NationStates Jolt Archive

Aaron sat staring at the console. The past few days had been pretty rough on his ship (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/freighter.jpg)and crew. First pirates attacked The Reginald, a small freighter from the ISEC Class, and then after stealing almost all their cargo, they shot up the engines so they could barely make FTL. The trip home would be long and expensive. Clarke had repaired the engines the best he could but even then, FTL was barely obtainable and it looked like a long trip to anywhere was the only thing the crew had to look forward to in the near future. The pirates had also ruined the radio beyond repair and left them drifting in space knowing even if the poor little ship made it back, there was no way to trace the pirates down since they would be long gone.

As Aaron watched the readouts, one of them suddenly dipped into the red zone and the whole ship shuddered followed by an explosion back in engineering. “Dammit, what now?” he muttered to himself as he reached for the switch to activate the internal comms.

“What happened back there?”

After a few moments, Clarke’s voice came over the intercom. In the background the shrill alarm from the engines as well as a few other explosions tried to drown out the deep voice of the engineer. “Captain, the engines finally went. There is nothing I can do about them. The last of the capacitors we had blew and there is not any way to replace them unless you think Radio Hutt delivers. You have about ten minutes before the FTL drive is completely useless. Better chose a place for us to crash for a while.”

Cursing under his breath, Aaron checked the nav computer and located a small system with a yallow star just barely within the remaining time he had use of the engines. He typed in the commands and the ship changed course and sputtered toward what could be their last destination.


Ten minutes later a battered freighter dropped out of FTL in a system that seemed completely deserted. Aaron and his copilot were on the bridge while Clarke was trying in vain to repair the engines.

“Well Captain, we have sublight but anything more than that appears to be a pipedream. I can’t fix them without parts we just don’t have aboard The Reginald.”

“I was afraid of that. Scan the system; see if there is anyone here. Perhaps we can luck out and find help.”

“There are no signs of EM traffic. If there is anyone here, they are not using any comm. Systems. Wait…I am detecting a presence in orbit around the second planet. It appears to be a metal construct about 4000 meters in length.”

“Any sign of life?”

“Negative, there are barely any power readings, just what appears to be minimum systems running.”

“Take us in; there might be something we can use to fix the drives.”

“Yes Sir, right away.”



An hour later, The Reginald came around the horizon and first sighted the object. Aaron watched the main screen as Karl and Clarke sat behind him. Clarke had come forward from engineering after giving up on the FTL drives.

“Jeeze, look at that (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/legacy1.jpg).”

“Love your technical terms for whatever it Clarke. Did you learn that back on Terra?”

“Shut your trap. Seriously, look at the damage; it appears to be part of something bigger. Something happened that snapped it off like a twig.”

“Something bigger? The thing is almost four kilometers long. What the hell could be larger than that?

“I don’t know but whatever it is, it is missing a part and that missing part is floating in front of us right now.”

“Clarke, scan the object and try to get an idea what it is. Karl, check to see if anyone claims this system. I am going to take us on a little trip around the thing (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/legacy2.jpg). Perhaps we might see a door.”

Karl was busy searching in the nav computer. “Captain, the system appears to be unclaimed by anyone.”

“Sir, Sensors shows the front half is hollow and an opening should be at the other end.”

“Hollow? This might be interesting indeed.”

The Reginald changed direction and headed toward the front of the artifact. As they drew near, it was becoming obvious how large the thing really was. Within minutes the artifact dwarfed the freighter. The “front” of the flotsam was open to space and Aaron headed toward it. As he entered the derelict (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/legacy3.jpg), Aaron switched on the exterior lights so he could see the cavernous interior.

“Holy sheet, the interior is almost two kilometers long. What could it be for?”

Clark chuckled, “Did you learn that in Pilot School?”

“Shaddup!”

“You two, knock it off, I see a protrusion that looks like an umbilical on the side. Lets head toward it and see what happens.”





Three days later, Clarke was sitting in a bar. He had obviously been there for a long time and consumed a lot of the stock. His words were hard to make out but those listening could get the gist of them. They wrote them off to booze and space madness. Some actually did listed and repeated the words or others. Soon rumors of the Artifact began to circulate and caught the ears of certain individuals…





The OOC Thread is:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=580466

The Katrina (http://z13.invisionfree.com/Chazakain_Storefront/index.php?showtopic=30) drifted through space orbiting A-012 wormhole, having released its batch of probes (http://z9.invisionfree.com/Earth_2050/index.php?showtopic=967) hours before.
"Probe Alpha Gamma reporting a red giant, 2 rocky outer planets..." "No"
"Probe Alpha Beta reporting a quasar..." "No"
"Probe Charlie reporting a white.." "No"
"Damn it Jim are you sure you heard the nerf herder correctly?"
"Yes he swore that his father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate, was the first mate on a ship that found an ancient device roughly 3,000 meters orbiting a planet in a yellow star system."
sigh "Wish he had been a little more specific, this is the 12th wormhole we've tried, I don't get why hq would believe such an unlikely and far removed story."
"You known as much as I do commander what the last piece of ancient tech gave us, advancing us in one year what would have taken us at least 200 times that, and if we can find another..."
"Yes I know brother, but this still seems like a wild grun hunt."
"Sirs, Probe Alpha Charlie Omega Delta 20192..." "Spit it out."
"We've found it, I repeat the probe has found the system."
"On screen."

With that the yellow system flashed onscreen, showing a medium yellow star in the prime of its life with several orbiting bodies.
"Third planet right?"
"No sir its the second planet, and its a deal larger than our original source claimed, we are detecting it to be at least 4 km long."
"Wonder what else he forgot, tell the 1st fleet we've moving in."

Transmission, minimal encryption
"We found the ancient array, at coordinations 1, 131.1, 512, we request back up we will be going through wormhole to stake our claim. Katrina out.

Captain Tek'atje liked to keep an eye on things. It was always helpful to have the edge in terms of information, especially when both every other member of your own species and every other species in the galaxy was either actively trying to kill you or passively waiting until you got close enough to kill. Tek'atje hadn't gotten to be head of the Independent Faction without staying alert, and he knew his enemies knew that.

Today he was checking reports from his probes. One set of probes had been assigned to follow a damaged and vulnerable freighter, one of several ships in the area tagged for potential resource harvesting; most of them had not been followed up on, however, partly due to the distance from Tek'atje's home system and partly due to better catches elsewhere. Tek'atje did not have very many ships, although the ships it did have were well-chosen and well-conserved, and the Captain made sure to keep them in place: he always left at least one harvester grounded to replace any lost ships, and kept automation maximized to avoid needless loss of life.

This particular set of probes had reported back something far more interesting than a space-dead freighter, however: a larger object about the size of a harvester, unoccupied, inside of which eight warships could fit comfortably. He had reassigned the probes to study the new object and leave the freighter alone. Their analysis had taken them awhile, as they in turn had entered the derelict to examine the insides; Tek'atje himself had moved on to other things, but now they had reported back, and it was a young Technician who brought this information to the Captain.

"We've received reports from Probes 61 through 63," she said.

"Which ones?" the Captain said absent-mindedly, examining survey records for a nearby star system.

"The ones assigned to the unknown object in 79.110.42.376. We've learned more about it. Well, obviously we've learned more about it.... it had three probes assigned.... that was kind of a useless sentence. But we know what it's for, what it's made of, and so on."

"Go on."

"It looks like a very specialized kind of harvester," she said, bringing up an image on one of the multi-screens. "One that builds only ships. You see, there are all these internal... areas.... which are too large to be anything but holding areas for ships. There could be other reasons, obviously, but when you look at all this machinery inside...." The Technician went on for a little longer in this vein.

"I see," the Captain said, examining the image carefully with a few of the finer sensory appendages. "It does look interesting. Why is it there?"

"We don't know," the Technician said. "And... we're not sure who built it. Its computer systems aren't anything we're familiar with."

"Hmmm. What system did you say it's in? I'll move a small group in to investigate more closely."

Shortly thereafter Tek'atje and his ships made the hyperspace jump, arriving in the system within seconds. He had picked a scientific consist, by Damalgian standards, which meant several med-to-large science vessels escorted by "only" about ten warships, with two arsenal ships carrying supplies, and an interdictor. Their arrival pattern surrounded the derelict, or artifact, or whatever it was, and interdiction was active to prevent anyone from sneaking up on the Damalgians. As already mentioned, the Captain was cautious in that regard.

Tek'atje was impressed. It was large, apparently useless, and had no identifying markings; in other words, it looked just like a Damalgian ship, except without the concealed weapons. Time to go in. He selected several personnel to accompany him onto the derelict and headed for the shuttle bay.

Some of these people who had heard about "Clarke's Artifact" were Dornalian Trader-Adventurers from Nova Louisiana, that big territory in another galaxy linked only by the miracle of warp-gates. One of them plying the trade routes heard of the stories, and said stories reached the ears of the Dornalian Government.

Inevitably, word hit MacIntyre, who merely grumbled and authorized an expedition, though he was busy. Thus, it fell onto the Commissariat of Science and People's Acolytes to organize somehting, and therefore--for the first time since the Farrell Expedition, a small unit of three ships, the Einstein, Da Gama, and Christie were on their way to the rumored coordinates of the Artifact at all due lightspeed.

As they sped towards the Artifact, two men were at the head of the Expedition. Dr. Ishii, and Sensei 1st Class Pyotr Brynner of the Shinmei School. Naturally, the initial force was but a scouting unit. However, should it prove to be something of value, Los Angeles had authorized the intervention of units based in New Leningrad and Nova Louisiana to ensure the Artifact remained very much in the service of the Dornalian Revolution.

When they entered the area, they began scanning for the yard....

The Captain had left a Subcaptain, commanding Warship Six, in charge of his forces while he and his team went down to the artifact via shuttle to learn more about it. So it was this Subcaptain who noticed the three newcomers and hailed them with a friendly greeting, which was unfortunately completely incomprehensible to humanoids and species with the same senses as them, even though his commanding officer had only just left the main science vessel on a shuttle and was well within reach. It was a fairly generic message anyway, so the Dornalians weren't missing much. However, they could interpret the visible signals -- the large number of ships, although their function could not as yet be divined, and the presence of a moderately powerful FTLi field extending a little under 1 AU in all directions from the small group -- somewhat differently than the Damalgian officer had intended.

The Katrina sped out of the temporary opening that was the wormhole's exit.
"Report?"
"Engines normal, shielding up, commutations normal, a perfect jump sir."
"Good and the system?"
"As when we left... No I'm picking up several alien ships, including several already in the possible ancient tech. We are getting an signal from one of the vessels sir."
messed up message
"hmm wonder what that means, hows those scans of the tech going?"
"We'll need to get closer sir, our scans can barely penetrate the tech's outer armor."
"Send a reply to the vessels closest to the tech and move her closer, carefully Sxero."

Message:
"Greetings Senient(s) we come in peace to this system, we believe that this object may be linked to an ancient race that use to live on our home planet and helped advance our race to what it is today, as such we request permission to study it and divine as to its purpose.

It's some sort of industrial-scale fabricator, right? We have those. I have those. Why do we want to grab this one again?

Because it's there, presumably. Regardless of the why, we do have orders to either secure the structure or render it inoperable, Monad.

Fair enough, I suppose. Just wish the Tripartite would deign to enlighten us poor gigaliths.

What, and ruin the fun? Right, found the poor bastard who started the rumors. I have an Avatar on site, wanna snatch him?

Let's not. I'd rather not have to bother with a C3 op on his little civ just because we were impatient. Just grab a mindstate off him and we'll 'rape a few thousand copies of it.

Aww, you're no fun. Let's see, just drop an effector net, and.... There we go!

Where am I? Why can't I see anything? Is anyone there?

Godammit Sieve, why does it have access to your comm systems?

Who's that? What's going on?

Sorry, little bug there. Lemme fix it. Don't want to listen to the annoying little bastard crying when we kill him a few million times over...

What?! No, don-

Ah, much better. Now I'll just run the copy machine a few times, boot up MekantanFunTime.exe, and let's see what meat-for-brains here has to say...

Oh my. That was graphic.

Nah, don't worry about it. I've got some better ones from when I was chatting with those gals from Xenonier, I'll boot them up later if you want to try 'em out.

I think I'll pass. So, we got directions?

I just tortured a few thousand of him to death. What do you think?

Right. I'll just boot up the Guilder... Hrm. FTLi field, being projected by one of several ships in system. Probably can punch through it, but it's only a few minutes wide.

Just hit the border of it, we'll walk the rest of the way. I'd rather have a full tank when we get there.

Righto. Dooring in three picos. Two. One...

____________________

The trio of black orbs blinked suddenly into existence at the edge of FTLi bubble, soaring inwards at a fraction of a percent below lightspeed. Swarms of green fireflies budded from the surface of the ebon bubbles, thousands of the emerald dots encircling their bulk as they darted towards the second planet of the system.

The Captain had left a Subcaptain, commanding Warship Six, in charge of his forces while he and his team went down to the artifact via shuttle to learn more about it. So it was this Subcaptain who noticed the three newcomers and hailed them with a friendly greeting, which was unfortunately completely incomprehensible to humanoids and species with the same senses as them, even though his commanding officer had only just left the main science vessel on a shuttle and was well within reach. It was a fairly generic message anyway, so the Dornalians weren't missing much. However, they could interpret the visible signals -- the large number of ships, although their function could not as yet be divined, and the presence of a moderately powerful FTLi field extending a little under 1 AU in all directions from the small group -- somewhat differently than the Damalgian officer had intended.

"Doctor....I'm getting a signal." Feeding the transmission to Gracie, the Ship's AI, her digital avatar shook her head and replied, saying, "Nope. Can't make heads or tails of it. I can try to work at it some more to crack the code, but it'll take a while."

Dr. Ishii replied simply, "See what you can do, Grace. In the meantime, I wanna know what the hell is slowing us up."

The avatar replied, "It's an FTLi field, sir. Whoever's projecting the welcoming signal is also tripping us up. No easy way in, we're gonna have to go manually. However, the quarry is ahead. There seem to be other ships in country though."

Brynner asked the AI, "What are they?"

"One group is unknown, but they're hailing. The other is possibly Otagian--they're at the edge of the FTLi, so they won't be too much of a problem for now. However, we have fast movers...."

A pause from Brynner, and a frown. The Otagians were known to be high-tech--and dangerous. They were the impetus for the creation of the Mao Zedong Mark IV; facing their tech in the ESUS-GFFA scuffle had left a sour taste in many a PN man's mouth.

"Continue course to the Artifact, full throttle. We need to get to it ASAP."

Thus, the three ships moved in rather quickly at sublight, gunning their engines to get to the second planet before any more interlopers could. As this occurred, Ishii had the sense that whatever he had found was something valuable--it seemed everyone and their cousin wanted it.

"A message, Subcaptain," said a Communications Officer monitoring the computers.

"What's it say?"

"Hard to tell. It's audio only, and pitched about [thirty octaves] below the hearing threshold. The computer's working on it, but I'm not too hopeful."

"Huh. Aliens. That's a pretty big ship they're moving, too."

"Do you want me to destroy it, Subcaptain?" the Weapons Officer asked.

"No! Well, not yet." The Subcaptain glared at him. "We can do that later, if it seems hostile. Yes, Navigator?"

"I think something just showed up at the edge of interdiction. At least, we're getting heat signals. Moving fast, too."

"Ships?"

"Impossible to tell. But they're showing up on the other scans, too. I'm checking for life signs now."

"You do that." He paused. The Dornalians were speeding up as well. "Comms, did you hail those three ships as well?"

"It was open frequency. I should have hailed everyone," the Communications Officer said. "They haven't responded."

"Should we blow them up?" the Weapons Officer asked, hopefully.

"No. Not yet."

"Not even a little?"

"Comms, hail them again. Tell them to slow down or there may be trouble. Keep it targeted at them, too, we don't want anyone else getting the wrong idea."

"Right."

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

Inside the artifact, the Captain's shuttlecraft slowed as it examined the insides, with the Technician and several Scientific Officers recording everything they saw. Inside his environment suit the Captain paused from the low-pitched conversation to listen to a message from the Subcaptain. "Numerous ships have showed up," it ran. "We don't want any trouble." He responded: "Don't make any trouble."

Then he thought better of it, and added, "There's a battlestation on standby if you really need the big guns. Otherwise, don't fire the first shot."

"You do that." He paused. The Dornalians were speeding up as well. "Comms, did you hail those three ships as well?"

"It was open frequency. I should have hailed everyone," the Communications Officer said. "They haven't responded."

"Should we blow them up?" the Weapons Officer asked, hopefully.

