Thyrium Wars [FT/IC/OPEN see OOC] [Archive]

Balrogga

05-04-2009, 06:03

Tyrian System:

The Despayre faded into existence as it entered Real Space somewhere near the orbit of the fourth planet. T-Space was left far behind as the small 120 meter destroyer (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/interceptor.jpg)crossed the dimensional barriers back into reality.

The entire system had been carefully examined long before The Despayre was sent in preparation for moving the rest of the fleet. The double red stars were old and loaded for harvesting along with a burnt out neutron star, the reason the Ta’Nar were attracted to the system in the first place. They have had replicators for millennia but some things you just cannot create because the mass is too much. The only other option for gaining those certain elements is harvesting the natural sources.

Captain Morr’Son monitored the sensors himself, merging his mind with the Kython vessel as his Ta’Nar and Childer crew followed standard procedures involving the now familiar move of The Fist into a new system.

Sir, all systems report clear.

Long range FTL sensors reports a clear area of at least fifteen light years.

There is 0.03% instability detected in the neutron star’s orbit but it will not amount to anything significant this century.

The fourth planet registers an insignificant energy reaction, probably chemical in nature. Nothing dangerous.

The voices ran through the mind of Morr’Son as he observed his crew operate with a feeling of pride. They have been together a long time and they worked as if they were a single entity, which was a good way of describing the way the Ta’Nar actually were. Their communal minds allowed them to act individually but they were always connected together. It has been that way as far as memory can reach and they could remember a long time indeed.

Captain, I am detecting a power surge consistent with Colonial FT drives off the starboard.

What is a colonial ship doing way out here?

Avenio

05-04-2009, 06:10

Here's a factbook on the faction I'm playing as, the Theline.

The Theline Dominion

Species Biology

The Theline are a species of aquatic mammal, most similar to Earth rorqual baleen whales. Adults range in length from 12–16 metres (40–50 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms. The Theline communicate using a complex language similar to humpback whale song. Conversations in Thelinan can take almost half an hour to conduct, as complex ideas are difficult to transpose over the long distances of the open ocean, combined with the difficulty of the frequencies used (20 Hz to 10 kHz). The Theline also have a strong electromagnetic guidance organ, used mainly for their yearly migrations to and from their birthing grounds. This organ also allows the Theline to control specially constructed servitor robots and computer systems. For the last 20 years, Theline young have been surgically implanted with FTL communication nanotechnology, allowing them to project and control servitors over great distances.

Species History - A Mark IV Autonomous servitor in a maintenance passage - http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/ThelineServitor.jpg

The Theline species has been sapient for close to 10 000 years, but inter-pod cooperation has only been widespread for 600. 4000 years ago, a primitive reptilian species called M'Aiq ascended into sapience on the small, dry continent in the southern temperate zone. Within 1000 years, the M'Aiq had built cities across the continent, successfully utilising radio communications, the internal combustion engine and nuclear power to create a desert-based polytheistic culture. the M'Aiq soon splintered into warring factions, fighting over the limited supply of fresh water on the continent. Rivalries were rife amongst the M'Aiq factions as fresh water was extremely valuable on dry land, and skirmishes were frequently fought over water sources. One of the more advanced factions, The P'Lor, constructed a series of robotic servants to conduct heavy labor and to work in extreme environmental conditions. A Theline matriarch named Arethusa upon swimming near a fishing vessel discovered that if she concentrated heavily on a servitor using her magnetic guidance organ, she could control its actions for a time, until the M'Aiq user changed control patterns. She tried to communicate with the users of a prototype speech-capable servitor, warning them about their self destructive ways, but to M'Aiq ears, it simply sounded like computer-generated whale song. The servitor prototype was shut down for reprogramming and stored in a warehouse. Shortly after the first line of servitors were built for general use, nuclear war broke out amongst the M'Aiq, and most of their cities and populace were killed and the remainder reverted to a primitive tribal state. For almost 50 years the continent was silent, until Arethusa tried to control another servitor. She discovered that the warehouse and factory that constructed the servitors was largely intact and set the servitor, designation A-001, to begin constructing more servitors and bringing existing ones online. She taught the members of her pod to use the servitors as well, and brought a limited amount of the surviving factories and power plants to operational status, enough to maintain a sizeable population of the machines. This event brought about the beginning of the Technological Age for the Theline, allowing them to build more and more advanced servitor machines and industry, culiminating in the construction of a floating city near the equator for the servitors to occupy, and the achievement of FTL than light travel for their spacecraft.

Theline Ship Design - An example of a Theline space vessel - http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/ThelineBattleship.jpg

Modern Theline ships are grown out of a genetically modified coral woven with a carbon nanotube based outer hull. Theline ships, due to the size of their occupants and the conditions needed to sustain them, are very large and few , often almost 4 kilometers cubed, and are built around a central oceanic habitat. Many Theline ships only have one or two "crewmembers", but most functions on the ships are carried out by specialised varieties of servitors. Theline Dreadnoughts and other warships carry three flights of unmanned fighter drones (controlled centrally by the Theline crewmember) which are armed with two 10mm railguns and a missile rack that is commonly equipped with either two fusion missiles or a single phasic warhead. The Dreadnoughts themselves are armed with 64 24mm coilgun positions, 24 missile launch tubes and ventral and dorsal ultraviolet arrays, used for sweeping the surrounding airspace of fightercraft, and in a close-quarters battles, broadsiding enemy capital ships. Theline ships propel themselves using an electron-sized black hole known as a drive kernel. The black hole rotates fast enough on its axis that its event horizon is permeable, allowing quantum tunnelling to occur, which then propels the ship at faster-than-light speeds. At sublight velocities, the ship simply dumps mass into the event horizon and the gravitic shift creates a "downhill" effect, allowing the ship to "fall" at sublight speeds. Diagram - http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/GravityDifferential.png

Dominion Holdings

Venii System

Central Luminary -
Hipparcos - F-Class

Terrestrial Planets -

Ceto

Aphelion - 0.466 697 AU
Mean Temperature - 340 K
Mass - 0.055 Earths
Moons - N/A
Atmosphere - N/A
Composition - 42% Molecular oxygen
29.0% sodium
22.0% hydrogen
6.0% helium
0.5% potassium

Phorcys

Aphelion - 1.0167103335 AU
Mean Temperature - 287 K
Mass - 0.951 Earths
Moons - Selene - 0.0123 Earths
Endymion - 0.002 1 Earths
Water Coverage - 86.24%
Atmosphere - 78.08% Nitrogen (N2)
20.95% Oxygen (O2)
0.93% Argon
0.038% Carbon dioxide
Composition - Nitrogen 78.08%
Oxygen - 20.95%
Argon - 0.93%
Carbon dioxide - 0.038%
Composition - silica 59.71%
Alumina - 15.41%
Aime - 4.90%
Magnesia - 4.36%
Sodium oxide - 3.55%
Iron(II) oxide - 3.52%
Potassium oxide - 2.80%
Iron(III) oxide - 2.63%
Water - 1.52%
Titanium dioxide - 0.60%
Phosphorus pentoxide - 0.22%

Jovian Planets

Lycorias

Aphelion - 10.115 958 04 AU
Mean Temperature - 134 K
Mass - 128.152 Earths
Moons -
Atmosphere - 96% Hydrogen
3% Helium
0.4% Methane
0.01% Ammonia
0.01% Hydrogen deuteride
0.000 7% Ethane

I'm hoping to have an in character post shortly

Orinon

05-04-2009, 06:31

Tyrian System:

The Despayre faded into existence as it entered Real Space somewhere near the orbit of the fourth planet. T-Space was left far behind as the small 120 meter destroyer crossed the dimensional barriers back into reality.

The entire system had been carefully examined long before The Despayre was sent in preparation for moving the rest of the fleet. The double red stars were old and loaded for harvesting along with a burnt out neutron star, the reason the Ta’Nar were attracted to the system in the first place. They have had replicators for millennia but some things you just cannot create because the mass is too much. The only other option for gaining those certain elements is harvesting the natural sources.

Captain Morr’Son monitored the sensors himself, merging his mind with the Kython vessel as his Ta’Nar and Childer crew followed standard procedures involving the now familiar move of The Fist into a new system.

Sir, all systems report clear.

Long range FTL sensors reports a clear area of at least fifteen light years.

There is 0.03% instability detected in the neutron star’s orbit but it will not amount to anything significant this century.

The fourth planet registers an insignificant energy reaction, probably chemical in nature. Nothing dangerous.

The voices ran through the mind of Morr’Son as he observed his crew operate with a feeling of pride. They have been together a long time and they worked as if they were a single entity, which was a good way of describing the way the Ta’Nar actually were. Their communal minds allowed them to act individually but they were always connected together. It has been that way as far as memory can reach and they could remember a long time indeed.

Captain, I am detecting a power surge consistent with Colonial FT drives off the starboard.

What is a colonial ship doing way out here?

The Unforgiven jumped into the system, its 2km length lit up with winking lights. Inside the CIC, the sensors went berserk.
"SIR! Massive contact!" shouted a sensor techy.
"Holy mother of Auron, what is that?"said Major Krace, staring at the sensor screen above them.
"Don't know, might just be a asteroid,"said Admiral Marin, tapping a computer screen with his finger.

Balrogga

05-04-2009, 07:16

Orinon

05-04-2009, 07:22

Aboard The Despayre, the crew went to work seamlessly and efficiently with the appearance of the mysterious vessel.

Sir, Battlestar appeared but the transponders are unknown.

Sir, the ship is huge by Colonial standards, about 2000 meters.

Sir, the ship appears to be damaged, sensors detect severe hull scarring.

Contact The Fist. Let them know we have an Unknown here.

Sir, the fleet is already on the move. They will wormhole in about ten minutes from now.

I see, we will just have to hold on until then. Have they tried to make contact?

No Sir, we have nothing to go on until they do.

Maintain a state of readiness. We don’t know what to expect. Don’t go weapons hot yet.

"Meh, an asteroid's a asteroid. Send a couple of Falconites to blow it up,"said Admiral Marin, before shouting:"FULL SYSTEM SCAN!! I wanna get this done and move on to the next system!"

As the Unforgiven scanned the system, 2 small specks flew from the portside flightpod. These specks were Falconite fighters and they flew towards the 'asteroid' at a high rate of speed.

OOC:Falconites= Vipers from the show. i just renamed them :P

Balrogga

05-04-2009, 08:23

Orinon

05-04-2009, 20:31

Sir, we have launch. Two fighters that resemble Vipers have left the ship. The bogeys are heading our way. Sensors show they are weapon hot.

Let them come. Colonial Vipers don’t have anything that can get through our defenses. Maintain ready status.

Once the mysterious ship gets their sensors online they will detect the Ta’Nar vessel containing the mass of a small star and the power reading to match.

"what the frak....Sir, check this out,"said Major Krace, standing at a sensor station.
"what? what the...Is this thing working? Cause if it is, theres a ship out there with the mass of a frakking star!"said Adimral Marin, running over to a coms station.
"Falconites, Unforgiven actual. Turn back and get back to the ship! NOW!"
Slamming the coms unit down, he then said:"Amber alert. Don't go weapons hot. For all we know, they have a big laser of doom."

In space, the Falconites listened to the orders, then span end over end and headed back to the Unforgiven.

Sertian

05-04-2009, 20:57

Low-Commander Kazia dispised the loose command structure of the Milky Way Division. Sure, she understood why. With only a scout fleet it would be suicide to go about things the traditional way, keeping ships bound togeather in strong squadrons, announcing to every technologically advanced species with a stick up it's arse that they were here. She wasn't stupid, she had taken her academy lessons in tactics, got a good mark as well - but she still didn't like it. She didn't know what it was or what caused it, but for some reason she just didn't like the loose structure. Her wild imagination sometimes got away from her on this, with thoughts ranging from the fact she enjoyed being apart of a squadron because of the larger ships nearby to reassure her, or perhaps it was because she didn't trust herself to take the initiative. Perhaps she was to reliant on having a higher officer only a few hundred kilometers away to step in if she screwed up?

Well, regardless of the reason, she didn't like it but she had her orders. Fresh ones at those, still hot from the liason that manged the vessels scouting around in this sector of space. Apparantly two species were having a first contact situation, although they couldn't tell more than that from long range sensors, but someone's gut had a good feeling that things might go south. If they did, it might be important that a Sertian vessel be there to catalog the situation. Who knows, the information could be to their... advantage, in a war to come.

But alas, her small ship, a barely one-hundred meter long frigate - Scrupulous-Class Aerospace type mind you, one of the newer ships, fast and with a nice mix of firepower and armor - was still about five minutes out from the system. Once they arrived they wouldn't do something as stupid as jump into Real Space, an act that would not only give away herself but the presence of the entire fleet division in the galaxy! Instead she would let the ship loft in Drift Space, letting the somewhat meager sensor arrays picking up any gravity waves that leaked over to their dimension. The sensor resolution would suffer, but it was the best her small ship could do without being detected.

[OOC: FEAR THE WAVE MOTION GUN!]

Balrogga

05-04-2009, 23:35

Orinon

06-04-2009, 05:05

Sir, I am picking up their Comms. Attempting to decipher their language.

Good, run it through Overmind if Shipmind has trouble.

Yes Sir.

A few moments later the sensor tech addressed the Captain again.

Sir, the two vipers are changing heading, they performed an about-face and are currently returning to their ship. No further movement from the Battlestar.

They must have gotten their sensors active and detected the singularities in our cores. Monitor their emissions and feed everything through Shipmind. Try to get a functional model of their language.

Yes Sir.

Keep an eye out on long range sensors. They might try to call in reinforcements.

"Sir, Thyrium detected on the 4th planet,"said Major Krace, smiling a little.
"Good. Get us in a geosynced orbit around the planet,"said Admiral Marin."Maybe we can be home by Christmas."

The Unforgiven's 6 sublight engines glowed a bright blue as the Battlestar pulled a somewhat impressive turn of speed for a ship its size and started to head towards the 4th planet in the system.

Balrogga

07-04-2009, 08:24

Orinon

07-04-2009, 08:31

Aboard The Despayre, Captain Morr’Son watched the movements of the strange Battlestar. As the ship moved toward the planet it dawned on him they might try to jump the Ta’Nar claim.

Tactical, launch a buoy to stake our claim on the system.

Yes Sir. What did you want it to say?

Just the standard in all known languages claiming the system for the Ta’Nar.

Buoy programmed and launched.

Good, we have satisfied interstellar protocols and legally claimed the system. If anyone else happens along we can claim defense if fighting breaks out.

Morr’Son watched the Battlestar a few more seconds.

Move us closer. Keep us parallel with them. I want to know what they want with that worthless planet.

The Despayre moved closer to the alien Battlestar while the buoy remained where it was left, sending out the signal most space faring races would know and recognize and a territory claim.

"Sir, they launched something,"said the sensor techy.
"Whatever, I'm more focused on the fact that they are shadowing us,"said Admiral Marin, deep in thought.
"Sir, the thing they launched was a buoy. Its transmitting something, can't understand it though,"said Major Krace.
"Hmmmm...Frak it. Go weapons hot,"said the Admiral."We are staying here. Thyrium here means we can go home sooner then expected."
"Yes sir,"said Krace, before picking up the ship intercom and saying:"All personnel, action stations. Weapons hot, i repeat, weapons hot."

Along the Unforgiven's hull, a stirring was occurring. the source: Veken anti-ship cannons and M.A.H.C batteries coming online and shifting into firing position.

The Fedral Union

07-04-2009, 12:36

The darkness of space shimmered a form started to take form a seemingly fluid like shimmered becoming less and less wavy and more solid, this form was a ship, a sacer like primary hull and four nacelles on a secondary hull took form, the ship was only four hundred and sixty nine meters long, with a spherical pod over its primary secondary hull connector . Its form loomed over what appeared to be a hot situation.

Captain Clay Zackary Ramirez sat in the center of the bridge, his brown eyes peering out of the holo monitor, a smile came across his brown smooth face, his hair was short and black, he shifted gently in his chair speaking out to his executive officer.

“Now that we have de cloaked, it time to see who we’re dealing with, set the sensors to full scan I want shields and sub space fields raised, just incase they decide to target us. Open a hailing frequency”

The Female commander simply nodded she started to tap a holographic panel with her smooth hands her blue eyes peering at the various commands she was imputing. A blip was heard the other orders the ships avatar abided by .

Ramirez spoke in a slightly Spanish accent

“This is the Terran Federation Star ship USS Nebula, do not be alarmed as we are only here to chart this system with our sensors”

The channel was cut what he had said was partly true, though the other part was a lie, the ship it self had an extremely powerful sensor pod mounted that could scan for many light years or focus its sensor power to cut through most forms of dampening and other technobabble.

The ships name was the USS Nebula, A nebula class Federation Star ship. Its class was designed to be a modular tactical cruiser, in this case the Nebula was an exploration and scout ship with its spherical pod. The ship floated over the scene of what seemed to be a hot situation Under phase cloak it had been monitoring the open communications of ships ongoing. While the nebula in this system was mainly equipped with pods for exploration and sensor readings it wasn’t un armed, boasting an impressive array of 18 Type X Phaser banks , 32 Multi rapid fire torpedo tubes, and 12 Iso-Kinetic canons.

Ramirez was a tough captain, recently given command of the ship transferred from his old frigate the USS Delgato. He would not take any ship firing with him but would not start any thing either, the ship floated in front of the battle stars bow several million KM away, the sensor system was scanning every ship in the system with masses of power and focusing abilities.

Red Talons

07-04-2009, 12:59

Orbat

1- Victory class strike carrier
2- Mining freighters
1- MK2 Superfreighter
1- Medical ship

Five ships dropped out of warp high above the system. The ships erupted out of deep purple/black holes in space. The ships were in loose formation, standing on the bridge of the lead ship, its captain, a young black haired Ctarl Ctarl sits in his command chair. "Scan for the asteroid belts detailed from the last pass, make sure this is the place. is it." He yawned a bit. "time for ano-" He was cut off as the tactical officer screamed across the bridge. "Multiple unknown contacts, including a Base-star..." The captain stood, "Have non-com ships position behind us, Have they picked us up yet?"

The tactical officer paused a moment, the system map going onto the main holo display "Contact appears to be holding station over one of the planets sir... Unknown as to wheather or not they've detected us... We're also picking up at Federation vessel decloaking." The captain nodded "General quarters, have all strike crews to their stations, all ships, engage stealth systems. hold fighter launch for my command."

The lighting on the bridge shifted to a soft red, hundreds of various crew scurrying to their stations as fighter crews scrambled to their ships.

Orinon

07-04-2009, 20:49

"Oh for fraks sake,"said Admiral Marin, shaking his head as several other vessels appeared in the system.
"Sir, orbit around the planet has been established,"said Major Krace.

The Unforgiven was now drifting around the planet at a slow speed, keep its engines pointed towards the planet.

OOC: Red Talons: Right series, wrong ship :P

Balrogga

07-04-2009, 21:52

Sir, I am detecting gunports opening in the unidentified vessel. Sensors show electromagnetic surges, probably maglev guns powering up.

Captain Morr’Son examined the power readings and tried to gage the power behind the weapons. He knew almost anything they shot at him would be negated mostly by their Dimensional shields and armor. The regenerative properties of the ship should cover anything that bleeds over if enough energy was dumped into the systems, which the singularity coils would provide easy enough. Even though the Battlestar was over twelve times larger than The Despayre, she was built to take on much larger prey.

Comms, condition of reinforcements?

The Dead Zone should be arriving in three minutes via wormhole. HQ sent her ahead to help clear the area before the main fleet arrives.

Send them a warning to hold fire. Use standard protocols. They should be picking up the Territorial Claim from the marker buoy. Move us closer to facilitate communications.

Yes sir, complying.

Attention unknown vessel

I am Captain Morr'Son of the Ta'Nar destroyer, The Despayre. You have been acting agressively toward my ship ever since you arrived in our territory. This is not a smart way to conduct a first contact situation.

Any act of aggression against this ship or any other ship of the Fallen Empire will result in immediate reaction. Do not make the mistake so many others have in the past. Power down weapons and move your ship to the following location so we can talk like Honorable civilized beings. We have reinforcements arriving within three minutes.

(data stream)

Sir, message sent. Sensors pick up other vessels entering system. Scanning for identity.

Sertian

08-04-2009, 01:04

“We’ve got… Six new masses entering the area. Five of them seem to be together, they jumped in as one and they seem to be holding a loose formation. No information as of yet… Sensor resolution is to poor to know if they’re arming or if they’ve even fired… Can’t detect any communications.” The tactical officer spoke, the sensor resolution was to poor for even an estimation to be compiled - therefore no holographic images of the local space.

“Interesting…” The Low Commander spoke, while giving a silent curse at how limiting Non-OMSAs were in their sub dimension. It was possible to read the currents of the Drift, understand how the incandescent particles flowed upon interaction with gravity leaking over from Real Space. It gave them enough to know where not to jump in to keep their ships safe, but it was pretty useless for a situation such as this. “Bring us around the other planet, I assume we have a Mark IV Probe onboard?”

“Err… Yes Sir, as per Grand Admiral Trilano’s orders, all frigates assigned to exploration duty are required to hold one M-IV Probe in their silos. Orders?”

“Drop us out on the side of the planet where we can’t be seen, then launch the probe in low orbit around the planet, slow enough that it doesn’t seem like it was just dropped there. Prepare a text message response into its communications.”

“Yes Sir, moving to the other side of the planet.”

It took a fine hand, or at least a sophisticated computer, to make precise movements to the Drift. But, they got close enough so that when they arose from the sub dimension there was a good chance that they would remain undetected (assuming, of course, no one suddenly had sensors that could scan through several kilometers of planet rock, and yet detect the relatively small 100 meter long frigate). The ship’s ion engines then flared to life, small thrusts from the powerful engines to lower them closer to the atmosphere, close enough that it’s EM-field generators could unfold, catching the planet’s field so they could literally hover where they where. A few seconds later a small pinprick of light, a tactical probe a mere 3 meters long shot forward, breaking against the atmosphere until it slowed enough to hold a stable orbit, allowing it to move around the edge of the planet to gather the information the S.I.V. Ignorance could not.

Once they started to receive the first encrypted information from the probe, the shipped disappeared back into it’s sub dimension to try and remain undetected. However, there was a message left to anyone who tried to use active scans on the small machine, or hail it for that matter.

>Greetings unknown vessels, from the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation. We do not wish to infringe on national borders, but to our knowledge this planet is uninhabited and unclaimed. We have no current plans for this planet, so you are free to do as you wish - this probe is merely to gather telemetry data for the planet’s surface features as well as the nearby neutron star. To continue this task, we ask that you do not destroy this probe. If our wishes are problematic with our wishes, please petition your local Serigate Plasma Trade Federation station.

>We apologize for composing this information in, what your races may refer to as, Basic or English, but the probe’s data banks are far to small to hold the hundreds of languages around the galaxy, so we were forced to use the most common.

Avenio

08-04-2009, 01:51

The Theline Dominion had detected the meeting of the fleets from several light years away, and had dispatched a Dreadnought and two autonomous support frigates to investigate.

The massive bulk of the Dreadnought Leaf's Choir quickly decelerated from relativistic speed around the 5th planet in the system, and the two frigates detached themselves from the hull of the 4km battleship. The executive officer in charge of the expedition, Commandant Pasithea, ordered the two frigates to set a course for the 4th planet of the system, while the Leaf's Choir itself would remain in position to continue monitoring the situation.
Opening a channel to the remaining ships, his translating systems translated a message in Basic to be broadcast to all ships; "This is the Dominion ship Leaf's Choir, along with escorts ES-863 and ES-294. We have no interests in this system save the peaceful resolution of conflict. We respectfully ask for the unknown vessel to power down its weapons and allow our escorts to scan your vessel to catalogue its nationality. We thank you for your time."

(OOC: As a side note, the Dreadnoughts are not very powerful, just very large, in order to contain the oceanic habitat necessary to sustain my cetacean (whale) species, and are few and far between.)

Orinon

08-04-2009, 04:52

"GIMME THAT!" shouted Admiral Marin, flicking the coms unit to boardwave and shouting:
"Oh piss off! Leave us the frak alone! We are here to find us some Thyrium and then go home! We refuse to power down weapons. Hell, we might just power up MORE! So FRAK OFF!!!"

OOC: This is just what i thought a angry, underpaid commander would say if he was given the chance to be home with his family sooner then expected.

Gaiaton

08-04-2009, 13:09

Red Talons

08-04-2009, 13:46

The bridge of the Carrier was a-buzz with activity as the crew struggled to filter in data. "Incoming message!" Called the comms officer, "Its from the battlestar."

The captain listened to the message, sighing. "Send them a message, video and audio." He paused. "We are the Red Talons Mercenary Republic. I am Commador Wilson of the carrier Independence. We came here to mine this systems gas giant for fuel, as well as strip it of any asteroids." He nodded to transmit the message. "Tell the Terran ship that we do not wish any hostilities, but we will defend ourselves."

"Incoming transmission." The coms officer called out. "From a third party, unknown contact." The message played. The captain nodded. "Respond, This is a mining expidition belonging to the Red Talons Mercenary Republic. we seek only to mine the area of its asteroids and hather fuel from one of the systems gas giants before we move on."

The Fedral Union

08-04-2009, 14:59

Meanwhile, the Holy Empire of Gaiaton had also detected the large number of ships, and like the Theline Dominion sent out a force. Gaiaton's fleet also sent a broadcast to all ships, but their message was a lot more forceful:

-----------------TRANSMISSION--------------------

Admiral Marin
Commandant Pasithea
Captain Morr'Son
Grand Admiral Trilano
All other commanders of fleets and ships in this area

We have sensed a large meeting of different fleets,
all with armed ships. We are sending a Victory-
class ship and 30 Destroyer-class ships as a
peacekeeping force. We are now in control of this
area until you power down weapons and peacefully
leave. Any ships engaging in combat will be destroyed.

Signed,
Lord Emperor Xeaphiel
Grand Admiral of the Holy Empire of Gaiaton.

