NationStates Jolt Archive

Nearly two centuries ago the war had started, and for a dozen years the galaxy was embroiled in flame and destruction on a scale never before seen. Quadrillions had died, quintillions more rendered homeless. Planet after planet had been devastated, entire systems of orbital habitats wiped out. All that was left of those systems were clouds of metal particles, planets of nothing but igneous rock, with all heavy elements having sunk into the mantle, that were still warm to the touch. Others didn't exist at all anymore.

But the Confederacy had survived, victorious over the rebelling Dominion of Isolationist Colonies. The task of rebuilding was long and hard. On Planets that had been wiped clean of life, but not severely geologically harmed, had been re-terraformed to their former beauty. New orbital habitats had been built from the salvaged hulks of warships and infrastructure restored. Refugees had homes again and life returned to what was the pre-war standard.

The Confederacy had survived. The Confederacy had survived, and restored itself from the horrors of war to its once and present glory. It was time to show the universe that the Confederacy was still here. That up from the ashes of war it had built a guiding light in the darkness, a shining monument to the ability of sapient beings everywhere to prosper despite horrible odds, that the universe, cold and uncaring in its vastness, could be made warm and comforting by the sheer will of its inhabitants. It was time for the Confederacy to step back onto the stage and show that the final curtain will not fall as long as people live.

Empyion-Coordinator homeworld
Capital city of Hanoka

A vehicle was driving down the road towards the supreme council chambers in the north side of the city, inside was the supreme chairman and one of his aids. The woman cleared her throat "Are you sure you want to go through with this sir?" the aid asked the chairman "I have lived a long life, and a long political life, it is time the torch was passed to some one new, that is why I'm making this retirement announcement" Chairman Gilbert Durandal told him. Durandal had leaded the PLANTs for a long time and achieved the most symbolic victory in his political career. That victory was when he retook the Coordinator home world from Blue Cosmos and wiping them out from ZAFT's corner of the galaxy. His resignation would quickly give way to an election and a new leader for all within the PLANT's.

The Hobbeebian Homeworld of the Hobbeebian Imperium was active as the newes of the ending of the Xessmithian Civil world hit top information distributions systems. Many people had mix feeling about the Xessmithian civil war. Some veiwed it as unresulting, other veiwed it as a well fought well decided war.

But within the Ancient Imperial Palace the Grand Elder Council was discussing any possible measures that could be taken if interaction becomes an issue, or it the Confederacy had become hostile since its war. And if they where in fact peaceful what Assistance could be rendered to the people to assist in the rebuilding of there government.

Many of the councilers where happy to see the end of the war, others where no convinced that the people who started the war where fully dealt with and such a war may begin once more thus putting Hobbeeian Vessels in harms way....

OOC: Zaft, I'm not ripping you off with this post-I planned to put this in as a sort of coming-back, revamp thing, but conveniently you posted something similar.

IC:

The jungle of Talasea lay quiet in the dark night sky, the dark scape above unshrouded by cloud or man. The surface was a myriad of colors; yellows, blues, oranges, and the dark reflection of the planet-wide rainforest of the world that was infamous as the birthground of the first Emperor of the Dominion. Tonight, though, the jungle outside the small urban town of Central Valley sat quiet-no artificial lights blinked. The town was completely abandoned of its normal residents, and only two figures stood at a massive construct of wood and burnable materials.

Former Apprentice Marka Ragnos, often regarded by Kyp Droma as the smartest of the apprentices, stood quiet in the intensely dark night of Talasea, on the 23rd of March by the standard calendar. Talasea worked differently-tonight was a hot summer night, muggy, damp. Yet, at the same time, dark-detached, yet cold. It was as if a spectre had cast its shadow across Talasea's planetscape, casting the world in a blackened mirror. Ragnos stood with arms folded before the wooden structure that he and his sole companion at the construct, fellow apprentice and Ragnos's only real friend, Naga Sadow, had spent two full days without sleep building. They could go much longer, but sleep was irrelevant at the current position. The apprentices were a scattered and varied group, but Ragnos and Sadow-and occasionally Sion-had made a sort of alliance of sorts, and these two becoming something near friends as the cunning Kressh and mysterious Nihilis continued their own paths of power.

"Our fates are at a crossroad," Sadow remarked, dumping a liquid from a durasteel container on a long, thick branch swathed at its tip by thick, dry rushes.

"Indeed," Ragnos mused, a darker tone in his voice than Sadow's naturally energetic, yet tonight dampened and smothering muse. "It seems that our time is either beginning or ending. The alpha or the omega. Genesis or Exodus."

"So be it," Sadow said, both eyes burning tonight from their usual color to a smoldering ash, "We take the steps forward."

"Be careful what you wish for," Ragnos remarked, the older of the two slightly and clearly the more patient and cautious. "It is not as if we are clear-cut the dominant force."

