Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived The Sol System

Tiko

Draconic Administrator/Mentor
Administrator
Mentor
Nexus GM
as written by barney_fife

The Sol System
The Inner Star system


Everything for a time, since the original call went out was quiet. Twenty minutes to be precise as the Aschen forces in the Cosmora Archipelago synchronized their FTL drives for the jump.

The first spatial tears occured within Valore's Thermosphere, directly in geosynchronous orbit over Westeria City. A brilliant flash of light that skimmed across the span of twenty-nine kilometers, to wink out and reveal the massive, bulbous form of the Imperial Aschen Reverence II, the Revenant.


"Jump complete." The Tactical officer reported, over the audible klaxon of a crystalline alarm call. "All hands report action ready, Commander. I'm recieving reports from the rest of the fleet, they're all ready and awaiting instructions."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Admiral Grayson replied, while he surveyed a three-dimensional hologram of Westeria City displayed before him.

"Alright, what do you make of this?" Grayson asked as he turned to his Executive officer, an older Aerilonian Colonel by the name of Nigel Carrington.

"Initial scans are detecting military presence in and around Hagan avenue, we're picking up fires here, and here..." He reported, gesturing to the burning Government Center, Hagan Avenue, and the NPA HQ. "Looks like the city's already been hit pretty hard." Carrington reported.

"I understand, take us in over the city, standard deployment. I want Hagan avenue secured first and foremost. Leave nothing to chance, if the Terrans don't surrender immediately..." The Admiral paused, while the Colonel spoke.

"Sir?" The Colonel asked.

"Eliminate them." Admiral Grayson replied. "Hagan Avenue is our primary objective, that means we secure it first, fast and hard. Any Aschen Citizens in Terran custody are to be brought into our Custody, if the Terrans resist, they are to be eliminated."

"Understood, Admiral." Colonel Carrington replied, while the Tactical officer spoke up.

"What about Terrans evacuating?" Lieutenant Nellis asked.

"Deploy the fleet, so that nothing gets off the planet."

"Yes, Sir."

____


Once the Aschen fleet had completed it's jump, roughly 3,500 ships in total began to spread out, with a standard formation in and around the Sol system to provide interlocking fields of interception. The Three Reverence II's made a run directly towards Valore itself, with the Revenant situating itself above Westeria City

The additional Reverence IIs positioned themselves accordingly, with one of them moving in a position just adjacent to the Revenant, but with a much higher altitude, while the Twilight Compunction initiated a Tactical jump, positioning itself roughly half an AU from Valore, to provide wide-band command and control support.

"Revenant Actual, this is The Rapid Conversion, I'm going to position at three nine seven carom one two eight, I'll provide any cover in case we get some uninvited guests."

"Acknowledged." Admiral Grayson responded, while the AI Chimed up.

"Admiral, we are entering Valore's atmosphere, we'll be ready to deploy Gravity footholds in thirty Microns." The AI reported, as the City of Westeria shimmered before him.

"Colonel, acquire all hardened military targets and anything airborne not broadcasting an Aschen IFF within our range of fire. When we come within range, destroy them. And then we'll initiate deployment."

Once the Aschen fleet positioned itself throughout the system, the Reverence II began it's descent, plasma flaring violently on it's shields as it began it's descent into the atmosphere.
 
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as written by Lobos

Already brutalized by the passing of thousands, the emptiness of space tore en masse yet again.

Thousands of spatial rends vomiting forth vessels, outlined in toxic lights of emerald acetonic light and arcing energies, bursts of radiation as the rents snapped closed astern. The new arrivals were alien, to be sure, the silhouettes of their bodies menacing, ominous.

The largest of these slung forward twin spears, the pronged bows reaching forward fully two thirds of their length, the rear third of each vessel home to a pyramidal obelisk. Six kilometers from jagged knife bows to the stern, they gave off surprisingly little signature for their size, numerous weapon emplacements panning slowly, methodically. They numbered 283, slipping forward in silence.

Flanking these silent hulks were cruel, blade-like vessels, dwarfed by their larger cohorts six times over. Their appearance belied swiftness to the pondering maneuvering of the larger vessels, the angular, edged hulls almost emanating a hunger, their own weaponry shifting from vessel to vessel ahead. Of these enigmatic arrivals, there were 2012.

Yet, so small as to be nearly unnoticed, the space between the goliath's swarmed with succintly unusual ships, a scant 5 meters in length, and 25 meters from wingtip to wingtip. Agilely swimming the void around their large brethren, the choregraphy of their movements at a glance, seemed...random. Yet it was a dance of maneuvering that followed an intricate pattern speaking of astonishing coordination. Their numbers were almost impssible to tell, so small and difficult to detect as they were. They came near to ten thousand strong.

A scant 350,00 kilometers behind the Aschen fleet, this unknown force advanced.
 
as written by barney_fife and Lobos

"Commander Torres." The AI Spoke up to the Commander of the Rapid Conversion. "I am Detecting additional DRADIS contacts, multiple unknowns inbound.

The Commander let out an audible growl as the display of the Sol System lit up with the new contacts.

"Gods damnit, why can't anything go smoothly for once." She grumbled, before she turned to her Lieutenant.

"All hands Action stations, prepare for battle! Bring us about we have to cover the flagship!" The Commander ordered.

As the Rapid Conversion came about, the rest of the Imperial Fleet had been signaled, all Aschen Combat vessels quickly adjusted their positioning to come about against the new arrivals.

"Send a hostile challenge and ID." Commander Torres ordered.

The Tactical Lieutenant nodded, as did the Communications officer, before he picked up his headset and sent out an wide-band hail to the alien fleet.

"Attention Unidentified Vessels, this is an Imperial Aschen area of operation, identify yourselves and state your intentions immediately, or you will be labeled enemy combatants and destroyed. You have exactly thirty seconds to comply."

Commander Torres turned to her AI. "Rapid Conversion to Revenant Actual, I'm going to signal for reinforcements, things are about to get nasty up here."

Admiral Grayson's voice echoed it's reply.

"I'm well aware, we've got company down here too, my AI has advised me to call for reinforcements or abort the mission. Planck the system to prevent further enemy reinforcements."

Torres nodded. "You heard the Admiral, prepare Planck packs for Jump inhibition, deactivate them when we have confirmation of imminent reinforcements."

____

If at first, the enigmatic fleet gave indication that it had heard, it hid it well. Gliding forward like phantoms, the silence persisted.

Then a return transmission was directly channeled to the very vessel that had cast the hail, a narrow beam communication. The encoding was simplistic, basic even. The code that formed the message was even layed in unencrypted binary, a simple flag that announced the packet attached was an audio log with subtitling, in common. While the message itself looked as plain as it was to a computer or AI viewing it, the same could not be said for organics if initially played over a speaker, the transmission simply coming as a modulated scream of static.