-----------------END TRANSMISSION----------------

Victory-class ships are as large as Theline Dreadnoughts but much more powerful, although very slow to manouver. Destroyer-class ships are smaller, and about half as powerful as the Ta'Nar destroyer.

Ramirez laughed out loud he sank back in to his chair his eyes peering over the sensor readings and the massive brawls about to happen, as the message from the other ship started to play, the holo monitor flickered on, a channel opened and he stiffed as he started to speak.

“You are mistaken as of now, this area is disputed by various powers, oh this is captain Ramirez of the USS Nebula a terran federation ship. We will not leave since we are here for totally different reasons, much of those classified. If you attempt to board or attack this ship, the federation will consider it an act of war, and well you don’t want that. Let it be known to all powers in this area, that we will shoot down any torpedo or fighter craft that comes to close to us. Good day”

And he was dead serious , the Nebula's point defense systems became active , Gatling phaser systems and Phalanx Micro torpedo launchers came online ready to fire at a moments notice.

Gaiaton

08-04-2009, 16:38

On board HBS Victory, the Lord Emperor of Gaiaton looked out over the scene. "Incoming message", announced the comms officer. A transmission started to play:

"This is a mining expidition belonging to the Red Talons Mercenary Republic. we seek only to mine the area of its asteroids and hather fuel from one of the systems gas giants before we move on."

He nodded. "Send them a transmission back: 'This is Lord Emperor Xeaphiel of HBS Victory. We understand that the purpose of your presence here is peacefull and will protect you from any attacks.'"

No sooner had he finished the message, another broadcast was recieved:
You are mistaken as of now, this area is disputed by various powers, oh this is captain Ramirez of the USS Nebula a terran federation ship. We will not leave since we are here for totally different reasons, much of those classified. If you attempt to board or attack this ship, the federation will consider it an act of war, and well you don’t want that. Let it be known to all powers in this area, that we will shoot down any torpedo or fighter craft that comes to close to us. Good day”

Lord Emperor Xeaphiel opened a channel and replied. "Very well. We will not attack you unless you first attack us or the Red Talons' mining expedition, and I ask that you refrain from doing so. And just to let you know, we have a large attack force heading back from a cancelled invasion, and it would only take about five minutes to redirect them here."

Sertian

08-04-2009, 17:44

Information started to trickle in from the probe, and with that a real time hologram of local space was finally possible. The Low Commander smirked as she saw the ships that, before, were just lumps of mass, she smiled again when identification of known vessels came up. The Federation, they where there too? And ah yes, the Red Talons, little buggers they were. It was amazing that a Sertain ship hasn’t been revealed by the Mercenary Republic yet, given how they tended to occupy the same back allies of space around the edge of the galactic rim. But these… Others, they were new. And new was good.

Still, there was a problem… “Why is the mass of this ship so large?” she said pointing at the holographic representation of the Fallen Empire’s ship.

“Perhaps a singularity core?” one of her officers said, which in his mind was just a shot out in the dark.

“Explain?”

“Well… It’s a form of power generation, the Empire explored it for a bit until fusion power got efficient and small enough that it provided more energy per volume. But, it basically relies on micro singularities. Once it’s contained you dump mass into it, any kind of mass, and the accretion disk that forms generate 7% of the matter as usable energy - then if the Black Hole is smaller than the mass of a small planet, you get the rest of the energy back as Hawking Radiation. In theory, it could provide 100% mass to energy conversion.”

“Interesting…” she said before turning back to look at that ship, while her fingers reached up to scratch her chin in thought. “Their singularity core seems to large for that, maybe they have multiple micro singularities?”

“Unknown si- More ships appearing in system… Three more ships, two of them escorts- No wait, make that… We’ve got a small fleet jumping in now. Looks like… One lead ship and thirty escorts. Both of them are unknown factions.”

“Great…” the commander said with a soft mutter, her eyes turning to look at the holographic representations of the new ships. “What do they want?”

The communications officer tapped away at a few keys, information programs that had been downloaded started to identify and translate the various different languages (many of which where acquired from within this galaxy, usually by buying various translators or downloading the computer of derelict ships they came across). “It appears that the thirty-four new ships in this area believe themselves to be peace keeping forces. It also appears that this ship,” she said motioning to the Battlestar, “Is after some substance called Thyrium. By his tone and… aggression… I’d wager it’s some sort of addictive narcotic.”

“Oh that’s great, we have a ship commander who’s jonesing,” she then broke out in a small laugh. “Anything else?”

“Red Talons are up to their usual antics, apparently coming here to mine the asteroid belt for resources. Federation are also their cocky selves, spouting off about attacking them is an act of war. Nothing from anyone else, still monitoring any com-transmissions.”

“Good… Stay in the Drift. This may become a fire fight without our intervention, so make sure to record all information from the probe. This could prove to be valuable tactical information.”

[OOC: Grand Admiral Trilano is nowhere near here, and my frigate is also hiding so as not to be detected, just for you to know. :3]

Orinon

08-04-2009, 20:35

"Grrrr..."growled Admiral Marin, tapping the command table with a finger.
"Sir, what are your orders?"said Major Krace.
"Spin up FTL. We may ned to leave in a hurry...."said Admiral Marin.

OOC: Feel free to have your ships interpret the FTL drive's energy as weapons charging to fire.

Avenio

09-04-2009, 00:54

The Leaf's Choir detected the signature of weapons coming online aboard the Battlestar, and ordered ES-863 and ES-294 to move along side the Battlestar. Leaf's Choir dumped mass into its singularity drive to accelerate toward its kindred frigates.
Commandant Pasithea sent another broad channel communication;
"Attention unknown vessel, we have detected the power signatures of weapons coming online aboard your vessel. Further escalation of hostilities will result in diplomatic sanctions and or military action. We recommend that you stand down, for both our sakes."

Balrogga

09-04-2009, 02:16

As the dimutive destroyer stood before the massive battlestar more than sixteen times it's size, Captain Morr'Son was monitoring the rush of data from the sensors.

Captain, I am detecting more ships entering the system.

Is it our reinforcements?

Negative, they are alien vessels and it appears they are from different nations.

Does it appear it is an alliance maneuver?

Negative, their chatter does not indicate they even know each other. It appears they are posturing with the others to see who is in Control of the system.

Boy, they are daft. Our territorial buoy should be enough proof of who claims this system.

You would think different if you were to hear their claims.

Let’s hear the first one.

Yes Sir.

Moments later he was fed the recording of the Dominion behemoth.

"This is the Dominion ship Leaf's Choir, along with escorts ES-863 and ES-294. We have no interests in this system save the peaceful resolution of conflict. We respectfully ask for the unknown vessel to power down its weapons and allow our escorts to scan your vessel to catalogue its nationality. We thank you for your time."

Power down weapons? Obviously they are talking about the others in the system. We have not readied ours yet.

What should we do Sir?

Make sure targeting resolutions are fully prepared based on scanner readings. If we have to fire, I want them disabled. Keep weapons offline until then.

Sir, the alien vessel made some sort of reply. The translators were unable to make anything out of it so it was unintelligible.

Communication would be so much easier if they would not use some backwater language and something more like Galactic Trade. What else has there been?

Someone calling themselves Lord Emperor from a nation we have never heard of before.

Probably another backwater piddling nation thinking they are big fish in the bucket. Let’s hear their message.

Right away Sir.

Again, moments later Captain Morr’Son found the sensor recordings played back to him while he observed the message. The reading of the Lord Emperor’s ships scrolled by.

-----------------TRANSMISSION--------------------

Admiral Marin
Commandant Pasithea
Captain Morr'Son
Grand Admiral Trilano
All other commanders of fleets and ships in this area

We have sensed a large meeting of different fleets,
all with armed ships. We are sending a Victory-
class ship and 30 Destroyer-class ships as a
peacekeeping force. We are now in control of this
area until you power down weapons and peacefully
leave. Any ships engaging in combat will be destroyed.

Signed,
Lord Emperor Xeaphiel
Grand Admiral of the Holy Empire of Gaiaton.

-----------------END TRANSMISSION----------------

They are in control? Is this a territorial dispute or are they trying to assist us?

I am not sure Sir. There is a brief flash of Comms between them and the Red Talons group. Their ships were blocking the signal so I was unable to get a clear copy of it at this time. Filter work will clear out the interference.

That is not important at this moment.

Sir, the battlestar appears to be spinning their drives. They might be preparing to fire their weapons and jump out. I also have the Leaf’s Choir moving in at top speed broadcasting a message toward the battlestar warning them to not power up weapons.

Open Comms and tell…

Sir, we have additional incoming. The Dead Zone is arriving.

Outside the orbital plane of the fourth planet a wormhole tore space and time asunder and a giant maw appeared. A singular and tiny ship was belched out of the rupture and if there was a medium to transfer the sound through space the rupture would be heard slamming shut with a thunder that would be deafening. It is a good thing a vacuum does not transmit sound indeed.

The small ship was only half the size of the Destroyer already in the system. The frigate (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/Frigatenewdesign.jpg)measured 60 meters from tip to stern. Like its cousin, it too gave out readings of containing the mass of a small star and power readings that topped the scales. Its black hull seemed to absorb light as shadows covered the vessel.

This is Captain T’Neel of The Dead Zone. What do you wish me to do in this clusterfuck?

Welcome, you are just in time. Things seem to be getting crowded and certainly clusterfuck is an accurate description. I am trying to communicate with this behemoth in orbit and everyone seems to keep popping in claiming authority.

Ha Ha Ha. Funny. Our Orders are to secure this area in preparation for the Battle Fortress to arrive. We have over twelve hundred ships ready to transfer here when you give the all-clear. How do you want to go about it?

Cover my back while I try to get it through these thick headed backwater speaking hicks who is the boss here. There is something about their language the translator programs refuses to comprehend. Keep an eye out on the others trying to act as Police. Their tirgger fingers might be getting itchy.

I can’t destroy them all instead?

Not right now, just get targeting resolutions in case. Let them make the first strike. After that we are cleared to make any action we need to take. Keep an eye on the Red Talons, they might be friendlies because there are records of a first contact meeting with them from years ago.

OK, that sounds good. I got your back, do whatever you need and don’t worry about me.

After the brief telepathic conference between the two captains, Morr’Son sighed. It was now time to get to work and tell the intruders who was in control of the system. You would figure they would know with the continuous transmissions from the bouy.

Establish an open channel

Yes Sir.

A powerful pulse was sent out through the comms designed to grab the attention of the other vessels in the syste.

Attention all vessels.

This is Captain Morr'Son of the Ta'Nar destroyer, The Despayre

Before anyone takes it upon themselves to claim control of this system I would like to remind you everyone is trespassing in a system already claimed and controlled by the Ta’Nar. If you check your Comms records you should be able to pick up the standard transmissions following galactic protocols sent out by the marker buoy we had placed before you arrived making a legal claim to this system.

I understand your messages regarding the powering down of weapons were not aimed at me for we do not have any online. I any hostilities break out we will not hesitate to exercise our authority over any within our territories.

Yes, I know you are wondering what two ships of our size can do against your mighty ships. If we did not have the ability to back up our claims, would we even try to bluff?

Please remove your vessels to a safe location before you drive the unknowns in the battlestar to act rashly. They probably think we are all about to gang up on them.

After this situation is settled, we can begin discussions about who wants what and how we can prosper off your needs.

Avenio

09-04-2009, 04:53

Commandant Pasithea, upon recieving the transmission, wired a response to the Ta'Nar vessel;
"Salutations Captain, we have recieved you transmission. As per your request, our Expeditionary Forces will stand down and regroup to the second Lagrange point (on the night side) around the 4th planet. Our request for weapons-hold was to the unknown vessel currently being flanked by our Autonomous Frigates, who was emitting weapons signatures. We thank you for your patience."
Leaf's Choir and her two escorts turned towards their rendezvous locations, leaving the Colonial vessel in orbit.

Gaiaton

09-04-2009, 07:09

The Lord Emperor sent back a transmission to the Ta'Nar:

"This is Lord Emperor Xeaphiel of the Gaiaton HBS Victory; very well, we understand the possibility that our presence here may cause combat instead of prevent it. We will withdraw from the immediate area, but if we detect weapons fire then we will return and intervene."

The Victory and it's 30 accompanying Destroyer-class ships slowly turned and flew away. They weren't out of sensor range, but they were out of weapons range.

Orinon

09-04-2009, 07:12

"Can they even frakking understand us?"asked Major Krace.
"Most likely, no,"said Admiral Marin.
"Ummm...sir, another contact. And one of the bigger ships is coming up along us with 2 smaller ships,"said the sensor techy.
"Oh come on, leave us alone!"said Marin, thumping his hand on the table.
"Sir...If i may...Maybe, we should make the first move?"said Krace.
"Hmmmm....whatever....Frak it. Fire all. Taget the ships closest to us,"said Marin.

The Unforgiven rollwed slightly so its sides were level with the ships alongside it(OOC:Avenio's ships), did nothing for a moment, then started shelling the ships with high explosive rounds and hydrogen charges.

Gaiaton

09-04-2009, 07:23

On board the HBS Victory, the sensors beeped as the Unforgiven started shelling the Leaf Choir and it's two support ships. Lord Emperor Xeaphiel shouted into the comms device:

"Commandant Pasithea, we will come to your aid! The Unforgiven has opened hostilities!"
The message was sent.
"Battle stations everybody! Quickly, get us over there as fast as possible, and get weapons fully charged and ready to fire!"

The Surrogate

09-04-2009, 08:41

A single ship materialized into space just below the grouping of the rest of the fleets. It broadcast no signals, nor did it seem to make any attempt to contact anyone. The 650 meter vessel bore a strong resemblance to a Sertian scout cruiser, its hull covered in what looked like red corrosion. Any scans of the vessel would show it had no shields up, it would register as a single life sign. Bone-like horns protruding from its bow and a few along the spine of the ship near the aft.

The ship seemed to be running silent, no energy signatures would be detected beyond what would possibly be life support, the ship drifting in space.

Gaiaton

09-04-2009, 17:19

"Sir, another ship has materialised!" the sensors officer informed Lord Emperor Xeaphiel.
"Any weapons?"
"No, it seems to be running silent, we can detect no shields and only one life sign."
"Well we can investigate that later. Keep going"
"Within weapons range, sir!"
"Then fire at the Unforgiven!"

Plasma drones and high explosive missiles shot out of the Victory towards the Unforgiven. The other 30 Gaiaton ships encircled the conflict, attempting to stop any others from joining in.

Avenio

10-04-2009, 01:48

ES-863 and ES-294 took the heaviest damage in the initial barrage, with ES-863 taking heavy superstructure damage, as well as losing one of its two engines, and was venting atmosphere from hull fractures. ES-294 was the luckier of the two, taking hull damage and two compartments were vented. Leaf's Choir, because of its massive bulk, took much less damage, with only minor hull fractures on one of the radial arms. Commandant Pasithea quickly brought plasma shielding online and ordered all drone fighters launched. As the drones left their launch tubes, the ship's missile accelerators sprang to life, and railgun batteries acquired targets. Pasithea began by ordering a scorching retort from the Dreadnought's ultraviolet arrays, then began loading its primary weapons as ES-863 and ES-294 brought shields online and did the same.

((OOC: An ultraviolet burst would scorch armor plating on the sides of the target ship (depending if the ship has energy shielding), and depending on electronic shielding, would cause massive power surges in electrical systems, and possible radiation sickness amongst exposed crewmembers. (ie gun crews)
By the way, this is my first battle RP, so let me know if something is unreasonable, and I'll change it))

Balrogga

10-04-2009, 02:34

Sir, we have weapons fire from the battlestar.

Dammit! I told them this would happen. This is our territory and unfortunately it falls upon us to protect them from the results of their own actions. I still think it would be better to let them destroy each other.

Sir, the two frigates are taking some damage. Scans show it to be mostly hull damages but there are signs of compartment breaching. They are also going weapon’s hot and opening fire on the battlestar.

That’s just great. Ready the ship for evasive maneuvers.

Captain Morr’Son reached out with his mind and felt the mind of the captain of The Dead Zone. He made contact with his counterpart.

T’Neel, I am taking The Despayre in to try and stop this madness. You keep as many of the others out of this as you can.

It seems you are giving me the hard job. I will do my best.

Retracting his thoughts from the other ship, Morr’Son turned his attention to the quickly developing battle only a few dozen kilometers away. So far they have only fired at the three ships that had approached the battlestar. An idea was forming in his mind and he quickly ran it by Shipmind to see if it could accomplish the plan. After a brief moment of running multiple scenarios, the Shipmind agreed with the captain this was the best option.

Initiating the first part of the plan was the most dangerous. He had to provide cover for both ships and this is where the Dimensional Shielding and the Reactionary Armor would be most useful.

Sensors would show a brief power surge through the small destroyer as its gravimetric drives activated and the ship accelerated at speeds that would make most crew jelly on the bulkheads. The Ta’Nar ship simultaneously activated its Dimensional Shielding and an obvious purple bubble appeared around the vessel as it sped between the fighting ships.

(To be continued in a little bit. Have to change computers.)

Orinon

10-04-2009, 05:19

OOC at Avenio: Sounds reasonable. AND realistic. So i'm good.

The Unforgiven shuddered as it took fire from almost every direction. The Victory's fire did almost nothing except draw fire to itself, as the Battlestar was designed with inter-Battlestar combat in mind. The Leaf's Choir fire was more effective, as the Battlestar had almost no electronic shielding aside from closed circuit's. Radiation wasn't much of a problem as the ship had lead anti-radiation plates build into the hull. However, the CIC's computers flicked on and off as power surges went through the ship.

"FRAK!"shout Admiral Marin as a tremor went through the CIC.
"Sir, i suggest we launch birds,"shouted Major Krace.
"NO! If we need to leave in a hurry, then we can't stay for the birds to land,"replied Marin, holding onto the table.
"What about nukes then?"asked Krace.
"Only if we have to,"said Marin, turning his attention back to the flickering sensor screen.
"Sir, one of the ships is heavily damaged,"shouted the sensor tech, watching 3 screens at once.
"Focus fire on that ship!"shouted Marin.

For its part, the Unforgiven didn't bother with evasive tactics, and just took all the fire. However, the stream of shells being fired slowed towards the other two ships and became more intense towards the ES-863 as most of the battlestars cannons were redirected towards it, with high explosive shells and hydrogen charges hammering against it's shielding.

OOC2: In space, hydrogen charge do jack all. Just don't let them inside your ships. if they do, say hello to a rather sizable hole in your ships hull.

Sertian

10-04-2009, 05:32

“Here we go, we’ve got a fire fight on our hands. The large ship has opened fire on the two ships that were straddling it, and one of the ships from the thirty plus fleet is accelerating to join in. Also seems like the large mothership of the two frigates under fire is firing as well. Looks like we’ve got one more ship jump- That can’t be right…” the tactical officer spoke. Right now though he just looked at his read outs with a stupid look.

“What is it?” The Low Commander spoke, somewhat confused at the officer’s own struck stupid look. However, when she looked at her holographic map, she saw exactly what he saw. “That can’t be… It’s the right size, shape… Except for the surface features it looks just like an Ascension-Class…”

“Sensors can’t see a designation, and there’s some growths on it… but…” the officer spoke again. “Sir… There’s a… Drift automated message… The sealed emergency beacon, it’s… still active.”

“And..?”

“Warning - Biohazard.”

The Low Commander didn’t speak for a while, her eyes just looking at the desecrated, mutated ship. “Have we lost any ships recently… Ascension-Classes..?”

“Yes sir… The S.I.V. Lamea disappeared a little while ago…”

“That can’t be right though… The standard procedure is to overload the fusion cores and all weapons, fire every missile… Why didn’t the self destruct work?”

“I dunno Sir… Should we… Report this?”

“Yes, priority one message to New Port. Send them everything, something did this and we need to know why…”

Avenio

10-04-2009, 05:58

Orinon

10-04-2009, 06:22

Leaf's Choir and her escorts continued to take hits from the Battlestar's barrage, and ES-863 was beginning to falter under the stress, as its microsingularity drive/power generation system was damaged in the initial barrage. The frigate itself was developing a severe list, as maneuvering jets were brought offline to conserve energy. Help was soon to arrive however, and just as the first wave of fighter and bomber drones reached their target, all three ships opened up on the Battlestar, first with a full railgun barrage, then a volley of two dozen fusion missiles swam through the debris-strewn space towards their targets.

"MOTHER FRAKKER!!!"shouted Admiral Marin as he was thrown to the floor as the barrage hit the Unforgiven.

As the missiles came within about a kilometre, several hundred Sephron anti-missile cannons came online and started spewing fire at the missiles. The barrage of bullets did manage to knock about 6 of the missiles offline, and destroyed another 5 outright, but 13 slipped through and detonated on the side's on the Unforgiven. The Battlestar shuddered as the missiles detonated, ripping the starboard flightpod hull open and sending shock waves through the ship as gases vented from the damaged pod.

"SIR! Starboard flightpod is frakked. Its got massive hull tearing and is venting gas like a bitch,"shouted the damage control tech.
"Nukes now sir?" shouted Major Krace, picking himself up off the floor once the shaking had stopped.
"frak it. Launch ONE nuke at the damaged ship. Make sure it hits home, then fire on the other smaller ship,"replied Marin, before being thrown to the floor as another shock went through the ship.

The fact that its starboard flight pod was almost torn in two had almost no effect on the rate of fire that the Unforgiven's cannons poured fire onto the ES-863. However, a hatch opened on the top of the Battlestar, then a missile sped out of it and headed towards the ES-863. as the missile sped towards the small ship, the Unforgiven continued its assault on its defences.

Red Talons

10-04-2009, 07:51

The captain had opted to have his carrier stay back and observe the fight for now, signaling the mining ships to begin to move away.

"new contact, looks sertian, combat has broken out among the ships above the planet."

The captain nodded. "Have shield drones deploy across the hull, open hangar bays and begin to launch fighters. Have them stay in guard formation around the carrier."

Hundreds of space superiority fighters began to stream from the carriers hangar bays, moving into a defensive formation around the carrier.

Balrogga

10-04-2009, 07:59

The Despayre maneuvered between the warring vessels with such a grace it would make a hummingbird blush and hang its head in shame. The living, sentient vessel used its gravimetric drives with the skill and precision of an Olympic gymnast as it dodged to and fro in the hottest battle zone in the system.

While some would gape at the maneuverability of the ship, it was really the result of the seemingly miraculous dance. The Despayre actually intervened itself into the path of the heaviest munitions, blocking both groups from being struck by the terrible weapons thrown at each other.

The cloud of debris left a thick black trail of fragments as missiles struck the tiny ship. Dimensional Shields operated as designed, shunting a majority of the released energies across multiple dimensions and thereby reducing the damage that filtered through. Shipmind then took over as its Reactive Armor system caused additional layers to materialize at impact points. Kinetic energy blew these extra layers to smithereens creating a screen of black metallic fragments that seemed to absorb sensor emissions, interfering with targeting systems as well as causing missile fire to prematurely impact and detonate. Energy weapons seemed to be even less effective and were actually utilized after they were reduced by the Dimensional Shielding to a manageable level. The raw energy was absorbed by the Thur'Tahg of the ship and used to power the regenerative properties, repairing the damage that managed to penetrate through the layers of armor.

The end result was a series of explosions leaving a thick screen of black debris leading to where The Despayre turned around after making it through the fire.

Captain, we have achieved our first objective, I am ready for the next.

Excellent Shipmind, execute the next part of the plan. Initiate a Space Minus Power Tap.

Good, I like this part. It tingles!

Shipmind activated the Space Minus Powertap and reached up through the dimensional matrix to Space Minus, the 6th dimension where only energy could exist. Anything material Uplifted there would be instantly converted to pure energy and when it was first discovered initial probes were completely obliterated to mix with the energies already there. Until a redesign of the Torq drives was made, the Ta'Nar were restricted to only climbing to Space Plus, the 5th dimension of Gravity of which contained the Space-Time continuum of the first four dimensions of existence.

Energy flooded through the ship's systems and any sensors would read the already incredible readings increase exponentially. The ship literally shone with energy as it rotated to face the combatants. A single communications laser ignited and pointed straight toward the Battlestar. To be exact, it was pointed through one end of the remaining flight pod and out the other end only broken by the flight crew and the fighters or other ships inside which might be painted by the harmless laser.

The second phase of the plan was intimidation. After that carefully calculated demonstration of defensive ability and the power up of The Despayre the communications laser was like a shot across the bow. It was clear as day Captain Morr'Son intended to fly the ship into the huge flight pod.

While this was a sound strategy, Morr'Son counted on the alien captain to panic and use the FTL drive already detected as “spun up” to get the "Frakk out of there" as their allies in the 12 Colonies would say. They would not risk an enemy penetrating the nearly defensless internal sections of the ship, most of the gun placements and the missile launchers were pointed outside the ship, not toward the inside and it was clear if the small but powerful Ta'Nar destroyer was to enter, the ship would be able to cripple the flight pod at the least. To be truthful, Morr'Son counted on that.

Shipmind, how are systems?

They are repairing. If it was not for the extra power gained from the energy attacks we would be in serious trouble. I have made sure external appearances show us as undamaged. The Power Tap is providing the energy we needed to complete repairs.

Activate point defenses in case they try to fire at us instead of picking the tactically sound option.

Flack system activated. Laser Grid online, Tractor beams ready. Should I activate any non-conventional weapon systems?

Negative, I don't want to destroy them. Stick to Beam Cannons. If we have to fire at them, I only want to disable. The Grav Torps are a last resort, if we have to resort to using them and they don't convince them to run we can then go with the Non-Conventionals.

I understand Morr'Son, repairs at 83%. Ready to go on your command.

Hold position for a couple seconds to see if they get the idea. Sweep them with Sensors and make sure they are aware of it. Intimidation is our greatest weapon right at this moment.

The Ta'Nar destroyer held position, waiting to see if the alien captain would either jump away or open fire on the dimunitive but powerful vessel.