"That is up to our fist," Sadow said, his voice laid with a gravel tone. "Our opponents stand not in our way. Now, it is our choice."

"Our choice may be better to lay and wait for what may come," Ragnos said, his voice sheet ice. "Better to let them make the first mistake."

"Better to wait 'til tomorrow to worry about those plans," Sadow said with a bit of a tone of remorse in his voice. Sadow was not a pessimist-he was an extreme optimist of sorts-but tonight was different for both men-and for an Empire. "Do the honors, Marka."

Sadow held out the branch at a high forty-five degree angle, the thatched wood sticking like a defiant finger towards the sky. With a crack, Ragnos blasted a shot of rippling blue electricity at the tip of the wood, cracking sparks and current. The branch caught immediately, a fire spewing up from the incendiary chemical Sadow had poured on the wood's end. Sadow approached the wooden construct, pausing momentarily once more.

"For all that ever has occurred from this," Sadow said, "We shall take what has come and pursue higher heights."

Sadow approached with the natural torch, his frozen eyes casting down at the now-still object on the wooden stand-the cold, dead body of the first Emperor, Kyp Droma.

"Your enemies be avenged...my Lord," Sadow said, "From the master to the Apprentice."

Sadow set the torch down on the wood, immediately catching on the corpse of the Sith who had reigned with total control over a region and maintained stability for quite some time. The wooden construct began going up in flames, a pyre of memories and histories-and a salute to the future of the two souls who watched the castaway of one of the most powerful leaders of the Shroud ever, two Sith who now took up the mantle of the Dominion with three others in what undoubtedly would be a perilous situation. The pyre shot high into the sky, as if channeled by Droma's still seething dark energy, a massive plume of fire and sparks illuminating the valley of darkness that had been the spawn ground for one of the all-time darkest forces.

"No longer apprentices," Ragnos said, his face partially hidden behind the hood of his black robe, "Our destiny is now just that."

A comet shot overhead as the flames burnt on, the two Sith watching the last memorial of the only master they had ever known, taking on a completely new role of leadership to guide the Dominion to new heights. The skies seemed to flux, the jungle sway, as the time wore on, a monument to the sins and past and a harbinger to the splitting future.

The car pulled up to council chambers, the media was already there awaiting some sort of announcement from the chairman. The car stopped and the chairmans aid exited first, walked around to the other side and opened the door. The chairman in his usual atire for the supreme council chambers stepped out and began walking to the podium.

He stepped up to the microphone and cleared his throat "Ladies and gentlemen, members of the press thank you for coming" he said pausing for a moment "For a long time I have over seen the PLANT's grow as a nation, ever since I took over from former chairman Clyne and his administration I had strived to make the PLANTs better for all, after conflict ended we began colonizing planets for agricultural and resource needed. However the fact is that by expanding our territory I made us a target for attack on more then one incident, I made up for this by going on the offensive and taking back the land from which I now stand on from Blue Cosmos, who are most likly now back on earth." he paused to have a sip of water from the glass in front of him.

"I also made friends, in the past few years two groups have joined the PLANTs with open arms, a group of Cylons on Carver Five freely chose to join us, and the people of Ter'angi prime, well I guess they'd want me to call it Earth even though its a different then the one we know, none the less home is still home and home is earth" he paused yet again to sip some water from the glass.

"That is one I've decided to buy a retirment home in the country side on earth, because I am here today to announce my resignation as Chairman of the supreme council and my subsiquent retirment from politics! effective fully in 48 hours!" he said in a shout to every one. Cameras flashed as reporters began asking questions of the chairman.

"Mr. Chairman why the sudden announcement?" One asked "Because I feel i've done all that I can for the PLANT's and its time to pass the torch on to some one else" he politly answered. Another reporter spoke up "Hello, I'm from CNN (Colony News Network) Who will be taking your job until the elections?" the woman asked "Until elections which will most likely happening within three or four months Vice chairwoman Christina McKight will be taking my job." he answered with a calm tone. The question then continued from one reporter after another.

OOC: Bump?

OOC: No more OOC in this thread. I made the OOC thread for that very reason.

IC:

Stephanie Carver was jolted out of sleep by the alarm. She quickly shook herself awake and unzipped herself from her sleeping bag and floated over to her locker to change into her duty overalls.

Stephanie then pulled herself along towards the mess of the Hidden Mountain, the same thing she'd done every morning for the past month as the ship slowly made its way towards a large object of artificial origin.

The object had been detected a year ago when a large burst of neutrinos was detected. Of course since the object was 212 light-years distant from Stephanie's home system the actual event had occurred long ago, but she had been one of the many astrophysicists who had petitioned the government to authorize this trip. A burst of neutrinos that large that wasn't produced by a supernova was well worth the expense of a starship visit.

