NationStates Jolt Archive

It was the dream of The Hyperborians to expand to other Galaxies, for The Hyperborians to become the most powerful race in The Universe. Unequaled by any other Stellar Nation in The Milky Way Galaxy. For that Journey to glory and power, The Hyperborians decided on colonizing the near by Dwarf Galaxies around The Milky Way for The Khanate to become a Empire unlike any known, a Empire of Galaxies.

Ayame's "Victory without War" Plan called for Colonies in The Local Group, whole Dwarf Galaxies annexed into The Khanate. Turning it into an Extragalactic empire. No one had ever tried building such a empire.

The Hyperborians had tested out Slipstream drive before and were keen to use it to go into other Galaxies. The Hyperborians has sent out probes through Slipstream and had found some worlds with life, although Primitive in life, in The Triangulum Galaxy. Some had not got out of The Bronze Age yet.

Bu The Hyperborians wanted to start out small, starting with The Dwarf Galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. 160,000 Light Years from the MWG, it was one of the first that was t be brought into the Khanate as a Colony of The Hyperborians.

First, they had to find out what was out there, so they planned to sent a Fleet to Explore what was in the LMC.

It was starting

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[I suggest jumping to one of the closer galaxies before jumping to the LMC, that way you don't have to contend with me. :P]

The Saerlandian cruiser Invisible Hand had been dispatched to the Large Magellanic Cloud three days ago, alone, as part of the most recent anti-piracy strategy foisted on Fleet Command by the government. Although the system was uninhabited, Fleet Command believed that pirate groups could be using it as a jumping-off point for attacks on Saerlandian trade routes, and that by destroying resupply ships belonging to the pirates they could relieve some of the pressure on the perpetually understrength escorts in the outer regions of their territory. So far, though, no pirates had materialised, and the Invisible Hand had loitered in the shadow of a large gas giant near the outskirts of the system. Perhaps not the best use for billions of bolts of bleeding-edge equipment, but such was life.

The Sensors Officer tensed as he saw a series of blips blossom out of the darkness of his sensor screen. "Captain, we have multiple contacts in system. Looks like a whole fleet just came out of nowhere."

The captain, previously lounging in his command chair, suddenly straightened up, his head snapping around. "Shut down all active sensors! Power down all non-essential systems! Shut down engines, we'll just drift for a while."

The deck suddenly came alive with activity, crewmen rushing to their monitors and flicking switches frantically. The ship's impressive stealth capabilities had already been active, but they were taking no chances. The Invisible Hand had an impressive array of weapons, but it was still only one ship. While capable of destroying small groups of the generally poor-quality pirate ships with contemptuous ease, a whole fleet of ships would most likely be too much for it to handle. The lights dimmed, the hum of the engines, activated to prevent the cruiser from slipping further into the gas giant's gravity well, stopped, and the sensor screens dimmed as the ship switched to passive sensors only.

The captain nodded as the crew came to a halt, their work done. "Do we have any identification on those ships yet?"
"No sir, no identification," said the sensors officer, still intent on his screen.
The captain's brow furrowed. Could a pirate group have re-equipped with ships that his men and computers didn't recognise? Or was this some as-yet unidentified threat entering the system? He wasn't sure which was worse.
"Gunnery Officer, deploy a sensors drone," he said. Without wasting time to reply, the Gunnery Officer keyed a rapid set of commands into his console.

A single projectile was launched from the railgun, a long, black, cigar-shaped object. Rather than activating its own thruster, it relied on momentum for a while, using the gravity of the gas giant to slingshot itself out into empty space, far away from the Invisible Hand. The reason for this was twofold. First, because once the drone's sensors were activated it would light up like a beacon, and the captain preferred that the drone did not draw attention to its mothership. Second, because that beacon would largely blind the cruiser's passive sensors, and so it was desirable to get as good a view from the drone as possible, one that it would not get from within the shadow of a gas giant. Once at a safe distance, the drone activated its thruster, using it to bring itself to a stop. The various sensor systems came online all at once in what amounted to a shriek. Meanwhile, a unidirectional communications link, encrypted so as to blend in with the sensors broadcast as much as possible, relayed sensors data back to the Invisible Hand. The captain watched his command console, waiting to see what these new ships' reaction would be.

OOC: I have not sent my ships in yet

*tagged* for later.

[He could come across a Sertian Fleet on patrol, that should fix things up nicely.]

