NationStates Jolt Archive

Sweating profusely in both terror and confusion despite his calm demeanor, Erje peeked through an opening in some undergrowth at the smoldering scene ahead. He had seen falling skylights before, even found the remains after their impact, but the relatively young chieftain had never before seen one stop just before striking the surface and clear a patch of the forest out before 'settling in.' With the tribe's warriors taking up position around the site, he focused his attention on discerning what exactly they were surrounding.

To a race that had yet to discover the concepts of metallurgy, the exact nature of the strange 'stone chariot' remained completely unfathomable. It was better then to make sense of the curious little creature hopping about and emitting sequences of chirping that were as lengthy as they were complex.

It was small, its ear tips barely capable of passing Erje's knee, though the chieftain sensed that the creature was far heavier and more muscular than its frame entailed, if only by the fact that as it landed upon an intact tree trunk half as thick as the creature was tall, the wood bent visibly, more than it had any right to. Covered in a short coat of brown and white fur, the creature bore a passing resemblance to a local variety of tree-borne rodent, though the creature in the clearing was far larger than those arboreal beings, to say nothing of more purposeful. Instead of some loincloth, it wore a strange collection of cords and ropes around its torso, with small pouches and objects attached.

One of his tribesman stepped on a twig in the underbrush, and the creature's response was instantaneous and terrifying. Without even seeming to move, the creature removed an object from its collection of pouches and sent it into the underbrush to impact an intervening tree with enough force to visibly shake it. There was no way possible for the creature to have thrown the object with such strength so quickly, even with its deceptive nature. The creature seemed hostile, reacting in such a manner, but Erje realized quickly that it had only been in defense. Perhaps the creature was just... twitchy.

"We do not wish to harm you!"

The creature almost sent another object flying towards Erje, but stopped just before releasing it as it recognized that the chieftain was speaking, not just rustling in the brush. The creature turned towards the strange chariot nearby and quirked its ears slightly. The strange construct said something unknown to Erje, and the creature wheeled around and shouted something of its own.

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

Erje did not understand the language, but he figured that the creature's response was a sign that it had not come inherently to kill, no matter how much its shrill and unpleasant voice seemed to count against that conclusion. He made another comment, taking on a different approach...

"We do not know what you speak... are you some form of demon from the sky?"

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? STOP TALKING STUPID PERSON AND SAY SOMETHING I CAN UNDERSTAND."

"We mean you no harm!"

"NO MORE GIBBERISH. DEFIANCE IS DEATH!"

Now, despite the fact that the conversation was already headed towards violence, it is important to note that one of the tribesman, namely the one who stepped on the twig that ignited the originally hostile response from the creature, had since been quite itchy with the arrow nocked to his bow. As the creature placed a last emphasis on the word 'death' in its language, the tribesman let fly his arrow more because of a combination of being startled and sheer terror than anything else. It is also important to note that as the creature wheeled around and caught the arrow in mid-air, the other tribesman thought that it was their cue to open fire as well.

The unfortunate thing was that the creature had already leapt to the other side of the clearing and let loose a horrific howl of fury, revealing its similarly horrific set of glimmering teeth before leaping into the underbrush from whence the first arrow came. A short scream, a chomping sound, no more scream. A second scream, also similarly cut off, came as the body of the first tribesman to fire came sailing into the clearing, bearing the distinct lack of a head, though still spurting blood in a great fount from the neck.

By the third scream, Erje had already gotten to his feet and turned to run deeper into the forest, away from the bloodthirsty demon as quickly as his three-toed feet could convey him.

Another scream... more screaming... the sound faded behind the chief as he ran, but ended sooner than it should have... and then the sound of something catching up to him... and then his shoulder was struck by a flying log.

At least that's what the strange object felt like when it hit him. It sent him flying forward and spun him around just as he hit a tree, and now he could see the creature walking right up to him. Erje trembled in fear and recited prayers to the gods to let him live. He did not understand what the creature said next, but three seconds later it didn't really matter to him anymore... nothing did.

::

The Razormaw returned to the clearing and spat out the head of the somewhat more ornamented alien. Enjoying the sound of the meaty thump it made on striking the Warriorship. Certain that they were all dead, he turned to gaze up at the sky and let loose a great bellowing roar. It echoed throughout the forest and through the sky, setting birds to flight and tree-born primates into a frenzy of terror. It went out through space as well, as the Warriorcraft relayed the transmission into the void, soon to be answered by a massive number of new 'stars' in the sky...