The Surrogate

10-04-2009, 09:55

The cruiser drifted in a gentle high solar orbit, drifting upwards at a course through the general center of the group, listing gently, what could be scanned as atmosphere leaking from its port midships.

Without warning, energy spiked could be detected, red arcs of energy lancling across teh ships hull to concentrate on the horns along the ships bow and stern before lancing out across space as deep red streams towards any ships that happened to be nearby. Four beams lanced out of the cruser, as it continued to list, red plasma began to swirl across its hull in a similar manner to the sertian plasma shields, it began to accelerate towards the Federation ship.

Orinon

10-04-2009, 10:21

"Sir, The first unknown has moved into our line of fire,"shouted Krace.
"HOLD FIRE!"shouted Marin.

The sudden lack of fire from the Unforgiven was disturbing.

"what are we gonna do?"asked a techy.
"we are going to leave. BUT we are gonna leave them a birthday present,"said Marin, walking to a station and entering a code.
"Sir, if you are going to do what i think your gonna do,..."said Krace.
"Yeah. and?"said Marin, pressing a button.

The Unforgiven launched another missile. This one, however, was different from the first missile.
It was a Supernova. A Planet Killer nuclear missile. Its yield is unknown, but it is large enough to completely destroy a third of a earth-sized planet.

"JUMP!"

About 15 seconds after the missile launch, the Unforgiven jumped away from the battle. The missile continued until it was about 2 km from the Leaf's Choir, where it detonated in a huge flash of light, followed by a absolutely space rending shock wave that spread to about 30km from the blast centre, devastating everything within the blast radius.

Gaiaton

10-04-2009, 11:14

The Victoryshuddered as it came under fire from the Unforgiven.
"Weapons are uneffective, sir!" the Lord Emperor was told.
"I can see that. Power up laser cannons, we'll try and weaken their shields to let our missiles make more damage. And order the Destroyer-class ships forward, get them firing on the battlestar as well!"
The other thirty ships flew towards the Unforgiven. An alarm sounded from the sensors - "Sir, they've launched a Supernova missile!" shouted one of the pilots.
"Victory withdraw! Full speed withdrawall! Get us out of here!" commanded the Lord Emperor.
The Victory slowly turned and began to fly away from the Unforgiven which as they retreated jumped away from the battle. The missile exploded, the shockwave destroying the fleet of Destroyer-classes.
The whole ship shook as it was hit by the shockwave. The Lord Emperor was thrown to the floor, but quickly got up again as he tried to maintain his dignity.
"Sir, the fleet has been destroyed and our shields are at 27%! Weapons and engines offline! We're stuck here, defenceless!"
"Then send for reinforcements! We have that attack force returning from the cancelled invasion. 20,000 ships! How long will it take for them to get here?"
"3 hours, sir", came the reply.
"Then we'll just have to hold out until then."

Balrogga

10-04-2009, 11:25

The Despayre waited to see what the Battlestar would do. It was soon answered by a flash as a single missile was launched toward the enemy they were fighting.

Sir, I have missile launch. It has strange energy readings.

Hold position.

Yes Sir.

Fifteen seconds later the Battlestar vanished in a flash of light as its jump drives activated. The crewman was about to inform Captain Morr’Son when the missile they shot detonated. The energy release as well as the concussion tossed the small ship like a leaf in a thunderstorm. The Dimensional shielding averted most of the damage but the destroyer took a nasty hit none the less. Even The Dead Zone had to take evasive maneuvers to escape the ever expanding sphere of disruption.

Avenio

10-04-2009, 14:58

Commandant Pasithea detected the launch of the supernova warhead, and as the missile closed, used his last resort. Switching off gravitic controls on the microsingularity and collapsing the ship's energy shield around his oceanic habitat, he allowed its time-space warping black hole to envelop the ship, frying any servitors onboard and any unshielded shipboard electronics as well as seriously rupturing the hull as curtains of force broke through the ship's hull. This gravity warped spacetime around the Dreadnought enough so that when the bow shock of the supernova explosion hit the ship, it simply warped around the partially naked singularity in the ship. ES-863 and ES-294 were not as fortunate. ES-863's shield collapsed soon after the bow shock hit the frigates, and was torn apart under the strain. ES-294's shields absorbed a part of the blast, but its microsingularity drive/generator gave way under the stress, and the ship fell into the gravity well of the planet, venting atmosphere and breaking up as it went. As soon as the bow shock passed, he evaporated the singularity, and absorbed most of the Hawking radiation that resulted and charged the ship's backup fusion batteries. Finally, he prepared a distress beacon to his homeworld;
"This is a Violet Grade distress message from the Dreadnought Leaf's Choir, calling any available ships to come to our aid, our two escorts have been utterly destroyed and 32 decks of our ship have vented atmosphere. Please respond as soon as possible."
For all intents and purposes, Leaf's Choir was dead in the water.

Orinon

10-04-2009, 22:00

Dead on the water is what Admiral Marin wanted the Unforgiven to be. As soon as the Battlestar jmuped into the Tarnia system it was rocked as a series of explosions went along the ruined starboard flight pod. The explosions stopped for a moment, then an entire half of the flight pod simply broke off and drifted away from the now-crippled Battlestar.

"Frak...that was close,"said Marin.
They was a shrill beeping, then a voice came through the speakers in the CIC.
"Unforgiven actual, Do you read."
Picking up the coms unit, Marin replied:"We read. Found thyrium on our first try, then we, quite honestly, panicked and opened fire on a bunch of unknowns."
"So you frakked up a first contact?"
"Yes sir. When we jumped away we used a Supernova to cover our escape."
"frak..OK, get the frak off the Unforgiven. The old girl is dead. We gonna pack her with nukes and use her as a suicide bomber."
"Yes sir,"putting down the coms, Marin shouted:"ALL HANDS! Abandon ship!"

For the next half hour, Raptors flew in and out of the Unforgiven's remaining flight pod as crewmen were flown out and nuclear weapons were flown in.

"OK, I want the fleet on red alert,"said Rear Admiral Hassnin, commander of the Tarnian Home Fleet."we don't to be surprised, do we?"

Balrogga

10-04-2009, 23:46

The Despayre flipped end over end until Shipmind cleared the cobwebs from its mind and reinstated control over the gravimetric drives.

Captain, I am online again.

What happened?

It appears the battlestar used a planet-kracker as a tactical distraction and escaped under cover of the chaos.

Smart guy whoever he was. How bad are the ships caught in the explosion?

It seems the two smaller ships are either totally destroyed or close enough to not matter. The lager mother ship appears to be crippled. Her power core was sacrificed to save the ship. It appears the vessel is maintaining a water environment.

Get is to that ship. If they are water-breathers, they will need power to keep it from freezing. Prepare a power umbilical to connect us and let them run off our excess power.

Yes Captain.

The Despayre righted itself and set course for the damaged behemoth. As it pulled aside the vessel, the captain sent it a message.

This is Captain Morr’Son, if you have a power umbilical we can connect our ships together to maintain your ship’s functions.

TRIAD Enterprises

11-04-2009, 00:29

MACE exploration missions had been stepped up along one specific galactic corridor after the deep-space arrays began picking up old EM traffic from at least a dozen seemingly interstellar cultures. All of this traffic was recieved at luminal speeds, so it was likely years or decades old. Still, where there were handfuls of such cultures, there were likely colonies, remnants, or other nascent civilizations.

It was decided to order one of the precious few deep scout frigates from the Expiditionary Fleet to scout likely systems along that galactic track. Perhaps the mission would bring back news of any possible neighbors; be they potential customers, or potential competitors.

The TEEF Frigate "Destiny's Horizon" was selected, captained by a male Irukan named Star Diver. The Irukans were a cetacean species, aquatic in nature, and closely resembled the bottlenose dolphin of old Terra; save that these 'space dolphin' had four eyes and two extra ventral flippers along their body. Star Diver had chosen a bioship which was converted for aquatic crew, and most of the ships internal environments were filled with super-oxygenated fluid to allow Star Diver and his crew of four other Irukan and two Marduk; themselves sapient machines, to move around easier. The ship's resident Digital Entity was named Halloran, supposedly based off some obscure alien vid, and oversaw most of the funcitons of the living ship, while the captain and the small crew maintained everything that couldn't naturally regenerate.

The ship was on it's second week of unfruitful jumps using the purchased Slipstream drives, when several anomalous readings came to the attention of the ship's mind.
Halloran's avatar materialized within the liquid environment of the bridge, where Star Diver was listening to a sonic image of the system they were currently in. It turned out to be another bust; only two planets, and neither showing signs of atmosphere or other indications of possible life. The two jovians and three asteroid belts were similarly empty. The second belt might have some useful mineral resources, and Star Diver made a note in the ship's memory to relay the system coordinates to HQ for possible follow-up. Finally, Star Diver turned his beak to Hal's image and sounded the avatar, ~Alright Hal, are we ready to jump to the next boring ball of gas?~

Hal's "voice" always came sounded, and felt, odd to the captain. The machine had to use sonar emitters set into the walls of the camber, so it's voice never came from the image it projected, an unnerving sensation. ~No Captain. I have just picked up unusual anomalies on the gravitic sensors. Several planetary and stellar class mass signatures suddenly appearing, and just as suddenly vanishing. The anomalies are coming from a system roughly ten parsecs from our current location.~

Star Diver blinked and did a partial roll in confusion and curiousity. Either a rogue singularity had passed through the system and eaten a planet or star, or someone was out there using gravitic technologies. ~It's about time! We've been through fifteen systems with no signs of life, aside for decades old comm traffic with no reliable source. Set a course for the nearest Slipstream point.~

The humanoid avatar nodded, then relayed to the rest of the crew that they would enter slipstream in five minutes. During the time it took to reach the jump point, Star Diver considered the possibilities. With any luck, he'd at least be able to go home with a preliminary report on any alien cultures contacted. Who knew, maybe he could arrange a future diplomatic meeting with someone out there. More contacts meant more possible markets for TRIAD to tap after all.

Ten minutes later

Star Diver always enjoyed traveling through slipstream. Being able to dive his conciousness into the ship's helm, essentially 'wearing' a 170 meter long frigate and riding superstrings between points in space was a rush few sapients got to experience. Finally though the ride was over and the ship dropped back into normal space on the outer edge of the system. Almost at once his ship-based 'senses' were picking up old EM comm traffic, as well as the rapidly dissipating shock fronts of multiple nuclear events, and the telltale neutrino emissions of a bigger one still on the way. Star Diver's voice as he jacked out of the helm was both excited and worried, ~Hal? What in the Abyss did we just jump in on?!~

Halloran did not use it's avatar this time, it's rapidly subdividing conciousness being diverted by analyzing the old EM emissions for clues. ~Based on the old comm traffic we are now recieving, it appears that there is or was a battle that took place near one of the inner planets. One moment... Yes, gravitic sensors are registering at least one gravitic anomaly indicative of a contained singularity in orbit of the planet in question. At this range we do not have sufficient EM or gravitic sensor resolution to determine if there are any other ship-scale masses in that area.~

A deep whistle as the captain mulled the information over. Finally he nodded, ~Alright, rig the ship for stealth running. Start calculating a local foldspace jump that will put us closer, but hopefully behind some cover from whoever or whatever might still be out there. I'd prefer to get a little more information before they know we're here. Oh and Hal, after we jump, keep a running calculation of our new position so we can make an emergency jump back to the slipstream point.~

~All hands, rig for stealth. Prepare for foldspace jump in two minutes.~ Hal's voice came over the shipwide comms, followed by a powering down of most ship systems. Outside, the vents and ports normally used for bleeding interior heat into space closed up. All electromagnetic emissions ceased, and the heat buildup was diverted to interior heatsinks. The organic hull of the ship started taking on a void-black appearance, soaking up the light as the gravity core of the ship canceled out it's apparant mass to outside observers. Unless someone could actively detect the use of gravitic manipulation, or else looked out a window and saw a star being occluded, there would be very little chance of detecting the Destiny's Horizon.

Exactly two minutes later, the area of space containing the ship suddenly imploded on itself. The foldspace drive aboard the frigate used an exotic matter lens to fold point A and point B so that for a fraction of a second, the two points were one and the same. A slight variation in the quantum potential caused the ship to remain at point B, while point A simply traded volume for volume. In an instant, the ship had been on the edge of the system, now they were in a very close orbit of one of the local moons, on the far side of the battlefield...

Avenio

11-04-2009, 00:58

The aquatic habitat at the center of the ship had made it through the singularity relatively unscathed, with built-in insulation keeping the habitat from freezing. The Commandant brought the specially shielded communications array online and wired a response;

"Thank you Captain Mor'Son, any assistance would be welcome at this time. Dominion Aerospace Command has redirected three Dreadnoughts, the Azure Dream, Sun's Bastion and Blind Mirror and their escorts from scouting missions in nearby systems to assist, and should arrive shortly. Some of our organic subsystems have come online, and they should begin patching hull ruptures and replacing our backup generators soon, and we can grow an umbilical attachment through one of the drone launch tubes. Once again, I thank your for your assistance."

Also, several drone fightercraft had also survived the blast due to fight-or-flight programming and were roosting in one of the less-damaged radial docking ports, or running diagnostics of the outer hull and superstructure.

Balrogga

11-04-2009, 02:12

Captain Morr'Son quickly responded to the Leaf Chorus.

I will direct my ship to move over the indicated drone launch tome and extend our umbilicle so we can make a power connection. We will check to make sure polarities match before we supply you with power.

The Despayre moved closer to the alien vessel and made the necessary connections making sure not to surge the vessel, gradually increasing the power feed until systems were running smoothly for both vessels.

Red Talons

11-04-2009, 03:19

The Carrier, having been a good distance up, had a bit more time to prep for the impact. "All ships get in the shadow of the carrier, close hangar doors, all shield drones to the keel of the ship, all power to shields." His orders were executed not an instant to soon, the blast wave slapping the carrier, the fighters shielded from the blast huttling together behind the bulk of the carrier and non-com ships. The carrier taking a few flesh wounds in the form of debris that impacted the hull, but otherwise nothing critical, 103 shield drones had overloaded and drifted away as molten lumps.

The command deck was quiet for a moment before everything flickered back to life. "all systems green captain, all strike craft intact." The tactical officer spoke up. "One of teh contacts is still firing, looks like the sertian vessel." He said quickly.

TRIAD Enterprises

11-04-2009, 03:51

When the Destiny's Horizon's entrance to local space did not seem to be immediately noticed, Star Diver dared to hope. Perhaps they could remain here a while longer and gather data, perhaps determine exactly what had happened here, and more importantly why. When the moon offered the best chance of shielding the small frigate from detection of the majority of the nearby ships, small ports opened in the organic hull and spat out over a hundred small objects. None were larger than a meter in length, roughly spheroid, and slipped away on seemingly random trajectories. Their small size and lack of any EM emissions should serve to keep them undetected.

As the sensor drones dispersed in a larger net, their passive sensors fed data through ansible-like particle resonance relays back to the frigate. Scan resolution jumped quickly by orders of magnitude from before, considering they were running dark and hiding behind the moon. Soon enough, Halloran was able to at least mark the positions and rough images of the closest ships. There was a good deal of residual EM static from the previous nova missile's detonation, which clouded the visual and EM picture of the ships further out.

~Hal, it looks like that ship there in the center is either dead, or nearly so. Can you tell what that other ship docking with it is doing? Are they helping her or trying to board her?~ Star Diver's voice was tinged with real curiousity now. If the fight was already over, maybe they didn't need to remain on stealth running, especially since they could only do so under these power levels for perhaps six hours max.

The digital intelligence attempted to analyze the incoming data in order to answer the captain's question. Finally one of the drones managed to detect the power link between the two ships, and the tiny speck of what seemed like life support in at least one section of the 'dead' ship. ~I would place a 83% probability on rescue attempts. I am reading a power transfer between contact Beta and the derelict.~ And in that moment Hal had already assigned contact callsigns, starting with alpha for the downed 'Leaf Chorus'

Star Diver gave off a lengthy chatter of sonar, then dipped his head, ~Okay. We'll continue to observe and try to see what the other ships are doing. If none of them starts fighting again, we'll stand down from stealth running in fifteen minutes.~

The rear hatch on the bridge cycled open and the ship's XO, another male Irukan named Storm Breaker swam up to join Star Diver, ~I've been monitoring the sensor feeds. Do we have a first contact or first combat situation?~

Star Diver did a half barrel-roll, ratcheting to show his confusion and annoyance, ~I wish I knew podbrother. I wish I knew. We got here too late to watch the fireworks or even know who's out there. It looks like there's at least six different groups out there, based on ship configurations and EM readings. At least one of them is using some very advanced gravitic technology, and that one looks to be tending another that may have been crippled in that shockwave.~
Star Diver suddenly clicked in suprise as new scan data came in about the wounded ship, ~Brother, that ship has an aquatic living environment! Most of it seems to be breached, but there is at least a small part that is still stable. Hal, send one of the sensor drones in closer. Make sure it is well away from the other drones and begin active scans of the wounded ship, I want to know if there are any life-signs still aboard.~

Halloran complied with the order, breaking off one of the drones and diverting it into a close pass of the Despayre and the Leaf Chorus. When the drone came within a hundred thousand km it's active sensors came online, bathing the aquatic's ship in several beams of detectable but harmless radiation intended to pick out active biologicals.

The Surrogate

11-04-2009, 04:20

The single ship, having been near the explosion, had ducked behind the largest ship, hiding form the blast in its shadow. The ship targeted the derelict Leafs Choir, two deep purple lances of charged plasma shot across the vacuum of space at the ship. Its secondary weapons opening up on the balrogga ship, as well as the UTF vessel. Red bolts of plasma lancing out at the other two ships.

It continued to lazily roll as it floated in space firing.

Avenio

11-04-2009, 04:25

((OOC: TRIAD, there is only one crewmember aboard Leaf's Choir, the Commandant Pasithea. As well, only a small fraction of the ship is habitable to him, the central oceanic habitat. He controls the ship using a specialised organ near his melon that is nanotechnologically engineered to control the servitor machines and computer systems that run most of the ship's systems. His species, the Theline, are roughly equivalent to Earthly humpback whales. (ie, 12–16 metres (40–50ft) and weighs approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lbs))

Sertian

11-04-2009, 07:46

“Well, so far things seem to be pretty one sided,” the tactical officer stated, although it was plain to anyone that was watching the central hologram that the Battlestar was likely to meet its end. However, that changed as they watched a bright explosion erupt from one of the largest vessels in the area. The probe, safely protected by range and it’s low orbit in the planet’s protective atmosphere, had it’s sensors blinded for a good while. The frigate, however, was safe in the sub dimension it was monitoring the situation in.

“We’ve got orders from New Port Sir,” the communications officer spoke up, “It’s in voice, playing it now.”

“This is Colonial Force Command. We believe that ship to be the S.I.V. Lamea, which disappeared a short while ago after investigating an emergency beacon that was detected. The last transmission that we received indicated that it was being compromised by some sort of machine infection, it indicated that it had activated it’s self destruct sequence. It is unknown why the vessel survived, perhaps the self destruct was stalled by the infection or, more likely, the vessel survived the self detonation.”

“You have orders to try and destroy the vessel at all costs, the Grand Admiral believes that studying this, infection, would be unwise.”

“This is… disturbing,” the Low Commander said before shaking it off. “Prepare a communication to propagate into Real Space, Omni-directional radio transmission, text only… Maybe these vessels could destroy it for us… Because we sure as hell don’t have the fire power to take on an Ascension-Class.”

<To all ships in the area, you may be aware of a ship around six-hundred-and-fifty meters in length that are hostile to your forces. This, is a former ship of ours, corrupted and controlled by some third party. As the previous owners of the ship, we encourage you to destroy it with impunity.

The message had no ownership tag added to it, but by it’s format and language, it could be a guess that it was the owners of the blinded probe that was orbiting one of the planets. The signal also seemed to be coming from nowhere in particular, which indicated that whoever the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation was, they had some sort of way to bounce radio transmissions into Real Space from somewhere far away.

TRIAD Enterprises

11-04-2009, 09:30

~Thank the Waters, there's still a survivor. It looks like they're using a similar organic hull to ours, although I'm still suprised that a ship that large is operated by a single being?~ Storm Breaker's relief and suprise mixed in his tone as he and his podbrother watched events unfold.

The Destiny's Horizon's drones continued to collect data, particularly the single detached drones that had moved close enough to use active sensors... So it was that this particular drone had a front row seat for the attack on the Leaf's Choir.

Halloran too was observing the datastream intently, and as soon as the point drone's active sensors relayed it's readings on the incoming attack on the Theline vessel. If Halloran had had actual eyes, they would have widened in shock and fear. It was different, but that energy spectra was extremely close to another observed pattern, one which was then subsequently encoded into the hard memories of ever Digital Intelligence that was ever installed into any TRIAD asset.

Immediately klaxons blared twice aboard the frigate, followed by the DE's voice, ~Priority alert! Category omega pathogen detected! All crew prepare for emergency maneuvers!~

Star Diver and Storm breaker had only enough time to look at Hal's avatar as it winked out of existance, then the ship's lights came to full and the gravitics took full control, forming inertial cancellation fields within all crew compartments. The oxy-gel began to flush back into storage tanks, leaving the crew floating in freefall, the gravitic fields preventing the ship's momentum from translating to the floating crew.

Outside, the ship's hull visibly shuddered and rippled as the surfaces converted from stealth mode to full battle readiness. The biomechanical nano-colonies that comprised the outer hull began layering on various armor compounds one after the other. Vacoule-like openings formed on the ship's skin as additional sensor drones were discharged, these rocketing away at 80 PSL. Other openings gave way to offensive and defensive systems which required external exposure to function.

The roughly teardrop shaped warship banked sharply and angled up and around the surface of the moon it had been using as cover, the gravitic drives flaring to life as the Destiny's Horizon drove up to 70 PSL, angling it's nose at the pathogen-ridden ship. Reactor plasma was being diverted through internal channels towards the spinal mount weapon, collecting in accumulators until the energy density approached that found in the outer cores of most stars.

A final opening appeared on the nose of the ship, and as soon as the frigate was in maximum weapons range of the former Sertian ship called Larnea, the primary weapon fired. Instantly all the accumulated high-density plasma was pumped through a very confined gravitic bottle out the end of the weapon. A thin stream of star-fire, only a meter across, but burning as hot as most suns lanced out at the infected ship, a slight shift of the Destiny's Horizon's trajectory traversing the beam across the expected length of the target.

Avenio

11-04-2009, 17:12

Leaf's Choir shuddered under the impact of the plasma, the two lances of energy breaking through several decks and damaging more of the ship's superstructure. The Commandant ordered half of the remaining fusion batteries' energy diverted to dorsal ultraviolet array, and sent a potentially sterilising blast of ultraviolet radiation at the biological vessel. Feeling pleased with himself, the Commandant breached triumphantly in his habitat. Warning klaxons went off soon after, and the ships organic subsystems indicated that a nanotechnological infection had entered the ship at numerous hull fractures near the impact sites. The organic defense brain near the habitat sprung into action, hermetically sealing individual compartments and releasing a specially designed retrovirus into nutrient channels in the ship. The virus is designed to mutate the biological components of the nanotechnology to react to the mechanical, causing the entity to effectively fight itself, allowing other antibodies to effectively combat the infection.

(OOC: It's completely up to you if you want to let this work or not, I have other ways of fighting nanotechnology)

Orinon

12-04-2009, 02:32

OOC: Auron Class frigate picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/Orion_hyperspace_%28No_Man%27s_Land%29.jpeg

The 1st planet in the system that the battle had taken place in was a small lump of rock orbiting the star. This was the planet that a Auron Class frigate jumped into the system besides. It was there to use its rather powerful sensors to keep a eye on the situation. The 600m long frigate quickly hide itself behind the planet and settled in for a long shift as a relay station. Just in case the ship was discovered, the frigate carried on it a transponder that, in all the languages that the ICO had discovered and decoded, that they were sorry for the battle but refused to taken the blame for it. The transponder, for the time being, was unactive. And thats the way the Tarnian Home Fleet hoped it would stay.

OOC: One of the languages that the ICO have found, the Ancient Language, is Galactic Basic. Just thought you should know ;)

Balrogga

12-04-2009, 08:47

Red plasma raked across the back of the attached Ta’Nar vessel. Alarms sounded as the crew took whatever actions they could without detaching from their dependant.

What was that?

It appears another vessel in the system is attacking. It was hidden behind the bulk of the Leaf Chorus so we did not have it in our threat list but it maneuvered into firing position.

Dammit, and we cannot detach without risking the Leaf Chorus. Fire back.

Negative, it maneuvered behind cover again.

Damages?

The Despayre only took superficial damage mostly shunted away by our shields and regenerated but the Leaf Chorus was hit heavily.

Contact The Dead Zo…

Sir, it appears the damage on their ship is mutating somehow, almost like it is infected.

Is it Kython Infection?

No Sir, something else entirely different. It appears to be both organic and inorganic in nature. If the plasma weapon used against us was the same, Thur’Tahg is apparently immune.

Well, at least some good news. If it comes into range hit it with the beam cannons. That should disable the electronics and any shielding the vessel has.

Yes Sir

Orinon

12-04-2009, 22:01

The Auron Class frigate's captain quickly noted that a small battle seemed to be happening between some of the unknown ships. After noting the attacking ships sensor pattern, they went back to monitoring the whole system.

The Great Lord Tiger

13-04-2009, 00:29

"How do you piss off the Immortal Lands, Captain?" Admiral Errol Jeth said to the ship officer of the Hawk, the primary Raptor-Class Carrier (http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/3/12/21/f_Demonm_f834a62.jpg) of four in the 3rd Defense Fleet of the Immortal Lands of the Great Lord Tiger. The 'meeting' was one of holograms and displays, and the younger man shook his head theatrically.

"No idea, sir, how?" Captain Joseph Quellus replied.

