NationStates Jolt Archive

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Holy Light of the Path
Location: Somewhere among the stars

"Primary engines at 72% efficiency and falling. Secondary engines offline. Tertiary engines offline. Primary shields at 23% efficiency and falling. Secondary shields at 57% efficiency and falling. Tertiary shields offline, recommend activation before subluminal deceleration. Offensive cannons offline, repairs needed. Defensive cannons at 12% efficiency and 98% heat capacity, recommend deactivation and repair. Sensors operations 54% efficiency and falling, repairs needed. Life support 69% efficiency, repairs needed. Warning! Enemy vessel detected firing upon us! Primary engines..."

Alensia waved the holographic display away. She had no need of a constant reminder of her ship's state. She could feel the damage accumulating with every shudder the frigate gave. Yet, they still kept going, plowing through the Nether as fast as they dared. Their nation had just emerged from a civil war and barely built its space force before running across something hostile and being forced to flee. It was embarassing to have their military might, even as little as it was, bested so quickly.

The bridge itself was a bit smoky, with the air having the now long-familiar smell of burnt plastic composites and melted electrical systems. Most of the lights had gone out, leaving it only to the woman's natural night vision and the occasional bit of light from a working control panel to see around the room. She had the advantage of her seat being raised above the others and in the middle of the back half, allowing her to watch the other four at work. The two directly in front of her were most responsible for the flight of the ship, with one operating the engines and the other working to keep power regulated. Both of those she saw only the backs of, though she could also make out their hand movements on occasion. The other two, backs toward the center and sides toward Alensia, were each manning sensor stations and weapons, their screen split between controls and data readouts at the bottom and a map at the top at current.

“Captain, the enemy vessel has directed its fire away from us. It’s aiming for the Moonlit Walk of the Path. I don’t believe the ship can take an assault for any length of time,” one of the sensor techs said.

“Right now, none of our ships can take an assault for any length of time!” Alensia growled. “How are the transports doing? I know we lost one when the Moonlit Shield of Fury was destroyed.”

“Their engines are in bad shape. Our sensors are too badly damaged for me to tell...” the sensor tech began, only to get cut off as the entire ship rumbled. “Captain, I’m on it immediately, no need to ask… It was the Moonlit Walk. They… I think they dropped back on purpose. Collided with the enemy ship.”

“Are there any other enemy ships within sensor range?” Alensia’s voice held just a bit of hope.

“None detected. Sensor range is cut by damage, though.”

“It’ll have to do for now. Prepare the ship for transition back to real space. I want a full accounting of damage, repair times, and how long you think it will take us to return home and warn them of this new threat.” Alensia bit her lip, trying not to let loose at the pain in her shoulders and back and she stood. During the initial attack, spare oxygen canisters within the ceiling had been ignited by a short and she had been flung back against her seat. Apparently, she hit the back of the chair far harder than she thought. “And do not be afraid to bother me within my quarters for this.”

Alensia paused as she caught her reflection within the metal on the back of the chair, the rare bit not blackened by smoke from the earlier explosion. Her dark purple armor, mostly ceremonial given modern weapons, was smudged black across the front, with one of the shoulders bent awkwardly. Her light purple skin was also smudged black, while her hair had slipped loose of its bindings and now completely covered her ears. The crest of her armor, which always sat on the left side of the chest, had been knocked off at some point and was likely scattered in the debris on the floor. The other four in the room, wearing similar armor, had been a lot luckier.

“Some image I make,” Alensia muttered, turning to leave the bridge, her fingers barely touching the door panel before she passed. She missed the sight from the bridge of the ship appearing in real space, it and the other four ships of the fleet releasing coronas of rainbow light.

The captain slipped quietly down the hallway, ignoring softly fluttering blue lights, display panels with parts of the ship highlighted in red as they became reported as critically damaged, and crewmen snapping quick salutes as they rushed by with tools or supplies to the current emergency they were assigned to. Instead, she quietly entered the crew quarters deck and slipped into the women’s washroom.

Alensia quietly stripped, noting the shoulder of her armor would need to be replaced, and let her outfit pile on the floor. She slipped into the shower, quietly adjusting the controls until she got just the right amount of steam coming from the tap. And then, alone in the shower, she sank down to her knees and cried.

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“Report for Temple of the Moon: The attempted journey to the new planet our probes discovered has suffered unfortunate delays. We encountered enemy ships, which we did not get a good look or scan of, that attacked us on sight. The destroyer, the Moonlit Shield of Fury, was lost along with all hands on deck. The fighting was short, during which time it became obvious we were outmatched. The frigate Peaceful Contemplation of the Path and the transport Restful Considerations were both destroyed before we were able to shift into the Nether. Unfortunately, one enemy ship was able to follow us. We were able to save the remaining three ships, but the frigate Moonlit Walk of the Path was destroyed during the escape attempt. At current, only the frigate Seer of the Path and my own ship remain to protect the three surviving transports. I apologize for such heavy losses among our first set of ships and during our first mission beyond our own system. I pray…”

Alensia had slipped back into her quarters after the shower was over, where she donned a light silk robe, a shade of reddish-purple she thought complimented her dark blue hair, and began to type up the report. Her fingers moved quickly as she continued the summary, adjusting her weight on the fur-upholstered chair, though she was unable to lean back against it and relax as she’d have liked.

While Alensia’s back had proved to be bruised from the earlier impact, she was far from the worst. Of the ten people still alive aboard the ship, two were in critical condition in the medical bay. Six of the crew had perished during the firefight, leaving the survivors even more stressed. If it hadn’t been for the lessons of their early days exploring space, before the civil war that devastated their world, they would never have made the ship so easy to repair.

“What is it?” Alensia asked, sensing the tech from earlier standing in the doorway to her room.

“We may have another problem…”

"I repeat. This is the Battlecruiser Emperor's Grace, representing the Holy Imperium of Angenteria. You are trespassing in restricted space. Identify yourselves at once."

The powerful male voice boomed over the vox-caster. Captain Ban Daur smoothed his black naval uniform, and replaced his officer's cap. They were acting as a patrol picket for the newest Angenterian colony in the Otherium System, a relatively newly-colonized system that sat on the fringes of Imperial Space, bordering the unexplored territories. Well, not totally unexplored. They knew of at least one race, an alien race that attacked without warning. With the help of several ships from other races, the Angenterian Imperial Navy was able to drive back the invaders, taking the fight all the way to their homeworld.

But that was a long time ago, before the system was settled. Now, things were a little different. This place was officially territory of the Emperor.

The ships in front of them were all badly damaged, or so they seemed. Their hulls were in tatters, and a life signs were few. Clearly they had been in some sort of battle.

"Is the channel open?" The captain asked.

"Yes, sir." Came the response.

"Shall we open fire, sir?" Another bridge officer asked, his eyes glued to his console screen.

"No." Daur replied. "They're obviously in no condition to fight." He folded his arms. "If they don't send a response, we will send a boarding party to investigate."

"Yes, sir."

The night black sphere, the twentieth built and crewed glided through real space, a slight dent near its equator showed the only damaged from its impact only a few minutes ago, a furry of movement could be seen outside the sphere as drones continued to repair the damage and the armor slowly but surely repaired itself.

Report Master.
The Sphere is repairing itself, Overmind, the collision gazed out a decent percentage of our mass near the equator, repairs will take time, two hundred drones were destroyed in the impact, shielding has dropped a full 5% on surrounding decks. We expect the initial repairs to take roughly twenty more minutes and we will be combat ready in that section after another hour though we can began FTL after 10 minutes the repair is complete.
Good, do we know what we hit?
Negative Overmind, initial reports suggest something metallic a ship maybe?
Phh, more likely a stray asteroid that our scanners didn't pick up.
Unlikely Overmind, our shields would have taken all but the largest and fastest asteroid without little but a small dip in power levels.
Possibly, do we know where we are?
About 10 light hours from the nearest edge of a solar system, we should be in and out before anyone notices and has time to bother us.
They'd better hope so...

The S.I.V. Wizened was passing through on some task or another assigned to it by the Colonial Force Command when it happened across the tattered ships. They were close enough that they probably could have detected the space battle if they had any sort of knowledge of the Nether, but as it was they only saw the tattered fleet when it dropped out and started repairs.

The ship flowed out the Drift, the small, one hundred meter long frigate appearing a few hundred kilometers away from the Kaldorei vessels. It seemed reserved, the vessels ion engines shut down. It just drifted there for a few seconds, not sending any transmissions or even responding to those received. Finally though, it sent out a brief burst of data. A text message sent in hundreds of languages, each version with a number attached so that when they responded, the persons inside could respond without having to deal with the language barrier.

>To vessels in this area, we do not know what happened, but seeing a badly beaten fleet in front of a heavily armed war ship is generally not a good sign. As a member of the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation Peace Keeping Forces, we merely wish to negotiate the end of any hostilities. Beyond that, we would love to get to know your species and open any trade agreements - say, the availability of a space port for major repairs or technological improvements.

"Captain Daur." A bridge officer reported. "Message coming in. Text only."

"Is it from the damaged vessels?"

"No, from a different ship altogether."

"Let me see." Daur rose from his captain's chair, and approached the waving officer. He took a look at the message.

"Send them a response, text format."

Serigate Plasma Trade Federation Vessel,
This is Captain Ban Daur, of the battlecruiser Emperor's Grace. These ships have only recently appeared in Angenterian space, and are not responding to vox-caster. We have not, nor do have any intentions of, bringing harm upon them. As for trade negations, we would gladly invite any interested party to the sector capital for further discussion.

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Holy Light of the Path
Location: Adrift among the stars
Status: Surrounded and heavily damaged

"What do you mean you don't know where we are?" Alensia was more than irritated. To think they had lost their way home was even worse.

“Captain, look. We jumped into the Nether at random. Without coordinates. We’re lucky we didn’t end up emerging inside an asteroid,” the tech argued, her long green hair swaying from side to side with emphatic head motions.

“Alright, you have made your case. I judge too hastily,” Alensia conceded. “At least one of the transports included miners. We can mine for materials if needed. Are there any estimates on how long repairs will take?”

“Another four hours, at least. The sensors are beyond help. The damaged component fused to the motherboard and we don’t have any spares of those. Luckily we…” the tech began.

“Captain, you should hear this…” came a voice from the ship’s comm.

“Fine. Play it.” Alensia was unable to keep the annoyance at the interruption out of her voice.

"I repeat. This is the Battlecruiser Emperor's Grace, representing the Holy Imperium of Angenteria. You are trespassing in restricted space. Identify yourselves at once."

Both women paled, glancing to each other.

“Send immediate reply! ‘This is the frigate Holy Light of the Path, from the Commonwealth of Eluneyasa,’” Alensia began dictating as she ran for the bridge, ignoring the fact she was still dressed only in a robe. “’We did not intend to trespass and need only time to repair our ship before we are on our way again. Please forgive the intrusion.’ Communication end. I want the engines of all ships ready for an immediate jump within thirty minutes. I also expect a set of coordinates to take us to near our homeworld in twenty.”

Once on the bridge, the captain headed immediately for her station, ignoring the glances of the other three present. She began immediately keying up systems, ignoring the reproachful glance of the other tech at not letting him finish his repair work on the console. She was plotting escape scenarios and not liking the outcome of each. Especially since the sensors were offline due to repair attempts.

“Sir, there’s a second communication…”
>To vessels in this area, we do not know what happened, but seeing a badly beaten fleet in front of a heavily armed war ship is generally not a good sign. As a member of the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation Peace Keeping Forces, we merely wish to negotiate the end of any hostilities. Beyond that, we would love to get to know your species and open any trade agreements - say, the availability of a space port for major repairs or technological improvements.

“By the eternal tears of the Darkened Moon!” Alensia cursed happily. “Reply. ‘We are currently attempting repairs after a battle elsewhere and these kind folk are just asking us why we are in their system.’ End. Get the sensors back working. I want to be able to see if anyone tries anything and run if we’re the target.”

Unknown to the woman was the third party involved.

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To Battlecruiser Emperor's Grace:
This is the frigate Holy Light of the Path, from the Commonwealth of Eluneyasa. We did not intend to trespass and need only time to repair our ship before we are on our way again. Please forgive the intrusion.

To S.I.V. Wizened:
We are currently attempting repairs after a battle elsewhere and these kind folk are just asking us why we are in their system.

Captain Daur paced the bridge of his ship, waiting for a response while going over the situation in their mind. His train of thought was suddenly cut off by the vox-officer.

"Captain, the damaged ship is responding. Vox only." The comms-officer, a young woman with short blonde hair, announced.

"Patch it through."


This is the frigate Holy Light of the Path, from the Commonwealth of Eluneyasa. We did not intend to trespass and need only time to repair our ship before we are on our way again. Please forgive the intrusion.

"So they're not pirates after all." Daur said aloud. That's good. He thought. Maybe we can help them.

The captain thought to himself for a moment longer. "...open a channel."

"Channel open."


"Holy Light of the Path, this is the Emperor's Grace. It appears that a number of your ships have been damaged. We would like to offer you our assistance in repairing them.

The person in charge of the small frigate, Low Commander Stepson, gave a small smirk at the reply. He was a Selac, a furred race long apart of the Sertian Empire. Some described them as the equivalent of an anthro cross breed of the Terran fennec fox and husky, but then again not a lot of people in the Sertian Empire ever met a fennec fox or a husky, and would not be cruel (or stupid) enough to tell a Selac that he was an animal to his face.

“They seem to be alright, however, it might be best to stay by them for now and see how they go,” the creature said with a small nod, a confirmation to himself. “Send them another message, something akin to well…”

>To the Emperor’s Grace, we recognize that you are not the cause of this ships distress - and apologize for assuming the worst. We recognize the territorial rights of your people and will not intervene, however we would like to remain by the damaged vessels for now and see if there is any help we can give them.

>To the unknown vessel, we see the repairs and would like to officer assistance. We have a few technicians that can be spared for external repairs, as well as have some spare fusion materials if your power systems require it - otherwise we have few other materials to spare.

As the last of the cracks were repaired, the breaches sewed and the ship otherwise repaired the Master looked over his sensor data, trying to figure out where they had dropped out. It didn't look good, there were no familiar stars or planets in a 50 light year radius, a good cleansing could be the only way it thought.
Overmind the repairs to the outer and inner structures are completed, we are ready for FTL travel, I suggest we cleansing a nearby planet/oid.
With or without life?
I suggest don't cleanse anything over a one power level for the time being but if we find something smaller.
Understood Master, do you have a suggestion?
Might as well start with the one we're closest to, we've already detected a few planets and a weak inner star.
Sounds good, do we have a final report?
Indeed, a total of two hundred and five drones were destroyed in the impact, twenty were damaged beyond repair and had to be deactivated, 30 were lightly damaged and have been repaired, the hull took less damage than we had initially thought only twenty kg of armor were lost and the repair only took two minutes, the interstructures were abit heavier damaged though, and took fifteen minutes, shield emmiters are currently being added to the outer armor as I go over this, we estimate that we will be battle ready in two minutes and at full capability after another five...

As the Master went over the data files and damage reports with the Overmind, the black newly repaired sphere of twenty started to accelerate towards the inner system, with an estimated time of arrival of seven hours...

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Wanderer's Dilemma
Location: Adrift among the stars.

The transport had managed to escape the fighting relatively unscathed, taking only a couple of direct hits before the jump was ordered. Unlike most of the rest of the ships, its engines were mostly intact, though they still need repairs from the amount of time spent within the Nether. Unfortunately for the ship, its luck was not absolute.

"Are you certain?" Seriyan asked, looking up from the report he was just handed.

"Yes. I double-checked it. Whatever we were hit with, it was powerful enough to breach the hull," came the reply from the repair cheif.

"How bad were the losses?"

"More than half of it was bolted down, and that was only one of two compartments. Still, I estimate that we left a quarter of our food supply somewhere within the Nether. Given the nature of the Nether, it could emerge anywhere within this galaxy over the coming centuries." The chief was somewhat amused by it.

"Well, you certainly can't find a better way to say hello to someone than by dropping food on them," Seriyan joked. "Still, make sure the Holy Light knows of this. They seem to be in charge now."

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Holy Light of the Path
Location: Adrift among the stars.

"It could be a trap," the tech said, listening to the twin offers of help.

"I agree. I doubt it, though. If they wanted to harm our ships, we're obviously in no position to fight or run. We'll operate under the assumption the offers are genuine, but be cautious," Alensia decided. "I'll prepare a message for them. And your name, tech? You're Merigold?"

"Merigold Starrunner. I don't see what..." the tech began.

"You're now my acting second in command. When we get back home, I'll talk to our leaders in the Temple about your actions here. In the meantime, coordinate repairs, gather damage reports from the fleet, and get me a list of anything that could be a critical worry,” the captain ordered. “And find out why the Seer of the Path has maintained communications silence. We have enough problems without a power struggle.”

Marigold smiled and turned towards the rest of the bridge.

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To Battlecruiser Emperor's Grace and S.I.V. Wizened:
Repair help is more than appreciated. I do ask that you forgive the crews of our fleet for being cautious. Our first encounter with a race not of our world did not exactly go well. So far, our second and third encounters are going much more smoothly, but the first encounter still has reminders leftover to haunt us. I’m sure that, with some work and a bit of time, these reminders can be painted over.

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“We may have a problem…” Marigold whispered to Alensia. “The Wanderer’s Dilemma was hit during the battle and ended up with a storage section breached. There’s the possibility that everything they lost was left back at the battlefield. And the possibility they left a trail leading straight to us within the Nether.”

“That is a problem. Keep quiet on it for now while I run simulations. I want to be certain before I let anyone else know,” Alensia replied.

“I also have not been able to raise the Seer of the Path. It could be just a communications problem. But…”

“I know. Have the helm move us between them and the transports. Take up a defensive position and make sure we keep them in sight of the cannons that still work. If the rest of the fleet asks, we’re moving to that position to test our engines. But make sure the other two races can see it. As soon as the sensors are back online, start heavy scans of it for breacher pods.” The captain sighed. “And have someone rig a light on the hull. We can try the old light code for communication.”

The Wizened finally engaged it’s twin ion engines. Powerful things for it’s size, as the Scrupulous-Class frigates were designed to be fast things, capable of entering an atmosphere and provide supporting firepower for ground forces, as well as enter gas giants and star coronas to siphon hydrogen and other materials for a fleet’s worth of fusion reactors.

Eventually the one-hundred meter long frigate arrived within thirty meters of the lead ship, it’s small plasma thrusters slowing it down and matching speeds with the vessel to remain alongside it.

“Bridge to Engineering, paging Vitya, I’ve got an assignment for you,” the low commander said to the comm. interface built into his chair.

“Vitya here, this have something to do with the damaged ships we’re holding position against?” it took nearly fifteen seconds for the engineer to reply, probably because he was away from the nearest communication station or busy.

“Yes… I want you to lead a team of four to assist them in repairs. Their hull looks like they could use some patching, and we have some spare tungstanium patches. However, it would be best for you to introduce ourselves, ask them what type of technology they use and what materials. They might be a bit sensitive on the subject, some of that technology might have military secrets, but it can’t hurt to ask.”

“Yes sir… I’ll bring some extra oxygen tanks and Tn-Ti bricks. We’ll be at the air dock ready in… five minutes.”

“Good… Meanwhile, I’ll be paging S.F.C. to see if they can send a scout cruiser our way, they’d have more supplies to spare, as well as being able to ferry some of those ships home if need be.”

>To Holy Light of the Path, we are currently preparing five engineers and technicians to jump across to your ship, it would be helpful if you could tell us which airlock you’d like to meet them. They’ve got some repairing devices that can patch your hull breaches, however the material is probably not of your kind. Because of this, I’ve recommended they speak with your engineering team, to at least coordinate the repair work.

[Secured Drift Communication]
>Colonial Force Command, we’ve come across a damaged fleet of unknowns. We entered Real Space to assist them, under the guise of the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation as per our commands. Some of the damage is extensive though, and we might not have the materials to help them… Or defend them from anything coming back to finish the job. I would like to recommend a scout cruiser, or if at all possible, a Heavy Cruiser to arrive and assist. If anything, they have more spare materials and supplies than we do.
>Low Commander Stepson out.