Translated properly, however, it's message was delivered in the familiar, artificial snarl of the previous reception the Aschen had made from unknown sources.

"You'll learn who we are easily enough, fleshlings. As to our intentions, well.

You're far from home, Aschen. And you were lax."


Coldly calculated to accommodate the delay of audio, the weapons of the mysterious armada opened up, a flood of pulse gamma lasers firing from the larger vessels en masse, targeting all over the Aschen battlegroup, flashing the intervening gap in barely over a second. Pulsing hundreds of times a second, the armada silently poured the strobes of 200Gw lines across space, the beams themselves invisible to the naked eye.

A few seconds of pulses, then the firing ceased a moment, before space light up with the signature of massed charged particles being discharged. The range was too distant for standard fire however. But this was even more coldly calculated.

Bremsstrahlung.

A wave of charged particles that gave off horrific amounts of radiation, sent straight for the heart of the Aschen fleet.

____

Aboard the Rapid Conversion, the Crew winced slightly at the brief sounds of screams, before the true message was played.

"You'll learn who we are easily enough, fleshlings. As to our intentions, well.

You're far from home, Aschen. And you were lax."


Commander Torres narrowed her eyes, and then turned to her AI. "All the identification i need, all ships engage! Leave no survivors!"

The CIC immediately came to life, as the shipboard AI registered multiple hits, as each laser beam struck the shields, it's photons were scattered by the shields, which flared in a visible white light from each impact. The lasers themselves lacked the power to do any real damage, though, which had the AI pondering if it was a test of their capabilities.

"We're taking weapons fire, shields are holding." The Tactical officer reported.

With the Admiral engaging on the surface, the choice was clear, so the Commander made the decision quickly.

"Return fire, and signal the fleet for reinforcements. We're taking the fight to the enemy."

The AI promptly nodded. "Signal sent, response confirmed, the Second Combined Fleet of Righteous Purpose will be en-route in one Millicenton."

Torres nodded. "So Chairman Inviere wants a piece of the action huh?"

The AI Nodded. "Given the nature of this incident, the Quorum will no doubt want to be appraised as well, I've disseminated a Briefing through the Datalink."

The pair of Reverence IIs opened the first salvo, launching their MAC guns towards the largest of the enemy fleet, each slug weighing thousands of tons and traveling at thousands of miles per hour.

The Aschen began returning fire shortly before the wave of charged particles were launched, this wave washed over the Aschen's magnetic shielding in a brilliant display of blues, greens, and reds as the particles were excited along their wavelengths, and gave off visible light. The Radiation was another concern, but nothing that ships weren't already shielded against. Smaller cruisers and one man fighters however were not so lucky.

With the opening shot fired, the smaller ships, cruisers, frigates, and other assortment of Aschen warships returned fire on the encroaching fleet, using a combination of long range AI Guided torpedoes, carefully calculated Disruptor salvos, missile and MAC fire followed as well, lighting up the vast gulf of space.

Athena cruisers on the fringes of the Sol System followed up with Thunderbolt missiles, launching them from their tubes, and plotting them a microsecond before they entered FTL, to emerge dangerously close to the enemy ships and detonate in a brilliant Plasmic explosion.

Gemenon class, and Aegis cruisers took up the center, positioning themselves between Celion's fleet, the Reverences, and the larger Sagittaron and Tauron class cruisers, the Aegis cruisers were responsible for taking out incoming missile fire through ECM Jamming, and wide-proximity flak. The Gemenon class cruisers were tasked with ascertaining their targets in orbit, and shelling them with their spinal mounted MAC guns.

The Twilight Compunction was the last ship to set up, her Commander considering their options before turning to the AI.

"Ready Singularity driver."

The AI offered a nod in compliance.

"Launch all fighters!" Commander Torres ordered through the fleet-wide datalink, and with the command given, the fleet responded, launching tens of thousands of small fighters, Apollos, F-69X's, Talon Fighters, and Harbinger Gunships moved forward to close the distance between the Aschen fleet, and the Celion fleet. Aegis Cruisers would also consolidate to provide anti-fighter support.

It was at this time the Planck packs were beginning to come online.
 
as written by Tiko

As the planck packs came online, something went very, very wrong. Where space is normally as fluid and supple as satin, the tensions upon the realms had left it frayed and brittle in places. Holes had been mended, rifts sewn closed. It had become a tattered tapestry of patchworked threads that were held together with little more than spit and a prayer.

There was no warning, no building of power, no chance for preparation of what was to come.

The planar stabilization field swept through Sol, tearing and rending space its wake. Where it sought to iron the folds of space, it fractured them. Where it sought to bring stability, chaos ensued. The opposing forces holding the realms together, and that which sought to manipulate them clashed with cataclysmic results.

Both the Aschen fleet and Celion's forces would be caught up in the wake of the chaos as ragged tears were rend through space. Many ships would simply be swallowed up, destroyed by the destructive forces at work, others would be lost to realms and places far from their own. Debris exploded through the Sol system; the bodies of people, buildings, vehicles, and animals alike from realms unknown. They drifted, lifeless through the vast emptiness of space.

Through one massive rift, clawed hands of such magnitude as to crush a Reverence within their grasp sought escape from some unknown hellish dimension. Its keening wail went unheard in the vast emptiness of space, but the shuddering of the rift sent ripples that would be felt across both fleets before it collapsed on itself.

A shockwave of force tore outwards, severing the behemoth clean in two to leave an arm and half a head to join the lifeless entities that had been spilled into the Sol system. The residual energy cut a swath through space, threatening the same fate upon any ships caught in its path.

It was only one of many though, and as long as the planck packs remained online the damage would only snowball, until there was nothing left of the region, or either of the fleets.
 
as written by barney_fife and Lobos

"Planck Packs are onli--." The Lieutenant was cut short as the AI began to register several tears in the fabric of space time. The Rapid Conversion was hardly prepared for what came next.

A rift tore itself open about a hundred or so Kilometers from it's starboard side.

"Take evasive action! Full military thrust!" The Commander shouted as the rift grew in size, threatening to Swallow the Flagship as it tried to pull itself away.

"What in Hades is going on!?" Torres yelped, as the Reverence shuddered from the shockwaves of energy.

"Spatial anomalies throughout the star system, we're sustaining casualties, and the energy surge has disabled our shields, Generators are spooling." The AI warned, but not before one of the rifts opened up, swallowing half of a nearby Cruiser, leaving the other half drifting directly towards the Reverence.

"Disabled Gemenon class cruiser, CBDR, brace for impact." The AI Warned again, and the gutted cruiser impacted the Reverence II's Bow, carving a deep gouge in it's sleek hull, and venting crew and debris alike. The Reverence II shuddered from the impact, sending the CIC crew flying against consoles, Torres herself was thrown against the Tactical map, an audible crunch signified a broken arm.

"Hull breach, Section two, decks seven through eighteen."