"You try to one-up them." Jeth was watching radiation monitors, the best method of detection from Slipspace, and a massive signature had appeared in a system that had drawn the fleet's attention with a myriad of distress signals. The 3rd Fleet was one of the Immortal Lands' largest, wielding the massive construct that was an Apocalypse-Class Capital ship. Said ship bore 10 munitions which carried their own Slipspace drives -- Banshee Nova Missiles. These little beasts each had the potential to produce a yield of up to one zettaton of nuclear explosives -- that was, 1 sextillion, or a one followed by 21 zeroes. This explosion was at the level of an exploding star; what was more, Banshees were more controlled than blind-fire hyperfusion warheads.

Like those that Jeth was watching the emissions of.

"The system is brimming with gammas, you know," he said pensively to Quellus. "Idiots don't even control the fifth stage properly, you end up with a massive flux of radiation, and next thing you know, everyone in the damned system is gonna be making three-headed babies and shit." The Banshee had a 13-stage 'hyper fusion' chain reaction, the last step of which was actually creating a black hole before exploding it to take advantage of nuclear forces. That step didn't always succeed, and many of their trials had ended with a small singularity drifting through space, sucking in matter indiscriminately. But it was in the name of war! Imglot cared not for sentimentality. Besides, black holes were pretty dangerous, too. Hopefully, though, said misfire didn't happen in a system. Oh boy.

"All right, let's not spook them," he said to Quellus. "We'll only bring out 2 Raptors, 10 Demons, and 20 Plagues. Oh, and the Famine. Everything else is under your command."

"Oh no, sir, we won't spook them," the officer responded with lidded eyes. "Not with a 27 kilometer capital ship, no."

Chuckling, Jeth terminated the communication and nodded to his navigation officer. This was a typical fleet severance, with enough in reserve -- including the primary battleship force in its entirety -- to save the fleet, should everything go to hell.

Imglot was not subtle about its FTL travel, and this showed in the Hantog Slipspace drives. The dimension was secondary to Realspace, with distance and time being skewed -- usually, if the crew knew what it was doing, for the better. So much so, that they could go several light-years in a manner of hours. It was quite an arrangement. The travel between these two dimensions... wasn't so pretty.

With a distinctive internal roar from the Hantog drives, one that all members of Imglot's navy had learned to enjoy, the whiteness of Slipspace was torn asunder and revealed a literal gash in reality, a tear in space, through which the illuminated darkness of Realspace, with a backdrop of stars, shone through. The 33 named ships slid through, the rest holding back as commanded, ready to come through on order. The massive bulk of the Famine (http://img37.picoodle.com/img/img37/3/12/18/f_Ragnarok2m_626e361.png) could not be pleasant for any unknowing eyes, and sure as hell, they weren't expected by this lot.

"So, I see we have a little bit of a skirmish here," Jeth said pleasantly in Basic through a full-spectrum broadcast channel. "And someone decided to play nuclear war. Unfortunately, this whole system is now brimming with radiation to give even a virus cancer. Well, of course, I'm sure you all have the proper level of polarity shields." Clearing his throat, Jeth dropped the jovial attitude. "I am Admiral Errol Jeth of the Immortal Lands of the Great Lord Tiger. We may not be a centuries-old empire, but we have the most advanced weaponry that can be developed by our technology level -- greater, actually, than that. We pride ourselves on having complete military superiority. We do have complete military superiority. You know that little simulated supernova you saw? We have 10 aboard this ship."

Jeth glared at the viewscreens pointedly, knowing that the recipients were probably just shrugging him off. "We are only here to assure that further hostilities do not continue. Otherwise... you might imagine that a ship this size has no small amount of armament. Stand down from all hostilities immediately; any violators will be engaged." He tapped a command into his input system, switching the broadcast to local fleet. "Release Orions," he ordered the Raptors, and they each released 30 high-speed starfighters that swarmed the ships defensively.

We are not going to go trigger-happy and blow everything up. Unless someone shoots us.

If you want pictures/sizes/equipment of anything military that I didn't link to, links are in the sig.

Orinon

13-04-2009, 00:41

OOC: O.o oh balls....Please for the love of god be on my side!

The Auron class frigates commander rather quickly decided that the situation was getting a little too cramped and so the 600m long frigate powered up its FTL drive, launched the transponder, and jumped back home.

The transponder began broadcasting as soon as it was launched in all the languages the ICO had decoded, including what they had dubbed the Ancient Language. In fact, this language had another name in the universe. Galactic Basic. The transponders message was:

To all parties involved. We of the Imperial Colonies of Orinon apologise for the battle that took place, but we refuse to take the blame for the situation that caused the battle to occur.

Avenio

13-04-2009, 04:37

Shortly after the Imglot fleet arrived in the system, the scheduled Thelinan reinforcements slowed down their microsingularity drives to arrive at the 4th planet in the system. Not knowing the situation, they detatched frigates from radial docking arms and launched fighter drones to patrol the area around their fallen comrade. Leaf's Choir's main communication array was offline due to power conservation, but Pasithea sent a data packet detailing the situation. Upon reading the situation update, Rear Admiral Lycorias proceeded to transmit a message to The Despayre.
"Salutations Captain Morr’Son, this is Rear Admiral Lycorias. Thank you for tending our brother's ship, they would have certainly perished without the extra power. Our repair drones are enroute to Leaf's Choir, and nanotechnology scrubbing servitors will deploy in the interior of the ship to help its autonomic defenses fight off the infection. We expect Leaf's Choir to be FTL ready in approximately 2 days, and depending on its condition, will either stay with the reinforcements, or it will set a course for the Fleetyards for full repairs. We hope to continue positive diplomatic relations, and will remain in contact if you need anything else." True to the Admiral's word, a small fleet of repair drones swarmed the crippled Dreadnought, and several transport shuttles carrying replacement electronic systems and repair servitors, as well as specialised nanotechnology-scrubbing equipment and machines entered the remaining radial hangar bays.

Current Condition of Leaf's Choir (http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/LeafsChoir.jpg)

Theline Reinforcement Fleet - Commanding Officer - Rear Admiral Lycorias

Dreadnought - Azure Dream - Commandant Halimede
Frigates - ES-539 - ES-713

Dreadnought - Sun's Bastion - Rear Admiral Lycorias
Frigates - ES-390 - ES-574

Dreadnought - Blind Mirror - Commandant Nausithoe
Frigates - ES-528 - ES-139

Balrogga

13-04-2009, 08:10

Captain, there are more ships entering our territory.

Oh great, what do sensors read?

Several massive vessels with one at least 27K. They appear to be hostile and are transmitting a message.

Let’s hear them.

Captain Morr’Son accessed the live feed of the signal and could only shake his metaphysical head at the audacity of the meatbag.

"So, I see we have a little bit of a skirmish here," Jeth said pleasantly in Basic through a full-spectrum broadcast channel. "And someone decided to play nuclear war. Unfortunately, this whole system is now brimming with radiation to give even a virus cancer. Well, of course, I'm sure you all have the proper level of polarity shields." Clearing his throat, Jeth dropped the jovial attitude. "I am Admiral Errol Jeth of the Immortal Lands of the Great Lord Tiger. We may not be a centuries-old empire, but we have the most advanced weaponry that can be developed by our technology level -- greater, actually, than that. We pride ourselves on having complete military superiority. We do have complete military superiority. You know that little simulated supernova you saw? We have 10 aboard this ship."

Jeth glared at the viewscreens pointedly, knowing that the recipients were probably just shrugging him off. "We are only here to assure that further hostilities do not continue. Otherwise... you might imagine that a ship this size has no small amount of armament. Stand down from all hostilities immediately; any violators will be engaged." He tapped a command into his input system, switching the broadcast to local fleet. "Release Orions," he ordered the Raptors, and they each released 30 high-speed starfighters that swarmed the ships defensively

Reaching out with his mind and using the Ta’Nar group mind, he contacted Captain T’Neel on The Dead Zone which was now returning to the area after riding the bow shock from the explosion. Sensors would detect a trail of no radiation as it swept through the irradiation caused by the explosion of the planet cracker. It was almost like the ship was absorbing the radiation and leaving a clear wake as it passed.

T’Neel, can you please deal with this jackass while I assist the damaged ship?

It would be my pleasure. Any suggestions?

Nope, just make sure he knows whose backyard he is strutting about pretending he is in charge. Make them fire the first shot if it comes down to that.

I understand. I have taken the liberty to inform Command of the new situation. They thing we should be send reinforcements.

The way these meatbags keep showing up we just might have to. It seems they are only impressed with size and quantity. They have no idea one of us could wipe out everyone here if we were ordered to do so.

I agree Morr’Son, their attitude needs to be fixed and they need to be given something to respect other than their own false sense of superiority. I will head over to these newcomers and straighten their mindset.

At least the Thelinans are polite and grateful for our help. I will interact with them while you get to have the fun.

The two captains disconnected (Ta’Nar are never truly disconnected by the way, just consciously connected when they wish to speak) and turned to their tasks.

Captain, we are receiving a message from the newly arrived Thelinan rescue ships.

Send it to me.

"Salutations Captain Morr’Son, this is Rear Admiral Lycorias. Thank you for tending our brother's ship, they would have certainly perished without the extra power. Our repair drones are enroute to Leaf's Choir, and nanotechnology scrubbing servitors will deploy in the interior of the ship to help its autonomic defenses fight off the infection. We expect Leaf's Choir to be FTL ready in approximately 2 days, and depending on its condition, will either stay with the reinforcements, or it will set a course for the Fleetyards for full repairs. We hope to continue positive diplomatic relations, and will remain in contact if you need anything else."

After opening a circuit Morr’Son replied to the polite guests.

This is Captain Morr’Son of The Despayre.

It was an honor to assist. When we requested everyone here respect our territorial claims, The Leaf Chorus and her escorts were the first to comply showing Honor and respect. They were damaged in our territory so we have ensured their survival. By the way, she is currently blocking targeting parameters of the attacker so you will have to take your own actions against the one that is currently attacking her. Situated on her hull I cannot get a good shot off against them. Beware for its weapons have a peculiar quality about them.

I agree further contact should be maintained with such an honorable race as yourself. When the remainder of our vessels arrive the proper first contact personal will be available to conduct those proceedings. I will issue my recommendations your interviews would be expedited and I am certain they would assist with repairs.

Please be patient and good things will come.

Morr’Son closed the transmission and turned to the message that was logged while he was transmitting. It had come from within the system and was in Galactic Basic but the point was currently unknown. There were way too many bogeys in system being tracked and it was hard to pinpoint it to any of them. He played the message.

To all parties involved. We of the Imperial Colonies of Orinon apologise for the battle that took place, but we refuse to take the blame for the situation that caused the battle to occur.

Trace that signal.

Too late, the source is already gone.

We really need to get the system locked down, there are too much coming and going.

Near the IMGLOT fleet:

The Dead Zone sped toward the latest fleet of invaders claiming to have “control” over their territory. Captain T’Neel was wondering how much they would laugh at a 60 meter frigate standing against a 27,000 meter capital ship. It was all normal business for the Captain so he didn’t think twice about his duty, even if it meant standing in front of another ship that was 450 times larger than his. The torpedo frigate approached the ship and came to a halt when the defensive fighter screen they launched after their message would stop him. He opened a channel to the alien vessel and addressed them.

This is Captain T’Neel of the Torpedo Frigate The Dead Zone.

You are currently in Ta’Nar territory so claiming military superiority is a direct insult against the rightful owners of this territory. The presence of a war fleet will be taken as a declaration of war against The Fallen Empire unless you follow our instructions exactly.

To prevent this I ask you power down weapons and retreat to the outer system. There is a single marauder ship in this system and the others can take care of it without your assistance. Once there you will wait your turn to speak to First Contact personal but as you can see there are a number of prior arrivals ahead of you.

Tactical, prepare defenses and acquire targets of importance but do not activate weapons. Set a full volley for reprisal if they are fools enough to not back down. Have the Mobius Aperture ready to use if they fire. Prepare for emergency Uplift.

Avenio

13-04-2009, 15:08

The Admiral recieved the Balroggan message, and proceeded to bring weapons online. On all three Dreadnoughts, missile accelerators, railgun batteries, particle shields and ultraviolet arrays all sprang to life. After maneuvering around their fallen brother to acquire a clear shot at the vessel formerly known as Lamea, approximately 60 self-guided fusion missiles launched from their accelerators, swimming gracefully toward their target.

Orinon

14-04-2009, 01:27

In the Tarnia system, many things were happening. One was the lack of lights on the night sides of the 7 inhabited planets. This was because of the Blackout Protocol, which meant that in times of great danger, all cities on the planets were to shut off their power planets at night, plunging the cities into darkness. Another thing was the lack of freighters and civilian spacecraft, because of the ordering of these ships being grounded. The last thing was that the Home Fleet had effectively doubled in size, as patrolling Battlestars and Auron classes were pulled back to the home system. Any wanting to pick a fight with the ICO would find it a very scary proposition.

Current Status of the Home Fleet.
128 Battlestars- 55 Galactica Classes, 50 Pegasus Classes, 23 Endeavour Classes
140 Auron Classes
188 Deleris Classes

Red Talons

14-04-2009, 08:19

The Red Talons carrier had its weapons online. "Sir, we have a massive contact, unknown signature." The tactical officer called out. The mining ships and their freighter had already started down to begin mining the asteroids.

The captain nodded. "Have all fighters enter definsive formations around us. Signal Pegasis Command, inform them we have a developing situation and send tactical data." The comms officer nodded, relaying the orders to the fighters while updating Pegasis command on their situation.

The tactical officer paused. "We're picking up ongoing weapons fire from the compromised sertian vessel. Unknown as to why the sertian government wants it destroyed." The captain sighed. "Probably some kind of rouge crew, no matter, hold position here, continue deploying fighters, deploy corvettes with anti-captal loadouts."

The comms officer called across the bridge. "Reply form Pegasis command, onscreen."

The forward screen lit up, showing grand admiral Roze. "I'm deploying a defense fleet to your position, along with another mining detail. Command out."

En-rout to the system

2- Cutter class dreadnoughts,
4- drone frigates
8- Destiny class battleships
6- Wolf class missile cruisers
6- Kergerin class heavy cruisers
2- mk2 superfreighters
6- mining freighters
2- hospital ships

Orinon

15-04-2009, 01:26

Unsurprisingly, the Imglot Fleet were not the only people to pick up the nuclear radiation. In the nearby system of Serenity, a pirate Deleris class had picked up the nuclear blasts radiation on its long range sensors, and had decided to have a look. Not knowing what it was in for, the ship jumped into the system in question about 3 km off the side of the Leafs Choir.

Avenio

15-04-2009, 02:04

Orinon

15-04-2009, 02:19

Without almost any warning, the Sun's Bastion picked up a rogue vessel 3km off the Leaf's Choir. Rear Admiral Lycorias put the fleet in full alert. All of the ships' weapons and defense systems came online, and its small fleet of fighter drones swarmed the vessel. The Dreadnoughts scanned the ship and determined that it was of the same origin as the Battlestar. Lycorias then send a broad-frequency transmission at the interloper.

"Unknown Colonial vessel, this is Rear Admiral Lycorias of the Theline Dominion. Your drive configuration and emissions spectroscopy match a vessel that attacked a Dreadnought in this system. You are hereby requested to shut down your engines and submit to a cursory inspection of your vessel and to further questioning as to the identity of the attacking vessel. Thank you for your time."

Twelve heavy transport drones carrying a platoon's worth of combat and assault servitors launched from Sun's Bastion, guarded by a further squadron of fighter drones.

The pirate ships captain responds was strange in the fact that it was Galactic Basic.

Hello Admiral. We understand your somewhat aggressiveness. But we are not related to the ship that attacked you in any way. We are pirates of Serenity, and quite honestly, we find those ICO scum rather....disgusting. If it helps, we can tell you we thier home system is.

The 120 metre frigate didn't even move as the drones approached it. The drones would find no way to enter the ship, as the small frigate didn't have a hanger of any kind or any service ports in the sides of it.

The Surrogate

15-04-2009, 03:00

The vessel rolled lazily, the plasma beam from the triad vessel splashing against the ships plasma shields. The sertian technology, modified by the surrogates organic warping was an interesting combination indeed. The ship actually absorbing the impact, its shields overcharging, plasma swirling off the ship like a deadly mist, the missiles impacting the charged shields of the vessel as it idly engaged full forward thrust, ramming its nose into the crippled Leafs Choir. The infection spreading exponentially through the ships systems. Subverting control consoles and hacking the ships computer from multiple points as the techno-organic virus spread through the ships very structure.

TRIAD Enterprises

15-04-2009, 04:28

~Halloran! What in the Abyss is happening!? Why did you assume command?~ Star Diver was more than a little annoyed. With the ship pulling high-g maneuvers like this, he was unable to move against the gentle, but insistant, restraints of the internal gravitics. All he could do was move his body enough to focus one eye on his first officer. As he sounded the display tank again, he could envision some of the battle that took place outside.

~Apologies Captain, however my internal protocals are activated. The ship I have attacked is carrying an Omega class pathogen. All TRIAD digital entities are ordered to attempt the destruction of Omega-class threats on sight.~ Hal still hadn't materialized it's avatar, and the voice simply came from an emmitter on the wall.

Storm Breaker ratcheted in annoyance, studying the sensor tank, ~If you have us locked into a battle, at least an I-Comms message to MACE command. I don't know if there's anyone nearby to respond, but maybe they can divert *something* to pick up the pieces if we fail.~

~Acknowledged. Diverting power from weapons to particle resonance transmission. Message delivered. Captain, our primary weaponry has no effect on the target. They appear to be using a similar plasma-based shield system to our own. Reqesting tactical orders.~

~First off, bring us down from relativistic drives. I want the crew to be able to respond to this crisis you've got us into!~ As the ship slowed back down to 20 PSL, the oxy-gel flowed back into the crew spaces. When he was able to move freely again, Star Diver swam over to the tactical display tank. He could see the relative positions of the other ships in the area, as well as a log of recent comm traffic. ~It looks like things are getting even more complicated out there. How in the Abyss did someone think that a ship twenty seven kilometers was actually a good idea? Hal, I assume there's no chance you're going to let us break off and just get out of this mess?~

Finally the DE could spare enough of it's datastream to use the avatar, the humanoid form materializing on the bridge, ~Negative Captain. While my protocals allow me to return command of the ship to you, I cannot comply with an order which would contradict established protocal. We *must* continue to engage the target until either we are disabled or destroyed, or else the target is destroyed. Should any other ships become infected, they too will be classified as targets.~

Ratcheting in disgust and annoyance with the decisions of upper executives, Star Diver moved over to the command harness and locked himself in, ~Alright then, let's see if we can even scratch this thing. Open a laser-link comms channel to that big ship out there, if they carry through their threat to engage anyone who continues hostilities, I want them to at least know *why* we're still fighting. Oh, and send a message to that Ta'nar ship, The Dead Zone. Tell them our reason for being in their system, and why we're engaging. Storm, would you handle weapons?~

As Star Diver interfaced with the ship, essentially wearing it as an extention of his body, Storm Breaker swam to the tactical station and dove his mind into the weapons systems.

Two low-powered comms lasers were aimed at the Ta'nar ship, The Dead Zone and the 27km long IMGLOT Famine.

To The Dead Zone:
~This is the TRIAD Enterprises Expiditionary Fleet scout frigate 'Destiny's Horizon'. We apologize for intruding on your claimed territory. Our craft is on a mission of exploration to contact other civilizations, however we did not expect a situation such as we find ourselves in. The target we are engaging is infected with an extremely dangerous pathogen, one which our internal policies require us to engage in battle. We regret to inform you that we are unable to disengage at this time.~

To the Famine:
~This is the TRIAD Enterprises Expiditionary Fleet scout frigate 'Destiny's Horizon'. Our craft is on a mission of exploration to contact other civilizations, however we did not expect a situation such as we find ourselves in. The target we are engaging is infected with an extremely dangerous pathogen, one which our internal policies require us to engage in battle. We regret to inform you that we are unable to disengage at this time. We would request at this time that you not consider our conflict as a sign of agression as your forces, please withhold your fire.~

The Destiny's Horizon slowed down from it's earlier seemingly suicidal dive against the infected ship. Taking brief shelter behind the Ta'nar ship before circling for another attack pass. This time instead of the spinal mount plasma beam, four apertures opened on the forward hull. These were gravitic impacters, designed to create focused columns of coherent gravity. Impacters imparted a force of anywhere from 50 to 500 terran gravities onto any matter within the path of the beam. The trick was that *only* the matter in the beam path experienced the gravitic shear. Bottom line, it was a weapon that punched meter-wide holes in ships.

Lining up for a strafing pass on the infected ship, the gravitic lenses opening fire in a stuttering path along the side of the target...

Balrogga

15-04-2009, 04:40

Captain Morr’Son watched the sensors as the infection-ridden ship rammed the Leaf Chorus. Careful scans of the actual infection process revealed much of the process and also validated the reasons The Despayre seemed to be immune to the effect while the others were obviously not.

Contact The Leaf Chorus.

Channel opened.

Leaf Chorus, According to my sensors, your efforts is not succeeding. I suggest you either transfer to The Despayre or evacuate your ship. We can prepare a space and disembark from the hull but whatever happens; we recommend the hulk must be destroyed. We can tow it into the sun if you wish. From the speed the infection is spreading you do not have much time to decide before it gains control.

The captain awaited their response.

Avenio

15-04-2009, 04:58

((OOC: Now I'm going to work under the assumption that the vessel is still embedded within the hull of the Dreadnought))

Leaf's Choir shatttered under the impact of the ex-Sertian vessel, with several decks worth of superstructure collapsing under the impact and several radial arms snapped and tore off. Warning klaxons went off in every system as the virus spread through systems and organic immune systems were overwhelmed. Commandant Pasithea, realising the hopelessness of the situation, sent a message to Rear Admiral Lycorias and Captain Morr'Son.

"Admiral, this is the Leaf's Choir. I have catastrophic failure in multiple systems, and the infection is spreading rapidly. I am enacting Biological Emergency Containment Protocols, and I recommend you move your ships out of range. Farewell Admiral, may you swim in the Current always."

"Captain Morr'Son, I advise you to move your vessels approximately 10km away, as we are activating Biological Emergency Containment Protocols. Thank you for your assistance, our brothers and sisters will remember your kindness. May the Current grace your path."

Terminating the transmissions, he activated the singularity in the heart of the Dreadnought. Its gravity already tearing at the fabric of the ship, he emptied all of the remaining fusion batteries into the vortex and shut down all of the gravitic controls. The singularity absorbed the plasma from the batteries and an accretion disc rapidly formed and began ripping the ship apart from the inside. With an infection on one side and a singularity on the other, Pasithea closed his eyes in meditation and breached one last time, at peace with the universe as his habitat was ripped apart and pulled into the heart of darkness. The ship was rapidly subsumed by the swirling vortex, pulling the ex-Sertian vessel with it. The area was graced by a beatiful, swirling accretion disc as the black hole evaporated. As the other ships pulled away, a stunning miniature nebula blew outwards, enveloping almost a quarter of the system.

A picture of the Leaf's Grace (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Triangulum.nebula.full.jpg) Nebula, as it would soon be named by Thelinan historians.

Orinon

15-04-2009, 05:11

"Holy frak,"said the Deleris class frigates captain, watching the nebula flare across the stars. The frigate had intercepted the coms and had ran about 25km before turning back and facing the rapidly expanding nebula.
"Those ICO dogs started this all off. Lets show them the path to revenge,"said the captain, opening coms, in Basic, with the remaining Theline ships.

MESSAGE TO REAR ADMIRAL LYCORIS
----------
This is the pirate frigate Baisin. IF you wish it, we can guide you on the path to the people who left your now-deceased ship and friend in that sorry state.
Oh, and i must say, that is a quite beautiful nebula.
---------------------

The Great Lord Tiger

15-04-2009, 05:26

"My, my," Jeth said simply, watching the drama unfold. The "Dead Zone", a ridiculously small vessel from the beings that claimed this area, had made a warning to Imglot to do nothing untoward. All too conscious of the beating-down Golugan forces had handed Imglotian forces in the latter's first true space engagement, he wasn't going to underestimate these beings. Nonetheless, advanced technology or not, there was no ability to resist the weapons -- especially the special ones -- of the combined Imglot fleet.

But that was irrelevant. Somewhere off to their port side (or maybe not -- space was relative -- a ship simply disintegrated, before exploding into a rush of gas and cosmic wastes. Jeth hadn't expected to see a nebula form firsthand. Snapping his fingers at a chief petty officer, he opened communications.

To TRIAD, he sent:

"We will not engage unless engaged, as stated previously. Our presence here was to investigate emissions from that supernova weapon, and afterwards, deter hostile actions. Our positions have not changed."

To the Dead Zone, he sent:

"We forgive intrusion upon your territory, but we are severely concerned with the threat of overt action against our vessels for the mere act of defusing an escalating situation. As per Imglotian law, itself adapted from relatively recent Galactic Law, unless all hospitable planets have been colonized, at the minimum, within a system, claims of true possession are unwarranted. Claims of possession on the planets themselves are permitted, but a government can not claim a full system without first populating it. Imglot calls it the 'Flag in the Ground' clause -- just because you have a flag planted in an island with your little insignia on it doesn't mean you own the oceans for a 250 kilometer diameter.

Personally, I do not see this being a problematic system at all; you are free to guard the planet as you see fit, but unless we take action to attack or take control of the planet, you have no jurisdiction. Of course, Galactic Law is a relative thing, not all nations need to follow it, and this I will accept. However, be advised that to further claim ownership over an unpopulated system and threaten those within its borders with attack would be a most unwise choice on your part. To that end, we will hold our position."

Avenio

15-04-2009, 05:31

Rear Admiral Lycorias, breached in grief in his habitat, a sentiment shared by all of the Dreadnought's Commandants. In the Thelinan religion (Similar to Earthly Buddhism), the greatest sign of enlightenment was losing all sense of self and sacrificing oneself for good of the collective, then becoming one with the universe. The nebula was the perfect embodiment of this. Lycorias sent a message back to the pirate leader.