"No. Not yet."

"Not even a little?"

"Comms, hail them again. Tell them to slow down or there may be trouble. Keep it targeted at them, too, we don't want anyone else getting the wrong idea."

"Sir, another transmission from the unknowns."

Dr. Ishii shrugged and said, "Till we can understand them, we can't very well do what they say." He then facepalmed, wondering if these people didn't speak English.

However.....Gracie then chirped.

"'Scuse me? Me and the other Gracies deciphered that previous stream. These folks call themselve the Dalmagians. And they're claiming this as a research zone, and they want us to do the usual. Power down weapons, slow up, or get shot.

As for the other stream....we used the same codes. It's a reminder."

Brynner replied, "Gracie, flash this message back at them in their own codes. Tell them we are an expedition from the New Dornalian Commissariat of Science, and we are here to explore the Artifact as well, and mean no harm. We will shut down weapons, and are willing to make contact if you so desire to provide assistance. However, we are prepared to defend ourselves in case of danger, especially from other parties."

The message sent to the Dalmagians, the ships slowed up and powered down weapons.

Hrm. We just passed another message. Sez they want us to slow down and power down weapons.

Slow down? We're going .999c. How exactly does one expect a half billion tonne warship to slow down with only half a second's warning?

Good point. And I really don't think they'd like us to power down our quench guns...

Hah! Yes, well, not like they can detect our guns through the Fields anyway. We'll make a token effort to brake at least, would like to be moving slightly slower when we launch boarding shells anyway.

Fair enough. Want to try to talk to them?

I suppose we should make some sort of effort at peaceably resolving this. I'll throw something out as soon as I finish the pre-firing checklist.

______________________


The Otagian vessels began to slow quickly, decelerating to a mere three-quarters light in the half second before they passed the station, and continuing to decelerate as they continued by, beginning to curve around the planet. A moment before they disappeared behind the horizon, a storm of shells erupted from the front of the black orbs, arcing towards the massive station.

Along with the shells, a simple message was relayed in several languages, from Otagian Japanese to what was known of the language the Dalmagians used.

Greetings. I am the ONV Monad. We are complying with your request to decelerate and power down weapons. Please disregard the swarm of shells currently impacting with the artifact, they are harmless.

________________

Ow, ow, ow, ow. I could hear my superstructure from that last round of braking. I'm not supposed to be able to hear my superstructure, Sieve.

Oh quit complaining, you big baby. Nothing's damaged, we were still below our failure threshold.

Yeah, barely... Anyway, I don't quite trust these blokes. I'm turning on my 'hardeners. No sense relying on the enemy's kindness in keeping his own buddies out. A couple of light-hours should do it...

_________________

As the FTLi bubble flashed on, the shells began making minute course corrections, guiding themselves towards uninhabited and non-vital portions of the station. Slamming home with far less energy than their velocity would suggest, the shells punctured the first layer of hull, landing gently in the inner corridors of the immense structure.

OOC: Apologies for a crappy post, typed quickly during lunch break.

"Two responses, Subcaptain," said the Communications Officer. "We're still piecing together the second one, but the first's pretty well complete."

"All right. What do they say?"

"The first one is.... I can't pronounce it, but it sounds a little bit like [New Dornalia]. They're here to research what they call The Thing That Exists, but with a special emphasis that sort of implies it's been around for a long time. They're willing to make contact with us to provide us assistance, and to shut down weapons, although they are willing to defend themselves if necessary."

"Wait, did they really shut down weapons?" the Weapons Officer said.

"Looks like it," the Communications Officer said. "I'm reading power drains in various areas which probably were weapons."

"That's kind of dumb. I'd just say they were already powered down and write off anything that looked like a weapon as 'cooling ports' or 'heat sinks' or something," the Weapons Officer opined.

"No chatter on the bridge, please," the Subcaptain said. "The second message, Comms?"

"We didn't catch the name again. Something like [Monad]. They have agreed to our request, even though it wasn't directed at them, and told us to disregard the shells hitting the derelict. I think they also call it The Thing That Has Existed For A While. That's what it sounds like, anyway."

"Thing appears to be pretty well known around here," the Subcaptain commented. "And yet nobody showed up during the day or so our probes were looking at it. Makes you think, doesn't it? SHELLS, WHAT SHELLS?!"

"These shells, maybe?" The Navigator brought an image onto the multi-screen.

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

In his environment suit, exploring the insides of the artifact, another message reached the Captain. "We've heard from somebody called, uh, [Monad]. They told us to disregard the shells impacting the derelict as they will not cause you any harm." This was from the Communications Officer, who accompanied it with an image of one of the shells, magnified for the Captain's benefit.

The Captain scowled, or rather, would have scowled had he had a face with which to do so. "Harmless indeed. Thank you, [Vali!k'ota+76 ASCII symbols]."

Inside, his team was moving as rapidly as it liked through the halls, looking for a main computer center. The goal being to figure out what this thing did exactly and how to get it to work. All of the information they gathered was, naturally, streamed back and saved to the thalia's databanks, and theoretically they had all of Tek'atje's computational power available to break the interface and become undisputed masters of whatever unimaginable powers the artifact held. Theoretically, of course.

Transmission, minimal encryption
"We found the ancient array, at coordinations 1, 131.1, 512, we request back up we will be going through wormhole to stake our claim. Katrina out.

In an unassuming outpost in the outer part of the Fiduse and Disuse Federation, the 1st fleet was operating an ordinary looking gas giant, the eighth in the system. This system, the twelfth discovered by the F&D federation held an unique wormhole that orbited in a truly unusual manner, creating one mouth with many exits which exit you got depending on the hole orbit around the star and your entrance into it.
All this was in the back of the mind of the 1st fleet commander as she gazed at the received message from the scout, Katrina.
"So its not a myth, Yxero alert the fleet, it is time to move out."
"Yes madam, location?"
"1, 131.1, 512."
"Thats darn close to the..."
"Yes, and the message is already several hours old, we need to get there now."

The eight ships of the 1st fleet launched them selves from the gravity well of the gas giants, towards the systems wormhole...

orbit(will arrive in roughly 4 hours from when received message, message was delayed by 8 hours)
4x Obsidian Class (http://z13.invisionfree.com/Chazakain_Storefront/index.php?showtopic=47)
4x Defenders (http://z13.invisionfree.com/Chazakain_Storefront/index.php?showtopic=30)

As the alien ship entered the mammoth construction bay, its presence awoke something. Deep within the structure an awareness stirred. Electronic eyes focused upon the ship as it slowly played spotlights over the surface of the construction facility. The many sensors located in every surface passively watched as they coasted through the weightless bay.

The interior was massive, at least two thousand meters in length and several adjustable umbilical docking arms arrayed along the sides. Located along one side was a tiny freighter that had several carbon burns on her surface. There was no power signature and the ship was dark. The freighter matched the reading from the one trailed to the system earlier and still leaked a small ion cloud from its ruptured drive.

The interior was not lit and there was barely any power signature but the awareness still watched, waiting to see what would happen.

The Dziecci Autokrata had their deal of exploring the confines of space, many times never turning back, as the heralds of the will of the Autocrat of the Federation, who in his cold logic refused to let any possibility of emotional bond to break the purpose for which his children existed. Figments of a robot mind, the children had neither fear, love or hatred, only the directives through which they secured the future of Poland, as they dwelt, with their self-awareness still slumbering, into the computing machines of exploratory vessels. Thoughts still came sometimes, regardless of whether they were truly aware or not, and thus they studied many possibilities, and sometimes, they simply fought.

"Chances approaching zero. Greater Reich forces converging into coordinates. Retreat from Neues Oppeln authorized unit Zhe."

Pulsating like the lights and many tubes of the massive computing machines, occupying nearly as much space as that crew quarters would, the thoughts reacted to the external situation the children had to deal with. In the system of Neues Oppeln, an old enemy has finally given the first step to restart their old war, attacking exploratory vessels sent by the autocrat of Poland with no explanation, firing upon their PZL. 78 a mass of sixty Wasserfall 2 missiles. As their atomic ray drives accelerated evasively on all vectors, and turrets moved towards the incoming missiles in an attempt to stop them, the three PZL. 78 exploratory spacecrafts prepared for what was the only logical choice.

"Acknowledged unit Pi. Setting random coordinates with highest chance of featuring safety through 88-Gandhi protocol. Currently avoiding to state 'you are doomed' without solving the causes behind it, despite lack of human operators."

These exploratory crafts were essentially large rhombus, with a hundred and half meters length on each side, and four engines facing opposite directions to each other, which emitted flashy and radioactive rays, accelerating the vessel extremely fast, in a way which would kill most biologicals. Armed with only two ray gun (http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/channel_changer_ray_gun.jpg) turrets and a handful of Wizna heavy missiles, they had the nearly entirety of their mass in the role of propulsion, and only enough firepower to hurt pursuers before outrunning them.

And hurt they did, as the massive fortress combatant after them took several hits against its astro-navigation deck, rendering it blind and thus essentially inoperable for enough time to make a difference for the war that was coming. Then the laws of science and space dislocated around the three exploratory crafts, as space bended around them, and only the void of nothingness was greeted with the missiles of enemy pursuers.

Saying that the space bended to spit all of the three into the fray was a bit superficial, but it could describe very well how they arrived, and as soon as they came, logical conclusions came as well at the speed of the atom.

"Large derelict vessel detected, exploratory directives demand exploration. Multiple unknowns detected, diplomatic directives engaged. Likelihood of language misunderstandings high All units, avoid communications if possible. Likelihood of alien presence significant. Alien protocol ready for execution. Earth nineteen forty-six consulted by off-protocol command. Disabling fancy communications module. Everything normal now, I was tired of speaking as dictated by fiction writers of the forties. Don't you agree unit Zhe"

"Ж Yes I agree pi, I disabled my fancy communications module as well... well as... programming limited, error detected, correcting. Setting inertial course for unknown derelict and ignoring unknown presences. Arrival in seven hours, inviting pi for simulated strategy game."

"I will join your game Ж, I left sensing roles to non-sentient subroutines in my dynamic punch card coding. Very well, this time I will win."

"No, you will not, for I am Ж"

And thus the rhombus shaped exploratory vessels moved, without bending space this time, propelled by two flashy atomic rays that left a long trail behind and with five hundred kilometers of distance between each of them. A long time awaited them, enough for better conclusions to be taken before the brain-robots were deployed to scout the derelict. Jetpacks were not as expendable as these machines, and thus avoiding unnecessary losses was important. Diplomacy, if necessary, would be extremely tricky for the Children of the Autocrat.

intro
The ASD had held itself separate from any Human (or non-human) contact for years, since the twentieth century in fact. Now, though, a series of technological breakthroughs had allowed for true FTL travel and 6 ASDAF Battlecruisers had been sent out in an attempt to meet up with foreign cultures. Unfortunately the First Pair of ASDAF Hawks to meet up with anyone were the Two that are Jumping in on one heck of a mess right about . . . .meow.

ASDAF Contingent "Honor"
Two ASDAF Battlecruisers, the ASDAF "Invictus" and the ASDAF "Soar", jumped in system right around 1 000 km away from the extremely odd, apparently alien, construction. As the battlecruiser entered system Sensors came Immediately online and . . .

The Bridge Of The ASDAF Invictus
"Oh come on!" Said Captain Greyholme. "We come back to meet people and we walk into the middle of a damn mess of them?"

"Sir," Replied Lieutenant Wilkes "What exactly are you planning on doing?

"Well Wilkes," Said Greyholme. He reached down and brushed a button on his collar, " AI? Send out a message to anyone out there and keep all our weaps. hot for now. Have tactical order a lockup on every single ship out there and plot missile Tracks on everything. Have Nav prep a micro jump out of the way as well, just in case and flash A report back to Redezvous point beta soonest along with a sit. Rep."

"Aye sir," Replied the toneless AI and the lieutenant at virtually the same time.

General, omnidirectional Broadcast Message
Language: 21st century English, Earth origin
Message:
This is the Honor contingent of the ASDAF. We have made no Prior diplomatic contact with any race to this point. You, in fact, are the first peoples we have encountered in over 500 years. We say this only so that you understand the position from which we are coming. Would Someone care to explain to us exactly whats going on here?

Inside the derelict, the shuttle's computer beeped.

The Technician reached over and activated a few buttons. "Scans have detected a computer system of some sort coming online."

"Hmm. What kind of computer system?" the Captain asked.

The Technician made a gesture vaguely analogous to a shrug. "I'm not sure. It's something electronic, and it's turned on now. Well, by turned on I mean on line, not, you know, literally turned on. Or at least we can detect its presence now. 'Cause.... yeah."

"Try to communicate with it," the Captain said. "In the meantime, Pilot, take us in towards that freighter and those arm-things. Scan for life-forms."

"No life-forms, Captain," the Pilot said.

In the meantime, the Technician sent out a standardized message to the unknown intelligence, consisting of a first-contact salutation ("Greetings. We are the Damalgians, here for peaceful reasons. If you are sapient and capable of communication with us, please respond.") cycled through several hundred Damalgian languages, starting with Damalgian Standard all the way to the most obscure dialects of k'Verthazian. And waited.

The awareness continued to do what it was created for, it watched. It would continue watching until it was called to do what The Builders determine was its other duty, creation.

Passive sensors detected the collision on the outer hull of the Womb but nothing was damaged too badly nor were they critical. Sensors did detect the cargo tramway was punctured so it shut down the carriage system feeding into that particular section until repairs could be made. There was movement inside the tube so sensors concentrated upon them and passively scanned them in addition to the things crawling through the Womb.

The first to arrive were scurrying about the Womb probing with their weak sensors. They were getting closer to the vessel docked along the side of the Womb. Its own passive sensors continued to watch as they began to radiate a seemingly endless stream of electromagnetic radiation, none of which was ever encountered so the messages went undeciphered.

The awareness continued watching to see what would happen next.

Brynner and the others moved forward at a crawl now, per the "Dalmagian," or whatever these people called themselves, instructions.

"Any other word from them?" Ishii asked GRACIE. The others--mere grad students on Semester in Space missions, scientists, soldiers--were not eager to see what was outside. Their screens were filled with activity, all of it busy and somewhat eager to claim the Artifact.

Gracie's avatar shook her head. "Nope. I'll buzz them again."

The Dalmagians would be called again on a secured channel, with the message, translated into their tongue, as:

"Dalmagian forces, this is the New Dornalian Commissariat of Science vessel Vasco Da Gama. We had hailed you previously concerning an offer to provide assistance in exploring and excavating the Artifact. Please respond--there are many others who seem eager to claim the prize you currently are on for themselves."

Captain we get signal
This is the Honor contingent of the ASDAF. We have made no Prior diplomatic contact with any race to this point. You, in fact, are the first peoples we have encountered in over 500 years. We say this only so that you understand the position from which we are coming. Would Someone care to explain to us exactly whats going on here?
"Helpful that was not." replied Yxero
"Indeed anyone get anything out of that?"
"Sounds like an ancient earth lanugage to me Captain."
"Hmm, Computer access memory logs, Earth Ancient Languages and compare to that transmission."
"One moment, accessing records, comparing 1st century Greek, 2nd Century Greek..."
"Computer compare to something abit more modern please."
"accessing, comparing to 22nd century German..."

10 minutes later
"Captain, transmission is in the ancient tongue of those who called themselves the English, the Americans, The British..."
"Ok, can we reply?"
"Yes, captain, seems who ever designed my memory banks was interested in their history and language..."
"HAL..."
"Affirmative captain, ready for transmission."

Transmission, 21st English
"Greetings Sentient(s), you have stumbled upon quite the mess. We are not sure why the others are here, but we are here to study the object infront of you as commanded by our prophet to learn know about the Ancients. You may also be able to detect a field surrounding the object, it disrupts FTL travel, so we suggest powering down that drive before it overheats. If you have further questions don't be afraid to ask"

Captain we get signal

"Helpful that was not." replied Yxero
"Indeed anyone get anything out of that?"
"Sounds like an ancient earth lanugage to me Captain."
"Hmm, Computer access memory logs, Earth Ancient Languages and compare to that transmission."
"One moment, accessing records, comparing 1st century Greek, 2nd Century Greek..."
"Computer compare to something abit more modern please."
"accessing, comparing to 22nd century German..."

10 minutes later
"Captain, transmission is in the ancient tongue of those who called themselves the English, the Americans, The British..."
"Ok, can we reply?"
"Yes, captain, seems who ever designed my memory banks was interested in their history and language..."
"HAL..."
"Affirmative captain, ready for transmission."