Wincing in pain, the Commander held her arm, biting back the searing pain from the broken bones. "Damage control to section two. Gods damnit shut those planck packs down!" She howled amidst the shower of sparks.

"Planck Packs coming offline, shields are coming back online. I have summoned medical personal to ascertain the nature of your injuries."

The cacophony of voices, sparks, and flickering lights presented a scenario that was unfolding across the Imperial Fleet, having been left disoriented in the sudden tearing of reality. One would only hope Celion's fleet suffered a similar fate.

____

Massed fire in return was expected, impulses flickering between the vessels of Excelion's armada, coordination on a scale that organics could not comprehend. The counter-fire slammed into the Wave Force armors of the massed Obelisks, Blades, and Seeds, vented energies filling the space around them towards the opposing fleet, the armada's advance as yet to be halted or checked.

And then space went mad, the chains of communications becoming a hurricane of impulse connections as the feeds became cluttered with debris and obstacles. Entire swathes of the armada were engulfed in spatial rifts, a dozen of the pondering Obelisks either gone, drawn through space and time to elsewhere, or cleaved asunder by releases of energy, the klein bottles that were the outermost layer of armor overloaded and surpassed, the speed of the destruction tearing rents through the vessels before the collapse of the bottle itself, unleashing titanic eruptions against the backdrop of space. A score of Blades, and several thousand Seeds suffered similar fates as the rents continued with reckless rage for a time, before the settling occurred in the wake of the stabilizers going offline.

The smooth precision of Excelion's ships as they regrouped was appalling in its swiftness and silence, no communion necessary in order to know their places in formation. In unsettling union, two thirds of the remaining Blades and nearly all of the surviving seeds advanced ahead of the main force at increased paces.

The resumption of firing commenced, the discharge of grasers in the thousands, no lessening to precede the firing of the particle drivers this time. A sustained bombardment supplemented by rapid cannon fire, kinetic slugs and proximity fused nuclear shells spiraling through space as the advance elements proceeded past the point of mere close range and began to encroach at knife-range within space, spaced across a front hundreds of thousands of kilometers across and directing all fire with uncanny precision.

____

As the fleet belonging to excelion returned fire, much of the aschen fleet was still in a fair amount of disarray following the sudden and violent tearing of the fabrics of space and time. As the incoming gamma rays and particle cannons cleared fourth, they took a handful of patrol frigates with them, irradiating the crew as their passive environmental shields had come offline due to the energies involved in the spatial tearing.

Aboard the Rapid Conversion, which had managed to regain shields in the scant moments between the collision and the incoming volley from excelion's fleet. Commander Torres was holding her arm while the shipboard AI unit coordinated damage control and recovery efforts. Nuclear fire and kinetic slugs alike made their marks, engulfing a few unlucky vessels in brilliant nuclear fire, or breaking their backs and perforating their hulls. Those that were more fortunate, specifically the larger and more powerful vessels fared a great deal better. Celions attacks flared angrily upon their shields, but otherwise left these ships spared.

"Commander, the Twilight Compunction is reporting that their singularity driver will be ready to fire in one half millicenton." The Rapid Conversion's AI reported.

The commander nodded before she turned to her executive officer.

"Colonel Emerson, you have the conn. I'll be in the infirmary." She stated, while the colonel nodded. "Understood."

Even as the battle was slowly beginning to turn against the Aschen in sol, it was clear they did not intend to go quietly.


In fact, the white flickers of new incoming Ftl signatures were quite indicating of new, fresh arrivals, and like the interdiction performed by Celion ground side, the aschen were going to perform their own flashy interdiction.

The Strictest Doctrine came in first, winking in a scant 50,000 kilometers from the leading group of enemy capital ships. Immediately following its jump, it opened up with all eight high powered kinetic batteries, hurling a brutal salvo of 3,000 ton ferric-tungsten slugs at roughly 12,000km a second towards the nearest 6km pronged ship, aiming to get a center mass volley that climbed upwards to roughly 50 gigatons of force multiplied by twenty four, the number of individual slugs that discharged from the Iconoclast class battleship's mammoth main magnetic accelerator batteries.

As the Calvary filtered in, a pair of the new Punisher class battleships followed suit, jumping in behind the front of machine ships, aligning their chaos cannons at the second pronged vessel, they unleashed their fury, each individual chaos shell utilized an antimatter warhead, and acceleration up to 5,000 km/s to deliver a whopping 150 gigatons of force per individual shell. Punisher class ships were specifically designed with capital ship killing in mind, and it was with frightening efficiency that it unleashed her fury.

As additional aschen reinforcements filtered in, their number had now doubled, but this fleet was comprised largely of newer and more powerful ships, perhaps now they could turn the tide against a ruthless and efficient enemy.

As the second fleet finished their jump, they unleashed a punishing weapons salvo upon the enemy fleet, hopefully buying the Fleet of Glorious Interdiction moments to regroup and lick their wounds.

____

The lashing of fleets continued, those of the armada possessing the knowledge of how the gambit for the Aschen technologies on the world below seemed unlikely to succeed. The engagement had become one of punishment, over victory.

And so the orbital aspects of the armada elected to cease the idle toying as the second fleet appeared, the rear elements of the Obelisks and accompanying vessels wheeling to face the new threat, weathering the storm behind Wave Force armors that shattered the kinetic slugs, twisting and returning the energies captured within their monstrous Klein bottles into weapons hurled back into the face of the Aschen fleets. Portions of hulls peeled back from over internal bays, the bores of massive cannons along the larger vessels exposing themselves for the first time.

Permission of Graviton clearance is granted. Engage at will.

The simultaneous firing of those fell weapons scythed across the vessels of the Aschen fleets like an eruption, beams that lensed white light into outlines around them being the only indicator of their presence. And yet, they carried no lethal energies, no flood of particles to batter and break, no apocalyptic heat to burn and vaporize. Indeed, they seemed to interact with nothing, easily passing through armor like phantoms slipping through a wall. Yet it was contact with matter that saw the rays activated, creating potent gravitronic fluxing that was still within tolerable specifications. What followed the seemingly harmless rays, however, should they strike true, was far more sinister.

The contact with matter generated a spontaneous creation, a formation of significant amounts of dark matter within the baryonic structures of the unfortunate vessel struck. Sufficient to generate a gravity well equivalent to the core of a neutron star, and with it, the titanic pressures involved with being in such a location, capable of crushing virtually any matter into a short lived singularity before the artificially crafted dark matter decayed. It was a weapon to ignite raw fear, and it's creation was the penultimate achievement of Excelion, the reverse engineering of technologies discovered on his sojourns among the stars. The Graviton Cannon, the Wave Force armor, and the still enigmatic Mirror Ring System.

The first firing was immediately followed by a hurricane of Macro-Flayer fire to strafe the Aschen lines, a continued bombardment of the jade spewing batteries as capacitors of the Graviton arrays recharged, preparing for a second volley.

