NationStates Jolt Archive

Eris was a peaceful world. A cool planet with a mild axial tilt, rich soil and plenty of rain, it had no problems growing food for its two billion people.

It was a pure desire for exploration that turned Erisian eyes to the sky. It started with a satelite. Then an expedition to one of the three moons. Then establishing a research base. As years passed, Eris began developing a more advanced space program.

So it came to be that the people of Eris made thier first subspace jump...

... And in doing so, called down the Destroyers.


Eris is gone now. In a few hours, thousands of years of work have vanished. What was once a thriving, beautiful world is now a barren wasteland.

All that remains is smoldering ruins, wreckage strewn in orbit and on the surface.

... And a single satelite, broadcasting a distress message on loop...

HELP US
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
UNKNOWN INVADERS
STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING
NOT MUCH TIME
PLEASE
WE ARE DYING

Only one image (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/MachinaKyrios/sdlucifer.jpg) exists of the attackers...

One thing is clear. This won't be thier only strike...


-OOC-

If you recieve the distress signal, feel free to show up and sift through the wreckage. Who knows, some of the invaders might pop back to check on thier victims...

1100 hours, February 18th, 2671 (Military Calendar)\
Battle Group 234, on investigation in Unknown Sector designated 312-C

Space parted in a fantastic display of blue light, and eight ships shot out of Slipspace. Battle Group 234, or as they called themselves, Battle Group "Bulldog", had been ordered to investigate a strange signal received from a faint source about four sectors away from the border of the Imperium. In command of this force was Captain Meikah, a tough but lighthearted woman who drove her crew hard but partied with them just as hard. However, her light heart was as heavy as lead as she saw the massive destruction that had been visited here, with the large firestorms the sensors detected on the planet and the great field of debris that orbited the planet.

It was all the tell-tale signs of a slaughter. "Have all ships go to Code Red, but do not deploy fighters. Scan everything, every bit and piece I want filed. The planet as well, I want to know what happened here!" The crew, numbed by the carnage could only nod in reply and go about their work. The Battle Group, one carrier, one cruiser and six destroyers, spread out slightly, and began to go into a heavy scan mode. Almost immediately, the Communications station piped up.

"Ma'am, we've found something!"

"Well, show me, dammit!"

The holoscreen flickered and showed the undistorted version of the distress message:

HELP US
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
UNKNOWN INVADERS
STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING
NOT MUCH TIME
PLEASE
WE ARE DYING

Several of the crew covered their faces and others had tears coming out of their eyes. Meikah watched with a neutral expression, though she felt the same inside. "Scan for any and all survivors and pick them up ASAP."

"Y-Yes ma'am....." Another few minutes passed before another discovery. "Ma'am, we have found an image in the distress signal..I...I think you should see this." Nodding, the Captain walked over and looked at the screen.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/MachinaKyrios/sdlucifer.jpg

Her blood chilled, as if she knew this ship. Yet, she had never seen it before. "Have weapons systems ready, I don't want us to be jumped by whoever did this.

"Right!"

OOC: Hey, is anyone allowed to join this?

Temporal Observatory, Deck 359

The trans dimensional comm room was little more than a tiny platform with a few spartan control panels on all eight sides of the octagonal pad. The room itself was enormous, it was over 100 meters in diameter and was 6 decks high. Suspended in the air were holographic projections of nearly all imaginable systems in the multiverse, and if the were not currently displayed, they could be pulled up. Upon a random broad band sweep, Terrel Williamson came upon a looping distress signal in the Eris system.

HELP US
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
UNKNOWN INVADERS
STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING
NOT MUCH TIME
PLEASE
WE ARE DYING

Immediately, Terrel ran an in depth multi-phasic scan of the system. He noticed that all traces of life in the system had disappeared. He quickly drew up a report and sent it to his superiors.

The War Room, Station 007
Fleet Admiral Sinatra walked briskly to her seat at the far end of the curved hard wood table next to Fleet Admirals Jackson and Defazio. With a professional smile and nod she greeted her peers and sat in her seat, focused on the primary reason for this meeting, the threat of war.

Commodore Jenkins was an old "sea dog". He has seen much in his life, he has overseen 3 chronometric incursions and the Terranite incident. He spoke in a low growl, "Right we are here today because of an unwelcoming discovery. There is an as of yet undiscovered race of hostiles that have destroyed at least one pre-ftl society. We cannot allow this to continue. I called this large of a meeting to alert the fleet to the staging for a possible war. The enemy is as I said, unknown and thus fleet strength, capability and such is unknown. I don't want ius to be caught with our trousers down". He straightened his uniform, and pulled up a holographic chart of the Eris system. "As you can see this is the Erisian home world" zooming the chart on the world. Several areas were highlighted in translucent red, "these are civilian centers, cities and the like". "You will notice that the areas are razed to the ground. Further more you see that their moon base has been totally destroyed and all of their orbital equipment is in ruin and suffering from a decaying orbit".

"Sir what are doing about this" Sinatra inquired.

"Well, you are deploying the UFV Clarkson, UFV Henderson and the UFV Bradley to investigate Eris, maybe we can find some sort of useful information as to who these mysterious attackers are" Jenkins said.

"Very well sir" Sinatra replied in a somewhat robotic tone.

Eris System, UFV Clarkson, Hermes class Light Cruiser

"Ma'am there are other ships in the sector, I am reading Telrosian Republic, they seem to have shields up and weapons primed" Jennifer Gustov said from her large workstation.

"Send a message that we are here on official business of search and rescue. If they are here for that as well, they are more than welcome to stay and aid us, if they are here for a salvage operation, they can take their vulturing elsewhere" said the Captain.

"Message sent ma'am" Jennifer replied.

The bridge crew sat and waited for a reply as the pulled into orbit.

Erisian Home World, Rescue Team Alpha

Starbase Waypoint at the Antares Fleet Yards, Communications Room
A junior grade Luetenant sat at her console monitoring the billions of subspace communiques shooting through the Dominion Sector of space. A harsh klaxon from the console sounds, her eyes widen ever so slighty as the distress call fills the screen.

"This is Luetenant Reynolds to Ops. I'm recieving a distress call from planet...Eris I think it's pronounced. Should we respond?"

"Comm, this is Admiral Jericho, affirmative. Tell them to prepare to recieve a small battle group within the next ten minutes. Jericho out"

The Leutenant quickly sent the response and forwarded the subsequent transmission from Ops to the nearest fleet detachment. two Dominion Strike Cruisers and two Omega Cruisers gathered around a Raven class capital ship as irt powered up its artificial wormhole generators. Within second they were enveloped in a red vortex of light and disappeared.

--------In Ops-------
"Admiral? What do you make of this?" the on duty Tactical Officer asked.

"Hmmm. The vessel looks familiar, but I do not recall any engagements with something of that make. At least not recently. Prepare a carrier to go after them and tell the detachment to stay frosty. We could have a fight on our hands," The Admiral responded with a hint of...could it be? No, the Admiral is incapable of getting nervous.

Seconds later the Dominion Carrier Hellion departed through its own artificial wormhole. When it emerged it found the Dominion vessels as well what appeared to be another battle group in orbit around-

"Dear God, who could have done something like this?" the sensor operator asked in horror.

"Certainly not us, there wouldn't be a planet left if the Saving Grace got at her," Captain Hawkins of the Hellion responded almost too confidently. "At any rate, condition red, all crew to battlestations, all pilots to their gunships. I want this tub locked down tighter than First City on Founding Day"

He was responded to with a round of "Aye sir!" from all stations as the lighting dimmed to red and a klaxon sounded.

-------Aboard the Raven class capital ship Eagle's Talon-------
"Sir, we're detecting another battle group in the area. Shall we hail them?" the conn officer asked.

"Yes Ensign, open a line," Captain Jameson replied flatly. When the channel opened, he cleared his throat and began to speak.
"Attention foreign battle group, this Captain Mark Jameson of the Dominion War Vessel Eagle's Talon. I am commander of Dominion battle group Delta. I assume we're both responding to the same distress call, and we both know why we're here. The only two X factors now are who you are and what we're up against. Any ideas?"

As he spoke, a second task force emerged from faster than light travel. The message sent to the Telrosians was reapeated the to the Metallinaut task force.

Deep Space

Shivans. Thats all there was to it. Shivans.

The transmition, the picture, the ship style, the tactics, all of it screamed Shivans.

Kil'Thu had lived more than two thousand years, and there was quite a lot he no longer remembered, but if there were any race of beings he could never forget, it was the Shivans. almost a millennia ago, back when Aegeus had freshly joined the ESUS, the Shivans had first come, ravaging and killing and leaving nothing but death in their wake. Even the new headman could apreciate this kind of threat. That's why he had dispatched new tactical order to the will almost two hours ago.

"Let us pray that this man can handle a threat such as the shivans. No easy task, even with The Will at his disposal..."

The Eris Sector

A small blue dot appears in space, several million kilometers away from the wreckage of the station, outside the immediate range of the converging forces. The ball expands to several meters in diameter, lightning and electricity coursing over it's surface and radiating into space. Suddenly the ball explodes into a massive blue-green swirling vortex. Suddenly the gravitational fields in the immediate area shift, a simply massive body moving forth from the vortex. almost as soon as it opened, the portal is closed, the blue ball slowly fading into the blackness.

The huge green and black ship powers forward, it's engines burning brightly as stars, moving forward to enshadow the fleets gathered beneath it's massive form. A message buzzes back across space.

"This is Headman Malakouth of The Wandering Empire of Aegeus, comanding The Will of Aegeus. Are you in need of assistance"

*OOC*

Yeah, The Will is my flagship. 21km across. it's also composed of a very high-mass alloy, hence the mass shadow.

This post was WAY better, but Jolt ate it :/

Interstellar observatory complex Soh-jin ....

And older man sat In his office overlooking a massive multi kilometer long and wide chrome like rough metal complex from a single holographic view port in the office center, a slight grin moved over his face as he looked out in to the ominous blackness of space, his Grey uniform glimering gently in the teal light of the ornately decorated lights in his office, he stepped back from it, his black tight combat boots polished as ever, he turned around his uniform filled with decorations and four stars on his collar, two on each side, his face was rough and well toned, his hair a little bit gray with black mixed. As he started to walk back to his desk carrying a small cup of scotch he heard his door ding with an uplifting tone, he looked over after taking a quick sip of the brownish clear liquid and putting the glass down. He said with a sigh and a rough coarse voice. "Come in".. Suddenly a younger Officer rushed in, his uniform blue with less decorations and two single silver bars on his collars. He said with a hasty voice and a salute at attention. "General, I have some urgent news for you.." The General looked over with a smirk and another sigh asking in the same voice.

"what is it sun....” He trailed off with a confident tone of voice sitting down at his desk with his scotch, he opened a drawer with a flick of his hand on a button and took out some old earth cigars, he looked up to the other younger officer awaiting an answer..
“Well sir” the officer said promptly “We're receiving a distress call several light years out of our border, we've also detected multiple ships moving to intercept it, and the signal contained a picture of a ship as well” The general raised an eyebrow lighting up his cigar and leaning back on his leather like chair. He said in a prompt response with the same confident voice. “Really? Well Let me see it... sun..” The other officer nodded poking his head out of the office saying to a person on a console several meters away from the massive doors leading in to this office to send the images over to the generals computer. The General sat up turning on the computer his cigar in his mouth and scotch beside him, he looked at the message and the picture and sighed looking over to the officer . He spoke again in another confident cool voice. “all right... Lets go investigate this, Tell Fleet command to send us there nearest patrol group, Lets hope I don't have to come to some idiots rescue..” he chuckled as he gave the order with a hard but professional voice , leaning back on his chair as his officer walked out. The Generals name.... Tom Solomon .. hes been in the Colonial fleet for years.. many.. many years, he thought in his head this might be just a wild goose chase, but as an officer he was thought different, and thus this investigation.

A message was sent back to complex from a local group of ships who had asked orders from Colonial fleet command to b e assigned to General Solomons control, it came back with an approval. And the officer quickly rushed in to the generals office rendering another salute and a stance at attention. The general looked over with a smile sitting up and peering at the officer with his blue eyes he nodded and said with cigar in mouth , and a some what muffled voice.
“Well what is it sun?” the other officer went to at ease and said with a confident voice.

“Sir the UCS Republic, UCS Lexington, UCS alliance , UCS Venus, and UCS Victory has been ordered to an investigation of this signal and they put you in charge ..” the officer saluted and went back to attention, the general smiled a bit roughly as he said in a hard confident voice. “alright sun, tell them I'm on my way..” With that he stood up his uniform as polished and as crisp as ever he moved out of his office, the doors swooshing open in front of him then closing behind his shimmering body. Several moments later he had beamed aboard the Republic the second ship of the Ranger class . His Uniform was reflecting some of the teal light because of its gold buttons, he walked out of the massive teal blue lit transporter room that was dotted with many holographic computer consoles and 3D systems. The massive doors clanked open as he walked down the deck followed by two marines dressed in black body armor with black helmets, two lower grade officers followed behind as they moved through the anesthetically pleasing yet utilitarian corridors up to the massive bridge. The bridge was dotted with many, many computer consoles depicting 3D holograms, and figures, many officers walked around the bridge attending to personal data links and other devices, as well as rushing to there station, as soon as Solomon walked in the entire room saluted and went to attention, the older man smiled as he walked up to the central holographic map and tactical readout center and said.

“At ease every one!” he said in a rough hard voice his hands to his side as he stepped up to the consoles to view it. The republic OP's officer looked over to the general with a professional look and tone and said “Sir the fleets awaiting your orders” The general made a smug smile looking to the ops officer snapping his hands behind him as he said in a rough commanding voice once more. “all right sun, lets have this fleet head out.. Full speed ahead” He grinned again Looking over the specs of this ship, his brown eyes not peering out in to the ominous darkness of the sky before them. The massive Ranger class ship floated ahead of the others Its rough chrome metal body shimmered in the bright white light of the nearby star, its massive form dwarfing every thing but the station and planets and sun it self as it shimmered quietly out to a point, it suddenly stopped followed by the smaller but still large Demeter class cruiser , A destroyer, and two Vesta class frigates . Suddenly simultaneously the ships opened a crackling white and blue portal in to the shimmering darkness of space, the portals expanded any one looking in to them would see arcs of lighting chaotic waves of blue and white and hear massive crackling whaling's of hyper warp space. The ships rushed in there hulls being converted to white and blue orbs of energy and being sucked in to this thing, the portal closed just as suddenly as it opened returning the spots in to darkness and lifelessness that it was before..


Several Moments had passed The space at the Edge of the system was ripped opened in another violent rift of chaotic arching energy the orbs had reformed to solid ships once again, the massive Ranger class Republic was ahead of the smaller ships, its massive form moved along in to the system with shimmering reflections along the hull. The General stood and looked out with a raised eyebrow his hands in his pocket this time he nodded with a small grin his eyes panning the other ships and scans of the area, he sighed again and looked over to the ops officer who had already opened a channel and let the General know with a nod. He started to speak in a rough hard but diplomatic voice looking out in to systems center.

“This is General Tom Solomon of the United Colonial Ship Republic, we are hear investigating a distress call that we received from this system”
Solomon just stood there looking out and wondering what had happened, the Republic and the other ships were registering as massive power signatures due to there shields being on line and Combat systems on standby, the ships floated in to the center of the system slowly but surely awaiting a response from other ships, the IFF signals registering Federal.

Solomon Looked to his Xo with a raised eyebrow and a cigar in his mouth again, he smiled and said with a hard confident voice. “Could these fleets here have done this ?” The Xo made a prompt answer and a shake of his head “I don't know, it seems to out of character for some of these people , It dose not fit, I mean if they're all here and one of them Did it why are they not fighting?” The general nodded and concurred he took the cigar out of his mouth to talk again the smoke billowing out from its tip. “I agree, they're here for the same reasons we are, lets wait to see if they respond..” The xo nodded with the General as they turned to look out again waiting...