Transmission, 21st English
"Greetings Sentient(s), you have stumbled upon quite the mess. We are not sure why the others are here, but we are here to study the object infront of you as commanded by our prophet to learn know about the Ancients. You may also be able to detect a field surrounding the object, it disrupts FTL travel, so we suggest powering down that drive before it overheats. If you have further questions don't be afraid to ask"
Transmission Reply
"Our thanks for the Warning, we are powering down now. We realize that this is potentially the worst possible place we could have landed but none the less would like to extend a welcome to you. We are Humans, and call our Nation the ASD. We would be interested in trade or diplomacy if you are open to it though we realize this may not be the best of times."

Transmission Reply
"Our thanks for the Warning, we are powering down now. We realize that this is potentially the worst possible place we could have landed but none the less would like to extend a welcome to you. We are Humans, and call our Nation the ASD. We would be interested in trade or diplomacy if you are open to it though we realize this may not be the best of times."

"They've replied sir."
"Hmm, we nearly have a war here and they want to set up trade relations, ah they're humans that explains it. Hmm is John still onboard?"
"Sir?"
"Best to put a human face forward Yxero, we may scare them away." Replied the captain as he grinned showing his sharp white teeth.

"Ah just the man, I wanted to see. Seems another of your kind as decided to spread across the stars."
"and?"
"Your scans have reported that they can receive our holo signals and we want a more friendly face to show them.
"In that case..."

Transmission, close up on John
"Greetings, Young ones. You are indeed correct about this not being the time or the place for this type of set up, though if you wish to receive our military catalog we can transmit our digital version straight over."

"They've replied sir."
"Hmm, we nearly have a war here and they want to set up trade relations, ah they're humans that explains it. Hmm is John still onboard?"
"Sir?"
"Best to put a human face forward Yxero, we may scare them away." Replied the captain as he grinned showing his sharp white teeth.

"Ah just the man, I wanted to see. Seems another of your kind as decided to spread across the stars."
"and?"
"Your scans have reported that they can receive our holo signals and we want a more friendly face to show them.
"In that case..."

Transmission, close up on John
"Greetings, Young ones. You are indeed correct about this not being the time or the place for this type of set up, though if you wish to receive our military catalog we can transmit our digital version straight over."
ASDAF Invictus
"Woh," Muttered the captain as he stared into the face. "That face seems a little to perfect to be real."

"Sir," Said the lieutenant "Whatever they are they're clearly only loosely related to us at this point. I'd suggest that that might be a hologram or some such but maybe this isn't such a . . "

"This may be as close as we come to humans out here lieutenant!" The captain said cutting here off. "On top of which they've been friendly so far and have expressed interest in trade. Now send the following message along with my face AI,"

Reply

"That would be much appreciated contact information would be appreciated as well in hopes that at some later point we might have some chance at true diplomacy"

occ
humm, the signal you would have received would have shown a very normal looking human(maybe to normal but still), I avoided showing my actual races for a very good reason.

Transmission
"If you so wish young one, we known of your planet Earth and we believe Alpha Centaurus is one of the closest stars near it? That is where we can meet to further discuss things such as diplomacy and trade, but for now. We suggest powering up your weapons and strengthening your shields as you very well may need them.

occ
humm, the signal you would have received would have shown a very normal looking human(maybe to normal but still), I avoided showing my actual races for a very good reason.

Transmission
"If you so wish young one, we known of your planet Earth and we believe Alpha Centaurus is one of the closest stars near it? That is where we can meet to further discuss things such as diplomacy and trade, but for now. We suggest powering up your weapons and strengthening your shields as you very well may need them.
OOC: my bad I'll edit.

Reply
Our thanks again, Greyholme out.

ASDAF Taskforce
With Hyperspace drives offline Shields and weapons went to full readiness and the two ASDAF battlecruisers Turned broadside on to the odd relic over which the might soon erupt into a war.

Cloaked Position Within One AU of Ancient Artifact

"Well Thor with a hammer up his ass...we've got a party going on," Garret Jax (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b184/Upum/New%20Ships/Jimmy___Study_by_madcarrot.jpg) murmured.

"More like a cluster-frak, eh Cap'?" added Jones.

Sitting in the command/pilot seat of his 35m ship, the Rogue Shadow (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b184/Upum/New%20Ships/rogueshadow.jpg), Garret Jax simply nodded and pushed his new expensive shades up the brim of his nose. He turned to his left where a beautiful and quite deadly woman sat looking over data feeds and comscan reports. A navigator's job was never easy, specially not aboard the Rogue Shadow, but on top of that Liz had to handle the computer AI and its oddities, like arguing with it over comscan reports.

"Dammit Zech, I'm going to put a blaster bolt in your hard wires if you don't stop overlapping the ion pulses with the heat signatures," Liz (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b184/Upum/New%20Ships/conceptart3.jpg) swore at the holographic inch-tall figure that hovered at her shoulder.

"I am sorry Mistress Liz, but it's a natural habit of some ships to use ion engines, such as ours." The holographic figure shrugged.

"Is this job even worth it Cap'?" asked Jones (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b184/Upum/New%20Ships/Tetsedah_by_TUS.jpg). Jax turned to consider his co-pilot and general strong man of the crew. Jones was easily twice the size of Jax in bulk, nearly all of it muscle, and yet he somehow managed to fit into the combat control seat with ease...or did once Jax had paid the extra money for the shipyard crew to increase the size of the cockpit. The Shadow Rogue was not a ship meant for straight up fighting or mundane tasks like shipping. She was all about stealth and speed. Which suited Jax fine, since he always thought it was better to run away and not die again another day.

"If the big boss says to follow the word of a crazed, drunk, most likely brain-dead, old fool...then yes, its a job worth taking. Or would you prefer we went back to Tettrea and tried living like leeches on Moff Dorden's quite excellent food and wine stocks? Believe me, if what Zing told me was true, then we've got a huge pile of credits to earn by learning more about this supposed 'lost, ancient, replicator' than we would doing anything else," explained Jax.

The Rogue Shadow had been contacted by Zing less than five days before, when one of the many of probably thousands of contacts within the new criminal syndicate that was slowly spreading across the known galaxy had contacted the big boss and mentioned that there was a replicator ship floating around with no one's name on it. And so the big boss wanted more answers and information, ie, ergo, cue Garret Jax. A jack of all trades, privateer, pirate, thief, smuggler, and general malcontent. Perfect resume for one working for the Zann Consortium.

"I guess you're right," huffed Jones.

"Hey boss," said Liz, causing Jones and Jax to turn and look. "I've been monitoring all the traffic ever since that FLTi came up and from what I can tell it seems like a few ships are from different nations. A few seem friendly and want to poke around the big coffin over there. One seems to want to blow it to bits. And the rest just want to have it outright, no ulterior motives."

"And this helps me how?" asked Jax.

"Well, from the chatter it sounds like some computer systems on that ship were triggered into life when those damned shells impacted with it. From what comscan is telling me it suffered hardly any damage, but most likely won't be making any improvements to it's paint job if you ask me-."

"Get to your point woman!"

"Geez! Cool your exhaust engines, eh? All I'm saying is that we can use this to our advantage. Ever heard of stealing the eggs when the hen is away...or however the saying goes?" Liz said, turning around.

"You and your uncle's crack-pot proverbs," muttered Jax, shaking his head. "But your idea does have merit. Jonesy, we got anything sharp and pointy aimed anywhere towards our general vicinity at this moment?"

"No Cap', we're clear sailing as far as that's concerned. That flotilla that came in is pretty much hogging the show."

"Well doesn't that smell like opportunity rearing up," grinned Jax. "Get us close and we'll see about seein'."

Right, Avatars are aboard. There's some interesting readings, I think something might be living in the circuits around here. I'm patching into the local systems now, I'll see what I can dig up.

Good. I'm picking up a few heat sources in here, looks like life signs. Definitely nonhuman, likely not even humanoid by the outlines I'm getting. They're sending off EMR like crazy too, trying to crack their encryption now. I'll send a few of mine over that way, see if we can't see what's going on here.

Right, you do that. Now, spread 'em, you prehistoric piece of junk...

_____________

The three dozen shells began to stir inside the guts of the structure, splitting apart and disgorging their Avatar cargo into the tramways. While most of the Avatars flew quickly towards the heat signatures, a pair of Avatars adhered themselves to the wall of the airless passage. Casting out effector fields, the pair patched into the circuitry of the station, interfacing directly with what was hopefully the station's intelligence. A quick burst of signal drove itself into the electronics, data pouring out of the Avatars, repeating a simple message in every language known to the Regency, all interlaced with a few universal constants: The first thousand primes, the Fibonacci sequence, and pi to ten thousand digits.

Meanwhile the ships themselves were content to wait inside their swarms of emerald singularities, the SCCAMs and drones moving about in a complicated dance, obscuring the impenetrably black bubbles of the ships from view. To all those watching, they would seem completely silent. Almost all, anyway.

A pair of lasers painted the comm arrays of the Dornalian and Damalgian vessels, tightbeam comms pulsing a quick message in their respective languages.

Greetings from Monad. We have noted the arrival of several unknown vessels. They have assumed a combat posture and diverted power to weapon systems. We highly recommend a coordinated preemptive strike, and would request permission to Displace a single Avatar to each of your vessels in order to improve communication capabilities. Please reply on tightbeam systems only.

There was no response. The Captain brought the shuttle around to one of the docking arms. At least, he assumed it was a docking arm. It looked like the arms on Tek'atje's main space station, in the orbit of a formerly airless, waterless planet they had been damalgiforming for several decades now. But it was impossible to tell what it was really supposed to be. As they approached and looked for a way to connect themselves to the derelict, a Science Officer informed the Captain that they had intercepted a message.

It was not directed at them and mostly garbled and impossible to understand, but within it it contained basic sequences of numbers, those discovered by all sapient species at one point or another in their development. That meant intelligent life.

He looked over at the Technician, busy trying to decode the signal. "Where's it coming from?" he asked her, not unkindly.

She raised a few of her sensory appendages and matched wavelengths with him. "Everywhere," she said. "All around us."

The shuttle's spotlights played over the walls, searching. The absolute silence of space was never more noticeable.

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

New Dornalian Commissariat of Science, we thank you for your offer. While we do not require your assistance at this time, we will in no way hinder your exploration efforts and, if you so desire, can share information gathered by our away team with your teams. We have noted the arrival of the other ships ourselves, and are as concerned about them as you are.

The Subcaptain reentered the ship's CIC, seating himself in his usual seat to one side of the Captain's. "Anything of interest while I was away?" he asked.

"I responded to another message from the New Dornalians," the Communications Officer said. "And some more ships have been arriving."

"More?" The Subcaptain grimaced. "Just like aliens. They always go with safety in numbers. I'd say they haven't tried anything so far only because we still outnumber most of them."

"Could be," the Communications Officer agreed. "That or they really do have peaceful intentions."

"Peaceful intentions, sure. That explains why they are clearly using military ships and powering up weapons." The Navigator brought images onto the screen. Most of the ships present were far larger than the average Damalgian warship, to add injury to the proverbial insult. "And there's another ship out there, too, really close -- only a few minutes away -- using some kind of cloaking device to mess with our sensors, but we can ping it on extremely low frequencies. Tell me with a straight face that that isn't a threat, please."

"Drop the sarcasm," warned the Subcaptain. Like most thalië Tek'atje had only adopted a military outlook in order to defend itself from all the other thalië out there, and didn't bother to follow all the rules of a standard military organization. Nonetheless, the line had to be drawn somewhere.

"We're receiving another message," the Communications Officer said. "From 'Monad'." He played it back on the main audio. It was in Damalgian Standard, although with a somewhat mechanical bent that indicated it had been sent by an AI; Damalgians were used to receiving messages like this when they communicated with aliens.

The Weapons Officer affected the analogue of a grin. "Preemptive strike. They're speaking my language, here."

"I don't think we should shoot first. The Captain said so." The Subcaptain paused. "Anyway, they want to put something on our ship to 'improve communication'. That can't lead anywhere good."

"With respect, Subcaptain..." a Lieutenant, who had heretofore remained silent, said. "I think it's a good idea. We'll need allies if we want to hold this area long enough to learn about it. It certainly looks like the aliens are planning some kind of attack to wrest control of the derelict from us, especially the cloaked ships and the ones with weapons powered up; and long-range probes have picked up numerous other ships moving towards this area. And the Monad did cooperate with our orders, even though they were not directed towards it."

The Subcaptain subjected her to an appraising look. "What about the Avatar?" he asked. "We don't even know what it does."

The Lieutenant shrugged-equivalent. "We have blasters," she said.

"Will you marry me?" asked the Weapons Officer.


Reply on tightbeam communications

Monad, we accept your offer. The increasing numbers of armed vessels endanger the lives of our Captain and members of our crews, on board the derelict at present; we have also detected a vessel of unknown capabilities, last seen at these* co-ordinates, which is using a cloaking device of some kind to evade the majority of our sensors and as yet has not been identified. We will also accept Avatars, if they are unarmed.

* Pretend that's a futuristic hyperlink to the actual coordinates.

Both the Dornalians and Dalmagians have accepted our offer of Avatars, although they want the things to be unarmed.

Not a big deal, I can cook up a limited run of unarmed ones in a couple seconds. Well, mostly unarmed. The usual deadman's switch is in place, and I guess they could double as one hell of a big bullet if I just increased the output of the impellor coils...

Whatever. I'm going to get back to monitoring our new arrivals and trying to talk to this damn station. Have fun chatting!

_________________

Aboard the bridges of each Dalmagian and Dornalian vessel, a small pinpoint of black appeared in the largest open space available. Barely noticeable at first, the speck quickly began to expand, ceasing at a two meter radius before vanishing, leaving behind a smooth glossy black oblong sphere floating in midair.

The thing quivered sharply, like a wet dog shaking itself after a bath, before dipping its front end in its best approximation of a bow.

"Greetings! I am the ONV Mind Like a Steel Sieve, companion of the ONVs Monad. This unarmed Avatar has been dispatched in order to coordinate the actions of our respective vessels. Given the impregnable nature of Otagian communication systems, we have determined that assigning an Avatar to each vessel in your fleet is the most efficient means to guarantee secure communications between our fleets."

Bobbing up and down, the Avatar began to glow, an aura of gold light dancing around it.

"Now then, let's get to work. We'll be most efficient if given access to data regarding the capabilities of your vessels, so as to utilize them to their full potential. Wouldn't want to throw an arsenal ship into a melee, after all."

"They seem to be ignoring us captain."
"That is just as well number 1, our reinforcements are still awhiles away. Hmm, maybe this will get their attention, launch probes (http://z13.invisionfree.com/Chazakain_Storefront/index.php?showtopic=49&st=0#entry1674329) Alpha 1 and Gamma 2. Have Alpha and its swarm inspect the relic and have Gamma 2 try and communicate with the interlopers.
It was done, the probes were launched with an interception pattern towards the relic.

A few minutes later

Probe Alpha, started to slow down as it rapidly approached the ancient relic. After a few minutes of such maneuvering it released it miniprobes and began to relay data to Katrina, its own scanners barely able to pierce the relic's armor...

Transmission(again)
"Greetings Senient(s) we come in peace to this system, we believe that this object may be linked to an ancient race that use to live on our home planet and helped advance our race to what it is today, as such we have began a peaceful study of it and to try and divine its purpose."

"Now then, let's get to work. We'll be most efficient if given access to data regarding the capabilities of your vessels, so as to utilize them to their full potential. Wouldn't want to throw an arsenal ship into a melee, after all."

The Subcaptain looked over towards the weapons control area. "Weapons, looks like your day to shine."

"Oh yeah." The Weapons Officer was stereotypically enthusiastic about his charges, in the way of masculine life-forms all over the universe. "All right, Sieve, welcome to Warship Six -- so named 'cause it's a warship, and it's the sixth one we built that's still active. Warship Six is also our flagship here so we issue orders to all fourteen other ships in system. As you can see--" he patched the Avatar into the local computer systems-- "the weapons loadout of this particular Warship is pretty huge." It was, too. The ship's 1.5 million+ cubic meters of internal space was split unevenly between engines and weapons bays, weapons prioritized, with little room left for CIC, shield generators, sensors, crew quarters, and other such minor things. "Designed to go toe to toe with ships twice our size, I'd say. Now over here we have....."

The Weapons Officer trailed off. He'd realized that the Avatar, having an AI behind it, had probably learned all that and much more about the ship's capabilities within a few seconds of his patch. And space warfare heavily emphasized time, of which he'd just wasted a few seconds. "Oh right, the coordinated strike. Well, just let me know when to fire."

On nine other warships of Tek'atje thalia, similar scenes played out. Except most of their Weapons Officers were somewhat quicker on the uptake.