Stephanie hurriedly finished eating and sent herself flying through the confining corridors to the main observation deck. In just a few hours they would arrive and finally be able to start studying the massive object. She relieved the crewman who had the previous shift, a fellow scientist named Arthur Fines. She checked the telescope display, it showed the familiar sight of a tetrahedron formed from four separated hubs from which two curving spokes ending in flat plates extended to the center of the geometric shape.

It was then that her sensors detected another neutrino burst,, she moved the scope to view the new contact, what she saw then was by all means impossible.

The ending of the civil war of the Xessmithians and the subsequent rebuilding that was customary after a war was watched by by the Ascendants, whom were curious of the new nation that had come onto the stage. Unlike many of the nations they were currently focusing on, which were possible or realized enemies of the Ascendancy, the Confederacy was seen as a possible ally in their struggle to ensure their survival and destroy such evils like Chronosia and prevent their continued spread across the galaxy.


So, to that end, they had a single ship, phased out of this dimension so as to be undetectable by anything but dimensional sensors, and even then, they'd only appear as a small anomaly; nothing worthy of further attention or alarm. This ship, the Soft Word, moved through Xessmithian space and when the burst of neutrinos hit their sensors, capable of looking across entire star systems, they locked on and began to investigate....

The first thing he noticed was the smell, of course the smell was the first thing any Bowman's Wolf noticed, it was the smell of lubricants, ammonia, ozone and BioFreeze.

Mark O'Connell finally opened his eyes. He was in the recovery room of the CNS Heavy Manufacturing, a long range refit and repair ship. One of the ships medibots rolled over to his bed. "Please remain prone for another five minutes. By then the agents in your blood stream will have been neutralized and you will be free to return to your duties."

Mark closed his eyes again and waited. He had learned the hard way that ignoring the 'suggestions' of medibots was not a pleasant experience. The time passed quickly and soon the medibot had returned and told him he may leave. He made his way to the locker room where he found the rest of the crew, all human, already getting ready.

"Glad you finally came out of it Mark. You always were slower than the average person, can't think your way out of the freezer!" Helen Georgison joked.

Mark made a rude gesture to his friend and shipmate. "It's cause I have an alergy to BioFreeze dumbass." Mark reached his locker, opened the door and started pulling on his work coveralls. "If you needed a whole fraking tray of extra drugs to keep your blood cells from bursting you'd be slow too." He reached over and slapped Helen on the back, the two had had these same friendly insult fests many times before.

"We all know you two have spades of sexual tension built up," Anthony Fredericks added to the conversation, "But we really need you two save foreplay for when the rest of us don't have to hear your prattle!" This time both Mark and Helen made a rude gesture.

The hatch of the locker room opened and one of the military crewers stepped in, "We need you TransGalactic guys ready to begin work on gate repair ASAP. We didn't spend ten years in the freezer getting here to sit on our asses so get your shit together on the double, we drop into real in ten." The crewer left as soon as he was finished.

Anthony snorted, "Military guys always have such big rods up their ass. The damn gate isn't going anywhere."

"Take it easy on the Uniforms Anthony, the Corps of Engineers guys are great."

"I wasn't talking about the Cogs, they're just like us. It's the combat types who have the rectal problem!" Anthony yelled out, Mark just rolled his eyes in response.

***

Stephani stared mout agape at the mostrosity space had seemingly spit out of the vacuum. It was obviously artificial but nothing she had ever seen even came close to this. The artifact she had come out to see was just as large as this new giant machine, but it was hollow and stationary. This, she supposed the best word was ship, was nearly sixty kilometers long and wide and half that tall, and it accelerated at impossible rates. The drives appeared to be photon rockets judging by the brightness of the stern of the ship, Stephanie did some quicky calculations, the ship must have a power sourve equal to a large main-sequence star to get that much acceleration for that much mass.

Stephanie finally came to her senses and hit the ship's intercom, "Captain we have a serious development here! I think we just found the Progenators!"

After answering a few more questions the chairman thanked the press for coming and then walked into the council chamber. He may of just announced his retirment but he was still on job for two more days and had work to do. He walked into his office and sat down in his chair "man oh man not even half an hour into the day and its already been alot" he said as he picked up a file that had been put on his desk a hour earlier. He picked it up and opened it "hmm more ships returning to port, well I guess they deserve a break, Especially the 18th fleet they got the hardest fighting, hope they have a safe journy back to L10" he said to him self putting the report down for a second to turn on his computer.


When his computer finished booting up and he logged in he brought up a star chart. The chart showed exactly where all incoming fleet were coming from "Hmm the Dagger is coming back from long range patrol tomorrow, I'm amazed some one had not noticed a ship of that size floating in deep space and went to investigate, oh well DSSD says its network is clear of unidentified craft" he said as he went through more and more data.