(OOC: Due to the way the Republic works, I see no way to really jump into this at the moment, however tell me this, are you planning a battle? If so, then I'' try to convince the others to allow me ships and men to partake. I like the originality of this intro, well played.)

(OOC: A small battle, with the Shivans putting some reinforcements in when the small force is eliminated. Maybe a much, MUCH larger force toward the end to show the Shivans mean business, scare people away from the system to give the Shivans a convinient beachhead, and create a drive for a new Shivan war.)

Others
Investigate
Scout
Orders
Engage, Report, Reinforce
Affermative

Five dozen blue-white lights flared between the second and third moons of the planet, darkening as eight Cain class crusiers and thirteen wings of Manticore fighters emerged from the subspace gates.

Others
Numerous ships
None match Them
Orders
Engage and Evaluate
Affermative

The fifty-four fighters streaked away from the cruisers. Each wing picked a different ship almost at random to harass, firing off a few energy blasts and missiles before streaking away to a different target.

The cruisers, however, stayed in place, launching a barrage of torpedoes at the ships from Telros, already charging thier beam cannons.


The Shivans had fired the first of many shots...


(OOC: Something short and shitty, since I'm still adjusting to using a race that doesn't lend itself to individual characters.)

A faint echo was heard of the subRADAR low-bands. Something had existed into reality from an actuality without the same physical constraints as the four dimensional universe. Something that happened all the time. An event that the SI didn't pay much attention to from their virtual stations on the listening post some several thousand LY from Electron proper. It was only the following commotion that piqued their attention.

It was not long after the first, that a second echo appeared; one that was far from faint and erratic as the first had been. Following the objects emergence into normal space, exotic particles indicative of weapons-fire and the destruction of nuclear power plants bloomed into the LS Equivocation's subRADAR and HysRADAR bands. Particles created by the disturbances caused by high-energy weaponry and physical processes not quite understood. Then came the distress call.


HELP US
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
UNKNOWN INVADERS
STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING
NOT MUCH TIME
PLEASE
WE ARE DYING

And then after, nothing else came; only another subspace echo.


STRATnet v1.03.4
<Lawrence> That's not good.
<Orsino> Indeed not; an entire civilization was terminated in a matter of minutes.
<Helion> What precipitated the conflict?
<Lawrence> Unknown. More data is required.
<Orsino> Likely scenario?
<Lawrence> The second echo, SEO-55.4b, in quadrant D, followed echo SEO -55.3b, in quadrant D. No other echoes had been detected prior to these two events. It is likely that the first echo was the civilizations first attempt at relativistic travel, alerting another species to their location, and thus the second echo.
<Orsino> We must investigate further.
<Helion> Agreed.
<Lawrence> Initiating panic protocol one.

The black-body cylinder that was LS Equivocation altered its position, increasing its tilt along its vertical axis. A communications array was deployed shortly thereafter, unleashing a burst of particle radiation that for a small moment, gave away the listening-post's hidden location.

--

Within the star system named Eris, several rifted in subspace bled into the cosmos. For a few microseconds, a storm of exotic particles annihilated themselves upon contact with the physical universe, unleashing a fury of ultra-hard radiation ten-AU away from the site of the conflict now over. Hopefully no one nearby was looking for such tale-tale signs of foreign activity, and hopefully, the speed of light would give the new arrivals time to scatter about before the particles could be detected with traditional sensors.

From those tears in reality, came five warships in black-body mode. Shunting their own emissions into a zero-width gateway leading into a special zone of subspace, hopefully far away from anyone's active scanners. Their hulls were also absorbing all radiation that contacted them, and their gravitic signature was scattered over such a wide area that it blended in with the local field.

--

"How are we doing, Nelson?" Skylord Harrison asked the SciOps officer breathing nervously behind him.

"All vessels should be undetectable to passive sensors in this area, and reasonably hard to find under active surveillance, even if we had been noticed by our hasty subspace exit."

"And how are we on time?" Harrison asked his TacOps officer, Gordae Deshevli.

"At this rate, we'll arrive at the scene of the reported destruction within a few hours, but with a few micro-jumps here and there, I give us ten minutes."

"And what will that do for our stealth, Yvvir?" Harrison turned back to SciOps.

"We'll be fine if they're small enough, in theory anyway. If we jump in too close to another ship, or groups of ships assuming any are out here, then we run the risk of being detected."

"Good. Keep the drones docked, and have the instructions uplinked to the other SkyComs. Let's go." Harrison said, re-encrypting the connection to the local CSTCS out of habit instead of need.

--

The five vessels did not actually belong to the Conglomerate military. They were instead, a part of the exploratory division tasked with investigating species as the Conglomerate became aware of them. Harrison did, however, answer directly to the actual military, but his commanders did not. The rational was to try and balance the influence of both branches; the military wanted to shoot everyone and the exploratory division wanted to talk to everyone. If it ever worked out in practice, though, no one could really tell.

They were squat in their appearance when not in black-body mode; a series of cube-esque structures that went on for quite a ways at first, before slanting sharply into another of significantly less size, and again till ending in an abrupt slope at the front of the ship. they were covered in an assortment of maser lenses and coil-guns, as well as an almost inordinate amount of missile racks and drone bays. Along the ships spine ran a single particle cannon, that dwarfed the other weapons in destructive output.

While closing in on the scene of destruction at over half the speed of light, they occasionally made a micro jump to speed up their progress, but never in a linear direction; they worked under the assumption that they had been detected or were being watched, and did not desire to make their surveillance too easy for those doing the surveying.

(OOC: That's quite what I meant, a new Shivan War. I'll be looking for it, and will most likely join in to add to the epicness.)

The General let a serious look over take his face as he peered out side at the fighters firing there weapons upon his ships, he looked over quickly and confidently to the operations officer sitting behind a holographic panel and put his cigar back in his mouth saying with a muffled hardened voice.
“All ships General Quarters!” He looked back out side and sighed again his body shimmering in the teal light of the bride now turning red with alarms blearing singling general quarters. The XO stood by him and was about to ask what to do when Solomon Cut him off taking the cigar out of his mouth and looking to the ops officer again, he said with a hard confident voice and a serious look. “Target those fighters with our interceptor system Cluster missiles, I want helm control to move us in to Weapons range” With that the operations officer nodded starting to tap a few buttons on his glassy holographic consoles. The ship began reverberating with dull weapons fire noises, as blue pulses of fire rushed out of The Interceptor systems dotting the massive glimmering rough hulled ship, Missiles streaked from opened tubes rushing towards enemy fighters as pulses and missiles from them struck the Republic making its shields shimmer with white and blue energy. The Point Defense missiles were designed as long range anti fighter missiles with MIRV war heads to act like flack cannons, many of these missiles streaked out of the ranges tubes, one after another as the ship and rest of the federal group shimmered in to weapons range. Solomon looked out side his hands to his back the cigar in his hand pumping out small puffs of smoke as he stood there, the xo right by him asking him in a rough but clam voice. “Sir I suggest we use the frigates to hide behind stellar bodies and start pumping out cruise missiles.” The general looked over with a nod to ops, in a way saying for him to make it so.

With that Order the Frigates Bursted off in to separate directions towards different planet. While the larger ships continued to move in to weapons range . The operations officer looked up with haste from his console saying to the general “Sir we've moved in to weapons range, Request further orders?”
The general looked to the ops officer with a slight grin, his rough skin empathized by the glowing red light of the bridge. He said in a commanding hard tone to her “Fire forward Phase Disruptor cannons , prep missiles for launch , and Target accelerators for fire on those larger ships.” The ops officer nodded starting to press buttons on the holographic consoles again bringing the ships weapons to bare. General Solomon smiled and nodded giving the order to fire with a loud thunderous voice. The massive 2.5 km ship and its smaller comrades picked there larger targets, and with that torrents of green pulses could be seen rushing from massive disruptor batteries and beam emitters filling the once quiet space between them with volleys of green and crackling energetic Beams. The Republic was filled with reverberating energy noises as her massive disruptor cannons and beam disruptor's fired the space In front of her filled with Green crackling pulses and beams of fire. Gravimetric accelerators were next to fire, they charged up and began to recoil as they started firing shells at massive fractions of the speed of light filling the area with streaming flaming pulses of yellow and orange that accompanied the already visible moderate amounts of disruptor fire from the ships.



General Solomon Looked over to his ops officer cigar in mouth, the ship was on full alert, crackling energy noises reverberated around the bridge and ship and massive crackling booms could be heard from the GAC emplacements. He sighed putting one hand in his pocket and over looking the darkness of space now filled with fire from both sides. He sighed thinking of what was to come, his mind was wandering not uncommon for a general. He did not like this at all, first a distress call then this, it was obviously the same group of people, every one knew. The Demeter and other ships began splitting off from the republic as they came to a stop at extreme ranges of fire, The republic was still facing forward firing its heavy disruptor's and Gravimetric Accelerators. It was a matter of time before she would turn to unleash a bigger torrent of fire power. Solomon looked over to the helm control station watching an officer tap his hands on the holographic red console. Solomon said in an orderly hard voice. “Son I want you to preform erratic maneuvers with this thing, It wont be quick but it should keep us form getting hit a little bit from these ranges.” the helms officer nodded suddenly the massive Ranger class Battle cruiser began to move from side to side slowly and ominously encroaching over some ships as its rough form glimmered with colors of weapons fire.

“Ma'am. Reading subspace readings at vector Alpha three-nine-four” The map flickered to show the incoming Metallinuts ships as they appeared in a flash of light. Meikah looked at them, eyes curious but cautious. “Ma'am, incoming message from the unknowns.”

“Show me.” The message scrolled on the screen and she nodded. “I see. Send the proper counter response.”

Good to hear. We are glad to have help in finding out what happened. If you come across any survivors, let us know.


“Ma'am, more incoming!” She turned in time to see five Slaughterian ships comes out of their wormhole. “Scanning....no relevant data found. Receiving message from alien battlegroup.”

"Attention foreign battle group, this Captain Mark Jameson of the Dominion War Vessel Eagle's Talon. I am commander of Dominion battle group Delta. I assume we're both responding to the same distress call, and we both know why we're here. The only two X factors now are who you are and what we're up against. Any ideas?"

The Captain sighed. It was going to be one of those situations. Most likely, they would be meeting many nations here and introductions would be need to made over and over again. Shaking her head, she sent a reply.

”Alien battle gorup, I am Captain Sara Meikah of the Imperium of Terra's Ship, the Nebula, and in command of Battle Group Bulldog. We are indeed responding to the distress call. As for what we are up against, no idea. We have only found a picture and our databanks have no info on them at all. Do you possibly have any idea?”

The second task force arrive and she raised an eyebrow. Already, between the three of them, they had some heavy firepower. Several minutes later, the fleet was amazed by the strength and power of the Aegusian FTL drives as their sensors were off the scale and they watched in wonder at the massive flagship that tore itself into subspace.

"This is Headman Malakouth of The Wandering Empire of Aegeus, comanding The Will of Aegeus. Are you in need of assistance"

Meikah sent the customary reply, stating who she was, welcoming the fleet and saying that yeah, assistance would be nice and asking if they knew who had done this. Her Sensor station spoke up again. “Ma'am, getting a massive power reading. Subspace frequency matches that of the Federal Republic.” The Captain smiled, finally a familiar face!

“Very well, prepare for their arrival” They watched as the ships tore through space to get here and intercept their message.

“This is General Tom Solomon of the United Colonial Ship Republic, we are hear investigating a distress call that we received from this system”

She sent a reply, welcoming him on the behalf of the Imperium and agreed that that they were here to investigate the signal. She was about to continue when a loud shout sounded from the Sensor station. “Ma'am, we have contacts between the second and third moons. Reading five dozen energy signatures. Fifty-four fighter class and eight cruiser class.” Her face paled. “Sensor readings match the image of the ones who destroyed this planet...” Meikah was in action, barking out orders.

“Send a warning to all the other ships in this system, warn them of the threat of these ships. Deploy al Longsword squadrons and get me weapon locks on those ships. Ready the PD system and fire at will!”

The battlegroup shuddered and then shifted, blasting towards the Shivans. Their sides glowed as plasma gathered for an assault. The fighters that chose to attack any of the Imperial ships would find a web of agile, arcing red beams slicing through the space around the ships, cutting through missile and ships alike. Some missiles still got through and impacted with the shields, causing them to flare white with heat but they quickly cooled. All fourteen squadrons took up position around the battlegroup, ready to do their anti-missile and torpedo duties, as well as engage the enemy fighters if they came around for another pass. The incoming torpedoes were shot down, both by the combined efforts of the PD system and the squadrons but some came through, impacting with the shields, explosions washing over the ships and draining the shields.

Meikah clenched the railing after one hit and roared. “All ships, lock onto all firing solutions and fire!” The carrier and cruiser fired, unleashing three powerful energy beams, lancing at at one cruiser, while unloading waves of mighty pulse lasers at the same cruiser. All six destroyers locked onto two more cruisers, three each. They fired their pulse lasers, along with twenty-one plasma beams blasting each cruiser, along with hundreds of armor-piercing Archer missiles were fired from the destroyers.

They did not know it yet, but they were engaging the Shivans, the mighty enemy that many nations had fallen defeating in their last few wars. Now, the Imperium would be one of many who fought them off once more.

Malakouth smiles coolly, his tactical map unfolding before him in an explosion of birght-red contacts. He begins shouting comands to the computer and his crew.

"Computer! Mark all ships without shivan energy signatures as friendlies, relay tactical to the secondary and tertiary bridges. Ensign Kur'than, Power up the LCA, lets show these shivans what new Agean technology can do."

He enters in the command for manual helm, and takes control of the ship's movements via his head-peice. The ship powers forward with agility belieing is vast size, it's plethora of engines igniting as one, propelling the ship foward, facing off with the shivan cruisers. The Telrosian ships fire lances just ahead of the massive ship's front bulkhead. The torpedo fire from the shivans suddenly smacks into The Will's massively powerful magnetic shielding, the torpedoes slowing to a crawl, and point defense lasers light up the sky, shooting down the turtle-like projectiles.

He keys a communication to the Telrosians

"Telrosian force, if you have any kinetic weapons or missiles, target them at these coordinates, they will allow you to shoot around us."

One of Malakouth's tactical officers transmits the data for two firing solutions, both about three KM off each side of the ship. He presses several buttons, activating the spatial compression nodes, which thrum to life, prjecting a field that mends space time into a sort of miniature event horizon.

A few torpedoes manage to get past the defensive network, and explode on the hull. the impacts barely even are noticed as the ship's momentum carries it forward.

"Your going to need something much bigger than that my glowy red friends."

The headman laughs. This is going to be fun.

"Deploy Elcerophant groups five, seven, and eight, and fire the Forward LCA."

The recoil of the LCA is astonishing, being felt even by the bridge crew, embedded within the body of the super-massive starship. All over the ship, a call goes out in a super-sonic frequency, alterting the elcerophants that it is time to go. dozens of small glowing balls melt out of the walls, lining up at "charge stations", metalic plates embedded in the walls. each gently brush against the plates, absorbing millions of joules of energy in seconds.

from the front bulkheads of The Will, a swarm of 96 blueish glowing fighters speed away, converting into an odd redish color, matching their energy signature to that of shivan beam-weapons.

OOC-

LCA= Large Cannon Aray (25m diameter railgun slugs), forward array is about 15 of them.
Elcerophants= Energy Beings used as fighters

chain of events ATM:

all kinds of peeps warp in.
Shivans attack, firing torps at Telros, and sending out fighters to engage.
Telros retaliates
Aegeus moves into shielding Telros, also retaliates.