OOC: ok yay.

ooc: Ack. Sorry. Yeah, I can come across a Sertian fleet if that will fix things up.

The Hyperborians decided to send the fleet into The Large Magellanic Cloud. this fleet was made up of 15 Rin-Shi Class Cruisers and 30 Dai-Shi Class Corvettes. This was t help be a show of force as they would be the vanguard of the coming Invasion and Colonist fleet that would fallow. this was the start of a new era as the fleet went into slipstream drive and left for their target.

[I'm just going to suggest that the Hyperborian fleet went to the same system, and to explain this we'll call it the closest star to the Milky Way to explain this?]

As ambitious as the Hyperborian's plan to colonize worlds outside of the Milky Way and, as theoretically successful it may be - it ran into two errors in judgment. The first being that, by sending a few probes to explore a relatively minimal area of a target the size of, say, a galaxy, they deduced that everyone in the galaxy was primates or primitives. The second error of judgment was that, while they can declare whatever area of whatever galaxy they like as their own, it usually pissed off whatever huge, galactic spanning empire had already grown there - having taken advantage of the power vacuum that the Hyperborians where blissfully trying to exploit themselves.


Of course, a huge Empire that claimed to control the entire Large Magellanic Cloud would face a logistics nightmare trying to monitor all of the cloud from outside invasion. Of course, that mean they didn't try to - small fleets constantly patrolled the outer rim of their galaxy to try and detect any invasion fleets (of course they were expecting this attack to come from somewhere other than the Milky Way, but that's not quite the point here]. But even then, there were constant holes in their intelligence network that allowed enemy vessel to slip through unnoticed. Because of this, back during the Resistance War twenty years ago, they tried to set up a network of satellites every few light-years to detect any invading vessels, they lasted a few years before going defunct.

But that didn't stop one satellite, put into a wide orbit around a sun that was slated to be a military outpost in the net few years for the tactical advantage of being the closest planet to the Milky Way, and thus a possible logistic link to their colonization fleet in said galaxy. Of course, the satellite was old, it's plasma battery had long since decayed into zip energy, and it's solar panels were only marginally intact. So it went sort of like this, it would be deactivated for long periods of time, appearing as nothing but space junk to those far away, but when it's solar panels were able to collect enough energy from the sun, it would flicker on for small periods of time. This was how the satellite hopped back online, sending messages to a military organization that was long used to ignoring the little bugger, and how it detected the vessel in orbit around the gas giant.

Of course, one blip from any old satellite that was marginally active was still a cause for detouring one of the patrol fleets, if only because it was a clear and present order from the Empress herself to do so. And since sensor probe 24-31b Alpha had never lit up before, well, it was an easy order to relay.

So within three days of the Invisible Hand's presence around the gas giant, the closet fleet to the planet (which actually turned out to be a rather large fleet slated to be sent to the smaller Magellanic Cloud, but was service ready and was straddling the Spaceway that would allow it to be within four light years of the rim system) embarked.

About an hour after the small sensor probe had picked up the disturbance and, once again draining it's power systems so it was once again deactivated, squadron 124 Zeta of the Sertian Arnada came into existence on the other side of the gas giant. The main bulk of it's forces remaining in counter orbit to the alien cruiser, although they sent one aerospace frigate to explore what was there.

The tiny, 100 meter long ship ducked down into the upper reaches of the gas giant's atmosphere to act as a form of, primitive shield as it raced around the gas giant. It's magnetic generators taking advantage of the large planet's magnetic field to further accelerate it, allowing it to sneak up behind the alien ship with a rather speedy enthusiasm. Of course, Aerospace Frigates weren't known for their sensors, and thus while it knew where it WAS forty-five minutes ago, it was going to be hard to pin point it amidst the other stellar debris that gas giants just loved to collect. That didn't mean they couldn't scare the pants off of them though.

The frigate relayed a message sent by the commander back on the fleet, "Alien vessel, you have violated Empire space with your presence in this system. Place yourself in our protection and explain yourselves, or your presence within our space will be considered hostile."

IC: An alarm sounded on the bridge of the Invisible Hand, loud and piercing in what had previously been an almost sepulchral silence. Warnings flashed on screens. The captain leapt to his feet, turning to face his officers.