The cold winter wind of snowy Polus shot over the massive construct, a stadium of sorts. The 120-yard long field sat below, at the convergence of the stadium's bowled sides that dipped far deep. 360,000 sat in the stands as camerabots hovered around on antigrav pads, flashing and recording every move by every player and some of the fans too. Marshawn Tyree, quarterbacking the home team-the Polus Panthers of the Amazonian Football League-took the plays from the Panthers head coach from the sideline, returning to the huddle with his 11-man offense. The Capital Wolverines stood across the way, one of the three teams of Amazonia, clad in scarlet and emblazoned with gold. The Panthers wore uniforms of black with deep crimson running down the sides of the uniforms, black helmets adorned with a technical-looking P.

"120 Yellow Firefly Razor," Tyree quickly reported to the huddle, the players listening intently. A quick clap by all around signified the play was ready to be put in motion.

High above the field, the holoprojection screen showed :06 left on the game clock, 4th quarter, ball on the Capital 42 yard line. The snow was picking up, and despite being in the range for Polus's standout kicker, the wind was intense-the chance of making the field goal to pull away with a 24-23 win (currnetly locked at 23-21) was unlikely, at best-at worst, impossible. Tyree was going to win the game or lose it right here, right now, with the swirling snow, screaming torrent of fans, and bots snapping his picture for distribution across the Shroud.

The Wolverines's Sam linebacker, Tyrus Fields, barked out a few defensive audibles as Tyree walked up to the line.

"Watch da' Mike!" Marshawn yelled out, indicating Capital's middle linebacker in the defensive 4-3 scheme.

The defense moved in towards a blitz formation, though Tyree already knew it was for show-they were going to go back to cover, even in the 4-3 and facing the three-wide reciever, 1-back, 1-TE set of the Panthers. Capital's defensive secondary was that good.

"Heyaat...35 Mojo! Hut-hut!"

The center quickly snapped the ball to Tyree as the O-line smashed into the slamming D-line, all three linebackers dropping back. Fields crashed down into the TE, effectively taking both out of the play. One less for the Wolverines. Tyree moved around in the pocket, buying time for his star wide reciever, #82 Terrell Jenkins, to split the X Corner and the strong safety and make his fly route.

"Bit bit!"

The RT was calling out-the LDE of the Wolverines had escaped the blocks and was coming around for a hit. Tyree manuevered, steering out of the pocket as the DE crashed in. The other three were being contained as Tyree kept looking downfield, the holodisplay above ticking down to 3 seconds. As the LDE came in, Tyree saw it-the X Corner a step behind Jenkins as the SS was moving in. A thread-the-needle play here.

Shunting his arm back, Tyree heaved up an arcing bullet towards the back of the endzone, Jenkins running a single stride ahead of the corner. Marshawn had the briefest of moments to complete the motion as the ball lifted out of his hands and the RDE came in for the hit. Tyree shook him off with a spin as the ball shot through the air like a missile, the snow obscuring Tyree's vision. Jenkins leaped up for the ball as the clock hit :00, the X-Corner raising up his cover arm to attempt a knockdown on the 7'6" wide reciever, who had the height advantage by 2 inches and a 66" vertical leap-

"LCDR Tyree, please report to the bridge."

Tyree blinked. The air was suddenly warm and fairly dry, the play around him completely stalled as Jenkins stretched out in the endzone for the reception, the ball a meter behind his reaching fingertips as the corner dove in for the attack. Tyree suddenly was out of place in Dominion Naval Officer uniform.

Such an inopportune time for something to happen in real life.

"I'll be thea," Marshawn said, moving towards the door from the holodeck as the picture-perfect end to the play stood in frozen time...and temperature.

Tyree had once been a pretty good college quarterback, but the military had offered things that no football game could. The adventure of traversing space was far more exciting than shuttling around planet to planet on this transport or that one to surface-bound or station-bound stadiums. Tyree, the weapons officer on the ADV Split Decisiveness, was having more fun than any time on his life, and having a darn good career, as well. He advanced fast through the ranks, currently the youngest officer of the Centaur-class Attack Cruiser. Due to the ship's name, he also had one of the most important positions-the Attack Cruiser, unlike some of the other like-sized ships of the fleet, was designed for one thing only-offensive warfare.

"Bridge," Tyree grunted as he entered in the turbolift. As usual, Tyree played his hologames with safeties off, so the stinger sack he'd taken by Dontarrious Williams of the Wolverines literally was throwing conniptions into his ankle-Amazonian football was a violent sport.

"Arrived, LCDR," the AI of the ship, omnipresent everywhere, reported back in a tough female voice. "Hurry up before the Captain busts your ass."

"F'real..." Tyree muttered to more himself than the AI.