”Alien battle gorup, I am Captain Sara Meikah of the Imperium of Terra's Ship, the Nebula, and in command of Battle Group Bulldog. We are indeed responding to the distress call. As for what we are up against, no idea. We have only found a picture and our databanks have no info on them at all. Do you possibly have any idea?”

"Our databanks have turned up nothing so far, we're perusing some of the older archives now and-"

"Captain! Incoming!"

"This is Captain Jameson to Dominion Battle Group Delta. All ships, evasive maeuvers! Scramble gunships and prime plasma torpedoes! Tactical, get me a firing solution and relay it to the others vessels."

"Aye sir, solution calculated, ready to fire on your mark. Gunships have just scrambled sir."

"I think our opponents have waited long enough...fire."

As the 100 gunship fighters soared out of the vertical launch bays atop the Hellion the battle group moved about in typical evasive maneuvers. They then slowed just enough to fire their volley of plasma torpedoes at the now attacking Shivan ships. Purple fireballs streaked through space unerringly towards the enemy fleet as the Shivan's volley hit home. Due to the semi erratic nature of the evasion, some of the torpedoes meant for the Telros vessels hit the Dominion Strike Cruisers Nova's Fury and Nova's Wrath. Their sheilds wavered under the onslaught and collapsed, a few impacted on the hull. They burned through the ablative armor and minor hull breaches were reported throughout the ships. Casulty reports were minimal.

The fighters, forming into their respective wings of 10, moved to engage the Shivan fighters. Dominion vessels took precedence, though they moved to defend the other ships if there were no immediate targets in the vicinity. They broke formation and loosed cannon fire coupled with the occasional torpedo.

The Strike Cruisers and capital ship opened up with phaser fire as the enemy fighters drew closer. The two Omega Cruisers moved closer to the Shivans to open fire with the full fury of their arsenal. Phasers powered up as normal torpedoes were put into their autoloaders. Once in range, fighters were ignored, allowing the shields to take the harassment. The many torpedo tubes on the Cruisers opened up firing their six round autoloaders in a predetermined randomized pattern at the Shivan fleet as phasers opened up to try and knock out their shields before the torpedoes impacted.

Alpha Team, Erisian Surface
The sights on the surface of the planet were horrific. The team was currently in the largest city of Eris, and from the way it's current state was, you would never believe it. Pillars of flame erupted at random intervals as fossil fuel deposits buried beneath the surface exploded. Beta team lost eight members to these things that are nicknamed "hell spouts".

Command Sargent Jackson felt sick as they walked down a massive transit system track. Buildings that were once several kilometers high now lay crumbling in on themselves, there former color could not be determined due to the massive black burns of energy weapons. He looked down and noticed that beneath them used to be what looked like a residential area, but now it was a smoldering crater full of white hot plasma, he shuddered at the thought of the indiscrimination between civilians and the military. To him it just did not make sense.

After a while had passed they came down from their lofty pathway through a now barren war zone. The area was obviously residential. Some new recruit puked at the nearly blasphemous sight ahead of them. Dozens of children, some clutching the severed limbs of their parents, lay disemboweled in the street. Their little faces showed the indescribable pain that they were enduring in their hellish last moments in life.

Fanning their faces from the stench, they trooped past the slaughtered children they fanned out into the houses. Inside, some were empty of all life, in others lay the pulpy corpses of civilians slain by energy blades. Jackson pondered what kind of creatures would willingly do this when comm silence was broken by a piercing scream.

"I have found one! I need a medic and an evac craft in sector foxtrot co-ordinates 3.56,-67.8. I repeat I have found a surviving Erisian!" some one cried over the broad band.

Within seconds the whole rescue team was inside a small house, they found a corporal wrestling with a female Erisian who was flailing and screaming nearly incoherently. The only words they could make out were "SPIDERS! SPIDERS! SPIDERS!"

The team's medic administered a heavy sedative and instantly the woman stopped screaming and lost muscle control. After using a scanner, the medic concluded she was alright. "Physically, this woman is fine. Her mind on the other hand; is going through a state of extreme shock. I believe that she may have a fear of spiders and that is all her brain can comprehend right now. In any case we should take her up to the Clarkson and return her to one of our hospitals at home.

The team exited the structure as the Mercy class medicraft landed in the street. They took the woman aboard on the stretcher that they had, and told the pilot they were cleared to go. The ship lifted off as 10 more soldiers hopped out of the craft to continue gleaning information and possibly find more survivors.

UFV Clarkson
Jennifer spun around in her chair as a message from fleet command came in. After a few moments she concluded her end of the conversation with a simple "understood". She again rotated her chair to speak to her captain, "Captain, we are ordered to return to base with the survivor. They are afraid that whoever did this, might return and we cannot afford to lose the survivor" she informed her superior officer.

"Very well," the captain said, "set course for port all available speed" she ordered.

"Understood, course laid in sir" the navigator said.

Unexpectedly a klaxon began to blare and the typical red lights of a hostile situation took over. "Captain, unidentified cruisers and fighters have appeared in the area" a voice said.

"What the hell do you mean the appeared" the captain barked.

"I mean that they were not there before, now they are" the voice frantically replied. "sir, they have opened fir on the Telrosian fleet, orders" the voice said again.

"We will continue our course, tell the Henderson and Bradley to engage at will" the captain ordered.

"Aye sir, they have confirmed the orders and are moving to engage" the voice informed the captain.

The Clarkson left the system as the other two vessels engaged the new enemies. They pulled along side one of the cruisers, and opened fire on the cruisers with all their might.

Captain Jal’Ahn was relaxing about thirty meters under the surface when it beeped. It most definitely wasn’t supposed to beep, unless there was a problem. And there weren’t supposed to be problems. But there apparently was. He sighed, and glanced down, the murky liquid mostly obscuring his vision, but the blinking red glow was clear enough. It said, in so many words, “Get back to the ship. Now.”

Less than ten minutes later, he was still buttoning up his dress uniform with two hands, as the other two held the orders while he read them. Jal’Ahn was jogging down a path that lead to the nearest orbital shuttle, two eyes intently scanning the document while the other two kept him somewhat aware of his surroundings. The orbital shuttle pads were placed strategically around the islands, so as you were never too far from one, although due to the distinctly small amount of land on Prime, you would have been relatively close wherever they had been placed. The orbital shuttles were of a relatively new design, little more than a passenger bay strapped to a fusion engine, designed to ferry military crews to their ships from shore leave, for situations like this. Jal’Ahn, the commander of the Atlas class Siegeship, BWS Artemis, was about to be a very busy man. He had just been handed orders deploying him clear across the galaxy, in the next eight hours, from the middle of shore leave.

The ship always impressed crewman Gej, despite the fact that it was the smallest type in the fleet. To serve aboard an Atlas class Siegeship was something many young children aspired to, the pinnacle of modern technology, and other than the merchant marine, the only way to see the galaxy. The Artemis is roughly 1300 meters long, massing just over 1.2 million tons empty. The ship fields an impressive amount of firepower, primarily in her broadside missile tubes. Crewman Gej manned the number seven tube, starboard broadside; he was the senior loading man for the tube, in charge of ensuring the automated loading system functioned flawlessly to ram the Type XII missiles into the mass driver after the previous one had been shot out.

“Captain on deck!”

“At ease.” A thousand things were running through Jal’Ahn’s mind, like ‘why are we being sent to investigate a dead planet?’ ‘what killed it?’ ‘why is this important again?’ ‘Where the hell is half the crew?’ but through reflex he saluted his executive officer, and sat down in the command chair. The Artemis’ command deck was rather spacious, with an immense holographic tank surrounding the command section, and various officers outside the tank as well. The Atlas class fielded an impressive sensor array, and the holographic tank showed those displays for everyone in the command room to see.

“All hand this is the captain. Prepare to jump, possible hostiles on the other side, all hand to action stations, yellow alert, this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.” The words blared over the intercom, and immediately the ship sprang into action. On the outside, massive armored plates retracted, revealing immense radiators, inside crewmen ran to their stations, the lighting took on an amber hue, and weapons systems flared to life. The faint hum throughout the ship’s engineering intensified to a dull roar, as the massive jump drive built up power, draining the huge capacitor banks into its systems.

“Sir, Jump drive is charged, radiators online and operating at optimal capacity. All hands reporting action station.”

“Very well, jump.”

The ship vanished completely, leaving behind nothing but a small thermal signature. Many light years away, the ship flickered back into existence, less than a nanosecond from the time is vanished from the Blademasterian home system. Immediately after the ship’s arrival, the radiators began dumping the jump drive’s waste heat into space, creating an immense thermal signature comparable to that of a small star. The ship’s shields were still down, so that the radiators could operate at full efficiency, but the sensors were very much alive, and the weapons systems were hot.

“Sensors, report!”

“Sir, multiple contacts, there appear to be several groups, some do match the image we received, they are definitely attacking the others, I don’t think we’ve been seen yet, but it shouldn’t be long.”

“Helm, lay in a course for the conflict, 90% acceleration, go to combat alert.” Alarm klaxons sounded throughout the ship as the lighting turned to a deep blue. The three massive engines on the aft section of the ship flared to life as maneuvering thrusters brought the bow to bear, and the ship began a graceful acceleration towards the battle in progress.

“Give me an open channel.”

“Aye sir, go ahead”

“Unidentified vessels under attack by the unknown aggressors, this is the BWS Artemis responding to the distress call sent from this location, we are moving to assist.”

"Artemis, good to have your help!" Jameson replied over the comm. the sound of many officers at combat stations were evident over the channel. "The biomechenical looking vessels are as our older archives have just confirmed, Shivans. An incredibly destructive, genocidal race. I'm quite frankly surprised that they're attacking with so small a force, but any help to beat them back is appreciated. It's been our experience that where there's a few, there's many more soon to come."

The transmission experienced a mild wash of static as the ship shuddered ever so slightly.

"We'll be sure to let you in on all our databanks have, which is admittedly not much more, after we're through here. Jameson out"

“We thank you for the data, but anything beyond tactical data can wait until after the fight, Artemis out.”

“Range to targets?”

“15.8 million kliometers, sir!”

“Helm, hard port, starboard broadside and missile pods, fire as you bear.”

The ship’s thrusters flared to life, swinging the bow to the side, as the tubes opened. Seconds later, sixty two type XII missiles flew from the ship’s broadside launchers and trailing missile pods. The pods, having expended their single salvo, were released from the tractor beams.

“Helm, roll ship hard port, port broadside, fire as you bear.”

Another thirty missiles roared from the Artemis as she gracefully rolled along her axis in space.

“Helm, set course to close distance while maintaining broadside fire.”

“Aye sir.”

The ninety two Type XII missiles roared towards their intended targets, accelerating at speeds much faster than any crewed ship could hope to obtain. Aboard each missile was a pair of bomb-pumped x-ray laser warheads, and eight dummy warheads. They were set to detonate at 9,000km range, just shy of their maximum effective, to test the Shivans’ anti-missile capabilities, as well as hopefully cause some damage to the cruisers. The Artemis continued to close range at a much shallower angle, to allow its broadside to face the targets, but she held her fire until the results of the first salvo could be seen, an event several minutes away.

(OOC: Oh, of course there'll be a Shivan War. I mean, it's not like I can do diplomatic threads with these guys. I'm even avoiding the things the previous Shivan threat did, like... allies. The number wank... Well, it's either that, or make the inevitable clusterfuck short and boring. The fourty-three unit Intelligence Report/Factbook will be done by the end of this thread, by the way. Note: fourty-three units. Canon Shivans only have twenty-four-ish. Freespace players might recognize the new ones.)

Situation
Resistance as expected
Others
Possessing considerable weaponry
Losses estimate
Absolute
Reinforce
Scout
Insufficient
Reinforce
Scout 2
Destroyer
Incomming fire
Evade
Unable
Affermative

Shivan or not, eight Cain class cruisers could only withstand so much weapons fire. Three of the ships managed to fire a short burst from thier small beam cannons at the Eagle's Talon before the sheer amount of ordinance being leveled at them tore the ships apart.

Within seconds of one another, the Cains exploded, shockwaves sending debris flying everywhere.

The fighters faired little better. They made no real effort to dodge the countermeasures used against them, one Manticore after another exploding into a shower of debris.


There was no time to celebrate, however, as another cluster of subspace gates opened, thirteen new Cains, or at least what looked like Cains, exiting subspace in a loose formation past the third moon. The glow at the bow of the ship gave a single clue: Their weapons were already armed. The crimson glow of thier beam cannons was little threat in comparison to the blue and white light of a fourteenth subspace portal, over ten times the size of the gate the Cain class opened.

It exited quickly before slowing to a crawl, its massive, ornate grey and red hull awash with light from the subspace gate. The Demon class Destroyer hung in the void as its fighter bays opened, hundreds fighters and bombers pouring out into the fray to replace the fifty Manticores lost.

In unison, the beams from the Cains belched forth, snapping through the void at the Blademasterian, Dominion, and Colonial ships.

OOC: 'Nauts, if you're not streaming data to BNet, I'll just edit this post accordingly.

Hiveship Mordecai, international space.

A middle aged scribe made his way into the inner bridge of the titanic Hiveship. In his hands he held a small glowing screen suspended between two metal rods. Strange diagrams danced between him and the scroll as he interfaced with the ESUS Battlenet. His brow was furrowed, face worried. The great cavernous doors rolled shut behind him, and he was alone with his lord and master.

"Your holiness." The scribe bent low at the waist, arms outstretched to the being at the center of the room. Standing on a platform suspended above the abyssal depths of the inner control chamber Greater Angel Pletorus stood, facing the other way. His hands were clasped behind his back as he drifted in and out of communication with the bulk of the fleet, channeling movement telemetry and other such tasks between ships. After a moment, the commander turned to the scribe.

"You rang?" Pletorus replied.

"I ran across a troubling bit of data on Battlenet. It struck me as something that would catch your interest." the scribe said. At this point Pletorus descended from his pedestal and took the scroll from his subordinate. His command and control AI automatically interfaced with the scroll and brought up the data that had been found in the ESUS communication network.

"Seems as if the 'Nauts have found a torched world to pla-..", Even as Pletorus spoke, it became evident that their allies had just engaged a disturbingly familiar ship class..,"Oh motherfucker.." he continued, "Tell tertiary maneuvering to bring us around and make for Prime. I need to get in contact with Sanctuary and cannot be bothered with making sure everyone stays with the tour group."

The scribes eyes widened. He didn't know what his lord had seen, nor did he dare ask. He merely turned around and hauled ass for the secondary control bridge. As soon as he had left, the Angel turned back to his pedestal and opened a communication line with Sanctuary.

"High king", he said, "we have a problem."

Year: 145.3 M(illenium), 5000 AGRD (After Grand Republic Defeat)
Task force: Millitant
Mission: Training Simulations
Fleet size: 8 (1 Andromeda Class Cruiser, 1 Eclipse Class Super Star Destroyer, 2 Torpedo Class Frigates, 2 Freedom Class Destroyers, 2 Nebula Class Corvettes)

Supreme Counsilor Jorrus sat upon the Command Chair of the Andromeda, recently refitted with new technology. He sighed as he slouched further in his chair as he continued to read this morning's disasterous reports from simulated battle stations and preparations. It was clear these cadets aren't quite ready for battle yet. The bald headed man rubbed his head with the headache from these training sessions of his crew. He turned sideways to see Major General Verneal walk into the bridge handing Jorrus another datapad.

"Oh dear god, not another one of these things."

Verneal chuckled, "No my dear Councilor. This just came in from long range transmissions from our base back at home. The GFFA election results are in. Congradulations on your win."

Jorrus raised his head, "I'm a Consul member now? Oh goody. More responsibilities on my shoulders. A leader of our great alliance, Supreme Councilor of the Malkir Council of Twenty, a Captain figure on the Andromeda, and now the second head of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances."