____

Inviere was suprised, astonished even that the mammoth firepower that was unloaded had been stopped, fear crept into her mind as the Lieutenant replied.

"Our weapons fire is... ineffective."

"Nothing.. their shields have stopped everything we fired at them."

Once Celion's fleet returned fire with the Graviton beams, the unfortunate vessels caught within them were destroyed, crushed into singularities without so much as a wimper, a fight. Macro Flayers impacted their targets, and the damage reports rang across the Tactical feed and ultimately the datalink.

"We've sustained heavy losses in that last attack, Chairman we're not going to last much longer if this keeps up."

The Chairman nodded. "Agreed... open a channel to the Aurora."

The Lieutenant nodded, and a channel was opened up.

"Aurora, this is the Strictest Doctrine, Admiral McGregor you're to report to Sol Immediately. Use whatever means necessary to destroy Celion's fleet."

There was silence on the other end, and Raphael McGregor appeared on the video feed.

"Excelion at Sol? I thought that was supposed to be a nice n easy smash and grab." He replied.

"Give me a moment..." He said, disconnecting the comm link.

The Penultimate achievement of Excelion Carnage, was about to be put to the test against one of the greatest, and most well kept assets in the Empire.

A single ship flickered in 150,000 Kilometers off the starboard side of Carnage's lines, strangely enough though, the fabric of reality lensed around this alien vessel, and this alien vessel would likely not match any profiles of known Aschen ships in Excelion's databanks. This was one of the well kept secrets of the Aschen Empire.

The strange alien vessel lacked the size and intimidation of the larger Imperial vessels, sitting at a scant 3.5 Kilometers in length, it appeared to be little more than a cruiser at best.

Raphael closed his eyes and focused his thoughts, if he helped here he would once again become the hero of the people for the Aschen, and he saw it as his duty to assist.

Mind and Starship were perfectly in sync as Raphael leaned back in the control chair, while genetically enhanced crewman worked their stations.

With a few mental commands, an Obelisk was garnered as a target. The Aurora analyzed it quickly, the Alteran AI providing Raphael with tactical data, composition, weapons, and current positioning.

A bead of sweat rolled down the Admiral's brow as he channeled his mind, mental images of atoms gave way to quarks, protons, until he envisioned the very fabric of space.

Reality itself lensed, and like the snap of a high-tension string, the fabric was torn, resulting in a massive warp chasm opening up dead center within the Obelisk. Where it lead too was a mystery, but the chasm was not unlike the spatial tearing from the activation of the Planck Packs.

The mind focused more, like a child struggling to tear a piece of fabric apart, the Warp Chasm was forced to grow until it would inevitably consume the Obelisk, and everything around it.

His teeth clenched as his mind's eye envisioned the rending of space. There was another snap, and a warp fissure was torn in an instant, spanning several hundred thousand kilometers in length, along the frontal boundary of Excelion's formation. Raphael gasped and labored his breath as he released his mental hold on reality, his mind amplified by the ship's interface.

He had hoped, prayed this would work.

____

Spatial breach detected.
Location: Internal structures of Tar-6 Obelisk.
Jump now. 200,000km directly forward.


Communicated within a nanosecond, and processed in three fifths of another. Alas, a thousand more Seeds consumed in the midst of jump translation as the fleet moved with uncanny precision, appearing behind the wounded first fleet of the Aschen. Not without its own wounds, nearly 2,000 vessels between Obelisks and Blades remained, as well as roughly 9,000 Seeds. The stern facing weapons of the larger vessels ignited, another brutal unleashing of massed Graviton Cannons targeting the largest of the vessels in their recovering formations, Macro Flayer and mass driver batteries spitting fire as the horde of Seeds reversed course faster than their heavier brethren could, rapidly accelerating to thousands of kilometers an hour, racing to slip inside of the fleet's very boundaries, fouling the ability to unleash such wanton destruction for risk of massive friendly fire. As the Blade and Obelisks wheeled, they too pushed for the boundaries of the damaged fleet, close mind to anomalous readings to preempt another such triggering.

Their rate of advance, combined with the sudden leap, left the space between Excelion's Armada and the Aschen fleet scarcely over 10,000 kilometers distant. Knife range was breached and violated, and the grim satisfaction of electronic minds felt pleasure as they poured furious fire into their enemies.

____

Raphael made a face as the fleet closed in on the Fleet of Glorious Interdiction. He made even more of a face when the AI from the Tria Submitted tactical data prior to it losing power.

"So he's going to try and jump ships past our defenses...."

The Aurora's engines kicked into full burn. He couldn't save them all, but the close proximity afforded Raphael with a distinct opportunity. As the Aurora gained on the battle, the McGregor let his mind wander, acquring several targets. It was at this point the Aurora unleashed it's complement of drones. Millions of yellow little spheres belched fourth from the Aurora, swarming around the Aschen fleet, dodging and avoiding friendlies.

Like massive tendrils of light, they branched out and acquired hundreds of ships simultaniously, bypassing the wave force armor in a similar manner as Orlin's drones did groundside, targeting vital power sources and everything else they could burrow through.

Hundreds of thousands of drones attacked each individual ship, hundreds of ships simultaniously attempting to cut Celion's fleet to shreds.

While this occurred, Raphael allowed the Drones to work on their own, and Raphael acquired a single obelisk in his mind, before he opened a warp chasm directly in the center of the ship, a miniature black hole that would serve to swallow the Obelisk into a singularity before decaying.

While this was underway, Raphael focused his defense, a Spatial stabilization field, while manually stabilizing reality to prevent the random rifts from opening up on his ship.

With each of Celion's ships destroyed, the drones would move on to the next, and the odds were evening out, for every loss the Aschen took, Alteran drones managed to make up for by destroying one of Celion's ships.

---

As the Armada was within knife range of the Aschen fleet, Aschen losses began to mount staggeringly high. The casualty count was skyrocketing as the Imperial vessels desperately tried to return fire.

Torres was going over the tactical data, and listening to the cacophony of chaos that transpired around them.

Celion's fleet was essentially knife fighting with Jameson's, and so the Commander made a last second decision.

"Time your planck Packs, sync them to activate in one Centon, calibrate your FTL Drives to jump onto the other side of the planet." She called out.

"Torres, McGregor! Withdraw your ship immediately, I have a plan!"

Across the remaining several hundred Aschen ships, and among the debris of their destroyed brethren, Matter stream transporters, and emergency jettisons activated in unison, sending out a cloud of debris from each ship.

A split second later they all jumped, flickering out of the battle.

A few seconds after that, all the jettisoned Planck packs activated, with thousands of individual Planck packs activating simultaniously, there would no doubt be immense stress on the space-time, and with no escape for Celion's fleet, they would be caught in the eddies that would inevitably follow.

____

Drone swarms inbound.
We'll not suffer this again.
We are agreed.