The doors to the turbolift opened up, revealing the small yet task-focused bridge, broken up into segments per each station for each task officer. Tactical was situated just ahead of systems engineering (rather than core engineering, back in the engineering department rather than the bridge) and besides helm control. Tyree rather liked that-he had a better view of the displayscreen that holographically showed real-time spread of space (usually just the 90-degree arc ahead of the vessel, but in red-alert, displayed a full sphere of space as if the bridge sat in the middle of the void itself, rather than inside the attack cruiser). Besides that, Tyree's best friend of the ship was the Helm Officer of Decisiveness, Lt. Sam Henshaw.

"So 'dthey cover the points spread?" Henshaw asked, jokingly. Before the game, the AI had predicted the Panthers as 18 point underdogs.

"Aw, hell no," Tyree retorted, "We was poppin'."

"Sensors, report," Captain Byron Christian, a rough veteran, cut off the two younger officers for a report on the latest. Decisiveness was on deep-space patrol, formerly having two patrol craft on escort but losing one to repairs at a sector control station and leaving another to investigate a planetary disturbance.

"Massive neutrino burst direction 1-2-4," the Chymeron sensor officer flawlessly reported. For being a race that was tough enough to deal with most issues-tougher than the genetically-suped humans that made the Shroud's majority-the Chymerons were too logical and too intelligent than they seemed. Too much of a counter for many of the Shroud's other races, particularly the Jiralhanae and the Skrawl.

"Visual?"

"Negative, captain. Just the flux."

"Is it close or distant?"

"Very distant, presuming sensor readings are accurate."

Christian paused for a minute. Tyree took advantage of the pause to continue his conversation.

"Back to shit, I was hittin' up deep ta' TD, snow goin', wind goin', peeps chippin' all ovah, 6 seconds-"

"Set course 124. Let's pursue the neutrino burst to hyperdrive. Estimates on course end, navigation?"

"I'd say at least 400 light years. That's at least a twelve-hour trip through maximum hyperspace," reported Sela Ve'reen, the ship's Tandani navigations officer. The Tandani were an antisocial, fragile race that was also probaly the smartest species of the Dominion. Ve'reen didn't fit in, however, with the bouncing personalities all over Decisiveness.

"Set a course, maximum speed, Lt. Henshaw."

"Comin' right up, captain," Henshaw said, turning to his controls.

Tyree spread his arms behind his head...nothing new for tactical yet: "Off we goins agin..."

On board the Dagger it was a calm and quiet mood, every one was tired of deep space, and military missions they wanted a change and some R&R which the crew deserved. The commanding officer of the Dagger was Commander Dimitri Slovan, a 3rd generation coordinator from the L6 colony cluster. He had seen much action, as had his XO who was not even a coordinator but a 'Natural' from Ter'angi prime. Dispite not being a coordinator no member of the crew ever looked down on him due to the many medals and honors he had recieved.

In the ships Astrology area which was only a large observatory like room the few scientists on board the ship we making observations "There it is again a massive neutrino burst, in grid E726-97" one said looking over his computer "Why don't we tell the captain, science would be a nice change for the crew" another said "good idea, ill report it" he responded. In a matter of seconds the report was sent to the bridge for the captain to look over "Hmm a scientific mission? what do you think?" he asked his XO "Well, its a little ov course and will delay us getting home by maybe half a day or so, I say give the crew a small break from combat missions" the XO responded.

the captain nodded his head "Vary well, fire up the FTL drive, Target location 726 mark 93" he order'd. It was a given break, maybe the crew would see some sort of rare celestial event. Either way the captain choice would soon either prove wise or fatal, while his ship and its massive size had power it had never been used in combat, only tested so its full offensive ower was not even known, the Dagger was top of the line outfitted with new shields and weapon system no other ship in the fleet had.

"I know what you mean Stephanie! I see them too." Captain Paul Anderson returned over the intercom, "I'm sending the standard first contact package on all frequencies. This is the biggest day in our history!"

***

Mark was busy, he was in charge of leading the team repairing the complex matter projector that was responsible for opening the hyperspace tunnel. During the civil war this gate's twin back home in the Magellan Galaxy was overloaded and the surge worked its way to this gate and fried all the important components.

As such he had no idea that the Milky Way Expeditionary Force's descendants had just been contacted.

There was a great flash of light in the sky as the Dagger completed one of its many jumps "Jump complete captain calculating next jump coordinates" one of the FTL officers said across the bridge to the captain "Alright jump when ready we got five more jumps to go till we reach the target location" the captain said back. It would only take several seconds for the FTL officers to plot the next jump. FTL officers had there own school back at the ZAFT forces academy, three years of training to become a junior FTL officer at a low rank. They would then be on a gunship or a small patrol craft until they earn there Plotter badge. As soon as the coordinates were in the ship jumped away.

Captain Frederick Holland, CO of the CNS Heavy Manufacturing, was very pleased with the speed at which his crew were working to repair the gate. They were ahead of schedule and estimated time to completion as three days.