Verneal raised his eyebrows, "if it's so big of a burden, then why did you sign on?"

"To give my duties to Melisha when I take my leave as a GFFA head. God it'll be like a vacation. Be sure to tell the ol' girl that I still got this ship."

"Do I have to be the one to tell her that? You know I hate it when she puts all of her problems onto me," Verneal grunted.

"Oh, I know. That's why I'm making it your personal duty." He took a look at his wrist watch and it read 23:53. Thank god, meditation time. "My shift has ended. I'll see you in the morning then. I'll expect reports from this evening's scann's ready when I wake up."

"Bright and early Councilor."

Jorrus finally got to his private meditation chambers on his beloved command ship, folding his legs and arms and sitting up right, he closed his eyes and opened his mind up to the Force. I am one with the force... My body flows with it... Is one... I... Jorrus suddenly found himself facing a planet. What he didn't know was that this was the planet Eris just before it was obliterated. Then, he saw... it. He saw the thing appear and attack the prosperous planet. Jorrus shuddered as he felt the wave of destruction and the millions of voices crying out in terror. And then scilenced. He felt the thing disappear, and what it was he couldn't say. Nor would he want to if his feelings were correct about the thing that just attacked. He only knew that there was trouble ahead. And as if to confirm his thoughts, his comm system beeped.

"Yes?"

"Councilor, we need you on the bridge at once."

"Verneal?"

"Hurry." Given that the General is the next most senior officer on the ship and that he has just as much battle experience as Jorrus does when he served the Huntarian Empire, Jorrus knew that they were in for some serious trouble just from the sound of his voice. And there wasn't much that could scare the old veteran of war. Jorrus closed his eyes once more and blue/white smoke appeared at the bottom of his feet as he vanished to the bridge.

"What is is Major General?"

Verneal was slightly surprised to see Jorrus on the bridge so quickly considering how he didn't hear any bridge doors open and close. Then again, he occassionally forgets that as human as Jorrus is, he's still a force wielder. Anything's posible, "we just got this transmission from a remote satelite in a system not too far from here."


HELP US
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
UNKNOWN INVADERS
STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING
NOT MUCH TIME
PLEASE
WE ARE DYING

"The transmission just keeps on repeating?"

"Yes Councilor. I've already laid in a course to the system. We'll get there in about three hours at maximum speed."

Jorrus yawned, trying to keep awake, "good. Report to the Freedom's Cry and take your command."

Verneal gave Jorrus the traditional salute, "aye sir."

"Red Alert. Helm, open a rif into the Necrominus and take us in. Maximum possible speed. I think it's time the General and I tested this task force's resolve in battle if the unknown attackers are still in the area."

-OOC-
A little warning: Until I manage to get ten posts, it's unlikely my replies will come quickly, thanks to moderation.

And the great thing? This probably won't make it through for a while.

EDIT: Oh, HA HA, Jolt.

OOC: All OOC stuff goes here now by request of TSW:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=12724483#post12724483

The Enemy fire ripple on the blue and white shielding of the republic Impacting it with force, the ship shook and vibrated gently with enemy fire hitting the Rebounder shields first then the MD shields second , the energy rippled across the shields lighting it up huge amounts of white and blue. Solomon stood on the bridge with a confident hard look coming over his face, his eyes panned the new incoming enemies he quickly turned his head over to the ops officer and asked “Status report” as the ship shook with fire. The operations officer responded taping his holographic console like mad pulling up status reports of the other colonial ships. The ops officer quickly mad an analysis of them and said with a sigh and a hard confident voice. “sir the UCS Venus.... it was behind that moon we lost contact with it.. we should assume the worse.. as for the other ships the UCS Lexington is reporting moderate Damage to forward shielding and reduced port shielding , The UCS victory is in good condition Only reporting Minor damage. Orders general?” Solomon looked at his ops officer with both eyes, you could see the seasoned commander in him telling him what to do, his uniform said it all decorated finely and glimmering in the light. He suddenly said with a hard commanding voice. “All right i want all ships to open fire on those vessels maintain distance” Th ops officer nodded saying with a quick voice “Affirmative sir” He started to tap the orders on the holographic console before him.

The Point defense alarms of the Ship blared, Solomon looked over then at the screen and said under his breath Damn.. enemy fighters incoming... “ he quickly looked over to ops and said in a commanding loud voice “engage Lighting barriers and interceptor grid. Fire all PDM tubes” His cigar was still in his mouth as he said it in a muffled loud voice. The ops officer complied taping the holographic Buttons on the console quickly quickly. The General looked over his boots taping on the glimmering floor. As he stared out side thousands of long range point defense missiles bolted out in streaking yellow trails of fire filling the darkness of space again with light Interceptors followed suit, firing bolts of blue pulses at amazing speeds towards fighter craft. The lighting field that now surrounded the ships were meant to stop missiles and fighters from coming to close to the ship, this how ever prevented the ships from launching fighters and did not protect against energy weapons.

Solomon looked back to the ops officer and hastily said to him in a hard voice after nearly ripping out the cigar from his mouth. “All right son, I want you to focus fire on the large ships, all Disruptor banks and batteries fire!' His voice echoed through the entire bridge like thunder. The ops officer complied starting to move his hands across the console, as general Solomon and his Xo stood in watch both of their heads filled with thoughts of the situation and what do to next. The ships began opening fire, Disruptor beams slashed out with crackling greenish energy towards the cruisers filling the area with more of a glow, Disruptor bolts followed a little more intense than the first time, all federal ships poured out torrents of beams and heavy disruptor fire. C fractional cannons followed suit launching Gravimetric shells at high speeds towards the ships, they had a glow of reddish orange as they left the recoiling crackling guns at super high speed. The ships were filled with crackling energy nosies as guns fired, Solomon just stood there waiting hearing masses of noise from his ships weapons banks.

His ship was well lit by the tones of fire being poured out in to space, Unknowingly the destroyed flaming debris of the lost frigate crossed the emptiness of space on the other side not touched by fire Its charred flaming dead hull floating in to silent dead space, its husk was caught in another planets gravitational pull, and began falling in to decaying orbit, its plates leaving a trail behind as the were yanked off by the force of gravity. It was quiet if you would view from the flaming wreck you could see the torrent of wild fire being exchanged by ships, brilliant lights flashing in the background and crackling lances of fire....

“Damage report!”

“Starboard shields down, number three and four starboard tubes are exposed to space number one starboard lance inoperable, sir”

“Roll hard starboard, present port broadside.”

“Aye sir!”

The Artemis had taken a heavy pounding from the counterattack, blowing right through her shields and shredding two missile tubes and a gravity lance. As the ship rolled to present her pristine port side, the communications section was transmitting a message to the homeworld. It read something like this: BWS Artemis under attack by forces known as ‘Shivans.’ Request immediate assistance, heavy firepower encouraged, all data on the Shivans is attached. Another hit shook the vessel, the power flickered and more alarms went off across the ship.

“Range to target Crewman Drek?”

“Sixty thousand kilometers, sir!”

“Charge port lances, helm increase distance to two hundred thousand kilometers.”

“Lances charged sir!”

“Fire full broadside!”

The two massive gravity lances fired from the Artemis, the sheer amount of power pumped into them was enough to make the ship shudder as they fired, and the lights dim as the reactors dealt with the drain. Accompanied by the lance bursts were another thirty type XII missiles, these set to detonate at a much closer range, roughly four thousand kilometers, to prevent the Artemis from taking any damage from the blast.

--Minutes later, aboard the BWS Zeus, orbiting Prime 1—

“Admiral, we have received a message from the Artemis.”

“Go ahead…”

“Sir, it appears they have engaged the beings who destroyed the world, alongside some of our allies, the message is brief, but they are requesting heavy fire support.”

“Very well, have the Atlas, the Athena, and the Terminus sent to assist them.”

Fleet Admiral Kal commands the Blademasterian Navy. His offices are aboard the BWS Zeus, which to the average outsider appears to be little more than an orbiting station. In reality, it is the most powerful warship fielded by the Blademasterian Navy, it is just never deployed except in times of dire need, or in defense of a Blademasterian world. The Zeus has been deployed once since its completion in 36915. The Admiral was not seriously considering deploying anything but Siegeships at the moment, as this Shivan threat did not appear to be too much of a threat to the consortium. He of course, was not present at the battle.

--on the command deck of the BWS Atlas—

“Captain, we’ve received a transmission from fleet. We are ordered to make best possible speed to the Eris system, along with the Athena and the Terminus.”

“Very well, spin up the jump drive.”

As the fire from the previous wave hit the shields of the Eagle's Talon, the impact and explosions caused the entire shield to ripple. The Dominion's old hyperphasic shield grids that dispersed a blast along the entirety of the shield to reduce weak points still seemed to have a place on the battlefield. However, when the second wave appeared, those shields would almost certainly be overwhelmed.

The Eagle's Talon and the two Omega Cruisers moved in front of the already damaged Strike Cruisers to provide some protection while their shields recharged. The fighters moved in to engage the new threat, though not at their previous strength. Of the 100 fighters, 5 were destroyed. Shields and armor could only protect for so long despite the advantage that the Shivan fighters made no attempt at evasion.

------On the bridge of the Talon------
"Ops! Report!" Jameson barked as yet again the ship shuddered from the impact of weapons on its shields.

"Sir, Omega Cruisers are moving to engage the Shivan vessel that launched the fighters (destroyer). The Nova's Fury reports that shields are at 80% and sufficient repairs have been made to the armor around the hull breaches. It has maintained defensive posture around the carrier. The Nova's Wrath is only at 70% shielding but repairs to the armor are a bit more extensive. It'll follow us in, sir," the Leutenant replied.

"Very good Luetenant, tell them to lay off our port side and stay frosty. Those Omegas need our help. Take us in," Jameson replied.

The Raven and Strike Cruiser moved towards the two Omega class cruisers, which had opted not to reconfigure the tubes for plasma and continued to fire smaller volleys of conventional torpedoes at the destroyer while raking the shields with phaser fire. As the Talon approached, it fired one of its focused plasma emitters at a Cain cruiser to keep the pressure off of the Omegas. The red beam of superheated plasma lanced toward the Cain cruiser the the ship followed up with a volley of phasers at another Cain. The Strike Cruiser focused primarily of the fighters.
All ships were taking a pounding and sheilds were starting to look sketchy, despite even damage transferral. This volley would have to count.

Starbase Waypoint, Tactical Command Wing
Data from the engagement poured over the consoles as scores of engineers and junior officers recorded and processed it into the Dominion TacNet. Between lives feeds and active and passive sensor readouts, the influx of information had already doubled the Dominion's shoddy and outdated file on the Shivans. An Ensign downloaded the statistics on the Dominion battle group and the data on the latest Shivan wave onto a padd and walked over to his supervisor.
"Commander, from the latest readouts and calculations, Battle Group Delta will probably survive this engagement with moderate to heavy damage depending on the ship and how much power is pumped into the shields. However, with no known way to track the Shivans' movements, we have no idea if or when another, possibly bigger wave will arrive."

The Commander, seated at a large desk covered in consoles and holographic displays and on a raised platform at the rear of the room, looked over the padd and nodded approvingly.
"Good work Ensign. This information will prove valuable in dictating our next move. You have quite possibly changed the outcome of this skirmish."

The Ensign saluted and returned to his station. The Captain hit a button on his desk and a channel opened to Ops.
"Admiral, the latest calculations show that Jameson will prevail through the second wave of Shivans. Though if another arrives, we will need to be ready to relieve his battle group with a task force, possibly a fleet detachment."

"Very good Captain, it will be seen to. Ops out."

Shortly thereafter eight Strike Cruisers, 5 War Cruisers, 3 Omega Cruisers, 2 carriers and two Ravens positioned themselves at the nearest jump corridor in case things did not proceed as predicted.

Meikah watched with satisfaction as the Shivan cruisers detonated, the wave of fire annihilating them. Turning, she looked at the bridge crew. "Damage Report?" The Ensign monitored the incoming telemetry.

"Well, the destroyers Hawkins and Pearl suffered moderate draining of their shields, and we got hit but it was nothing major. Others were hit more than we were. since the enemy unleashed their other weapons on them." The Captain nodded.

"Very well. Mariah?" The holopad shimmered to show what looked to be an animated suit of armor.

"Yes. Captain?"

"Gather all the data we have on these nations as well as on the intruders we just fought. Send it to FLEETCOM and request another battlegroup be sent to aid and secure this area."

The A.I. bowed. "It will be done." It then faded out, just before the sensors detected the incoming Shivans.

"Ma'am incoming contacts. Sensor read more enemy ships coming out of subspace!" Meikah whirled to see the tactical map shift to reveal the thirteen new cruisers. "Enemy ships appear to be different than the ones before. Estimate that its a new class." The alarm went off as the newest ship appeared, larger than any of the other Shivan ships. The bridge crew was stunned. The computer tagged the fighters as they began to boil out of the ship. Meikah was the first to snap out of it.

"Have the destroyers power up their MAC cannons, and ready their pulse and missile arrays. Have the Courageous power up their energy beam projectors and ready their missiles and pulse lasers. Do the same for us." She pointed at the Shivam destroyer. "All fire is to be locked onto that single vessel. If we eliminate that ship, we will greatly decrease the threat level of the enemy."

"Yes ma'am!" The ships powered up their weapons and locked on the Shivan destroyer, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The fleet shifted, using small thrusts of anti-gravity to move them out of the way of any of the other fleets. The PD systems and Longsword squadrons readied themselves for the second wave, when it came.

Meikah watched as the Federal ships took a beating but retaliated with a massive wave of weaponry, the Artemis who fought on, battling the Shivan invaders and the Dominon, which was moving to engage the destroyer, and battling off fighters at the same time. Information on their weaponry and shielding came in, revealing the situation.

Their volley would have to come soon....

---------------------------

Aboard the Supercarrier Power of Truth...

An Ensign who was monitoring the battlenet of the Imperium soon noticed a new message. Reading it, his eyes widened and he turned. "Admiral Johnson?" The Fleet Admiral turned, his gray hair and sharp green eyes facing the Ensign.

"What is it, son?"

"We have just received a message from A.I 785, codenamed "Mariah". It concerns Battlegroup Bulldog that went to investigate that distress call." The Admiral nodded.

"Well, let's see what they have to show us." The screen flickered and data began scrolling it, schematics, blurry and unfinished, types of ships lining down the screen, power readings and recordings of weapons fire, images of the planet and the Shivan ships. A message popped up.

/start decryption package/

/start file/


"Battlegroup 234, CODENAME: "Bulldog" encountered distress beacon originating from a single satellite above a Class 3 planet. Planet was heavily scarred from planetary bombardment, and obvious signs of battle were evident, both on ground and in space.

Other galactic powers arrived soon after, recommend opening relations.

At 1110, a fleet of eight ships appeared from two of the moons in the system and began to attack us. Image received from the distress signal matched the enemy ships exactly. They opened fire on Battlegroup 234, and Bulldog replied. All other ships replied as well and enemy fleet was quickly neutralized.

New enemy fleet has appeared, large and with more powerful ships. Situation estimated to reach critical soon. Recommend sending two more battlegroups in for support. And prepare the Imperium for a possible attack, in case this does not go well.

/end file/

The Fleet Admiral stood up, quiet for a moment as he thought. "What nearby battlegroups are there, Ensign?" The Ensign checked the charts.

"We have a choice of Battlegroups Tango, Falcon, and Draco."

He studied the positioning of the three possible choices and he pointed to Falcon and Draco. "Send those two to reinforce Bulldog and get me HIGHCOM on the horn. We appear to have yet another problem."

----------------------

As soon as Falcon and Draco got the message, they immediately shifted, moving to Slipspace vectors. Within minutes, they were gone, heading towards the battle.

Grand Archangel Themistocles severed the communication between he and his subordinate Pletorus, and turned back to the gathered tribunal.