The world of Charnel had come under Death Spectre control... and even the dumbest creature knew what that meant...

Within the span of two weeks, Charnel had undergone a full transition from a world dominated by rainforests and lush oceans to a world dominated by a particularly vicious species of sentient rodents. It truly was unfortunate that something so simple as not speaking the same language led to the devastation of the indigenous sentient species, but then it most likely would have happened anyway, if only because the Death Spectres 'are like that'.

As burrows were excavated and natives were 'reconstituted', a new Warriorcraft set towards another system... one that had previously shown signs of interstellar communication and limited trade. What interested the Death Spectres more, however, was the fact that the system they had just chosen was known to host a race of particularly violent beings... that had long ago attempted to assault the Death Spectre homeworld. Perchance they did not even recall what happened to their own fleet...

::

"Administrator, we have a hyperspace reversion seven orbit-spans out. Profile does not match any known."

The administrator turned to the sub-coordinator and made an expectant gesture with his chitinous hand. All around the room, attention had turned to the sensors officer for such an announcement was particularly atypical. The sub-coordinator did not turn from his chair, but continued on his description while bringing the information up on the main viewscreen.

"It is small, though its power signature is very strong for its size... it has just made a course correction and is headed directly for us. Shall I warn it away?"

[i]"No... blow it awa--"

Another sub-coordinator yelped out "We have a signal!"

"Get it on the main screen!"

The main viewscreen switched from the strange vessel to what appeared to be the cockpit of the aforementioned vessel, yielding a rather close up view of a strange rodent-like creature wearing a pair of strange goggles and chewing on what appeared to be some form of dried meat. Behind its furry lips, ever so slightly visible due to the fact that it was presently eating something, the various individuals in the control room knew exactly what kind of creature they were dealing with, if only for the reason that the last transmission from a conquest fleet they sent out long ago was filled with insane ranting about 'the teeth'... much though the transmission quickly ended with a shocked scream followed by blood spatter and bone-crunching noises.

Noting the horrified expressions of the beings on the other side of the transmission, the creature gulped down the rest of its jerky and gave them a full-on grin, revealing the razor-sharp alloy maw in all its ferocious glory...

"YOU KNOW US."

The administrator pointed at the creature and screamed: "Kill it! They've come for us!"

The creature responded with a deafening roar of unsurpassed rage before cutting off the signal... then the fighter vanished.

"Administrator! It went into hyperspace aiming straight for our capital city!"

"No... get the planetary shields up! Get them up now! Maybe we still have ti--"

It was unfortunate indeed that raising planetary shields at the outset of the Death Spectre's arrival caused them to lose their most populous city as well as approximately half of the continental landmass upon which it was situated. A Death Spectre's mere act of 'embellishing his suicide' caused his warriorcraft to strike the surface with such force that it effectively functioned as a matter-antimatter bomb of a yield equivalent to 180 gigatons of force, if only because the universe had to have SOME way of accomodating what would happen if something moving faster than the speed of light hit something that was most assuredly NOT moving faster than the speed of light.

But then... the Death Spectres did like their food cooked. And within a few minutes, more Death Spectre warriorcraft appeared at the edge of the system, accompanied by a fleet-carrier of some form radiating a power signature entirely too large for its size.

And thus, the Death Spectres increased their controlled world count by one further.

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OOC: Well... basically, the Open part of this thread is for folks who have the urge to come in and possibly react to the wildfire spread of the Death Spectre 'menace'. Any rationale can be used, though the easiest would likely be the rather hefty explosion that just left a really large crater one one continent...

New Tyre System, Terran Border SWAC’S sensor post.
“Commander” Said a young man who was sitting beside a holographic control panel; he was hooked directly in to the system via neural link. The commander was standing in the middle of the control room, his hands folded behind him as the white light emphasized the utilitarian look of the command center. He looked over to the officer sitting next to him. “Yes ensign?” his voice was cold and unemotional as he responded.

The officer responded in an equal cold voice “We are detecting significant FTL Movement Several light years away, it appears to be emanating from a system beyond the Polaris nebula, as well as power signatures that indicate ships.”