"Captain we're receiving a signal, running it through analysis." The commscan-tech spoke from her station, "It originated from a small vessel approximately fifteen hundred kilometers away at Theta two-oh-three Alpha forty-six. Looks to be a fission powered jump-ship, estimate its builders to be type one point three to one point five on the Kardashev scale."

"Why did we just detect it now?" Holland asked.

"Commscan equipment was being used to verify astrometric data and elapsed time. We would have picked it up when the scan had finished in another fifteen minutes, their signal triggered the priority override." The tech's station beeped, "Analysis of the signal is complete. It's a first contact package, the computer's linguistics programming has managed to get a moderately accurate translation. We'd need proper facilities to get a better one."

Holland nodded, "Understood Petty Officer. Send a data pulse back to Magellan on the hyperwave transceiver let them know that we've found remnants of the MWEF." The Petty Officer nodded and started to prepare the signal.

Contact was underway.

"Jump complete captain however our max consecutive use of the FTL drives is now at its limit we must let it 'cool off' for four hours before making another jump" one of the FTL jump officers said to the captain "Vary well, take this time to make guesses at what we might find, now that we are closer we should be able to get some idea of what it is" the captain said to the bridge crew.

"I'll get our people on it, by the way when was the last time you slept captain?" the XO asked.

"At least 19 hours maybe more" he responded to his XO.

"Go get some rest sir, I'll call you up if anything happens" The XO said since it was his responsibility to look after the well being of the captain, and if the captain was fatigued it could effect his command decisions.

"Vary well, thank you," the captain said before leaving the bridge.

Captain Holland waited in the boat bay for the shuttle to return with the Captain of the Hidden Mountain research vessel. He fidgeted with his dress uniform, he wasn't comfortable in it even after years of command. He was a Cog, joined the Navy right after he got is BASc in mechanical engineering, he was more comfortable behind a desk drawing up plans or overseeing manufacturing than he was politicking. But since he was the only available person for the job in half a billion light-year radius he was stuck with it.

Rousing himself from his musings he drew himself to attention as the shuttle set down on the deck. Waiting patiently for the delegation to disembark he then stepped forward, "Welcome aboard the CNS Heavy Manufacturing. On behalf of the Confederacy of Xessmithia I'm pleased to offer you a tour of our facilities and brief you on the Confederacy itself. Now if you have in any questions don't hesitate to ask."

Stephanie was thoroughly impressed by the Xessmithian ship. The black-hole catalyzed annihilation reactor, the artificial gravity systems, the perfect microstructure construction materials, it was all so much to take in.

She'd spent nearly three hours asking questions in Captain Holland's after tour brief, she was still processing most of what she had heard. Captain Anderson had already asked her to come up with a request on what to ask the Confederacy for to help up-lift their society. Frankly Stephanie didn't think uplifting her own primative by comparison single world civilization would be a priority for a civilization spanning millions of worlds and controlling hundreds of billions of star systems. But orders were orders and she began getting to work. First item on the menu, a cure for the common cold.

OOC: still kicking eh? alright

"Is it just me or does the captain seem a little edgy lately" one officer said as he went about his work on the bridge "The captains wife is expecting a child in the next few weeks, I'm sure he is eager to get back to her and be there when the kid is born" the XO said in response as he went through the usually reports from around the ship "how long until we can jump again?" then XO then asked "About an hour in a half sir"

"Vary good"

OOC: Slowly but surely.

IC: Captain Holland perused the list that one Dr. Stephanie Carver had handed him. She wanted a few total conversion reactors, instructions on how to build Confederate level infrastructure, designs for hyperdrive engines, fairly mundane things from his perspective but surely unimaginable ones from hers. "We can provide you with all of this as soon as we get permission from Magellan. You won't be able to build any of the infrastructure needed to build the infrastructure to build to infrastructure and so on to build our level of tech so we'll be doing it for you. We have a few spare exawatt range reactors we can set up nearly immediately once we're done repairing the gate. I can request a few prefab autofactories for you as well, they'll take a few weeks to arrive though, we need to get the gate up first."

Stephanie looked blankly at Captain Holland, "You have spare exawatt range reactors. We don't even produce that much energy on our entire planet! And to just rebuild our entire infrastructure is just... well I'm speechless."

Holland smiled, "Well remember that to us this scale of construction is like someone on Old Earth building a deck over the weekend. Most of our citizens own vehicles that have an exawatt reactor in them, hyperdrive is an energy hog." Holland brought up the requisition forms he needed on his screen, "Besides you're the descendants of our expeditionary force, we can't just let you wallow around in what, from our perspective, is absolute squalor."

Stephanie jumped from her chair and hugged the Captain, "I can't thank you enough. You don't believe what this means to our society!"

Holland smiled again, "You're very welcome Dr. Carver. The Confederacy always takes care of its own."