"Greetings! I am the ONV Mind Like a Steel Sieve, companion of the ONVs Monad. This unarmed Avatar has been dispatched in order to coordinate the actions of our respective vessels. Given the impregnable nature of Otagian communication systems, we have determined that assigning an Avatar to each vessel in your fleet is the most efficient means to guarantee secure communications between our fleets."

Bobbing up and down, the Avatar began to glow, an aura of gold light dancing around it.

"Now then, let's get to work. We'll be most efficient if given access to data regarding the capabilities of your vessels, so as to utilize them to their full potential. Wouldn't want to throw an arsenal ship into a melee, after all."

Ishii looked at the Avatar, and shrugged, saying, "Well, I am the scientist here....I'll field this to my assistant. I don't think you'll find anything sensitive here, though."

Snapping his fingers, the Avatar would be confronted with what looked like an orange-haired Japanese girl on the viewscreens, drawn in anime-style, twirling a leek. She then pocketed the leek, and bowed herself, saying in a chirpy Anime Teenage Girl voice, "How do you do? I am the General Rated Ability Computer Integrated Engineer. Gracie for short."

Her picture then changed forms, keeping shape but this time changing costumes to a librarian pulling books off of shelves. She then began rambling on, pulling out a copy of Billy Bob's Fightan Ships.

"This here is the NDS Vasco Da Gama. We're part of a three ship force made up the Albert Einstein, Da Gama, and Walter Christie.

Not the most violent of ships, it is a Mao Zedong Mark IIIa modified extensively for scientific purposes, with lots of shields, lots of scanners...generally, we're better suited for getting samples of things and studying them, although we can engage in limited combat with an array of EM Railguns, Temporal Shielding, and Anaconda Replicator Torpedo Launchers, plus our own FTL. You guys may have faced those before, being we used to shoot one another. Anywho, we're best suited for defensive warfare, though we could execute something mobile if we needed it."

She then said, "Crew wise, we have grad students here on Semester in Space."

They waved, and went back to work.

"Besides our scruffy group of college grads, we have a unit of People's Navy. Just a skeleton crew of those to man the vital systems I can't. Weapons and such. We have People's Acolytes, like Sensei Brynner here. He's the military arm of this job. His Shinmei School has kickass Force powers....yum!

There's a buncha other stuff, but I can't say much. A girl's gotta have some secrets!" She then winked.

Brynner then nodded and said, "If you have further questions, ask. As for coordinations, we'd be happy to coordinate things. I luckily have a People's Navy commission still, so I know a few things on strategy. Though it is as Gracie has said--we are primarily for research and durability--not combat. My men are excellent fighters, but our ship offensive weapons...."

*snip*
The Avatar looped happily. "Excellent! FTL-equipped missiles, eh? Will make sure to stutter the FTLi fields for you. I've analyzed the launch patterns of your missiles, and I should be able to flicker for them without any problems. Now, at my signal, please flicker your FTLi for one quarter millisecond and fire."

*snip*
"Grad students, you say... " The Avatar's aura pulsed a dull red for a moment as its bobbing slowed. "You'll likely be best suited to defensive duties, protecting the Dalmagian vessels, who are also coordinating with us. They're expert bombardiers, I doubt you'll have much difficulty protecting them. Please remain here and do your best to prevent them and the artefact from suffering any undue harm."

______________

Allies briefed and ready, herr Monad. Time to take a few cycles off of playing with your new toy and commiting a display of excessive force for our audience.

Very well. Only FTLi in system is friendly. Standard envelopment strike?

We have numbers on our side, and certainly surprise. Targets are in broadside formation, which implies that their bows are relatively weak in comparison. So yes, standard envelopment strike. Ready?

Always. Hop in three picos. Two. One. Hop.

_______________

A fraction of a second beforehand, the Avatar aboard the Dalmagian flagship glowed a soft white, its equivalent of a grin. "Fire."

_______________

As the two FTLi fields broke for the tiniest fraction of a second, the three Otagian battle cruisers and their emerald swarms vanished from the midst of the fleet as if they had never existed. Simultaneously, they snapped back into existence, three hundred thousand kilometers off the bow of their prey, as their FTLi fields snapped shut again, blazing at three light-hours.

Immediately, the swarms reformed into a solid wall in front of the cruisers, holes chaotically appearing as they permitted outgoing railgun shells and CREW fire through, slamming shut as quickly as they appeared to present an invulnerable green wall to the foe. More of the green specks darted around the barrier as SCCAMs left the launchers of the Arachnes, slamming towards the enemy cruisers and detonating in massive multi-gigaton blasts.

On cue, Warship Six fired, releasing forty-four missiles in total. Leaving out the missiles designed to bypass shields and FTLi, this left about twenty missiles to each battlecruiser, targeting strategic points all over the ship. Unlike the Otagian maneuver it was not particularly dramatic, as the missiles simply disappeared from inside missile bays and reappeared inside enemy ships, with a few exploding against the gravitic shields as they were dragged from hyperspace prematurely. A single missile impact was generally enough to destroy a large city, let alone a starship, but they were usually fired at a ratio of ten or twenty to a ship due to the assorted countermeasures that the Damalgians had developed over the centuries.

The other nine warships had as yet not made a move. But in the fraction of a second as the FTLi field deactivated, the mini-fleet hopped into a new formation, one resembling a wall facing outwards from the derelict. And as a precaution, the various captains obtained missile locks on every other non-allied ship in the area that they could find.

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

Meanwhile, the Captain -- with no knowledge of this -- had brought his shuttle to a docking arm, and began to wonder how to operate it. The unknown intelligence had yet to do anything, and his team was not sure whether it controlled the entire derelict, or just part of it, or even another ship they had not yet detected. For an unarmed shuttle without FTL capabilities, that was one of the things they didn't really want to hear.

He moved in closer still.

OOC: Bleh. My writing sucks today.

As the small ship neared the inanimate docking arm, sensors detected its presence and the ancient mechanism jolted into life. Tractor beams lashed out and grasped the vessel, holding it in place and the arm extended until it nearly touched the shuttle. Metallic foam expanded to fill the space remaining and locked the ship to the arm. The tractor beams helped the arm ease the ship against the side of the womb and then when finished, turned off leaving the shuttle to rest quietly where it was taken. A scanner began to analyze the interior of the vessel and once things were satisfactory, everything died down again.

The awareness was informed a vessel docked with appendage 412 and environmental scans had adjusted internal atmospheres to match the internal reading of the ship. A tram awaited the passengers at the Arm Station.

"Grad students, you say... " The Avatar's aura pulsed a dull red for a moment as its bobbing slowed. "You'll likely be best suited to defensive duties, protecting the Dalmagian vessels, who are also coordinating with us. They're expert bombardiers, I doubt you'll have much difficulty protecting them. Please remain here and do your best to prevent them and the artefact from suffering any undue harm."


Brynner merely shrugged and said, "As you wish." Clearly, the People's Acolyte was not pleased with being relegated to a second-tier position, but Gracie's briefing had a point--they were here to perform research, and not engage in active combat. That was something for the People's Navy to perform in earnest. Or was supposed to....

He then ordered the CoS vessels to move to positions to cover the Dalmagian gunners, power up shields and ready guns, and keep an eye out for interlopers...

On cue, Warship Six fired, releasing forty-four missiles in total. Leaving out the missiles designed to bypass shields and FTLi, this left about twenty missiles to each battlecruiser, targeting strategic points all over the ship. Unlike the Otagian maneuver it was not particularly dramatic, as the missiles simply disappeared from inside missile bays and reappeared inside enemy ships, with a few exploding against the gravitic shields as they were dragged from hyperspace prematurely. A single missile impact was generally enough to destroy a large city, let alone a starship, but they were usually fired at a ratio of ten or twenty to a ship due to the assorted countermeasures that the Damalgians had developed over the centuries.

The other nine warships had as yet not made a move. But in the fraction of a second as the FTLi field deactivated, the mini-fleet hopped into a new formation, one resembling a wall facing outwards from the derelict. And as a precaution, the various captains obtained missile locks on every other non-allied ship in the area that they could find.
OOC: Bleh. My writing sucks today.

OOC: lol no worries It's better than mine :) I'm assuming that only the FLTs were targeted towards my ships?

IC:
ASDSF Contingent
Any human would have had no time to react between the power up of an FTL drive and the utter destruction of both ships. Unfortunately, for the enemy that is, the Human contingent of the ASDAF fleets had realized much earlier that they had no hope of averting a war and might not have time to react and had turned over both offensive and defensive controls to the AI's aboard each ship. In the split second of power up on the enemy missiles they loosed every single weapon they had aboard and ditched every available lifepod from the ship. Instants later both ships blew in deathly silence but their counterstrike was visible at such short range (8 light minutes). 64 Laserhead Missiles streaked for a single Damalgian ship as 24 Grasers accompanied by 6 Coilgun rounds reached for warship six. The lifepods blew outwards from the ships as fast as they could manage and the shields aboard the ASDSF Invictus Lasted just long enough that 90% of those lifepods got away from the ship. The other Battlecruiser's crew was much less fortunate. A single pod, leaking atmosphere flew from the explosion and died , its small death dwarfed by that of the two Battlecruisers.

The ASDSF Woad Raiders
For their enemies, the worst was yet to come. The ASDSF Command Staff had hoped that their first encounter with whatever happened to be out there would be peaceful but they were not, by any means, counting on it. At Rendezvous point Beta The entirety of the ASDSF offensive fleet had been stationed awaiting news from the battlecruisers and when they received it they had commenced a jump immediately only to find that they were unable to program in those specific co-ordinates. Realizing something was going wrong they jumped slightly further out but at maximum N-space acceleration.

10 light hours out,Woad Raiders' jump point
The Woad Raider fleet appeared in time to watch as their friends got blown to shreds. They were out of range for any type of efficient attack but they adopted a strange formation, a sphere almost and with they .99999c speed they would be within firing range in 9 hours (real time). AI's took over but otherwise the fleet showed no outward sign that it was ready for war.

OOC:
orbat
5 x Lac Carriers
4 x SD (P)
12 x Battle Cruisers
20x Destroyers
3 x Raider carriers
20 x resupply vessels

Most of the Damalgians' point defence systems were fairly automatic. In this case, to assist the PD, Warship Six released short bursts of plasma from the secondary weapons banks, containing all of the sublight offensive weapons. These were targeted mostly at the missiles and coilgun rounds, those being the most solid things that could get blown up by a beam of superheated plasma. By the time the other allied ships had brought their defenses into play as well, PD weapons had powered up enough to destroy or intercept most of the incoming projectiles. With several other Damalgian ships in range as well, it would be lovely to say that not a single ASDSF weapon made it to the Damalgian ships. However, a few grasers were overlooked, damaging the shields.

"Shields holding steady at 68%," said the Weapons Officer. "I'll get a drone out to replenish them."

"Subcaptain, we're detecting another fleet entering the region on med-range scans, about ten hours out," said the Navigator. "A few with signatures similar to the ones we just destroyed."

"Ten hours is well within our weapons range," the Lieutenant said. "Nonetheless, I would not suggest destroying them outright, even though they are probably hostile. It would only lead to a war of escalation, and we are uncertain as to how many more ships this nation has at its disposal."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," said the Subcaptain, a little sharply. He'd worked with the Lieutenant for years -- her normal posting, when the Captain was present, was Tactical Officer -- and trusted her judgment implicitly, but sometimes she could be a little too forward. Of course, practically everyone else was that way as well, but only because the Captain wasn't around right now. He did note approvingly that discipline had improved greatly now that they were in an actual combat situation. "I'll decide on that. Navigator? Can we get a harvester in-system to pick up the escape pods?"

"Negative, Subcaptain. I'll get the arsenal ships to beam them aboard for manual processing, though."

"Damn. Sieve?" The Subcaptain cast a glance at the Avatar, or what the AI had to interpret as casting a glance. "We're going to fire again, on the newcomers. But not enough to destroy their entire fleet -- just enough to make it obvious to them that getting into a close-range melee with us will be too costly to them. You have any objections?"

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

The escape pods were transported into bays on an arsenal ship.

Transporter technology had been scavenged from the ruins of a space station called something like "Torek Nor". But the Damalgians had never been as successful with it as most other races. To the present day they had never been able to transport a living being; transport killed it. Some cynics suggested that improvements to the technology had never been made just because of the military applications thereof.

Once on the arsenal ship, Damalgian crew members arrived, removed the bodies and tossed them into a room for organics, then put the life-pods themselves into a room for metals and plastics. There, mechanical devices would deconstruct the pods and convert the bodies into materials necessary for the continued survival of the Damalgian race. As a mechanical arm descended to separate the materials used for constructing the life-pod, a faded sticker was visible on its side, bearing the unofficial motto of the species as a whole and the official motto of the Union itself:

"Waste nothing."

The Captain's away team watched and recorded all of this. Of particular note was how the machinery managed to function flawlessly despite having been indicated by scans to be several thousand years old. There was obviously some kind of maintenance that occurred regularly, but no sign of who did it and how. In this situation it is always necessary for someone to raise an eyebrow and murmur "Fascinating."; it was a great loss that Damalgians did not have eyebrows and thus could not fulfill this duty.

"Captain, scans indicate a breathable atmosphere outside the main hatch," the Technician said.

"Keep the environment suits on anyway," the Captain said. "Pilot, open the hatch."

There was a hiss as the pressurized hatch opened, drawing the Damalgians in towards the darkness beyond. Slowly the small group moved out of the shuttle into the passageway, examining the area carefully, (once again) recording everything. The hatch shut again, leaving them in a tunnel facing upwards.

"Shall we get a move on, then?" said Tek'atje.

They did.

At the station they found a tram. After examining it for a while, and briefly wondering if it was actually a cunningly concealed explosive device, they got in.

The doors closed with a slight hiss as the train pressurized. Outside the train, doors of the station closed and ahead of the tram, a single sphincter opened. The train entered a long dark tunnel, speeding up as it began to travel through the darkness. It was difficult to keep track of where they might be but since the tracks traveled straight, they could tell they were heading toward the base of the structure and not away.

After a couple minutes, the tram began to slow until it came to a complete stop in the darkened chamber of another station. Lights began to slowly come on and a closed sphincter was easily seen dead ahead of the train. To the side was another station similar to the one they boarded the tram with a single doorway leading away from the train platform deeper into the structure.

Through the doorway a long hallway could be seen heading straight into the distance lit intermittently by lights as they came to life as if some unseen hand was slowly switching them on. Windows to one side seemed to open into a large space but from the tram it was hard to tell if it was the large bay they had entered with their ships or another space yet undiscovered.

Most of the Damalgians' point defence systems were fairly automatic. In this case, to assist the PD, Warship Six released short bursts of plasma from the secondary weapons banks, containing all of the sublight offensive weapons. These were targeted mostly at the missiles and coilgun rounds, those being the most solid things that could get blown up by a beam of superheated plasma. By the time the other allied ships had brought their defenses into play as well, PD weapons had powered up enough to destroy or intercept most of the incoming projectiles. With several other Damalgian ships in range as well, it would be lovely to say that not a single ASDSF weapon made it to the Damalgian ships. However, a few grasers were overlooked, damaging the shields.

"Shields holding steady at 68%," said the Weapons Officer. "I'll get a drone out to replenish them."

"Subcaptain, we're detecting another fleet entering the region on med-range scans, about ten hours out," said the Navigator. "A few with signatures similar to the ones we just destroyed."

"Ten hours is well within our weapons range," the Lieutenant said. "Nonetheless, I would not suggest destroying them outright, even though they are probably hostile. It would only lead to a war of escalation, and we are uncertain as to how many more ships this nation has at its disposal."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," said the Subcaptain, a little sharply. He'd worked with the Lieutenant for years -- her normal posting, when the Captain was present, was Tactical Officer -- and trusted her judgment implicitly, but sometimes she could be a little too forward. Of course, practically everyone else was that way as well, but only because the Captain wasn't around right now. He did note approvingly that discipline had improved greatly now that they were in an actual combat situation. "I'll decide on that. Navigator? Can we get a harvester in-system to pick up the escape pods?"

"Negative, Subcaptain. I'll get the arsenal ships to beam them aboard for manual processing, though."

"Damn. Sieve?" The Subcaptain cast a glance at the Avatar, or what the AI had to interpret as casting a glance. "We're going to fire again, on the newcomers. But not enough to destroy their entire fleet -- just enough to make it obvious to them that getting into a close-range melee with us will be too costly to them. You have any objections?"

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

The escape pods were transported into bays on an arsenal ship.