The commander raised an eyebrow and looked at his officer, “Well we must investigate this, tell venture pack alpha, to prepare for departure, and to equip one of their ships with an SWAC’s package.” He stood their looking out in to the vast darkness of space, his eyes getting a full view of the magnificent blue and green Polaris nebula ahead of the system. Venture class attack ships, were state of the art heavily armed high tech, border patrol, scouting and attack platforms. That could facilitate multirole missions better than any current ship in the federation fleet. All border outposts were the first to receive packs of them for scouting and quick reaction.

Mean while on the 210 meter UTS Phalanx , captain Morgan Benson, leaned back on his leather like chair, His brain hooked up to the ships AI and Computer via wireless network, a new addition to federation ships, he already had received the orders the instant they were issued. The ship was on condition yellow. He sighed a bit placing his hands on his lap and folding them, he started to speak in a commanding coarse voice. “Are all ships ready for departure?”, the con officer sitting in front of him swiveled her chair back and nodded “yes sir all ships report ready”

Benson was middle aged man in his late twenties, brown hair and blue eyes; he was a normal height for a Terran , he was involved as a commander in recent incidents along the Gyyes border, now he was assigned a new ship and crew, fresh out of space dock he hadn’t gotten a chance to test the advanced systems of the ship. The 210 meter ships began departing, a pack of six vessels moved forward glimmering gently as they pushed in to the utter darkness of space, their hulls shimmering due to the light of the nearby star.

Benson sighed and nodded sending a wireless single to the ships AI, suddenly the entire ship was reverberating with energetic noises, the vessel opened a tear in front of it , followed by its wing mates it disappeared in to a vortex of crackling multi dimensional energy, the vortexes closing upon the crafts entry, leaving nothing but dead quiet space.
Several moments passed, those vortexes appeared just outside the strange system, crackling to life as ships busted from Multi dimensional Space, the small ships moved forward gliding at sub light, using only their dark energy repulsion drives another new feature for these ships.

The UTS Thermopile was equipped with a SWACS package, specially enhanced for scouting and advanced sensory output; it was in the center of the arrow formation.
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d110/USFU/HeavyAttackship.jpg

Death Spectre World 3: Bloodlust

As the Fedral vessels appeared in the system, it would have seemed as though some form of invasion had only recently concluded, as the general vicinity teemed with squadrons of fightercraft easily numbering into the thousands, of no discernible common construction. Each craft bore its own unique structure and disproportionately strong power signatures, suggesting weapons of a great many different types far stronger than their frames should be able to accomodate.

Off by the planet itself rested a single vessel that might be considered a capital ship. Several kilometers in length, its power signature was similarly disproportionate in strength to its size, and at the present moment it was simply hanging there in low orbit...

The Death Spectres were cautious when it came to newcomers, as the recent not-killing-everything-in-sight policy over their homeworld taught them to be within the first half hour. And so it was that a simple audio message came for the Fedral vessels within seconds of their arrival, giving them little chance to move further into the system:

YOU WILL HOLD POSITION. DO NOT COME CLOSER. ONLY COME WHEN CLEARANCE GIVEN.

A lone destroyer (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a287/GeneralZhukov3333/?action=view&current=GanoxanDestroyerMkI.jpg) comes out of hyperspace over Charnel. The hull seemed to have taken a beating, smoldering and venting smoke. "Goddamn that was close!" a relieved Captain Lingun exclaimed. "Damage report!"

"Hyperdrive is fried. Sublights are working at minimum. That storm really messed us up. Life support is operational. Wea--" proximity alarms interrupted Lieutenant Briansk. "We are getting pulled into the planets gravity well. Navigational systems cannot pull us away," Briansk looked away from the monitor and at Lingun," we're going in."

Lingun gaped as the destroyer began its decent into the atmosphere. "Attention all hands. Attention all hands. Brace your self for surface impact."

"Some of the reverse thrusters have been damaged."

"Alright try to level it out."

"I'm trying sir."

The ship began to fire up in the atmosphere glowing red. At first it was diving straight down then the undamaged thrusters began to kick in leveling somewhat at around a 45 degree angle over the next 13 seconds and continuing.

"Try to find a soft landing zone. Wait over there. Zoom in on that location."

"Seems to be some wetlands"

"Alright Lieutenant reel her in their."

"Yes sir!"

The thrusters began to turn the ship into the wetlands. Several seconds later it hit the location skidding across the marshy surface spewing up mud. When the ship finally came to a halt Lingun got up. "Is everyone okay?"

"Some sections reporting minor injuries but everyone seems to be okay."

"Status report."