"Looks like the other aliens are beginning to assist as well." Captain Daur noted. He stood up from his captain's chair. "We shouldn't be too far behind."

"Incoming transmission, sir."

"Patch it through."


Repair help is more than appreciated. I do ask that you forgive the crews of our fleet for being cautious. Our first encounter with a race not of our world did not exactly go well. So far, our second and third encounters are going much more smoothly, but the first encounter still has reminders leftover to haunt us. I’m sure that, with some work and a bit of time, these reminders can be painted over.


Captain Daur nodded.

"Send a team to each of the vessels, and have them repair any damage sustained."

"Yes, sir."

Another few minutes passed before utility ships began departing the hangar bays of the Emperor's Grace, splitting off and heading toward the beleaguered fleet. Some would dock in the hangar bay of each ship to repair internal damage, while others would remain outside to assist in external repairs.

As Daur watched his ships approached their repair points, he couldn't help but wonder about what the aliens had said. About their "first contact." Well, it was obvious that it didn't exactly go as planned, but still, he had that nagging feeling.

"Open a channel."

A moment's pause "Channel open, sir."
"To all ships, this is the Emperor's Grace. At this time, we would like to invite a representative from each party to our vessel to discuss the situation in more detail, and make our intentions clear to each other.

Meanwhile, the approaching sphere was still too far away to pick up.

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Holy Light of the Path

>To Holy Light of the Path, we are currently preparing five engineers and technicians to jump across to your ship, it would be helpful if you could tell us which airlock you’d like to meet them. They’ve got some repairing devices that can patch your hull breaches, however the material is probably not of your kind. Because of this, I’ve recommended they speak with your engineering team, to at least coordinate the repair work.

Alensia looked at Marigold as that transmission stopped. Right now, her engineering team was pretty much the entire ship; only one of the actual engineers had survived, and he was busy running across the entire length of the ship as they effectively oversaw the entirety of the repairs. The captain honestly doubted the visitors would be received well by him.

“I’ll meet with them,” Marigold said. “Anything in particular to keep in mind?”

“Keep them away from the Nether drive and access to the main computer,” Alensia answered automatically. “And the weapons. They can enter the starboard airlock.”

“Um… Marthrin has been stripping it for materials for other parts of the ship…”

“Joy. Fine, port airlock. Both are near the front of the ship.” Alensia paused. “And I’m sending them a list of what materials we use.”

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To S.I.V. Wizened:
Our port airlock is currently available. The starboard airlock is currently out of commission. Your team will be met by the ship’s second in command. More will be explained to them when they arrive.

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“Captain, sensors are back online,” said a crewman who had been working on the bridge.

Alensia nodded, tapping buttons on her console to bring up readings. She had to blink as she saw the measurements of the Wizened. It was a full thirty meters longer than the frigate she was on, and the four built by Eluneyasa had been a source of many questions about if they were too long. The destroyer had been bigger… and, right now, it was also debris, left elsewhere.

“Prepare the airlock for receiving guests. In the meantime…” the captain began.

To all ships, this is the Emperor's Grace. At this time, we would like to invite a representative from each party to our vessel to discuss the situation in more detail, and make our intentions clear to each other.

“In the meantime, we shall continue with attempts to communicate with the Seer,” Alensia finished determinedly. “And contact the transports to see if they have anyone they can spare for this. I know we don’t and I doubt the Seer is in better shape.”

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To Emperor's Grace:
We are currently checking to see if we have anyone we can spare for such a meeting. Please forgive us if we do not. We were expecting to be in orbit around a planet while the transports began to set up a colony, not sitting in space and trying to repair our ships.

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“Are there any other emergencies to come up right now?” Alensia asked, her tone suggesting there shouldn’t be. “Because if not, I wish to begin attempting communication with the Seer sometime before the day’s over. Let me know as soon as that light is in place.”

Unknown to the kaldorei onboard the ship, there was a sphere approaching…

ooc I apologize for the slowness of these.

The engineers grouped up at the air lock of their ship, Vitya in the lead as they received confirmation of what air lock to report to. Luckily, it was in range that one good jump from the Sertian air lock would allow them to hit the Kaldorei air lock - although the technicians of course had micro-jump jets in case they missed, or for E.V.A. around the ship as it was needed. So, after they carried as much of the repair bricks as they could, spare plas-cells for the repair tools, and just about everything else they could strap on them or carry, the air lock was vented and Vitya made the first jump to the Kaldorei vessel.

He missed, or well, he misjudged his dump and thus had to correct his path with the tiny plasma jets on his ankles and shoulders, which allowed him to make it to the air lock without much of a worry. The next two technicians made the jump without worry, landing next to their leader. The fourth had to use his micro-jets to correct his course, and the fifth one just jumped completely off and had to use a small burn to get back on course. This left five engineers waiting for the air lock to open and, once that was accomplished, for any decontamination procedure or scanning to commence so that they could be allowed entrance. Then they just exchanged pleasantries and waited to be told where they would be needed, or if they were to meet with someone.


Meanwhile the Low Commander in charge replied to the Battlecruiser, acknowledging that they had an officer who could be spared for such a meeting. They just needed to know where to be sent and went.

Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Holy Light of the Path

When the airlock opened, the five engineers were facing Marigold, who had taken the time to put her hair into a pony tail before pressing the buttons to cycle it. For about ten seconds, she was seriously afraid that it would not work; the engineer could have gotten to it without her knowing yet, as overworked as he suddenly was. Instead, she let out a brief sigh of relief as it worked as intended before opening, showing those inside.

"Welcome to the Holy Path of the Light. I am Acting Sentinel Commander Marigold Starrunner. I..." the recently promoted tech began, only to find her hair sent flying as the ship's engineer ran up, talked with a couple of people for five seconds, and then started running for the back of the ship. "... hope you are not overwhelming by the current situation, or our engineer being unable to speak with you. If you really need to talk to him, I wish you the best luck in catching him."

She waved for them to follow. "You will note that our ship's armor is comprised of titanium-plastic composites. Not the most durable of materials, but it was cheap enough for the job it was intended to do. You'll also notice a lot of the ship's internals are composed of plastic composites. Again, less expensive and does the job intended. We have numerous systems in need of repair; where would you like to start?"

Meanwhile, a communication was being prepared by Alensia...

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To Emperor's Grace:
We have found a candidate for your ship. One of our transports will be docking shortly. His name is Baldrin Bearclaw. He will act as our representative.

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Date: Henyana 23, 7340 Current Regulatory Era
Ship: Seer of the Path

When the repair crew from the Emperor's Grace arrived, they would have found an unresponsive ship. The ship itself was easy enough to dock with and open, the main computer apparently offline. The first thing to greet the repair crew would be a smoky atmosphere drifting into their vessel from the frigate.

"Error! Main computer is offline. All systems are offline. Primary power has failed. Error! Fire containment system damaged beyond repair!" came the automated voice of the computer.

"I know that, you corrupted piece of technological trash! You don't need to repeat it every time I pass by a..." a man was yelling, at the ceiling as he walked, only to stop as he spotted those here. His eyes went wide and he immediately rushed to a door, trying to pry it open with his fingers. "Everyone, grab anything that can be a weapon! The enemy's boarded us! Prepare to defend yourselves!"

"Error, communications system is still inactive," the computer unhelpfully said.

The Master reviewed the data forwarded so far, at least three different types of ships, one that was fairly damaged but was undergoing a great deal of activity, circling up the wagons had gone through the overmind, another had taken a position that indented that they didn't fear them and were probably over confident in their own abilities, probably have a decent amount of backup somewhere near at hand, and the third well the third didn't real fit in. All or none of them we could have accidentally ran into, it muttered, the Master then pulled up the ship's specs noting the lowered energy density near the strike and the sphere's own frantic gathering as repair drones worked on the hull like so many gnats.
I suggest that we take out the confident ones first, if we can destroy the majority of them before they can get any real signal out.
We do not know Overmind, after such an impact if we can take three different groups.
Are you growing soft Master? We are Technonauts we do not fear the non cleansed.
Do we still have all the Weapon in placements?
You know every well that we don't stick any of the Weapon in placements near the center.
Fine charge the Weapon, and began to target vital systems on the confident group, we need to wipe them out in the first strike.
The Overmind nearly purred with pleasure as it began the necessary actions, picking out likely weapon, shield and life support placements on the ships, even though it would take the sphere another two hours to reach even maximum range, the Overmind knew it had to strike first and strike hard to win...

Seer of the Path

Upon reaching the bridge, the repair crew from the Emperor's Grace noticed it in a state of disrepair. It seemed main power was failing, and it had sustained heavy damage from whatever had hit them. Over by a console, a man seemed to be trying, unsucessfully, to get through to the ship's computer. Upon noticing them, he shouted something, and ran to the door, trying frantically to get it open.

"Wait!" The lead engineer, a young woman with short black hair, called out, removing her visored helmet. "We're not the bad guys! Feth! We're here to help you!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emperor's Grace

"Captain, both parties have prepared delegates to send over."

"Very well. Direct them to hangar one. I'll meet them personally." Captain Daur turned to leave, before he was stopped by his auspex officer.

"Sir." She spoke up. "Long range auspex is detecting something moving towards us. Fast."

"Is it one of ours?"

"Negative, sir."

Captain Daur paused, thinking to himself for a minute.

"What's their ETA?"

"At their current speed..." She did the calculations on her console. "I would say about two hours, give or take."

"It might be the species their captain was talking about. Send a transmission to command, tell them to send additional aid. Also, send a transmission to our alien friends, and inform them of our discovery. Inform me if anything happens."

"Yes, sir."

With that, Captain Daur turned on his heel and marched from the bridge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To S.I.V Wizened and Holy Light of the Path,
This is the Emperor's Grace. Your perspective delegations are cleared to proceed to hangar one. Also, be aware that our long-range auspex has detected an unknown contact closing on our location. Be aware that we are uncertain of it's intentions, and may pose a danger.

Secure Communication

To:Imperial Naval Command, Otherium System

This is the Mars-Class Battlecruiser Emperor's Grace, on patrol route 3629. We've come across a number of damaged vessels, and have momentairly stopped to assist in repairs on coordinates Omega-76. Their captain has explained that they were attacked on their first contact, and made a blind jump to escape destruction. Supplementary to this, our long-range auspex has detected an unknown contact closing on our location. We earby request additional vessels, preferably a destroyer or battleship, if there are any to spare, to be dispatched to our location to see off any potential threats.

OOC: TRIAD, I don't see any reason they couldn't have :)

One of them has sent a message.
How can you be sure?
See that bit on the ship, it wasn't there two minutes ago and it isn't there anymore. It is large enough for some kind of long range commutation array and why else would it go through this kind of movements?
So much for knocking them out before they could get a message out. Hopefully it was just a simple commutation of: we found a damaged vessel and moved to help.
Do you really think that is likely?
No, but it would have made it quite abit easier.
Now were would the fun be in that?
Bah, we just survived an impact with a fairly large object only a dozen or so hours ago and you're talking about fun. Do any of the ships structures match the samples we took of the impactor?
Can't be sure from this distant, but we are 76% sure the middle/damaged ones are the ones. Targeting data has also been uploaded to the respective positions.
I don't suppose you could tell me what the message sent was?
We are powerful, but not that powerful. Do you wish to stop and turn around?
No, just hightlight the ones that pose the most threat instead of only the confident ones, if nothing else the confident one's leaders know where to collect their fallen.
Spoken like a true Technonaut, you could be Grand Master just yet...

On The Wizened’s Bridge

Low Commander Stepson monitored the various status messages that were coming up around his ships. A few of them were automated messages from the engineering crew who had been dispatched to the nearby vessel, things like the ship having a suitable atmosphere, right temperatures, and the condition of their light armors. Other things were just status messages on the ship, reports of the supplies they could give to the vessels to assist in repairs. There was however, one window he was looking out for - and as luck would have it, it showed up right after he was starting to get worried about not receiving a resposne.

>Colonial Force Command to the S.I.V. Wizened, your actions are commendable, both for preserving our cover story as well as lending actions to a damaged vessel. Your request has been accepted, the S.I.V. Egruoy has been rerouted to meet up with your vessel. The Heavy Cruiser will arrive in a little over an hour and a half - until then you’re on your own.

“Two hours… It must be coming in from outside of the galactic rim to arrive here that fast,” Stepson said before turning to the communications officer on the left side of the bridge, “Hey, Saren, Get our security officer on the line and tell him to suit up, he’s going to be our representative.”

“You sure sir?” the Sertian officer spoke looking back to look strait at the commander. “What about your X/O?”

“He’s sleeping his little heart out - besides Tarin could use the excursion. He’s been getting bored on a military vessel without any disciplinary problems. Besides, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to look after the safety of the vessel than the one who who’s in charge of its security.”

“Alright Sir… Sending message to Tarin, he should be at their ship in a few minutes after he gets ready.

On board the Kaldorei Vessel

Vitya couldn’t help but let out a small laugh as he saw their engineer rush by on some important task. Although afterwards he quickly stifled himself and, if it wasn’t for the helmet that disguised his form, he would have looked quite embarrassed, “Oh, sorry about that… I suppose there isn’t much funny about your situation eh?”

“Ayway,” the engineer decided it would be best by removing his helmet. His hands reached up to where his neck met the armor, a few discrete presses here and there and the nanofibers that made up the under suit would untangle, allowing him to pull the helmet off to reveal his mostly human face. His species was almost indistinguishable from what people called human, if it wasn’t for the usually weird colored hair or eyes and the tiger stripe like pattern that spread around his neck. “I’m Lieutenant Advanced Viyta, and my band of merry men armed with mist guns to do whatever needs to be done.”

“I suppose though, might be best to have us patch the holes we saw in your armor. We don’t have the Titanium-ceramic composite that you do, but our Tungstanium should at least patch your hulls until you get home. There’s also the least chance that one of my people will screw up and cause your people more trouble.”

“Besides, it allows us to work our way in while your own crews work outward, more efficient that way.”

S.I.V. Wizened's Air Dock

"You sure I can't bring the rifle?" Tarin spoke to the communication panal in the air dock while his arms held the large battle rifle in his arms.

"You've got the Ion Pistol with you and your battle armor, and this is for a diplomatic meeting Tarin," the commander's voice echoed back through the electronics. "We don't want to give them the impresion that you're a security risk to their vessel after all."

"It's not that, it's ceremonial! I don't have a ceramonial katar so this is the best thing I've got to a weapon of honor!"

"You've got the plasma katars built into your armor! And let's just hope you don't have to use them, the last thing you need to do is slice one of their officers apart!"

"But!"

"NO! No rifle, that's an order Lieutenant Tarin. You're also forbidden from revealing just how deadly that armor is, make them think it's merely an E.V.A. suit if you can."

"Fine..." the Selac said with a small grumble before locking the Pulse Plasma Rifle into it's place on the ship. Afterwards it was only a few keys of the air dock before he was free to jump out into space, making his way over to the battlecruiser through the microjets along his armor.

Ship: Seer of the Path

Unfortunately for the crew from the Emperor's Chosen, the man ignored them and continued trying to get the door open. Amazingly, it finally moved, creaking open to reveal what turned out to be a small storage closet. Unfortunately for the man, he just barely got the door halfway open before a large wrench from inside the room swung out, instantly knocking him to the floor and leaving him unconcious. Out stepped a young woman, who promptly dropped the wrench she was carrying and clasped her hands over her mouth.

"Oh Elune! I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry..." she began repeating over and over, sinking to her knees near him.

Two others, a man and a woman, emerged from the closet as well, glancing between the girl on the floor and the intruders. The woman was holding up what looked like a hammer, while the guy was holding up what looked like a welder. They both were covered in soot and grime, with their armor having discarded the shoulders, arm, and leg pieces in favor of mobility.

"Who are you and why did you attack our ships?" the woman asked.

Ship: Holy Light of the Path

This is the Emperor's Grace. Your perspective delegations are cleared to proceed to hangar one. Also, be aware that our long-range auspex has detected an unknown contact closing on our location. Be aware that we are uncertain of it's intentions, and may pose a danger.

"A ship incoming?" Alensia asked, almost not believing her ears. "Could they be coming through the Nether?" She was unsure if the other ships could scan it or not.

"Honestly?" The tech on duty answered. "They could be firing entire planets at us right now."

Alensia sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. A habit she had picked up during her last stay in Silvermoon, but it helped her stress level a bit.

"I'm putting a text note through the comm system. Maybe one of the two races repairing our ship could get our sensors fully repaired. In any case, I want shields, engines, and weapons fully operational. If we have to fight, we will need to maneuver. Maybe we can get lucky and whoever we'll face won't notice us slipping below their combat plane to strike from below." At least, she hoped that would happen...

Elsewhere on the ship, Marigold was just trying her best not to smile to the other's laughter. Yes, it was true it wasn't supposed to be funny, especially with the wounded, but she still had to smile.

"Patching the hull would be nice. I know that several of our ships didn't escape without a few new entrances added," Marigold said. "I also..." She paused as a hologram appeared before her, before waving it away. "Um, also, could one of you go to the bridge and try to get the sensors repaired? When we looked at it, the damaged sensor module was fused to the motherboard. We don't exactly have any spare motherboards..."

She smiles. "And, um, just out of curiousity... What race are you? You look kinda familiar, but I can't place it."

Ship: The Emperor's Chosen

Baldrin Bearclaw was one of those old soldiers, the ones who had the hair on the sides of their head turn white from stress and yet still were walking walls of muscle and combat. He was also, like many of his generation, a tall tale teller. He was also being ignored, with the crew of the transport greatful to have him off the ship in this emergency.

"Ah, yes, a nice, fancy ship," Baldrin said as he departed into the hangar after the transport had docked. "Back in my day, we would never have had spaceships or fancy engines. No! If you wanted to go to space, you had to build a giant rocket, fill it with gun powder, strap yourself to it, and light the fuse! And you liked it!"

For the others present, this might be the start of a very long day. The Kaldorei still on the transport, though wise enough not to say it, silently pitied the other races.

“My people?” the engineer spoke with a confused look. “Well, I guess it is proper to introduce one’s species as well. We call ourselves Sertians, although…” the engineer gave a small shake of his head, as if he was trying to forget something that was nagging at his mind, “Nah, it’s nothing important. But the familiarity, our species resembles a pretty old race spread throughout this galaxy. Maybe they had a colony on your world and left some artwork of themselves behind, or it could just be that we’re both two legged humanoids with similar features. Now anyway, you mentioned some burnt out circuitry?”

“I’m the most experienced engineer here, so it would be best for me to take a look at that. I’m not sure of your electronics but, if you just use simple binary it shouldn’t be to hard to whip something up.” Vitya would then turn to look at the four engineers he was in charge of, giving them a nod and a few short words to tell them to go back out through the air lock and start fixing whatever holes they could manage.

Once done he turned back to look at Marigold, “Now, I don’t suppose you mind escorting me to wherever this crispy motherboard is? No ship should fly blind for to long, that’s just torturing them, and the people on them.”

The Master sighed and went over the predictions again, they did not look good. They had been able to compute the likely threshold of the shielding and armors, 82% probability of destroying a quarter of the fleet(s) in the first pass. Its 85% now, we found the specific frequency for that ship.
Its still not quite good enough, I'd prefer to knock out them all out rather than have them bang on our shields, the frequencies aren't behaving like they should.
You worry to much, we could last several parso against all their ships, with a few missing it would be even longer and easier.
That's whats worrying me, only the central damaged ones have any real defensive positions, It looks like a trap.
For us or them?
I don't know, it could even be for the third party that damaged the damaged ones in the first place.
We are still forty light minutes out and are moving fast enough that they likely won't detect us before we arrive specially with the maneuvers we've been preforming.
Continue your computations and charging, I want as many as possible out in the first pass. I wish there was a closer plant or at least a planetoids were we could bleed off some of our speed.
True, but we'll have to make do with the twenty seconds we have...