The final approach to integrate with the Aschen fleet halted, a rapid, near static flurry of communion engaging the larger vessels. Coordination. Sudden discharges, staggered to form a single, precisely timed volley that would arrive at it's target simultaneously, forgone by only one Obelisk, calmly reporting anomalous activity before crushing into ruin.

But the target was not Aschen. Indeed, it wasn't even aimed forward. The near solid sphere of slugs drove inwards on a single Obelisk of the formation, and the armada swiftly made their own jump, exiting nearly a dozen million kilometers distant. All in the sake of being fully clear.

The targeted Obelisk's task was a simple one, the activation of the Mirror Ring System at precisely the opportune moment, the fraction of a moment before impact. The Klein bottle of the Wave Force captured the kinetic force of the hurricane salvo, shredded the slugs and drew more power from the particle wash, before it altered fundamentally, becoming a visible pair of edge-intersecting rings that met at the midpoint of the vessel. The energy mitigated was in the teratons, thousands of mass driven slugs at significant .c velocities halted, their impacts drained. But unlike Wave Force, the Mirror Ring was not a stable defense. Sword and Shield, the energy entered a feedback loop, multiplying in magnitude. Dozens of teratons became low exatons of power within the two brief seconds of the Mirror Ring system's primary activation phase.

And then it fractured, erupting into an omnidirectional blast-wave of absolutely monstrous proportions, 3 exatons of raw, destructive energy that within a second, blossomed into a sphere 5000 kilometers across and continued to expand at lightspeed. At the center of the near cyclonic storm, the Obelisk's superstructure groaned and strained, plates tearing and fracturing along the surface from the titanic strain the firing phase put on the vessel.

____

Timing couldn't have been more perfect, as Torres attempted to execute her plan, she had inadvertently cleared the Aschen fleet from certain doom. The fleet's new location on the other side of the planet afforded them the perfect defense.

Raphael on the other hand foresaw the result as his Drones moved in, and the Aurora came to a sudden stop, winking out of space as the Shockwave started to race outwards.

Appearing among the Aschen fleet on the other side of the Planet, the Aurora's AI informed Raphael that the last strike had depleted the Aurora's drone stores by roughly 40%.

The Admiral cursed to himself as he went over the datalogs.

"I'll have to go back to Proclarush Taonas and rearm." He said to himself, watching the enemy fleet as it sat in the distance.

"We're at 60% weapons capacity.. not exactly ideal, especially if they levy another attack like that and destroy the rest of my drones... I could probably recall the drones from the Tria..."

At that moment the AI informed Raphael that the Drone tubes were loaded for another attack.

"No.. we wait... see what Celion is going to do next."

"Commander Torres, what gave you the foresight to clear that blast?" McGregor asked, while Torres responded. "We were going to try and set a trap." She explained, gesturing to the Planar storm that had no doubt consumed their battlefield.

"I need to tend to my crew, and have Admiral Grayson briefed on everything up here.. Torres out."

Raphael then turned his attention to the Displays. "Gods damnit..."


---

Fortunately the Combined Fleet of Righteous Purpose was far enough away from the blast point that the blast had lost a significant amount of energy, and the fleet had time to react. With shields raised, the larger newer ships shrugged off the blast, while the remainder of the fleet was buffeted, some of the smaller ships sustained damage, but had largely survived.

Inviere was planning her next move, as reports continued to pile in.

"I'm going to recommend we go to Exterminatus." She said, nodding to her XO. "You have the Conn. I need to contact the Emperor." She said before she turned to leave the Bridge of the Strictest Doctrine.

____

Shuddering from strain, the lone Obelisk that had fired the Mirror Ring system paused, going over the extensive debris field with passive sensors, emissions virtually nonexistent giving the lower power status. What it deduced from wreckage hinted that a gamble had been played, and inadvertently foiled when the drone launch prompted the usage of such extreme measures. However, the end result was extensive debris and gutted vessels abounded in its immediate location, with signals of the nearest fleet outside the range of the Mirror Ring detonation.

Consensus was quickly reached between the internal AI controllers, one withdrawing from its matrix in the form of a back-up burst non-space transmission, to announce on its arrival the presence of salvage to be captured, providing extensive details from the sensor data on location and rate of drift.

Within a minute, muted flashes within the debris field occurred, drone vessels jumping in, locating and attaching to themselves larger portions of wrecks or pieces of debris that appeared to be somewhat salvageable, snaring them and jumping once more with their prizes. For as long as the Aschen response allowed the pillaging, Excelion's support elements, held away for such a purpose, would collect a bounty.

The bulk of the surviving armada regrouped and reassessed, shifting formations to split the cohesion into three dozen smaller units, shifting their coordination to focus on the smaller group tactics with overall communication between the splinter fleets readily possible. Making brief jumps to various midpoints within the system itself, the splinters organized in their holding positions, lurking like jackals ready to pounce unwary or wounded prey.

____

As the wreckage drifted about, the carcasses of ships that were devoid of any valuable data lie dormant. The Drones would find scrap value and some metallurgical data, but there was nothing amidst the field of wreckage that Excelion could benefit from. Data had been purged and the memory storage devices that held it had been physically destroyed by failsafes, to the point where data was salvageable.

Despite that though, scrap metal had some value, and the presence of the Drones gave the Empire pause for a moment, as the Second Combined Fleet of Righteous Purpose regrouped, and the remnants of the Fleet of Glorious Interdiction licked their wounds on the other side of the planet.

Aboard The Strictest Doctrine Chairman Inviere was in a conference with Emperor McGregor, who was reviewing her proposal to launch an Exterminatus against Valore.

Mollem pondered the data slightly, before he frowned. "Resistance was too viable.. Celion appearing was unforeseen, of course the fleet got slaughtered." Mollem said, tossing the Dataslate aside.

"Terran Resistance was also unusually Viable, their resistance to our invasion has caused us to sustain casualties in the Hundreds, we had to deploy War Adepts to push the native Terrans back." Inviere explained. "I wanted to secure our artifacts and exterminatus the Planet, to prevent any retaliatory strike against the Empire."

Mollem scowled. "I don't like how Admiral Grayson went about it, shooting people indiscriminately. The Doctrine of fear does not seem to apply to these Savages, it galvanizes them, and causes their resistance to be even more viable." Mollem paused.

"I had hoped Admiral Grayson would use a bit more Discretion. I want him severely punished for his incompetence." Mollem added, while Inviere nodded.

"I'll see too it." She replied as Mollem continued.

"I'll review the request for Exterminatus, and grant it if the Circumstances require it. Keep me appraised of the situation on Valore." Mollem said, terminating the link.

Inviere heaved a sigh, before the intercom phone chimed.

"Inviere..." She said, picking it up.

"Chairman, the Tria was shot down over Westeria City, it appears to be intact. We need to secure it with all haste." The XO reported.