"Report!" he shouted. The sensors officer turned to face him, looking suddenly ashen.
"They know we're here, sir. We have an active sensors broadcast nine hundred kilometres from our position and closing in a hunting flight pattern. We've also got data from the drone: the unidentified fleet is on the other side of the gas giant," he said, face rigid.
"How the hell did they find us?" shouted the captain, slamming his fist down onto the back of the command chair. Noticing the crew's shock at this sudden outburst, he regained his composure. "Do they know exactly where we are?"
"Doesn't look like it, sir. The searching vessel doesn't seem to be on an attack vector. They know we're here, but they don't know exactly where. I guess they think that we're debris or..."
He was cut off suddenly as the communications officer shouted across the bridge. "Captain, communications broadcast from the searching vessel."
"Play it on the deck speakers, officer."

"Alien vessel, you have violated Empire space with your presence in this system. Place yourself in our protection and explain yourselves, or your presence within our space will be considered hostile."

Not pirates, then, thought the captain, beginning to pace the deck. Who this "Empire" was, though, he didn't know. Saerlandian High Command was unaware of any space-faring civilisation in the vicinity, let alone one that laid claim to this lifeless, apparently resource-poor system. Still, empire or not, placing the Invisible Hand under the protection of any foreign power was quite unacceptable. There had to be some way to distract the hunters without putting the ship or crew in danger, without allowing a potentially hostile fleet to get a close look at a pinnacle of Saerlandian military engineering. In a combat situation, of course, he could have deployed ECW drones to blind the pursuer and then attack or flee as the situation merited. But this was not, as yet, a combat situation. And then he hit on an idea. The Invisible Hand sensors profile was already near-imperceptible. With a dash of luck, they could quite easily pass for wreckage.

"Comms, I want to broadcast our response through the sensors drone," said the captain, a sudden glint in his eye.
"Yes sir. Switching broadcast channel to your command suite now, sir."

A message was sent on the unidirectional channel to the sensors drone, and from there it was broadcast across the system.

Unidentified ships, this is a marker buoy under control of Artificial Intelligence designated I-166-LT. This system is under quarantine, and off limits to all traffic. Please depart immediately. Failure to comply with quarantine order has already resulted in one casualty in vicinity of outermost gas giant. Please do not repeat their mistake. Repeat, please depart immediately.

The Hyperborian Scout Fleet was nearing the target area in the LMC. It had entered the cloud and was nearing a Gas Giant. The Fleet was commanded by Jein Kalijigyu, one of the beat admirals of The Hyperborian Starfleet.

They would come soon.

OOC: as you can see, I have not come into the system yet. I will RP my self entering the system soon.

On board the SIV Ukario, lead ship of Squadron 124zeta

High Commander Alison frowned at the message received from the ‘buoy’, her mind busy with thoughts about how to handle the situation. Her top priority was to figure out if this was a member of the United Resistance, possibly scouting for another invasion of the Sertian Empire - or perhaps it was a ship from the other Magellanic cloud. This was less possible, but the Empire had only explored roughly five percent of that galaxy, conquered less than one percent, and thus it was possible for another power capable of Faster Than Light travel. The least likely explanation was that it was something else entirely, “Officer Nero, rely orders to one of the Scout Cruisers in this fleet to scan that satellite, I want to know everything about it.”

“Already done Ma’am,” Officer Advanced Nero responded, one of the dutiful Support Commanders in charge of those cruisers had scanned the mechanical object with it’s advanced sensors, then reported the information as soon as it was compiled. “They report that the buoy resembles the configuration of a sensor probe, in addition to this it matches none known configurations for a probe in our databanks. Unlikely to belong to the Resistance, to low tech for them buggers.”

Alison nodded, absorbing the information as she snapped out her next order, this time to the Tactical Assistance Computer, “Display local star map for this area, report on the last patrol to come through this system as well as any recent data transmissions from Probe 21-31b Alpha.” The information quickly came up as the information was processed. The last scout fleet went through the system about a week ago, it had dropped out of Drift and stayed in the system for four hours to scan with all available sensors - very by the book and nothing to report. Then came the probe’s report, it seemed to report every other week, almost like clockwork. It’s last report noted nothing of importance besides a solar ejection. Then, by beforehand knowledge she knew that the closest Sertian world was just over ten light years away, a small colony of a few thousand people.

“This story doesn’t sound very likely, I want a full sensor sweep of the gas giant with the DOMSAs, tell the scout cruisers to get their fighters ready if we need a closer work. Also, blow that stupid probe out of the sky. We don’t need it spying on us if it is a sensor probe, and if it‘s a buoy it probably won‘t be programmed to dodge weapons.”