Themistocles spoke, "Gentlemen, is seems as if our allies have run into some trouble in a previously unclaimed sector of space. Our young Pletorus seems to believe that those whom our allies are engaging are in fact Shivans."As he said this, murmurs filled the chamber. Themistocles raised his voice and spoke over the medley, ". Considering the close proximity between us and them, naturally we would send support elements. However, our allies are capable of handling themselves, and I cannot justify drawing forces from other areas of priority until we confirm that those are in fact Shivans." The warriorking nodded to himself and sat down.

At the far end of the table, an archangel named Hadriel spoke up, "I volunteer what I can spare of my own guard."

"Then make it so.", said Themistocles.

About seven light minutes from where the battle raged, a pair of blue orbs only microns across popped out of nowhere. These orbs spontaneously swelled to the size of a large building, and then faded away. In their place a pair of medium sized frigates, broadcasting call signs TA-00616 and TA-91721, appeared. Blue fire blazed from the engines and the pair accelerated, the leader of the fire team opening a comm link to ESUS units.

"Attention, this is Lieutenant-Guardsman Turmures of Damasica, our primary orders are to confirm Shivan activity. This has been confirmed. We will be in range within an hour, are you in need of assistance?"

"Damage report?"

Malakouth begins running diagnostics in one window of his hud whilst his bridge crew begins to assess the situation. A young Koun'Nou'Kathi woman pipes up:

"Sir, that static discharge was from one of those new contacts, we still havent identified a class for them sir."

A man across the room, running commands through a console and looking at a systems diagram of the ship, calls out.

"We've got a few injuries from the impact turbulence, but apart from that, it seems like we've suffered no structural damage. The mag shields overloaded after we got hit by whatever that was, but we're power cycling them, should be back up in a second."

A humanoid woman beside him whacks her console fiercely with her palm.

"Sir, medium to long range targeting is out, it looks like they may have fried some of the sensor power grid, I'm dispatching a repair team right now."

Malakouth glares, typing on his holoscreen quickly, rerouting connections, bypassing decks and circuits.

"Cut power to Charge-Plates, The Elcerophants will just need refuel off of enemy fire, reroute power from the ventral LCA to the defense systems. Where are my shields?"

"Theyre comming back.... now!"

There is a low thrum within the bridge of the ship, which escalates and rises until it can no longer be heard. Debris of the station that had started gravitating towards the insanely massive ship suddenly is rocketing away, being repelled by the huge magnetic generators housed within the ship. Malakouth barks at the computer.

"computer, open channel to the Telrosian Forces."

The computer keys the channel with a tone.

"Telrosian forces, we're experiencing power failures all over the place, these new weapons are disrupting our power grid, We've lost targeting sensors, can you stream us your targeting data?"

His bridge crew immediately begins to reconfigure to remote targeting, drawing power from the engines to charge up the fore-facing LCA.

Eris System

"Sir, shields are holding at 100%, the Henderson reports 100% shield efficiency on their primary grid" Tactical Officer Herbert Young reported. "The enemy capital ships have been destroyed and the fighters are... wait... sir I am reading several new contacts jumping in around the third moon, their weapons are primed. As of yet I don't think that they are targeting us, our flotilla does not appear to have enough firepower to vanquish these reinforcements, suggesting a tactical with draw" the heavy set officer continued.

"Negative, set an intercept course, maintain distance between us and these 'Shivans'. Signal the Henderson to do the same. I want chronometric torpedoes loaded, when we are in range I want a full spread put on that leading ship. See if we can hammer them from a distance" Captain Pierce Peterson said.

The Bradley and Henderson moved to a long distance from the fleet and barraged them with several chronometric torpedo salvos. Only time would tell to see if this new fleet could also be beaten back.

OOC: Nauts are you streaming data to BNet? That'll give my frigates long range firing solutions.

The Shivans had been expecting fierce resistance. It almost pleased them to know they were right.

Others
Force substantial
As expected
Others
Agression peaking
Negative
Reinforce
Inquiry
Tactical Analysis
Determine maximum force
Exploit
Affermative
Reinforce
Destroyer 2
Escort Fleet
Affermative

Without hesitation, the Shivan fighters began converging on the Telrosian warships, intent on engaging thier fighter groups and bombarding thier vessels with missiles... and luring the other fighters to the area. They braved the Dominion anti-fighter barrages, losing fair numbers, but not enough to put a serious dent in the force.

The cruisers and destroyer hung back, all fourteen ships charging thier beam cannons. The small cannons of the Cains were nothing compared to the large heavy beam cannons the Demon mounted, an anti-capital ship beam presently locked onto The Will.

The fire being thrown at the Demon seemed to bounce harmlessly off its hull, compared to the more fragile Cain classes. The Shivans seemed protected somehow from temporal effects, but conventional weapons made noticable mark in the Demon's metal hide. As the Dominion ships approached, numerous heavy turrets turned to the crusiers, raining fire upon them to keep them away until the beams could be charged.

It took only thirty seconds for the noticable glow to be seen at the noses of the Cain class cruisers, and half that time again for two points of the Demon to glow even brighter. Thirteen light beams and two heavies screamed toward the Aegean vessel, as the battle got worse.

A second Demon class crusier, flanked by four ships that resembled the Cains only in structure, exited subspace behind the Colonial fleet. The four Lilith class heavy cruisers wasted no time in charging thier medium beam cannons all five ships began pounding out blast after blast from thier laser turrets.

There was nothing to indicate the Shivans were even close to done...

"Shields! Reinforce forward shields! Energy dispersion to maximum! Weapons target those beam cannons!" Jameson had gone from tense to full blown frantic as more ships arrived and they charged their weapons.

The bulk of the fire was rerouted to the Demon, letting the destroyer and Cains reel from the barrage. It all centered on the beam cannons. Jameson was determined not let a second shot get off on his watch.

Out of nowhere the Omega Cruiser Divine Vengeance listed hard to port as the shields failed and the shots were now impacting on the quickly weakening armor. Many of the bridge crew of the Talon looked on in horror, completely frozen. Never had any barrage been enough to bring down an Omega Cruiser.

All of a sudden, Divine Vengeance fired its engines, rocketing toward the Demon class cruiser. As it neared the enemy fire overwhelmed it, the warp core hitting critical and the animatter in the core detonating. The ship exploded in a brilliant light show right next to the Demon.
The remainder of the task force was rocked, but the sheilds were online. Just barely.

"Fo-...Focus your fire on the Cains once more," Jameson said between struggled breaths. He had every right to be in shock. One of the Dominion's premier warships, praised to be unkillable, had just gone up in flames.

The battle group returned its fire toward the Cain cruisers as the Hellion and its escorting Strike Cruiser moved in to fill the void where a ship crewed by six hundred and fifty souls had previously stood.

------Starbase Waypoint, Antares Fleet Yards------
The battle group jumped into the wormhole as soon as news had reached the TacNet that a ship was down. ETA ten minutes.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me"

The female tactical officer almost groans as she looks at her now partially-functioning console.

"Sir, those new ships are conducting a massive energy buildup sir, its probable that they have some kind of massive energy weapons."

Malakouth looks over at her, glaring.

"More good news I see..."

In the distance, he sees elcerophant fighers wizzing about, firing odly-colored blasts at the shivan fighters, ripping through their sheild and burning away their hull easily.

"Wait a minute..."

He snaps over to the Elcerophant archon, sitting behind him, looking in an almost meditative state.

"Archon T'zllan, recall your elcerophants as quickly as possible, I have a plan..."

Malakouth stops speaking as the archon and himself begin speaking telepathically.

Outside the massive hulls of the ship, the elcerophant fighters suddenly stop in their tracks. Each one of them turns, and faces The Will. They all slowly fade to a blue color, seemingly collected of tiny blue spheres of light. They all lurch forward, and disappear in a flash of tachyons.

The archon nods his head slowly. Malakouth smiles

"Lets pray to god this works..."

An alarm sounded as the map glowed a bright blue, with the incoming wave of fighters slamming towards the battlegroup. "Ma'am, we have incoming enemy fighters and lots of 'em." Meikah clenched her teeth. "Have all Longsword squadrons engage and focus all of the PD systems fire on the enemy ships. Keep them away from the fleet!" All fourteen squadrons peeled off and rushed to engage the Shivan fighters, firing an initial salvo of tracking, armor-piercing missiles before they became too close for anything but raw combat. Laser and plasma bolts were exchanged as the two waves clashed. Explosions punctuated space as they fought. To add to the hell that had been unleashed, the combined fire of all eight ships point defense systems unloaded on any enemy fighter they could target. Wave of wave of agile, cutting beams sliced through the darkness, seeking the tough metal of the Shivan ships.

"Ma'am, incoming message."

"Telrosian forces, we're experiencing power failures all over the place, these new weapons are disrupting our power grid, We've lost targeting sensors, can you stream us your targeting data?"

She nodded her assent and the Ensign sent the targeting data to the Will as they powered up another salvo. "FIRE!"

A wave of three energy beam projectors, powerful pulse lasers, hundreds of Archer missiles and fifty-four MAC rounds were fired from the battlegroup and sent tearing across the space between them and the Shivan Destroyer, all aimed at one point so as to overload the shielding and cause maximum damage. The energy beam projectors would hit first, their powerful beams cutting into the shields, followed up by the pulse laser beams, keeping that point weak. The missiles would weaken it even further, as well as do damage to other sections of the shield, and then the MAC's would either break through and hit or slam their full impact onto the unshielded ship.

That was the hope anyway......

All the while, the reinforcing battlegroups came closer and closer to arriving; but would they arrive in time?

The shipboard comuter on The Will beeps, signifying incoming targeting data. The female tactical officer reacts imediately, calibrating and firing off the LCA in round, all 15 tremendous canons firing one after another, a total of three salvos, 45 25m diameter shells flying at .75 C.

"Lets see what these bastards think of this!"

The alarms blared loudly with bright red glows, the ship shook wildly as weapons impacted the Republics aft shielding and rebounder's , Solomon stood on the bridge being shook by the impact, he could see out of the aft view screen the shields shimmering and rippling with bright white and blue light. Solomon looked to the ops officer as lights dimmed and the bridge reverberated with rumbling and crackling energy noises. “status report!?” The officer responded after taping his holographic console, his hands smoothly guiding over it. He peered in to to screen watching as reports rushed in about damage amongst the colonial fleet. The op officer hastily looked up to the general who by now was leaning on the central command platform in the middle of the bridge. He said with a hard set voice “Sir aft shielding is a 75% Port shielding is holding at 80% , we have some reports of blown out conduits on or maintenance decks in aft section four” Solomon quickly looked back over to the ops officer and said with a hard commanding voice as he stood up strait his hands moving to his sides. “All right, I want suppressive fire with every thing we got on those new ships, tell the fleet to prepare for a tactical jump on my say so! In pattern alpha, bravo one Fire!” Suddenly the op officer taped an automated firing sequence entering in the suppressive pattern dictated by the general.

The colonial fleet suddenly shifted fire with every thing they had, the new ships behind them were a big bullseye target in the tactical computers eyes, the ominous shivering darkness of space was filled with masses of fire, thousands of disruptor bolts raced out of Colonial ships, hundreds of crackling energetic beams flowing out of Colonial weapon banks, Gravimetric cannons crackled and recoiled again and again as they spat out large fast moving C frac shells with a halo of red and orange around them , the shells followed the Disruptor's right behind in a constant wave of fire targeting the most powerful ships first. Solomon then looked to the ops officer again and said with another commanding hard wave of orders. “Fire all missiles!” Suddenly the space between the two fleets were filled with even more bright colorful fire, large cruise missiles lunged out of Missiles tubes with stream s of blue and white behind them, these anti matter missiles could level a city , and now thousands of them from all ships were flying out to meet their foes.


The Destroyer UCS alliance Did not fair so well, its aft shields had collapsed its hull was being scared and slashed by flaming beams of death, flaming bits of plating floated off of the ship as its hull charred black from its usual chrome white color , it started to turn using its port shields as a barrier the shield rippled wildly as it absorbed some of the Fire, the destroyer returned fire furiously, firing cutter phasers, disruptor bolts and anti matter missiles from its weapons banks, unleashing a torrent of deadly fire that crackled through space. Solomon was on the Bridge of the republic when his ops officer reported the Alliance being hit. “Sir The alliance is hit its aft shields are down and hull integrity is severe to moderate , its turning to avoid fire on its damaged aft side right now the captain is reporting the port shields have sustained most of the fire and have been reduced to modest levels.” Solomon nodded and said in another commanding voice. “all right keep laying fire on them make sure all our fire is focused on the capital ships, let interceptor systems and lighting fields deal with the rest.” the ops officer nodded quickly taping on the bottoms.

The fleets fire power was now focused on all the capital ships behind them, massive waves of green crackling bolts, beam of energy screeching missiles and flaming C fractional projectiles filled the gap, lighting the ominous darkness of space with a heavenly but deadly glow , Solomon looked out with a grin his hands to his back as he observed his ships firing back, he could hear the recoiling disruptor cannons and GAC'S around the bridge. In The maintenance deck Crew men rushed around as conduits exploded now and again as the ship was stuck, a person yelled to a comrade. “Hey johnny! Get me those god damned Nano repair patches we just lost three conduits down here”

“Commin right up boss” said the other rushing with two glimmering chrome like vats of nano goo, the other man took it and opened it an emitter starting to focus a blue stream of particle energy on a burnt out charred part of of a panel, the others were doing the same, attempting to repair things before others went out, the area was busy technicians and engineers moved around with haste fixing up on panels and other objects , as they could hear the ship retaliating with full force, they looked up and hear what was going on momentarily, the sounds of the ship.. It was as almost the ship told them what was wrong when it was hit, the reverberating noises moved across .

Cease
Confirmation
Reinforce
Main Fleet
Entirety
Sufficient data collected
Affermative
Arriving: Lucifer
Affermative

The heavy beams the first Demon fired at the Aegean flagship streaked through the last location of the strange energy creatures the Aegeans employed. The Shivans sensed they had fallen into some trap...

But it mattered not.

The death throes of the Dominon battleship it had destroyed knocked out a large segment of its forward shields, allowing its surviving comrades unimpeded shots at the destroyer's hull. Weapons mangled and tore at the warships, destroying one of its heavy beam cannons and several lesser system. Fire from the Telrosians and Aegeans slammed into the other side of the ship, destroying its other cannon and most of the forward subsystems. Listing and spewing plasma from ruptured conduits, the destroyer looked like some great wounded creature, waiting to die...

But it mattered not.

The second destroyer and its Lilith escorts that had surprised the Colonial forces each shuddered under the Colonial retort, thier shields barely holding. Many shots managed to slip through unhindered, and two of the Liliths suffered assaults that ended thier service to the Shivans. Explosions spread from the bow where the missiles had hit to the stern, until the entire ship detonated, sending debris and waves of energy in all directions. The surviving Liliths and Demon faired better, but the damage was quite noticable...

But it mattered not.

A third Destroyer-sized subspace gate glowed to life on the edge of the battle zone, then a fourth, then twelve. With each Destroyer gate, a dozen cruiser-sized subspace rifts were torn in the fabric of spacetime. Gate after gate opened, and it was apparent this force was hundreds of times more powerful than the recon task force sent to engage the nations now aligned against the Shivans. But they kept comming...

In the center of thier formation, another portal opened, slightly bigger than those of the Demon classes. What emerged was familiar, to the ghosts of the Erisans... and those who saw the image they captured.

Basking in the light of the subspace gates, the Lucifer hung in the void, seemingly glaring at the ships that had opposed the Shivans. This was the force that in hours sterilized a star system.

This was the Lucifer Fleet...