"Understood... Secure the Priority one packages, and then withdraw all forces from Westeria City Proper, we'll redeploy outside the city and establish a Siege, once we've subdued local resistance, deploy the Rapid Conversion to recover the Tria. I understand Commander Torres is a very capable individual."

"At once, Chairman." Colonel Emerson replied.
 
as written by barney_fife

A millicenton or so had gone by since the initial exchange with the Terran government officials regarding the tech con prisoners. Chairman Inviere was going over the list of workers that the Terrans had taken prisoner.

She had also been going over combat reports concerning the extraction of the primary devices.

At that moment her thoughts were interrupted as her Lieutenant stepped into the Chairman's ready room.

"Chairman, we received a response from the Terrans, they have Security Chief Henderson hostage, and are threatening to execute her if we don't negotiate with them."

Inviere frowned a moment.

"Do we have any Intrepid class ships at our disposal?"

The lieutenant nodded. "The Sojorner is ready to deploy from imperial space, why?"

"It's matter stream transporters are far more advanced than the ones we have in this fleet, we will need it if we hope to stage a rescue of Captain Henderson." Inviere explained.

The lieutenant nodded slightly, before he turned to leave just as Mollem chimed in on the datalink.

"Chairman, this is unacceptable, but it feels good to be proven right. A legitimate government taking hostages... Secure her release by all means, I'm still having trouble getting the Quorum to authorize an Exterminatus. You'll have to work with what you have, but rescuing Callandra is your top priority."

Inviere nodded slightly, and then she picked up her intercom.

"Patch me through to communications."

Once the patch was established, she transmitted her reply to the TNG.

"Prime Minister, this is Chairman Gina Inviere, I do not respond well to threats and ultimatums, you will surrender Miss Henderson to Imperial custody immediately, there will be no negotiations until that occurs. I can tell you I don't have the authority to disengage from our objectives. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let Cally go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. We will finish what we came here to do, and we will withdraw, leaving your world, and your people in peace. But if you don't, I will burn your cities to the ground, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.."

She then opened a channel to the commander of the Sojorner in Aschen Space.

"Commander Caraway, jump in as close to Valore as you can get, try to remain undetected. Lock onto Callandra Hendersons sub space transponder implant, and beam her aboard your ship, make all haste."

The commander of the Intrepid class ship signaled their reply.

"Acknowledged, Chairman, We'll be in System in one half Millicenton." Caraway replied, while Inviere leaned back.

"Gods help us."
 
as written by barney_fife

The Terrans didn't seem to buy Inviere's demand, the signal that Callandra's Subspace transponder went dead caused the Chairman to sigh heavily. She was now put in a position to carry out her own threats.

Sitting up from her seat, she stepped out of her ready room and onto the Bridge.

"Colonel, have the fleet regroup over the Continent, target all major cities, your heaviest weapons." She ordered, and the massive Iconoclast Battleship shifted slightly, Valore coming into view.

"Chairman, we have a transmission from the Emperor... We're to go to Exterminatus."

The Chairman swallowed, and then nodded. "Open a wide band channel to all Ships, and to the TNG."

A lieutenant nodded.

"You didn't heed my demands.. In fealty to the Emperor, and by the grace of the Imperial Throne, I declare Exterminatus upon the world of Valore." Inviere called out.

"Because of your actions, Prime Minister I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world and consign a million souls to oblivion. May Imperial Justice account in all balance." Inviere hailed, terminating the link.

"Colonel, all ships are to initiate a grid formation, Alpha Epsilon Phi Beta, All heavy weapons initiate primary bombardment, Secondary heavy weapons are to target fault lines, volcanic activity, and major waterways. All Singularity capable ships are to synchronize your systems and prepare to open fire." Inviere hailed.

"Once our forces in Westeria have withdrawn, we will initiate the Exterminatus."

The Aschen fleet started to move, from it's position in deep space, towards Valore itself. Immediately following the declaration of Exterminatus, a third Aschen fleet jumped into the system.

With it, the Gigashadow led the tip of the spear.
 
as written by Lobos

Close monitoring with active and passive sensors detected the new arriving fleet, sparking a new storm of communications between the splinter squadrons. But it was the arrival of the monstrous image of the Gigashadow that provoked the most furious response, burst transmissions firing into a subspace to inform the intelligence. The span of ten seconds between the arrival of Aschen reinforcements, and the response of the origins of the armada.

The number of translation ruptures numbered first in the tens of thousands and rose rapidly. Thirty thousand. Sixty thousand. One hundred thousand. More, and more, and more. Emerald light shone a new sky of short lived stars as Obelisks and Blades arrived in their thousands, as Seeds flooded in in the millions. The armada's reinforcements dwarfed the initial dispatch dozens of times over in heavy ships, and if rationality existed as the sheer number of contacts arriving in the system, technicians would realize that their origin was close to the Sol system. Much closer indeed than their own.

The lesser force was now the greater, numerical superiority achieved. Close to one hundred thousand hulls cut the void as they poured towards the Aschen fleets, the milling Seeds in their midst as seething clouds twisting around the titanic formations.

A prize was to be had, and their enemy had so graciously placed it within reach.
 
as written by barney_fife

The Gigashadow, and the Fleet of the Impenetrable Aegis remained steadfast in the presence of what could be described as insurmountable odds.

As the tens of thousands turned to a hundred thousand. Communications flitted between the Aschen ships, not as quick as the communications between AIs, but they had reacted quickly enough.

An array of tactical jumps immediately followed, as the Imperial Fleet positioned itself strategically around the Emperor's ship.

Mollem watched everything unfold upon his throne, which was situated center of the Gigashadow's CIC, crystalline chimes echoed aboard the bridge as the Tactical officers manipulated shimmering crystalline consoles.

"Chairman Inviere, Sitrep." Mollem asked.

Inviere's image shimmered onto the screen, the din of the background of the Strictest Doctrine's CIC Filling the screen. "It's Celion, sir. So far his ships are completely invulnerable to everything we've thrown at them short of the Alteran systems. I don't think we're going to win this fight."

Mollem made a face, before Lunatea shimmered onto a smaller screen, still in her War Adept armor.

"Emperor, if I may, I have a solution to the predicament regarding enemy shields. I've been monitoring the exchange via Datastream, as well as high resolution scans across multiple vessels, their shields seem to be some kind of modulating dimensional manifold, possibly a Klein field of some kind, which absorbs the energy from our weapons into a dimensional pocket, and redirects them. Conventionally, the field is impervious to our weapons fire."

Mollem made a face, as Technicians ran their scans, the Bridge Commander shouting. "Let's try our our new shields, ready the Calx Pods. prepare for crystal dispersion, have all Lightship pilots report to their Calx Pods."

The Gigashadow prepped it's defense first, standard Aschen shields washed over it's massive hull, but something else followed. An energy that would be unlike anything Celion had ever encountered before followed suit. The visual appearance was that of sunlight on water, shimmering across the hull of the Gigashadow and enveloping it in a strange barrier that defied the very laws of physics. Any attempt to scan the Gigashadow would be blocked, and aside from visuals, nothing would be able to penetrate this unusual barrier.