"Thank you Captain, any assistance would be welcome at this time. If you would transmit the coordinates to their home system, we can sent a special message to these barbarians. We will transmit a message to all other ships to allow you to leave in peace, and our repair drones can repair any damage you may have. May your path be clear, and ever bountiful."

Ending the transmission, he ordered all fighter drones to roost back in their carriers, and moved the Reinforcing Fleet out of the nebula, taking special care not to disturb the grave of their fallen brother. Once out of the expanding gases, they opened a channel to all ships and all three Commandants sung a melancholy song, (a tradition when an admirable Theline dies) which echoed endlessly amongst the frequencies in the system, mixing with the background static from the nebula.

The Great Lord Tiger

15-04-2009, 05:41

This is the pirate frigate Baisin. IF you wish it, we can guide you on the path to the people who left your now-deceased ship and friend in that sorry state.
Oh, and i must say, that is a quite beautiful nebula.

The message sent by the Orinon captain did not go unnoticed. Picked up by -- well, intercepted by -- the Famine, its own CO studied it. Jeth was a quick thinker -- all Imglotian officers were. At that, all Imglotian soldiers were -- most of them were genetically-modified children raised to be warriors. Those who volunteered were even better. He determined the comrades of the dead vessel, and ignoring the Balroggan forces for the moment, sent a message to Rear Admiral Lycorias (not that he knew the name, but he had at least gathered the classification of the nation):

Thelinan Vessel,

I am Admiral Errol Jeth. I offer you the most sincere of condolences for this unfortunate incident. With our... hosts... being non-responsive, I wish to know if there is any assistance we could render you -- we have a full combat fleet available, both what you see in this dimension and holding in another. If there are any leads to who did this to your ship, we would gladly assist in vengeance.

Yes, we are manipulating the manipulatees being manipulated by the manipulators. I just want some war, dammit.

Orinon

15-04-2009, 05:48

Pulling up the coordinates from the ships data banks, the captain transmitted them to the Admiral, bid them good day, and proceeded to jump to another system, to continue their life of piracy.

OOC: From now on, pirate ships commanders will be called captains, and military ships commanders will be...well, commanders. :P

Balrogga

15-04-2009, 11:39

The Dead Pool:

"We forgive intrusion upon your territory, but we are severely concerned with the threat of overt action against our vessels for the mere act of defusing an escalating situation. As per Imglotian law, itself adapted from relatively recent Galactic Law, unless all hospitable planets have been colonized, at the minimum, within a system, claims of true possession are unwarranted. Claims of possession on the planets themselves are permitted, but a government can not claim a full system without first populating it. Imglot calls it the 'Flag in the Ground' clause -- just because you have a flag planted in an island with your little insignia on it doesn't mean you own the oceans for a 250 kilometer diameter.

Personally, I do not see this being a problematic system at all; you are free to guard the planet as you see fit, but unless we take action to attack or take control of the planet, you have no jurisdiction. Of course, Galactic Law is a relative thing, not all nations need to follow it, and this I will accept. However, be advised that to further claim ownership over an unpopulated system and threaten those within its borders with attack would be a most unwise choice on your part. To that end, we will hold our position."

Captain T’Neel could not believe his ears, if he had them in the first place. The meatbags with the inferiority complex that was so severe they had to build ships over two dozen kilometers long just refused to not only recognize Ta’Nar territorial claims but also to threaten them in their own territory.

After another metaphysical sigh T’Neel requested the channel being opened to reply to the brainless meatbag.

“Interesting. So you are attempting to claim our territory? That is not a wise thing to do. We have decimated stronger races than you for much less offense. I am assuming you are ignorant and I will provide simple instruction for you instead of removing your atoms from this universe.

First, this is not your territory. Your laws do not apply here. Period.

Second, if you are so concerned about possible threats against your ships, don’t bring them here and act like Ka-Chatkas. You came here seeking a fight and now you are overly concerned about threats against your ships. Do you even realize the Nova missile explosion you are claiming brought you here was fired by a ship that has already left before you even detected the explosion? If it is true you are so concerned about threats against your ships, move them away from our system and bring in a proper contact vessel.

Third, according to your own words, you cannot claim your own home system for I am certain you do not use every square meter of it otherwise your ships would be crashing together all the time. The interplanetary space is part of the system and we are currently inhabiting it therefore you are invading our interplanetary space. Remember, it is the part of the system you have to travel through to get from one ball of dirt to the next. Everything from the outer edge of the system’s Oort cloud is part of said system. In the event there is no cloud, the system edge will extend by definition until the star’s stellar wind is dissipated by the interstellar medium.

Fourth, it does not matter what you think. If you still have problems accepting this, remember the first instruction. This is not your home and your opinions and laws do not matter here when you come in and threaten to claim our territory. I should place multiple holes through your ship and the ones behind it for those words alone but I am feeling generous today.

Now, I will give you one more chance to fall in line with the program and remove your ships from our territory. Refusing to immediately follow these instructions will be considered a hostile act. You will be counted as firing the first shot and you will be obliterated.

I believe you will do the right and Honorable thing and place your vessels in the proper parking place as asked by your Hosts. Please don’t disappoint me by making me regret giving you this last chance.

The Despayre:

"Captain Morr'Son, I advise you to move your vessels approximately 10km away, as we are activating Biological Emergency Containment Protocols. Thank you for your assistance, our brothers and sisters will remember your kindness. May the Current grace your path."

This is Captain Morr’Son to Pasithea. Eject from the vessel and we will try to save you. There is no need to perish. There has to be a way.

Sir, they have terminated their signal. I am unsure if they have heard you.

Dammit!

Sir, I am reading a complete failure in their singularity core. Collapse is imminent.

Disconnect the umbilical. Take us away immediately.

Yes Sir, ship underway.

The sleek black form of The Despayre shot away from the stricken ship as parts of it began to implode. The singularity began to expand as fail-safes designed to keep it from doing just that were terminated and the Leaf Chorus was crumpled inward. A safe distance away Captain Morr’Son gave a moment of silence for the captain that sacrificed himself to stop the spread of the alien infection.

The Great Lord Tiger

15-04-2009, 15:35

“Interesting. So you are attempting to claim our territory? That is not a wise thing to do. We have decimated stronger races than you for much less offense. I am assuming you are ignorant and I will provide simple instruction for you instead of removing your atoms from this universe.

First, this is not your territory. Your laws do not apply here. Period.

Second, if you are so concerned about possible threats against your ships, don’t bring them here and act like Ka-Chatkas. You came here seeking a fight and now you are overly concerned about threats against your ships. Do you even realize the Nova missile explosion you are claiming brought you here was fired by a ship that has already left before you even detected the explosion? If it is true you are so concerned about threats against your ships, move them away from our system and bring in a proper contact vessel.

Third, according to your own words, you cannot claim your own home system for I am certain you do not use every square meter of it otherwise your ships would be crashing together all the time. The interplanetary space is part of the system and we are currently inhabiting it therefore you are invading our interplanetary space. Remember, it is the part of the system you have to travel through to get from one ball of dirt to the next. Everything from the outer edge of the system’s Oort cloud is part of said system. In the event there is no cloud, the system edge will extend by definition until the star’s stellar wind is dissipated by the interstellar medium.

Fourth, it does not matter what you think. If you still have problems accepting this, remember the first instruction. This is not your home and your opinions and laws do not matter here when you come in and threaten to claim our territory. I should place multiple holes through your ship and the ones behind it for those words alone but I am feeling generous today.

Now, I will give you one more chance to fall in line with the program and remove your ships from our territory. Refusing to immediately follow these instructions will be considered a hostile act. You will be counted as firing the first shot and you will be obliterated.

I believe you will do the right and Honorable thing and place your vessels in the proper parking place as asked by your Hosts. Please don’t disappoint me by making me regret giving you this last chance.

"Now hear this, fools." Jeth's smashed his hand into the arm of the chair, leaving a dent in the metal -- he was one of the genetically enhanced ones. "You seem to be making an explicit effort to ignore every damned word that I have said. To prevent myself from mentally snapping and doing something I might regret, I will answer your points individually.

To the first: I acknowledged the fact that GALACTIC COMMON LAW, and by extension, our own law (derived from it) is not a requirement to obey. To claim that we said otherwise would be most unsatisfactory.

Secondly, there is no reason to move away from this system, especially since that planet that you so boldly claim has no civilians for you to protect. In this case, your force is not a defensive one, by my reckoning, but could be deemed a one of conquest, since you are forcefully seizing an entire system otherwise unblemished by colonial peoples; the Immortal Lands make it a priority to terminate any and all fleets of conquest. By extension, unless you stand down immediately, we will be forced to take action. Do not make the mistake of thinking that we will take this planet for ourselves -- it is not any interest of the Immortal Lands at the moment, far as we are from the Tigerian Prime system, and by the time we extend this far, another world -- likely yours -- will hold it in their hands. Knowing your lies and likelihood to selectively hear, however, you will be convinced that what I just said was either a threat to destroy you now (without yourselves doing anything improper) and/or steal the territorial ambitions of your people. Neither is the case; as said previously, we are reactionary only, and we honor planetary space and claims, until a system is colonized.

Thirdly, by MY OWN WORDS, you presumptuous bastard, our home system is heavily populated by Tigerian citizens, thus making it our possession, since there are civilians colonizing the system. You pick and choose what you want to hear, it seems, and evidently this choice does not include the primary point of our communique. For that, I have no solution, for a species so unwilling to listen to what their -- dare I say it -- 'attackers' (I say that sarcastically, to honor your obvious predisposition to treat us as the conquerors) is one that never solves crises peacefully.

Your fourth point goes beyond the pale in what has been said up to this point. Even we haven't made overt threats to any one party, your beliefs and massive ego notwithstanding. Now, though, you're threatening to 'place multiple holes through our ship and the ones behind it', and yet we are incorrect for merely being in an UN-FUCKING-COLONIZED SYSTEM?!? And then you possess the audacity to say 'but I am feeling generous today.' How dare you make light of this situation, and act in such a manner? Do not presume upon your almighty powers too far, beings; I quite assure you, your 'advanced' defenses have another thing coming if you think you can repel our retaliation, should we be forced to defend ourselves. I do not care what reality-distorting bullshit you have going on -- the laws of physics can only be bent so far in this dimension.

That being said, until overt action is taken by another side, I will not even acquire targets, let alone enable and activate all weapons systems or, in the end, discharge weaponry. We leave the overt posturing to you, and I assure you, if even one offensive action is taken against us, and this fleet, though all your thousands of ships may come crushing down upon us for it, I will see you dead for your transgressions; for I am quite sure that our sensor take, and those of the other vessels in your system (of which, I see at least one other potentially military force whom have not themselves been browbeaten into subservience), will clearly indicate that we had not taken the first shot, and a claim to the contrary on your part would have some serious issue with the governing bodies of the galaxy.

You are not our hosts, because as an old Tigerian joke (of all things) goes, a man does not claim throw a party in 'his' house when it is an abandoned building. You do not have this system colonized, so you can hardly qualify as residents, let alone owners."

Red Talons

16-04-2009, 02:12

"Holy jesus... they overloaded their singularity core..." The sensors officer said in awe as they watched the fireworks.

"Reserve forces coming out of warp, feeding them current tactical data." There was a pause before one of the dreadnoughts responded. "This is the defense detail, we're forming up on you." The carriers captain nodded. turning back to the holographic display. "Send a broad range message." He paused.

"This is Commander Wilson of the carrier Independance to all ships in the system. We are here to mine this system for minerals and strip-mine its asteroid belts. The only planet we are interested in is the gas giant, whcih we need to gather hydrogen from to replenish fuel reserves. Any hostile action taken against any of our ships will be responded to In-kind and without warning. Once we are done here we will move along."

Space opened, a purple black rift spreading across space high above the system as 36 more vessels slipped out, the warships moving in alongside the carrier. The dreadnoughts moving infront of the carrier, the other ships taking up a defensive formation covering the noncom ships that proceeded to spread out on trajectories to the systems asteroid belts.

currently in system
1- Victory class carrier
2- Cutter class dreadnoughts,
4- drone frigates
8- Destiny class battleships
6- Wolf class missile cruisers
6- Kergerin class heavy cruisers
3- mk2 superfreighters
8- mining freighters
3- hospital ships

The Great Lord Tiger

16-04-2009, 02:15

"Tell ya what, Dead Zone," Jeth said angrily in a direct channel to the Balroggan ship to punctuate his previous transmission, "Why don't you go threaten to kill them? We're just sitting here. They're actually taking resources from your planet. Do explain the dichotomy, please."

Avenio

16-04-2009, 02:17

The Thelinan Admiral recieved the message from the pirate ship, and a little bit extra. He had copied the message from the pirates and extrapolated its frequencies. His technicians proceeded to craft something special from the transmission for the coming encounter with the Colonials. He transmitted a briefing to Dominion Aerospace Command, and they decided to send yet more reinforcements for a possible retaliation against the Colonials. Shortly afterwards, he recieved the hail from the Imglot fleet.
He then wired a response to the Imglot Admiral,

"Salutations Admiral Jeth. We appreciate the offer, but our repair drones can repair any damage that we may have. We have the coordinates to the Colonial home system, but they are doubtlessly expecting an attack on their home soon. We have additional reinforcements arriving soon, when they do arrive, we would welcome assistance in confronting these mindless savages.
Thank you for your time."

Thelinan 2nd Expeditionary Fleet - ORBAT

Dreadnought - Ascendant Peace - Commandant Eione
Frigates - ES-542 - ES-301

Command Dreadnought - Enlightenment - Admiral of the Fleet Pontus
Frigates - ES-143 - ES-827

Experimental Quantum Sapping Cruiser - Harmony - Commodore Nereus
Frigates - ES-076 - ES-941

The Surrogate

16-04-2009, 02:19

The Ex-sertian vessel reversed out of the Leafs choir as soon as it sensed that it couldnt stop the singularity's overload. The vessel dropped into warp an instant before the core went critical, taking a small chuck of the Leafs Choir with it.

It retreated from the system, deciding that there was too many varying contacts in the system to continue attempts at procreation.

TRIAD Enterprises

16-04-2009, 03:52

Halloran monitored the seemingly negligible damage their Impacters were making on the plague ship, but that worrying situation paled next to the readings coming from the Theline ship. Gravitic sensors read the resulting increase in field strength as the singularity containment was dropped. The DE didn't even have time to warn the crew of the Destiny's Horizon before the shockwave was upon them.

The construct mind raced to do what it could in the microseconds it had to react. Plasma shields were out of the question, there wasn't time to focus or move them into place. That left only magnetic shielding and a sudden increase in gravitic fields inside the ships to compensate for the massive "bang" the ship was about to experience.

For the Irukan captain, the sensation was what he imagined a giant hand suddenly grasping every cell in the body and holding it still as a sudden and massive wave smashed into the side of the ship. For a long moment his mind devolved into primal thinking, and he sounded franticly to try and orient himself.

Outside, the magnetic fields managed to divert the majority of the expanding plasma *around* the hull, but enough slammed into her side to send the small frigate spiraling away through space. Inside the ship plasma feeds overloaded and detonated. While the internal damage was relatively minor, it did serve to totally disable the plasma thrusters and the power feeds to the gravitic drive. The slow tumble through space continued as the ship drifted slowly away from the confrontation site.

Finally however Star Diver's mind managed to pull itself together, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the panicked echos sounding through the bridge, both his own and his podbrother's. ~Storm Breaker, are you injured?~

Storm Breaker struggled free of his station's harness and moved alongside, ~No podbrother. However I do not think Halloran is active, all but reserve power systems are disabled.~

Ratcheting in worry, the captain of the Destiny's Horizon swam clear of the helm station and moved over to sound the only active display tank. The ship's hull was intact, only minor armor scarring. The power systems were another matter; the expanding plasma front had overloaded their distribution system throughout eighty percent of the frigate. Primary power was out in all sections, and only life support and communications were fully operational. Shaking his head in a humanoid expression he'd picked up, Star Diver turned to his old friend, ~Try to send a distress call using the backup radio comms system. It looks like we're not going anywhere for a while.~

Broadband radio signal:
#To any friendly vessel in the area. We have experienced catastrophic system failures and are unable to navigate. We are requesting assistance from any source at soonest opportunity. This message will repeat in all known languages and response signal channel follows.#

The message then repeated in twelve different languages, including two local galactic trade languages, then finally ended with a mathematical representation of a radio frequency.

Balrogga

16-04-2009, 04:09

The Dead Pool:

Captain T’Neel chuckled to himself. The fool fell for the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. His continued argumentive stance guaranteed his doom as he had completely refused to comply with the Ta’Nar request to move their ships. In combat training this is called Passive Resistance and even private security forces patrolling corporate properties are allowed to escalate the situation without breaking any laws. There were plenty of chances for the obstinate fools to comply with both requests. It was clear the warships were here to practice a takeover using active and passive resistance thinking the Ta’Nar were afraid to make them move. Now they would see the Ta’Nar were not anyone to be fucked with, much to their sorrow. They were about to be evicted.

“Captain, captain, captain. I regret to inform you that since you have refused our two requests to move you are now forfeiting your vessels. Please exit out the nearest airlock in an orderly manner. Do not remove any gear for they are also forfeit and you shall be charged with felony theft. You are in our space and have refused to remove yourself. That means your stuff is now ours.”

“By intergalactic laws anyone engaging in acts of subversion or piracy against a sovereign nation shall forfeit their possessions to said nation. You are in our nation attempting to not only subvert our control of this system but by refusal to comply with our requests you have entered a new stage of stupidity. We thank you for your vessels, they will make great scrap iron or even gifts to some of the others here if they so wish. The other nations here have all removed their vessels from the immediate area at the request we issued, all but you.”

“If all power system but environmental do not immediately power down we will take matters into our own hands and forcefully evict you from our property, the vessels that used to belong to you. Every nation here is bearing witness to your actions.”

“Dead Pool out.”

Shipmind, establish a Space Minus Power Tap.

Right away, contacted Space Minus and made the connection. Power filling the transmitter and flooding through The Dead Pool.

Let’s see what they do next.

As the small ship established the power tap, energy flooded through the vessel filling every pathway it possessed. Systems were energized and energy literally seemed to arc and jump about the hull as the ship began to shine with power. Scans would reveal the levels increased exponentially from the already high readings of before.

Captain, I am detecting a number of arrivals>

Who are they now?

Our home fleet, it has been ten minutes since they left the Klaren System.

Throughout the system, wormhole after wormhole tore the space-time continuum asunder as they arrived. Battlegroup after Battlegroup arrived one after another almost as if they were endless, ehac bearing the telltale sensor readings that would soon drive the technicians crazy as their systems tried to adapt to the presences of additional solar masses in the system. Each Battlegroup was nineteen vessels headed by a monstrously huge (by Ta’Nar standards) vessel that could only be called an attack carrier. Each battle group contained eight Infernal Frigates (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/InfernalFrigate-2.jpg), four Interceptor Destroyers (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/Interceptor2.jpg), four Infiltrator Cruisers (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/Infiltrator1.jpg)two Impaler Battleships (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/kythonbattleship2.jpg), and a command carrier. Each fleet contained four 1,000 meter Intruder Carriers (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/intrudercarrier.jpg), three 3,000 meter Avatar Carriers (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/avatar.jpg), and a single 6,000 meter Deity Carrier (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/KythonDeityCarrier.jpg). In all, eight fleets of eight Battlegroups of nineteen ships had arrived; not counting the two ships already in the system and it was easy to see the tiny Infernal frigate standing defiantly in front of the IMLOT attack group was the smallest class of ship in the entire navy.

In the orbit of the fourth planet, four Dreadnaughts emerged from their own respective wormholes. Three of them were Hades Dreadnaughts (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/HereIAm.jpg)measuring five kilometers long and the largest was twice that at ten kilometers. This was clearly the flagship of the Ta’Nar, The Serendipity (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/Serendipity5.jpg)

Near the third planet, a wormhole deposited a huge vessel that was nearly fifteen kilometers in length. The Heart of Darkness (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/heartofdarkness.jpg)appeared as if it was salvaged from a larger vessel but it was clearly a Ta’Nar ship now.

In orbit near the moon something larger appeared. It was what can only be called a battlefortress. To be exact, it was called the Fist of Darkness (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/BlackstoneFortresssuperlargemoon-1.jpg)and it was the seat of Ta'nar power. It was forty five kilometers across and it was armed with four guns larger than most of the ships in the system. It was hard to think what those things would fire but if it hit, it would certainly hurt more than a little.

Three Battlegroups changed course and approached the alien battleships that was now Ta’Nar property. Under orders, they used their Drive Destabilizers and sent quantum fluctuations designed to mess with the fine balance drives have to operate causing them to shut down. It was effectively a single target FTLi that prevented them from operating and each of the intruding vessels had two defenders targeting them.

After the ships were secured, three of the fleets were assigned patrol duty. The remainder formed into defensive formations.

A message was sent to all the remaining nations in the system.

This is Nhur Galladu, the Warlord of the Fallen Empire. I wish to send a representative to each nation here. Please hold your activities until we have a chance to talk.

Avenio

16-04-2009, 04:24

Rear Admiral Lycorias picked up the distress beacon, and wired a transmission back.

"This is Rear Admiral Lycorias of the Theline Dominion. We apologise for the damage to your ship, as the commanding officer of the Leaf's Choir did not have time to notify every ship about the blast. We are sending a Dreadnought, Azure Dream, and its two companion frigates to assist you. We can have transport shuttles carrying repair servitors and replacement equipment within a few minutes, if you wish."

Just as specified, six transport shuttles carrying said equipment launched from a radial docking arm, having been previously loaded for repairs on Leaf's Choir before its tragic demise.

TRIAD Enterprises

16-04-2009, 04:38

The Destiny's Horizon continued to drift further away from the initial battle site, her repair systems were mostly down, and while the crew worked feverishly to restore main power, there was simply too much work to be done in such a short span of time. On the bridge Star Diver and Storm Breaker monitored the passive sensor systems, watching as they drifted further away from potential help, and incidentally they were drifting closer to the IMGLOT fleet.

"Podbrother, I'm getting a response to our beacon!" Storm Breaker's voice was edged with whistles of hope.

"This is Rear Admiral Lycorias of the Theline Dominion. We apologise for the damage to your ship, as the commanding officer of the Leaf's Choir did not have time to notify every ship about the blast. We are sending a Dreadnought, Azure Dream, and its two companion frigates to assist you. We can have transport shuttles carrying repair servitors and replacement equipment within a few minutes, if you wish."

Immediately Star Diver wired himself into one of the control stations and sent a response.

~Admiral Lycorias, I hope this message is recieved. Our communication systems are suffering from our power failures. At present we have only three hours of reserve power before everything short of life support fails. We would appreciate any assistance your vessel can render. There are two docking ports on the dorsal hull, just port and starboard of the central spine. At present our most urgent need is carbon fullerenes to replace the damaged plasma conduit linings. We may also need external power cells to restart the primary fusion core. One final note, we will have no propulsion control until power is restored. If you are able to halt our attitude spin, we would appreciate it. Thank you for your offer of aid, TRIAD will not forget this.~

And so the wounded ship tumbled through space.

The Great Lord Tiger

16-04-2009, 15:24

“Captain, captain, captain. I regret to inform you that since you have refused our two requests to move you are now forfeiting your vessels. Please exit out the nearest airlock in an orderly manner. Do not remove any gear for they are also forfeit and you shall be charged with felony theft. You are in our space and have refused to remove yourself. That means your stuff is now ours.”

“By intergalactic laws anyone engaging in acts of subversion or piracy against a sovereign nation shall forfeit their possessions to said nation. You are in our nation attempting to not only subvert our control of this system but by refusal to comply with our requests you have entered a new stage of stupidity. We thank you for your vessels, they will make great scrap iron or even gifts to some of the others here if they so wish. The other nations here have all removed their vessels from the immediate area at the request we issued, all but you.”

“If all power system but environmental do not immediately power down we will take matters into our own hands and forcefully evict you from our property, the vessels that used to belong to you. Every nation here is bearing witness to your actions.”

“Dead Pool out.”

As Jeth listened to the transmission, he watched the system fill with the nation's ships. He looked at the officer of the deck, a captain, and the other man had the same expression. What hypocrisy.

To the Dead Pool:

"Now, these is the sort of actions that I personally condemn -- forget the law." Jeth shook his head with something akin to pity as he spoke to them, perhaps for the last time as a living man, if they maintained their attitude. "After we told you that we will not engage your forces unless fired upon, and we did not even acquire targets or enable weapons systems, your ship still maintained a hostile stance; furthermore, you inevitably find yourselves empowered by the arrival of a large fleet of reinforcements. This is a joke. We have done absolutely nothing wrong by being in an unpopulated, uncolonized system, and yet we're being told by the newly-arrived neighborhood bullies to stop picking on them?

Cowardly, is what you are. Here I stand, against the consultation of all my subordinates, without even attempting to acquire a lock, let alone discharge weaponry, staring death in the face. On the other hand, you have remained belligerent, hostile, and completely unfair on any grounds of negotiation or situational diffusion. Not only that, but now you think yourselves the biggest kid on the block because you are conquering this system now, as evidenced by the aforementioned reinforcements. Regardless of the Immortal Lands' stand on system conquest, I know that I can't possibly stand against your innumerable forces, no more than a single ray of light can hope to make a dark room bright.

Your claims that we are attempting conquest fail on one simple element: reality. If we were actually attempting to take control of this system, would we not have engaged your forces already, or at the least, and most importantly, locked on to be ready to? And yet, have you detected any combat sensor emissions from our ships? Of course you haven't, but to be honest, you'll probably interpret our inter-ship combat link system as an overtly hostile act, since we're not allowed to be an armed fleet with all of its weapons locked up in the gun cabinet. Regardless, no active sensors have been initiated to target your ships, and passive sensors are pretty essential to not run into each other.