"Power systems are functional for at least 3 months, then we would have to find some palladium to refuel."

"Alright. Anything else.

"We cannot seem to open port hangar bay doors seems to be jammed with debris. Starboard doors are operational. Fighters have remained secure and undamaged by the crash."

"Good. I assume the air quality is breathable."

"Yes sir, at least thats what the scanners are saying."

Very well. Send out the Signal Corps Fighter (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a287/GeneralZhukov3333/?action=view&current=stealth.jpg) to jump back to friendly territory and another (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a287/GeneralZhukov3333/?action=view&current=FighterAtmos.jpg) to scout the area."

"Yes sir."

Lingun looked outside the viewport. Where the hell are we?

OOC: Just a little bored thought I try the smaller one ship approach.

As Lingun looked out the viewport, a rather sudden happenstance took place just inside visual range, which wasn't very far considering the dense jungle.

A lone humanoid, approximately five feet tall and sporting an intricate pattern of skin blotches that helped hide him amidst the underbrush, tore along as fast as he could, leaping over fallen logs and dancing past upright trees, almost oblivious to the fact that a vessel had crashed so close by. Shortly after his passage across the visual field of the viewport, a small bolt of furry death went sailing along the ground after him at ridiculous speed. The only reason it could be seen at all was that it was sufficiently far away that it could not pass from one side of the field of view to the other in the blink of an eye.

Thirty seconds later a dismembered three-toed foot impacted the viewport, followed by a very intrigued ball of fur and teeth. The latter impact resounded even through the relatively well armored hull, though the sound of its shrill laughter was likely the more disturbing sound to get through.

It eyed Lingun through the viewport, then pulled out a little knife. Then, with more strength than a creature of its stature should have been capable of, it etched "GTFO" on the viewport. When it was finished, it hopped back and happily chewed on a dismembered arm while keeping an expectant eye on the vessel's only exposed airlocks.

Lingun was taken aback by the creature's actions. "What the hell was that?!?"

"Perimeter scans show a life sign nearby." a scanning technician said.

"Looks like we aren't alone on this planet. I want pilots to their Arm Slaves. Have them perform a perimeter sweep of the area for any other life signs nearby."

"Yes sir."

In the hangar, Arm Slave pilots ran to their M9s (http://www.full-metal-panic.com/images/recon/mecha/gernsback/gernsback01.jpg) and climbed into the cockpits. The hangar doors opened as the ten 14-meter tall mechs exited the ship carrying their 40 mm Assualt Rifles. "This is Torus 1, proceeding with perimeter sweep."

"Copy that Torus One, updating your databanks with the latest map intel."

"Copy HQ."

"Map updated," the AI said.

"Alright squad fan out."

OOC: Suggestion, sterilize planet surface and quarantine the system. :o

At the first sign of what emerged from the hangar, the little creature spat out the stripped arm bones and grinned menacingly, showing its alloy teeth in all their horrific glory. Then it was gone, disappearing into the ground like a malicious whack-a-mole.

Then comms suddenly erupted into a high-pitched cacophony of roaring, swearing, and a disturbing prevalence of 'Yum!' that seemed as unpleasant to listen to as it was even more unpleasant to comprehend. If sensors pointing into orbit were at all present, it would have been somewhat easier to spot the fifty signatures of small craft hovering in low orbit, though at about the time that the picture could be permitted to fully manifest, a rather intense surge of sensor jamming hit, rendering any such scans relatively useless.

Communications remained active, however, dominated by malicious chatter and... two shrieks of rage broke the maddening monotony, followed by a sudden shift from simple chatter to something along the lines of insane laughter.

And within a few seconds beyond that, a pair of strange fightercraft suddenly came to a stop just above the mechs, by only a matter of meters in fact, with their 'noses' pointed back towards the sky. How they got their so quickly was anybody's guess, but even the most basic military mind could recognize that they came in at hypersonic speeds and somehow managed to brake to a standstill in that position with remarkable precision, as both fightercraft were in the exact same position, save that their noses were oriented in a slight radial manner with respect to the lead mech.

Then they lit what amounted to their afterburners. The equivalent of two sets of weapons-grade fusion torches flared into life right onto the mech as the two fighters surged back into the sky mere moments after they came to a stop above the lead mech, each generating their own sonic boom as they went back up into the blue. The force of the ignition was sufficient to rock even the crashed destroyer...