Thus responding to her orders, the main Plasma Canon of her Heavy Cruiser powered up, then fired it’s plasma bolt clear across space. In fact, the probe was probably able to track the particle round moving at it’s .1c speed.

Well, they didn't buy it, thought the captain, seeing on his screen that one of the Imperial warships was now shooting at the sensor drone. Looks like we're going to have to make a break for it.

"Helm, bring engines online and take us to full speed. Jump as soon as possible for a dead system: we don't want these bastards following us home. Flight Officer, drop drones, and get our sensor drone to take evasive action. They already know it's not a buoy, so it won't be a surprise. Munitions, prepare firing solutions. You may fire at will. We don't want to be followed."

There was a flurry of activity as the crew set about completing the captain's orders. On his screen the captain saw the sensors drone slip neatly out of the way of the plasma bolt, and then felt the acceleration as the engines kicked in.

The Invisible Hand leapt forward, bursting out of the cloud of debris and dust around the gas giant like a breaching whale. Three hundred metres of black armoured hull, sleek and menacing, racing towards the edge of the system and the safety of open space. Drones spilled from exit ports along the sides of the ship. Combat drones separated into squadrons, ready to strike at enemy fighters or other small craft. Meanwhile, ECW drones activated jamming, hoping to blind the enemy and give the Saerlandians a better chance of escape. The deck jolted under the captain's feet as the ship's railguns opened fire on the Aerospace Frigate, causing the whole cruiser to lurch to the side and forcing the thrusters to re-vector to correct it's course.

Well, they didn't buy it, thought the captain, seeing on his screen that one of the Imperial warships was now shooting at the sensor drone. Looks like we're going to have to make a break for it.

"Helm, bring engines online and take us to full speed. Jump as soon as possible for a dead system: we don't want these bastards following us home. Flight Officer, drop drones, and get our sensor drone to take evasive action. They already know it's not a buoy, so it won't be a surprise. Munitions, prepare firing solutions. You may fire at will. We don't want to be followed."

There was a flurry of activity as the crew set about completing the captain's orders. On his screen the captain saw the sensors drone slip neatly out of the way of the plasma bolt, and then felt the acceleration as the engines kicked in.

The Invisible Hand leapt forward, bursting out of the cloud of debris and dust around the gas giant like a breaching whale. Three hundred metres of black armoured hull, sleek and menacing, racing towards the edge of the system and the safety of open space. Drones spilled from exit ports along the sides of the ship. Combat drones separated into squadrons, ready to strike at enemy fighters or other small craft. Meanwhile, ECW drones activated jamming, hoping to blind the enemy and give the Saerlandians a better chance of escape. The deck jolted under the captain's feet as the ship's railguns opened fire on the Aerospace Frigate, causing the whole cruiser to lurch to the side and forcing the thrusters to re-vector to correct it's course.

Unfortunately The Invisible Hand was going to run into The Scouting Fleet as it started coming out of Slipstream. Now they would be in trouble as Hyperborians did not take lightly to what they thought of insults, namely that whole 'This system is under quarantine, and off limits to all traffic. Please depart immediately.' was a insult.

"That Ship might be the one who sent the insult" Jein Kalijigyu said, pointing to the Invisible Hand. "Let make sure they will know who they are messing with." That meant the capture of the alien Ship.

The Ships soon fired Ion Cannons and Turbolasers against The Invisible hand in our to disable it and take it for The Hyperborian Khanate.

In the area where the Hyperborian ships had decided to open fire upon the retreating ship, someone else was making their first appearance in the Universe. They had not visited it before, not in all their long history. They were not a part of this system, preferring to look inwards upon their own cultures and their own races. Now though, the time had come for the people of the Domas Realm to take their first steps in exploring the many Universes that layered their own, all unique yet all similiar. All following the same basic rules yet being different enough to bend these rules to what suited them most to make multiple places that were all delightfully seperate and diverse. The Government of the Starr Empire had often wondered what it must be like in this Universe. Now they were going to get a chance to find out.

The first evidence of their arrival was a small distortion of space. This distortion, looking like a multi-coloured rip had opened in the blackness. However, it was only momentary before a ship (http://emppyrean.deviantart.com/art/starship-heavy-carrier-96599217) began to emerge from that rip. The vessel was lined with weapons and looked impressive with the symbol of the Empire stamped along it's side. The vessel was a Mulutu-Class Ship, designed both to meet with new races diplomatically but also armed to deal with anyone who proved hostile towards the enquiring Species. Their goal was not war, nor conquest, nor anniliation, but simply one of knowledge. They were here to find out all they could on this Universe so they could better understand it's peoples.