Transporter technology had been scavenged from the ruins of a space station called something like "Torek Nor". But the Damalgians had never been as successful with it as most other races. To the present day they had never been able to transport a living being; transport killed it. Some cynics suggested that improvements to the technology had never been made just because of the military applications thereof.

Once on the arsenal ship, Damalgian crew members arrived, removed the bodies and tossed them into a room for organics, then put the life-pods themselves into a room for metals and plastics. There, mechanical devices would deconstruct the pods and convert the bodies into materials necessary for the continued survival of the Damalgian race. As a mechanical arm descended to separate the materials used for constructing the life-pod, a faded sticker was visible on its side, bearing the unofficial motto of the species as a whole and the official motto of the Union itself:

"Waste nothing."
Woad Raiders
The fleet continued to bore in-system, following a second micro jump to the edge of the field, so far unopposed. They were not approaching 5 light hours out and starting a gradual Decel though the formation remained the same. Aboard the Flag Bridge of the ASDSF Nike, Flag ship of the fleet, Admiral Vance Hawk was extremely unhappy. "they slaughtered em," He said Flatly to Captain Honor. "No warning, no call to surrender, nothing. Just flat out slaughter."
"Aye, Sir." Replied Honor, "but sir, we've also found friendlies."
"That we have. Doesn't change it though, Prep the marines and the Foxhounds. Have Lacs good to go and get the pods out and ready to fire."
"Aye SIR!" Replied Honor

"Ah flip" was the only said thing said on the F&D ship as the Woad ships were blown to pieces. Each imagining that they could the screams of the dead and the rush of the explosion.
Stunned silence was the only thing, that anyone was able to do as they watched the now hostile start to pick up the life pods.
The HAL unit was the first to react, after a few seconds of silence.
"Orders Captain?"
"Power up all weapons, increase the shield strength, and get me scans of the last moments of those ship(s). I want to know what hit them and how they were so easily destroyed.
Couple minutes later(fleet 3 1/2 hours out)
"Seems the hostiles beamed aboard some missiles onto the ships and pretty damn close to them."
"I thought Dr. Txero proved that transporter technology past the atomic scale was impossible due to his Uncertainty Principle."
"Seems we need to redefine impossible again Captain (and a few laws of physics.)."
"Aye, open a channel to headquaters, warn them maybe they can think of some way to deal with it and warn off any of our fleets."

"Captain, we are detecting incoming ships similar to the previous ships that were just destroyed."
"Warn them that they'll need a bigger fleet and how the previous was destroyed and the life pods taken up by the enemy."
"Do you think they'll hold them as hostages?"
"Doubtful Captain, the ones that fire first without any warning, commutations and the like aren't likely to want hostages. They likely have some weird ritual about eating the enemy gifts them with their knowledge or powers and such."
"Thats pretty damn barbaric HAL."
"Theres all kinds Captain."
"True guess if we survive this we'll need to change quite a few known rules/laws."

"Captain!"
"Yes?"
"We've found a partial block to those missiles."
"Well?"
"We just Stabilize the prefire collar with a mobile photon lock!"
"Seems logical captain."
"Indeed, make sure to add that to our messages."

Transmission to woad raiders
"We wish to warn you of the destruction of your ship(s) by the ships closest to the relic. Our scans have revealed the following.
We recommend that you Stabilize the prefire collar with mobile photon lock to avoid the worst of the enemy missiles."

Transmission to Headquarters/Fleet
We have hostile forces, they are currently in control of the relic. We suggest that any ship Stabilize the prefire collar with a mobile photon lock to avoid a transported(/FTL) missiles strike by the hostiles.
We also suggest overwhelming force. Scans and other data

F&D Fleet
"Boy that sure is impressive." said the vice-admiral as he watched the holo recordings of the destruction of the Woad ships.
"Hmm, there bringing in the life pods."
"Ask headquarters for another fleet, seems we are going to need it."
"Aye Vice Admiral."
"Nearest free one is a couple days out though in gamma quadrant."
"Well if HQ really wants this relic, there going to have to tell them to hurry."
"Indeed sir."

"Damn. Sieve?" The Subcaptain cast a glance at the Avatar, or what the AI had to interpret as casting a glance. "We're going to fire again, on the newcomers. But not enough to destroy their entire fleet -- just enough to make it obvious to them that getting into a close-range melee with us will be too costly to them. You have any objections?"
"Not at all, Subcaptain. However, I'd like to inspect the remains that you recovered, they may still prove useful. While I do so, I'll be skimming the atmosphere of the world below. I've diminished my stores somewhat, and would like to replace the munitions I've expended."

_____________

Ten light hours out, eh? Reasonable sized fleet, our combined forces could probably win out...

But why play the odds? Start talking with the rest of the Fleet, see what we can come up with. At the very least, Gave Peace a Chance should be available.

GPAC? Ewwww. Let's try to find someone a bit more competent before resorting to that one.

Agreed. Let's check back soon to see what we've come up with. Meanwhile, I'm going to grab a snack...

________________

The three cruisers moved slowly through the expanding debris field, displacing fragments of hull and other reasonably dense pieces of matter aboard, to be quickly analyzed and then devoured by the ships' molecular foundries, or reduced to nothing by their conversion plants. Within minutes, all that remained of the debris field was merely a cloud of gas, too diffuse to be efficiently harvested by the ships.

Sated, the three ships blinked out of existence again, reappearing deep within the atmosphere of the planet below the artifact. Within moments, the sky began to churn, driven to super-hurricane winds by the gravitic intakes of the Arachnes. Forcing the air into their hulls, it was rapidly condensed, forming new superfluid fuel for their plants or rendered into ammunition in the foundries.

Aboard the Dalmagian vessels, Sieve's Avatars rummaged happily through the wreckage and corpses, setting aside several of the pristine bodies for their own uses while its sensors played over the pods themselves, dissecting the technology within.

And on the artifact-station, Monad's shielded bodies flitted through the hulls at supersonic speed, scout drones mapping the interior as they went. A few of them broke off from the main swarm, flying towards the Dalmagian team, intent on introducing themselves.

OOC: @F&D: Actually, stabilizing the prefire collar with a photon lock won't work very well at all, as hyperlight gamma-ray and sub-gravimetric sensors can detect the photon lock and order the missiles' reentry guidance to ignore them and behave normally. That would only work if we were using transporters rather than built-in hyperspace engines to move the missiles, which however does fit in with what your crew knows about the Damalgians so far.

"Go ahead. They're in the storage rooms in Arsenal Ship Two. The AI'll show you around."

The Subcaptain turned back to the Weapons Officer. "On my mark.... pulse FTLi and fire. Now."

Half a second later, approximately two hundred and forty missiles -- assisted by one shieldbuster to each targeted ship -- appeared inside about half of the ships of the Woad Raiders. The Damalgians had purposefully not targeted all of them, because if they wiped out this fleet completely, their enemy might bring in an even larger fleet -- the small group of ships was powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with much larger forces, but a sufficiently large enemy could lay down enough suppressive fire to cause real damage. When one's thalia had no more than a hundred ships available in all, the loss of ten or fifteen could be a major blow. Whether a ship received ten or twenty missiles depended on its size and apparent function; the strike thus targeted mostly capital ships and resupply vessels, leaving escorts mostly unharmed.

"Arsenal One, we're out of primaries. Reload us please."

On sensors, Arsenal One appeared to lighten somewhat, while Warship Six returned to its pre-battle weight. "Done."

"Another ship has powered up weapons," the Navigator said to the Subcaptain. "Presumed hostile."

The Subcaptain opened a line to Engineering. "Chief? How are we doing for power?"

"Within optimal range, Subcaptain. Bringing those shields back up cost us, as did the maneuvers, but we're still running on a practically full tank."

"Right. Comms? Send a message to the ship that just powered up weapons. Tell them to power down weapons or be destroyed."

"Will do."

The transmission reached the F&D ship. It came out incomprehensible as most of the sounds were inaudible to human ears, and it didn't just incorporate sound. But given enough time, it could be partially decoded: Attention alien ship, power down your weapons or face the fate of your compatriots. Your act is a direct threat to an area under Damalgian control.

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

The captain and his team stepped off the tram into the eerily quiet bowels of the derelict. It was vast, as large as a harvester, with endless passages leading in all directions; the design was strange and everything seemed to be in working order despite no sign of recent use. It was certainly a mystery. When the Technician spoke it resounded eerily.

"Through the doorway, this way."

The Damalgians passed through the doorway and into the long hallway, watching the lights come on all the way down (which they could even see on the visible light spectrum, thanks to the enhancements on their environment suits). They rolled, or floated, or slid down the hallway, scanning everything, comparing it to the maps of the interior that their probes had made. Then a Science Officer told them to stop.

"What is it?" asked the Captain.

"Something's coming."

Half a second later, approximately two hundred and forty missiles -- assisted by one shieldbuster to each targeted ship -- appeared inside about half of the ships of the Woad Raiders. The Damalgians had purposefully not targeted all of them, because if they wiped out this fleet completely, their enemy might bring in an even larger fleet -- the small group of ships was powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with much larger forces, but a sufficiently large enemy could lay down enough suppressive fire to cause real damage. When one's thalia had no more than a hundred ships available in all, the loss of ten or fifteen could be a major blow. Whether a ship received ten or twenty missiles depended on its size and apparent function; the strike thus targeted mostly capital ships and resupply vessels, leaving escorts mostly unharmed.

Which would have worked wonderfully, only the Woad Raiders weren't entirely idiots. Attempting to accelerate up to a force that could destroy them would have been pure suicide so they had adopted a defense against the FTL missiles. The odd formation they had adopted put all of their sub light drives in close proximity. These weren't torch drives either, they were, in fact, Gravity Manipulation drives grating a grav wave that the ships "rode" allowing them to accelerate and decelerate faster than a torch drive would have. Attempting to translate out of FTL into that kind of Gravity field was similar to attempting to translate out into a blackhole and the kind of accuracy the FTL missiles had had against stationary ASDSF targets was completely degraded. The enemy missiles ended up spread around a full light second radius with most of them actually translating out into heavy grav fields that crushed them before they could detonate. 10 Missiles survived translation but only one detonated close enough to an ASDSF ship to do any damage and the Kinetic energy shield handled the explosion with no trouble what so ever. The Woad Raiders were at the very outside of their missile firing ranges but instead of opening fire they continued to decelerate towards the enemy fleet but now LACs began launching and the SD(p) s began rolling pods At maximum possible speed and the formation shifted slightly again. "What Fate?" Replied the ASDSF Ships as they came closer to firing range.

Hrm, fiddly little buggers. I can see why I didn't qualify as a WorldMind. Hrm, if I displace it like so...

How's the progress going? Just got a signal from the enemy reinforcements, inquiring about casualties.

There we go. All done tinkering with these guys, I'll go ahead and play with 'em a bit. Oh, and any clue on the status of our reinforcements? I haven't managed to find any yet...

Not a one. Hells, even GPAC is honest-to-god busy. Something about Darkships.

Ick. Wouldn't wish that even on ol' No More Chances. Well, keep looking. I'm going to put on a little show.

_________________

"For most, a quick death. For those fortunate enough to escape to their life pods, captivity."

The transmission quickly gained another dimension as video feed was broadcast along with the sound of the Avatar's voice. The survivors of the ships destruction could be seen standing at attention, uniforms torn and singed, sweating profusely. One stepped forward, the lowest ranking amongst them.

"Sir," he croaked, voice slurred and hoarse, "We... tried to fight... Too strong..."

An invisible arm slammed him back against the bulkhead, interrupting anything else he could say. "As you can see," the Avatar continued, "Your men are relatively unharmed, barring the sedatives coursing through their veins. However, that can and will change."

With a squelching crack, the head of the crewman who had spoken burst, showering the area with gore and arterial spray. The body slumped over, blood flow quickly subsiding as the corpse drained. "As I have just demonstrated, each man has had a small antimatter charge implanted in his brain. For every minute you waste by failing to comply with our request, another will have the contents of his skull splattered across the room. The process will begin with the lowest ranking, and shall work its way through to the highest officer we recovered."

The Avatar rocked back and forth, obviously pleased, it's aura glowing bright red.

"It's your call, my friends. Continue resisting our very reasonable request, or watch as your comrades are killed."

"I observe a pointed lack of destruction at the location of the enemy fleet," said the Subcaptain sternly. "What is going on?"

"It appears our missiles were dragged off course by a powerful gravitic field, Subcaptain," said the Navigator. "Operating much like our gravitic shields."

"And we overlooked something like that?.... Okay, scratch that. We didn't know they had gravitic shields?"

"They weren't active on the first ships we destroyed. And as you should know, half the point of gravitic shields is so that they don't know you have 'em until it's too late."

"Point. We'll have to adjust our fire parameters then and send them another round."

"Incoming message from Warships Two and Five, Subcaptain. They say they've examined the problem and come up with a solution, and for the record have fired weapons," said the Communications Officer.

"... What was that?"

"In battle, every second is precious, and Damalgians have infinitely slow reaction times compared to AIs. Permission was granted by the ship's AI, as it had been automatically set to combat."

"What did they do, though?"

The Weapons Officer was looking through the data. "Classic solution: they sent a singer."

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

Singularity Drones had become the standard Damalgian method of dealing with gravitic fields and anomalies impeding their passage: turn the fields into singularities, rendering them harmless to the Damalgians if they avoided the event horizon -- and very harmful to whatever ship was generating them. Damalgians generally avoided using those shields themselves for this reason. The drone was FTL capable, and used to making short hops en route to an enemy fleet. In this case, however, "short" meant "1-4 light-hours". Two hops and the singularity drone was at the fleet of Woad Raiders. It was large for a drone, more than fifteen meters long; it was mostly remarkable for being extremely massive, filled with some of the densest and heaviest materials available to Thalia Tek'atje; and its second FTL hop brought it right to the edge of the gravitic fields.

The difference between a standing gravitic field and a black hole is mostly compression. Put a significant amount of mass into a standing field and a black hole results as the field is drawn into the mass, creating a point of focus. When the drone arrived, the field swept over it in a tiny fraction of a second as the fleet moved forward, and it was immediately crushed into a point smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At about the same time it absorbed the energy created by the engines, vented from the exhaust ports, and continuing on towards it from the shockwave. This was more than enough to suffice.

The fleet was still moving forward, but now it was moving forward into the event horizon of a growing black hole. They had a few picoseconds to decelerate before being ripped to pieces, and their engines were contributing to the black hole's growth. The formation they had adopted was especially suicidal, as the ships were necessarily extremely close together. If the Damalgians didn't use weapons like these too often, it was only because black holes were really difficult to harvest for materials.

occ
sees above, argh are we in an anti ftl field or not?

IC
"We get signal captain."
"On screen."

The transmission reached the F&D ship. It came out incomprehensible as most of the sounds were inaudible to human ears, and it didn't just incorporate sound. But given enough time, it could be partially decoded: Attention alien ship, power down your weapons or face the fate of your compatriots. Your act is a direct threat to an area under Damalgian control.

"Pretty bold claim. Status?"
"Shields holding at 95%, weapons systems are fully charged and ready, calibrations have been set into the shielding, raptors are preped."
"BG sphere?"
"Another 6 minutes captain."
"Odds HAL?"
"10% probability of surviving the first attack captain."
"That good eh? anyway to fudge the figures to our side HAL?"
"Figuring out how they can pinpoint their transporters inside our ships through our shielding would be a start captain."
"Any thoughts what their sensors are for that?"
"Infrared, ultraviolet, radar, sonar, "visible" light and a few others have been ruled out as those would all take time to go towards and back to their position and since it would take time to punch in the location of the ships and so on and since the Woad ships were not dead in space it seems they have a ftl senor array that updates instantaneously and knows both velocity and position of the ship at anytime between the initial scanning and the final launching and any movement between the launch and the hit/kill of the ships or in other words they've discovered a very good form of magic."
"Hmm magic, and I left my antimagic charms back at the base."
"O and they also happened to transport(/travel at ftl speeds) in an antiftl field at ftl speeds captain with no ill effects on themselves."
"Helm start maneuvering out of this madhouse, point 2 degrees starboard, HAL warn the crew that we're getting out of here as fast as possible. This relic isn't worth it, at least not at our current strength."
"Aye captain."
Maneuvers
The Katrina is leaving antiftl field at roughly .75% c, roughly 12 lightminutes out from field edge(unless it was expanded and/or collapsed then I haven't got a clue)
Previously relayed to fleet is roughly one jump/1 hour out.