So, I'm going to end my transmission as such: with your threat of space piracy, you are the ones who are on the brink of breaching galactic law. If you even dare to approach our ships, or if we detect so much as a wayward piece of space junk that, to your misfortune, flies in a path from your pirate ships at us, we will engage to defend ourselves; if you hold your position, we will not. Quite simple, you see," Jeth finished quietly. "This is not your nation, because I see no citizens of your world here -- only a fleet hell-bent on domination. How sickening that you truly believe yourselves to be in the right, and then dare to project upon myself your willingness to spit at, not just galactic law, but simple decency. We will be leaving on our own time, without doing anything to any planets in this system, as I have already stated; and I will repeat myself one more time: Commit piracy against our persons, and it will be the last mistake you personally make, even if I die for it. I will see you punished in hell for your domineering actions, pirate."

"So." The fleet's strategic officer, Admiral Thomas Erntog, walked up to his old friend. This wasn't broadcast -- it couldn't be. "Errol, you walk a fine line, here."

"Have I yet engaged the fleet? Rule of Five, anyway." The latter was a relatively new systems package that disabled Imglotian weapons systems on board fleet ships; the fleet's commanding officer, plus four other ship commanders in the fleet, had to put in their own personal codes in order for weapons to be discharged, although targeting could still be acquired. This, of course, was automatically overridden when the fleet was attacked, and the point-defense weaponry and starfighters in the Raptors' bays weren't restricted. To this end, though, what Jeth had told them was truth: he wasn't engaging, and even though every other commanding officer in the Realspace part of the fleet had long since put in their own codes, he refused to. He would not break his word and take dishonorable action, even though he was staring liars, thieves, exaggerating bullies, and potential pirates and murderers in the face.

"Jeth -"

"Shut up, Tom," Jeth said. "No, we aren't going to bring in the rest of the fleet from Slipspace. Worst that could happen, they run home when they see what happened to us. They're relatively safe, and I would rather that some Imglot forces escape than none at all, if they continue to threaten and, in the end, engage us. We aren't going to send a message to Command, because even if all other fleets dropped what they were doing, including the Defense fleets, best we could do is... what, break even? Seven on our side against 8 on theirs. It's pointless."

"Listen, Errol," Erntog said earnestly. "I understand your passive resistance, but think about the Famine. Yes, it's cold to say so, but the importance of those other ships is virtually nothing compared to an Apocalypse-Class. You're making a huge mistake if you stand and fight -- and lose -- this ship."

"That's up to them, Tom," Jeth replied quietly, pointing at the view screens. "Make ready to leave in thirty standard minutes -- make sure that broadcast is on an open channel, as well as the inter-ship channel. Might help them realize that, first of all, we are willing to leave without engaging, as I have said repeatedly yet they completely ignore; but secondly, that we do not bend to the orders of plunderers. Unless we have enemy ordinance in the air," he finished, "we do not attack. We have the moral high ground, here, and if they're sane, they'll understand that. To be honest, though, they seem genuinely convinced that this system belongs to them, despite the lack of a national citizenry, and might just engage us like the madmen they're turning out to be. CrossSpace transmission," he added. "Transmit all data from approximately one hour ago to the Hawk. If we die, Quellus can take the information to Tigeria and the insert galactic organization here (GA? Galactic Assembly?). This galaxy won't stand for their overtly hostile actions, claims notwithstanding; I have stated multiple times that lack of civilians means that my presence in system space, away from any planet, is not something to be threatened with death for."

Avenio

16-04-2009, 15:55

The Theline Dreadnought and frigates began a slow orbit of the Destiny's Horizon. The six transports had approached the tumbling vessel, and docked with the TRIAD ship. Using their combined gravity drives, they reoriented the ship and began unloading repair servitors and auxiliary equipment. The servitors went to work with silent efficiency, using built-in scanners to detect damaged systems and immediately worked to replace them, starting with the installation of three fusion batteries, donated from the auxiliary power systems aboard the Azure Dream, and coating the damaged plasma conduit linings with a special organic resin that grew along the pathways, solidifying itself into a durable carbon composite as it spread.

Red Talons

16-04-2009, 18:20

On board the Independance, the captains jaw dropped as the holographic system map showed the new ships entering the system. The tactical officer gawking at his screens. "S...Sir....." The officer laughed a bit at what he was seeing. "There are now over 1200 contacts in the system, all new contacts have been labeled properly.." The sensors officer was a little slower to speak her part. "Sir.... sensors are having trouble adjusting to the twelve hundred new gravity wells....."

The captain nodded. "Record all sensor data, priority one. If this gets hot the tactical data will be priceless... have all ships standby weapons, general quarters. All non-com ships are to clear the engagement zone and standby for emergency jump protocols."

The Great Lord Tiger

16-04-2009, 19:18

The signal wasn't directed at them, but the Famine had powerful non-directional scanners that intercepted a diplomatic communique, of course not given to Imglot:

This is Nhur Galladu, the Warlord of the Fallen Empire. I wish to send a representative to each nation here. Please hold our activities until we have a chance to talk.

"Sir," the officer on deck said to Jeth fervently, "Low-power transmissions from our fleet ships indicate that they're dead!"

"What?" he called back.

"Yes, sir. Drive systems are offline... The carriers' bays are stuck open. And some reports of sporadic life support failure in the Plagues. Sir, they're going to die..."

Jeth's mind clouded. Piracy was one thing, but this was truly murder. Perhaps this Warlord would listen to his words, because this whole nation seemed to be under a twisted vision of him saying that he was going to conquer the system. By the Great Lord, he was going to die because of the insanity of a few men. How bitter... the first Imglotian deaths in naval combat had taken place because of a Tigerian admiral's belief that he had exclusive right to the system he had found himself in, and had gotten his fleet decimated. Too bad that the madmen in this case would take no such lesson.

Taking a deep breath, he opened a communication channel to Galladu, maybe the fleet's last chance for survival.

"Honorable Warlord Galladu,

I am Admiral Errol Jeth of the Imm-- no. I am Errol Jeth, citizen of Tigeria. I know that you see us as pirates and thieves, and are probably confused as to how we have your channel. Well, despite your unwillingness to treat us as people, we got your message.

I understand perfectly the situation we are in, and what you have been told by your subordinates. Please, though, listen to my words. Because of your world's orders, I have starfighters -- whom were flying in completely defensive postures and carrying weaponry of no danger whatsoever to your forces -- floating in space, unable to return to their carriers and, if we are forced to leave, stuck here. There are something around 200 pilots out there, Warlord, all of them at risk of death. I have reports from my other ships that life support has failed in some of the ship environments. Accordingly, we have people dead on board our ships.

Heed what I say, if for no other reason than to humor yourself before destroying us so unmercifully and cruelly. We have done absolutely nothing wrong. We are in a system where there are no peoples of your race that are under threat; furthermore, we have not made any moves to attack the planets that you have claimed, nor to exert any territorial ambition. We merely sat here in space, with all weapons systems disabled even if we tried to engage -- I will transfer the mechanism details to you, if you wish -- and continued to say we were innocent, which we are. We are in system space, yes, but far away from any one planet. And yet, we were accosted by your forces and instructed to leave empty space like criminals, and when we refused that, told that we were pirates and, in turn, pirated by your forces. How is that in any way just? I take it from your title and what I have seen of your culture that it is one of honor and tradition. Tell me, Warlord, is killing a man in the neighborhood you are going to move into for having a locked gun cabinet an honorable action? Because right now, there are hundreds of deaths of my people on your hands, and that could be considered an act of war. In spite of that, I stand here, still neutral, still non-offensive, and ask you to do the same.

I am forwarding all communiques and sensor readouts from our ship to you via this channel. You likely will not read it, but I wish for you to still take note of the complete lack of all weapons systems, both targeting and ordinance delivery, in active function. I will be quite frank, Warlord: your people are about to exterminate thousands of lives for doing absolutely nothing to threaten your people or, barring that, your property. Perhaps yours is a culture which does not place as high a value on life as others -- I say that not to be insulting, but to acknowledge differing viewpoints, just as I acknowledged that Galactic Law is a guideline rather than a true law for people of the galaxy. That is another thing you will see in those readouts.

I make this appeal directly to you, Warlord, because I feel that the supreme decision to murder thousands should lie in your hands, and not in those of your officers. Are the lives of innocent men and women of my fleet -- innocent, yes, because we have done NOTHING! -- worth killing because of a flawed image? Why is it so hard to understand that I can't shoot at you even if I wanted to? And yet we are going to die because you think that we were threatening your ships, and somehow, extrapolated that we were threatening your homeworld.

I thank you for your time, if you listened to this, Warlord Galladu.

Admiral Errol Jeth, Immortal Lands of the Great Lord Tiger"

When he finished, Jeth put down the communicator, his hands shaking, and felt an overwhelming need to vomit. He ran to the garbage can at the end of the deck, and made it just in time.

"This isn't about me," he choked as Erntog walked up and smacked him on the back.. "If these people are convinced that we are hostile, and we jump back to Tigeria -- what's to stop them killing our people?" He looked up, expression grim, eyes full of... despair. "Tom, I don't think we have a choice now. I'm sorry that I got us into--"

"Enough. You're right. If we leave now, after our protests of innocence, then they might assume we're a thief running away. We aren't the criminals here. Besides," he added, "do you think I want to leave our people behind, either?"

Jeth shook his head. "CrossSpace transmission," he said. "They won't detect it. Tell Quellus to run home. There's still some lives that can be saved."

An odd radiation, undetectable by conventional sensors, leaped from a communications mast -- and vanished. In fact, it had breached the dimensional veil and was now traveling as a 'normal' wavelength signal to Captain Quellus, still in SlipSpace and wondering what was going on -- he had received a backup download of the Famine's records, and that was never a good sign. The new transmission simply said:

RETURN TO TIGERIA

DO NOT BREACH SLIPSPACE UNTIL YOU ARE IN SYSTEM.

JETH OUT.

TRIAD Enterprises

17-04-2009, 01:32

Star Diver watched the limited sensor bands as the Theline ships latched onto the Destiny's Horizon's hull and stopped their tumble and drift. Letting out a long whistle as he contacted the engineering team to let them know the alien repair crews would be boarding soon.

As the silent sevitors moved into the ship, they would find smoothly curved corridors layed out laterally along the ship's spine. The air was thick with a heavy mist which if analyzed showed it to be a super-oxygenated fluid. One of the Destiny's Horizon's crewmembers 'swam' past. At first glance the being appeared to be a member of Tursiops Truncatis, the Bottlenose Dolphin, however a second look would reveal the subtle differences; where Tursiops had only one pair of forward ventral fins, the Irukan had two forward pairs and a third closer to the tailflukes, the dorsal fin was taller and more sharply wedge-shaped, instead of one pair of eyes this being had two. It's skin was a gradient of dark cyan and ocean blue, and blue-black tattoos snaked their way across a third of it's body. Finally, the being seemed to be wearing some kind of harness which covered most of it's back, from which extended multiple mechanical appendages.

The Irukan swam past without seeming to notice them, followed by another of it's kind and what looked like a mechanical hybrid between an octopus and a squid. The latter two noticed the boarding party and stopped, curving easily through the air as if they moved through water. The second Irukan let out a series of high-pitched whistles and shrieks in it's native Trinary. The machine responded, then a mechanical, masculine voice came from the machine, speaking a variant of Instella, #Greetings. It is hoped that you are able to understand this language. If you understand, please follow us to the central engineering compartment.#

The Irukan swam off right away, while the machine waited for an indication of understanding before leading the way down the corridors to the Engineering airlock.

Avenio

17-04-2009, 01:55

((OOC: Ok, thanks TRIAD. We'll say that the organic resin dies as soon as it hardens, so it would just show up as a carbon layer on the inside of the plasma conduits, and the servitors are built to perform repairs in aquatic environments anyways, as many of the main systems on the Dreadnoughts are tied into the central marine habitat, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue getting to the central spine hopefully.))

Avenio

17-04-2009, 01:57

The Theline command ship, the Enlightenment, rapidly decelerated out of relativistic speed, and along with its slightly smaller sibling the Dreadnought and the 600m (tiny in comparison) Quantum Sapping Cruiser moved into defensive formation around the Destiny's Horizon. Shortly after bringing main systems online, Admiral of the Fleet Nereus picked up a transmission from the newly-arrived Fallen Empire armada;

This is Nhur Galladu, the Warlord of the Fallen Empire. I wish to send a representative to each nation here. Please hold our activities until we have a chance to talk.

He quickly wired a transmission to the Warlord;

"Salutations Warlord Galladu, we would welcome diplomatic talks at this point, as the system is getting quite crowded. We hope that the other powers in the system would do the same."

Orinon

17-04-2009, 02:12

There was a flash of light and suddenly, in the middle of the system, there was a 2.4km long Battlestar.

In the Battlestar, Group 89, Bloody Mary's CIC, everything that could make noise did, as the sensors were damn near overloaded by the sheer amount of ships in the system.
"Sir! Blind jump complete, but by the looks of it, that pirate ambush would of been better then the clusterfrak we just jumped into,"said a navigation techy.
"Oh bloody hell! What is this? First contact heaven?!"shouted Commander Kara Maraina, shaking her head in dismay.

For its part, the Bloody Mary sat there, almost dumbfounded.

Avenio

17-04-2009, 04:51

Once again, an unknown vessel popped into existence in the system. The Enlightenment scanned the vessel, and determined, again, it to be of Colonial origin. Bringing weapons and shields online, he sent a message in Galactic Basic to the Battlestar.

"Unknown Colonial vessel, this is Fleet Admiral Nereus of the Theline Dominion. Your drive configuration and emissions spectroscopy match a vessel that attacked a Dreadnought in this system. You are hereby requested to shut down your engines and submit to a cursory inspection of your vessel and to further questioning as to the identity of the attacking vessel. Thank you for your time."

Twelve heavy transport drones carrying a platoon's worth of combat and assault servitors launched from Enlightenment, guarded by a further squadron of fighter drones, aiming for the nearest flight pod or service port.

Orinon

17-04-2009, 05:20

"Sir, One of the ships is sending us a message, but the coms are frakked up. its coming through as gibberish,"said the coms techy.
"Frak! They are launching what look like transport ships and fighters at us!" shouted Maraina's XO.
"Fire on them! Keep them from landing in the flightpods! Get all Marines to action stations at the flightpods! Get birds in the air! And for fraks sake get the FTL spun up!" ordered Maraina.

The Bloody Mary's cannons roared to life and started spewing fire at the incoming drones, while Falconite fighters began launching out of launch tubes in the side of the Battlestar and started swarming around the Battlestar, trying to pick off any drones that got past the Veken cannons.

Avenio

17-04-2009, 05:43

((OOC: If I'm being too presumptuous, let me know))

Four of the twelve transports were taken out in the first barrage, with the other eight dodging and weaving madly to avoid the anti-aircraft cannons and fighters on an intercept course. Another two were taken out by well-placed shots from the Falconites, while the remaining six carried on course, their escort fighter drones dogfighting with the numerically-superior Falconites.

Meanwhile, on Enlightenment, missile accelerators fired a select volley of four fusion warheads towards the nearest flightpod and its adjacent AA batteries. Several squadrons of fighter and bomber drones leapt from their roost on the ship, and dove towards the Battlestar.

The Great Lord Tiger

17-04-2009, 05:48

Jeth glanced at the viewports to see streaking enemy fighters streaming from the bays of a newly-arrived ship, and as he watched, what seemed to be dropships from the Thelinans were charging the vessel.

"Oh, dear," he said dryly, "As if our day weren't good enough."

"Should we--"

"No weapons systems, Captain. You know the standing order."

Orinon

17-04-2009, 06:01

Falconite fighters continued to launch from the Battlestar, until all 5 Air Groups, each having 15 fighters in it, had been launched. Along the sides of the ship, Sephron anti missile cannons came to life, spewing fire at the incoming missiles, knocking 3 out of the air. The 4th got through and detonated on the portside flightpod, scarring the pod and tearing a small hole in the side of it. It was clear by now that the Bloody Mary was made of tougher stuff then the Unforgiven. By now, its engines were coming online and pushing the Battlestar along, turning it so its alligator head was pointed towards the nearest Dreadnought. Along the sides of the Battlestar, M.A.H.C cannons started firing at the other Dreadnoughts, but it didn't take a tactical genius to work out that the Battlestar planned to ram the dreadnought in front of it. Then, as it poured fire at the other dreadnoughts, the Blood Mary went to full flank speed, and rammed the Enlightenment in the centre axis of the dreadnoughts arms.

OOC: yes, i ripped it from the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. Get over it.

TRIAD Enterprises

17-04-2009, 09:14

The Destiny's Horizon's engineering team worked alongside the Theline servitors, efficiently and quickly restoring the ruptured power conduits and fried systems. When the repairs were completed, the fusion batteries were hooked up to the ship's primary reactor. There was still some reserve neutronium fuel aboard, and almost a third of this was used alongside the fusion batteries to jump-start the primary reactor. This in turn would restart the other two reactors.

As fresh plasma flowed through the energy grid, systems which had been dark flickered to life. On the bridge, Halloran's avatar sputtered once, then stabilized as the DE's datalinks were restored and it's awareness spread through the ship again. ~Captain. It is good to be online again. There is some minor hull damage, however this can be regenerated in short order. Do you have any orders?~

Star Diver shook his head and clicked to himself, ~No Hal. Please send a transmission to Admiral Lycorias on the Theline ship. Tell him we are back online and will be under way soon. Also, if they can give us some idea of what is happening while we've been dark, we'd appreciate it.~

Halloran complied with the captain's orders, transmitting the message to the Theline ships. As the frigate licked it's wounds clean, active sensors swept through local space, gathering as much data as they could to try and catch up on what they'd missed.

Balrogga

17-04-2009, 11:18

The message from Nhur-Galladu was returned to the held ships after a very long minute.

“I will release your carriers from the destabilizers so you can land your ships. After that you need to board a shuttle and proceed to The Serendipity so we may speak upon this. I will be expecting your arrival short…”

His transmission was interrupted by the appearance of the Battlestar in the middle of the system near another of the alien ships. A short exchange of words passed between them followed by open firing commenced along with several exchanges from fighter craft. Nhur-Galladu again addressed the stricken ships.

“If you wish to earn your freedom I will give you the chance. Assist in removing this interruption and I will free the rest of your ships. After that I wish to speak to you.”

Nhur-Galladu turned away from the communications array after it was disabled and faced the representative of the Red Talons.

“As I was saying, I will grant you the mining rights for the gas giant if you assist in defending this system while we are here. Our work will be finished in several hundred hours provided all these Ka-Chatka doesn’t keep interfering. I will also allow the asteroid belt nearest the current orbital position of the gas giant in your mining rights. Depending upon the way things work out there may be additional bonuses given…”

Avenio

18-04-2009, 00:47

The Enlightenment's shields buckled under the impact of the Battlestar, and the prow of the Colonial vessel plowed through six decks before coming to rest. After recovering from the initial shock and decompression, Admiral Pontus ordered combat servitors to the affected decks to repell potential borders. The other Dreadnoughts proceeded to bracket the Battlestar, launching approximately 60 fighter and bomber drones and four squadrons of transports carrying more assault servitors towards both flightpods. The Enlightenment's short-range railgun emplacements opened up on the Battlestar, and its missile accelerators launched fusion missiles at point blank.
The six transports had made it in relatively good condition to the docking ports in the nearest flight pod, and begun unloading assault servitors, which proceeded to the closest airlock.

A team of servitors (http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/ServitorBoarding.jpg) unloading off of a transport.

Orinon

18-04-2009, 01:02

The Bloody Mary's guns re-targeted when the boarding transports got too close, and started firing high explosive shells and hydrogen charges at the dreadnought at point blank range. Inside the flightpod, Marines began to engage the attacking servitors, using a combination of assault rifles and lever action shotguns loaded with armour piecing shells to combat the robots.
Outside, the Battlestar continued to take a pounding from the fighters and bombers, but it seemed to ignore the fire and continued pounding the Enlightenment with high explosives and hydrogen charges. On one of the arms of the dreadnought, a hydrogen charge pieced the hull and entered a unvented deck, where its true power was shown. The hydrogen charge cracked open, unleashing a burst of compressed hydrogen. Then a secondary explosion ignited the hydrogen, blowing a sizable hole in the dreadnoughts hull.

Avenio

18-04-2009, 01:42

The servitors fought back against the marines, using a mixture of antipersonnel rounds and their impressive speed and melee abilities, and attempted to push towards the engineering section.

The hydrogen charge split the radial arm like a ripe fruit, and set off a small munitions depot, spraying the surrounding space with exploding munitions. Two chunks of the arm flew off into the surrounding space, one striking another Dreadnought, which overloaded several shield emitters and took out power to two decks.

Two of the transports were blown out of the sky by the AA turrets, but the remaining two landed in the opposite flight pod and unloaded more servitors.
The servitors in Enlightenment proceeded to place detonation charges on the service airlocks in the embedded prow of the ship, and attempted to board from the crumpled impact zones, and the Dreadnought's missile accelerators and railguns continued to pour fire point-blank into the Battlestar.

Orinon

18-04-2009, 01:50

The Bloody Marys Marines fought the servitors to a standstill outside the flightpods, holding them off with turrets and grenades, laying mines along the corridors of the Battlestar in their wake. By now, the Battlestar was showing signs of damage, and the Commander had set off the Mary's distress becon, sending out a massive pulse that any Battlestars and Auron classes would pick up and, hopefully, come running.
Meanwhile, the Bloody Mary's commander had decided to start fighting dirty. Along the sides of the Battlestar, panels opened and started launching nuclear missiles at the surrounding dreadnoughts, including 2 at the Enlightenment at point blank range.

OOC: War time. More ships coming in in the next few posts.

Avenio

18-04-2009, 02:19

((OOC: This is my first boarding action, if you think I'm being unrealistic, just let me know, and I'll change it))

The servitors dug in to their current positions, and began using deployable cover and their own turrets. As a final resort, they deployed large EMP charges, and if they were overrun, they would detonate, hopefully disabling some of the ships systems, but it would fry any other servitors still within the Battlestar.

Most of the nuclear missiles detonated against the other Dreadnought's shields, blowing out several power relays and heavily scarred the hulls of the vessels affacted.
The two nuclear missiles aimed at the Enlightenment detonated near the center of the radial arms, decompressing several compartments and severly damaging the organic hull in the affected areas. Admiral Nereus had had enough of the barrage, and brought Enlightenment's gravitic engines online and tore the larger Dreadnought away from the ship, taking a large part of the shattered superstructure with it. He then brought the ship's shields online and sealed off the damaged decks.

The Admiral then proceeded to blast the Battlestar with its ultraviolet arrays, then launched a barrage of missiles.

Orinon

18-04-2009, 05:40

The Battlestar shock almost in anger, then its sublights kicked in again and it chased after its wounded prey, all the while blasting it with its weapons. Again, the CIC experienced power surges when the ultraviolet bursts hit, and the Sephron cannons and the fighters made short work of most of the missiles. Meanwhile, there were small flashes of light in the distance as a small fleet jumped in. At the helm of it, was a Battlestar, even bigger then the Bloody Mary. Surrounding it was 3 Auron class frigates, the 600 metre long frigates dwarfed by the Battlestar. Activating its 10 sublight engines, it moved to cut off the Enlightenment and attack it from behind, the smaller frigates in tow.

Fleet responding to Bloody Mary's distress beacon.
The Picon- Endeavour Class Battlestar, 2.8km long
CS231,CS324,CS657- Auron Class frigates, 600 metres long.

The Great Lord Tiger

18-04-2009, 05:50

"Now's the time," Jeth said quietly as new contacts moved in. The Plagues had radioed in a full system recovery, and the carriers were picking up the starfighters. He had a 'debt' to pay, though. "Weapons, lock onto new targets."

"Enable weaponry, sir?" he heard through the intra-ship comms.

"Not quite yet. Communications," he said, switching channels, "Contact those ships, all frequencies, wavelengths, and languages. Send the following message." He dictated a short notice:

Unknown vessels,

Effective immediately, you will cease any and all combat operations. Failure to comply will result in your imminent demise. I have the express permission of -- and request to -- remove non-resident fleets from this area, and that includes yourselves. Failure to comply will result in nothing short of a complete and total annihilation.

"Weapons," he said quietly, "Gamma-2-Beta-42-Alpha-73-Tau-96-Sigma-38-Omega." With that string of random codes, the active acquisition programs sprang to life. The Rule of Five program was successfully complete. All weaponry was now ready for combat.

Avenio

18-04-2009, 06:09

The five Dreadnoughts bracketing the Bloody Mary detected the approach of the Colonial fleet, and began with a combined ultraviolet burst on the largest ship, then launched fusion missiles from all batteries, around 120 in all.

The Enlightenment's shields took the brunt of the damage, but several power systems were brought down, and damage control servitors were still flushing out hydrogen from the damaged radial arm. Seeing as he might not win this fight, he authorised the Harmony to assist. Harmony was a prototype, rushed off the Fleetyards to assist in the conflict. Instead of a microsingularity core driving it, it had an atom-sized accretion-powered pulsar inside of gravitic restraints. By dumping alpha particulate into it, the ship could spin the neutron star into becoming a pulsar, allowing it to harvest the large amounts of radiation emitting from the core into shield or weapons power. During testing, the X-ray arrays were particularly potent, and by using gravity lenses, the ship could channel large amounts of exotic radiation into powerful lances of energy. The ship, however, has a definite amount of fuel, and generates an excess of ionized hydrogen, which needs to be expelled frequently and overusing the X-ray arrays or too much damage to the shield could overload the containment systems, and could create an out-of-control pulsar.

The Harmony flew beside the Enlightenment and targeted the Bloody Mary. An immense amount of radiation and gravitic warping could be detected inside the vessel, and twin lances of blinding energy shot out of the vessel, towards the engine pods of the Battlestar.

The Great Lord Tiger

18-04-2009, 06:11

"Thelinan vessels, stand down against the newest arrivals," Jeth said over a communication channel to the named fleet. "We have issued an ultimatum. If they attack, we will engage. It is handled."