"Warning hostile aircraft detected," Torus One's AI said.

He immediately rolled the Arm Slave to the side in time to dodge the incoming jet of flame. As soon as the AS was able to attain a kneeling firing position, T1 opened up his 40 mm on the enemy aircraft with the one arm that wasn't damaged. He ceased fire and was blasted back the AS's feet dragging in the marsh, as the fighters left quickly. "Warning right side shoulder has taken critical damage, muscle packages moderately damaged but still operational."

"Command looks like we have company."

"We already know, Torus One."

At the bridge the scanning officer reported, "Sir they were jamming us."

"Have every functional turret loaded with flak rounds. Have them shoot anything they see that is out of place."

"Yes sir."

Lingun looked back at the viewport and pondered on what was written on it.

One hour later, a tech Sargent came with a PDA. "Sensor array has been moderately damaged. Because of those fighters we will be set back by a day??"

"Yes sir, seeing that is our priority, we are putting every available engineer to it."

"Alright, you're dismissed."

Much though I hate to do OOC things so soon in a thread...

OOC: Barring the notion that you shouldn't have been able to detect the incoming fighters as they were jamming SENSORS... and also that the whole process took maybe three seconds from initial appearance to eruption of a monstrously overpowered fusion-torch effect, if your mech dodged out of the way it would still have been at least partially slagged by sheer proximity to the durn thing.

See, there's two big mistakes ya made, bored or not. One was in not sending out a comm signal at least stating your purpose for being anywhere near charnel. of which even a distress signal would suffice. The second was in sending out assault mechs when shown that there are creatures that can speak a known language romping about just outside. These creatures are very sensitive to hostile gestures, as their entire culture has been constructed from the ashes of beating off foreign invaders with unsurpassed fury.

Their space forces are fighter-based, with their fighters being significantly stronger than average to make up for the near complete lack of capital ships. And this tends to translate also into the fact their propulsion systems are proportionally monstrous. So I did indeed mean it when I mentioned that two Death Spectre fighters lighting up their afterburners at point-blank range to the mech would have sufficient force behind them to rock the destroyer. Any mech would simply be sent flying with significant amounts of melting damage, at LEAST.

Ya don't wanna pick a fight with these things just because you're bored. These things hold the ultimate grudges. They will kill you, eat you, find where the rest of your people live, kill THEM, eat THEM, and likely leave a note on a blasted and bloodstained rock saying 'Shouldn't have sent out the mechs first'.

OOC: You were jamming sensors not scopes. The AI would only need that three seconds to react. But as the proximity of the blast I will RP damage. Wouldn't your pilots be crushed by the monstrous speed your fighters have coming down. Even with inertial dampeners coming down from low orbit with that speed and the gravitational effects of the planet would have made your pilots look like pancakes.

My ship just came from a RP that my world became swallowed up by a Forcestorm as I mentioned in my first post, although I didn't specify. I sent out the mechs to make a perimeter sweep not to kill anything just find out what the hell was going on. The Spectres made the first hostile move.

The reason I did not send out a signal was that the sensor array was damaged. The one thing I did send out was my Signal Corps Fighter to be sent back home, not directly though. Also I have another fighter

The only reason I was bored is that I did not want to send a huge ass fleet. I wanted to do a survival RP.

OOC: Scopes sure, but those also tend to require you to be looking in the right direction. I prolly should have mentioned that the fighters came in rather low, keeping the destroyer between the mech and them until the last possible reactionable second, to say nothing of just a small ways above the treeline.

Plus, when most FT fighters zip about in space, they move at significantly higher speeds if only because there's no space to hold them back. The inertial dampeners will be able to hold relatively easily in atmospheric flight. The only thing it really means is there's also a very significant concussion shockwave from where the two fighters lit off. Which of course also adds to the notion that three seconds might be sufficient to *try* getting out of the way, but only to get away from 'being tossed half-melted back into the ship's hangar.'

In other news, ya needed to RP the fighter actually being sent out. I saw you giving the order, but nothing was said about it actually going up. There's gonna be some hilarity about that in itself...

As for not communicating... well you know there's stuff out there NOW.

OOC: I fail to believe that your fighters can come in from low orbit, skim the treeline at hypersonic speeds or whats left of them as you describe the planet being a wasteland, and then suddenly stop with their afterburners facing the ground. The forces involved would have to slow those fighters considerably.