OOC: Yep. Except it's my anti-FTL field, so whenever we need to move something in it, we turn it off for a few nanoseconds, then turn it back on when we're done. This is also presumably coordinated with Otagia, who has the other anti-FTL field, and with whom we are currently allied. I mean, there's no real point in having an anti-FTL field if you can't use it to your advantage like that.

As for sensors.... we have lots of mini probes connected to an instant communication network (using wormholes or something -- whatever, almost everyone has something like that). The mini probes have a variety of sensors on board; they pinpoint the location, velocity, and vector of the target (a "targeting solution"), pass it to the computer on board the missile with corrections for the assumed [very small amount of time] it would take for the missile to reach its target, the missile fires. It's mostly based around everything happening very, very quickly, and if your ships are moving fast enough a few missiles will always fall by the wayside just because of differences of .00000001 in the targeting solutions which in real life translate into many kilometers. Woad's two ships weren't moving at all. :P

Deep within the awareness, the Artifact was communicating with the presence controlling a majority of the internal processes.

DAMAGE REPORT: OUTER HULL PUNCTURED, INTERIOR DAMAGE NULL

RECOMMENDATIONS: IMMEDIATE REPAIR

QUERRY: NOT ALL RESOURCES NEEDED IN STOCK

SOLUTION: RETRIEVE NECESSSARY RESOURCES



Once the decision was made, several relays came online and power began to flow through several long unused pathways. Across the battlefield alarms went off as sensors detected power surges within the Artifact. Space/Time took a strange twist as the Awareness reached into the Quantum Foam, found one of the micro wormholes, and used the immense power it possessed to briefly enlarge it and slip into the momentary naturally occurring aperture disappearing in a flash of photons as the hole in space/time slammed shut with a vengeance.

Across the system the Artifact reappeared in a similar pyrotechnic display. Several drones were dispatched to the nearby asteroids and began bringing back resources. The Artifact swallowed the resourced into openings in its base to be processed and shortly the holes blasted into the outer hull began to close as if they were being healed.

"I observe a pointed lack of destruction at the location of the enemy fleet," said the Subcaptain sternly. "What is going on?"

"It appears our missiles were dragged off course by a powerful gravitic field, Subcaptain," said the Navigator. "Operating much like our gravitic shields."

"And we overlooked something like that?.... Okay, scratch that. We didn't know they had gravitic shields?"

"They weren't active on the first ships we destroyed. And as you should know, half the point of gravitic shields is so that they don't know you have 'em until it's too late."

"Point. We'll have to adjust our fire parameters then and send them another round."

"Incoming message from Warships Two and Five, Subcaptain. They say they've examined the problem and come up with a solution, and for the record have fired weapons," said the Communications Officer.

"... What was that?"

"In battle, every second is precious, and Damalgians have infinitely slow reaction times compared to AIs. Permission was granted by the ship's AI, as it had been automatically set to combat."

"What did they do, though?"

The Weapons Officer was looking through the data. "Classic solution: they sent a singer."

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

Singularity Drones had become the standard Damalgian method of dealing with gravitic fields and anomalies impeding their passage: turn the fields into singularities, rendering them harmless to the Damalgians if they avoided the event horizon -- and very harmful to whatever ship was generating them. Damalgians generally avoided using those shields themselves for this reason. The drone was FTL capable, and used to making short hops en route to an enemy fleet. In this case, however, "short" meant "1-4 light-hours". Two hops and the singularity drone was at the fleet of Woad Raiders. It was large for a drone, more than fifteen meters long; it was mostly remarkable for being extremely massive, filled with some of the densest and heaviest materials available to Thalia Tek'atje; and its second FTL hop brought it right to the edge of the gravitic fields.

The difference between a standing gravitic field and a black hole is mostly compression. Put a significant amount of mass into a standing field and a black hole results as the field is drawn into the mass, creating a point of focus. When the drone arrived, the field swept over it in a tiny fraction of a second as the fleet moved forward, and it was immediately crushed into a point smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At about the same time it absorbed the energy created by the engines, vented from the exhaust ports, and continuing on towards it from the shockwave. This was more than enough to suffice.

The fleet was still moving forward, but now it was moving forward into the event horizon of a growing black hole. They had a few picoseconds to decelerate before being ripped to pieces, and their engines were contributing to the black hole's growth. The formation they had adopted was especially suicidal, as the ships were necessarily extremely close together. If the Damalgians didn't use weapons like these too often, it was only because black holes were really difficult to harvest for materials.

Woad Raider Fleet
Commandant Gibbs had been a little slow at the start but with near 5 minutes to work out solutions and with 2 AI's on board There was plenty of processing power. None the less it nearly didn't work But the Woad Raiders had lucked out as the "singer" took two hops and gave them the opening they needed. The Raiders had been working on a way to use the enemies FTL weapons to their advantage and the AI's had figured out exactly how long the enemy took between powering up FTL drive, shutting down the FTLi and powering up the FTLi again. Even with the FTL sensors and multiple AI's on the ASDSF ships the timing was 2x10^-16 seconds too long for them to exploit the gap but the second hop made it possible and as the weapon translated so did the ASDSF ships, directly into the heart of the enemy (Damalgian) fleet. They were expecting the jump as well which the Dalmagians, hopefully, weren't and the instant they reappeared every DEW and KEW in the fleet fired. The ranges were ridiculously low, so low, in fact that the ASDSF ships were firing Counter-missile laser clusters into enemy shields. Not only that, but the ASDSF fleet was still under power, though no longer at anything like light speeds and though they managed to get off two volleys of everything they had, the enemy wouldn't have more than a couple of seconds to react before the ASDSF fleet had enough range for active defenses to come into play. The ASDSF fleet had Fired with 628 Separate Grasers, 476 smaller caliber lasers and 170 heavy Coil Gun rounds in each of the two volleys along with literally thousands of quick cycling Counter Missile Laser clusters.

All Damalgian machinery was engineered for power and efficiency, not endurance. Here was the strength and the weakness of the warships: they were built for quick and punishing strikes, and failed in drawn-out firefights. (In fact the best surefire way to defeat a Damalgian city is to lay siege to it; by the time you break down the walls, the inhabitants will have all eaten each other.) That was why they were spending so much time looking at an artifact that had lasted for at least a hundred years. That was also why their mission statements ran something like "Travel the galaxy, find new worlds, break them down for raw materials."

The Damalgian Union alone had developed permanence, and that was why its foreign policy had been updated to "Exterminate and consume all non-Damalgian life in the universe (and whatever Damalgian life opposes us)."

The Navigator examined the screens carefully. "Subcaptain, probes indicate that the enemy fleet disappeared just before the singer blew."

"They weren't sucked into a black hole then?" the Subcaptain said hopefully.

"No, I'm afraid not. They disappeared in a manner consistent with FTL travel, leaving a traceable signal heading in our direction."

"I'd yell 'Battle positions' but we've been in those for about ten minutes. What's your analysis, Tactical?"

"Obviously, after the first time we fired, the AI was ordered to enter FTL travel as soon as the barriers flickered enough for it to do so. It's fairly simple and would never happen if we developed some way to hyperspace through our own FTLi fields." The Lieutenant sounded reproving. "I'd move in probes as close to the edge of our own FTLi as possible to watch for something crossing the barrier."

"We're receiving a message from the interdictor," said Comms. "They've detected an intrusion into the FTLi fields, and have deployed probes to find out what it is."

"Solves that problem. Get our own probes back in this direction as well."

On Warship Two instructions were given to the singularity drone, which was to hold position until something else running gravitics showed up in the area. Meanwhile, the fleet prepared for real action; for what they presumed to be a short but very bloody melée. About thirty-five seconds after the Raiders showed up, probes began to home in on their signals, passing information back to the ships. From there it was simple. Let's slow things down to an understandable pace, from the AI's point of view.

Incoming weapons fire detected. Preparing countermeasures.

Hostile warships detected. Gravitic interference increasing difficulty of obtaining targeting solutions.
SOLUTION: Int-1 to deploy anti-grav field.

Solution successful. Plotting targeting solutions.

Manual Instructions from Warship Six: Open fire with secondaries. Keep the primaries in reserve, only use them in limited numbers.

Manual Instructions from Warship Six: Deploy all drones. If it can fly and it doesn't have a pilot, I want it out of this ship. Especially the jammer drones and the shield drones. We'll need those.

Picture the fabric of space time as being like a long rubber sheet. Let's say it's about twelve feet long. Now let's say you and a friend hold each end of it, and you shake the sheet. What you are creating is a rubber wave, which isn't exactly like a gravitational wave, but it's a lie the layman can understand. Gravitational waves are just like any other kind of wave you might encounter, apart from things like electrons which exhibit particle-wave duality, which is problematic and mostly caused by that damn quantum stuff.

And how do you stop a wave?

With breakers.

Interdictors create fields. That's why they're brought into battle. This one was currently generating an 8-minute FTLi field. The AI ensured that it was also now generating an 8-minute anti-gravitics field, which neutralized any such gravitational waves by dispersing them. Sometimes, as anyone who's seen the Gulf of Mexico coast during a hurricane knows, with spectacular effects. Interdictors can also generate some other specialized fields, like anti-psionic fields, as well as boring normal radiation on various wavelengths, but their main military application is FTLi.

The Raiders had a moment or two to realize the implications of suddenly losing power to their gravitic drives before the jammer drones came online and it suddenly became very hard to find the Damalgian ships. Or anything else, for that matter. The drones caused all of the readings the enemy's sensors were picking up to start fluctuating wildly, fed the sensors false and constantly-changing data, or passed them irrelevant information; they hid the Damalgian vessels from view, occasionally revealing them long enough to give the enemy a clear shot, before the ship disappeared again before a hit could be confirmed. In short they played merry hell with any sensors not on the defined friendly wavelength (which the Damalgians had transmitted to the Otagians and Dornalians).

And all that was before the Damalgian attacks hit. There were a hundred or so missiles, combined with whatever else the AI could think of to bypass shields and FTLi (in this case, the Damalgians' own FTLi). The main strike was from secondary weapons, however, including mass driver rounds, plasma bursts, and shield-breaching canisters filled with everything from high explosives to acid-secreting slime beings. The Damalgians had very full arsenals. And the jammer drones should have been able to hide most of the incoming ordnance until it was too late.

All was not well with the fleet, however. Weapons were inbound, a few volleys that the Raiders had managed to get off before the Damalgians responded, and it was looking bleak with about a hundred weapons tracking each warship. However, Damalgians' stereotypical overarmament also extended to tertiary weapons, or point defence, and they had allies to assist in their defense.

Situation: Incoming weapons (very numerous).
Estimated chances of survival: 71%.
Solution: Overkill.

Physical rounds incoming: 170.
Trackable: Yes.
Kinetic shields active.
Deflector shields active.
Anti-missile missiles deployed.
Point defence lasers (bank 1) deployed.

Energy weapons incoming: est. 1000.
Trackable: Yes.
Kinetic shields active.
Refraction shields active.
Suicide missiles deployed.
Point defence lasers (bank 2) deployed.
Shield drones deployed.

Situation: 225 energy weapons (est.) survived tertiaries.
Solution: Pray.

There were some explosions.

Ships destroyed: War-3 (survival rate: 6%)
Ships damaged: War-2, Sci-3, War-7
Fleetwide shield rating: 77% (suboptimal -- absorb War-3's debris & shockwaves for energy)
Losses acceptable? Y/N

All Damalgian machinery was engineered for power and efficiency, not endurance. Here was the strength and the weakness of the warships: they were built for quick and punishing strikes, and failed in drawn-out firefights. (In fact the best surefire way to defeat a Damalgian city is to lay siege to it; by the time you break down the walls, the inhabitants will have all eaten each other.) That was why they were spending so much time looking at an artifact that had lasted for at least a hundred years. That was also why their mission statements ran something like "Travel the galaxy, find new worlds, break them down for raw materials."

The Damalgian Union alone had developed permanence, and that was why its foreign policy had been updated to "Exterminate and consume all non-Damalgian life in the universe (and whatever Damalgian life opposes us)."

The Navigator examined the screens carefully. "Subcaptain, probes indicate that the enemy fleet disappeared just before the singer blew."

"They weren't sucked into a black hole then?" the Subcaptain said hopefully.

"No, I'm afraid not. They disappeared in a manner consistent with FTL travel, leaving a traceable signal heading in our direction."

"I'd yell 'Battle positions' but we've been in those for about ten minutes. What's your analysis, Tactical?"

"Obviously, after the first time we fired, the AI was ordered to enter FTL travel as soon as the barriers flickered enough for it to do so. It's fairly simple and would never happen if we developed some way to hyperspace through our own FTLi fields." The Lieutenant sounded reproving. "I'd move in probes as close to the edge of our own FTLi as possible to watch for something crossing the barrier."

"We're receiving a message from the interdictor," said Comms. "They've detected an intrusion into the FTLi fields, and have deployed probes to find out what it is."

"Solves that problem. Get our own probes back in this direction as well."

On Warship Two instructions were given to the singularity drone, which was to hold position until something else running gravitics showed up in the area. Meanwhile, the fleet prepared for real action; for what they presumed to be a short but very bloody melée. About thirty-five seconds after the Raiders showed up, probes began to home in on their signals, passing information back to the ships. From there it was simple. Let's slow things down to an understandable pace, from the AI's point of view.

Incoming weapons fire detected. Preparing countermeasures.

Hostile warships detected. Gravitic interference increasing difficulty of obtaining targeting solutions.
SOLUTION: Int-1 to deploy anti-grav field.

Solution successful. Plotting targeting solutions.

Manual Instructions from Warship Six: Open fire with secondaries. Keep the primaries in reserve, only use them in limited numbers.

Manual Instructions from Warship Six: Deploy all drones. If it can fly and it doesn't have a pilot, I want it out of this ship. Especially the jammer drones and the shield drones. We'll need those.

Picture the fabric of space time as being like a long rubber sheet. Let's say it's about twelve feet long. Now let's say you and a friend hold each end of it, and you shake the sheet. What you are creating is a rubber wave, which isn't exactly like a gravitational wave, but it's a lie the layman can understand. Gravitational waves are just like any other kind of wave you might encounter, apart from things like electrons which exhibit particle-wave duality, which is problematic and mostly caused by that damn quantum stuff.

And how do you stop a wave?

With breakers.

Interdictors create fields. That's why they're brought into battle. This one was currently generating an 8-minute FTLi field. The AI ensured that it was also now generating an 8-minute anti-gravitics field, which neutralized any such gravitational waves by dispersing them. Sometimes, as anyone who's seen the Gulf of Mexico coast during a hurricane knows, with spectacular effects. Interdictors can also generate some other specialized fields, like anti-psionic fields, as well as boring normal radiation on various wavelengths, but their main military application is FTLi.

The Raiders had a moment or two to realize the implications of suddenly losing power to their gravitic drives before the jammer drones came online and it suddenly became very hard to find the Damalgian ships. Or anything else, for that matter. The drones caused all of the readings the enemy's sensors were picking up to start fluctuating wildly, fed the sensors false and constantly-changing data, or passed them irrelevant information; they hid the Damalgian vessels from view, occasionally revealing them long enough to give the enemy a clear shot, before the ship disappeared again before a hit could be confirmed. In short they played merry hell with any sensors not on the defined friendly wavelength (which the Damalgians had transmitted to the Otagians and Dornalians).

And all that was before the Damalgian attacks hit. There were a hundred or so missiles, combined with whatever else the AI could think of to bypass shields and FTLi (in this case, the Damalgians' own FTLi). The main strike was from secondary weapons, however, including mass driver rounds, plasma bursts, and shield-breaching canisters filled with everything from high explosives to acid-secreting slime beings. The Damalgians had very full arsenals. And the jammer drones should have been able to hide most of the incoming ordnance until it was too late.

All was not well with the fleet, however. Weapons were inbound, a few volleys that the Raiders had managed to get off before the Damalgians responded, and it was looking bleak with about a hundred weapons tracking each warship. However, Damalgians' stereotypical overarmament also extended to tertiary weapons, or point defence, and they had allies to assist in their defense.

Situation: Incoming weapons (very numerous).
Estimated chances of survival: 71%.
Solution: Overkill.

Physical rounds incoming: 170.
Trackable: Yes.
Kinetic shields active.
Deflector shields active.
Anti-missile missiles deployed.
Point defence lasers (bank 1) deployed.

Energy weapons incoming: est. 1000.
Trackable: Yes.
Kinetic shields active.
Refraction shields active.
Suicide missiles deployed.
Point defence lasers (bank 2) deployed.
Shield drones deployed.

Situation: 225 energy weapons (est.) survived tertiaries.
Solution: Pray.

There were some explosions.