Orinon

18-04-2009, 06:30

The Bloody Mary having already taken a pounding, had had enough, and jumped out of the system as the beams closed in. Any ship too close to the Battlestar when it jump would experience some amount of hull scarring due to the amount of energy used in the jump. It arrived back home in the Tarnia system, where it's commander started to tell its tale, all the while the Marines fought to destroy the servitors still onboard.

Meanwhile, the Picon launched al of its 8 combat groups of fighters, totalling in at 120 fighters swarming around the Battlestar. They then moved to intercept the missiles with their own, knocking out about 45 missiles. As the rest closed in, however, the Picon did something unexpected. It jumped away from the missile barrage and reappeared right along side the Enlightenment, blowing a good chunk of one of the arms off as it reappeared. It then sat there for a moment, then began raining hell on the enlightenment, The Auron classes moving as fast as their 4 sublight engines could move them to join the battle.

OOC: Not too unreasonable, is it?

The Great Lord Tiger

18-04-2009, 06:38

"Laughable," Jeth said, looking at the 'mighty' battleship of these underdeveloped fools' fleet. "Well and truly laughable. And they have ignored our attempts at diplomacy. Well, so be it. Ready a Ragnarok round."

The Ragnarok cannon, operating under typical Gaussian Principles, functions using a series of powerful electromagnets. They change polarization almost instantaneously, forming a tube of magnets that, at first, pull the projectile, and then switch charge, pushing the charged projectile forward. This enables the object to reach astronomical speeds, approaching about 1/2 the speed of light. The projectile is constructed in a cone-like shape designed to puncture, and is filled with incredibly radioactive Polonium. This makes the round glow with an eerie blue light, and adds additional destruction to an otherwise standard kinetic weapon. An Apocalypse-Class had ten, and all other ships in his fleet (with the exception of the carriers) held 1 or 2.

"Target's course plotted."

"Match bearings and fire one," Jeth said. With the massive size of the ship, he couldn't even hear the massive buzzing noise of the electromagnets as they accelerated the projectile, like he would have on a smaller ship. Even so, he alternated between watching a display projecting the round's course and looking in one of the artificial viewports to track the brightly-glowing blue round's progress.

"I think it's going to--" weapons began, and Jeth nodded.

"Miss right." The round streaked by the rear end of the enemy's largest ship, probably barreling through a few of the wasp-like fighters along the way. "Well, this gives them a warning shot, and also improves our aim somewhat. Same cannon, adjust angle accordingly."

Orinon

18-04-2009, 06:42

OOC: OK, one and only warning Tiger: TONE DOWN THE HEAVY STUFF!!! That gun of yours kinda comes under my definition of 'lazor/gun of doom'

The Great Lord Tiger

18-04-2009, 06:50

OOC: OK, one and only warning Tiger: TONE DOWN THE HEAVY STUFF!!! That gun of yours kinda comes under my definition of 'lazor/gun of doom'

OOC: It ain't a gun of doom. And it missed. Our weapons have only one setting, you know: powerful. Let's see here, pick your poison...

-Ragnarok Coilgun
-Despair Missile Batteries (1-megaton Fusion Warhead missiles)
-Banshee Nova Missiles (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of conventional explosive yield)

Okay, the Ragnarok can be loaded with normal slugs from now on -- they're multifunctional. Will that make you feel better?

TRIAD Enterprises

18-04-2009, 08:55

While the Destiny's Horizon's systems were recovering from the damage, events were unfolding chaos surrounding the comparatively tiny frigate. While their drift had thankfully brought them some distance away from the Theline ships, it was still far too close to the ensuing battle for Halloran's comfort. ~Captain, we have a serious situation here. It appears that another unknown contact has started a major battle with the Theline fleet. So far we have not been engaged, however the combatants are drifting this way.~

Star Diver and Storm Breaker listened to the time-compressed replay in the sonar tank; Hal was right, the battle was definitely moving closer. ~Halloran! Are our drives and shield systems operational?~

The avatar nodded, ~Drives are fully operational. Plasma vents and focusing arrays are online, however it will take time to rebuild our plasma reserve. We can only maintain twenty percent shield strength for the next fifteen minutes.~

~Understood, it will have to be enough. Bring the shields online, start vectoring for any possible inbounds. Get us clear of this maelstrom! Signal those Theline transports to undock immediately! We'll have to return the Theline personel if and when things quiet down.~ Star Diver was already swimming for the helm station, slipping into the control harness and feeling the neural interface connect with his cranial socket. His senses became one with the ship as he watched the transports hastily disengage.

The rough teardrop shaped bioship prepared itself for surviving the chaos, it's skin rippling as the hull reconfigured for anti-kinetic armoring. Pulling into a steep climb on the Z axis, the frigate accelerated to 40 PSL to try and get clear of the battle between the Colonials and the Theline.

When the small ship broke free of the carnage, it transmitted a tightbeam message to the Theline flagship, indicating galactic coordinates where the Destiny's Horizon could be contacted to see the return of their personell still aboard the frigate. Hopefully some of the Theline ships would survive this madness so they might yet make official contact.

As the Destiny's Horizon raced to the nearest sliptream point, a similar transmission was sent to the Balrogga vessels for the same purpose. Perhaps something could yet be salvaged of this mess. And with that, the small TRIAD frigate entered slipstream and raced to another star system a few parsecs away.

((OOC: Alright, this is my stop. No way I can make much impact in this fight. The invitation is open for Avenio and Balrogga to send someone HERE (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=14712283) and make official contact.))

Sertian

18-04-2009, 11:38

Location: New Port Station, 4 parsecs out from the Galactic Rim

“Well, this was quite unexpected…” Admiral Zephra spoke as she read through the report, the ACTIVE report of what was going on. One of her frigates, had happened to come across a scene and, to much credit of Low Commander Kazia, managed to sneak a sensor probe around the orbit of one of the planets. The probe had been knocked out by some sort of nuclear explosion utilized by the hostile vessel, but now it was once again operational, transmitting valuable tactical and diplomatic data right into the Colonial Commands data banks. “TRIAD, Red Talons, the Federation, and a few other powers we don’t know of. Damn Kazia outdid herself with this find.”

“Indeed, there are thousands of ships now in the area - most of them seeming to belong to a power that calls themselves the Immortal Empire. The Immortal Empire appears to be the most technologically advanced power in the system now, even though they’ve only demonstrated rudimental, by Milky Way Standards mind you, energy weapons,” another voice said, apparently either one of her advisers or some important Commissar under her direct command. He wasn’t that important though, certainly not meriting a name at this point in time.

“Interesting… Given how quickly they stepped up to defend their claimed territory it seems unlikely that they are a pacifist people. Perhaps they merely don’t believe in overkill and are only using weapons on their opponents level?”

“Could be Sir,” the Commissar spoke once again. “But that is hardly the point, it’s obvious that this situation is quickly going to grow out of control. A single frigate can’t keep up with the activities in this system alone, yet alone a war that seems to be developing.”

“Agreed… I have spoken to Trillano on this matter, we have authorized that four squadrons reassemble for use, just in case. In additional, fourteen other vessels, ten Scrupulous-Class and four Ascension-Class, are to report for scouting duty in the afflicted territory,” the mention of the Grand Admiral’s name seemed to disturbed the Commissar on some level, perhaps it was only because his name was used informally, or it might have just been how, whenever he had seen their leader for this expedition, he had always seemed distant, lost in thought… As if he was above such mortal things they were dealing with and thought of them akin to ants…

“Err… Yes Zephra… Four squadrons and 14 other vessels for a total of 214 vessels. I assume these ships will be coming from your Beta Division?”

“Yes, notify the Commissars in charge of squadrons 31delta, 18beta, 128omega, and 85sigma. More detailed orders will be given to them in due time, but they are to immediately reassemble their fleets and to report to the area of interest - and to remain in the Drift at all times.”

“Yes Sir. Is there anything else, Admiral?”

The Admiral, the only non-Sertian Admiral in the history of the Sertian Armada grinned. A Selac who’s mind was as sharp as her reflexes, and her age quite young for a women of her rank. “That will be all Commissar.”

Avenio

18-04-2009, 16:17

((OOC: Orinon: Perfectly alright. Imglot: Your weapon comes under the classification of an RKV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKV) (Relativistic Kill Vehicle), which, like its name suggests, is incredibly powerful. A way to power it down a bit would be to make it a "burst" RKV, which, like some artillery shells, explodes before impact, showering an area with tiny relativistic-speed pieces of shrapnel, which would be a lot easier for a Battlestar or Dreadnought to absorb.))

The servitors aboard Bloody Mary detected the fact that they had jumped away, and detonated their EMPs, frying the Battlestar's systems.

The Enlightenment shuddered once more under the impact of the weapons, and another of its radial arms was torn asunder. All four of the Dreadnoughts proceeded to launch a full barrage of missiles, around 150 in total. Harmony also proceeded to send out another set of twin lances of exotic radiation, again targeted at the Battlestar's engines.

Red Talons

18-04-2009, 20:04

The captain of the Independence nodded, turning to the tactical officer. "Target the colonial battlestar, all ships, fire at will." The 27 warships opened fire on the battlestar and its escorts, an instant later it jumped out, the others jumping in.

"Sir, new colonial contacts." The sensors officer called out. The holo map updating. The captain nodded. "Looks like they're using fighter cover. All ships, load M-K-2's and fire a full barrage, hold any other fire untill the missiles do their job."

Over eleven hundred missiles flew from the hulls of the Red Talons ships. Each one angling its trajectory at the colonial ships, traveling a few kilometers before each one burst into hundreds of micro-missiles. The now four hundred, fifty three thousand six hundred pop can sized missiles dancing through space as they homed in on their targets. Targeting any falconites in the area, then the battlestars guns, then its escorts guns.

The captain smiled and watched the missiles accelerate across the expanse. "Spread our formation out a bit, i dont want us being to clustered together."

Orinon

18-04-2009, 23:51

The Picon, being bigger then the Mary, was also faster. The Battlestar moved to start circling the Enlightenment, pounding it with its cannons, and inadvertently dodging the beams targeted at the engines. The Falconites, realising that they were being targeted be the missiles, spun around and charged the Independence, missiles in tow. The Auron classes weren't so lucky; They got hammered by the missiles, and were left without most of their weapons. The Picon's anti missile cannons, however, made short work of any of the missiles still coming for it, with only a few getting through, and those detonated harmlessly against the sides of the Battlestar.

Meanwhile, the Bloody Mary was disabled as the EMP hit its Thyrium reactor, shutting it down. The Fleet Commander, realising that one of the most powerful Battlestars in the fleet had been disabled, and another had been crippled in the same system, decided that enough was enough, and sent 10 Battlestars to the system.

By now, the second lot of missiles targeting the Picon had come into range, but with almost no fighters to stop the incoming fusion missiles, the anti missiles cannons were not as effective, with about 80 of the missiles knocked out, with the rest detonating against the Battlestars side, rocking it and tearing a sizable hole in the hull, venting several decks.

OOC: Tiger, tone down weapons, or get outta my thread.

The Great Lord Tiger

19-04-2009, 00:13

I can't 'tone down' anything, because that's the way my tech is. Look at my Military Factbook. It's all there. I wasn't listing that shit to be cool or impressive -- those are the ONLY WEAPONS I HAVE. Our directed-energy weapons (read: laser cannons, etc) are point-defense only. There are two types of weaponry -- ship-to-ship (listed for you above), and close-range anti-starfighter/anti-missile. My nation doesn't close in and engage point-blank, broadsiding our opponent like terrestrial navies of the 18th century, never has, and I'm not going to change my doctrine and II canon to satisfy a single RP. I thought that having had the round miss -- and I specifically pointed out that I did that, before any claims of wanking went on -- would be fine, and that swapping out for conventional projectiles to ICly prevent damage to Avenio's ships from proximity (about to be posted here) would work. Obviously, though, anything more than short-range, light-damage lasers for ship-to-ship engagements -- what would only be suitable for point-defense, ICly, for Imglot -- isn't sufficient for you.

Fine, whatever. Balrogga, what interactions our nations have had up to this point are now non-canon. Shouldn't affect either of our nations at all. Later, all.

Balrogga

19-04-2009, 02:35

Sir, the sensor data from the battle is being formed into a comprehensive profile for each vessel type along with the extensive scans of the individual ships.

Nhur-Galladu looked up from the energy sculpture he was creating. He manipulated raw energy until it became the correct color and shape. He then added it to the collection he had already created slowly building up a model floating in front of him. Turning the creation, he added another engine pod onto it as he accessed the sensor feeds from one of his ships with the correct angle. After that model was finished he moved it to the others waiting nearby. He nearly had the battle scene recreated below and only needed two create more ships. He summoned some more raw energy and began forming one of the last two ships.

Release the rest of the Tiger ships. Their drives will need to be rebooted so they cannot be used right away but I will be ready with their models to be inserted into the battle.

Yes Sire.

While he was working, he also consciously moved the collection of models to match the sensor readings he was accessing from his ships. Miniature specks bussed about the models, tiny representations of the fighters and missiles being used. He even removed the shattered gun placements when they were hit by the missile spam from the Red Talons. He finished another model and added it to the lineup of stalled ships and began working on the last one.

The Great Lord Tiger

19-04-2009, 03:38

"Sir, all ships are reporting in as fully functional. They released us fully," the officer on deck said to Jeth. "The drives are still in start-up cycle, though."

"How quickly can we breach Slipspace?"

"A minute, sir, easy, but we've only got enough stability for about 10 minutes in."

Jeth considered this. "Blind Jump protocol?" he said to his strategic officer. His friend nodded.

"Yeah, Errol, we just keep hopping from Slipspace to Realspace -- ten minutes in Slip' should give us a few light-days of distance, we slide out; if they have probes, they'll be distracted from shifting from one dimension to another. Should work..."

Jeth nodded. This Warlord would probably raise hell from their running away despite the... 'invitation' to join a diplomatic discussion, but if it came to it, he would defend Tigeria if these enemies came to play. A dangerous adversary, to be sure.

"Ready drives," he said quietly, and all around him the ships imperceptibly (externally, anyway) spun up their Hantog Slipspace drives, likely driving any EM sensors nuts on the Empire's ships. "Breach."

With the characteristic roar within the ships, the remainder of Jeth's fleet slipped from the blackness of space and into the pale whiteness of Slipspace through synthetic dimensional rifts. "Goodbye, Warlord Galladu," he said to himself. "Enjoy your battle. This is not ours."

Avenio

19-04-2009, 04:38

The Harmony's remote-commander had had enough of missing, and, charging its main shields and X-ray arrays, pulled up behind the Battletar and sent a scorching point-blank blast at its engines.

The Enlightenment continued absorbing hits, and shield emitters were beginning to strain under the assault from the Battlestar. Admiral Nereus had also ordered an autonomous frigates, ES-713, to nestle against one of the nearly-disabled Auron-class frigates. The frigate, under a preprogrammed command, magnetically docked with the Colonial vessel, shut off its singularity drive and transmitted a special distress beacon to the Colonial fleet.
Using the transmission copied from the pirate Deleris-class, and the recorded distress beacon the Bloody Mary had sent, Thelinan technicians had constructed a distress beacon that was almost identical to the one broadcast by the Battlestar, but had two exceptions. One was that it was in Galactic Basic, and the second was that it had a hidden virus embedded in the signal. When a Colonial vessel picked up the signal, they would translate it into their language, thus downloading the virus. The virus then would then infiltrate the communications array of the vessel and transmit the virus to as many ships as possible. It would then attack fire-control systems and damage control systems, and, if it was not discovered by then, would turn the ship's weapons on its fleet, and detonate its nuclear stockpile inside the ship.

To a busy sensor technician, the signal would (hopefully) appear to have originated from the Auron-class itself, and he would assume it was a simple malfunctioning beacon, and download it aboard the ship.

Admiral Pontus proceeded to send a heavily-encrypted signal to the TRIAD, Fallen Empire and Red Talon fleets.

"Attention all non-combatant vessels, there will be a distress beacon emitting from what appears to be one of the Colonial vessels. We urge you to ignore these transmissions, as they carry a virus being used to combat their fleet in the system. Thank you again for your support."

Orinon

19-04-2009, 04:52

The Auron class Frigate's commander picked up the beacon, thinking that it came from one of the other frigates, then translated it and immediately feel the effects of it. However, the virus had an unintended effect, because of somewhat clever, and somewhat stupid, wiring by the shipmasters in the ICO shipyards: They wired the fire controls along the same circuits as the the Thyrium reactors safeties. Instead of attacking the fire control, it attacked the safeties on the reactor. The result: A massive explosion as the reactor went out of control and ripped the frigate apart, taking ES-713 with it.
Meanwhile, the reinforcing fleet jumped into the system. When they picked up the Picon in the middle of a battle with the Enlightenment, they opened fire with a volley of fire that would level a city.
However, the Picon, not realising that the Auron frigates demise was by the virus, downloaded the beacon pulse and translated it. The virus then went to work, first by trying to transmit, which failed thanks to the Harmony's burst, which overloaded almost all the Battlestars systems and fried the engines. The virus, thinking it had transmittted, then attacked what it thought was the fire control, but was the reactor safeties. This, coupled with the Harmony's fire, cause the Thyrium Process to go out of control. The result was that the Battlestar just exploded outward, sending part of the engine pod into the Harmony and a flightpod into another dreadnought.

OOC: Man, that took a while to type. Mah fingers are hurting now...

Avenio

20-04-2009, 02:07

The Harmony's powerful, if volatile shields took the brunt of the damage from the impact, but it blew out several power systems, and went into a uncontrolled spin because of the strain on its maneuvering jets until stability was restored to the pulsar core. Enlightenment wasn't as lucky, and the flightpod crashed into the shields, collapsing them in an km radius, and scraped the hull of of a chunk of one of the radial arms, exposing several decks to vacuum.
Another of the autonomous frigates, ES-827, docked with another of the Auron-class frigates, and broadcasted the same virus-encoded signal to the arriving fleet, fully aware that doing so would destroy itself.
Admiral Nereus detected the approach of the Colonial reinforcements, and ordered the surrounding Dreadnoughts to form a square around the harried command ship. The flanking Dreadnoughts absorbed most of the fire, with downed shields on several decks on each ship and on two seperate occasions, hull and superstructure damage. Admiral Nereus then proceeded to order a combined blast of the ultraviolet arrays at the largest of the reinforcing Battlestars, followed by launching every fighter and bomber drone available to amass on the fleet. Finally, he ordered a full nuclear strike on the enemy fleet, using the Reinforcing Fleet's full missile capacity, launching approximately 180 heavy fusion AI-driven missiles.

Orinon

20-04-2009, 02:27

The Commander of the arriving fleet rather quickly realised that it was under nuclear attack and answered with a volley of 5 Supernova planet crackers. Meanwhile, one of the fleets Auron classes, which was hanging back as a relay, picked up the beacon and translated it. It immediately suffered the fate of the Picon, shattering as its reactor overloaded. Meanwhile, the fleet, seeing the demise of the Picon and one of its Auron frigates, simply shut off all communications with any other ships in fear of electronic sabotage. This meant that the Battlestars couldn't communicate with each other, but this wasn't really a problem. Falconites launched and moved to intercept the missiles, knocking out a large number of them, with about 20 slipping past the Falconites and the anti missile cannons. Then the Fleet repeated the Picon's move, and jumped, reappearing in orbit above the 4th planet. By now, the Supernova's had come into effective range.

Avenio

20-04-2009, 04:51

The Harmony, which had lost power and had drifted away from the battle, brought its main power back online, only to detect five supernova missiles on an intercept with the Reinforcing Fleet. Bringing main X-ray arrays online, it shot twin blasts of radiation at two of the incoming missiles, completely frying them and rendering them inert. The remote commander of the vessel, Commandant Agathokleia brought the vessel's main gravity drives online and brought shields to full power. She hoped that she could skirt the majority of the massive blast by bringing the ship to 40% of c and venting excess radiation and ionized hydrogen, creating a miniature solar wind of its own. Placing her faith in the Current, she activated the necessary systems and powered down all unnecessary power-drawing components and sailed forth.

The majority of the Reinforcing Fleet had more time to react to the incoming missiles, and quickly recovered what fighters and autonomous frigates they could before firing up their singularity drives and accelerating quickly to a similar speed of 40% of c and ran behind the 5th planet in the system, for the cover of its magnetic field.

Orinon

20-04-2009, 05:24

The Fleet scanned the system for the enemy ships, then recalled the Falconites, spun up FTL drives, and jumped back to the Tarnia system.

Balrogga

20-04-2009, 06:19

Sire, we have built up an accurate profile of the battlestar’s abilities as well as her escorts. The others in the system have taken damage and the alien vessels have exited the system, both the Battlestar and the intruders.

Nhur-Galladu watched the models he has created for a moment longer before dismissing them with a wave of his hand. They burst into tiny particles of color and faded away.

It is fine; I knew they would run away as soon as we released them. I am sure we will encounter them again so keep their profiles in the system.

Sir, I am reading a large amount of damages on our allies’ ships. They are retreating from the battlefield.

Open a channel.

“This is Nhur-Galladu. We offer to assist repairing and damage caused by the relentless attacks against those in this system. I also wish to invite you to meet with me aboard my flagship, The Serendipity. I will move her to your location to better assist your repairs.”

“Please reply back and I will take actions.”

After getting an answer back, Nhur-Galladu moved The Serendipity as promised.

Red Talons

20-04-2009, 09:06

The micro-missiles, powered by small induction drives, could accelerate rather quickly as well as turn on a dime. The reactionless properties of the gravity induction core rather remarkable and handy for use in missile propulsion drives. That and teh fact that the micro-missiles could accelerate to mid range fractions of C if given enough distance.

"Multiple impacts along the forward keel. Minor damage, but we've lost the last of our shield drones." Called the tactical officer. The comms officer playing the massage recieved via direct transmission from the Avenio ship. The captain nodded as the message from Avenio played. "Right then, all ships switch to Lansat coms, disregard any distress signals."

The captain, noting the fighters charging his vessel, drew his katana. "All drone fighters, intercept enemy fighters" He paused as the holo-display updated with the new battlestars, changing slightly as the sensor lag was filled in. "Have all Hellcats begin attack runs on the battlestars, weapons free. All ships, pick your targets and fire at will." There was a pause. "Sir, they've launched five more of the superweapons.... Detecting FTL spikes across the system." The captain nodded. "Have all fighters cluster on the drone frigates, all ships prepare for De-jump, take us to the loaction of the colonial ships." The nav officer responded with an affirmative as the flight control officer barked orders to the fighter wings. The lot of the fighters turning tail and hauling ass back to the drone frigates, where they would pile into close formation.

As the 5 supernova missiles streaked out to their destinations, and other ships were popping around the system, a moment after the colonial fleet dropped out of their jump, their magnetic sensors would shriek at the appearance of the Red Talons fleet, within preverbial spitting range of the colonial fleet(300,000 Km, or one light-second). The hundreds of drone and manned fighters dispersing from their formations around the drone frigates and moving to make combat runs on the battlestars. The fleet as a whole opened up with all guns. Brilliant blue sustained particle beams lancing out from the Kergerin, destiny, and cutter class ships. The whole of the fleets ships sparkling with purple muzzle flares as they fired c-frac cannons. A total of 500 Hellcat class superiority fighters and 96 Dragon class corvette gunships. With another 600 drone interceptors sprinkled in. All moving out from the fleet and accelerating on attack vectors. The Corvettes deploying four Thanatos anti-capital cruise missiles.

Reports began to filter in of various casualties from the jump. The acting captain of one of the Cutter class dreadnoughts having been one of them. Due to this, many of the fleets deck guns were sluggish to respond to the fire command, as their crews had to work around the twisted remains of their crew-mates.

The captain growled. "Continue to keep fleet command appraised of our situation, we should be able to handle ourselves so far."

Then the battlestars vanished. causing the captain of the independance, as well as most of the crew of the fleet to roar in rage that their enemy had turned tail and ran.

Avenio

21-04-2009, 00:39

The Reinforcing Fleet continued to take cover behind the fifth planet in the system, a slate-grey gas giant with a very thin but complex ring system and twelve moons, designated by Aerospace Command as Proteus. One of its moons, with approximately 0.5 M (The mass of the Earth), was almost completely covered by a shallow blue-green sea. Complex nitrogen-based marine life was beginning to evolve in the oceans, and scouting reports from autonomous drones showed that primitive land-dwelling plants were beginning to colonize the damp land. Admiral Nereus proceeded to launch a solar-powered beacon into orbit, built to transmit an automated signal requesting for no further disturbances of the burgeoning life. (A picture of Cybele (http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt41/Avenio/Cybele.jpg) from the beacon.)
A small cloud of construction drones were flitting about the damaged Dreadnoughts and the Harmony, and transport drones were shuttling materiel from several new mining facilities on the surface of a metal-rich moon, and a small tritium and deuterium refinery was built in orbit of the Jovian. Harvesters were skimming the top layers of the atmosphere, picking up ionized hydrogen and bringing its to the refinery for processing, then specialized transports bring the processed hydrogen to the Fleet.
Admiral Pontus picked up a transmission from the massive Ta'Nar vessel that was approaching from the inner system.

“This is Nhur-Galladu. We offer to assist repairing and damage caused by the relentless attacks against those in this system. I also wish to invite you to meet with me aboard my flagship, The Serendipity. I will move her to your location to better assist your repairs.”

“Please reply back and I will take actions.”

The Admiral wired a response;

"Greetings Warlord Nhur-Galladu, we would welcome any help that you can offer us. Unfortunately, I cannot leave my habitat, however, I can send a Consulate-Class diplomatic servitor, which I control directly, or we can meet aboard my vessel, whichever you prefer. Thank you again for your assistance."