For the moment though, it seemed like they had found a battle. The Captain of the vessel, a tall and powerfully built Anthro-Canine, looked at his scanners in confusion. He did not know why this attack had happened, nor did he know who was involved. Regardless, it looked like his ship had been thrown in at the deep end and immediately, the form of the vessel rippled and vanished into nothingness, hiding behind a cloak to observe the actions more easily.

"New contacts on the scopes, captain. Just appeared between us and the edge of the system."
The captain gritted his teeth. What now? "Any idea who they are, officer?"
"No, sir. They aren't the same as the others, though. They seem to be coming towards us, though, and... shit, they're opening fire! Energy weapons fire inbound!" The young officer's face had turned ashen, knowing full well that the Invisible Hand could now be caught in a crossfire between their previous pursuers and this group of newcomers. Although at this range even laser weapons would not be particularly accurate, unless the Saerlandians moved quickly they could easily be trapped in between two groups of hostiles with nowhere to run to. The captain knew this too, and although he attempted to hide the desperation in his voice, he was not entirely successful.

"Helm, evasive action. Take us seventy-five degrees to port. We're going around them. Flight Control, we need ECW drone jamming on the newcomers. Munitions, send a missile salvo their way."

The Invisible Hand twisted out of the way of the incoming fire, thrusters flaring, then turned sharply to the left. It fired as it turned, thirty missiles falling from the racks into the cold of space before racing towards the enemy in a rippling wave. Although not as fast as laser fire, their guidance systems ensured that the Hyperborians could not simply sidestep, as they would have been able to had the Saerlandians fired their railguns. The drones, meanwhile, shifted their alignment around the cruiser in order that the ECW drones could also target the Hyperborian ships. The Hyperborian weapons fire, having been detected while inbound, was allowed to pass harmlessly by the Invisible Hand.

"New contacts on the scopes, captain. Just appeared between us and the edge of the system."
The captain gritted his teeth. What now? "Any idea who they are, officer?"
"No, sir. They aren't the same as the others, though. They seem to be coming towards us, though, and... shit, they're opening fire! Energy weapons fire inbound!" The young officer's face had turned ashen, knowing full well that the Invisible Hand could now be caught in a crossfire between their previous pursuers and this group of newcomers. Although at this range even laser weapons would not be particularly accurate, unless the Saerlandians moved quickly they could easily be trapped in between two groups of hostiles with nowhere to run to. The captain knew this too, and although he attempted to hide the desperation in his voice, he was not entirely successful.

"Helm, evasive action. Take us seventy-five degrees to port. We're going around them. Flight Control, we need ECW drone jamming on the newcomers. Munitions, send a missile salvo their way."

The Invisible Hand twisted out of the way of the incoming fire, thrusters flaring, then turned sharply to the left. It fired as it turned, thirty missiles falling from the racks into the cold of space before racing towards the enemy in a rippling wave. Although not as fast as laser fire, their guidance systems ensured that the Hyperborians could not simply sidestep, as they would have been able to had the Saerlandians fired their railguns. The drones, meanwhile, shifted their alignment around the cruiser in order that the ECW drones could also target the Hyperborian ships. The Hyperborian weapons fire, having been detected while inbound, was allowed to pass harmlessly by the Invisible Hand.

The Saerlandians may have never seen The Hyperborians before, or even know what they were faceing. One thing was that Hyperborians used Layer Shields. Corvettes had three layered shields while Larger Ships, like The Rin-Shi Class Star cruisers had a total of Seven layers of shields. enough to block the enemy missiles.

Also, the Drones were soon to get in trouble as they soon were in range of The Hyperborians own Projectile weapons.

chroniton torpedoes, a deadly projectile weapon based on temporal science. These Torpedoes could pass unhindered through the shields of enemy ships due to their existing in a state of temporal flux. These could be good against enemy capital Ships or even fighters.

The Ships also fired Missiles and Lasers against the enemy Drones. From The Rin-Shi, Fighters flew out to meet the enemy drones. The Fighters wre deadly Droid Tri-Fighters.

