: ‘They have detached from us, Captain,’ declared Eraus after noting the increase in the Kapella’s speed.

‘Never mind, we will have them shortly, then they will wish they accepted my most generous offer,’ Lathain promised, turning away from Eraus, ‘Lieutenant Thanan, signal the fleet, give them intended co-ordinates and instruct them to meet us there.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ answered Thanan, getting straight onto the communications.

******

The two Strike Cruisers floated in orbit above the world that until recently had been known as Cetar. Debris from several ships lay scattered around the system, the remains of pathetically inferior warships that in less than ten minutes had been overrun.

Below the space born graveyard that would forever denote the fate of this world, lay a surface covered in flame. Those who hadn’t surrendered had been left to burn - an entire populous all but all but wiped out.

Lathain stood at the bridge view screen, staring out at the magnificent view.

‘How long until the fleet arrives, Lieutenant Thanan,’ inquired the Captain, eager to return to the unknown world and finish what he had started.

‘No, time at all Captain,’ replied the officer after a quick check of the comm. logs, ‘they are due n…’

Before he could finish the sentence, multiple FTL signals sent beeping alerts from the ships sensors. Traveling across from the corner of the view screen, massive ships decelerated into orbit just in front of the Kapella.

‘Now,’ finished Thanan, ‘right on time.’

‘Well, it is to be expected, Lieutenant,’ said Lathain, off handedly, ‘now let us head back.’

"Power plant established sir. We are currently running at eighty-five precent efficiency" Kalwak reported as he turned from his monitor to address Captain Woktak.

"Eighty-five percent." The surprise in Woktak's voice was noticeable. Back on Lamehk with the current usage of geothermal power it was rare that a plant would ever reach eighty percent but here it seemed that the previously untapped resource was far more productive.

"Good," Woktak continued "start establishing mining, farming and habitation pods. I want this colony up and running by the end of the day. Also deploy all defensive pods from the Rhincodon and place them in tactical locations."

"At once sir" Kalwak replied.

Woktak looked out the bridge window at the vast ocean before him. As he did he could see the various pods detaching from the Rhincodon and reattaching themselves to the near by cliff.

At this point Woktak turned again and faced his second in command.

"Kalwak. I want to know what is out there. How long until the long range scanners will be back online?"

"Another hour yet sir the Sphyrna weaponry was only just finished and there was no spare array on board so the engineers have had to start assembling the spare parts."

"Hmm not soon enough," Woktak stated bluntly. "In the mean time have the Phyllopteryx pilots go on recognisance. I want the entire ocean floor mapped as well as the locations of those three colonies. Also order them to establish sonar buoys at the edge of our scanning range. I would like a bit more warning if something is coming."

"As you command sir" Kalwak answered and sent the order down to the hanger bay.

Woktak turned once more to the bridge window and watched as the six Phyllopteryx sped through the water in different directions.

***Above the planet***

Watek and the rest of his fleet dropped out of FLT speed above the planet surface and began a stationary orbit.

"Wogtok send a transmission to the colonies and notify them of our intent."

"Yes sir" Wogtok answered and began assembling the transmission

Watek felt uneasy as he viewed his monitor. There was no longer any battles raging meaning that all of the craft present were free to view his fleet as a threat and fire upon them.

"Transmission sent sir" Wogtok stated as he turned from his console.

"Good. Now all we have to do is wait"

To: The Colonies of the unnamed planet
From: Captain Watek of the Lamehken Fleet
Greetings unknown life forms. As I am sure you are all aware by now several of our ships have crashed into the planet's ocean. We require your approval to begin a search and rescue mission and mean you no harm. Send your reply at your leisure although time is of the essence if there are any survivors.

OOC: According to the intro post of this RPG, we all have only two planets, know of eachother, and have more or less peaceful relations untill this planet was found. Because of that I have the feeling we know what Yallakians are when we see them. :OOC

After several minutes, the communications officer walked up to Cogar, having received the message from the Lahmekian ships. It seemed a strange request, and the answer was obivous at the least, but it had to be reported anyhow.

"Sir, remember those alien ships that came down earlier?"

"Yes, what about them?"

"It seems their owners are here to help them out or whatever they want to do, Sir."

"What has that got do do with us? Let them do so if they want."

"That's exactly what this is about, Sir. They are asking permission to do so..."

"Friendly of them, although a bit pointless. Just tell them they can do whatever they want as long as they don't bother us too much."

The order was followed, and shortly after the conversation, a message was returned to the Lahmekians, telling them the same Cogar had said, that they could do whatever they wanted on the planet as long as they didn't become any problems.

"Sir," Wogtok turned from his communications console and addressed Watek, "We have recived word from the Exodians. They have no problem with our mission and have authorised all further activities on the planets surface just as long as we are not directly effecting them."

"This is good news Wogtok," Watek replied less nervous now than before, "One more permit and we will land. The sooner the better I do not know what is going on below the surface and I do not like the look of things up here."

"Kap'n, tha ayl'yunz are wan'in ter search tha wataz, theys wantz are approofal."

The Boss was sitting back in his throne of junk, he simply batted his hand signifying that message was not important and that the Komms officer should do want he wanted.

"Ayl'yunz ship, yooz gots are approofal, jus' don'ts be comin' towardz are depositz!"

"Captain. We have just received word from the Toops. They have also allowed us to land and go about our business as long as we do not disturb their mining colony." Wogtok was ecstatic as he relayed the news to Watek.

"Excellent begin our decent immediately. Prepare for a slow water entry at the crash site if there is anything their we should be able to find it. If not the fleet is to divide into two groups to speed up the search process," Wetak was also clearly happy that the request had gone well and that the colonists seemed very friendly.

The fleet began its controlled decent through the planets atmosphere and submerged below the waves at the believed crash sight.

As the water covered the ships the long-range sonar was activated.

Wogtok watched as the sonar completed it's first sweep of the area.

"Captain Watek," Wogtok began in an unconcerned tone, " We are picking up two incoming objects of the port. Estimated time of contact three minutes."

"Is it Woktak's Rhincodon and one of the Sphyrnas" Watek asked also unconcerned.

"No sir," Wogtok answered formally, "The craft are too small to be capable of space flight. I believe them to be two of our Phyllopteryxs."

"Ah" Wetak said while his concern for Woktak faded, "This is a good sign. The Rhincodin must have survived impact and knowing Woktak he has continued with the mission."

The two Phyllopteryxs signalled Watek's Rhincodon and notified him of the established colony.

"Excellent," Watek addressed the Phyllopteryxs pilots, "We shall follow you to the new colony."

Watek slumped back into his chair and watched as the Phyllopteryxs pilots led the way.

OOC: Come on people. I don't want to do this by myself. Where is your posting spirit??

In the after life me thinks. This RP looks dead.

Mmm. Everyone stopped posting some time ago. Most unfortunate.