Seer of the Path

The lead engineer could say that she was a little taken aback by the initial reaction of the aliens they were trying to help. Apparently, one of their crew had accidentally knocked out another, while two others appeared out of nowhere, holding hammers and welding torches.

"Who are you and why did you attack our ships?"

The lead engineer, named Miranda, looked over to the newcomer, brandishing a welding torch with the intent to kill. Since the repair team didn't expect to be running into trouble, they had foregone taking things such as laspistols and blades with them. Miranda stepped toward the woman, her hands held out in a peaceful manner.

"It's okay. We're here to help you. We're engineers from a nearby vessel. Your captain asked us to help repair your ships..." She took another step forward away from the team of seven engineers, who looked on silently as the situation unfolded.

-------------------------------------------------------
Emperor's Grace
Hangar

Captain Daur looked on as the two shuttles from the other ships landed neatly in the hangar bay. As maintenance crews and servitors rushed forward to tend to the docked craft, he stepped forward to greet the delegates. While not a young man anymore, he certainly wasn't old. In his mid-40's, he still retained his original head of black hair, and his tall stature certainly gave the impression of 'I can command a ship.'

"Welcome to the Emperor's Grace, friends." He began. "I'm Ban Daur, the captain of this fine vessel."

.............

Bridge
Commander Jason Mcgraff, the ship's XO, looked on as the crew continued to analyze the unknown contact. A younger man in his mid-30's, his pale skin and physique described a lifetime mainly spent aboard ships.

"Updates?" He ordered, shifting his position in the command chair.

"Sir. We've lost the contact, sort of?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, sir." The lieutenant scratched the back of her head, putting together an explanation. "It's moving a lot faster when we first detected it. We can't get a fix on it's location. Also, it's shifting on and off our auspex scopes. Like, sometimes it's in one place, sometimes it's somewhere else."

Mcgraff scratched his chin, thinking. "Can we still determine it's destination?"

"Yes, sir." The officer responded. "It's coming here."

"Frak..." The young XO said under his breath. "Put up the void-shields as a precaution."

"Yes, sir."

Mcgraff touched a button on his command chair.

"Now hear this! All pilots and gunnery crews to secondary alert."

.............

Pilot Quarters

"And...that's game." The first person said, smiling smugly as she folded her arms. "I'll be taking my 5 credits now."

The two figures were sitting in one corner of the room. It was a basic quarters to accommodate the fighter and bomber pilots that normally came with the ship. A Mars-Class Battlecruiser was a medium-sized ship of all trades, with enough gun batteries, strike craft, and shielding to hold it's own in case of an attack, if only for awhile. Recognizing this fact, the Ministry of Military Affairs was all too happy to produce these vessels in large numbers. While certainly not heavy enough to stand up to anything bigger, it was enough to see off most light vessels.

"What the..." The second person looked at the regicide board in surprise, unable to contemplate his loss. Conceding defeat, he reached into his uniform's pocket.

"Feth you, Banda." Tomas Manheim cursed, tossing a five credit piece on the table, which was generously scooped up.

Jesse Banda laughed, and began to open her mouth. Before she could speak, however, she was interrupted by the ship's vox-link.

"Now hear this! All pilots and gunnery crews to secondary alert!"

The two pilots looked at each other for a moment, in silence. Then, the bunk room sprung to life. Pilots leapt off bunks and scurried around, picking out their flight suits and helmets and zipping them up with all haste. Helmets we're strapped on, and suits double-checked by partners.

Sure they were secured and squared away, the pilots rushed down the corridor to the hangar bays.

Location Seer of the Path

The pair still looked distrustful.

"Our captain? He's dead. I don't think he'd be giving orders to anyone," the man growled.

"I think she means Alensia on the Holy Path," the woman said, lowering her own tool before reaching a hand over to gently lower his. "She must have taken command of the fleet."

"Alright," the man said, though his glance was still suspicious. "Can we trust them?"

"Can you fix it yourself?" the woman countered, before looking to the visiting repair crew. "We will need to gain access to our ship's Nether Drive. It was damaged during our flight through the Nether. When we transitioned to real space, it overloaded one of the power circuits. The resulting fire made it into the computer core before we were able to stop it."

"Without the computer core, the ship is useless. We can still fire the ship's weapons manually, but it won't do any good if what we're shooting at decides to move," the man said. "And the Nether Drive won't function as long as the main computer is offline. If we can't get it working, then this ship is just scrap materials."

"Come," the woman continued, turning towards the bridge's entrance. "I can show you to where the engineering door is. We'll need help getting debris out of the way. The bulkhead collapsed during the transition."

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin snorted as the ship's captain spoke. "Baldrin Bearclaw. Ninety years of war experience. If my people have ever had to kill it, I've probably killed at least one of its kind. And even a few they haven't. Can we get this under way? They may need my expertise soon."

If Ban Daur were to look at the transport, he would see one person on it shaking their head in disagreement with that last statement.

"This certainly isn't like it was back in the old days. Then, you didn't meet other commanders in shiny vessels like this. No, you were at war. You met them when your forces joined each other. And half the time, you were introducing yourself to them and shooting the enemy at the same time. And promotions? Those weren't determined by some fancy-schmancy system of 'Oh, you're a good boy who does your chores.' No. You went to battle. If you lived and your commander died, you got promoted. That's how a real promotion system works." Baldrin sounded like he was just getting started. "None of this 'get five stars and suddenly you're in command' crap that the children nowadays use. I swear, I used to eat things that were tougher than half the commanders today..."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

"Repairs on the shields are taking slightly longer than we thought. One of the spare generator coils was defective. Luckily, we caught it in time. However, we doubt we will have all three shield systems fully operational in the time limit you gave. I would suggest choosing between combat or ability to freely travel through the Nether. If we had a bit more time, we could get all three systems online and..." came a male voice over the comm as Marigold and the engineer walked into the room.

"Focus on combat and try to get the third system online as fast as you can. Our combat shields may not allow us to win a fight, but they can at least last long enough for us to run. I'll extend the time limit a little bit, since we have visitors and the extra repair crews. Why are you not utilizing the extra crews to help with the shields?"

"The problem itself is within the main computer core. A couple of very hard to reach circuits are blown, and we're having issues with getting to a damaged surge protector to replace it. We're having to dismantle the casing of the main computer itself to replace these parts. Until we get those parts replaced, we can't get any power to the shield coils themselves without blowing them," the voice replied.

"Hrm." Alensia was obviously contemplating something. She was also still wearing that robe. "Let the extra people from the Emperor's Grace handle the rest of the internal repairs. I want you to prioritize the shields, weapons, and engines. Also, make preparations for implementing the Moon Well Directive."

"You don't mean...?" Marigold asked.

"I do. It may become necessary to save the rest of the fleet. As soon as the transports are repaired, I want them to immediately jump and set a course for Draenor. I will be downloading our logs to them, as well as any letters members of the crew have to back home." Alensia looked to Vitya. "I would suggest you make it a point to have your crew back on your ship once combat starts. I cannot guarantee your safety if you are still here then."

Marigold nodded, then turned to Vitya. "H-here, come. The damaged sensor module is over here..." She lead him over to the front of the captain's station. "I, um..." She considers. "Could we continue talking about your people after the ship is repaired? It seems things are taking a turn for the worse."

Lieutenant Tarin didn't actually arrive in a shuttle, so much as he arrived floating through space propelled by the microjets that were still clamped at various hard points of his armor. It did leave less work for the servitors, but it also made for a comedic show when the armored humanoid moving at a few dozen meters per second approached the artificial gravity of the hanger bay and, well, who would have guessed that a full metal body suit would have such a comedic thud when it hit the floor of a hanger. Fortunately though, the soldier got to his feet with little more than an idle curse about how the gravity should slowly come into effect, rather than just being there one second. But, after that few seconds of hurt pride the Sertian would get to his feet and walk over to the Captain.

"Lieutenant Tarin, Security Officer of the Wizened. Pleasure to meet you Ban Daur, and you too... Baldrin," the Lieutenant turned to the grizzly looking Night Elf. He didn't really know what to say, or do, about the crazy old man, although thankfully the tinted helmet of his suit prevented the Kaldorei from seeing the puzzled look he shot at him.

"Now then, not to spare the pleasantries or anything, but you mentioned something about a ship approaching?"


Back To The Misadventures Of Lieutenant Advanced Vitya!

The engineer gave a solem nod as the leading Kaldorei spoke, "Don't worry ma'am. Except for me, the other four are on the hull of your ship. If something gets hot they can jump out into space where they can be out of the way of any action and picked up later."

The engineer would then give a somewhat brave smile to Marigold. Despite being an engineering officer, it was apart of the Sertian's early training to be trained in front line combat, just in case - and he had been in his share of minor scuffles throughout his home galaxy. "Actually, I prefer to talk while I'm working so I could tell ya about it while I work. That is, if you don't have something else to do, I'm sure your people must be busy."

He would then kneel down by the damaged station, pulling a variety of tools that were magnetically locked to his armor. He first pulled out what looked like a universal screwdriver and attempted to unscrew the panal, but it seemed like that was ineffective or that some of the screws were partially slagged and wouldn't work anymore. Instead he reached for another tool and placed it within an inch of whatever it was that was preventing him from getting at the electronics, toying with the settings before activating it, hopefully disassembling whatever had melted the panal shut.

Seer of the Path

Miranda thought for a moment, the pupil of her augmetic eye twisting, as if adjusting itself. "If your Nether Drive acts anything like a Warp Drive, my people can definitely fix it. The main computer, however, might be a different story. We'll need to access the fire damage before we can say anything for sure, though." She tilted her head to the side. "But let's see that bulkhead first." She pointed to one of the engineers. "You! Stay here with the rest of the bridge crew, we may to get something done up here." She turned to the rest of the crew. "The rest of you! Follow me"

Emperor's Grace
Hangar

"The pleasure's mine, Lieutenant." Daur replied, nodding in approval of the Sertian arrival. He turned to Baldin, who was busy ranting and raving about how things were done back in the day, "Please, you're scaring my repair crew." Captain Daur interrupted the large, grizzly-looking Night Elf, motioning to the emotionless repair servitors, who were busy buzzing away with augmetic drills and other maintenance equipment grafted into various points in their body.

Sure he had both delegates attention, he began to speak again. "Now, to business. Our long-range auspex scopes have detected an unknown vessel heading to our location. It's been shifting it's course multiple times, and has changed it's speed quite a lot as well but it's destination still seems to be here." He explained. As he spoke, the several doors to the hangar slid open, and the first batch of pilots came dashing out, fully suited up. Moving past the captain and docked shuttle, they ran towards the Lightning interceptor and Marauder bomber craft on the sides. "I've ordered my people to secondary alert, as a result."

..........................

Jesse Banda dashed through the hangar, paying little heed to the officer chatting with the aliens. Manheim was hot on her heels, but diverted to the left to run a check on his Lightning.

Dashing to her own Lightning, she leapt into the open cockpit, and pressed a series of buttons. The cockpit system came to life, lighting up and shutting the canvas. She pressed a few more buttons, and threw on her vox-headset. Her channel was already thick with comm-chatter, as other pilots dashed to their stations.

"One, this is three." Manheim's voice chattered through the noise. "All systems go."

"Confirm that." Banda responded. "Squadron, confirm status.

"Two here. All systems go."

"Four here. Green light."

"This is five. I'm ready."

"Alright. We'll assume patrol pattern alpha-2."

A series of acknowledgments. Another voice crackled on their channel.

"This is the bridge. Gold Squadron, you are cleared to launch."

"Roger, control. Gold Squadron, let's move out."

The fighters fired to life as the engines gave a deafening roar throughout the hangar. The fighters lifted off the metal grating of the floor, and took off into space.

Location: Seer of the Path

"We will need to hurry," the womand said, beckoning the others to follow as she turned and hurried into the room just outside the bridge. "We'll have to step over debris and route through a couple of air tunnels, but we should be okay. This is an alternate route I'm taking... the other's, um, a lot less pleasant."

She reached down, prying a panel off the wall, revealing the crawlspace inside. "It's a bit cramped in a couple of areas."

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin blinked as he saw people rush out. His face turned serious as Daur decided to get to business, nodding and grimly turning to face the man and the one who had decided to float into the room.

"I'm ready when you are," he said. "We should hurry. The Holy Path could be ready for battle at any moment, and it will need every soldier it can get. I'm old, so they wouldn't question my decision to join them. But this incoming ship will still be a challenge."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

"Who welded this shut?" Marigold asked as the watched Vitya struggle to get the panel open. "I know we're running low on parts, but I don't think that was necessary."

"Give me an updated report on the weapons system," Alensia ordered.

"Anyway, you said you'd tell me about your people?" Mairgold asked Vitya.

"Moonglaive launchers are active. The control system's a little... wonky. I would expect them to at least scratch the sides of the launchers when they return. We could get a few shots in, but we won't be able to fight another battle," the intercom replied.

"I'm less concerned with fighting another battle as just keeping enemy attention," came Alensia's reply. "If things go as is suspected, we won't need to be able to fight another battle."

"Captain, the transports report that they can't find Azeroth or Draenor," Marigold said as a hologram appeared before her, the front of it containing a text message.

"Forward a polite request to the Emperor's Grace for some star maps of this region. We just need to find a system we've actually surveyed." Alensia rubbed the bridge of her nose. "And when the transports leave, I want you on one of them. I can't afford to waste what would be a healthy career with a suicide run. And don't protest."

"Sending message," Marigold replied, her hands reaching up to type on the hologram, all the while she continued to pay attention to Vitya's work and words.

“I don’t think it was wielded shut, it‘s possible that during someone‘s work they just accidentally heated up the screw when they put it in, so it got slagged to the cover plate,” the engineer said as he placed the panel to his right, before giving a confused look at the fried circuits, melted wires, and some sort of soot that might have once been something that caught fire. “Doesn’t look like there’s much left here that can be salvaged, and I don’t have any silica bricks with me… Hmmm…”

“I think I could reconfigure the back up mother board from my armor and rewire it to your equipment,” he said before putting his tools down and starting to type at some sort of armlet computer on his arm. A few seconds later some sort of stick (well, it was more of a small cylinder with various ports along the sides) popped out of the back unit. Catching the unit, he would quickly crack open the casing with one of his tools and then begin pulling the compact wires, circuitry, and cooling sinks apart so he could put them back together again.

“Anyway, my people,” he spoke as he still worked, although his eyes were focused on the circuitry in his hands so it looked more like he was mumbling to no one in particular. “Historical records go back for a few hundreds years before we achieved space flight, not FTL mind you. Started off as scattered small tribes, mostly hunter gatherers with a semi-permanent home base they could return to for winter and what not.”

“After that came the age of civilization,” he spoke as he finally seemed to be putting what used to be apart of his armor back together. Wires and ports being plugged in, torn out, or melded together by one of his tools. “People started to intermarry, power was collected between individual tribes and cities started to develop. It was also marked by frequent assassinations of leaders though - which in the long run was probably for the best, it culminated the power faster and allowed our people to develop as a people faster.”

“After that, we started to poke around in space. Explore other planets in our system, and start a colony on our moon. As things went on we developed the Bussard ramjet engine, which allowed for our first colonies to spread to other worlds… And… There!” he said as he finished plugging the new make-shift sensor motherboard into the Kaldorei systems.

“It might be a bit finicky, I just used a standard binary data handling, processing, and report program. If you’ve got anyone who’s a computer programmer they might want to take a look at it.”

Onboard the Emperor’s Grace

“The fact that they’re trying to remain undetected is a bad sign, if they were just coming to check things out or ask if we needed help they would just plot a direct course to get here as fast as possible.”

He would have taken the time to notify his ship of this, but fortunate for him his suit was already making a record of this conversation, transmitting it with a short ranged Drift communication back to the Wizened where the Low Commander was made aware of the situation. The response came with a small window on the HUD of his helmet, stating that the Egruoy was still on it’s way - along with the timer for it’s estimated arrival.

Of course, he didn’t consider it prudent to tell the captain about the Sertian Heavy Cruiser on it’s way.

15 light minutes


14 light minutes


13 light minutes

How long do you plan on doing that?
Until you let me fire the main weaponry and we start our twenty second fight.
Of course, are we close enough to do either of that?
Depends on whether you want to hit them or not and if they have FTL sensors, since they have been moving into more defensive positions over the past half hour, we'd wager that they do.
Fine, probabilities of hitting in our first strike.
78% for main weapon on their larger and hopefully slower ships, 48% hit rate on their smaller vessels, that would be the confident ones only by the way, the damaged would be slightly higher and the third group lower, these percentages are also steadily increasing and decreasing the closer we get.
How can it be both?
Theres less lag the closer we get, but more time for them to deploy/summon reinforcements and get into FTL, the damaged ships are also steadily losing their damaged state, they could very well be in a combat ready state if we wait to long.
Fine, when we are at 8 light minutes fire the main weapon(kind of a star wars type ion cannon and turbolaser combined) and release drones when we are at 30 light seconds.
That would give us only five seconds to release them.
If we want any of them to make it to the ship, we will release them that far and no farer
As you wish, 12 light minutes...

The TEEF Fervent Dream stumbled into the system in total disarray. Instead of using Slipstream, the ship was limping using a foldspace drive. Much like the colony fleet, the TRIAD destroyer had been ambushed by unknown hostiles, and had been forced to make a blind jump. The previous jump of the "Holy Light of the Path's" fleet drew the incoming fold into local space.

One moment there was nothing, roughly a hundred thousand km off the Eluneyasa fleet; then with a flash of light and a flush of disturbed space the wounded destroyer appeared, slowly rotating. The vessel normally had an appearance that resembled a manta ray, however there were signs of extensive damage now. One of the forward 'horns' was missing, and the leading edge of the starboard 'wing' was venting atmosphere from several long ruptures. Scars which vented some kind of fluid crossed the smooth hull.

For the moment, only very low power readings were evident; she was adrift.

OOC: Apologies for length, but I'm pressed for time.

Seer of the Path

Despite herself, Miranda sighed as she looked inwards towards the little crawlspace. She thought about how bad the other route could be, ranging anywhere from fire-chocked corridors to going out into space itself.

"I suppose it'll do." She finally said, waving her people in. "You heard the lady, get going!"

Emperor's Grace

"Which is exactly what we're afraid of." Captain Daur replied, folding his arms. "What I'm saying here is, if it comes down to a fight, everybody will have to help."

.......................

"Commander." The ship's auspex officer said. "Something coming through the Warp."

"Is it the vessel?"

"No, sir..." she said, her voice trailing off. "It doesn't match anything in known database, but it appears it's heavily damaged.

"Show me?"

The view-screen panned to get a view of the ship.

"Scans show a very low level of power output."

"Try hailing them. Maybe there's somebody still alive in there."

A spray of nutrient fluid from a ruptured conduit sprayed over it's primary optical sensors. For a moment the machine "felt" annoyance, if what the Marduk captain actually experienced could be called "feeling". A moment's struggling as it tried to right itself, a helpful crew member leveraging against it's side and heaving. Eventually the bulk of the Marduk designated GX-752-T, or more commonly known as Gex to it's crew, got to it's feet. Gex had originally possessed an insectoid frame, patterned after a multi-pede species. However common interaction with more common bipedal organics convinced Gex that it would better serve with a similar shape; and so opted to use a frame that more resembled a creature similar to a terran gorilla.

As the ape-shaped machine looked around the disturbed bridge, Gex finally found it's first officer, a female, canine-like Khyrolii named Shyla. Knuckle walking over to Shyla's side, Gex tried to access the ship-net to assess the damage, and found itself unable to do so. #Report.# The smooth, mechanical voice asked of the canine.

"I'm sorry sir. Most of the ship's datagrid is offline. Primary power is gone, reserves are down to twenty percent. Life support is holding, but there appear to be hull breaches on the starboard wing. We're still trying to get a headcount and determine any casualties. Enkidu's datacore is intact, but all it's feeds are shot. We're dead in the water." The clipped tones tried to hide her apprehension over the ship's situation, and only partially succeeded.