Unknown to the Saerlandians, along with the torpedoes, a small object, small enough to be undetectable to enemy sensors, headed for the alien ship.

ooc: Steppe Empire, were you only firing at the drones? From you post I couldn't tell if you were also firing at the Invisible Hand, so I assumed not. I can amend this post if I'm wrong.

IC:The munitions officer turned to face the captain with a strange, beaten look on his face. It was not a look that the captain had seen before from him: normally collected to the point of appearing emotionless, he now looked utterly beaten.

"Our missiles just splashed on their shields, sir. Didn't even make a dent."

With those words, the situation went from merely tense to almost hopeless. The drones had been hit hard by the Hyperborian volley, although they had evaded as best they could, and were now engaging in swirling, skirmishing combat with the Tri-Fighters, a battle that they were steadily losing. Heavily outnumbered, the drones continued to fight without any of the morale loss that human pilots would have suffered, but this apparent show of bravery would not be enough to overcome superior forces. And now they had found out that their weapons were ineffective. The missiles were their only truly long-range weapon, railgun shells lacking either the sheer speed or the guidance to be effective outside close combat.

"Helm, how long before we can jump?" asked the captain, recognising that their only hope lay in a swift exit.
"Ninety seconds, sir."
"Is there any way that you can speed that up?" asked the captain, knowing already that there wasn't. An early jump, before the phlebotinum drives had been sufficiently prepared, could vaporise the Invisible Hand and everything on board.
"No, sir. I'm cutting it fine as it is."

Ninety seconds. Possibly long enough for either the Hyperborians or the Sertians to destroy the Invisible Hand, but there was still little option other than to flee. The Saerlandians were heavily outnumbered, their weapons had proved ineffective, their drones were being shot to pieces, and their stealth systems and jamming had apparently not been enough to hide them. The ship continued to race towards the edge of the system, making its flight path as unpredictable as possible to avoid laser fire.

The frigate quickly found itself caught between the Saelandia’s fire, as well as the wide arc fire of the Hyperborian’s trying to hit at the same vessel it was following. Still, the (relatively) small frigate did a good job of avoiding fire - the combination of it’s twin ion engines and the magnetic generator that pushed or pulled against the gas giant’s magnetic field make it quite agile. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t equipped with the kinds of ECM devices you’d see in most Sertian ships.

It quite literally went (almost) blind as it ran into the field of probes and droids. Although the program that ran the Sertian point defense turrets was quite resourceful, after going blind for about 5.32 seconds it quickly isolated a few spectrums of light that wasn’t blinded by the ECW devices. It limited their range of vision, roughly about three-fourths of what they were used to. Still, it was large enough that their turrets were capable of pecking off any of the droids that tried to get close to the large frigate.

Still, that didn’t stop a Hyperborian plasma round from slamming right into it. Fortunately the Emprium-II armor that made up the frigate’s hull was quite strong against thermo-kinetic attacks, case in point rail guns and plasma canons. Still, it didn’t prevent the charged particles to interfere with the frigate’s engines, causing them to go offline for the moment. Still, it’s magnetic field generator and point defense turrets kept it safe, for the moment.


Back on the SIV Ukario

“Commander, the mysterious vessel is retreating… However, an unknown fleet has appeared and open fire on the intruder. Sensors can’t match the configuration of the new vessels bu- wait, got a data packet from… The SCF?” the communications officer looked confused as he read through the information as fast as he could. “Sir, the new fleet is apparently called the Hyperborian’s, they’re a race from the Milky Way… The SCF has been observing them but hasn’t made contact… Just what is the SCF?”

“The Sertian Colonial Forces, it’s a small detachment sent to the Milky Way in the preparation for a later invasion… Interesting though, they seem to have done something right. Is our frigate alright?” the Commander asked back.

“Their engines are disabled due to a plasma round, minimal damage to their hull - got a few rail rounds embedded into their hull but nothing dangerous. Your orders sir?”

“Continue on our intercept course… However, keep the fleet dispersed enough to allow the mysterious vessel to flee though, prepare a data packet to be transferred to them however. Till then, let’s go greet this new fleet…”


Back to the battle over the gas giant

The Sertian fleet accelerated, bringing itself to confront the Hyperborian fleet, staying just out of what they figured to be the effective range of their weapons - which of course was well outside of their own but if it came to a battle they could always jump via Drift to the range where their weapons were devastatingly effective. And in a battle, they might not have as advanced (or any, really) shields, but their hull was stronger, and they had superior firepower. Not to mention that if need be, several squadrons could be rerouted to join in the fight within a span of hours.