Ships destroyed: War-3 (survival rate: 6%)
Ships damaged: War-2, Sci-3, War-7
Fleetwide shield rating: 77% (suboptimal -- absorb War-3's debris & shockwaves for energy)
Losses acceptable? Y/N
ASDSF Nike
"Damn," Said Gibbs as he watched the tracking screens erupt into a field of static. "Ops, what happened?"

"Looks like we misjudged sir," Replied Ops "We've landed eight light-minutes out sir and there are, Other issues as well."

"What?" Asked Gibbs

"Drive Fields are down sir, and they will definitely have launched by now."

"Go to thermals! Locate those missiles and start frequency hopping on FTL sensors. Return fire!"

Woad Raiders, Defensive actions
Aboard every ship of the fleet, Manned counter missile and laser point defenses opened fire at oncoming enemy weapons. Anything solid was met by a return wall of fire and counter missiles intercepted and weakened plasma bursts. Gravity based Deflector shields in close proximity helped to deflect and derail the enemy FTL missiles and there were fewer FTL missiles per ship than their had been before, but one of the SD (p) managed to pick-up almost every one of the FTL's that struck and 60 high megaton blasts was far too much even for the single SD (p). A battle cruiser took a single round, knocking it out of the fight though it survived and three destroyers were hit in near proximity and they survived though point defenses and offensive weapons took hits. 4 more destroyers took hits from secondary weapons but KE and Deflector shields held and they survived.

Deployed LACs
The Lacs had been launched with high initial acceleration. Thrusters, used for atmospheric maneuvers allowed the lacs some maneuverability but it would be far to little while the FTL drone was still functioning. The only solution was to get rid of the source of gravimetric interference and the LACs had been tasked to do just that. When the enemy had switched its function to Grav. interdiction it had made the drone a massive target and 1500 Lacs were now in space targeting it and the other enemy drones. 300 LACs Targeted the enemy FTLi with 2 Laser heads a piece. Individual LACs went after enemy drones as well using what was in essence an advancement of HARM trackers. Lacs went after un-armed and Un-manned drones as the 600 missiles went after the single FTLi.

Woad Raider Offensive Actions
Switching to thermals degraded sensor targeting slightly but FTLs were getting hits as well and a reply was possible. As the Woad Raiders continued to travel towards the enemy fleet, Offensive weapons hammered at weakened enemy shields. Coilguns, Lasers and Grasers targeted the Remain enemy ships firing as fast as they possibly could.

Rate of shield recharge: 8%/minute - poor
Solution: Absorb energy from shockwaves and incoming munitions, direct into shields

Absorption shields activated

Situation: Numerous (500+) weapons incoming towards interdiction-class warship
Solution: Move interdiction-class warship to more defensible position. Increase field strengths and deploy FTLi drones to compensate.

Rate of success: unknown (further information to be received within 120 sec.)

Interdictor's current position: 2 light-minutes behind remainder of fleet, near planet's natural satellite
Current diameter of FTLi and anti-grav fields: 10 light-minutes
Full coverage of enemy fleet maintained: Yes

The jammer drones and shield drones were under attack, mostly from incoming laser fire. At ranges of several light-seconds, like these, lasers are possible to dodge; and most of the drones did just that. Others formed into clumps protected by shield drones, which (true to their names) generated shields. Either way, however, it was obvious that many drones would be lost. Their mass could be re-harvested and rebuilt into new drones, but the fleet didn't have a harvester on hand to do that just now, and would only be able to process the materials up to a certain point. In short, resources were limited.

The order was given out to move the drones out of the LACs' way, and allow their laser fire to hit the absorption shields (which, true to their name, absorbed energy). This would have the added benefit of being useful to the Damalgians by recharging their shields with free heat. The Damalgians also deployed anti-shield drones towards the enemy fleet. These drones simply targeted enemy shields from a few light-seconds out, draining power from them, and were intended to survive mostly by virtue of bearing a very close resemblance to random debris on scanners. The heat they emitted from drawing off energy from the shields was dispersed widely enough that it was nearly invisible compared to the heat emitted by the ships of the fleet. And the power they drained off from the shields was sufficient to allow more missiles through. (Can you guess what the AI was doing at that moment? That's right. Firing missiles.)

Situation: Incoming warships and drones.
Solution: Target warships with primaries, drones with secondaries.

Fired: 1152 missiles (full complements of War-1, War-2, War-4; reloads in 3.5 sec.; additional missiles from War-5 and War-7)
Targets: all incoming ships
Fired: several thousand anti-missile missiles (from War-1, War-2, War-4, War-5; reloads in 3.25 sec.)
Targets: all incoming drones

Weapons were incoming. The switch to thermals was not going to be useful for a few more minutes, as it only gave the position of where the Damalgian warships had been six minutes ago, and not where they were now. The FTL sensors were being jammed and could give only incomplete pictures of the Damalgian ships, despite the frequency hopping; as a result, only a few ships were successfully targeted. One of them was Science Vessel Three, already damaged; the others were Warships Four, Six, Seven, and Nine, and Arsenal Two. No firepower was spared, although the majority of incoming laser fire was ignored as it only served to strengthen the absorption shields, which in turn passed on excess energy to the other shields to avoid overloading. Science Vessel Three was destroyed, as its weapons were insufficient to deal with the incoming rounds despite all of the support and defense from the other ships. Fortunately, the crew were ready for it, and managed to eject their bodies into space before it was destroyed, so that Arsenal Two could transport them into its organics and inorganics rooms for later processing. Arsenal Two survived, being better defended (it had all their food in it after all), and the warships got off with minor damage if at all. Warship Four lost a weapons bay but shields were rapidly brought back up to full strength over the hull breach; Warship Six got its hull a little scorched and suffered some small fires.

Rate of shield recharge: 8%/minute - poor
Solution: Absorb energy from shockwaves and incoming munitions, direct into shields

Absorption shields activated

Situation: Numerous (500+) weapons incoming towards interdiction-class warship
Solution: Move interdiction-class warship to more defensible position. Increase field strengths and deploy FTLi drones to compensate.

Rate of success: unknown (further information to be received within 120 sec.)

Interdictor's current position: 2 light-minutes behind remainder of fleet, near planet's natural satellite
Current diameter of FTLi and anti-grav fields: 10 light-minutes
Full coverage of enemy fleet maintained: Yes

The jammer drones and shield drones were under attack, mostly from incoming laser fire. At ranges of several light-seconds, like these, lasers are possible to dodge; and most of the drones did just that. Others formed into clumps protected by shield drones, which (true to their names) generated shields. Either way, however, it was obvious that many drones would be lost. Their mass could be re-harvested and rebuilt into new drones, but the fleet didn't have a harvester on hand to do that just now, and would only be able to process the materials up to a certain point. In short, resources were limited.

The order was given out to move the drones out of the LACs' way, and allow their laser fire to hit the absorption shields (which, true to their name, absorbed energy). This would have the added benefit of being useful to the Damalgians by recharging their shields with free heat. The Damalgians also deployed anti-shield drones towards the enemy fleet. These drones simply targeted enemy shields from a few light-seconds out, draining power from them, and were intended to survive mostly by virtue of bearing a very close resemblance to random debris on scanners. The heat they emitted from drawing off energy from the shields was dispersed widely enough that it was nearly invisible compared to the heat emitted by the ships of the fleet. And the power they drained off from the shields was sufficient to allow more missiles through. (Can you guess what the AI was doing at that moment? That's right. Firing missiles.)

Situation: Incoming warships and drones.
Solution: Target warships with primaries, drones with secondaries.

Fired: 1152 missiles (full complements of War-1, War-2, War-4; reloads in 3.5 sec.; additional missiles from War-5 and War-7)
Targets: all incoming ships
Fired: several thousand anti-missile missiles (from War-1, War-2, War-4, War-5; reloads in 3.25 sec.)
Targets: all incoming drones

Weapons were incoming. The switch to thermals was not going to be useful for a few more minutes, as it only gave the position of where the Damalgian warships had been six minutes ago, and not where they were now. The FTL sensors were being jammed and could give only incomplete pictures of the Damalgian ships, despite the frequency hopping; as a result, only a few ships were successfully targeted. One of them was Science Vessel Three, already damaged; the others were Warships Four, Six, Seven, and Nine, and Arsenal Two. No firepower was spared, although the majority of incoming laser fire was ignored as it only served to strengthen the absorption shields, which in turn passed on excess energy to the other shields to avoid overloading. Science Vessel Three was destroyed, as its weapons were insufficient to deal with the incoming rounds despite all of the support and defense from the other ships. Fortunately, the crew were ready for it, and managed to eject their bodies into space before it was destroyed, so that Arsenal Two could transport them into its organics and inorganics rooms for later processing. Arsenal Two survived, being better defended (it had all their food in it after all), and the warships got off with minor damage if at all. Warship Four lost a weapons bay but shields were rapidly brought back up to full strength over the hull breach; Warship Six got its hull a little scorched and suffered some small fires.
ASDSF Nike
"Screw it," Said Gibbs "Go to Terminal option and initiate Hammerblow. Now!"

"Sir, Probability of success on the last option is not . . . great and --"

"Their going to launching again in seconds. Do it, Now!"

"Aye aye Sir! Initiating Hammerblow and Final Option Now."

Grav Waves, Final Option
A breaker is a great way to disrupt a wave but when something the size of a tsunami hits one its not going to last long. That, in essence, was the final option. Every Single Ship and Lac in the fleet brought up their grav fields to 120%, full emergency power, at exactly the same moment. Shields were useless against this kind of attack and, the result, at worst, was going to be the temporary disruption of both the FTLi and the Grav Wave inhibitor and at best it would fully burn out both though a likely result was somewhere between the two. As the Grav generators came online the enemy fired FLT missiles. With them Firing through their own FTLi and with the ASDSF ships with full strength, and some, Grav Disruptions the attempted attack was a joke. Two destroyers went fully down and the damaged battlecruiser went up as well, its drives having been offline. There was a cost, though, in ten minutes of use the ASDSF ships had burned off about ten years of normal usage on their drives. ASDSF Jammers went to full strength clouding the field of battle for whatever enemy ships survived.

Manned Light Attack Craft (LACs)
With Grav drives back online the Lacs could maneuver well again, their own CMS went after those targeted against them and deflector shields and point defenses took out any that came close enough to cause trouble.

Hammerblow
In co-ordination with The Capitol Ships, the Lacs cleared their missile Tubes in a single massive Volley. The missiles were Laser heads with a standoff range of nearly a light-second and the ability to deal massive amounts of damage to unshielded targets. With pods, Capitol ships and Lacs 56108 missiles targeted the enemy ships Timed to hit at exactly the same moment. This type of attack while hopefully effective, depleted the entirety of the Woad Raider's missile capacity. Follow on salvos were going to max out at just under a thousand missiles a piece, too few to punch through CM, active and passive defenses until resupply. On the plus side, active sensors on the missiles meant that they would re-target themselves and not suffer the kind of light-speed lag suffered by the Capital ships and they'd have plenty of time for maneuver on their drives.

DEW and KEV weapons
Lac energy weapons targeted the enemy drones that were close enough for lightspeed lag not to be an issue. Capitol ships Continued to fire Salvos of energy and Coil guns into what they could glean of the enemy positions.

For about half a second a powerful gravitic field formed in front of the Raiders' fleet, only to dissipate again into the anti-grav field. It had not been without its effects -- interdictor power was down somewhat, although not completely diminished, and the anti-shield drones (being close enough to the fleet) had been crushed in the wave's wake. But only perhaps thirty percent of the FTL missiles had been thrown off course by the attack; the rest continuing towards their targets, negotiating shields en route to explosions.

The main attack was a different matter.

Incoming missiles. est. 50000 trackable.
Chances of survival in current position: 0.25%.
Solution: Move to new position, prepare defenses; call for backup.

Battlestation One called in for assistance. Automatic parameters set.

Battlestation One has arrived in-system with fields set to fleet normal.

Task force (14 surviving vessels) moved to new position in system asteroid belt, 94 light-minutes from previous site, near Derelict One.

In front of the Raiders' fleet, the cloud of warships and drones disappeared. (FTL fields had flickered again.) Over fifty thousand missiles continued straight through the position where they had just been and became a very large and dangerous cloud of debris passing through the system. The fleet had positioned itself near the derelict, but on a flightpath that left an asteroid between it and the incoming missiles, and the hour and a half it had before the missiles arrived should give it plenty of time to prepare.

The Raiders, however, were not now exempt from anti-grav and anti-FTL coverage. Something else was generating those fields within its range. That something was a sphere two point five kilometers in diameter, covered by a swarm of drones like bees, and close enough to be visible out the windows. Battlestation One had made a career out of scaring the pants off military commanders. The cloud of drones was issuing similar jamming signals to those that had protected the fleet, but its purpose was mainly to serve as an ominous buzzing shield to something that looked like a spikier version of the Death Star. A battlestation could destroy planets, it was said. In fact, a single warship with a working hyperdrive could destroy a planet, if it was willing to sacrifice itself, but it just didn't have the intimidation factor of a battlestation.

In the few seconds as the Raider fleet noticed all this, they also noticed that their KE shields had dropped far below optimal levels (thanks to anti-shield drones). Then they noticed that they were being bombarded by thousands, perhaps millions, of flechettes moving at relativistic velocities and not emitting enough heat to be tracked. This would not ordinarily be such a big deal, given the thickness of the average hull plating on a warship, but while just about anyone could fire lots of little shards of steel, it took the mind of a Damalgian to fill those little shards with antimatter.

And that was before Battlestation One turned its guns on the Raiders and began to fire an apparently endless barrage of high explosive rounds. And in this day and age, high explosives are in the gigaton range. The shells traveled extremely fast, could maneuver surprisingly well, and.... well.... the KE shields were pretty low already. And with this kind of yield, one hit meant one kill, even for SD(p)s.

Overwhelming force had arrived. (As somebody or other once said: There's no kill like overkill.)

OOC: Shoot. Tech issues kept me away.

IC:

All the while, the Dornalians had been participating in combat against their foes. Throwing in ordinance, they worked to keep the enemy at bay--though it seemed that their new friends were doing more of a job than they were....

For about half a second a powerful gravitic field formed in front of the Raiders' fleet, only to dissipate again into the anti-grav field. It had not been without its effects -- interdictor power was down somewhat, although not completely diminished, and the anti-shield drones (being close enough to the fleet) had been crushed in the wave's wake. But only perhaps thirty percent of the FTL missiles had been thrown off course by the attack; the rest continuing towards their targets, negotiating shields en route to explosions.

The main attack was a different matter.

Incoming missiles. est. 50000 trackable.
Chances of survival in current position: 0.25%.
Solution: Move to new position, prepare defenses; call for backup.

Battlestation One called in for assistance. Automatic parameters set.

Battlestation One has arrived in-system with fields set to fleet normal.

Task force (14 surviving vessels) moved to new position in system asteroid belt, 94 light-minutes from previous site, near Derelict One.

In front of the Raiders' fleet, the cloud of warships and drones disappeared. (FTL fields had flickered again.) Over fifty thousand missiles continued straight through the position where they had just been and became a very large and dangerous cloud of debris passing through the system. The fleet had positioned itself near the derelict, but on a flightpath that left an asteroid between it and the incoming missiles, and the hour and a half it had before the missiles arrived should give it plenty of time to prepare.

The Raiders, however, were not now exempt from anti-grav and anti-FTL coverage. Something else was generating those fields within its range. That something was a sphere two point five kilometers in diameter, covered by a swarm of drones like bees, and close enough to be visible out the windows. Battlestation One had made a career out of scaring the pants off military commanders. The cloud of drones was issuing similar jamming signals to those that had protected the fleet, but its purpose was mainly to serve as an ominous buzzing shield to something that looked like a spikier version of the Death Star. A battlestation could destroy planets, it was said. In fact, a single warship with a working hyperdrive could destroy a planet, if it was willing to sacrifice itself, but it just didn't have the intimidation factor of a battlestation.

In the few seconds as the Raider fleet noticed all this, they also noticed that their KE shields had dropped far below optimal levels (thanks to anti-shield drones). Then they noticed that they were being bombarded by thousands, perhaps millions, of flechettes moving at relativistic velocities and not emitting enough heat to be tracked. This would not ordinarily be such a big deal, given the thickness of the average hull plating on a warship, but while just about anyone could fire lots of little shards of steel, it took the mind of a Damalgian to fill those little shards with antimatter.

And that was before Battlestation One turned its guns on the Raiders and began to fire an apparently endless barrage of high explosive rounds. And in this day and age, high explosives are in the gigaton range. The shells traveled extremely fast, could maneuver surprisingly well, and.... well.... the KE shields were pretty low already. And with this kind of yield, one hit meant one kill, even for SD(p)s.