#Understood. Focus efforts on restoring power to life support and internal sensors. Then divert repairs to those hull breaches and any other critical damage.# Gex returned Shyla's salute, then moved back to it's command station. Right now it could best serve the ship by taking direct command of several of the non-autonomous Marduk drones aboard the ship. Diving into the six bodies it could reach, the captain of the TEEF Destroyer "Fervent Dream" tried to lick it's wounds, totally unaware to the dramas outside.

OOC: Sorry about the delay. Work today was brutal. But, it's over with now and I'm relaxed ^^

Location: Seer of the Path

The crawl space was small as one went through. It was also filled with soot but, given the cleared path, had apparently been used quite frequently lately. Once beyond the crawlspace, two directions were revealed: One towards a door that had been welded shut, beyond which could be seen several small holes in the floor and open space beyond them, and the other leading to a number of pieces of debris, most of it in the form of half-melted plastic. Signs of attempts to clear it were easily found, with pieces having been moved to be piled up against the welded door.

The wall, of course, was worse; obviously, the thickness between it and space in several areas was around that of paper, as one could see through it to the blackness outside a bit. Several wires, not sparking, could be seen extending partially from the wall before being abruptly ended. Lighting was provided by an overhead light that kept flickering on and off. The light only seemed to make the woman's eyes, even through their glow, appear to have a slightly unsettled look, as though her mind was heavily frayed by recent events.

"We'll have to hurry. I don't know how long this room will remain pressurized," the woman said.

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin nodded. "If the Holy Path does what I think they'll do, they'll execute the Moon Well Directive. They'll try to lure the enemy ship as close as possible, and then overload the Nether Drive." He frowned. "It's an emergency procedure, but it's the only way they can guarantee a significant enough distraction for the transports to escape. Only... they need star maps. We don't have this region mapped yet."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

Marigold nodded, listening and leaning close as she watched the actions. When it was put in place and started, she smiled. "It sounds like your people had a relatively short history before space flight. I..."

"A ship just showed up on sensors. It appears slightly damaged," one of the other techs said.

"Show it to me," Alensia said, shooting Vitya a greatful look.

Emperor's Grace
Bridge

"No response, sir." The comms-officer reported. "It seems like they're just drifting."

"A ship just doesn't 'drift' in and out of FTL travel like that, lieutenant." Mcgraff replied, standing. In fact, he couldn't have been more wrong. There had been rumors of such ships, empty of crew, fading in and out of the Warp as it so pleases. However, Mcgraff wasn't one to believe in ghost stories. "We can't spare the people to carry out a full investigation right now. Divert a fighter to make a pass." Maybe a fly-by could reveal something that ships scanners couldn't."

"Yes, commander."

Hangar

"Overload your FTL core?" Daur said, perking an eyebrow. "Will there be enough time to get everybody out of there? Our people will assist you in any way, if need be."
..................................

Gold Squadron

"Acknowledged, control." Banda responded over her vox-link. "You heard that, everyone?" Her question was answered by a flurry of acknowledgments across her vox-link.

The closed in on the derelict ship, sweeping over it with short-range scanners as they flew by, like birds of prey over a rotting carcass.

............................

Seer of the Path

Regina, while knowing that clearing the debreis would be no easy task, couldn't help but feel her heart sink as it came into view. The engineers had certainly brought tools required - hell, some had them physically grafted into their arms. But it would take time. And time was something they didn't really have right now. This ship was in a state where something could explode at any second.

"Alright, get to work, people!" She ordered, as the other six engineers quickly moved forward. As they began to go to work, it was clear that a number of them had had some body parts replaced with mechanical enhancements. Some sported mini-drills in their fingers as they cut through smaller debris, turning it into smaller chunks. Some had metal enhancements grafted into their arms, giving them the ability to lift heavier objects that a normal perso wouldn't. Even others had a large mechanical arm grafted into their shoulder, combining drill, wrench, and lifter into a single metal piece. Regina herself, however, seemed mostly unaltered, the only visible part being her eye, which twisted and turned every now and then, making small mechanical noises.

On the Emperor’s Grace

“That will not be necessary,” the Lieutenant spoke after Baldrin revealed what his people were planning. “Once our ship asked if you needed assistance, we took it upon ourselves to place your care under our protection.”

“Our ship may be… small,” the security officer said with a slightly confused tone being transferred through the electronic voice that spoke through his armor, possibly a bit of awkwardness at how he had called their frigate a small ship despite the fact it was larger than the Kaldorei ship they were assisting. “However, she’s fast and has some nice fire power to her - she can cover your ship’s profiles, giving all of them the chance to escape.”

“Not that your ships aren’t, capable,” he said with a small nod to the male night elf, a respectful gesture. “But they’re in no case to handle a full on assault, even a suicide mission might end in only gaining the attention of the ship so it’ll be vaporized before it has a chance to enact it’s plan. Our ship, however, is a combat vessel. Heavy armor, weapons, an experienced crew who’s battled against dozens of other species. Thus the Wizened is much more capable of serving as a distraction while your vessels retreat.”

“As for star maps,” he continued once more, apparently wrapping up his little speech. “Our engineer, Vitya, on your ship can transfer over what we’ve scouted of the galaxy, as well as the location of pulsars. It’s not guaranteed to show your people the way back home, but if even a few of those pulsars are in your star charts, you should be able to plot a course.”

Back to Vitya *Bat Man Sound*

It looked like the Sertian was about to speak about how his people, unusually, did have a short recorded history compared to most races in this galaxy, but most of it came from summarization. However, the report of another ship showing up caused him to shut his mouth before he spoke the first syllable.

Instead, he said something entirely different, “Could it be the ship that was moving all over the place?”

On Board the Bridge of the Wizened

“Report on the Erguoy, it should have been here for a while now,” the selac spat out. The fact that another damaged vessel showing up wasn’t a good sign. It could mean that something larger was happening, something that would take more than a single cruiser and frigate to handle, even if it was a Sertian Military Vessel.

“The Erguoy’s plotted route ran through a dense star cluster, the gravity slowed down it’s travel. The Erguoy is now two minutes away from our position - their tactical officer is requesting that we provide them with the vector of the unknown ship so that they can move to intercept.”

“Reply that we’re having trouble locking onto the enemy vessel. It continues to change course to try and remain undetected, and seems to be traveling close to, or at the speed of light. We are unclear if they’re suffering from relativistic lag, but if they are it would be impossible for them to effectively combat our vessels - heck they wouldn’t even have time to detect us.”

Onboard the "Fervent Dream", repair crews both organic and mechanical scurried about the ship attempting to seal ruptures, reconnect power conduits, and restore critical systems. With a yelp of triumph, the team of Khyrolii engineers managed to patch the last plasma conduit that was causing most of the ship's power systems to fail. Almost immediately half the ship's systems lit up, displays coming to life as power returned.

On the bridge Gex withdrew it's conciousness from the repair drones and looked to the Digital Entity's display tank. The holographic projectors flickers, sputtered, then died again. Despite the seeming failure, Enkidu's masculine voice came out clearly, "Greetings captain. It appears that some of my subsystems remain offline."

#Understood Enkidu, begin diagnostics of all ship systems and direct repair efforts to critical systems.# The Marduk responded verbally, mostly for the benefit of the other bridge crew.

Gex was about to dive back into the repair drones when the crewman at the tactical station called out, "Captain! Short range sensors came back online with the power. We've only lost a little resolution, but enough to detect five strikecraft sized objects making passes near the ship."

#Are there any indications of hostility?# The machine's attention diverted slightly as Gex accessed the datafeeds from the short range sensor systems. Gex could clearly see the feed from the optical cameras as they tracked one of the small craft pass by.

The Reikoan studied the readings for a moment before shaking his head, his fur going from yellow to a calmer cyan, "No sir! I cannot be certain with this level of resolution, however it appears they are attempting to scan us. I am reading no EM or thermal signatures consistant with charged weapons."

"Comm traffic!" Yelled Shyla, her head tilting as she tried to listen to the static-laden traffic. "Our communications are still badly damaged. We cannot even receive radio signals without severe distortion. I'll keep working on it."

Gex turned to the Enkidu's tank, #Enkidu, focus efforts on sealing all hull breaches first, then divert equal attention to comms and propulsion. Tactical, notify me immediately if those strike craft make any threatening actions.#

Outside:
The manta-ray shaped ship continued to slowly tumble, outwardly unresponsive to any communication or actions. The fighters that passed by would read the entire ship registering bio-signs, and the material of the hull appeared to be at least semi-organic. Other than faint power readings, little could be determined of the inside of the ship.

Suddenly however the faint power readings spiked, then leveled off to what *could* be considered somewhat below 'cruising' levels. The entire surface of the hull seemed to shudder; a ripple starting at the bow and moving it's way aft. At several points along the ship, small openings appeared on the hull, disgorging numerous shapes which scurried along the surface to the sites of venting atmosphere and fluids. More energy readings consistent with cutting tools.

While so far it had not responded to any communications, it seemed the ship was not quite as dead as first appearances.

Power down all weapons, and bleed off some speed now!
Master?
One damaged fleet is bad enough but when a second one shows up, something wrong. We're switching to diplomatic and defense protocols now, put the bled off power to long range scopes and began figuring out where that ship came from.
Aye, but bleeding off speed is going to be fairly hard in the few minutes we have left.
I don’t care, bleed off as much as possible and began preparation to send a message on our first pass, use the nearby planet to burn off some speed, if it takes several I don’t care, just do it.
Aye, all drones strap in, emergency braking protocols activated.
The sphere visibly shook as a number of thrusters roared onto life on the face facing the various noncleansed ships, a slight boom could be heard in a way if one had the correct sensors as the sphere rapidity accelerated, producing a number of space-time distortions as it slowed from its previous FTL travels to a more leisure pace, yet it still flew through the gaps in the noncleansed ships lines at seventy one percent of the speed of light. Transmitting a brief message in the galactic common language and a number of other important ones.

We came for war, but now arrive in peace.

Continuing its maneuvers, the sphere took an unstable orbit around the nearest planet shuddering more as additional velocity was dumped into the planet, it completed one orbit before heading towards the main star to bleed off even more...

Location: Seer of the Path

While it would appear to be a big mess, there was one factor to be considered: This ship was cheaply made. The external plastics of the ship were layered with titanium, but the internal ones were not. And, given how easily they melted, these were not top-grade plastics. Or anywhere close.

It wasn't long before the ones working were joined by the rest of the ship's crew, minus the man who was still unconcious. They kept quiet as they helped the engineers clear the rubble, with the clearing going relatively quickly. The plastic itself was lightweight, easily cut, easily melted, and relatively easy to add to a pile.

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin nodded to Daur, only to turn to look at the Lieutenant from the other ship.

"The aid would be appreciated. But, I doubt our ship would let you do all of the fighting. It may not be able to stand up to what they have to throw at us, but it can draw attention. Captain Alensia might be convinced to leave with the transports if one suggested she might need to escort them," Baldrin said. "And the star maps will be very useful. We have sent out a large number of probes. Most of them did not make it to their target before we discovered the issue with navigation through the Nether."

"Distances and speeds within the Nether are not the same as those without," Baldrin continued. "Most of the Nether itself is empty. It's made up of air you can breathe, but still empty. A large number of remnants of worlds have been found within. We've gotten to where we navigate by these and by pulsars found in space. Objects within the Nether move, so we have to leave it frequently for course corrections. We know that three ancient civilizations were capable of travelling through it and arriving at their destination without needing to leave it, but we don't know how this was done."

Finally, Baldrin decided to end the explanation, leaving much out on purpose. "The problem is that none of these races are still around. The last one capable of it had their leadership killed by our people. They have since either died off or scattered to the far edges of the galaxy. Much of their technology still remains for us to study, but without their power to keep it going."

Location: Holy Light of the Path Nananananananana~

As the ship appeared on screen, Alensia leaned forward to study it. It quite obviously was not one of the ships that attacked them. At the same time, it appeared to be damaged. The ripple along their length, along with the emerging workers, only made the captain sit back and blink. She was very glad she chose to have this appear on the large screen at the front of the ship.

"Are our sensors currently active enough to scan that ship for life signs?" Alensia asked.

"I think the sensors still need adjustment. We're getting a confusing mixture of life and otherwise. In between sensor readings that look to be Winterveil songs?" the techs said.

"Marigold, do you know anything about computer programming?" Alensia asked.

"A bit. I studied for a few months in Exodar," Marigold said, moving over to the captain's station and punching a few keys. "This looks to be a set of basic algorithms to convert data into readible printouts. I should be able to use the writer it comes with to create a basic program to adjust for the differences in the new part. Our sensors won't be up to full capacity, but I think I can get you... eighty percent?"

"Do it," Alensia ordered, before looking to Vitya. "Now, tell me about this ship that was moving all over the place. Our sensors have not picked it up yet."

Marigold looked over to Vitya as well. "Could you come over here and give me a bit of a hand? I need the specifications and signal output from the part you added. Plus you can tell me more about your people."

"Captain, shields are repaired. We only have combat shields and realspace navigation. Netherspace navigation is next. If we bypass two of the safety protocols, we can have them in... ten minutes? Fifteen?" came the intercom.

"You have ten minutes. Bypass three of them if you have to," Alensia said, before sighing. "Marigold, when you're done here, try to see if we can get some idea where we are. We need a route back to Draenor and soon, and we need to at least have some idea where we are in space."

Location (I stole it! HAH! *Runs off with the way of writing!*): Holy Light of the Path.

“I can’t tell you much,” Vitya said as he got up to move next to the Merigold. “Our sensors aren’t the most advanced, and that goes doubly so for our FTL sensors. We heard about it from the Emperor’s Grace, and recently our sensors have detected the ship moving about. What we do know is that’s it’s large, possibly the size of a very small moon. Other than that, their ship seems to be moving at just under the speed of light. It’s possible they don’t even have FTL travel and just rely on their incredibly powerful sublight drives.”

Once he had told the kaldorei captain what he knew, he went about adding what bit of advice he knew of binary from his school days - needless to say he was a bit rusty as well, but hopefully the two of them were enough to enhance the sensor resolution now that the modified motherboard was in place. “Well, I was summarizing a bit, ya see my people’s most interesting history comes after we achieved space flight.”

“We set up about… eight colonies before we developed FTL travel, but that didn’t mean we didn’t try to develop it. You can’t believe how many failed Hyperdrives, Worm Hole Generators, Warp Drives, a ton of things that either did nothing of blew up in our face. By the time we developed primitive Drift Drives we had given our colonies almost full independence, and like children they almost immediately got into a war over territory that they could colonize.”

“Needless to say, our first warship frigate, equipped with experimental plasma technology and FTL drives, quickly put an end to the Colonial Wars and formed all nine planets under the Home Imperium, the first incarnation of our government.”

The engineer would then stop for a second, as if he was listening to something that only he could hear. “We’ve got a vessel dropping in in front of us, do you mind telling your ships not to get trigger happy about it?”


Location: Bridge of the S.I.V. Erguoy

The Erguoy, an Avalon-Class Heavy Cruiser was one of the largest vessels in the Sertian’s armada (actually the third largest ship given active military status). It was a one kilometer long cruiser, slightly blocky in shape with it’s sharp angles that were designed to handle the incredible punishment of space battles. However, for the moment it’s surface was blocked by the bright glow of white-blue plasma that covered it’s hull, the plasma sheath technology covering just what type of weapons or defenses the war cruiser might have.

The ship arrived just in time to catch the Technonaut sphere shooting by, it’s standard sensor array being able to catch blurred images of the relativistic moving vessel, while it’s Drift Sensors made sure to keep track of the ship’s mass as it moved throughout the system. When they saw it heading towards the star for another breaking pass the Erguoy sent their own message to the mysterious vessel, curiously in sound instead of the usual text messages the vessels sent.

“This is the S.I.V. Erguoy, leading vessel of the Serigate Plasma Peace Core in this sector of space. You openly admit that you came here to attack ships that were damaged and, some of them, unable to fight back - ships that were under the protection of our forces. What should stop us from opening fire on your vessel right now rather than listen to you, on the off chance that your intentions may switch again?”

Drop the sensor blockers around everything but the core.
Master?
Let them get a better idea of our status. If they know we are injured also they may be more willing to talk and if not they can count the amount of weaponry we have and no they're still currently outgunned.
We are receiving a very unusual transmission, language is off most charts, but we have a good grasp of it, putting it on your console now.
Can we transmit in that frequency?
By the time we are close enough to transmit, yes.
Good, continue our acceleration, I don't want to pass by the planets anymore than necessary. Also send them and only them this message..

"None, though we could destroy a majority of your ships before the first shot reached us. As your sensors will no doubt beable to detect when we reach you, we have also been recently damaged, our own scans, reports and investigation have turned up has identified that several of the damaged vessels you are currently protecting are similar to the one that damaged ours. We did not take likely to species that attack us without warning or cause nor those that shelter them, it will take us time to reduce our speed but we can also prove that we did not damage them or the other ship that has just appeared nor did anyother Sphere in our collective. As we are not indestructible we fell it is better to forget the past for the moment and focus on what really damaged the ships and how to best not end up as bad or worst than them..."

Have it?
Yes, but we will have to transmit it in multiple parts, our speed is still currently to high.
Hopefully we've peaked their curiosity enough that they won't began shooting...

(OOC: A had a nice, good, long post lined up before Firefox decided to eat it alive.)

Emperor's Grace
Bridge

"What the hell is that?" Mcgraff asked aloud, quickly becoming irritated.

"Sir! The unknown contact has reappeared! It's currently orbiting Otherium IV."

"Report coming in from the orbital station." Another officer spoke up. "Apparently, the ship is trying to use the planet to help reduce it's speed. They're relaying a transmission to us." He chuckled. "Looks like they got the shock of their life."

We came for war, but now arrive in peace.

"So they don't want to blow us up now?" Mcgraff asked, finding that hard to believe. In his experience, the enemy could be playing some sort of trick on them, to lower their guard.

"Inform the Captain of this. Also, open a channel."

"Yes, sir."

Unidentified vessel,
We find your sudden change of heart a little hard to believe. Perhaps you can clarify your reasoning for doing this?

..............
Hangar

Captain Daur suddenly paused in the conversation, his comm-link buzzing.

"Excuse me." He said suddenly, moving away to converse with the XO. After a minute or two, he returned to the two aliens.

"Perhaps it's time I showed you two the bridge?"

..................

Seer of the Path

"We're making more headway than I thought." Miranda commented, stepping out of the way for an engineer. "What's this ship made of, anyway?"

(OOC: I had so much more for this part, too...)

.................................
Space

"Something's happening..." One of the Gold pilots announced, his voice already becoming edgy.

"I can see that, Two." Banda responded. Looking across the hull of the derelict spacecraft, she was able to make out movement. "Looks like maintenance servitors, trying to fix the hull."

"Roger that." Another pilot responded. "Moving to intercept."

"Belay that." Banda commanded. "They don't look hostile. Try contacting them, see if we can get a response."

******
Hull of the Fervent Dream
******

Enkidu's awareness spread out as facets of it's conciousness connected with the many Marduk drones aboard, directing these to airlocks to begin repairing the torn hull along the starboard wing. One of the drones, patterned after a centipede, scuttled from the airlock and moved to get a good vantage of the breach.

It appeared that the entire forwards weapon pod had been destroyed, rupturing the inner hull in at least two sections, and causing lacerations in the ship's circulatory system as well. Those would need to be patched before the ship lost too much vital fluid. The centipede used microwave beams to direct the other drones, then turned it's 'head' spaceward as a reflection caught it's photoreceptors. The Angenterian fighters made another pass, and the drone's sensors detected the radio frequency emissions. Sadly while the drone could detect the emissions, the frame did not possess any hardware to actually receive and interpret those signals.

******
Bridge of the Fervent Dream
******

"Captain. One of the drones I am linked to is detecting radio emissions from the unknown fighters. They appear to be trying to communicate, however my drone is unable to respond using radio frequencies." Enkidu still could resolve it's avatar.