OOC: Omnidirectional VTOL is fun, and I stand by my statement that FT fighters can handle stresses greater than what was just pulled simply because they're built to do things at even greater velocities in space.

Oh, and you're thinking the wrong planet. Wasteland is mostly what's left of Bloodlust. You went for Charnel, which is the rainforest world mentioned in the first post and the beginning of the second. Death Spectres tend to like liberal amounts of overgrowth if only because it gives them more places to hide when preparing assaults.

Anyway, back to IC stuff since I do so hate OOC clutter.

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Not seconds after the fightercraft performed their maneuver and vanished into the sky, one trailing some slight electrical discharges as the shields stopped a trio of large shells launched by the partially disabled mech, the comms chatter from above quieted significantly. A deeper, but still unmistakably alien voice bellowed on all lines:

"KNOW YOU CAN HEAR US. CHARNEL DEATH SPECTRE WORLD. HERE WE RULE. YOU BOW TO US.

RESPONSE DEMANDED. DEFIANCE IS DEATH."

"Sir our shortrange antennas have picked up a message."

"Play it,"

"Yes sir."

After the message was heard Lingun sat back in his command chair. "Set frequency to open channels."

"Done."

"This is Captain Lingun of the Destroyer Niflheim. We did not purposely come to this planet, as our ship was pulled in by the gravitational pull of the planet. If you would allow us to repair our ship we will go merrily on our way. We apologize for any hostile actions towards your craft but your actions were questionable."

"Message sent out sir," the comms officer held the earpiece tightly," sir Torus 1 is coming back to the ship. He has suffered severe damage to the right shoulder."

"Open hangar two when he comes near. Have the rest of the team surround the destroyer."

"Relaying orders to their AIs."

"OOC: The stress in atmospheric flight is very much different from spacial flight. Yes they are built to handle greater velocities in space because their is very minimal force involved. But in a atmospheric condition you must acknowledge the forces involved, such as gravity and atmospheric resistance.

The comms chatter broke into enraged shrieking and curses once again, likely accomplishing little more than sending notice that the creatures were not pleased with the response they had just recieved. The outburst ended as quickly as it began, as if the creatures instinctively knew a retort was on the way. They were not incorrect in their assumption.

"NO DISTRESS SIGNAL. SENT OUT WALK-TANKS FIRST. SEE MORE WALK-TANKS NOW. RETURN WALK-TANKS TO BOX OR WE SCRAPE AREA CLEAN. DEFIANCE IS DEATH. SELF-REPAIR MOOT ISSUE THEN."

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OOC: I already did. They weren't GOING as fast as they would in space. Hypersonic speeds such as they approached at are still below what they can manage in space, but still significantly fast enough that they would practically be right on top of your folks before one can even complete the phrase 'Sir, there's a couple dots on the horizon incoming mighty fast and they don't look friendly' or something similar.

"We are receiving another message."

"Patch it through."

After the message Lingun got up slowly. He pondered about the motion of moving the Arm Slaves in. "Open channel," he ordered.

"We will comply with the order. We will move in our Arm Slaves."

As the hangar bay doors opened, the team of Arm Slaves filed into the destroyers the ones that were on the other side simply jumped onto the destroyers and ran to the hangar doors.

OOC: If you were traveling at hypersonic speeds then your fighters should have slowed down on the approach at least.

OOC: Hence why the process took three seconds rather than 'scree-BOOM!' Of course discarding the fact that one cannot skid in mid-air in exchange for a slight amount of comedic value...

No response came after the interlopers complied with the bellowed demand, but neither did the area get 'scraped clean', so it was at least safe to assume that they had been moderately sated by the acquiescence. Sensor jamming let up as well, showing that the number of fighters overhead had easily doubled, and also revealing a strange larger vessel further out that oddly enough showed a proper ship registry. Whatever Y.A.A.S.F. meant as a ship class was anybody's guess though.

Outside, the creature from earlier popped its head above ground once again and simply stared at the ship with an almost disturbingly cute expression of curiosity. Its teeth were not shown in any way, and in all presented a strange dichotomy to the previously seen vicious rodent seen before. Now it simply looked like something of a slightly oversized cross between a rabbit and a gopher, with slightly cloven paws. Shortly after it reappeared, several dozen more popped up as well, in a rough circular pattern around the destroyer itself.