Meanwhile, as their formation left an escape route for the Saerlandia vessel, it also sent a brief information burst to them. It was a rather simple transmission, telling them that another incursion into Imperial space would not be treated as… lightly (indeed, they had never open fire on their vessel until it started attacking them), but if they wanted to bring up any issues that concerned their presence within the system, it left a coordinate for a space station on the edge of the galaxy that was capable of handling their queries and to inform the Imperial Caste.

"Sir! The first fleet, they've broken their formation! They're letting us go!"

The captain's face changed rapidly, first to shock, then relief, then apprehension. The apparent break in the formation could be a trap, designed to lure in the Invisible Hand before slamming shut around it. Still, with the drone squadrons all but obliterated, and little hope of escaping along their current trajectory, he wasn't prepared to turn down the opportunity.

"Helm! Bring us around, we'll go through them. Maintain evasive manoeuvres, though. We don't want to catch a stray shot. Flight Control, have the remaining drones follow behind: maybe we can use them to block shots."

The Invisible Hand spun around, thrusters battling against the ship's momentum before pushing it back the way it had come, towards the gas giant. It passed the swirling planet with its cloud of debris, using the gravitational field to sling itself towards the Sertian fleet at full speed. The helmsman then switched off the main thrusters, relying solely on manoeuvring thrusters for course correction and evasion: the magnetic bow wave and wake of the cruiser could potentially damage external electronics, a fact unlikely to endear the Saerlandians to the Sertians even if this apparent stay of execution had been made in good faith. Apparently it was: the Invisible Hand shot through the gap without incident, and once at what was judged to be a safe distance, the helmsman engaged the phlebotinum engine. The cruiser blinked out of real space.

Immediately a cheer went up on the deck. The crew leapt from their seats, whooping and shouting in sheer elation at surviving what had appeared to be the end for all of them. A spontaneous chorus of the Saerlandian national anthem broke out among them, the captain standing up in his command chair in order to conduct, his face a picture of mock solemnity.

Saerlandia, Saerlandia, we pledge our loyalty...

As the final line faded away, the captain noticed that the Sertians had sent a databurst to the ship. He opened it, read it through, and committed it to memory. High Command, the government even, would be very interested in this.

Just as the Chroniton torpedoes came within striking distance of the Saerlandian Ship, the Starrean Ship emerged from it's cloak, shields raised and ready for battle. The Ship had been watching the battle unfold for the past few moments and had ascertained that the outnumbered ship was trying to flee while this other Fleet was trying to capture them. The anthropomorphic Wolf who controlled the ship had been forced into a difficult decision, either he could sit by and watch as this ship was disabled and captured, for that was what he had guessed was going on, or he could betray his mandate and come to their assistance. He had chosen his action now and he would deal with the consequences at a later date.

They had been taken readings during the entire battle and some interesting facts had come up on the attackers and the defenders in this combat. The Captain had been hesitant right up until the moment when a third ship, a smaller version had jumped into the storm of fire and had been crippled. Such an act of bravery could not be ignored, not by anyone who had a sense of honour and duty. The blue Wolf had both. So he decided to do what a Captain had to do.

His vessel tore from under it's cloak and moved in front of the smaller Saerlandian ship. The chroniton weapons phased in and out of space time as normal, however, when they phased through the shields of the Starrean ship, they hit a barrier known as a Temporal stabiliser. This layer of shielding forced the missile back into regular space-time. It was then easily destroyed by the warship's point defences. The plasma weapons were also easily defeated by the advanced segmented shielding of their own warship. For the moment, they did not fire upon the Hyperborian vessels, choosing to remain defensive. However, They were more than ready for battle if it came to that.

They remained by the side of the ship they had come to the rescue of, acting like a big brother, protecting it against any and all vessels who dared to hit her, for the moment. She did not send a message, for she could not speak the language of this Universe yet and now was not the time to try.

The Hyperborians were letting the alien ship retreat, knowing that it would soon lead the Hyperborians to the enemy homeworld. The small object they had sent was in fact a small Techno-Organic tracker, it as now on the ship good and tight.

But when More ships came, Jein Kalijigyu decided to better to retreat and fight another day. She soon ordered a Retreat back to The Khanate, with a report that The LMC was not good for colonizing.

The Hyperborian Scouting fleet was in retreat.