The Marduk captain reviewed Enkidu's data, if it's frame could frown it would have. #Attempt to contact the fighters using the drone's microwave transmitter. Be certain to keep the power output low so they do not misconstrue it as an attack.#

"Understood captain. I estimate it will take fifteen minutes to seal the hull ruptures, all forward weapons along the starboard wing have been either destroyed or disabled. I will be unable to determine exact damage reports until other efforts are complete."

******
Hull of the Fervent Dream
******

The centipede drone kept it's body oriented on the nearest fighter. When the Angenterian ship made it's next pass, the drone activated a very low power microwave beam, attempting to keep the beam on the fighter. The beam was not constant; it was pulsing rapidly, it's power level varying as well. With any luck, the fighter's sensors would detect the attempt to communicate.

Location: Seer of the Path

The woman glanced back at the question of what the ship's made out of.

"Cheap plastic. It was built on a budget smaller than my yearly pay," the woman replied, a bit miffed at it. "And then they layer it with titanium on the outside. As though that's supposed to do some good. We're just lucky they never got in a direct hit."

"Oh, stop complaining. We knew when we launched that any aliens we met would be able to shoot through our armor," the man said.

"That's not why they made it so cheap, though. No, they had to save money to prove to those ingrateful tightasses in Silvermoon that a space program could be done on a copper," came the scornful reply.

"Silvermoon? It's Mulgore they had to build so cheaply for. The blood elves at least have an economy. The dumb cows wouldn't know what trade was if they didn't have the orc smugglers."

Unless someone were to interrupt, the pair would continue to argue like this for quite some time, managing to blame every other race on their planet, including two races who didn't even know what a space program was without diagrams, for how cheaply the ship was made.

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin nodded to the captain. "Lead the way."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

We came for war, but now arrive in peace.

"Captain, we have... an echo? A ghost of some kind on sensors. I think it transmitted that," the tech said.

"An echo?" Alensia asked.

"Um... I think it's just travelling too fast for our sensors to pick up normally. But be at FTL speeds."

"Great," Alensia said. "At least they're peaceful. Send a standard greeting." Then, glancing to Vitya once, "And be prepared to move between the Seer and that alien vessel. We have no way of controlling what that ship does otherwise."

Marigold then nodded to Vitya, her hands working on the keyboard. "Captain, I've got eighty-two percent for you. I wouldn't try to stress them, though. I'm a bit underpracticed at this and the program might not handle it well."

"Understood," was Alensia's only reply.

"So, plasma weapons?" the tech said as she looked to Vitya. "Your people have those? It looks like we're a lot farther behind than I thought. Our own attempts at it have mostly relied on magic. Otherwise, all we get are expensive flamethrowers at best and really expensive firework shows at worst.

"I'm guessing your people have met a lot of other races?"

"Captain, we're picking up readings from the Seer. No power signature coming from their ship, multiple hull breaches, and I think the computer core's offline. There are no communications from them in the backlog..." the tech started.

Alensia's eye twitched. "Backlog?"

"Yes. The transports have been sending us reports every few minutes. We have a bit of a backlog because of it," the tech answered.

"Please tell me the communication from the alien ship was just recieved," the captain said, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"No, it..."

"I am strong enough to throw you out an airlock."

"... it was just received."

"Good boy. Clear that backlog," Alensia ordered.

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

To unidentified ship decelerating:
This is the frigate Holy Light of the Path. We are currently very glad you have no wish to fight. Please feel free to begin a true chat as soon as you fully stop.

OOC: Net was out most of the night.

Location: Holy Light of the Path

Vitya gave a solemn nod to Alensia before donning his helmet. The nano-fibers of his under suit locking together with the fibers in his helmet, sort of a super vicro that was sealed on a molecular level, small enough that the air loss was minimal, if not nonexistent. He would then continue to talk to Merigold, though in hush whispers as they prepared for what might be coming next, as well as any preparations she needed to do.

“Actually, our people specialize in it,” came his soft, electronic voice as his suit captured it then spoke in cheap speakers that were attached to the armor’s outer layer. “It’s a pretty hazardous material at first, but it can be tamed with electromagnetics. Our first plasma technology was short ranged but powerful for the time. Nowadays our plasma technology is long range, relatively fast, and still just as deadly… Probably because, once you think about it, it’s pretty much a particle beam weapon with enough heat to melt most substances it comes into contact with. Combination of a kinetic and energy weapon you could say.”

“As for races, well… Our nation has just over half a dozen races apart of it in some way or another. But, well, this galaxy is just teaming with sentient life - most of it Terran though. Kinda took us by surprise when we first started scouting the Milky Way.”


Location: S.I.V. Erguoy

“I assume you got their initial transmission, as well as the reply I forwarded to you Stepson?” the Commissar in charge of the Heavy Cruiser said, speaking to the commander of the Wizened via audio only.

“Yes sir…”

“Do you share our findings?” the higher ranked commander spoke once more.

“Based on our combined sensor data, yes… An Avalon-Class Cruiser is likely to win in a firefight between it and this sphere if it comes to that. I share your course of action to keep the plasma shields up and hide the fact from them. It’s easier to guess the actions of a race that believes it has the upper hand than one that knows it’s out gunned. Besides, they do seem to be damaged.”

“Agreed, I’ll be sending a message to their ship soon.”

“Also, Sir, what about the other damaged ship that’s currently repairing itself?”

“The Angenterians seem to be handling it the TRIAD vessel, and it seems to be repairing itself nicely. We leave it for now, respond only if they hail us.”

You may be able to destroy a few ships of this rag tag fleet, but only three are non-damaged war vessels, one of those being a frigate. It wouldn’t take much trouble to destroy the four damaged vessels while the remaining three bring down enough fire power to cripple or destroy a vessel. Of course, you wouldn’t want to anger anyone here now, as you claim.

Now then, our sensors do detect some damage to the horizon of your sphere. However, it appears to be the type of damage you see from a ramming maneuver. Given, however, that your drives seem to cause you to travel at near the speed of light in Real Space, fast enough that most sensors wouldn’t even be able to detect you - it’s more likely they didn’t know you were there and thus you slammed into them.

The Master cringed as the Overmind yelled through the overmind as the new messages reached them.
The Insolence!
Possibly true though as we are in no state to teach them the arrogance of that statement. Nor are we the most powerful of the Spheres.
You should have destroyed them in the first pass instead of slowing down and allowing them better targeting data by lowering our shields!
That was and still is the best course of action, the collision damaged our FTL enough and who knows how the weapon would have reacted in a battle situation.
It would have preformed perfectly just like the two hundred times its been used before!
You couldn't know that, the type of damaged we received...
It was minor compared to what this Sphere has come against before and will face again if you don't doom us all!
The Master sighed, the Overmind had been acting more and more irrational the closest they came to the uncleansed fleets "Hope its just this system, rebooting the Overmind in this situation..." The Master rubbed its "eyes" before continuing.
Stop being such a drama queen, we including even you Overmind are not invulnerable nor are we omnipotent. We can be defeated and destroyed just like anyother race. Now if you'd shut up, I may be able to respond to their message. We must try to restrict ourselves from schooling them on the own nuances of the galactic language and its very real and very annoying limitations. We would also prefer not to let slip the full technological and capabilities of this Sphere
Which is why you limited access to the core?
Mainly though I also didn't want them to learn that our core is also slightly damaged and the systems contained within.

To: Arrogant Fleet

"You may feel that but as we don't wish to test our mantel against you just yet that will have to wait for a later time. As for your second hypothesis we do not normally travel though these dimensions of space and time when we travel through the stars, the damage to our vessel was rather severe to our actual faster than light drives(ooc and the brake system). As the rifts that we use are no longer known to those still living, we can only suppose that we were hit by an experimental vessel which is unlikely due to the damage we originally received or someone created that vessel for a very particular reason, we had thought the second was more likely but this new damaged ship has shifted our calculation no small amount."

To: Holy Light of the Path

"We have much to talk about young ones and we very much would like a "true chat"."

In the meantime the Sphere had slowed enough in its passes to reach a fairly stable orbit around the planet nearest the uncleansed fleets...

Emperor's Grace

After a short walk through the winding corridors of the ship, and a short ride up a lift though the command tower, the trio of officers made their way to the bridge of the Emperor's Grace. The central command hub of the ship, all Angenterian starship bridges were designed roughly the same, with only minor differences depending on the class of ship. As soon as one steps through the door, a walkway leads out to a balcony, where the captain's chair is located. On either side of the balcony were two flights of stairs, which descended down to the various stations and consoles were were manned by the ship's crew. (OOC: View from the command balcony (http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p98/l33t-h4x0r/bridge.jpg?t=1240190071). View from the bottom. (http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p98/l33t-h4x0r/bridge2.jpg)) As soon as they entered, they were greeted by Commander Mcgraff.

"Captain on the bridge!" He announced, snapping a sharp salute.

"At ease." Daur replied. He crossed over to his XO, pressing a few buttons on the holo-keyboard in front of it. The holo-display flickered for a moment, before flickering into a different display. Turning his head, he motioned the two aliens over.

"It looks like our unknown friend has had a change of heart." He remarked. The holo-display showed a 3-D view of the local area. The Angenterian ship shown as a blue arrow, the Sertians yellow, the Kaldorei purple, and the TRIAD ship was orange.

"Right now, they're orbiting a nearby planet in our space, here." He pressed a few more buttons, and the screen flashed over to the planet's view, where the ship shown as red. "They've admitted to coming here wanting to blow us into tiny metal fragments, but it seems they've decided not to. Furthermore, scans are showing that they have in fact taken damage."

---------------------------------------
Seer of the Path

Miranda looked on with what she would later admit as amusement as the two aliens seemed locked in a bitter argument over whose fault it was that their ship hulls were so fragile, blaming a number of races, and switching in and out of several languages she didn't understand. It seems that the races of their empire didn't get along as well as they would want others to think. As they argued, she was approached by one of her tech-enginseers, an unaltered Eldar male.

"Lead Engineer." He said, his fluid, tranquil voice calming the young human. "We have finished clearing the debris." He motioned down the corridor, which was now clear of rubble.

"Thank you, Amandil." She replied, wondering what the two angry officers were busy arguing about in their tongue.

"That one claims that something called the murlocs have no idea what a space program is." The Eldar stated plainly, pointing to the angry woman.

Miranda looked up at the taller Eldar, raising an eyebrow. "You can understand them?"

Amandil just smiled. "They seem to speak a rather strange dialect of my tongue. Granted, it's not the same, but that's what it basically means."

"Does it now..." Miranda replied, looking at the pair of aliens with greater interest. "Thank you, Amandil." Nodding, the Eldar left her side, returning to the gaggle of techs standing around, waiting to be ordered around.

She approached the two aliens. "If you two aren't too busy, we've finished here." She pointed down the hallway just to make sure they got the message.

-------------------------------------------
Gold Squadron

As Banda's interceptor came around for another pass at the ship, her shields registered something impacting on it in a pulsing motion.

"What the hell..." she muttered to herself as she checked the shield meter. It seemed to be getting hit with what was a very low-powered beam. What was this? Were they trying to attack her? No, it was coming from one of the repair servitors. Were they trying to communicate? \

Wait...something's coming through...

She tried to contact them again, broadcasting on all frequencies.

Damaged vessel,
This is Flight Lieutenant Jesse Banda. You have entered our space in a heavily-damaged state. If anyone can hear me, please respond.

********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
********

"Sir, we've restored thermal and EM passive sensors, as well as the microwave active sensors. We may be able to patch the EM passives into the comms systems. We won't be able to transmit, but we should be able to recieve incoming signals." The Khyrolii held a triumphant look on his muzzle, his hands dancing across his terminal.

#Excellent. At least we will be able to find out if those fighters have received Enkidu's attempts to communicate.# Gex waited as the Khyrolii tech made the computer connections.

Damaged vessel,
This is Flight Lieutenant Jesse Banda. You have entered our space in a heavily-damaged state. If anyone can hear me, please respond.

#It appears they have been attempting to contact us for some time. Enkidu, keep attempting to return contact until we can repair the radio systems.# Gex settled into it's station and connected it's mind to several of the repair drones elsewhere on the ship, directing them to work on restoring full-spectrum communications equipment.

********
Fervent Dream - Hull
********

The centipede drone Enkidu was connected to continued to detect radio spectrum emissions from the passing fighters, but could do nothing about them. Enkidu kept the microwave beam trained on the lead fighter, varying the pulse modulation and the wavelength frequency to try and get their attention. The message was encoded in simple base-ten binary, and should be very easy to decode, however for some reason the fighters had yet to respond.

Could it be that these craft had no microwave detection equipment? It would be irony worth of the 'Verse if both distressed and rescuer could not contact each other simply because of mismatching comms equipment.

Still, the DE kept up it's efforts while the other service drones continued to patch the holes rent in the Fervent Dream's hull, all the while Enkidu kept the signal going:

#Unknown craft, this is the TEEF Destroyer Fervent Dream. Our ship has been heavily damaged and our primary communications equipment is offline. If you are able to receive and translate this message, please attempt to contact us using microwave emissions.#

Location: Seer of the Path

The pair stopped arguing, only to glance to the cleared path. And then, back to each other.

"Well, um..." the woman began.

"Let's just go through," the man answered, heading for the door.

Beyond the door was a room, filled with black smoke that smelled of melted electronics, that held the secret of the ship's capacity for FTL travel. The Nether Drive itself was an imposing marble construction, almost resembling a tiered fountain, which held a large crystal at its top. The drive was also obviously fully functional, the large red crystal glowing and bathing the room in a bloody light. Sitting in front of the drive itself was a small control panel, a mixture of crystals and touch interfaces. Just beyond the drive lay a small door, the inside of which was filled with ash.

"It's just like we feared," the woman said, pointing to the room of ash. "The main computer's gone. May Elune forgive us... I'll need help setting the drive up for the Moon Well Directive. Hopefully, we can get communication to the other ships as well."

The man nodded, moving to the drive itself and having apparently forgotten the visitors.

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin had to whistle appreciatively as he moved onto the ship's bridge. His own ship was tiny compared to this. He had known this ship was big, but he hadn't known it would be this big. He continued to glance around until the captain spoke again, then moved closer.

"I am glad to hear that. The Temple of the Moon will be glad to get what's left of our fleet intact," Baldrin said, before looking closer. "Odd... That ship reminds me of something. Not seen here, but back home; I think we've encountered records of a similar race before. It doesn't matter."

He leaned back. "The Holy Light will try to establish contact and diplomatic protocols. If we are lucky, she'll remember to send them here."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

"Captain, we're lucky. The final shield system is online. Except for any damage left to the hull and the life support systems, our ship is fully ready for anything you need it for," came the comm.

"Thank you," Alensia said, before looking to Vitya. "How long do you think the hull would take? I know we have some holes and were in very bad shape, but I hope it's not too bad."

"Unknown sphere vessel has taken up an orbit around a planet," one of the techs said.

"Prepare a message for them on the location to meet at," Alensia ordered without even looking.

"Electromagnetics... I think one of the draenei was talking about the possibility of using that for plasma weaponry. Plasma weapons would make our ships much more capable. If we made them out of better materials, too..." Marigold tapped her fingers together. "And it's going to be a long time before we make another ship. The council of Eluneyasa is going to argue about this for years.

"Um, tell me about each race?"

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

To unknown alien race:
Please send a representative to the Emperor's Grace. It is currently the ship diplomats are meeting on.

OOC: Sorry for the length.

Location: Holy Light of the Path

“Well, a lot of the major hull breeches should be patched by now, so long as they had enough Ti-Tn bricks. There might be a few small patches or microfractures, but the hull should be sound again in maybe… five minutes?”

He would then turn to look at Merigold once more, nodding as she spoke about one of their peoples theoretical use of plasma weapons. “Well, maybe if we remain in contact around this, we could send some technicians and technology to your government to help close the gap between your technology and the galactic standards. As you’ve probably seen, there’s a lot of threats in space you need to be prepared for, and now that you’ve jumped into the space scene you probably won’t be able to burry your head in the sand anymore.”

He would then give a smile, but of course it didn’t show through his dark visored helmet, “Well, there’s us, the Sertians. We’ve got slightly more efficient physiologies than other races we’ve come across, requiring about four to five hours of sleep, slightly less to eat and the like. Mostly though, our remarkable characteristic is our capacity for learning. Some studies say that our long term learning potential is ten times that of other races.”

“The Selacs are a bit different, furred beings with long ears and tails, while standing on two legs. They’ve got truly amazing senses though, and have a reaction speed that boarders on precognition. It’s nearly impossible to sneak up on them. Then there’s the other major alien race call themselves Rip’lards, and are lizardic in appearance. Shorter than most, but some of their scales have micro fibers on them that allow them to cling to almost any surface. Combined with their fast metabolism and speed, as well as their smaller size, they make pretty good mechanics.”


Location: Emperor’s Grace

“Our ship, the Erguoy, is currently communicating with the vessel as well,” the Sertian would say while his arms folded across his chest. He had seen the bridges of some of the larger ships of the Empire during his stay in the reserve fleet, so he wasn’t as affected by the size of the thing - especially when he knew the shape of the bridge was about the farthest thing that indicated how strong a ship was.

“Scans also reveal that they’re quite strong, however our ship believes the only danger is to the damaged ships we’re protecting. For that reason, it may be a good idea to hold this ship between them and the damaged vessels along with the Erguoy to make sure they’re not hit.”

The sphere continued to orbit around the planet, slowly leaving the sight of the various ships.
A face to face meeting, interesting.
Indeed and after we admitted to wishing to destroy them, seems we miscalculated their original intentions.
With the other ships movements a direct face to face is impossible, though we could use the Ava Protocols.
That’s still a fairly big risk and we don’t know what their now restored shielding could do.
Its better than sending a drone and if they thinks it’s a weapon firing...
We wish you weren’t so eager for that, we’ve already picked our ava.

The Master had called up a database and scrolled through various forms and shapes before selecting a pale 5 foot five inches humanoid form in olden medieval garb with a rather large hammer and striking green eyes and black hair.

Always did like Norse Mythology, beginning transmission to transmitted coordination.

Provided that the ship’s shielding did not misaligned the transmission, a simple hologram would slowly began to form on the selected ship’s bridge, at first it would be as wispy as the air but as time would advance it would slowly harden into a roughly human density and shape.
Waiting for a few seconds, the Master started to talk in the control room his words transmitted to the ship.
“We have arrived and wish to talk peace…”

OOC: Apologies for crappyness. I do not feel will at all right now.

Gold Squadron
Banda's squadron came around for yet another pass in a tight formation, now aware that they were communicating with the unknown ship.

"Anything yet?" Banda asked. It had been some time since they had received anything, and she was getting impatient.

"Nothing...wait." One of her wingmen called. "I'm getting something. It's faint, but it's there."

"Relay it here."

"I'll try."

A few moments passed before the text spat out onto the screen in front of her:

#Unknown craft, this is the TEEF Destroyer Fervent Dream. Our ship has been heavily damaged and our primary communications equipment is offline. If you are able to receive and translate this message, please attempt to contact us using microwave emissions.#

"The feth..." Banda said to herself, squinting to read the text as it appeared on the small pict-screen. "Microwave emissions... how the frak am I supposed to do that?" She banked her fighter around the hull of the ship again, passing over the topside of the ship. Her interceptor was designed to destroy enemy ships, not communicate with them. Sighing, she tapped into her comm-bead.

"Does anybody know how we can relay microwave emissions?"

A few seconds of silence before a response:

"You want to what?"

Banda sighed again, before repeating the message to command. Maybe they would think of something.

---------------------------------------
Emperor's Grace
Bridge

The appearance of the drone on the bridge, however slow the materialization took, was still quite surprising to the crew. Several officers drew their pistols, and the deck guards on duty readied their lasguns, watching as the drone materialized in front of the captain and his guests.