Since micro-jumping for the last time to within a few scant light-seconds of the now raging conflict, the Expeditionary fleet had been cataloging as much information as the data-sinks could possibly hold on the activities and overall designs of the other ships present. Known and unknown. They had remained in black-body mode, using up large portions of their power-sinks in order to remain hidden. Harrison now hoped that the endless barrage of weapon's fire from the Shivans and the would-be heroes aided in masking their presence.

The bridge was a mess of gunmetal constructs; minimalist consoles and thick leather chairs lit by the soft white glow of the radFlare illuminating every square inch of the twenty-by-twenty-by-ten meter room. There were seven stations in total, all of them containing an officer of some kind either doing their work in real time, or within the appropriate node of the datasphere. Harrison's seat lay at the back of the room, and was elevated to give him a clear view of operations as they went on around him, though he always opted to use the myriad of bridge-cameras and sensors to apprehend his surroundings.

Harrison now looked in casual dismay at the battle as it progressed on the canvas of morphing colors dancing above the projector situated in the center of the bridge-floor. The holosphere was very spartan in the picture it displayed. Stars, planets, asteroids, ship-debris, dust clouds; anything not directly relevant to the present battle was omitted. Instead, dashing lines indicative of weapons fire whipped across the image, missing completely, barely, or slamming right into perfect pixilized representations of the ships currently engaging one another. As it was, the supposed allies were winning based on the TCTA assessment. Then reinforcements arrived.

Suddenly gravitic sensors whined in hysteria as huge mass shadows began reshaping the regions space-time geography. Cubical insets appeared on the holosphere, recording new data as it was received, displaying likely capabilities and tossing out old information as the aSI scrapped it as worthless. SciOps and TacOps officers on every ship ran through the information at speeds that pushed the limits of their enhancements and implants. Harrison could only look on with a sense of mild disbelief as events unfolded in front of him.

He knew that the first set of cruisers, easy as they were to deal with, were at best a garrison for the system. The influx of reinforcements only reassured him of that fact. Why, he wondered, any space-borne entity necessarily needed to garrison a system for an invasion was beyond him, he only knew that such a display of force against overwhelming odds was not a sign of hubris; it was a sign of things to come.

"Things could be going better, I suppose." Gordae said as he processed even more data.

"That's an understatement if I ever heard one," Harrison replied, "The allies have managed to wipe the floor with the garrisoning forces, but even then they still took moderate damage. Now a backup has arrived in craft with unknown but presumed lethal capabilities and no one has a contingency plan." Harrison walked down the decline towards the holosphere to get a closer look, to underscore the facts in his mind with an image of the cold, hard truth.

"Plus they've almost killed us about a million times now with an inability to target properly." Harrison exclaimed with an exacerbated expression. The amount of ordnance in space is typically irrelevant given the volumes involved. Here, though, it was actually becoming hazardous for every ship in the area to be where so much was hurled about with casual disregard for accuracy or collateral when some of it hits a pre-Ascension society in a few centuries. It also made acquiring reliable firing solutions difficult in the event that the fleet decided to get involved; the constant maneuvering to avoid being incinerated by inordinate amounts of destruction in the area made every planned vector obsolete within moments.

"At this rate there won't be anyone around to fire off any more shots we have to worry about." Gordae said with a wry smile.

"Not funny," Yvir chipped in, "We're seriously, um, 'screwed' if we stay here for much longer without doing anything."

"Yvir has a point." Gordae cleared his throat and transmitted the information - a large collection of graphs and summaries of likely scenarios - over the local datanode. "Given the tendencies of all nations present, it's likely that reinforcements from their side will arrive to deal with this new threat. These aliens will in turn bring in more ships, and the cycle will continue until one side exhausts the other. All the while..."

Harrison wasn't dumb, "Yeah, yeah, we're sitting ducks for the exponential increases in firepower that is unleashed in this area."

"Retreat?" Yvir asked.

"Yes, but we'll give the invaders something radioactive to chew on first. If anything, it'll turn the tide of the battle in the favor of the defenders at least for a few minutes." Gordae said with a smile.

"That assumes our munitions will accomplish anything," Harrison said, returning to his seat with an expression of loathing broken across his aged face. "But, we've go nothing to lose, and it may do something to keep the battle in the favor of the defenders."

"Shit!" Yvir said glaring into the holosphere as the Lucifer arrived to dominate the scene. Everyone else was in an equal amount of shock, though part of it came from hearing Yvir curse.

"Alright, we're getting out of here, now." Harrison said activating the various implants that connected to his seat.

"Canceling firing sequences."

"Hold up Gordae, we're going to leave these bastards with a parting gift."

"Ready when you are." Gordae said with a digital hand over the fire controls.

--

The CEF Damnation and her four companions were now scattered about within half an AU of the current battle after a short series of micro-jumps and rushed maneuvering. At that distance one felt that the battle was too far away to be of any concern, even when stray shots came dangerously close to annihilating the black bodied craft. It was only when the Lucifer fleet arrived did things change.

Being surrounded by an enemy force with no attempts to be diplomatic, with no regard for ships already lost, and no care for morality, made events feel all the more close. Every Skylord, officer, and ensign felt the same thing: dread.

Even if the events in this system did not necessitate danger, or even worry, to Electron proper, witnessing the rise of a monster seeking the unequivocal destruction of other species, without reason, gave everyone a sense of obligation; even if the military itself would have been content to leave a d-cube in the area to collect information.

It was this sent that spurred Skylord Harrison Rakovsky to give following orders.

Each craft immediately micro-jumped a short-distance away from the daunting Lucifer, abandoning all stealth options and enshrouding themselves in the crackling violet energies of shielding to protect themselves from the retaliation following their impudent maneuvers. They were now perfectly visible to anyone who gave that area of space a casual glance with any manner of sensor systems, or even crude optical relays.

They were each accelerating at the Lucifer at random vectors, glowing like the embers of a dying fire in the dead of night.

Particle lances charged beyond safe tolerances, masers bloomed into burning bruise-colored brilliance, and hatches exploded open to reveal the ominous monsters resting underneath.

Drones cycled through targeting vectors and processed information as it became available. All were ready for their first and only flight.

Just before the assault began, however, a cacophony of jamming washed through the area across the entire spectrum. Bursts of white-noise road along more static and predictable patterns of interference except on a small frequency of the hyszone that allowed all drones and missiles to communicate and target effectively.

Then, within only five-seconds of making their entrance, a massive barrage fire shattered the cosmos is energies that stars themselves were humbled by.

Space was overtaken by a rushing ethereal tide of radiant amethyst as the masers lanced towards the Lucifer's abhorrent form.

Bolts of azure incandescence streaked across the void in a silent charge of energized neutrons from the spinal particle lances, shaming the underlying microwave lightshow in illumination.

Thousands of missiles poured out of their racks, leaving behind an ashen trail of exhaust barely visible to the naked eye. Nearly all of them were targeted against Shivan fighters, detonating in a cataclysmic thermonuclear explosion whenever they hit. Hundreds of others were slightly larger, accelerating at over a thousand gees towards the Lucifer, detonating in a blast yielding in the high-gigaton range from the power-sinks. They gave the five ships wings of gray sinew as their onslaught pressed onward.

Finally, over ten-thousand drones rushed from their frames upon electromagnetic sleds, raging through space upon gravitic accelerators. Each one was nothing more than a lightly-shielded hull wrapped around a highly expensive sensor-suite, engine, and an overclocked power-core armed with a graser at the front of their spherical bodies.

They dashed towards the Lucifer in a kamikaze charge, moving in erratic formations, doing their best to avoid counter-measures while also remaining in an attack vector that maximized the success of their insanity.

Those that made it would explode in nearly the same gigaton-level fury of the missiles that preceded them. Casting a blanket of ultra-hard radiation across the cosmos.

After the drones exited their racks and assaulted the Lucifer, all five ships accelerated away from the beast and its escorts, Hard. Initiating their jump drives and preparing to exit while transmitting one short single.

To anyone that remains, good luck.

A large wormhole opened up off to the port side of the beleaguered battle group. It glowed an angry, fiery red. Out of it poured the Dominion Task Force sent to relieve Jameson and his forces.

"Captain Jameson, this is Vice Admiral Stukov. You have served your Dominion well, fall back through the wormhole, we'll avenge our comrades, don't you worry."

"Aye sir, and thank you," Jameson replied amidst exploding conduits and shots hitting and collapsing their sheilds.

The Hellion, Eagle's Talon, Nova's Fury, Nova's Wrath, and Divine Hammer fell back through the wormhole as it closed, leaving a fresh new force of eight Strike Cruisers, 5 War Cruisers, 3 Omega Cruisers, 2 carriers and two Ravens took its place. The plasma weapons on all vessels were alight and it almost looked like the fleet was completely ablaze in rage over the deaths of their comrades. They targeted the remainder of the group Jameson had been attacking, and fired. The plasma tore through space, rocketing toward the ailing Destroyer group. It was followed moments later with a torpedo barrage unleashed in full ferocity and coupled with phasers. 200 fighters total swarmed out of the carrier and moved toward the group, raking it weith cannon fire and missiles as the Task Force continued an unrelenting bombardment.

"Attention Task Force Omega, this is Vice Admiral Stukov. Now hear this, we have just detected a massive Shivan war fleet emerging around us on seemingly all sides. We WILL hold this area as a jump corridor to allow reinforcements. We owe it to our fallen comrades, and to the Erisians dead and dying on that planet. Humanity was threatened once before by this menace. They thought us an insignificant child race, unable to defend itself from itself, letalone from an outside force. We proved them wrong once, with cost of thousands of lives. Now the bloody proving ground is open again, and our fate is in our hands. If today is the day we shall meet our almighty creator, then I say so be it! We'll take the entire Shivan armada with us! This bombardment stops for nothing and no one!"

Cheers rocked the fleet as the deadly barrage continued. Areas around the torpedo tubes glowed red from overheating, yet the fire never let up.

-----Starbase Waypoint-----
The battle group emerged through the wormhole, the cost of battle all too apparent. There was one ship less than when they left, scorch marks covered the vessels, and their energy were all but spent when they were dumped into the weapons systems. RS-110 Maintainence vessels rocketed over to them and immediately deployed crews to get to work as the ships were towed to spacedock.

"Admiral," a Leutenant Cammander addressed Jericho, "We just started recieving data from Task Force Zeta. It seems what Jameson fought was just a recon force. Sir, their fleet has arrived. Stukov is keeping one area open as a jump corridor for reinforcements and is letting loose with everything arsenal to maintain a hold."

"I'll be damned. We should alert the President about this. It's looking like we'll be in all out war soon enough. Prep the Fleet Yards, get all spacedocks ready to recieve damaged vessels and alert the medical bay to be ready to institute triage. Also, get Admiral Piett on the horn. Have Hyperion Fleet ready for deployment with Subjugator and Sentinel Fleets on active patrol and security throughout the sector. If this is a repeat of the last Shivan War, the Saving Grace will be needed again. It seems once again, the giant has been awakened."

The proper communiques were sent and the space docks were moved into position as all crews in the Dominion's largest military compound shy of the homeworld of Epsilon Prime went to full action readiness. Thousands of ships streaked out of it and towards predetermined patrol routes of the Dominion Sector. A large detail of warships were left behind as well as 24 more Oega Cruisers to reinforce the Task Force in necessary...Or engage pursuing forces if the Task Force was beaten back.

Solomon quickly looked up His jaw almost dropping, as he stood up strait, his Xo already peering at the ominous large beast before them, the ship shook from the streams of explosions some consoles and panels sparking, the ops officer peering at the general and the xo with expectations of orders. The General looked to the xo and the xo looked back in a split second they nodded almost knowing exactly what each of them was going to say , they both looked back and at the same time they said “Get us the hell out of here full engine power!” the ops officer nodded taping on his holographic console that was now flickering in during the impacts on the ships. The ships shields violently reacted with incoming waves projectiles and energy fire shimmering with white and blue light.

Solomon quickly looked to ops again and said with a commanding hard voice “before we go launch a few probes!” the ops officer nodded and before long small inconspicuous projectiles fled from several tubes under each ship, they moved like space junk, floating every so gently in the massively battle lit area of space. Gates of crackling energy opened in front of each colonial ship. They're massive glimmering body's now well light because of shield reactions rushing in to the gates turning in to blue and white orbs of energy.. the crackling gates of arcing electrical and chaotic energy soon closed.
Several moments later They opened several AU away from a massive star fortress, the energy gates crackling to life as they ripped space open with blue arcs of chaotic lighting, orbs of energy flowing out and reforming in to what was ships. He ships that came through were battered and damaged, the alliance barely limping along, its flaming charred aft and port sections clearly visible as hull pieces flung away from it in to the darkness of space. The UCS victory faired no better , The curiser lost several turrets ripped from the hull when energy beams gashed through the shielding and heavy armor, it had a once 40 meter flaming gash across its starboard section , its scars visible from quiet a distance.

The republic faired some what better it gently shimmered in the white light of the near by star as its body ominously moved with the rest of the fleet slowly and gently, its engines pushing it along through the bleakness and ominous silence . Solomon sat back in the ready room chair looking out of the holographic view port he sighed gently as he leaned back on the chair, a cigar in his mouth again, the light brown scotch on the metallic table. He swiveled his chair from looking out in to space over to a desk computer taping on the holographic console. His voice was coarse and rough, as he brought up station the commander, he said “ I want you guys to send a copy of what recorded and what we record over to the joint chiefs and the president, I fear these things are going to come to us before we find them again. The commander on the station nodded his black hair and brown eyes peering in to the screen at the older general. “Yes sir right away”

The president walked in to the large planetary defense station, his black suit shimmered in the teal and white light as he walked in to the massive main room, thousands of holographic computer consoles manned by people, large holographic 3d maps of areas of space known and semi known, thousands of images of friendly and not so friendly forces appeared on monitors all around. Atlas arm control stations were at the other side of the facility , guarded by power armored troops by huge metallic doors. Robert walked In to another room guarded by normal marines, as he entered he saw th joint chiefs sitting down with a large colonial seal in a digital monitor behind the head chair of the large metallic table. Older men and younger men stood up saluting, the president smiled as he walked in tote softly light room. He said with a smooth commanding voice. “As you were..” the men sat down and looked up to the president. Robert sat down shifting the chair out gently and moving in to the table, his smooth hands resting on the metallic table. He said as he leaned in with another smooth voice. “Alright what do we have?” General caravel an older man with Grey hair and a built body stood up, his blue uniform glimmering gently in the light of the area. He started to speak in a rough voice as he put images of the encounter on the digital screen, every one went wide eyed and sat up. Caravel spoke.
“Mr president, I don't have to tell you what these are , or who these are ships from, General Solomon had engaged the enemy several light years from Federal borders, this is who they engaged, they did better then expected, out numbered and out maneuvered.” The president started to speak quickly with a look at the general. “They're back,I know the Union had not been involved in the first two conflicts with these things, but we did observe what happened...” The general nodded again and said “Indeed sir, right now My recommendations and the joint chiefs recommendations is to put all forces on Defcon 2 , as well as re deploying available fleets from current conflicts.” the president nodded saying with a soft voice “ agreed alright people lets prepare our defenses, I want to set up every thing possible.” the stood up and stared to walk out.. .

Defcon 2.. this alert status not only re deploys and deploys fleets for defense, but communications between all military units are encrypted even from most allies, star gates are set up in case of evacuation. The Out lying worlds have military and national guard units deployed on the street, ships are deployed in orbit, and out laying travel is restricted. Emergency provisions as made for temporary government and evacuations. Atlas arms are prepared for firing. computer systems all high level computers are locked , and mobile ship yards deployed in to un-specified areas..

The tactical map flared as the impacts of the Aegean and Dominion salvoes, as well as their own, slammed into the Shivan Destroyer. “Direct hit, ma’am. Sensors read forward and side shields collapsed. Heavy damage all across the board, we have that duck drowning in the water.” Meikah grinned. They watched as the Colonial ships fired back, their salvos hammering the enemy, destroying two cruisers. Despite the fierce attacks these invaders had unleashed, they were winning. Soon, they would defeat their reinforcements and wipe this system clean.