As they all just stood there watching the ship, one pulled out an object resembling a traffic sign and planted it on the ground in plain view of the vessel. Referencing it would reveal that it was a 'beware potholes' sign, though why they felt the need to put one up was not readily apparent.

And they simply sat there, watching...

It had been a week since they crash landed on the planet. After running into those strange creatures Lingun has been on edge. The crew was almost finished with the repairs to the hyperdrive system and the engines. The hull had only suffered some significant damage but had been patched up from the inside as Lingun refused to let anyone out of the ship. The lead engineer, Commander Frenck, gave Lingun the report. "Sir we only need a couple of hours and the engines should be operational."

"Tell me ASAP when its functional. I want to get off this rock."

"Right."

She walked off towards the repair areas.

Two hours had passed and Lingun's commlink rang. "Sir its finished. It might be shaky but its functional."

"Power up engines."

"Powering up engines," navigation's said, "engine power at 60%"

"80"

"100, engines online."

"Punch it!"

The ship started to lift off out of the marsh and out. "Sir repulsors are can't level it."

"Fire downward thrusters, once we're level all power to engines."

"Aye sir, firing thrusters."

The ship started to level out skyward. "All power to engines sir." and started towards space. They had gotten out of the atmosphere and were in orbit.

KCS Mercy II (KCSR-171241)

The staryacht glided into the system on low engine power. Its sleek appearance belied the massive amount of weaponry inside - like most staryachts owned by the Kostemetsian Navy.

The sensors beeped and detected an energetic disturbance around one of the planets of the system. Lieutenant Samuel Walton frowned and turned on the tracker. A red circle appeared on the screen, highlighting a small area around the planet.

He tapped the FTL jump button, and flew the Mercy in through a rapidly appearing wormhole terminus. A second later, the Mercy appeared again, directly on the six of the ship taking off from the planet.

Over the systemwide wormhole radio, he sent a quick message.

"Unidentified ship, this is the Kostemetsian staryacht Mercy II. Please forward identification codes."

"Sir we have entered orbit," navigations said.

"Sir we are getting a message from another vessel." Lt. Regal said

"No more messages I just want to get the hell out of here."

"Ditto sir. Preparing hyperdrive."

Commander Frenck's voice can be heard through the intercom. "Captain navigational computers are working at minimum it will alter our course drastically."

"Then jump randomly. Anywhere is better than here."

"Aye sir."

Soon the engines lit up and the destroyer left the system for good. But to where?

OOC: Taking the ship to a new thread. I will be using this ship throughout some other threads as they journey home.

They had taken the presence of the crashed vessel with relative good grace, as they had simply remained at the periphery of the area after constructing several dozen pit traps in the event the 'walk-tanks' should have emerged again. The inhabitants of the vessel knew what would happen if the Death Spectres were defied again, but since that first day not a soul had poked its head outside. When it took off, they simply looked on, watching its departure like hawks.

Which may have accounted for how surprised they were when another ship appeared out of nowhere, completely ignorant of the gargantuan collection of trigger-happy fightercraft and the programmed-to-be-trigger-happy fleet carrier, and demanded information from the departing ship. Profiles did not match up, so the Spectres swiftly concluded they were not of the same origin, however...

The breach was quite colossal. How dare this vessel arrive and not only fail to ask permission to go further into the system (without a damn good reason why), but also act as though it had the right to demand anything whatsoever from another vessel that was running away from them.

The fleeing vessel departed, THEN the FTL inhibitor field went up, THEN surrounding fighters each planted a shot at maximum power at the engines of the offending vessel (OOC: Keep in mind there are about three thousand fighters and one rather disturbing dreadnought that the spaceyacht has just surrounded itself amidst, each with SIGNIFICANT firepower and some (read 'about 500') with the equivalent of capital-class batteries, all of which had targeting locks on your vessel about three seconds after it appeared). Without even missing a beat, a communication with the exact same mechanism came to the beset-upon ship:

"CHARNEL DEATH SPECTRE WORLD. HERE WE RULE. YOU BOW TO US. DEFIANCE IS DEATH. OTHER SHIP LEARNED HARD WAY. YOU LEARN PAINFUL WAY."

The ships appeared on the sensors out of nowhere.

"Oh, go away," Walton thought. Working quickly, he loaded up some malware and waited for the next transmission, piggybacking the malware onto it and watching it spread throughout every computer in the system.

While the ships were distracted, Walton fired a quantum shot at the area of space in front of him, weakening the fabric of space, then pulsed the slower than light engines once, ripping open a makeshift wormhole that would take him about two AUs out from the fleet.