Overwhelming force had arrived. (As somebody or other once said: There's no kill like overkill.)
Gibbs Cringed, As a massive ship began Launching Flettchet Rounds against his shields but he still had the Hammerblow Missile Volley and the enemy Station made one hell of a target. The missiles re targeted themselves and screamed towards the enemy ship. Enemy Jamming had left with their fleet though ASDSF Jammers were still well online and decoys howled pulling apparently guided shells towards them. Coutermissiles Swarmed out and Point defenses Cycled fast, destroying Shells outside even their Massive blast radius. The ASDN ships survived, though, and replied with volleys of Coil Gun rounds and Grasers. The enemy, though, was apparently capable of moving anything to anywhere instantaneously and the Woad Raiders fleet was clearly outmatched and incapable of even jumping out. In a last ditch attempt 1500 Lacs bored in towards the Massive station Firing the large Graser they were built around and Accelerating Towards the Station at top possible speed.

ASDSF Nike
"Well, boys, it was an honor serving with you, but we've clearly met an enemy capable of doing the impossible. " Said Gibs over an encrypted comm to the LACs. "They can apparently look right through our shields and Jamming, Build an FLT drive into a missile, Jump straight through their own FTLis , Somehow guide inert shells through space, mix anti-matter with matter to no ill effect and Move a thing that size through space instantly.Try to get yourselves out alive, and we'll do the same. Good luck, Gibbs out"

Woad Raiders
Unable to maneuver due to an apparently impossible block on grav waves with defenses apparently pointless and the ennemy throwing seemingly impossible weapons at the fleet, it began to die. Slowly at first, Five Destroyers and a Pair of Battle Cruisers went down but more were sure too follow.

The battlestation had numerous lines of defense, as its massive powerplant had to be large enough to move it through hyperspace and could thus power many layers of shields, weapons, and such-like when the hyperdrive was offline. As missiles and incoming graser rounds continued to dent its shields, it released several attempts at defending itself: first an extremely low frequency electromagnetic pulse, directed at the incoming Hammerblow missiles, in the hope of throwing off their guidance systems. Second, numerous lasers and anti-missile missiles, which targeted the incoming LACs, tracking them as quickly as was possible with the ASDSF's jammers affecting FTL sensors. (The ranges involved, being less than fifteen light-seconds, didn't make lightspeed delay that much of an issue.) Third were the rows of shields, which absorbed seemingly endless punishment from the ASDSF fleet.

On board the battlestation itself, however, the picture was not quite so rosy for the Damalgians. Shields were falling fast, although the cloud of drones managed to conceal most of that from the enemy (mimicking a shield strength of over 90% when in fact it was currently below 40%), and the seemingly bottomless gun barrels could in fact hold only about three hundred shells, almost all of which were gone. Then the battlestation was down to smaller weapons like missiles, which really should be saved for later. With things as they were, the Damalgians would soon run out of trump cards to play, and be left high, dry, and very very dead.

So they came to a decision just as the shells ran out, transmitting a message to the ASDSF fleet. The battlestation ceased fire, leaving the last few flechettes spinning through space aimlessly.
We tire of this foolishness. Enough missiles to destroy your puny fleet many times over are already locked; only give the word and they shall be launched. But if you do not wish to die, cease fire, power down shields and prepare to be boarded, where we shall discuss this little spat like beings of honour and not mess around with urinating contests.

The battlestation had numerous lines of defense, as its massive powerplant had to be large enough to move it through hyperspace and could thus power many layers of shields, weapons, and such-like when the hyperdrive was offline. As missiles and incoming graser rounds continued to dent its shields, it released several attempts at defending itself: first an extremely low frequency electromagnetic pulse, directed at the incoming Hammerblow missiles, in the hope of throwing off their guidance systems. Second, numerous lasers and anti-missile missiles, which targeted the incoming LACs, tracking them as quickly as was possible with the ASDSF's jammers affecting FTL sensors. (The ranges involved, being less than fifteen light-seconds, didn't make lightspeed delay that much of an issue.) Third were the rows of shields, which absorbed seemingly endless punishment from the ASDSF fleet.

On board the battlestation itself, however, the picture was not quite so rosy for the Damalgians. Shields were falling fast, although the cloud of drones managed to conceal most of that from the enemy (mimicking a shield strength of over 90% when in fact it was currently below 40%), and the seemingly bottomless gun barrels could in fact hold only about three hundred shells, almost all of which were gone. Then the battlestation was down to smaller weapons like missiles, which really should be saved for later. With things as they were, the Damalgians would soon run out of trump cards to play, and be left high, dry, and very very dead.

So they came to a decision just as the shells ran out, transmitting a message to the ASDSF fleet. The battlestation ceased fire, leaving the last few flechettes spinning through space aimlessly.

The ASDSF Fleet was trying just as hard to disguise its own damage. Shields had taken a beating, and though no more capital ships had been destroyed almost all were taking some sort of damage The least damage ships, mostly battle cruisers and SD(p)s were now located on the "outside" of the formation showing a fleet that seemed less affected than it actually was. Offensive capabilities were down and seeing how little damage the fleet had done to the enemy was, disheartening, to say the least. Even the hardened elite of the woad Raiders could be and were frustrated by the fact that they were throwing everything they had at this thing to little effect. The LAC fleet was still fairly intact, with only 15 LACS lost but their shield, too, had been weakened and though they still had missiles theirs were much smaller and less able to penetrate shields. their grasers, too, were smaller than those of the capital ships and seeing how little those massive weapons had done, there seemed to be little hope for the LACs. On the other hand, there was no way the ASDSF was gonna surrender.

ASDS Nike
The Bridge was remarkably untouched though, with it being in the belly of the ship perhaps that wasn't so surprising at all. On the other hand the Red dammage reports from various ships were diheartening to say the least.

"Sir!" Said Comms we've got a message here

"My screen Comms." Said Gibs as he stared at the tac. screen looking for some sort of way out.

"Aye Sir." Then seconds later "up sir. And the enemy has ceased fire."

"The hell? They want us to stand down?" But suddenly there was a glimmer of hope in his voice not heard in quite some time. "Here Comms. Send this reply out and OPS?"

"Aye sir?"

"Cease all offensive actions and have the LACs stand down for now."

"Aye SIR!"


We are agreed that this spat should be settled and soon. That being said you opened fire on our fleet without provocation after we had attempted to make peaceful contact. Thus as a counter-offer and a show of good faith we suggest two things. First, we will agree to a mutual phased stand down of both of our fleets. Second we ask that you pull your fleet out of system in order to normalize force levels here. At that time we would be willing to entertain you aboard our ship

"They want us to leave the system? We don't have anywhere near enough power to do that and maintain shields and weapons," the commanding officer on the battlestation said (he was another Subcaptain, whom we'll call Subcaptain Two).

Subcaptain One on board Warship Six said, over FTL comms: "They're in no position to negotiate. They should remember that."

"Actually, they are in a very good position. They can sustain this for much longer than we can and they have many more ships left.... they haven't taken that much damage. And we won't be able to hold anti-grav fields much longer. I'm surprised they haven't called our bluff."

"They're aliens," the first Subcaptain said. "They're weaker than us, and they think differently from us."

"It's not that simple," sighed the second Subcaptain as he prepared to send a message.

You are in no position to negotiate with us. Our fleet shall remain where it is, as will yours; but as a gesture of our own good faith we shall turn off our anti-gravitic fields, and our battlestation shall remove itself to a more distant and less immediately threatening location.

In addition to anti-grav, FTLi deactivated for a small fraction of a second as well to allow the battlestation to make another hyperspace hop. It was only short range, as the engines couldn't sustain much more; it went about five light-minutes out from the enemy fleet, into high orbit around the system's major planet. It took with it its myriad drones and left behind two shuttles, which rapidly approached, heading for the flagship and its docking arms. They'd reach it in about a minute. Meanwhile, massive doors in the battlestation's metal hide slid open as it descended slowly towards the world, harvesting all the matter and energy it could obtain from the planet's biosphere.

"They want us to leave the system? We don't have anywhere near enough power to do that and maintain shields and weapons," the commanding officer on the battlestation said (he was another Subcaptain, whom we'll call Subcaptain Two).

Subcaptain One on board Warship Six said, over FTL comms: "They're in no position to negotiate. They should remember that."

"Actually, they are in a very good position. They can sustain this for much longer than we can and they have many more ships left.... they haven't taken that much damage. And we won't be able to hold anti-grav fields much longer. I'm surprised they haven't called our bluff."

"They're aliens," the first Subcaptain said. "They're weaker than us, and they think differently from us."

"It's not that simple," sighed the second Subcaptain as he prepared to send a message.



In addition to anti-grav, FTLi deactivated for a small fraction of a second as well to allow the battlestation to make another hyperspace hop. It was only short range, as the engines couldn't sustain much more; it went about five light-minutes out from the enemy fleet, into high orbit around the system's major planet. It took with it its myriad drones and left behind two shuttles, which rapidly approached, heading for the flagship and its docking arms. They'd reach it in about a minute. Meanwhile, massive doors in the battlestation's metal hide slid open as it descended slowly towards the world, harvesting all the matter and energy it could obtain from the planet's biosphere.
Woad Raiders
As the enemy's, or opponent's , shuttles approached the ASDSF was performing repairs and rescue missions of its own. Lacs returned to carriers on now working grav drives and Resupply vessels closed on the fleet and began restocking ammo. Drones surrounded ships who had powered down drives, rebuilding simple damage and even some of the heavier issues as inside, damage control teams did their own work. Engineers were also getting together cobbling together various pieces of equipment out of existing drives and parts. Weaps and OPS officers were recalibrating their offensive and defensive weapons as well, setting up new targeting parameters.

ASDSS Nike
"Well now that's interesting," Said Gibbs as he read the opponents reply.

"Sir?" Asked tactical.

"They're saying we're in no position to negotiate, which was expected, but at the same time they seem to be acceding to some of what we asked to the best of their abilities." Gibbs looked thoughtfull for a second. "I wonder if --. Well its moot anyway. I just want to organize some sort of treaty and get the hell out of this place."

"Aye sir," said the raider Master-chief on the bridge. "Sir we have an honor gaurd ready at the loading bay and will be sending them the co-ordinates soon. I would suggest you get down their sir."

"Agreed Chief." Replied Gibbs. "I'll suit up and head down now."


We thank you for the gesture of good faith. Our ships have powered down weapons and shielding and we are standing by to recieve your shuttles aboard the ASDSS Nike, one of our battle cruisers. Suggested approach vector is Kilo-3 Alpha -57. Sending vector chart, now. We will welcome your people aboard our ship

(ooc: feel free to dock those shuttles)

Back at the Artifact, the mindless drones gathered the resources they were looking for and returned to the Atrifact depositing them into open hatches near the damaged section to the rear. After completing their task, they returned to their positions and doors sealed them intot he Artifact. The vessel'd hull damage was slowly closing if there was anyone nearby to see.

"My apologies for my lack of participation in recent hostilities, Subcaptain. My molecular forges have finalized my rearmament process and I am fully operational again, and will be able to assist in any further conflicts in system."

Bobbing up and down amidst the splattered remains of a dozen headless corpses, the Avatar listened to the Nike's message. "The offer seems acceptable, Subcaptain. I and Monad are each displacing an Avatar to your shuttle. They will assist in negotiations. Oh, and my apologies for the mess. I'll have a few drones clean it up."

The shuttles docked at the alien ship. Emerging first was the closest thing the Damalgians had to a diplomat; his title was approximately "Legate", and he commanded a group of infantry, several of which accompanied him out into the ASD ship. They all wore environment suits of rounded polished metal which did little to conceal their fundamentally alien forms; the Legate was identified by streaks of cobalt and manganese in an environment suit otherwise made of what looked like steel or carbon; while it was hard to see for a human, it looked like an impressively woven pattern to Damalgian eyes.

The Legate saw the humans and shuddered instinctively. Something about them was fundamentally wrong -- perhaps the squamous, unclean flesh; perhaps the way their bodies were elevated over the ground by blasphemous long prehensile tongues (or something), perhaps their complete lack of a main stalk, a large visible mouth, or any of the other identifying features of a Damalgian. What sensory tentacles they had seemed to extend in a hideously tangled mesh at the top of a weird half-mushroom shape atop their bodies, and they were still, like a dead person's. It was impossible to describe them in Damalgian terms. Over the comlink he said to the Subcaptain (number one): "You're getting my video feed? ... Those things are sentient? Don't we have a duty to the galaxy to destroy something that ugly?"

The Subcaptain (1) sighed-equivalent. "[i]Just talk to them, okay? Try to overcome your disgust. I know they look like eldritch abominations from the edge of the universe, but maybe they're amenable to reasonable discussion even so. We don't want to fight anymore.[i]"

"Fine...." The Legate activated his translator, which pitched everything that he said into the blasphemous ululations and gibbering shrieks of the aliens, and mangled the names of even everyday things into unmusical shouts. "Greetings, aliens. I am Legate Pti'aq*ishtharkstgb'vritkh!latpakr'!udislzi, here to discuss with you the matter of your departure from this system in return for a peaceful settlement." With a few of his longer sensory appendages he scanned the aliens more closely, attempting to search their minds. "Which of you... beings.... is the leader of this crew?"

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

"It's all right, we seem to have things under control," reported the Subcaptain. "We're a little bit depleted, and we had to call in our battlestation a bit early, but give us some time to harvest materials and we'll be ready to fight again with the best." He sighed. "As for negotiations.... the aliens are some kind of horrific abomination, near as I can tell, resembling a giant [common Damalgian household pest] but twisted so far out of normal proportions they could be caricatures. Still, they seem to be capable of reasonable discussion, so I hope we'll be able to get past the physical appearances and settle this without too much more bloodshed."

The shuttles docked at the alien ship. Emerging first was the closest thing the Damalgians had to a diplomat; his title was approximately "Legate", and he commanded a group of infantry, several of which accompanied him out into the ASD ship. They all wore environment suits of rounded polished metal which did little to conceal their fundamentally alien forms; the Legate was identified by streaks of cobalt and manganese in an environment suit otherwise made of what looked like steel or carbon; while it was hard to see for a human, it looked like an impressively woven pattern to Damalgian eyes.

The Legate saw the humans and shuddered instinctively. Something about them was fundamentally wrong -- perhaps the squamous, unclean flesh; perhaps the way their bodies were elevated over the ground by blasphemous long prehensile tongues (or something), perhaps their complete lack of a main stalk, a large visible mouth, or any of the other identifying features of a Damalgian. What sensory tentacles they had seemed to extend in a hideously tangled mesh at the top of a weird half-mushroom shape atop their bodies, and they were still, like a dead person's. It was impossible to describe them in Damalgian terms. Over the comlink he said to the Subcaptain (number one): "You're getting my video feed? ... Those things are sentient? Don't we have a duty to the galaxy to destroy something that ugly?"

The Subcaptain (1) sighed-equivalent. "[i]Just talk to them, okay? Try to overcome your disgust. I know they look like eldritch abominations from the edge of the universe, but maybe they're amenable to reasonable discussion even so. We don't want to fight anymore.[i]"

"Fine...." The Legate activated his translator, which pitched everything that he said into the blasphemous ululations and gibbering shrieks of the aliens, and mangled the names of even everyday things into unmusical shouts. "Greetings, aliens. I am Legate Pti'aq*ishtharkstgb'vritkh!latpakr'!udislzi, here to discuss with you the matter of your departure from this system in return for a peaceful settlement." With a few of his longer sensory appendages he scanned the aliens more closely, attempting to search their minds. "Which of you... beings.... is the leader of this crew?"

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

"It's all right, we seem to have things under control," reported the Subcaptain. "We're a little bit depleted, and we had to call in our battlestation a bit early, but give us some time to harvest materials and we'll be ready to fight again with the best." He sighed. "As for negotiations.... the aliens are some kind of horrific abomination, near as I can tell, resembling a giant [common Damalgian household pest] but twisted so far out of normal proportions they could be caricatures. Still, they seem to be capable of reasonable discussion, so I hope we'll be able to get past the physical appearances and settle this without too much more bloodshed."
Commandant Gibbs, along with 10 Armored marines were standing by to greet the strange beings as they entered the ship. Clearly not human, They none the less seemed intelligent and as their translator came online Gibbs only watched calmly. After the odd being spoke Gibbs replied, "I am the leader aboard this ship and i welcome you aboard the ASDSS Nike. Now if you would care to move to the meeting room I would be glad to discuss potential terms with you."