“We have arrived and wish to talk peace…”

"Stand down." Daur ordered with a wave of his hand. Several weapons disappeared from wary hands, while the deck guards returned to their stations, and back to pretending like they were being attentive. Seeing this, the captain took a step forward, silently noting the outdated garb and giant warhammer. What were they trying to do?

"That's quite a large weapon there. Are you sure you're still peaceful?" He said. "That counts as a joke here, by the way."

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

Ensign Mikelus sat back down at his comms-station, holstering the standard-pattern laspistol. The appearance of the drone had given them quite a scare, but the Captain seemed trusting of it enough. And if the captain trusted the aliens, that was good enough for Mikelus. Looking down at the glowing screen, he noticed a red flash that indicated an incoming message. Putting his headset back on, he listened. Apparently, the new arrival had been heavily damaged, and could only communicate via microwave.

"Well, if that's the case..." he said silently "...let's see what we can do." Cracking his fingers, he went to work, pressing several buttons on his console in rapid succession. Contacting the Enginarium here, re-routing power to this relay beacon there, strengthening the power here...

This would go on for several minutes as Mikelus silently improvised a transmission in what he hoped would be a microwave emission. That is, if the tech-priests had done what he had asked. After a few minutes, he was able to broadcast a message to the new arrival:

Unknown vessel,
This is the A.I.S Emperor's Grace. If you are receiving this message, please respond.
---------------------------
Seer of the Path

Looking up at what she assumed was the alien's warp-drive, Miranda couldn't help but think how wondrous it looked. Warp-drive designs on Imperial ships were metal monstrosities, massive things that were several decks high, and literally pulsing with energy flowing through clear tubes that wrapped along the side. In comparison, this thing almost seemed...beautiful.

Well, however different it looked, it probably functioned more or less the same way.

Coming back to her senses, she turned to the two aliens.

"Re-establishing communications should be our top priority right now." She said. "Letting everybody else know we're still alive is pretty important right now."

Location: Seer of the Path

"Primary system check..." the man said, moving over to the control panel in front of the drive. "Thank Elune! Those paranoid freaks from Exodar put in extra redundancies. We could probably play asteroid ping pong with this drive and have it still work."

"It's the only thing that works," the woman said. "The entire computer room is melted. Anything that may have survived the fire got hot plastic pouring into and on it. It's all gone. We've no communications, no navigation, no weapons... The ship is useless. Prepare the engine to blow."

"Um, we could rig a flashlight for the old light code... use it to communicate..." the girl said, taking a step back in uncertainty as she spoke.

"Try finding one that works," came the woman's reply, before glancing to the visitting engineers. "Do you have anything that could work?"

Location: Emperor's Grace

Baldrin raised an eyebrow as the hologram appeared. "You know, we have a saying back home about people who have to rely on large hammers."

Then, rather than continue with that, he got to business. "I take it you're the sphere ship? I must admit, you're not quite what I was expecting. Alien insects? Sure. Giant race of cuddly koalas bent on destroying all other races? Easily done. Humans? Met plenty of those already. But a Titan? Well, honestly, I kinda expected your ships to be a bit... different."

He then tilted his head. "Though, I gotta wonder... Did you guys know we might accidentally summon the Burning Legion when you left the Well of Eternity? I must admit, us blowing it up to stop them may have been a bit extreme, but it worked. And, don't worry... we just made another and then put a bit of a seal on it. And we took out the Legion for ya, so that should make up for us blowing up the Well.

"Though, you are a bit smaller than I thought you'd be... must be the hologram." Obviously, Baldrin had entirely the wrong idea as to what the image was supposed to represent. "Oh, and we took out the Old Gods for you. Turned out you just had to kill them one at a time once they started to escape imprisonment. We still even have some of the stuff you left, and we're kinda hoping you don't want it back any time soon. Kinda hard to move it, what with the murlocs and nerubians all over that area. And we'd kinda like to study it a bit once we ge to where we can figure it out. As you can see, we made it to space."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

Alensia nodded to Vitya, before turning back to her own console. "Give me a report on weapons. I want a complete check on all systems."

"Moonglaive cannon one, 80% and operational. Moonglaive cannon two, 83% and operational. Defensive railgun one, 90% and operational. Defensive railgun two, 95% and operational. Defensive railgun three, 75% and operational. Automated offensive tracking program, 90% stable with six glitches detected. Automated defensive tracking program, 100% stable and no glitches. Do you wish to do a test firing?" the comm said.

"... We are surrounded by warships, we just came from a massive battle, we have another damaged ship here, everyone is on edge, and you want to start shooting at things? Are you insane? If you even dare look at a single button related to firing any of the weapons and I will beat you until even the undead feel pain when they look at you. Do you understand me?" Alensia replied, her voice getting louder as her tirade went on.

Meanwhile, Marigold just smiled to Vitya. "We never had a chance to bury our head in the sand anyway. Our world spent ten thousand years with the threat of an invasion from outside of our world holding over our heads. We barely stopped it the first time, had an even harder time stopping it the second, and barely prevented a third. Our space program came only a few hundred years after the threat was gone. For most of us, that's within our lifetime.

"We would also love it if you sent people. Any help in advancing ourselves and adapting more to space would definitely be appreciated."

Then Marigold paused for a bit as a hologram appeared before her, reaching up to tap a few things on it before waving it away. "Annoying things, sometimes... It sounds to me like your empire is a lot like Azeroth. We... well, honestly, we have a massive amount of sentient species."

"Sir, I think I've got a lock on where we are," a tech said. "And you're not going to like the answer."

"And the ceiling fan meets the dung," Marigold muttered.

The Master quickly selected the method that allowed him to communicate with only a select group at once in the bridge, provided it did not pick the wrong frequency a slight buzz would be heard then an almost whisper would be directed.
Seems you selected a good choice.
You don't have to sound so amused, I'm surprised the other group hasn't tired of them and left long ago.
Indeed, they must have the stamina of an ork.
We wonder how they got a word in edge wise.
All must breathe Master
Some less often than others Overmind. We hope this works, it would be best to let them think what they will of us but we do need to talk with the other group.

The holograms eyes still watched the jabbering creature but a small whisper went to the previously identified captain.
"Do they always communicate this much? The weapon also came with this program and we still have yet to figure out how to disable it. Anywho it seems to have finally stop and we do so wish to maintain appearances."

The Master quickly inputted the codes that allowed the Ava program to project to all those gathered. Its tone was at first rather harsh and its face was full of soft scorn.

"Our ways have always been different than yours mortal. We did indeed foresee the usefulness of the Well and were slightly concerned when you destroyed it so recklessly. Its tone and expression lightening it continued, but you and the other races have done well, even one at a time killing the Old ones couldn't have been easy and now you have spread to the stars, which could very well be the most important accomplishment. As for our things, we have formed their betters over the eons and no longer require them, you and the other races are free to keep and study them at your leisure though we would warn you to not overdue it some things are better left well and truly forgotten and the burning legion wasn't even in the top one hundred of the worst things out here. Now enough of the past, you and we must strive for the future, do you know yet what damaged your ships? We have our own theories but we have not visited this region in a time.."

********
Fervent Dream - Outer Hull
********

Digital Entities normally did not experience or express emotion like organics did, however the sensation that Enkidu was experiencing was exactly what the shipmind thought frustration must feel like. A small fragment of it's conciousness had been sitting in this coordinator drone for some time now, shining a microwave beam on passing fighters, hoping to be noticed. The engineering drones had nearly finished sealing the hull ruptures when at last a response was recieved, however from an unexpected source.

Unknown vessel,
This is the A.I.S Emperor's Grace. If you are receiving this message, please respond.

The microwave beam was broad enough to reach half the Fervent Dream's hull, and came from an unexpected vector, partially confirming Enkidu's suspicions what the passing fighters likely did not possess microwave transmission equipment. Well, that just made this part more... Interesting. The coordinator drone's optics tracked to the area of space the incoming transmission had come from, limited telescopic sensors finally making out the ship in the darkness, as well as other ships which had gone unnoticed until just now. The machine turned back to the fighters, sending off another microwave pulse.

#We acknowledge your transmission, however are unable to respond directly. This drone's microwave transmitter does not have sufficient range to broadcast directly to your ship. We are attempting to relay this message through your fighter craft. We have nearly completed repairs to our hull, and will begin repairs to our primary communcations equipment momentarily. We anticipate full comms capability within fourty minutes. We would like to request the identities of the other vessels in the area, as we have limited sensor capability. Fervent Dream out.#


********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
********

As Enkidu finished relaying the contact from the Emperor's Grace, the Marduk captain shifted at it's station. It was exceedingly fortunate that the hostiles which had so very nearly destroyed Gex's ship could not track or follow them through their blind foldspace jump. Even more fortunate that the ships here on the other side appeared at least willing to communicate, despite the difficulties doing so. That there had even been anyone here spoke of cosmic irony, or simply coincidence. #Tactical, how many ships are in the area other than the Emperor's Grace?#

The khyrolii studied the holographic readouts carefully, "Sir, there appears to be three ships some distance off from each other, though we do not have enough resolution for profiles yet. There is an additional cluster of readings suggesting a fleet in formation, however I can't determine exact number. Best guess is no less than six, and perhaps more than a dozen."

The mechanical captain nodded in response, #Understood. As repair resources become available, try to get the other sensor systems online. Enkidu and I should have communications restored within the hour.#

Location: Holy Light of the Path

“It’s possible to run a simulation…” the engineer spoke as the commander of the vessel had just finished harping on a bridge member who had suggested firing a weapon. “That is, don’t load the canons yet test fire them with either blanks or nothing at all. You could see if the weapons are capable of handing most of the stress of fire without upsetting anyone.”

He would then turn to Merigold and nod, “I’m sure there’s some technology we can spare, technicians that we can send to help you understand some of our technology. That’s not up for me to decide though, but we can probably work something out between your world and New Port.”

He would then wait to hear where they were, which wouldn’t be to much of a surprise to him. His ship wasn’t lost after all, but it could be bad news to the ships. They could be lost in a different galaxy for all he knew, and the Sertian’s lacked drive systems fast enough to ferry them anywhere outside the local cluster if it became a problem.


Location: Emperor’s Grace

The security officer decided to stay silent, although he gave a wide smirk through the helmet of his suit when the male elf talked about the humanoid figure over compensating. Although he had little to add as the hologram talked about whatever these Titans where, and how they may or may not be related to the race they were helping out. However, there were things that he couldn’t help realizing.

For one, the sphere’s hologram only mentioned stuff the night elf had talked about, and the response it gave could have been compiled by a logic program if it had the needed language programming added in. The second was that, well, from what he gathered the Titans seemed to be a sort of benevolent society, given that they left something behind for the Kaldorei that was powerful enough to be used as a weapon of mass destruction in a primitive race’s hands. While this ship was about ready to try and blow these very ships out of the sky before the Erguoy showed up.

“Excuse me,” the Sertian officer spoke after the hologram was done. “If you were indeed proud of this… child race I’m guessing, why would you so carelessly try to blow them out of the sky?”

The Ava grinned, "We feared that they had gotten so bold after their recent victories as to attack us, as has been remarked they destroyed most of the Old ones we had imprisoned. We have been gone for many eons from their sector of space and were concerned that they had forgotten the way(s) and had been driven to blood lust quite like the Orcs had before and we can not suffer another threat to pass by while those on Azeroth may be our favorite sons and daughters they are not the only ones. Many of them have not advanced at this rate and would be destroyed before they could yet shine."

While the Master continued to speak and had his words translated to those before the Ava, it decided it would be a good idea to show their power and how Ava are not just holograms.

"And I am not just a hologram, and this hammer is not just light."
Hefting the hammer above its head, the Ava swung downward, putting just enough power behind it to cause the effect it wished but not enough to permanently damaged the floor. When the tip of the hammer it the floor a sharp rang out followed by many multi colored sparks as the main part of the hammer reached the floor...

Location: Emperor's Grace

"We didn't destroy most of them," Baldrin said, crossing his arms. "We destroyed all of them. And if you really were the Titans, you would have been concerned about us possibly destroying the planet. Or you would have asked us how it is we killed Sargeras when you couldn't. And you would certainly be concerned about why we don't have metallic skin.

"It was a nice try on the deception, though."

Then, sighing, the night elf shook his head. "I guess we won't be meeting the Titans out here after all, if all we do find are those who pretend at them to take advantage.

"In any case, who are you really? And nice trick with the illusion. It was impressive when I saw mages in Quel'Thalas use illusions to juggle porcupines, but it's not impressive now."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

"No, it's not," Marigold replied before Alensia could speak up. "Our main cannons fire moonglaives. Three of them, using a remote drone-control system to guide their flight path as they tear through enemy ships. It's an adaption of traditional weaponry we've used for millennia."

"Besides," Alensia added. "do you really think the other ships would respond well if we started to charge the capacitors for our weapons?

"Now, where are we?"

"Captain, you know the Coleptra Probe? The one that its guidance system shorted out in mid-flight and emerged inside a pulsar? We're about four standard jump units beyond that pulsar," the tech says.

"That puts us forty-five jump units away from our destination," Alensia said. "That means... How in the name of Elune did we end up farther away from the target world than Azeroth is?"

"Nether Drift. We probably skipped entire stretches of real space thanks to it. Navigating the Nether is an utter nightmare," Marigold said, shaking her head. "How did the Burning Legion manage to so accurately find world after world while in the Nether?"

"Hopefully, our techs on Draenor will figure it out," Alensia answered.

"Anyway," Marigold said, turning back to Vitya. "We would definitely appreciate it if your people would help with that. Honestly, we didn't expect to encounter anything hostile on what should have been a short trip. We should really make it a point to incorporate more advanced technology for the future."

Emperor's Grace - Ensign Mikelus

Ensign Mikelus blinked as the cogitator display spat out the words of the received transmission as relayed from the fighter squadron:

#We acknowledge your transmission, however are unable to respond directly. This drone's microwave transmitter does not have sufficient range to broadcast directly to your ship. We are attempting to relay this message through your fighter craft. We have nearly completed repairs to our hull, and will begin repairs to our primary communcations equipment momentarily. We anticipate full comms capability within fourty minutes. We would like to request the identities of the other vessels in the area, as we have limited sensor capability. Fervent Dream out.#

He smiled slightly. At least he was safe in the knowledge his hard work had paid off. Now he hoped those uppity tech-priests had the decency to keep things the way they were. He thought for a moment. It couldn't hurt to inform them of their situation, could it? Well, it was probably better to ask.

He raised his head. "Commander?"

Mcgraff, glad he was able to leave the company of the chattering aliens, calmly, yet briskly, made his way to the seated ensign.

"Problem, ensign?"

"Not exactly...take a look at this, sir." He moved to the side, allowing the commander to take a look. After a few seconds of intense reading, he looked back at the waiting ensign. "Well, what are you waiting for? Do it."

"Yes, sir."

As the commander stalked away, Mikelus began to type out the message, stopping after hearing a loud CLANG on the bulkhead above him:

Fervent Dream
You are currently located in the Otherium System, a star system on the edge of colonized territory of the Holy Imperium of Angenteria. You are currently in the presence of several different interstellar factions. Several similarly damaged vessels belonging to the Commonwealth of Eluneyasa. A sphere that arrived here intending to do battle, but has apparently decided to back off. A pair of ships belonging to a Trade Federation, who has arrived to assist. And us, the Emperor's Grace, of the Angenterian Imperial Navy.

Captain Daur

Several officers on duty turned their heads sharply as the hammer made a striking impact on the metal floor of the bridge, sending sparks in all different directions. Several tech-priests moaned in mourning to the ship's Machine Spirit, who which they believed would have suffered from that unnecessary impact.

Daur, on the other hand, seemed amused. He perked an eyebrow. "Please refrain from denting the bulkheads." He said, a hint of sarcasm present in his voice. "I don't think my tech-priests could take it."


Seer of the Path

"Woah, woah, woah!" Miranda suddenly cut in, waving her hands. "Don't get hasty here. There's no need to blow up anything right now. You can't just destroy the first fleet you created.

Fervent Dream
You are currently located in the Otherium System, a star system on the edge of colonized territory of the Holy Imperium of Angenteria. You are currently in the presence of several different interstellar factions. Several similarly damaged vessels belonging to the Commonwealth of Eluneyasa. A sphere that arrived here intending to do battle, but has apparently decided to back off. A pair of ships belonging to a Trade Federation, who has arrived to assist. And us, the Emperor's Grace, of the Angenterian Imperial Navy.

Gex read the message displayed in it's mindspace, then silently composed a response, passing it along to Enkidu to transmit to the fighters, and from there to the Emperor's Grace.

#Emperor's Grace, thank you for the information. We anticipate having communication systems operational momentarily, and will advise you when this is complete. Our hull repairs are nearly complete, however we still have extensive damage to sublight engines, both FTL drives, weapons, and defenses. A full assessment of the damage will require more time. When we are able to receive docking craft, will your vessel be capable of rendering assistance?#

The games afoot my dear Master!
I find your lack of faith in my abilities disturbing.
True, though it was a decent amount of luck that you even selected that Ava.
I don't think it was only luck, maybe the...
Force? We should have never cleansed Lucas IV, bunch of bloody nerds.
Possibly, though If we had to suffer through one more of their stupid revisions.
True, now what are you going to do now?
Well we never claimed to be the Titans, so we could say that they were the ones that put forth that hypothesis but we have another idea instead...

An amused smile crept along the Ava's face.
"You have gotten bold indeed, you did not destroy them all, we were not so ignorant as to leave all of them locked up on one planet when there were billions of other locations to choose from. We scattered the actual Old ones across this galaxy in various systems and conditions. The ones you killed were the Old one's servants some of which had a great power themselves but they are servants none the less. As for destroying the planet, we implanted a number of safeguards that would have prevented that or at least warned us that you were about to so that we could stop you. That is partly why we are in this sector, a number of our nonvital safeguards had been breached and we had grown concerned. As for Sargeras that was a pretender whom had arisen after the original had fallen(ooc into slumber, into death whatever originally happened to it, I'm not very up to date on Warcraft lore which is probably why this isn't overly convincing :) ), he had stolen a fair number of artifacts and absorbed their power and after a number of years to study it.."

After talking for atime yet, the Ava turned towards those that had moaned when it had hit...

"There is no need to mourn for the floor, I know my power and only put enough into the swing to create the display you saw and the sound, the flako(/floor) is unharmed. As for your bulkheads I do not think the others allowed me to partake of that much power quite yet."

OOC: If I may inquire. do any of the factions here have Relatively High Quality Gravitic Sensors?

OOC: Sorry, but no. My people would use psykers to detect disturbances in the Warp.

Has your ship been cloaked this whole time?

OOC: That's what I was planning on. I was going to be relatively close by and in-system. But I don't want to claim I was doing something when someone could pick up my ship. =)

OOC: I'm fine with it if Eluneyasa is. Also, I know for a fact that TRIAD does, so you're in good hands there.

Although, since it's technically an inhabited star system, you might have to be a little far off from any nearby planets.

OOC: The TRIAD destroyer does have very good gravitic sensor systems, but thankfully for you, they're all inoperative now. They just managed to repair the passive EM and thermal sensor systems, but the gravitics are all offline.

Also, I'd suggest to Elune that we start an offshoot OOC discussion thread. We're looking long enough with enough participants.

OOC: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=14731777#post14731777

OOC thread thingamajigbobberdoohickey.

SSN Indomitable

The hallways were, of course, half as tall on board the Indomitable. The Sutufinai crew moved about their ship, their soft paws pitter pattering across the grated floors softly. The ship, even though it was stealthed and the vacuum of space did not transmit sound, was remarkably quiet.

Standing in the Control Room Captain Dakota Altair looked to the sensor technician, "We just left the Lunar Gravity well, any sign of being spotted by the assembled ships?" The Quadrupedal being found it quite hard to "Pace" in a circle, but he managed it, in these tight quarters it was rather difficult to turn around.

The sensor tech shook his head as he checked his scopes and readouts. "Sensors report Negative on enemy detection." The Sutfen flicked a few switches and went about his work to make sure the readouts were correct, but said nothing.