The Aschen fleet was situating it's formation opposite of the new arrivals, while Lunatea considered her proposal. "The only way we'll be able to penetrate these barriers, is through a large enough yield, or a weapon that tears space itself apart. I require an inventory of all Tricobalt warheads with a yield of 20,000 Teracochranes or higher."

A technician made a face, before he turned to Mollem. "Twenty Thousand Teracochranes? Are we trying to shred the fabric of space around this solar system?"

"We're not going to win this by ourselves, You have my authorization. All ships with Tricobalt devices are to use them, start with the largest ships and work your way down, Minimum Yield is twenty thousand Teracochranes, try for ship groupings, get as many caught in the spatial tears as you can. All Non-essential ships, retreat to Imperial space, you can't do much good here."

Aschen ship chatter littered the comms, a symphony of ship commanders relaying commands amidst each-other. With Valore slated for Exterminatus, the heaviest Aschen weapons were being unlocked.

"We're not going to hold out long enough for a conventional Exterminatus." Mollem admitted, turning to his bridge officer. "Signal the fleets to move to pattern Shaw-Bravo, once the Tricobalt devices are expended we'll scatter, and set up for our final punch. All hands prepare for Tetryon Cascade! Synchronize, T minus two Millicentons. We fire the Cascade as soon as Aschen forces on Valore clear the planet."

The CIC of the Gigashadow was a flurry of activity, though to Celion's fleet, it appeared the Aschen fleet was doing nothing, perhaps struck by the sheer number of enemy ships. Half of the fleet appeared to flee, winking out and jumping away, leaving the Iconoclasts, the Reverence IIs, and other Aschen heavy hitters.

An initial salvo of Thunderbolt missiles armed with Tricobalt warheads started hostilities, vanishing once they cleared the Aschen fleet in winks of light.

The only notice Celion had was the sudden detonations within groupings of his ships, Detonations that crept well into the Yottaton range erupted amidst clusters of his ships, massive spatial shock-waves expanded outwards for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in every direction, capable of tearing even the mightiest ship to pieces, but that wasn't the largest threat. With each explosion opened a massive tear in the fabric of space time, it was this tear that would tear Celion's ships apart, similar to Raphael's warp chasm, but on a much larger scale. Spatial rifts hundreds of thousands of kilometers long, and millions wide erupted amidst Celion's fleet from the detonation of the Aschen's tricobalt devices. There was no warning, as detonation came immediately following the emerging from FTL, such was the lethality of the Thunderbolt Missile. Breaths were held as the Aschen hoped this massive Tricobalt salvo, hundreds of individual warheads carved a chunk out of the AI's fleet.

"All ships report their Tricobalt stores are depleted." The Commander reported. "They'll need to dock with Revs to replenish them." Mollem nodded, thumbing his chin.

"Clear the area and rearm, we'll use Tricobalt devices to keep Celion busy long enough for the Revenant to clear Valore, then we'll fire the Tetryon Cascade and consume everything within this solar system."

A few moments went by following the Tricobalt Salvo, and the Aschen fleet dispersed, jumping from their initial positions in orbit.

The Gigashadow remained but for a moment, before it too faded, displacing itself from real space.

Aside from the Aschen attempting to clear the planet, Celion was left alone. Perhaps in his overwhelming presence, they fired the best they had and scattered. The Tricobalt explosions had consumed the wreckage of the previous battle however, and there was nothing left to salvage, save for a gaping tear in space.
 
as written by Tiko

The Aschen didn't get the chance to assess the success or failure of their assault on Celion's fleet, let alone take further actions and disperse. With their focus on the immediate threat they had left themselves blinded to the seemingly minuscule one.

As one, the brunt of the TNG Triremes jumped into the midst of the Aschen fleets, and the Tricobalt salvo.

Dozens of the missiles meant for Celion's ship tore through the TNG's Triremes, detonating beneath the massive collisions and spacial distortions caused by the TNG ships jumping in - many of them directly on top of the missiles inadvertently.

All in all, fifteen of the Iconoclast and Punishers would be subject to the detonation of their own missiles as Triremes plowed into the path of the salvo - and the ships themselves - with little warning.

Two of the Reverence II's were singled out as each one was subject to three Triremes jumping on top of them. One Trireme in a last act of defiance had landed a successful calculation that left it jumping half inside one of the Reverences, likely resulting in the destruction of all four ships - Aschen and TNG alike. If it hit its mark, the massive spacial distortion would rend the ship apart internally as molecular bonds were violently disrupted in a brutal release of colliding energy and detonating warheads. The Trireme coming out of its jump was essentially attempting to spatially disperse the area to make room for itself, to catastrophic results.

The second Reverence II evaded the full brunt of the suicide run as the three Triremes crashed into its hull, rather than planting a successful jump inside the ship itself. Even still, the Reverence would need to weather the impact of three Triremes plowing into it at various points - all carrying warheads.

Three more of the Reverence II's would each have only a single Trireme's crippling collision to contend with as the TNG ships aimed to drive their ships into the broadside of the Reverences as they came out of their jumps right on top of the Aschen ships.
 
as written by Lobos

The approaching armada, freshly swelled with numerous reinforcements, proceeded at a brutal pace, assisted with superluminal sensor feeds from enough sources to establish a forward picture that was essentially a real-time reconstruction of events among the Aschen fleets. As such, the launch of missiles was impossible to conceal, as was the arrival of the TNG Triremes crashing into the invaders. The vanishing of those missiles, with a signature that matched the now known FTL means they used, prompted a very simple response from Excelion's ships. A coordinated, simultaneous jump, advancing through non-space to a point scarcely ten thousand kilometers ahead of the Thunderbolt's entrance to subspace.

And with translation, the armada vomited fire. With the volume of ships discharging weapons, at the range, it was nearly impossible to miss. Nearly a hundred thousand ships unloaded salvos from hundreds of weapons per hull, grasers, particle accelerators, kinetic hypervelocity weapons. Entire sheets of lethal energies and solid rounds filled the empty space with potential death, networked coordination focusing salvos into cones that terminated into individual ships. The cloud of Seeds eerily maneuvering around the firing behemoths, slipping out of firing lanes with microseconds to spare, many coordinating secondary jumps in communion with the larger AIs commands from the Obelisks.

These secondary jumps where suicide runs, calculated to terminate in the vicinity of the spatial location of Reverence II main bridges, intel gathered from the wrecks still being drawn from the prior skirmish location. These began in pairs, targeting vessels on opposite sides of the fleet, intent on using the sheer chaos to scramble communications about the tactical strikes. The combination of sustained massed fire was intended to grind the fleet to debris as though it was entering a massive grinder, the forward elements of the armada advancing into the teeth of the group Aschen ships, shifting their vectors to allow fire to pour from those further back.