OOC: as long as your getting there

"I hate long waits, oh well i'm going to get some more coffee, I need a new cup" the XO said walking off the bridge for a quick couple of minutes before coming back in with a new cup of coffee. He began watching news feeds being sent to them from back home "Well it would seem a new football season is starting back home, guess I have something to watch now"

"Well we all have our own lives when we get back sir"

"Indeed we do petty officer, apparently a couple squads of the psy-com division will be transfered when we get back"

"Psy-com? never heard of them"

"I'm not surprised petty officer, any way there will be a full briefing when we return, of course command is not making this a big deal since psy-com divisions are comprised of the new generation of Humanity"

"Sir?"

"again all in the briefing"

Stephanie was proudly standing next to Captain Holland in front of the first Confederate level auto-factory and reactor complex on her planet of Caledonia. It was a sprawling series of gleaming metal and heavy equipment spread over an area of twenty square kilometers in the middle of the Junut Desert. In the center was the main reactor, a dome of carbon-nanotube re-enforced concrete a mere fifty meters in diameter. Large air intakes drew in the required mass of air to feed the reactors needs, even then only around 12 cubic meters of air per second was required. The rest of the complex was devoted to making nearly any material and product imaginable.

Stephanie stepped up to the microphone on the podium, "I am proud to be here at the grand opening of the Caledonian Uplift Project. When I first petitioned our government to study a mysterious neutrino burst I had no idea it would end with us meeting the Confederacy. Nor could I have imagined they'd be so generous and would not think twice about helping uplift our society. Today marks the first step to our people truly becoming galactic citizens." She took her pair of ceremonial scissors and cut the decorative ribbon over the entrance to the complex and deftly cut it into two pieces.

Captain Holland then stepped up to the microphone, "Caledonia, welcome back to the Confederacy of Xessmithia!"

It was almost time for the next jump to be possible, the XO watched his monitor as the last lights started turning green. When the last one turned green he raised his arm "All hands prepare for jump, proceed to condition yellow we don't know whats there after all" he shouted to the bridge crew who then quickly relayed the message around the rest of the massive ship. The ships primary jump drive spun up as all stations began reporting ready for jump. The captain was on his way to the bridge, it was his station and the condition yellow alarm woke him up. His room was not far from the bridge making his trip short. When he arrived he simply went to the middle of the room "XO are we ready?" he asked as he looked right over to him "Well Captain Slovan I assume the condition yellow woke you up, other then you probably needing some coffee the situation is green for jump"

"Excellent work, you really need to cut out calling me Captain Slovan, we've severed together long enough Jack that you can Dimitri"

"Oh I Know, I just do it to tick you off, my way of getting some kicks"

"What a strange sense of Humor you have Jack, any way jump now please" the captain said. Before he knew it the ship was gone in a flash and was at there destination with another bright flash.

The gate was finally back up and running, Heavy Manufacturing had done her job and had moved on to Caledonia to start the uplift project. Mark O'Connell was happy to have completed his mission, and he was happy to have been promoted by TransGalactic Industries to chief engineer, the pay increase was incredible. On the other hand though the post of chief engineer on the Milky Way side gate was boring as hell, pay increase or not. Unfortunately he was also the highest ranking employee on the gate, which made him head honcho of the whole damn station.

"Boss we've got a H-RADAR contact, about fifteen light-years out." The sensor tech switched to long-range passives, "Looks like he's been skipping for some time, computer projects he's on his way here."

"Right, shields up, send a pulse through the gate let the Air Force know we need some cover." Mark was following standard procedure, Air Force planes were much quicker with response than the Navy and had more than enough firepower to keep the gate safe against most threats.

"We've got confirmation from AF command, the 3347th interceptor group under Group Captain Marshall Evans flying F-237 Dragon IVs is on the way, ETA three minutes."

Mark nodded, two-hundred fifty six interceptors would be a good defense against the potential threat. "Roger that, send our thanks to Forces command."

The mood was calm all over the ship, including the bridge. The captain and XO watched the projected map of the area as the ship moved. Before long blips popped up but they were of little concern so far, they had no hostile intentions "New contacts baring 057 Green 17 distance 15 and closing fast, possible fighters" came a shout from various people in the outer reaches of the bridge which doubles as the CIC. The captain didn't seem concerned with it since they were just exploring "Well set condition yellow, put the rapid response groups on stand by, no launches, don't raise shields, just let them come" he ordered the crew. Before long they carried out his orders and the ship continued on course "no communications yet, stand by"

"Relax, this ship is the size of a small city and has been called the pine cone of death before, we aren't about to start a war, we are here peacefully" the captain then said.

The F-237 was a large twin-tailed compression lift delta, the fuselage was dominated by the twin engines and the cockpit was a heavily braced tandem midway down from the short nose. Flight Lieutenant Francis "Screamer" Borden was the first through the gate and the holographic wraparound display flickered with a brief blue glow before being replaced by the Milky Way side gate and starscape.