Captain Altair nodded, "Helm, keep us on course." He looked to the Nav ET working the Hologrid, "Navigation, bring us within Point Five Zero AU. Slow to One fourth." He looked over the maps, before looking back to sensors. "Keep me updated Sensors." With that the Captain softly padded over to the Intercom, "Engineering, What's status on the Batteries?"

While the Nav ET's posture signified agreement, Engineering crackled online. "Not as strong as I'd like 'em sir. We can keep 'er running on them for a few hours if we're forced to Scram the Fusion pile and do a complete restart. We'll be forced to go to ionic and drop stealth however. I'm worried about that aswell sir. I'm getting some odd fluctuations in the Reactor feed system and I think our Pile may be infected. I'd like to run a full clean on the feed system."

The Captain nodded. "Alright. I'm not happy with having Stealth, Gravitics, and ECM down. How is troubleshooting on the ECM coming, chief?"

The engineer shook his head, "No good cap'. We'll need a full reinstall of the running gear's operating computers."

Captain Altair nodded. "Alright."

---

The Stealth ship cruised cleaning through space, not leaving an ionic trail for anyone to follow. Outward emissions being monitored by the computer to mirror the area of space they were in and to mask their own emissions. The Light bending programs kept the ship nigh invisible as it slipped unerringly through space. It approached the rather large group as it had been monitoring communications from the group for some time.

---

"Comms reports possible hostile contact, unknown globe shaped ship has been spouting off all kinds of bullshit for the last hour or so. It's even getting on my nerves sir." Reported the Comms Technician at his station, which was a couch in front of his computer.

"Oh? I recognize a few of the other ships here, That's an Angenteria ship too, expected, we are in their space. Sensors, get out espionage subroutine on that fleet of unknowns. I want to know what colour their captains' great grandsire's eyes were."

The Captain then turned to Navigation, "Alright Navigation, plot us a course around to the rear of that orb. I want us in a good firing position with our nukes if we have to shove them up someone's Arse."

Navigation nodded, "Aye sir." while the other crewmen called out their own agreement.

---

The Stealth ship cruised around to the rear of the whole fleet but was forced to move between the fleet and the Angenteria ship to reach the Orb to get into position. However, of course, that's when it all went wrong...

---

Their was a flash of lights on the Control Center, and the radio came on, "This is engineering! We have a Fusion Pile Malfunction we are SCRAMing the reactor! Shutting down nonessential systems, cutting gravitics, engaging Ion engines! Running on batteries!"

"NO! DAMNIT!" howled Captain Altair, "Not now! We're right infront of them!"

---

It wasn't up to them, Stealth systems went down, everything from emissions masking to light bending systems went down. Gravitics went down and the old flare of Ion engines came online directly off the Angenteria ship's bow!

A haze grey and Charcoal colored ww2 submarine promptly appeared directly off the Angenteria ship's bow. The faint blue glow emitting from the ship's now turned on ion engines. The Gato was showing it's broadsides to the Angenteria ship and the Elune ships. It was pointed just a few degrees off directly at the Orb. The Gato has slowed to nearly nothing and was continuing to slow majorly. None of her deck guns moved as the batteries had no come online for offensive weapons systems, beyond that all targeting locks had been lost during the ship's electronic restart.

... Helloooooo Dolly!

Emperor's Grace

The bridge was suddenly flashed with a massive light as the ship's ion trail suddenly discharged right in front of them, covering the massive viewscreen with a white flash. Many officers began shouting at each other, and most shielded their eyes from the bright light. Proximity alarms were blaring, as well as warning klaxons, indicating damage.

"What the-" Captain Daur looked up at the screen. "Report!"

"New contact, off the starboard bow! They've got weapons ready!" An officer shouted, trying to get a handle on the situation herself. Apparently, the ship's weapons were pointing right at them.

"Minor shield damage sustained from ion trail!" Came another officer.

"Why didn't the sanctioned psykers detect anything!?"

"Unknown sir, we-"

"Then find the useless frakker and have him SHOT!" Daur bellowed, clearly agitated with the situation.

"No, wait, belay that!" He suddenly corrected himself. "Lock all weapons, fire on my mark! Prepare boarding torpedoes for launch"

"Sir, we haven't detected any power surge through their ship!"

"They're pointing at us, aren't they?! Do it!"

The guns on the Angenterian battlecruiser swiveled to face the new contact, and fighter and bomber craft had it in their targeting computers.

"Open a channel, now!"

The officers scurried to obey the order. Below decks, naval security troopers, their black ceramic armor and lasguns at the ready, rushed to their boarding torpedoes and strapped themselves in.

"Open!"

Attention Unknown Vessel,
This is the Emperor's Grace. You have ten seconds to respond to this transmission before we proceed to blow your ship back to the Warp!

The Overmind was less than amused with the sudden appearance of another ship.
We frakking called it, the uncleansed always betray us in some manner in the end.
O calm yourself if their bridge is any indication, they weren't expecting it either though I do question why they were heading towards us.
We aren't the most liked race in the galaxy.
True, though we did earn most of that. Anywho, why didn't we detect that ship sooner?
Our sensor grid has been acting funky since the collision Master we've already began our initial scannings and have acouple weak points if we wish to engage.
We won't fire the first shot.
Nice sentiment but its likely to get us killed. Override protocols Alpha Omega Gamma Two, began immediate extraction of the Ava program and other drone systems from uncleansed ships, all drones report to pods for emergency jump procedures, We want some room between ourselves and that ship.
Where will we go?
A burn to get out of this plantery gravity shadow then a jump to the next most inner planet, its close enough that we can join the battle if it comes down to it or reestablish talks.
Sounds like a cowards tacit.
If you haven't noticed we are outnumbered and now most definitely outgunned, protocol dictates our next actions.
True, but may I suggest a slight pause before starting our protocols.
They have five minutes...

The Ava began to document everything that the various crewmembers began to do, storing them for later collection and analyzition. Both weaknesses and strengthens would be complied.But first it shed its medieval garbs and its hammer laying them on the floor for later recollection and it began to shimmer as various subprograms that were no longer needed were disabled and others re enabled. It then turned and looked at the captain of the ship.
"Does this ship have an AI unit or other computing device? I can lead my memory and other systems to boost them as needed..."

SSN Indomitable

"Shite Shite Shite Shite! Are Offensive computers back online? Get those guns back in their Stand-Down positions!" He watched the whole bridge crackle to life as it went from a nearly silent and smooth sounding room to a hectic insane asylum. Defense and Sensors were screaming....

"Shite! Sensors report they are rebooting, they were the first to come back online, but our Ion trail ignited off their shields and caused an overload! I'm trying my best sir!" The sensor tech yelled as he scrabbled with the many things on his computer trying to get sensors back online.

"We have multiple Target locks online from unknowns across the board!, AMS down, ECM Down, Shields at Forty Five Percent, Hull refuses to polarize!" Called Defense, as he tried his best to reboot the main defensive systems.

"Incoming Message! Sir, we're being challenged!" Yelled Comms, in cominbation with Espionage.

Captain Altair shook his head, "Comms! Send, "This is Sutufinai Space Navy Ship Indomitable, our Fusion pile has malfunctioned and we are rebooting systems. OUr targeting computers...." He paused trying to grasp, "Our targeting computers were affected by the energy output from the SCRAM of our reactor and our weapons auto-manuevered to aim at the largest and most threatening capitol nearby. Our offensive systems are down, we cannot fire upon you and we're trying to get our weapons back to their stand down positions!"

When Comms cut off the link Captain Altair looked to the Intercom, "Engineering ETA until Core restart!?" He grit his teeth in hope, his ears going back as he winced, already knowing the answer...

"I just cannae do it sir! I dunnae have deh' time! I need Two more hours!" (Think Scotty, totally.)Called forward the engineer. INdeed in engineering they had more problems, like Ionic feedback from the ignition feeding back through the engine arrays causing an Ion leak trailing behind the slow moving Stealth ship, one of it's engines was down because of it aswell.

Altair bared his teeth, "Forward Launch bay, Close forward Launch tube gates, however, for me... Flood the tubes." In other words, instead of the "Open" tubes that most people could easily see in the bow... They would close off with doors. This would imply the weapons standing down. however Torpedoes were slid into the tubes -just in case- and the air flooded from the tubes back into the cabin. Instead of reopening the tubes after the torps were loaded, they remained closed to keep the idea of "Safed guns" going with everyone.

Location: Seer of the Path

"Just this one ship," the woman said. "It's a protocol back home. Unless you can drag this ship across several dozen parsecs, I doubt it will get home."

"Uh, guys, there's something going on outside..." the girl said from just outside the engine room.

Location: Emperor's Grace

"I guarantee you're not the Titans and that you know nothing about them. If you did, you'd know that you couldn't have scattered the Old Gods because they were tied to Azeroth directly. It was only..." Baldrin stopped, his statement cut off by what happened next. "Damn... Captain Alensia won't take a sneak attack like this well."

Location: Holy Light of the Path

Baldrin's words were far more accurate than he knew.

"Where did they come from?" Alensia shouted. "Bring all shield systems online and charge all weapons. Put us in a defensive position between them and the sphere and order the transports to jump now! Anyone who isn't off this ship in five seconds just became part of the crew."

Five seconds was about how long it took the ship's engines to fully charge, the tiny frigate not even hesitating as it moved. The transports began charging their engines as well, changing their angle as they prepared to begin the series of jumps necessary to return to Azeroth. The ship itself angled to where it would have a clean shot at the newcomer, all the while keeping the sphere well behind it. In the meantime, the cannons themselves began to charge, preparing to fire.

"Do not fire a shot unless someone fires first, but I want a targetting solution upon that ship. If their cannons even twitch like they're about to fire, let them know we have them dead to rights," Alensia ordered.

"Sir, I'm pretty sure our cannons won't even scratch them," a tech said.

"Who said anything about scratching them? I want them so busy looking at us that they don't notice the other ships. I don't care what you have to turn on, but when they run sensors over us for power sources, I want this ship to light up like a Winterveil tree," the captain said. "While we're at it, have the drive fully charged for a jump. If they fire on us, get us out of here."

"I can't believe it... Captain, you're doing the Raptor Pack?" Marigold asked.

"Yes," Alensia said, grinning.

"In that case, I better get on comms. If we spam that ship on every channel we have, we might be able to make them think we're doing some kind of deep scan," Marigold said.

"Raptor Pack? In a ship? Captain, you're nuts. That's... Holy light of Elune, they'd never expect it," the tech said. "I'll try to feed you all of the power I can get. But... Wait, we're getting transmissions."

This is Sutufinai Space Navy Ship Indomitable, our Fusion pile has malfunctioned and we are rebooting systems. OUr targeting computers.... Our targeting computers were affected by the energy output from the SCRAM of our reactor and our weapons auto-manuevered to aim at the largest and most threatening capitol nearby. Our offensive systems are down, we cannot fire upon you and we're trying to get our weapons back to their stand down positions!

"Keep all combat systems active. Do not stand down until their weapons have," Alensia ordered, before glancing to Vitya. "How do you feel about something slightly more dangerous than this ship's bridge?"

"Sir, Enkidu reports that we should have full comms and sensors momentarily." The khyrolii tech turned to look up at the captain, as his screens began flickering to life.

#Progress at last. Bring all sensor systems online and begin active scanning, I want to know what is out there.# Gex closed it's eyes and dove into the sensor datafeed, while the bridge's holotank began filling with data and displays on the ships in local space, the marduk experienced it in real time in it's own dataspace.

#Interesting. There appears to be a newcomer to the scene, and they do not look to be in much better shape than we are. Do we have *any* weapons systems online?# Gex asked as it studied the readouts from both the 'submarine' and the sphere.

The khyrolii shook his head, "Negative Captain. All drive systems are also offline, so even if we had weapons we couldn't maintain a lock. Damage report from engineering says it could be as much as an hour before the primary reactor is back online."

#Very well. We will have to hope that the Emperor's Grace can cover us if things turn hostile.# Gex nodded and closed it's eyes again as it dove into the datastream, accessing the newly restored comms systems and transmitting to the Emperor's Grace on radio frequencies.

#Emperor's Grace, this is the Fervent Dream. We have now restored communications and sensor systems, however all our drive, primary power, offensive and defensive systems are still offline. Should the situation prove hostile here, we will be unable to defend ourselves, or even escape. We are requesting your aid in defending our ship should the need arise. Will you assist us?#

Location: The somewhat cold yet non-conducting depths of space

The two Sertian ships floated, apparently not minding or even detecting the stealthed submarine. The ships did have a relatively primitive version of gravitic sensors, but unfortunately such sensors were pretty much only useful to keep the ships from entering some object that would cause the utter destruction of a ship emerging into Real Space. There was the Drift Oscillating Matter Sensor Array, but the two ships in the area could only dream of having such refined sensor equipments on them - it would make their scouting duties oh so much easier.

As for the espionage profile on the ships it will be, well, surprisingly blank. Their race, their origins, were pretty much unknown. What was known is that reports of their ships were being reported across the galaxy in surprising quickness, almost never introducing themselves, and when they did it was under the cover of the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation. An organization that had the power to rival the galactic powers would be expected to have some paper trail scattered through the Milky Way, yet there was none. Whenever a member of their species were encountered they pretty much kept themselves hidden behind their armor suits, while those that revealed themselves seemed to be human or some other local species in the galaxy. Over all, they were very elusive organization, and their sudden presence in the galaxy caused more than a fair share of worry amongst the various nations - at least they only seemed to be interested in exploring and trading weapons and resources.


Location: Emperor’s Grace

When the humanoid projection brought its weapon down against the floor of the bridge, Tarin’s instinctual reaction was to clench his fist in such a way that the computer of his armor would ignite the plasma katars. This, while calling forth perhaps the deadliest infantry weapon in all of the Sertian Empire’s history, would be a bad idea. Not just for the fact it would reveal that the seemingly lightly armed trooper had a weapon that looked like it was designed to slice through heavy armor like that making up the ship’s hull, the pure heat convection alone from the katars could perhaps incinerate the personal he was standing next to. Incinerating the commander of the ship he was in, as well as two foreign diplomats, was probably a bad idea.

He decided to let the night elf continue to talk with the Titan, instead his attention moving to the emergency situation resulting from the appearance of the stealth vessel.

“Did you know about this?” he asked without broadcasting the message to the speaker of his suit, effectively only the people listening in to his encrypted channel. It was a short ranged, simple radio transmission, so the possibility of it being listened to wasn’t out of the question, deciphering an unknown encryption might be more of an issue though.

“No, whatever their stealth sensors was, it disguised their electromagnetic emissions. If they had a gravity cloak we wouldn’t know, their ship is to small to register on out Drift Sensors. If we had a D-OMSA we might have had a better chance at detecting them, but the Ascension-Classes are busy as of late.”

“Great…” he was about to switch his suit speakers to talk to the rest of the crew on the bridge when the communication officer he was speaking to on the Erguoy spoke once more.

“SHIT! The damaged vessel the engineers we sent to seem to be jumping away!”

“What the heck?” unfortunately for Lieutenant Tarin, he HAD turned his loud speaker on, so the entire crew of the bridge he was standing on would suddenly hear the conversation of a very infuriated Security Officer who was about to lose members of his crew, and a flustered officer on a Sertian ship trying his best not to get a katar royally shoved up his unspeakable region from several thousand kilometers away by voice and intent alone.


Location: Light of the Path

Lieutenant Advanced Vitya was somewhat flustered about the sudden change of events, if it wasn’t for the helmet that was secured on his head everyone would have been free to see the confused deer in the head lights look. He barely had enough time to drag himself together to give the order to jump for the technicians on the kaldorei vessel to jump. Luckily, almost immediately, the crew members would drop their tools, leaving micro fractures half way patched and other torn of shears untouched. An initial jump from the surface without their magnetic boots would take them a few meters from the surface of the vessel, before quickly igniting a full burn from their micro jets. The energy and heat emissions from the plasma jets would be enough to alert almost everyone in the nearby proximity to the technicians location, hopefully they wouldn’t want to shoot such a soft and vulnerable target however.

By the time the commander of the vessel finally talked to him (and he managed to push the voice of a raving mad security officer and defensive communication officer out of his mind, even though it blared through his internal com), he turned to her, “What exactly do you mean by that..?”

The Ava stared off into the distance abit before looking at the commander of the ship.
"You may wish to delay that order were it concerns the Sphere, the Overmind is acting rather crazed at the moment and will only likely see that has a threat, she has also activated our Alpha protocols.
An emergency jump? In the state that the Sphere is in?
Aye, Seems our dear Overmind doesn't like being outnumbered and with the sudden appearance...
These protocols include manoeuvrings into a position that allows an emergency jump and if your ship gets in the way. Lets just say we've had practice with ramming through ships..

2. 1. Ok firing main engines now, we should have blasted them out of the sky in the first place.
Possibly, but we would certainly be dead instead of only having a 65% chance of death or serious injury.
We could have taken them specially with their reduced state of seeking to protect the formally damaged ships.
Formally damaged?
Yes, they have regained basic systems and will soon be in some sort of operational. ah I see what you are trying to do.
Hmm?
You are trying to delay our departure.
No we are not.
Yes, you are.
Nope
Indeed you are!...

The Ava smiled as the new information reached it, thy master always was a clever one it muttered.
"Maybe you wouldn't have to move after all captain, my Master may be able to distract the Overmind enough for you to get into positions and for that other ship to do what it will..."

SSN Indomitable

"Shields are back to one hundred percent sir!" Called out defense, "AMS is back online. ECM is still down, ETC until full program reinstall is at twenty minutes." The defensive officer continued working his station.

Captain Altair rubbed his furry chin as his ears stayed back, "Defensive, based upon their possible armaments... If they open fire, do we have a chance?"

Defensive scowled at his position, "If their weapons are missile based, AMS will probably be able to take out fifty to seventy five percent. Shielding, maybe twenty five more percent. If their using Kinetic Kill rounds our internal structure should be able to take it. If they hit us with EMP, I'm pretty sure we can take that. Nuclear or Fusion? We're gunna be pretty badly hammered."

Captain Altair nodded, "And?"

"If we can get ECM back online, Missiles shouldn't be a problem. Torpedeos shouldn't either. However if their using direct fire weapons, Kinetic Kill weapons are going to punch right through our shields, armor should take a brunt, and I'm guessing that we'll get a through and through, a clean shot for the first few. It'll probably only take out two to three sections. If they are using energy? Particle based weapons should be brunted by the shields, but the moment it hits our hull we're screwed."

The Captain nodded, "And of course, Lazer weaponry will be brunted by the shield, but it should react nicely with our hull causing it to mangle pretty badly and we're screwed. Light Bending is out of the question with battery power, so no way we're gunna counter lazers with that." He sighed as he rubbed his chin.

The Gato Class K was the most prevalent ship in the Sutufinai Space Navy. Outfitted with the best engines and stealth equipment of it's class, it is only surpassed in Espionage ability by the "Snoop" boats. The Snoop boats of course being much lighter armed and somewhat faster. While the Gatos were definitely not a front line brawler, their armament wasn't to be laughed at. Given it's stealth systems the Gato was adept at getting first-strikes and scooting away, allowing it's impressive array of Hyper Velocity Torpedeos to come into play with quick, decisive kills.

Caught without stealth however, the Gato was only moderately defended and was relatively easy to kill with anything greater than a light cruiser. It's torpedeo tubes were situated at the bow and stern, not the broadsides, where only it's deck guns could be brought to bear. These deck guns were adept at killing anything lighter than a light cruiser, and were basic destroyer main guns.

At the Indomitable's current status, and the fact it was running alone, facing numerous other enemy ships including a battlecruiser and a number of lighter ships running from escort to patrol vessel... The Indomitable was not only out weighed by a few thousand tons, but it had lost stealth. It was stuck running on inefficient Ion drives and had lost it's gravitic drives.

All that rolled together meant that the Angenterian ship alone could take the Sutufinai Space Navy ship to the cleaners.

...