As well, the Enlightenment launched a small autonomous scout ship, designated OV-231, which accelerated to c, headed for the origin system of the Colonial fleet.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 02:18

The frigate, when it returned to normal speed, would find itself in a binary star system with 8 planets. The first, and biggest, star, Tarnia Alpha, had 6 planets orbiting it. The second star, Tarnia Prime, had 2 planets in orbit. And in orbit above the planets, was the Tarnia Home Fleet. The Fleet had divided itself amongst the planets, with roughly 15 Battlestars in orbit above each planet. More Battlestars simply floated in space, acting as guards of their homeworlds. Interestingly, the 6 planet of Tarnia Alpha, Magni, gave out massive chemical energy readings, readings similar to those that the 4th planet of the contested system gave out. On all the other planets, a simple scan would give readings of a large society, one that was using neither fossil fuels, or nuclearpower to power its massive cities.

OOC: Check factbook for a more descriptive description of the Tarnia System.

Avenio

21-04-2009, 02:56

OV-231 decelerated from light speed close to the star named Tarnia Prime. Because of its close proximity to the luminary, its exact location was difficult to determine with sensors, and any visual determination was impossible. Using several specially constructed singularity-assisted coilguns, the scout ship launched three sensor probes (One traveling to an H20 rich world orbiting Tarnia Prime, another traveling to the planet with the highest level of civilization [determined by examining the spectrum of the dayside] and the last heading for the planet with the strange chemical energy readings), all traveling at 20% of c.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 02:59

The Home Fleet picked up the probes, but assumed that they were meteors, and left them be, thinking that they would burn up in the atmospheres of the planets.

OOC: damnit. my last post should say that 6 planets orbit Tarnia Alpha.
I always fraking do that...

Avenio

21-04-2009, 03:28

The probes sped past the planets in question, taking complex sensor readings on each of the planets, including charting power levels, spectrographic readings of the night and daysides and taking detailed scans of the vessels in orbit of the planets. After collecting the data and sending it via burst transmission to the scout vessel, they destabilized their respective orbits and entered the atmosphere of the planets (in the case of Magni, the probe simply crashed into the surface) and burned up.

OV-231, its mission completed, brought its gravity drives online and began the arduous trek out of the luminary's gravity well. For a short time, it would be visible as a ship before it achieved light speed, so the scout brought shields and its ultraviolet arrays online.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 03:34

'What the frak?!"said Admiral Marin, staring at a sensor screen onboard the Battlestar Atlantis.
"what?"said Rear Admiral Matthew Firun, Home Fleet Commander.
"There. That unknown....Oh frak! Its one of the unknowns we fired on!" replied Marin.
"Get the Fleet to red alert. Tell all ships to fire on it!" shouted Firun, running to his post.

The frigate was fired on by 5 Battlestars and their accompanying 15 Auron classes, unleashing a hail of high explosive at the small frigate.

Avenio

21-04-2009, 03:43

OV-231 artfully dodged most of the barrage, but was clipped by one of the explosive rounds, which exploded and overloaded the ships' shields. Shortly before reaching c, in a surprising display of a petty sentient behavior, the autonomous scout ship buzzed the Battlestar Atlantis, coming within 10m of the imposing Colonial vessel.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 04:08

"Cheeky mother frakker!" shouted Admiral Firun."Fire all guns at it!"

The Atlantis's anit missile and anti ship cannons flared as it started trying as hard as it could to blow the frigate out of the sky before it jumped.

Balrogga

21-04-2009, 04:37

Nhur-Galladu listened to the reply from the cetacean and replied in a personal message.

“I understand why you cannot travel here; instead I will send an Avatar. My forces are scanning the damage done to your vessel and we will return it to conditions matching pre battle scans using our own biotechnology if you permit. It will not interfere with any of your defenses for we will use cloned material salvaged from your damaged sections to prevent tissue rejection. Within a day everything should be as good as new at the latest, hours if we are lucky. Meanwhile we can discuss these enemies that keep popping in here guns blazing.”

Ships moved in on the damaged ships. Samples and deep scans were taken and replication began of replacement parts in vast tanks of goo, the basic materials used by the aliens and then injected into forms and molds constructed by force fields. Once the parts were done they were placed in their proper locations and attached to the living structures.

Meanwhile, the Avatar of Nhur-Galladu appeared before Admiral Pontus. The robed figure was merely a projection of the Warlord’s mind but it allowed him action as if he were there.

Avenio

21-04-2009, 04:54

The scout ship, upon reaching its destination in orbit around Proteus transmitted its data to the Enlightenment before settling in to roost in one of the Command Dreadnought's still incomplete radial arms. The Admiral and his Commandants pored over the data recieved from the probes using a shared datalink and their habitat's ability to function as a holographic immersion tank.
Commandant Eione was the first to notice the correlation between Magni and the 4th planet.

"Sir, I've just realized something. Based upon the scans of the 4th planet in the system before it was leveled by the nova weapon, there was a rare, highly reactive compound, similar in chemical makeup to complex hydrocarbons, classified as HC-21 in our chemical database. That may explain why they were here, their supply of it in their home system wasn't enough to sustain them anymore."

Pontus thought for a minute before answering;

"This is intriguing. If we could strike at their mining facilities, perhaps cause the natural HC-21 in the planet's crust to react, we could cause serious enough damage to their military-industrial complex that we could enter peace talks."

Rear Admiral Lycorias also chimed in;

"We will need a diversion however, as their entire fleet will come crashing down on us like a storm surge. I recommend that we split our forces in half, one section attacking a less-important planet first, and the other will arrive shortly afterward at the HC-21 rich planet, hopefully with little resistance."

"Very well. I will inform our Ta'Nar allies of our insight, and I will return with their insight. Farewell for now."

The image of the Ta'Nar Warlord appeared in an austere room near the center of the Dreadnought, its focus being the enormous window into the oceanic habitat where Pontus dwelled. There were several spartan chairs arrayed facing the viewport.
The Thelinan Admiral's voice echoed quietly throughout the room;

"Salutations Warlord, we have much to discuss."

Orinon

21-04-2009, 05:27

After the frigate had left, the Fleet returned to their posts above the planets.

Meanwhile...

System EX3443, 10 jumps from Tarnia system....

In EX3443, there wasn't much to see. A earth sized planet thats atmosphere had been boiled off by the red giant in the system long ago. But the planet wasn't what the mining ship and its accompanying refinery and food processing ships were interested in. What they were interested in was the asteroid belt in the system, which contains asteroids packed with Thyrium. Of course, that didn't mean that there was no one else there....

Telros

21-04-2009, 05:30

As battle raged in the Tarnia system, with the Colonial fleets battling the Red Talon mercenary forces, another player arrived onto the scene to be drawn into this large conflict of miscommunication. The Kindai Empire was a small empire, since the constant raider and pirate attacks prevented it from expanding quickly like others of its type. However, the constant attacks provided another bonus, in that the Empire had a large push for greater technologies, and better ships. This gave them the edge in combat. But in exploration and other peaceful employs, they had trouble. So it took some time for them to send a Tou-class frigate to investigate the signals that had come from a signal system off past the borders of the Ka Territory. A probe had been dispatched and had taken data on the signals there. They then discovered a burgeoning FTL-capable nation of humans, who had a totally different design scheme and technologies. Not to mention a strange energy signal that came from their planets.

They had planned to send an envoy for some time now, but had been unable to do so due to increased raider attacks. Attention was shifted to fighting them back and after some time, they had been pushed out once more. With that done, they had sent a frigate to go open talks. However, unknown to them, a chain of events that came from miscommunication had caused a war of sorts and they jumped right into it. The frigate, Sakura Wind, appeared when a large blue gate sliced open the fabric of reality and the ship jumped forth. Captain Fuka stood on the bridge with the diplomat, who he had summoned once they were getting close. Mikal, the legendary diplomat and ruler of the Mizu Territory, was gone on another mission, so another diplomat had to be sent. Things went south, however, as sensor spikes shot up detecting weapons fire within the system, with the defending ships of a planet blasting at some small object.

Fuka gripped his chair. "Bring us to red alert! Power to the shields and weapons. Have all marines and drones on standby status. Dammit, someone give me a status report!" The lights of the bridge went dark red, as the alarm sounded and the ship jumped into motion as crewman, both marine and shipmate alike ran to their posts. Power spiked from the ship as it brought its shields, weapons, and drone fighters and bombers online. Sensors washed over the system, struggling against the distortion magnetic fields caused by the planets and the battles going on. ECCM packages began running, helping to clear up the picture. Data began to appear on the tactical display.

"We are reading every planet is currently being protected by a force of native ships, as if they were expecting an attack. One planetary fleet is currently engaging an unknown object, possibly a ship, but it is unknown. Orders, Captain?"

Fuka glanced at the diplomat. "What are your thoughts on the matter? I'm for jumping in to help but I don't want to get the Empire caught in the middle of a war." The diplomat nodded before moving over to the communications officer station.

"Open a channel to the Colonial ships, use frequency 003-4A. They will recognize that one. Also, encrypt it so these unknowns do not listen in. Have a distress call prepared, just in case."

The officer nodded and got to work. Within seconds, one messages was sent off to the Colonial planets and ships and while another was prepared to be sent to the Empire.

Attention Colonial forces, this is the Imperial frigate Sakura Wind. We have come on a peaceful mission to open contact but see you are under attack. We wish to render assistance as best as we are able.

Fuka nodded. That would be good for now; they were appearing suddenly but offering to help. "Move the ship into sector three-zero-four-seven. Speed Mark Five." The frigate began to turn and head towards one of the Colonial planets, seeking to get within their defensive net as they waited for an answer.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 05:52

"What the....Another unknown...Transmission coming in...Holy frak, they know our signals...and codes..."said a techy. working to translate the message from Ancient to their language.

Attention Colonial forces, this is the Imperial frigate Sakura Wind. We have come on a peaceful mission to open contact but see you are under attack. We wish to render assistance as best as we are able.

"Holy frak, a first contact...Translate to Ancient,"said Rear Admiral Firun, picking up the coms unit and speaking to the unknown frigate.

This is Rear Admiral Matthew Firun, CO of the Battlestar Atlantis and commander of the Imperial Colonies Home Fleet. Your offer is welcomed but the unknown we were engaging has already turned tail and left. As for opening contact, feel free to land in the Atlantis's starboard flight pod, then we can talk.

OOC; My Ancient= Galactic Basic

Balrogga

21-04-2009, 10:09

Tyrian System:

Nhur-Galladu stood before the Admiral dressed in his robes of white and gold, the symbol of his office. It was of course a projection so it did not need air and it somehow spoke, the exact means was not easily discernable but it didn’t matter. An unknown avatar stood near Nhur-Galladu which the admiral would suppose was someone from the Red Talon vessels but it was hard to distinguish features at first. (you can describe yourself if you wish).

“Yes, we do have much to discuss. Just to let you know, I am addressing both you and the representative from Red Talons simultaneously.”

“First I wish to thank you both for assisting in defense of this system. I want to grant you the temperate water worlds as well as habitable moons your species can use. The Ta’Nar are not interested in the planets, it is the stars that bring us and after we are finished, we will move on. I have given the gas giant to the Red Talons as well as the part of the belt nearest for their resource harvesting in return for their protecting the system. I do not wish us to clash for we have more to lose if we do. We are each fighting for part of this system so I made sure we all have vested interests in remaining here.”

“The first thing we must all do to preserve our mining rights to this system is defend it from the gorilla war tactics of the enemy. I have dispatched four cruisers to investigate and monitor the system their ships jump to based on their departure coordinates as well as what that pirate craft claimed.”

“I can provide you with construction facilities to reproduce your frigate drones if you can provide the construction schematics. I cannot make new people for you but I can create drones or empty ships for you to use.”

“I will also send my ships along, this is not a war where I will be using you as my forces, it is one where we will fight together to keep this system outs together.”

“Now, this is all the sensor data I have gathered so far. It is being transmitted to both your computers so we can come up with tactics we can use together to remove our threat. What do you suggest we do?”

Tarnia System:

The four Infiltrator Cruisers slipped into the system using T-Space. Taking strategic positions, they held in Deep T-Space. From the launch bay of each cruiser, eight Triple-S ships (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/Survey2.jpg)were dispatched (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/launchbay.jpg). They flew to a predetermined distance away from the cruiser until they were in formation around the Ta’Nar vessel. Once in position, they linked themselves to the cruiser, creating a massive VLA several kilometers (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/beldragos/infiltratordeepscan.jpg)across to allow them to easily peer through the dimensional veil into Real Space. Their sensors were passively searching the system and broadcasting everything back to the ships waiting in the Tyrian System.

Avenio

21-04-2009, 15:16

The Theline Admiral was a older member of his species, at almost 150 years old, and was encrusted by barnacles. He swam in front of the window in the room and regarded its occupants with giant sea-gray eyes as he swam back and forth. He then brought up three projections simultaneously, one was the 4th planet in the system, its nightside lit up by molten rock from the supernova weapons, the other was the planet Magni, encrusted with industry and atmospheric domes, and finally, he brought up a chemical formula and atomic model for a complex hydrocarbon.

"Thank you for the assistance, Warlord. We would greatly appreciated any assistance in repairing our vessels. One of the moons of the gas giant in the system has primitive life forming on it, and we have placed a beacon in orbit of it requesting that no further landings are conducted on the planet, for risk of contaminating its biosphere. In regards to our plan, this is wha we have garnered in regards to information."
"Based upon our scans of the enemy's home system, we have determined that they run their ships on a rare form of hydrocarbon, noted in our chemical database as HC-21. One of their planets has an abundance of this hydrocarbon, and the high levels of infrastructure denotate that they are actively exploiting it." (The hologram zooms in to the planet's night side, showing exhaust contrails and thermal signatures of deep-crust mines)
"I believe that if we were to capture their mining structures on this planet, or destroy them if necessary, we could damage their military-industrial complex enough that they would cease combat operations, and we could enter peace talks.
"Our idea was to split our forces in half. One half of our fleet would first attack a backwater in the binary system, a planet that we have determined from intercepted transmissions to be named Aqutra." (The water-covered planet swam into view, along with readouts stating its population and spectrographic readings) "When the majority of the defending fleet moves to defend their world, the other half of the fleet would exit their respective relativistic travel methods and attack Magni, with the goal of capturing or destroying their facilities on the surface. Based upon the size of their fleet, which is one thing we don't know exactly, we can either retreat after this, or try to defeat their forces in combat. What do you think?"

The Enlightenment proceeded to transmit schematics for their autonomous frigates to the Serendipity.

Telros

21-04-2009, 17:28

This is Rear Admiral Matthew Firun, CO of the Battlestar Atlantis and commander of the Imperial Colonies Home Fleet. Your offer is welcomed but the unknown we were engaging has already turned tail and left. As for opening contact, feel free to land in the Atlantis's starboard flight pod, then we can talk.

Fuka sighed and let out a breath. So the unknown had already left. That was good. He'd have to power stuff down so as not to make the natives worried. He turned to the weapons officer. "Power down the weapons and the fighters, but keep the shields up. They seem to be tense about something and I don't want to be caught unprepared." The officer nodded and set to work, with the energy readings coming from the frigate becoming vastly lower. The Captain then sent a reply to the Colonials.

"Greetings Rear Admiral Firun. We will begin moving towards the flight pod. I will be coming along with our official diplomat, in case our talks move to business."

The frigate shot through space towards the battlestar, moving with a grace and agility not expected in a ship design like this. Such were the gravitic engines, enabling them to make maneuvers most ships were incapable of. Within minutes, they were moving into the massive flight pod on the battlestar and securing a position within it. The frigate did not fully land but instead chose to hover, in case it had to make a quick exit. A shuttle was prepared, and the Captain suited up in some defensive armor, and took his pistol with him. The diplomat required no weapons, for her abilities shielded him from anything short of a nuclear bomb. With them went two Imperial Marines (http://th05.deviantart.com/fs29/300W/f/2008/167/e/4/Space_Marine_by_Morriperkele.jpg) to be their bodyguards. They walked in large power armor and wielded large rifles that looked capable of tearing through armor with ease. The shuttle exited the hangar and landed near the entrance into the ship.

They walked down the ramp, with a Marine next to each person, headed towards the meeting place. The Marines got strange looks from the crewmen of the battlestar, as they barely fit into the hallways and everyone had to get out of their way when they passed by, getting a quick apology as they passed from the Marines. Soon enough, they came to the area where they were going to meet the Rear Admiral and the diplomat made a motion that caused the Marines to take position outside the door, guarding them alongside the Colonial soldiers in place. As they walked inside, both the captain and diplomat bowed.

"I am Captain Fuka, and this is my official Imperial diplomat attache, Nian." Nian bowed.

"It is an honor to meet you, Rear Admiral Firun. We apologize for the scare you must have had when we contacted you on your own frequencies, but we have been watching you for some time and haven't been able to get in contact until now."

OOC: Captain's uniform is this http://th06.deviantart.com/fs6/300W/i/2005/059/0/5/Rico_Sakara___Uniform_Design_by_CaptRicoSakara.jpg (not the kid obviously).

Diplomat's is this: http://th04.deviantart.com/fs20/300W/f/2007/290/2/8/Fanart__Taylor_by_Luprand.jpg Again, ignore anything but the uniform.

Orinon

21-04-2009, 23:49

"Apologies accepted. I must apologise for the room. Until 15 minutes ago this was the unofficial poker room on the Atlantis,"replied Firun, speaking in Ancient/ Galactic basic."Anyway, as you know, I'm Rear Admiral Firun, and this is Jakob Agerion, the Atlantis's communications officer and the closest thing we have to a diplomate, considering that all civilian ships are grounded until this whole alert blows over. Anyway, please have a seat. I will be acting as a....translator? Yeah, translator, as not all of us can speak this language. Anything you wish to know before we start?"

Balrogga

22-04-2009, 01:06

Tyrian System:

“There is only one flaw in your plan; it does not take into account their Overlords.”

Nhur-Galladu brought into view footage of an alien vessel entering the flight pod of one of the battlestars. There was no firefight and the footage was not very clear.”

“We managed to capture this image as our systems came online. Since they are passive, we cannot tell what is going on inside the vessel or even where it came from. There is only one and the aggressive colonials allowed it to not only dock but to actually enter their ship. That would indicate the mysterious ship is in command and they are most likely reporting their two losses here in the Tyrian system.”

“We know nothing about this other party. We have no idea about their strengths or weaknesses. We have no data upon their ships or weapons. They are a complete unknown but their ships are small enough to enter the flight pod so they may have consolidated the same way we have in the past. Their strength could be considerable indeed so we must be sure to not underestimate their appearance.”

The most recent data from the live feeds of the four vessels sent to the Tarnia System was relayed to the Red Talons and the Theline.

“When we attack, I would like to place a Childer/Kython pair aboard your individual command vessel so we can have instant communications. Of course, it is your choice to accept or not. If you chose not to I will understand.”

Telros

22-04-2009, 02:48

Nian nodded. "It is perfectly understandable. We are used to rather lackluster meeting rooms. And we noticed the lack of traffic and the deployment of your navy ships. I can hazard a guess that you are in the middle of a war or some kind of crisis, right?" The Captain gave her a glare and then coughed uncomfortably, trying to make this as gentle as possible.

"Yes, we did notice you appeared to be on high alert. We are curious as to what the problem is and if we can possibly assist in the matter. Negotiations for such a thing are on the table and we are always willing to help those in need."

Orinon

22-04-2009, 03:02

"To be honest, we have no real idea whats going on, but apparently one of our Battlestars out on a mission to find another source of Thyrium happened apone a group of unknowns. The situation went south, and the Battlestar fired on the unknowns, sparking off all this,"said Firun, shaking his head."Now, if it wasn't bad enough, another one of our Battlestars blind jumped into the system and got attacked. it set off its distress beacon, which we sent a small fleet to investigate. It arrived to see that the Battlestar that was fired apone had jumped out and another one on patrol in a nearby system was under fire. Then, according to the fleet commander, a burst of data, not unlike our distress beacons, was sent out by the unknowns, which must of overloaded the ships reactor and well....it was destoryed. The fleet then drove the unknowns back and came back home." The admiral paused for a breath, then continued."The alert you see is because of this and that there was a unknown ship in the system. It left, and well, then you showed up. We really have no idea what we are up against, but any help is welcomed."

Mewsland

22-04-2009, 03:35

OOC: I did post in the OOC thread, so there's no confusion.

Intergalactic Warp Space

The captain gave a big sigh. He was wondering why the Federation of Mewsland was still conducting exploration missions so far from the Mewsland Galaxy. Intrepid was dispatched to the Tarnia System to make a sensor sweep. As soon as they arrived, they dropped out of Warp Space.

Tarnia System

As Intrepid regained her bearings (Warp Space has its effects), the captain addressed the crew.

All hands, this is Captain Mew Mæow III. We have arrived in the Tarnia System for an exploratory mission. All hands are to report to duty stations for such mission when they come on duty. End of speech.

"Take us into the system at .25 of light. Begin sensor sweeps." the captain said.

Avenio

22-04-2009, 04:53

The Thelinan Admiral reviewed the feeds quickly before answering;

"I think that instantaneous communication would only benefit the coming conflict. I can have a transport drone and servitors to your vessel shortly to pick up the Childer/Kython pair. I can also have four more Dreadnoughts pulled from Homeworld Defense for the conflict, but any more would strain our naval resources. One thing our technicians have noticed is that the Colonial forces are very susceptible to electronic warfare. A virus that we have used against them worked very well, if we adapt it to affect more varied computer systems, we could do considerable damage to the alien fleet." (A feed of the recent battle is projected in the room, showing the Auron-class being destroyed by the virus attacking its reactors) "What's more, with more modification, the virus could be utilised to turn the Colonial Battlestars on their allies, putting a severe strain on their respective forces that we could take advantage of."

Thelinan 3rd Expeditionary Fleet - ORBAT

Dreadnought - Synecdoche - Commodore Antialcidas
Frigates - ES-509 - ES-012

Dreadnought - Nymphaea - Commandant Amyntas
Frigates - ES-110 - ES-872

Dreadnought - Camellia - Commandant Periplus
Frigates - ES-189 - ES-638

Dreadnought -Ericales - Commandant Strato
Frigates - ES-043 - ES-921

Balrogga

22-04-2009, 05:07

“You do not need to provide transport; I will assign a pair to each ship you wish to have them equipped. They will use the telepathic Link they share with their kind to pass on information to the others. Please excuse the appearance of the Kython’ they were created to provide fear in their enemies but they will be docile while crewed to your ships.”

OOC:

I am waiting on the final OK/Denial from Orinon for my response to Mewsland’s entry in the Tyrian System. Please be patient.

Avenio

22-04-2009, 05:11

((OOC: Sure thing. I'll say I'm waiting for my reinforcements to arrive.))

Orinon

22-04-2009, 05:39

OOC: Alright, Mews is in.

Red Talons

22-04-2009, 08:33

The mining ships, hanging out of the engagement zone, took the opportunity to move in on the outer asteroid belt. Stripping it of their ore, starting in and spreading out from the farthest left of the system. Thet set to work seeding the asteroids with the nanite compounds that would begin breaking down the minerals in the rock.

Meanwhile, the small fleet redrouped, making speed to climb up into the system. intercepter drones fanning out to patrol the system as the fleet began to deploy decoy drones, which would move out in groups across teh system, showing up on sensors as the ships that launched them. 6 decoy drone fleets moved out across the system. the main fleet staying about two light-minutes above the systems star.

Mewsland

23-04-2009, 02:09

Suddenly, Intrepid detected vessels in the system.

Science officer) Unidentified vessels, captain.

Captain Mew) Steer clear, we don't want trouble. However, go to yellow alert just in case.

Intrepid gave the vessels 1 million miles' distance, and continued scanning the system.

Balrogga

23-04-2009, 07:47

Nhur-Galladu called forth the a holo-image of the system detailing the data from the live sensor feeds provided by the four cruisers he sent.

“I propose we strike at them like this, we use the plan already set forth but we adapt it for these Overlords. I will send a Battlegroup tasked with preventing their inference in your operation. I will have them enter the battle after we draw the enemy to the decoy target. The Battlegroup will join the battle after the Overlords are either left alone or are drawn into the battle with the feint attack. Other than that, the plan will be the same one you put forth.”

Nhur-Galladu looked to his two partners.

“Any suggestions?”

Red Talons

23-04-2009, 10:24

The corvettes moved back to the carrier to reload their torpedo compliment. The captain of the carrier ordering all ships to remain on standby alert and to actively target any colonial vessels that enter the system.

Telros

23-04-2009, 15:41

Nian glanced at Fuka after the Rear Admiral had finished his story. This was turning out to be a very bad twist to what was supposed to be a diplomatic first contact mission. They had gotten into some kind of situation where their first contact in another system had gone sour and they were forced to defend themselves, as it appeared. They retreated after a while, only to have another of their ships stumble in. It called for help when it came under attack and a whole fleet was drawn in before they left, fighting off another unknown fleet. Now it seemed they had at least two enemies stacked against them, and it did not look like they had the numbers to hold off against them. Information was lacking, but they both knew what the Empire's reaction would be. Nian turned to face Firun.

"I can see your situation is quite dire. Although we are reluctant to war, we cannot let a nation come under attack and against such abominable odds. We will aid you as best we can." She nodded at the Captain, who got up and walked over to a corner and began to speak into a communicator. She turned back to the Colonial. "The Sakura Wind will remain here to aid you as best as it can. Reinforcements should be arriving soon, we hope. Our military, unfortunately, is kept on standby status due to the constant raiding attacks by the Akki. Now, if I may not be so bold, can we have any and all information on these unknowns and that signal from your sensor logs and such? Information is power and we know little of this enemy. The more information we can gather, the better."

The Captain returned to his seat, nodding at both of them. "The message has been sent and the Empire has acknowledged. They will be sending a full Battlefleet to aid us." Nian looked stunned.

"Even a Battleplate?"

He shook his head. "No, things would need to be especially dire for that to happen. A dreadnought will be leading the attack, the Swift Strike, under the command of Admiral Dageki. They should be arriving within the hour, at best speed with the hyperdrives."

Nian nodded as the Captain turned to the Rear Admiral. "After we get the information you have, is there anything else you'd like to discuss or something you would like our help on? Or do you want to start negotiating things and not leave that until after the battle, when it comes?"

NationStates Jolt Archive

Thyrium Wars [FT/IC/OPEN see OOC]