She was quickly followed by the rest of the 3347th's 256 interceptors and single command AWACS. "This is Lantern, we'll be staying back here to relay telemetry all squadrons jump to the co-ordinates we're supplying."

Lantern was the call-sign of Group Captain Evans and the AWACS, "Squadron Blue Charlie acknowledges orders." That was Screamer's squadron CO Squadron Leader Gerard "Zipper" Jones. Screamer spoke to her Weapons Systems Operator (WSO), Pilot Officer Dorian "Dead Eyes" Yates, "You got the co-ordinates Dead Eyes?"

"Just came in over the squadron data net. We're clear for jump, hit it!" Screamer eagerly obliged and activated the hyperdrive. For an instant too fast for the human brain to notice the F-237 had sent itself 15 light-years to the target at over a hundred million times the speed of light. At that speed she only had a range of about 10,000 light-years but that wasn't a problem in this case.

Screamer brought her fighter in at 10,000 gravities and the target rapidly grew to fill her field of view. The entire group did a fast pass before reversing heading and quickly coming along side to match velocity. "Target has no shields activated, priming Hurricanes for anti-shielding strike regardless."

Screamer gave Dead Eyes a thumb up of approval. The SRM-321 Hurricane was a 200 gigaton anti-ship missile that could focus it's blast into a 30, 15 or 2 degree cone for various levels of penetrating power, Dead Eyes had selected the 2 degree cone for maximum energy per square meter.

With the group flying formation around the target ship with all the fighters flying nose towards the enemy and all target acquisition sensors at full power Lantern opened comm channels with the group, his message would be re-transmitted locally at all known radio and hyperwave frequencies. "Unknown ship you are in Confederate airspace, state your purpose at once."

"Incoming message, displaying on your screen now" a officer shouted as the fighters came ever closer on the captains screen, the message then displayed for every one to hear. The captain knew any wasted time in responding could cause unwanted blood shed, and since his crew was on its way home when they came to investigate he did not want to loose any one. He activated all communication channels and stated his response "We are here for scientific reasons, we detected a large energy burst to say the least and came to investigate, we had no idea some one had claims in this region, my apologies for that"

The response was quick, and Lantern was quick to move to the next step. "Roger, you will move in the shortest possible route to a thirty light-year radius centered on the following co-ordinates. Our fighter screen will escort you out."

The co-ordinates were then sent to the ship, the center didn't correspond to the gate, though had they detected the neutrino burst of its failure they would know that. Never the less the attempt at secrecy was standard procedure.

"Vary well" the captain said turning to the rest of the bridge crew "Begin moving to the new location" he ordered quickly. The ship then began moving towards the target location. The ship it self had no visible engines but used a gravitational propulsion system to let it glide through space. Above that it had prototype systems for testing, due to there size the Dagger class was perfect for testing prototype systems including the system unique to its class, the active star camo. Within the ship it was a virtual military city, hangers, factories, crew lodgings, and under the ships hull was a massive amount of weapons ready to deploy to defend such a large ship, in a sense it was a self sustaining army. However the Dagger was a expensive creation and only three shipyards in all of PLANT territory could preform repairs or even build such large ships to which only two exist.

"Whoa, we've just picked up a big new contact." Dead Eyes's fingers worked rapidly on the controls, "Profile suggests a large mass object but nothing on the EM bands. Computer calls it a gravity based reaction-less drive, sending info to Lantern and filtering the contact out of your threat display."

Screamer gave another thumbs up, "Good work as always Dead Eyes." The target ship began accelerating on its new course and Screamer flipped her fighter around to match heading the RCS thrusters and internal gyros adding their own distinct sounds to the background noise of the cockpit. A brief touch of the throttle and she was matching the acceleration of the target perfectly. "Keep your eyes open, we need to get as much intel on this guy as we can before he leaves our airspace."

"Well now I'm sure we can say they are probably scanning us, why don't we do the same with these little fighters" the captain said crossing his arms with a smirk on his face. With the click of a few buttons on several different consoles the various types of sensors all over the ship began taking readings on the craft. The captain also had another agenda now that they have met these people, if he had the chance he wanted to open diplomatic relations once they were out of there territory.

"Announce to the crew to prepare for a possible diplomatic arrival" the captain ordered as he walked around the central console of the bridge "Sir?" his XO asked puzzled at what the captain was thinking "I want to if possible open diplomatic relations with these people, its in the charter remember? or did you forget your training from the Military Academy?"

"No sir, its just unexpected, but it makes sense, I'll inform the crew" he then pulled up a screen out of thin air in front of him and made a couple clicks "Attention all hands, captain has informed us to prepare for possible diplomatic talks, you all know what that means and what you should do, get to work people we don't want to make our homeland look bad"