As such, Captain Altair got on Communications, "This is the SSN Indomitable, we repeat we mean no harm and do not wish combat." Partially true, at the moment he definitely didn't want combat, "We are having reactor malfunctions and were trying to get out of the Lunar Gravity well. Our ship is relatively lightly defended so we had decided we would seek the safety of larger more adept combatants to cover us while we get our systems fixed and underway once more."

Luckily, the deck guns finally swiveled back to their "Safe" positions as Barrel cradles slid up from the deck to hold the guns in place. As it seemed for everyone else, the Indomitable's weapons were safed, it's torpedo tubes were locked closed. It looked like the ship was in fact unable to do any outward harm.

The Chief Engineer finally got the leaking Ion Drive fixed, Ions stopped spraying all over space in a noticeable trail and the Gato began moving away from everyone slowly and carefully. Not turning tail, just moving away to get out of everyone else's way.

...

Captain Altair sighed mightily, "Offensive, what is our status?" He padded quietly over to the Offensive operations panel where his Tech was working.

"We are A-OK 'Cap. Duck guns are check, main systems online. We are Offensively OK for combat." The Offensive Electronics Tech states as he ran through his checklist one more time.

"Good," Mumbled Altair, He wasted no time wandering over to the central Holo Bank as he looked to Espionage and sensors, "How are we standing?"

Espionage grumbled lightly but called out, "Multiple Unknowns. I don't want to actively Ping them, but we're getting some pretty good stuff on passives. The Angenterian ship fits the bill perfectly, the damaged fleet looks mostly civvy with escorts. I'm guessing from the damage, it explains why their so darned skiddish. I'm happy to state we're filling out the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation's file. Not with much, but with some. As the admiralty guessed it doesn't seem they were able to detect us."

The Sensorman waited his turb before calling out, "Same as before 'Cap. We've got all kinds of good stuff like targeting locks on us, people threatening us, all the good stuff you can expect when a ship randomly appears -directly in front of you-."

Captain Daur was not amused as the responses came back from the Sutufinai vessel. Sure, they may not have any harmful intentions any more, after just about every ship here is about ready to unload an alarming amount of weaponry into them. But still, he couldn't believe their story. He folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes.

"Captain, the enemy is deactivating their weapons." His crew was referring to the Sutufinai ship as 'the enemy' now. Well, it was a natural reaction, considering that they just appeared right in front of them, apparently ready to start shooting.

"Remain at the ready." He ordered, turning to his alien guests, the Ava in particular. "Your master can be assured that we didn't plan on this." He turned back to his crew. "I don't want that ship out of our sights."

He was about to say more, but a sudden, unknown voice disturbed his thought process:

“SHIT! The damaged vessel the engineers we sent to seem to be jumping away!”

"What?!" Daur replied, turning to face the Sertian. "Our people are aboard those! They can't just take them away!" He turned. "Get me those ships!"

Eluneyasan ships,
This is the Emperor's Grace. We demand to know where you are taking your ships with our crew still aboard.

Returning his attention to the Indomitable, Daur made his reply:

SSN Indomitable,
We acknowledge that you have deactivated your weapons, but find it hard to believe that you have arrived without hostile intentions. We ask that you provide proof to the contrary, or face the consequences.

Meanwhile, a second message was being sent:

Fervent Dream
Given the current circumstances, we are sure that the situation will not resort to conflict. If, however, that is not the case, you may consider yourself under the protection of the Imperial Navy.

-------------------
Seer of the Path

"Wha-" Miranda began, turning her attention to the new arrival. She flipped her vox-channel to the Emperor's Grace, which was now flooded with messages and tactical updates.

She whistled. "Something big happening out there..."

**********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
**********

"Extensive comm chatter out there Captain. Patching what we can decipher to your number three tank." The tactical officer didn't turn to the mechanical captain, as he was still jacked into his own station.

#Understood, continue to monitor the situation and alert me immediately if anyone starts firing weapons. Enkidu, status on the gravitics and maneuver drives?# Likewise, Gex hadn't moved from it's station, but it's head did turn to face the emitters where Enkidu's avatar should normally be.

"We have managed to trace all the damage, and there is considerably less than expected. We will require thirty minutes to restore all gravitic systems. We should have interior gravity and basic plasma drives in five minutes. We will not be getting anywhere fast, but we will be able to maneuver." The smooth voice continued to simply hang in midair, it was only the visual part of the DE's avatar that was damaged.

#Excellent. What about the weapons and defenses?#

"All armor and nano-repair capilliaries are still intact, so we will have some minor protection. We will be able to deploy plasma shields when the primary reactor is back online and we have rebuilt sufficient plasma stores, estimate is ten minutes. Initial damage reports on the weapons systems indicate we still have launch capability for half the port-side warship and fighter missile bays. Manufacturing facilities are disabled or destroyed. Both starfire cannons are operational, but will require two minutes to charge sufficient plasma stores for firing. Impacters are offline, portside grasers appear to be functional once they are powered. In total, I estimate 40% combat effectiveness once the primary reactor is restored."

Gex listened to the damage report and nodded to itself. The damage could have been much worse, considering the enemy had attacked from total suprise and nearly crippled them. That stealth ship was worrisome, as was the sphere.

Fervent Dream
Given the current circumstances, we are sure that the situation will not resort to conflict. If, however, that is not the case, you may consider yourself under the protection of the Imperial Navy.

Gex read the message in it's dataspace, then opened the comms systems directly.

#Emperor's Grace, Fervent Dream. Acknowledge your offer of protection and welcome it greatly. Report that the Fervent Dream will be approximately 40% battle ready within seven to ten minutes. Additional repair efforts continue. Thank you once again for your assistance. Fervent Dream out.#

**********
Fervent Dream - Outside
**********

The repair drones were finished with the hull repairs, so Enkidu directed them to assist with the power conduit repairs needed to get the primary reactor back online. The vaguely insectoid machines scuttled across the hull under Enkidu's guidance. When the last drone was back inside, Enkidu turned the head of it's current host to look one last time at the Angenterian fighters, and the ships facing off in the distance, then finally followed the drones back inside before relinquishing control of the command drone.

The manta-ray shaped destroyer no longer tumbled in space, and it was no longer silent or inactive. The hull occasionally rippled in color or texture as new layers of armor were laid down by swarms of nanomachines. Additionally, the ship began bathing local space in active sensor emissions. In particular the stealth ship and the sphere were given special scrutiny, the sensor systems trying to dive deep into hulls of both ships to try and see what made them tick, and how they might best be fought if it came to that.

Are too! Now if you would stop, we are being pinged.
Hmm, did you reestablish our antisensor shields network after the...
Of course we did, thats why we even noticed the disturbance in the first place.
Any clue on its source?
Yes, either the newly decloaked or the other damaged sh.. Most unusual.
What?
That other ship, we had been to busy to do a full scan before now. We thought they were strange to began with but now...
What!?
We were getting to that, your patience Master needs a serious upgrade. They are another machine based race, could explain why are initial computer viruses were less than normal effectiveness. I would suggest another Ava, some of a more modern flair would probably be best.
Indeed.

As the Master scrolled down the choices the Overmind stopped its previous orders with the required codewords. Override always seemed like a stupid password for the Override codes.The Genius lies in its simplicity. If you say so. Finding the one it wanted the Master selected an Ava, it was dressed in complete black, had the voice of an old black man and the body of a white man, a black cape and various other elements.I said modern not post modern, bloody geeks of Lucas... Beginning transmission to what we assume is the bridge.

Provided that the ship’s shielding did not misaligned the transmission, a simple hologram like projection would slowly began to form on the selected ship’s bridge, at first it would be as wispy as the air but as time would advance it would slowly harden into a roughly human/cyborg density and shape.
Waiting for a few seconds, the Master started to talk in the control room his words transmitted to the ship.
“Greetings brethren. You seemed to have suffered some damage can we help in anyway?”

**********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
**********

A simple hologram like projection would slowly began to form on the selected ship’s bridge, at first it would be as wispy as the air but as time would advance it would slowly harden into a roughly human/cyborg density and shape.
Waiting for a few seconds, the Master started to talk in the control room his words transmitted to the ship.
“Greetings brethren. You seemed to have suffered some damage can we help in anyway?”

Gex rose to it's feet immediately, as did several other crewmembers on the bridge. The tactical officer was even in the process of drawing his sidearm when Gex registered that the intruder was not a physical being but rather a projection. Holding up a long, ape-like arm to still the Tejhiik.


**********
Fervent Dream - Digital Dataspace
**********

Enkidu first felt the intrusion as an emission of unknown spectral type against the hull of the Fervent Dream. As the unknown signal gained in intensity, a new presence was felt within the ship's dataspaces. This alone would have alarmed the shipmind, however Enkidu was rather distracted trying to repair the various damaged systems. It wasn't until the hologram appeared on the bridge itself that Enkidu became concerned.

#Captain, there is an unknown intrustion in the ship's dataspace. It is this intruder that is responsible for the hologram on the bridge. The intrusion attempted to access my holographic projectors, then increased in intensity to form the hologram on it's own. I am monitoring the dataspace projection of the intruder now. What are your orders sir?#

Gex's avatar materialized in dataspace, appearing as it looked in the physical world, and frowned, #Continue to monitor the intrusion. If it attempts to access any critical systems, burn it out. In the meantime I will speak to this projection. Divert some of your facets to trying to trace and backhack the origin of the intruder. If they are going to be impolite about intruding into others' vessels, we shall show them the same courtesy.#

Enkidu's core avatar bowed, then vanished.


**********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
**********

Gex sat back down at the command station and regarded the Ava for a few silent moments. The form of the intruder seemed familliar somehow, but Gex could not quite place it. #Your intrusion into this ship's systems is both unexpected and unwelcome. That said, the 'damage' has been done already. Before this goes any further, I must request you identify yourself and your affiliation. Then you will state your reason for intruding in this fashion.#


**********
Fervent Dream - Digital Dataspace
**********

Enkidu didn't bother using a dataspace avatar unless interacting with other dataspace users. Instead the shipmind simply appeared to be a glowing ball of light moving around the simulated environment. As Enkidu approached the 'location' of the initial intrusion, the shipmind split off a portion of it's conciousness, a facet, and used that to approach the intrusion site up close. The intrusion was abstracted as a glowing pillar of light which reached off into the simulated sky. Stepping into the pillar, the facet attempted to trace the carrier signal back to it's origin point.
The Enkidu-facet was taking a calculated risk by remaining connected to Enkidu's core self. On the one hand it allowed the Enkido-core to stay appraised of the status of the facet, but it also allowed the remote possibility for any hostile programs or digital entities to attack the Enkidu-core itself. As the Enkidu-facet few along the beam of light, the simulated reality began to alter into a black void as it approached the digital domain of the Technonaut sphere. Now was the point where the Enkidu-facet risked it's existence. If the sphere had any sophisticated digital defenses, the Enkidu-facet could be snuffed out before it even reached the surface of the sphere's dataspace.

"Hold Fast Offensive. I know you don't like them pointing guns at us. Hell, what am I saying, I don't rather like such big guns being pointed at us. But Hold Fast." Captain Altair cursed as he padded over to the Communications and Esiponage center,

"Espionage, what do you think they'd do if we turned on ECM the moment we got it back online?" Altair raised a tufted brow as his ears went forward curiously..

Espionage on the other hand, let his ears flick back as he shook his head. "I'm going to say there's a 99 percent chance their going to go hog wild if we turn on ECM. People naturally don't like suddenly having their sensors go haywire, sir."

"Ah, yes, good point." Mumbled Altair, "Alright, Comms." Instead of stepping over, he kind've just turned his head... As rotating in place was a rather interesting thing to see with a quadrupedal being, and Altair was positioned between the two stations, "Are you prepared to ahh, transmit? Let's see if they'll take this as a response."

Altair coughed slightly as he started talking through the Communications system at the Angenterian ships;

"Angenterian Ship,
Had we, in fact, wanted to blow you or anyone else out of the water... We had time enough to launch a full spread which would have at least disabled You, destroyed most of the escorts, and preferably taken out the ships that were the most dangerous too us. As you saw, we were directly in front of you with our broadside facing. Now... I don't want to sound crass or anything, but we both know my deck guns aren't going to scratch your ship. So... If I intended to shoot at you, would it not seem wise to at least aim my main weapon towards you? Let alone get out of the probable warhead's radius of destruction? If we were going to shoot at you, we definitely would not have closed to a range where a kill would have disabled us. If we were going to shoot at you, we most definitely wouldn't be sitting right off your bow where there's a possibility your sensors might have hopefully tried to have the slightest possible idea we were there. So, if you want proof we were not going to shoot at you... Look at the Situation we are in."

With his spiel over and done with, the Sutfen captain sighed... "Saints help us. Let us hope there will be no need for lifepods today."

"Vad the Ava of the Sphere Twenty of the Technonaut Collective. I so intruded to facilitate commutations between our species and to gather data on yours. Your own counter intrusion is also noted but as my database is separate from the Technonaut mainframe it will be allowed for now but if it moves past that base the Overmind itself will destroy and/or take it over. I will also stop my own probing for the moment. Now can we help in your repairs or your own probings? We have quite the amount of data on the other ships, their cyberdefenses were quaint and underwhelming for the most part..."

**********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
**********

Gex listened to the Ava identify itself, but privately wondered. A star faring civilization that regularly intruded into the data networks of other nations at will was either reckless, arrogant, or both. Still, a rapid consultation with Enkidu confirmed that the intruding program had indeed ceased it's attempts to delve further into the ship's dataspace. #Very well Vad. I am GX-752-T, however I also have been named Gex. I am the captain of this vessel, the TEEF Fervent Dream. I will not ask you to leave at this time, but I will ask that you refrain from moving about this ship's dataspace without authorization from myself or Enkidu, the Digital Intelligence which serves as shipmind.#

Turning to the place where Enkidu's avatar normally stood, Gex addressed the shipmind, #Enkidu, will you please see to it that our guest behaves itself? Also, please resume repairs to critical systems.#

"Yes Captain. I estimate we will be able to attempt re-start of the primary reactor in another two minutes. We will then be able to restore internal gravity and begin charging plasma shields and starfire cannons. I estimate four to seven minutes to basic combat functionality." A soft chime followed the report to confirm the initial order.

Gex nodded and sat back down, diving back into the personal dataspace of the command station. #Very good. Continue scanning the new arrival and notify me immediately if anyone out there opens fire on anyone else.#

Another chime as Enkidu acknowledged the order. For now Gex was too busy to pay the Technonaut Ava much attention, but after a long minute the Marduk finally looked up at Vad. #Our technicians and repair drones are about to attempt to re-start our primary reactor. Even if this is successful, we have sustained significant damage from an unknown vessel we encountered several hours ago in a region of space some distance from here. We were forced to make a blind space fold and through some perversion of probability, we found ourselves here among these ships. At this time I will accept any assistance which will hasten or improve our repair efforts. I will have Enkidu's facet-self relay your vessel a report of the materials which we most require. If you can provide any of these materials, we would be grateful.#


**********
Fervent Dream - Digital Dataspace
**********

The Enkidu-facet received an order from Enkidu-core to cease attempts to penetrate the alien vessel's dataspace and to return to the Fervent Dream's dataspace for reintegration. Immediately the fragment of Enkidu's mind changed it's direction along the datastream, returning to familliar territory, observing the intruding Vad's projection along the way.

Enkidu-core subsumed the facet after examining it's dataloop for any contaigens. A new facet was generated shortly afterwards to monitor Vad's activity within the systems of the Fervent Dream. When the Captain ordered Enkidu to supply Vad with a report of the most critical elemental masses required to repair the ship, the new facet complied.

#The following elements are needed in various amounts. Argon, boron, cadmium, cesium, carbon, cobalt, gallium, iridium, lead, lithium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, neodymium, neon, nickel, niobium, nitrogen, palladium, platinum, polonium, promethium, selenium, silicon, strontium, tantalum, technetium, tellurium, thorium, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, xenon, yttrium, zirconium. In addition, we require the following isotopes. Deuterium, tritium, and quantium.#

Would have been nice about how much they needed, a metric ton, a kilogram?
Indeed, but I gave my word to not intrude into their systems for the time being.
Well the Overmind did want to move from our current position...
Correct but not towards the uncleansed.
Well you'll have to get over that, because that is what we are going to do.
As you wish, we have already accounted for what we can spare for their repairs. Probably not enough but it should help.
Yes, it was a good thing we found that bulk freighter a few days ago.

The Sphere briefly lit up as its engines slowly came to life, after a number of orbits it broke free from the planet's main gravity field and began its descent towards the other machine ship.

Ava-Bridge of Other Machine Ship
"My masters have looked over your requests and have approved transfer of materials, as we are unsure of the state of your antitransporter technologies we will go with a hull to hull contact, we can also spare 15% of our nanodrone (armor) repair force as/if needed. Do you require any already manufactured components?"

**********
Fervent Dream - Digital Dataspace
**********

At the moment, most of Enkidu's many components were focused on repair work aboard the Fervent Dream, and since so far the foreign facet had ceased it's digital probing, the Enkidu-facet that had been created and assigned to monitor the Technonaut Ava was a somewhat less than stellar conversationalist. It had been given a simple order, to relay to Vad what was most needed for repairs. The order had neglected to mention that how much might also be useful for the alien facet to know. Such were the inherent pitfalls of distributed intelligences, sometimes the smaller parts got overwhelmed by complex situations.

While the facet could not directly interpret or 'listen in' on Vad's conversations with the Sphere, that the conversations took place was monitored and logged for review by the Enkidu-core.


**********
Fervent Dream - Bridge
**********

Gex switched it's inputs from the ship's dataspace to realspace as the alien hologram spoke. The captain nodded slowly, #We have a functional docking collar near the one of the cargo holds that took little damge. It is located on the ventral facing of the ship, just starboard of the midline, and three quarters aft. We will have service drones light the area with infrared beacons.# Looking to Enkidu's emitter and nodding at the chimed confirmation.

#If you can provide technical data on your nanodrones to Enkidu, he can determine if they will be compatible with the ship's own nanotechnology systems. At the moment most of our damage consists of ruptured plasma conduits in the power transfer grid. There was damage to the housings for the gravitic core, and much of our weapons control circuitry was destroyed. If you can provide suitable computational cores, we may be able to use those to bypass much of the damaged systems. We are also quite short of deuterium, tritium, and neutronium fusion fuels.#

The Ava transmitted the new information back to the Master and Overmind.
Hmm, we only use one power source and it isn't once of those three. I guess we could give them the bits we got from that freighter.
And the parts?
We can scrounge up a few, we are also transmitting the relevant parts of information on the nanobots to you, figure out which parts you feel they should receive and direct it to there database, do try and not overload it with too much information, replacing a central AI would be quite past us at the moment.
Aye, did you receive the docking information?
Yes, and we are moving into position, tell them we will arrive in five minutes.

The Sphere began to move closer to the (other) machine ship, igniting its thrusters in controlled fashion as the Ava alleged that its masters had received the information and were moving to docking...

((OOC Note: Bad news I'm afraid. Least bad news for me. I and my housemates have just been served with an eviction notice this morning. The notice states that we have till the end of the month to vacate. The landlord is being an ass and kicking us out because on of the roomies received a service dog. Technically, it is illegal to refuse a tenant to own and house a service animal, as it is an ADA violation. Our landlord however is ignoring that and looking for any excuse to evict us anyways.
We are going to be fighting this, however I don't know what is going to happen at this stage in time. I am going to *try* and keep up with things here on the forums, but consider this a heads up if I suddenly stop responding. Even if I can watch, I may not have the time to write replies in a timely fashion. For those who care, please bear with me and be patient. I will return actively as soon as I know what is going to happen.
Thanks in advance for any prayers or well-wishes.))

Well good luck, hope you get it fixed in a decent manner and come back to posting quickly...
*bump*

(OOC: Eluneyasa is nowhere to be found...)

*bump*
come on guys, don't let it die things were just starting to get interesting again...

(Okay Techno, I am going to work on a new post today, after that we need to wait to see if Eluneyasa is coming back from AWOL.)