“Why don’t we see if we can put it out of its misery? Prepare another salvo and prepare message for the battlegroups, and inform them-“. Whatever she was going to say was lost to time as the alarm shrieked.

“Ma’am, sensors are reading multiple subspace ruptures. Four….eight….twelve….dear god, they are opening up everywhere!” As the ships streamed in, they watched in horror as what looked like a bottomless pit of Shivans began pouring out of the breach they made in space into the battle. “I am counting numerous enemy ships…there’s too many for the sensors to categorize!” Meikah was about to roar orders to come about and engage when they saw the Lucifer. The Ensign at the sensor station started to tremble.

“Ma’am….that ships perfectly fits the image that we received from the satellite.” A hush fell over the bridge crew. Meikah watched as they continue to stream through.

“Damn….this is too much, even for our reinforcements.” She clenched her teeth in frustration, before gripping the railing and barked out orders. “Pull back all fighters and launch every single Archer missile we have left into that cloud of fighters. I don’t want them pursuing us. Prepare the battlegroup to move to course four-five-seven-two, and to shunt extra power to the engines and Slipspace capacitors. Focus the point defense systems on any fighters that escape. Send a message to Battlegroups Falcon and Draco, and tell them to stay away and report to FLEETCOM, and that we will be joining them shortly.” The Longsword squadrons pull back and began heading to their hangars. A final salvo of hundreds of Archer missiles streaked through space and slammed into the cloud of Shivan fighters. If any still chose to head for the fleet, they were met with an overwhelming field of point defense laser fire.

“Ma’am, the fleet is ready to leave, we only need the order.” Meikah smiled grimly.

”Not before we say hello, Ensign. Remove all safety locks on the Shiva missiles for the entire battlegroup and lock on the enemy ship.” The Ensign quickly looked at her, shock on her features but at seeing the determination on her face, gulped and nodded.

”Taking off the locks…..locks disabled. Prepping them for launch….locking onto the enemy ship…..Enemy ship locked on. The entire battlegroup reports that it’s missiles are ready. We await your order.” Meikah closed her eyes.

”Fire.” The sides of the Imperial ships flashed with light as forty-two Shiva-class nuclear warheads were launched at the Lucifer. “Alright, come about.” The fleet shifted several degrees to the left and began to head out.

“Slipspace capacitors charging….Leaving in five….four…three…”

The alarm blared as the stealthed ships appeared next to the Lucifer. “Ma’am, unknown ships have appeared next to the enemy flagship! They are in the danger zone for the nukes!”

Meikah closed her eyes. “Nothing we can do about it now. Ensign.”

”…two….one…MARK!” The entire fleet flashed blue and vanished into Slipspace fleeing the battle.


1210 hours, Epsilon Eridani system

A blue flash appeared in the void of space and Battlegroup Bulldog appeared. Meikah sighed. “Report.”

“Ma’am, all ships have come out of Slipspace. We lost five Longsword squadrons against the enemy.” Meikah put a hand over her eyes. Forty men and women killed….and that was just a skirmish… A console beeped.

”Receiving incoming transmission…It’s from Fleet Admiral Johnson!” Meikah started.

”Put it through!” The stern, old face of Derek Johnson appeared on their monitors.

“Hello Captain Meikah. I heard you just had a spot of trouble. Mind informing us unenlightened people as to what is going on?” Meikah took a deep breath and gave a quick summary as to what had happened in Sector 312-C.

“…and that’s about it, sir. I am sending you our sensor logs and video records.” Johnson nodded.

”Understood. You did a fine job today, Captain. You didn’t win but sometimes, winning in battle isn’t always the most important thing. The Imperium will be ready for this new threat. Get your battlegroup into the shipyards at Reach and we will discuss more there.”

”Yes sir.”

And so it was, that the Imperium now entered what would be known as the next round of the Shivan Wars…..

Somehow, the Shivans weren't surprised that the Lucifer was the target of almost every ship fleeing the system. A lone ship, appearing to be the flagship, larger than the units that surrounded it? It simply screamed "target me" in any language.

The fools...

The Lucifer was bathed in light as laser blasts and missiles appeared to smash into its hull. Not a single point defense shot was fired, even as the drones impacted. It seemed almost that it welcomed the barrage. For a brief, beautiful moment, it looked as if the Eris System had a second star, a brilliant aura that truely fit the name Lucifer eminating from the ship.

Then the light and energy from the blasts vanished, seemingly drawn into the Lucifer itself. Not a single impact was apparent, very little of the energy and radiation was spread to the rest of the fleet. The massive Superdestroyer simply absorbed everything, leaving only a thin halo of debris from the explosives sent against it, hanging pitifully around its bow.

The fighters faired much worse, but they were expendable in the eyes of the Shivans. If hundreds fell, thousands would take thier place from any of the hundreds of Demons in the system.

Demons that turned thier attention to the forces that remained, charging thier heavy beam cannons and unleashing a hellish, but intentionally innaccurate barrage at the Blademasterians, Metalinauts, and Dominion ships. Smaller laser blasts rained upon the Aegean flagship, and anything else that caught the fleet's eye.

All the while, the Lucifer hung there in the void... amused...

Meanwhile, aboard the Traileric frigates, a light was blinking.

"Lieutenant, targets in range of our long-toms. Should I achieve a firing solution?" unguided ordinance officer Ridley Etorpolis asked.

"As soon as possible," answered the Damascan, "and get me a connection to the TA-00616."

On board the other frigate, the shimmery goo that was a communication screen sprang to life, taking the form of Turmures's face.

"Guardsman, we have a firing solution, commence on my mark." The fireteam leader said. The second guardsman wordlessly acquiesced. Within minutes, the four main cannons of the two vessels let fly a volley across the two light minute void of space, dead on track for the Lucifer and far too fast to track by sensor.

The redish beams of energy course through space, blasting past where the elcerophants were, streaking towards The will Malakouth glares intently at the beams, calculating.

" ... and NOW!"

The Archon moves his hand over a small crystalline orb, suspended before him, a nexus crystal. these are the same devices used to create the Aegean jumpdrive, however they emit a unique faster than light energy signature, one which Elcerophants can perceive clearly over great distances. His palm glows, as the energy feeds from his own form into the crystal. He says one word, which echoes through space in the form of a small shockwave...

"Arise..."

The shivan beam weapons scream towards the hull, distances closing, 200 meters, 150, 100, and then suddenly there is a huge flash of reddish light, like a small red star, blinding light spewing forth from where The Will. As the phosphorescence clears, it is perfectly clear what has happened.

Around The Will of Aegeus there is a bright red glow, almost like a tiny aura, making it look eerily like the shivan ships shooting at this temporary alliance of forces. All around the ships, Elcerophants crackle, filled to the brim with the energy of the shivan beam weapons. Several elcerophants, located at the plasma-induction cannons used for creating the Jump-Vortex begin converting the energy into a greenish blue, the Aegean energy signature.

In the bridge, malakouth grins like a ghoul, and stares at his adversaries.

"Not so easily beaten, are we?"

The engeneering tech pipes up

"Sir, our power grid is operating at 220%! All systems full operational!"

"Exelent. Focus power to engines, charge the planetary bombardment array."

The rolls the ship onto its side as it menuvers strikingly fast, revealing the underbelly of the ship. on the bottom of the ship, ports open all over, tucked into every nook and crany, revealing more plasma induction generators. The red field disapears as the energy is leached away, and thirty small blue balls apear beneith the ship, pointing at the enemy forces.

"Engage Nexus-generators and fire."

The blue balls explode into vortexes of green and blue light, lightning radiating out from the holes in spacetime. the vortexes hold open as a huge barrage of shells spews forth from the jump holes, shells of all range of sizes, all flying from speeds ranging from a few thousand miles per hour, to .85 C.

The mass of shells, covering an area roughly the size of The Will itself blasts across space.

“Sir, weapons ineffective against the large target!”

“Understood, focus fire on the smaller ships, all ships this is Artemis, recommend we move to maximum distance”

“Confirmed Artemis, formation switch heading, we are feeding new nav data now.”

The small squadron of Siegeships realigned itself, accelerating further away from the hellfire of destruction the Shivan fleet was directing at it. The Artemis was horribly scarred, jagged rips running across her hull, whole sections of the ship exposed to space. About half her crew was dead. The other three were only slightly better off, their powerful shields reduced to nothing in mere salvoes. They still continued to belch missiles, regardless of the damage, the huge mass drivers firing a Type XII shipkiller every three minutes.

At the number seven starboard tube, Crewman Gej had little knowledge of the events around him, beyond the fact that he was the last crewman alive in his weapons mount. He had abandoned his post at the loading mechanism in favor of the still-functioning fire control station, feeding the targeting data into the missiles as they were loaded. The other three crewman who manned the number seven tube had been vaporized when an enemy weapon blew through his compartment. Staring out through his suit’s faceplate, he could see open space just beyond the workstation screen. It had been a small miracle that he hadn’t been killed, and that the station was still functional.

On the bridge, Captain Jal’Ahn barked orders as the damage control teams swarmed around the holo-tank’s emitters trying to determine why it was nonfunctional. Without a clear picture of the battle, the Artemis was forced to rely on the other three ships for targeting and maneuvering data, when Jal’Ahn’s superiority meant he should be commanding the squadron. He was most displeased.

Resistance continuing
Unexpected
Affermative
Hypothesis: Others are afraid
Affermative
Irrational refusal to withdraw in the face of superior forces
Increasingly desperate attacks
Signs of a cornered foe
Affermative
Reasons
Irrelevant. No prior contact.
Curious
Affermative
Prepare for Subspace shockwave
Incomming: Charon
Affermative

The shells fired by the Traileric vessels were true to thier mark, striking the Lucifer's sheath shielding on its bow... then stopping. All kinetic energy was sapped, leaving the shells to float away, harmless to the Lucifer, but less so to the SF Dragon fighter that found one in its path and rammed it with enough speed to shatter its shields and reduce it to space debris and an explosion.

The massive Superdestroyer simply angled more toward the offending ships, two bright flashes at its bow the only warning before it fired its flux cannons, each blast aimed at a different ship. A Demon, unfortunately, found its way between the Lucifer and one of the Frigates. The Lucifer's flux cannon tore through its shields and armor like wet paper, the Destroyer doing nothing to impede the progress of the glowing beam as it streaked toward the Traileric frigates.

The retort from Aegeus and Blademasters was slightly more effective. The Blademasterian missiles managing to seriously wound three Demons and destroying outright thirteen Cain class cruisers before the Shivans began using thier bombers to intercept them. The Aegeans found that even Shivans weren't exactly willing to stand between that many shells and their command ships. Fighters, cruisers, and destroyers tried to scramble out of the way... A futile move for the larger ships.

Shells ripped through Cain shields and punched through thier bows, impacting with key points in thier power grids and causing overloads that tore the ships apart. Liliths, heavily armored and shielded cruisers far outpacing the Cain class, found shells imbedded in thier hull, their forward arms broken off under the force, or were simply destroyed when a high velocity shell pierced a critial point. Demons were shaken, battered, and had weapons disabled, some crippled to the point of no longer being able to fight. Any fighter that found itself in the path of a shell simply splattered and exploded on impact.

But in a fleet of several hundred Demons, such losses and wounds were trivial. The Demons' response against the Blademasterians was swift and fierce, fifty Demons and thirty Liliths opening up with everything they could bring to bear against the Seigeships.

A similar fleet of seventy destroyers and almost two hundred cruisers turned thier attention to the Dominion, refusing to allow them to remain in the system as their heavy, medium, and light beams slashed through the blackness of space at the ships that had relieved thier previous targets. They would drive the Dominion from thier new system, or destroy them all...

Aegeus, however, posed a problem. Another beam barrage could simply be absorbed again, resulting in another barrage. That would be a stupid move.

The Shivans were not stupid. Expendable, but not stupid.

Three Demons seemed to jump out, projecting subspace gates in front of thier bows and gliding out at a greater velocity than normal. Three gates opened similarly behind The Will, and the Demons charged forth, wreathed in light from thier jumps and speeding toward the Aegean ship, intent on ramming it into submission.

Charon incomming
All Ships
Subspace Anchors Engaged
Affermative

Just past the third moon of Eris, a small blue and white light flickered into being, slowly growing larger, and larger. It seemed like another destroyer incomming, but grew... and grew...

And continued to grow...

The young lieutenant had just enough time to calm down his guncrew who had managed to knock out a stray fighter before the flux cannon beam caught his lead frigate just below the foreward artillery turret. The paper thin screens and medium armored hull of a frigate many times smaller than a destroyer did little to even change the flux shot's course, this was evident due to the fact that much of the ships frontal compartments were blown out the back of the still accelerating engines before the FTL core destabalized and blew the sloop apart in a sphere of white fire.

Aboard TR-00616 the commanding line-sergeant watched wide eyed as a single round blew his commander to dust.

"Get me an emergency hyperspace coordinate set! Evasive man-"..Unfortuneatly the grisled middle aged navy engineer was cut short by the second cannon shot which crossed the ship's T and broke it's spine like a dry twig, resulting in the same fate as the other ship.

Parsecs away, aboard the hiveship Mordecai, Pletorus paced in the spacious inner core, still in connection with Sanctuary, and thus, his commander.

"My lord, I've lost two frigates and fifty good sappers. I know for a fact from data streamed to me before their honorable deaths that my fleet outnumbers and from what we saw outguns them. Edict demands that we..as you say..'go in guns blazing'.."..He paused.."My lord, I am the closest fleet. If we wait, our allies are in peril.." Another pause as something unseen spoke. "But, your holiness, if we strike now, any coming forces will not have a bulwark of ships and a planet at their disposal if we strike now!" Even as he speaks, Pletorus seems to realise he overstepped his limit. "Yes high king." The young man seems shaken, a little, and disconnects from the unseen communication link before exiting the hollow chamber and making the sojourn to his command bridge.

His ship's Patriarch hung suspended by a forest of cables in a tank of fluid. Six glowing eyeslits turned toward the Angel as he entered, other lesser ranking officers veritably were kissing the floor (It was rare that they saw their fleet lord).

After a brief nod, the cable-encumbered figure within the tank spoke to his king, "Shall I make a course for the Eris system?" The Patriarch, though beneath the Angel in rank, was far far older, and thus did not bother with groveling pleasantries.

"No, Phaliadricus..We are to hold our position and keep an eye on those Shivans..And can you believe this? If they come within a parsec of us we are to withdraw and await backup from Cordrus's hivefleet!" Indignantly, the robed, helm shook.

"I believe we should worry less on what rival will save us and more on if we will have a chance to run." The ancient Patriarch answered.

Pletorus had no response to that.

“All ships, this is Artemis, state jump drive charge status, we are fully charged.”

“This is Atlas, 70% charged.”

“Athena, 40%, our main capacitor bank took a direct hit, we had to switch to backups!”

“Terminus, 77% charge in the drive.”

“Artemis, this is Athena, we will hold the line, get back to command and inform them of the situation.”

“Negative Athena, we leave as a squadron, redirect to position four in formation, shut down your shields and divert energy to the capacitors.”

“Sir, recommend you take the Artemis and warn HQ, the three of us are more than capable of holding until Athena is ready to jump.”

“Negative Atlas, I don’t want to risk weakening the defensive grid.”

“With all due respect sir, it’s a wonder your ship is still in space, you’re not contributing much to the defensive grid, get home.”

It was true too; the Artemis had suffered the worst from the Shivan counter-attack. She had scarcely a deck not exposed to space, and nearly everything was on automatic control, less than fifty of the crew left alive. The ship was firing barely three missiles per salvo to her original thirty, and with ever-increasing intervals between shots. The number one and two fusion engines were gone, the number three operating at about 70% efficiency. The captain looked over the damage reports, sighed, and keyed his communicator.