(OOC: This wormhole can't be stopped with an FTL inhibitor because it wasn't created by an FTL drive.)

The interlopers attempted to fire up their wormhole generator again as they seemed to realize the error of its ways at the last moment, unfortunately the inhibitor field worked in a manner that the spectres could only describe as 'keeping things flat'. In actuality this pertained to enhancing the stability of the fabric of reality around the source of the inhibitor field, preventing any spatial warping that could be attributed to wormholes, hyperspace, or generally any form of faster than light travel requiring a 'hole' to be opened up. It was something of a curiosity in fact that due to the nature of Death Spectre cultural evolution, they had acquired a significantly powerful form of inhibition long before they ever got their hands on any form of actual faster than light travel.

But then, coming from a race that perfected the concept of blitzkrieg before fire, one could not exactly expect the Death Spectres to have followed traditional technological advancement pathways.

Of course, when one considered that the aft section of the vessel in question was now blooming in a spectacular display of convergent and more than a little overwhelming firepower, one realized that discussion of inhibitor fields became somewhat moot.

A curious signal popped forth from the vessel as the Death Spectres decided to finish the thing off. What it was they did not know, as all it did was make one warriorcraft's comm reception get all staticky while they all ensured that the vessel was little more than a slowly expanding cloud of metallic vapor and the occasional smidge of volatile gas. For the part where it mattered, the Death Spectre involved didn't even pay attention to the slightly irritating 'anomaly' until about two weeks later, when it was decided to 'fix' the problem via repeated treatments (and eventual destruction) with a hammer. A new one was crafted an hour afterwards and placed on the fightercraft with no noticeable sign of whatever it was that caused the annoying 'psh' sound.

OOC: You came into a Death Spectre system. You completely ignored the colossal number of ships watching the Ganoxan vessel flee the planet. You jumped into their midst, and attempted to lord it over the fleeing vessel. Nations that AREN'T Death Spectres would have shot your vessel out of the sky for that breach. You did not pay attention to anything that went before in the thread, which you very much should have as it would have avoided this entire situation. Your ship is dead. Shot down by several thousand thoroughly put-upon Death Spectres, their only regret that in their blind rage they did not preserve enough of your doomed ship to locate your homeworld and blow it to smithereens with a YAASF.

You can consider this an ignore notice. Do not bother to reply in this thread.

Bloody shame really... I made this bunch to have somewhat mindless fun. What do I get? A whole bunch of OOC disputes with people who don't want to take the consequences for their actions. P.S. Not actually meaning Communistic Govts in that tho... that worked out in the end, though shorter than I would've liked. If only his folks'd come out to chat...

Morgan Benson sat up with a raised eyebrow as his ship received the message, he sighed as he motioned his hand idly, to his AI, as his wireless link blinked in the back of his head, he started to speak as the communication was open between destructor ships and federation ships.

Agreed, we will hold, we come in peace and do not mean any harm

Morgan sat back waiting his hands folded together as he peered out to the darkness of space in front of him, little did he know about the mess going on in the other system.

The venture class ships floated in formation holding their stance, their hull lights blinked again and again.

I think you'll find that ripping a hole in the fabric of space != activating wormhole generator. I did basically the equivalent of throwing myself into a black hole.

OOC: The Spectre FTLi stops the ripping of holes in space.

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Some time later, on the outskirts of bloodlust, a single Warriorcraft approached the odd newcomer vessels. Though it was easily dwarfed by even the smallest of the Terran vessels, it came without fear or caution, and simply came to a stop some distance from the front of their formation.

A single comm channel came from the Warriorcraft, though the background noise seemed to indicate a more crowded environment around the speaker, what with the heavy amount of chittering and occasional enraged shriek accompanied by a symphony of jackhammers.

"UNKNOWN. FAMILIAR. EXPLAIN PRESENCE."

Benson looked outside his eyes panning the darkness of space, he looked at the ships, he folded his hands together on his lap as he replied to their odd inquiry, his voice was calm, cool and diplomatic.

“We are here to explore, and investigate, as well as scout systems out for life.”

He simply said his voice reverberating calmly through the comns, the Terran ships stood their ground floating gently, as their running lights blinked upon their grey hulls.
Thankfully the Terran federation wasn’t as aggressive as most nations, though it was still on guard for most foes.