“This is Artemis, confirmed, good luck, I expect to see you three on the Zeus in a few hours.”

His words were empty; all four captains knew the Artemis would be the only Blademasterian vessel to leave the system. Atlas would not let her sister ship, Athena go down alone, and the captain of the Terminus was much too headstrong to retreat, even in the face of this massively overwhelming firepower. Their eventual defeat would be the biggest blow to the Blademasterian Navy since its inception nearly 5,000 Terran years ago.

“Helm, spin up the jump drive, open radiators, let’s go home.”

“Aye aye sir”

The massive jump core, spanning the length of the ship began to glow white hot as the capacitors containing an immense charge dumped their energy directly onto the drive’s surface. The jump drive was horribly powerful, giving the vessel utilizing it the ability to span an immense distance in a matter of nanoseconds, but it was horribly inefficient, and the design had resisted all attempts to improve that. Nearly 70% of the energy pumped into the drive was emitted as heat, necessitating immense cooling systems on every jump-capable ship.

The Artemis vanished from space, the only reminders of her existence in the Eris system were the battle scars the Shivan ships now bore, and the wake of debris she had left behind.

The other three Siegeships continued their course, firing missile after missile at these foes. The Atlas was the first to succumb to the concentrated Shivan fire, a lucky hit piercing the antimatter storage bunker, vaporizing the ship is a brilliant flash of light. The other two continued firing missile after missile, the Type XII Shipkillers accelerating to meet their targets.

"Sir, defenses are holding very well. It seems that they are not paying us any mind aside from that one volley" commented a voice from the tactical station.

The captain leaned back in his chair and looked at the view screen. The two Metallinautsi light cruisers had emptied their ordinance into the Shivans. Yet, they seemed to keep coming, and worse, they were out of torpedoes and missiles, leaving only temporal disruptors, which were not to be used lightly in a skirmish such as this. He stroked his chin watching the Lucifer destroy one of it's own to fire at the Traileri vessels. "These... things are insane. They have so little value on life. Lieutenant Henrey, relay all of our combat logs and scans to the Bradley[i/] and tell them to return to base. If both of our vessels are lost, we lose valuable information, we will stay here and fight with the little ordinance we have left" the captain ordered. The bridge was silent.

The silence was broken by an acknowledging beep coming from the comm station that the [i]Bradley had received the signals and orders. On the view screen the Bradley was gobbled up by a small white tear in space, they were alone.

"Hard to port and bring us in as close as you can to that large vessel that is firing on our Traileri allies. Fire all batteries and don't stop until we are completely dry. We will go to our deaths fighting with the courage and honor that our race is known for!" the captain barked almost inspirationally.

"Yes sir!" the tactical officers replied with fervor.

The Henderson flew along side the Lucifer and emptied the last 48 chronometric torpedoes she had on the hellish vessel. After that she began to fire here measly point defense guns on the ship as she orbited the murderous craft.

Sparks flew from conduits all over the bridge of the Eagle's Vengeance as the shields took the bombardment and drained exponentially. Life support was flickering on decks 47-55 and one of the Strike Cruisers was listing badly to starboard.
"Sit-rep!," barked Stukov.

"Sir," the tactical officer responded, "the Strike Cruiser Zeta has suffered heavy damage, most of the other vessels have shields barely online-"

The ship was rocked violently by the force of the barrage.

"Very well," he sighed, resignation apparent in his voice, "we may have to...withdraw. Have the carrier Harbinger recall its fighters and power up its wormhole generators. The rest of the force will cover it. We shall join up with Hyperion Fleet before they jump to the edge of this sytem. Those are my orders, carry them out."

"Aye sir," the Ops officer replied.

The battle group assumed a defensive posture around the carrier as the Strike Cruiser Zeta finally succumbed to the enemy's fire and erupted in a shower of fire and debris. The fire was refocused upon the new threat to the battle group, its ferocity nonetheless unrelenting. The generators would be charged soon, though it would take a lot longer due to the energy drain of maintaining shields while the bombardment continued, and Stukov would leave the field.

But you tell your leaders, he thought as he looked at the force of hundreds attacking him, I'm coming back, and Hell's coming with me

(OOC: Sorry about the delay. Classwork caught up with me. Now that my final is over, however... It's go time. And by go time, I mean time for you to go away.)

Update
Charon incomming
Affermative
Subspace anchors steady
Affermative
Continue


The Shivan fleet only continued to press thier assault, firing on everything in sight that wasn't one of thier own, even the remaining wreckage from Eris.

The Lucifer's flux cannons again belched forth thier hellish beams as the Metallinauts vessel assailed it, intent on swatting away the vessel that dared challenge it. The smaller ships simply continued thier bombardment of anything that caught thier eye, so to speak, leaving thier flagship to fend for itself.

But regardless of the resistance, the massive subspace portal beyond the third moon grew bigger, and bigger. Many kilometers across, the moon nearest to it wobbled in its orbit from the gate's influence.

What emerged was a red ring (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v384/MachinaKyrios/Shivans/Support/SICharon.jpg), and within it, a second subspace portal...

Arrival: Charon
Overlay shockwave incomming
Affermative


As the first subspace portal began closing, the second within the ring grew brighter, and brighter, shining like a second sun. The Shivan bombardment even ended for a moment, the destroyers and cruisers seeming to admire the view.

The moment the first portal grew smaller than the second, however, all hell broke loose.

A blue and white tide swept forth in all directions at three quarters the speed of light, knocking the third moon out of orbit toward the planet and drawing the second toward its center. The Shivan vessels, save the Lucifer, shuddered as the wave struck them, but maintained steady, surrounded by a clear ruby aura. The wave nearly filled the system, rendering most of the space surrounding the Erisian sun a hellish, violent maelstrom of subspace shockwaves and gates leading to unknown parts. Entire planets of the Eris system vanished in the chaos, ripped asunder and send to distant ends of the galaxy, while distant planetoids and barren worlds were dragged into the system and ripped to shreds. The most dangerous factor, however, was when a second star was drawn into the system and flung into the first. The resulting explosion disrupted the entire system, flinging matter everywhere and forever altering the gravity that once kept the planets in thier places.

The storm would continue to rage for two weeks, but none of those who came to oppose the Shivans would see its end. When finally it cleared, the Shivans stood triumphant over the ravaged, ruined system.

Triumphant... And ready to take on the rest of this galaxy...

Orders
Establish forward base
Begin resource harvesting
Alert all Tartarus
Objectives
Explore
Expand
Exterminate
Affermative
Dispatch scouts
The others will be expecting us

Federal Sector IA-102 Monitoring Station

The small station spun lazily about its far-off dwarf star. Its extraordinary tilt was really not that big a deal; the wonders of artificial gravity and whatnot.

Having been severely understaffed due to the war, the personnel shortage was not severely important, as the sector it monitored was wholly unexciting. A few developing civilizations, pirates' nests, and cold, cold space.

A single crewman was manning the spherical, five-tiered Command Center (Command level in the middle, Systems second level, Science level above it; the two sub-levels are used for battle & damage control), its central holodisplay of Sector IA-102 casting a bluish light across all the levels.

The station had been aware of a rather perturbed patch of space in a developing spacefaring culture's star system, and a probe had been dispatched. The tumultuous disturbances of whatever had invaded the system had immediately destroyed the probe upon De-Folding.

Sensors had picked up the entrace of several fleets into the system, but Federal preoccupation with the Civil War had caused a resurgance in pre-war isolationism had negated any further action. High Command had issued orders merely to observe: "No action to be taken whatsoever." It was just another battle amongst the powers of the outside universe. Nothing to be worried about.

Until now.

A formerly small representation of the current skirmish in the so-called Discord System blossomed into a giant, roiling storm in space-time. Red light spewed from the display, coloring the walls and infusing the computing-crystal decks seemingly with blood.

"Bloody hell--", the Crewman shouted as he slammed his fist on the Alert control. Klaxons began to scream through the empty halls of the Station; only one other soul was present to be awakened.

The Crewman had picked his short, muscled frame up from his chair and had lumbered across the Command level to another panel just as the Station Commander, an Ensign only, shuffled through the door. He was buttoning the top fastener on the tall collar of his Officer's tunic, pumping his equally short, yet not-so-muscled legs, barely braking his run before skidding down into the Holopit.

"Roger, what the hell could be so damned important out here," the Ensign growled, motioning toward the displayed sector with his right arm.

The Crewman, Roger, briefly glanced over his left shoulder, growling back. "Yeah, well, we've got a problem here, Jonas," he said, pointing to the display before him. "Computer's got a match on that disturbance," he paused, whether for greater impact, or because he couldn't believe it himself, only he knows.

"What," Jonas asked, slightly taken aback.

"Shivans."

"@#$%."

The wormhole finally opened as the storm roared over the Dominion Task Force. Ther ships moved, or, rather, were buffeted into the wormhole. Some of the energies from the storm went with it.

A red vortex opened in Dominion space. The Task force poured out, hull breaches and scorching covering the entirety of most of the ships. The Vengeance looked the worse for wear. Her shield grid was totally fried, armor was literally burned away, showing entire decks underneath shimmering force fields. The wornhole had drained much of the storm's energies, but the force was still enough to require double the amount of tow ships to stop the Task Force. All engines were inoperative.

A good distance off of their port bow, a sea of black, gray, and purpleish debris floated around a massive construct. That debris was the thousand vessels of Hyperion Fleet, and the construct was the only Dominion ship ever to cripple a Shivan flagship: The Dominion Warship Saving Grace.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/DominionofRS/SG.jpg

She was a titan, with a height of 40km, a length of 10km, and a width of 20km, as well as boasting 80 plasma turrets, 30 plasma torpedo tubes, 1 conventional capable, 5 antimatter warhead torpedoes, 1 subspace ionic pulse cannon (anti planet/fleet weapon). It was the masterpiece of the combined efforts of both Dominion fleet yards, only one could be made.

Vice Admiral Stukov stepped out of the transporter pod and was greeted by the ship's commanding officer and Grand Admiral of the Dominion Starfleet Maximillian Piett.

"Alexei my friend, what the hell happened out there?" concern was apparent on Piett's face.

"Admiral, we had just opened a corridor back here when the Shivans unleashed some sort of superweapon. It shoved us through and damn near killed us all. I feel sorry for whoever was left to face it..."

"Well, fear not. They push, we punch. The modification to the tractor beam is still operational from our last encounter, and has been thoroughly tested. We'll see how tough they are when we drain their shields and pipe it into our forward cannon's charging array. However, unless we recieve further transmissions from that system, by order of the President we are to consider it lost and brace for some kind of Shivan probing attack along our borders. Defenses at the homeworld are on full alert and the suns in all three of our star systems have been mined with two layers of shield generators on stanby. Our revenge will come Alexei, just not right now."

Stukov nodded and turned his attention to the viewscreen as they finished their walk from the transporter room to the bridge. The view was awe inspiring to say the least. Hundreds of tiny support vessels darted in and out of the largest collection of Strike Cruisers, War Cruisers, Omega Cruisers, Ravens, Firestorms, Absolution class frigates, in one place in the history of the Dominion. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of fighters that were landing in the hangar bays. Both Sujugator and Sentinel Fleets were larger, but they were never concentrated, not with three star systems to police daily.

Well, Piett thought to himself, You've thrown a rock through the hornet's nest. Time to face the swarm

Somewhere in Deep Space

The Command center around Militant Senator Cassius abord the Aquilla Cruiser Luck of Legion was bustling with reports of UFO activity from Metallinautsi Ships in and around the Eris vicinity
"Ensign, Have we recieved engagement coordinates from the Metallinautsi fleet yet?"

"Yes Sir, The Commanding officer has forwarded coordinates of possible Shivan Fleet"

"Well then ensign, It looks like we have quite the task ahead of us"

"Yes sir, Quite"

All at once the engine drives of the Legion XII-A Recon interception Group, a force of 1 Aquilla Cruiser, 4 Leto frigates, and 1 Cato escort carrier, moved quietly towards the Eris vicinity and ultimatley towards their fate.

The area around the small cloaked Terranite vessels gently tore open, invisibly to all scanners as a pair of Rhea heavy cruisers slipped into the void. No heat signature, no mass disturbance, nothing. It was like they were ghosts, a perfect phase cloak. The small flotilla of Terran vessels had no idea that flanking them were two good sized temporal hunters capable of leveling a system of planets themselves.

Finally after temporal stability had been established they broke radio silence, "Greetings Terran allies, the is Commander Doughtry of the Metallinautsi warship Hammmer I am escorted by the Freedom. We figured if our allies have a hard on for death someone has got to come along and bail their asses out" he leaned back in his large and comfortable command chair and awaited a response.

The Luck of Legion, her trappings and their ghoslty allies entered the Eris system under cloak making the best of their incognito status. The circumstances were not as they seemed, the objective not as pellucid as assumed. The Terranite Scouting Force was here to draw the enemy into an engagment, but with alterior motives in mind, the Scout Dispatch had come for a collection of sorts.
The number two Escort Carrier, Hadrians' Wall, was outfitted with a Terran Marine Barracks, a contingency of 400 Terran Marines, and their Modified Assault Craft each Having their own cloaking device and Gravity Shield.
Their objective: to retrieve Shivans dead or alive by Intercepting and attempting a hull breach against multiple ships.
Militant Senator Cassius knew his role in this Mission, to ensure the survival of at least one or more of the Boarding craft and the Hadrians' Wall "Now that our Metallinautsi Bretheren have been informed of our true objectives, we must simply wait for a proper time to isolate the enemy and take them with us. Lieutenant Commander, the Metallinautsi cruisers must escort the Hadrians' Wall and her cargo to a more managable position While we act as the Bait"
Cassius had no regrets, Neither did his Lieutenant Commander,or any of the the other crew. All for that matter had volunteered. They knew it was better to die running at your enemy than away from him. He thought to himself "I suppose suicide is ownership. I...I...I suppose its better to terminate my cycle for the advancement of the Terranite progression"
Cassius was absorbing the full implications of his thought process when one of his many hardwired neural alarms began pulsing, images from cloaked probes ahead picked up a relativley isolated Pocket of Shivan Ships and broadcasted them instantaneously on his on his intra-retinal HUD, electirical implulses from Cassius' brain surged, and the Luck of Legion's nav.computers instantly plotted and adjusted to an intercept/ambush course. "Lieutenant Commander, put the marines on call," The Lieutenant Commander immediatley initiated mental protocols that were relayed to hundreds of waiting souls. "Ahh Cassius said to himself under his calm breathing, These cogs have begun to revolve. I can feel our fate churning around us."

"Escort the carrier to the way point," Commander Doughtry said wistfully, "I think we can do them a little better than that" he said with his youthful voice. Doughtry was the young rising star in the Federal Navy. He was a hot to trot hotshot and let that attitude influence his command. "Arm the light PSP batteries, when the bait has been released drop phase cloak and lay into them. After that I want a 360 spray of kenetic harpoons at 0 degrees then put the cloak back up and await further instructions" Doughtry ordered.

The bridge dimmed a little as battle mode was reached. The view screen showed the seemingly infested area if Eris. The bright crimson ants that were the shivans appearing in blue flashes of subspace. That is when Doughtry lost his invincible attitude and let the maturity of a commander wash over him. This was serious and this was real. Lives were going to be lost on this day, maybe not Metallinautsi. but certainly Terranite lives, it was his job to marginalize he loss. He chuckled in a somewhat repulsed manner, to think that loss of lives could be marginalized is a foreign concept to him. Metallinautsi people have always cherished life. Their Terranite allies on the other hand seem to lack the regard and reverence that they have for the precious gift.

"Militant-Senator, we are ready at your mark" he said.