The rearmost elements of the armada were spreading towards the edges of the central pocket, increasing the size of the fleet's facing and advancing above, below, starboard, and port of their relative orientation, beginning to form a massive dome that focused its fire inwards to hammer them from multiple axis of attack. The only oddity of the assault was the lack of Graviton beams being fired, the larger vessels of the armada surrounded by coruscating Seeds.

____

Where Excelion's forces had been, the salvo of Thunderbolts arrived and detonated in monstrous conflagrations, the Tricobalt warheads ripping a monstrous tear into space, consuming the prior battlefield within scant seconds. Only the most extreme edge did wreckers and the structurally crippled Obelisk survive, fleeing into non-space with enough time to complete the translation in one piece.

The combination of tortured planar instability, already strained by the prior introduction to the Planck packs, tore again, and with the mammoth strain of the salvo, it seemed unlikely that the swirling rent would close anytime soon. The riven reality began to gyrate, the instabilities of the planar fault forming a fissure that was unbalanced, twisting and gyrating, vomiting unstable energies. This building storm rent micro-fissures in the fabric of space, short lived tears that stirred the nexus, the formation of a devastating, unstable flux of extradimensional energies nearly thirty thousand kilometers across. Spat plumes boiled space for ten thousand kilometers, the smaller micro storms flung off as far as twenty thousand kilometers away. It was even visible from Valore, a malignant wound within space that burned like a small, sickly star.
 
as written by barney_fife

Everything was happening so fast that the network of AIs and human commanders were losing control of the situation. The Triremes managed to cripple one of the Reverence IIs, the Minor Transgression took the brunt of the assault from the Triremes, but the Reverence II's sheer size, and the structural engineering of it's superstructure meant that while the three Triremes managed to severely cripple it, Total it by Aschen standards even; it was not destroyed.

The Enlightenment's Fire narrowly avoided the onslaught of Triremes, banking hard port before making an FTL Jump, taking the three Triremes with it, the terminus of it's jump was the heart of Aschen space, where Imperial defenses could finish them off, if they survived the impact with the Reverence II.

The handful of Iconoclasts and Punisher class ships were caught in missile detonations, which flared violently against their shields, damaged, but not destroyed, the ships entered full reverse, with intention to flee the Battlefield after the Terrans took them out of the fight. They too winked out.

A Trireme attempted a suicide run on the Strictest Doctrine, but Inviere's quick thinking banked the ship hard laterally, dipping the bow down and unleashing all three MAC batteries onto the ramming Trireme. The Trireme would be torn to shreds from the Iconoclast's weapons fire before it could get within a hundred meters of the Strictest Doctrine.

The three additional Reverences suffered little damage, with the Trireme's Spatial distortion shrugged off by shields, and impact shrugged off by the Kanvium armor of the Reverences themselves. The Triremes would either destroy themselves, like an insect on a windshield, or be consumed by retaliatory fire from these Reverence IIs, which too jumped out, further adding to their spatial distortions.

The Rapid Conversion was the next ship to jump out, Commander Torres had ordered a strategic retreat, while transmitting a set of covert orders to the Twilight Compunction.

The Aschen were retreating amidst a hail from Celion's fleet. Reverence IIs evacuating before the seeds had a chance to jump into their CICs, having been broken and routed, the fleet didn't wait for orders to retreat.

The Gigashadow, and the handful of crippled ships were all that remained, Mollem ordering the Seraphic shields around the wounded vessels.

The Shimmering bubble of light enveloped the Gigashadow, the totaled Minor Transgression, and the handful of Iconoclast ships that were crippled in the TNG's attack. As the hail of fire came in from Excelion's armada, something unexplained was happening. Every rail slug, every graser, every weapon leveled against this shimmering barrier inexplicably ceased to exist on impact. There was no shield fluctuation, no ripple effect, the ordinance simply vanished prior to impact.

Seeds that attempted to jump inside this barrier met a similar fate. Ceasing to exist while in Non-space circumventing the barrier. Technology beyond the understanding of Excelion and the Aschen were at play here, but the Aschen at the very least managed to turn it on.

Minutes went by and Mollem ordered a retreat, the wounded Reverence II, the Gigashadow, and remaining ships vanished in a spatial rupture, being pulled into Slipspace before re-emerging in orbit over Langara.

The Aschen would recover survivors, count the dead, and regroup in the heart of Imperial Space, within a Planck field and safely nestled amidst impassable defenses. Everything Aschen had vanished in orbit over Terra, ship carcasses, bodies floating in space, and debris had all vanished. Mollem used the advanced Seraph technology to leave Celion nothing to salvage.
 
as written by Saarai

Reluctant as he was, Captain Mishima ordered his ship to head up into space over Valore. His intent to follow his orders and aid the TNG in their fight.

There it was, this lone ship. It was a very large ship, it rivaled an Aschen Reverence in it's size. Unknown if in it's capabilities as well.

This one ship couldn't have been all that the Invictus had sent.

Captain Mishima sat in his chair on the bridge of his ship in silence for a moment before hailing the TNG still in the area.

"We have your back. For now." The Japanese mercenary said, "All of us." He added.

As he finished speaking, more and more ships, some only slightly smaller than his own made their way from the surface to join in protecting Valore from hostile alien invaders or anything else.

There were at least one hundred or so ships forming a wall.

And then even more smaller ships shot off into space, fighters and recon ships all heading in different directions to scout and protect the areas even further away.

There would be no surprise attacks on their watch.

And as long as Mishima was tasked with protecting Valore, he would do so to his very last breath.
 
as written by Azrican

In the vast, icy reaches of the system's Oort cloud a large predator stalked through the glimmering fields of planetesimals and rocky ice. Blocks the size of sedans (or larger) burst along a permeable aegis of boiling energy, splinters twisting and bouncing along the form of the starship as it eclipsed the crest of an ancient, colossal body: millions of years of ice packed and formed into a mountain that could rival even the peaks of great Austra, trailed along in a solid plane of glinting ice and rock. Lights pricked and spun amongst the vacuum as the prow of the CNS New Atraliah became washed in the cool glow of Sol, nearly several thousands of AUs away. The fading twinkle of the lonely yellow star caused bubbles to grow and burst along the vessel's navigation shielding. As the cruiser drew further and further from the old giant she had positioned herself behind, her hull gleamed. Dishes rotated and spun in a corridor along the vessel's spine, antennae beaming and receiving information: a symphony of dancing lights and spinning machinery.

The New Atraliah silently drifted, the first visual view of the system in question the cruiser had separated from TG-9 to investigate. With the Trondholm and Pastoralius in the farther reaches of the Local Region, the light craft of the Task Group had been assigned the interior (and largely unexplored) sectors. After interesting readings from spectroanalysis onboard the Wikingr and Fabrexta command of the Task Group had dispatched New Atraliah and the CNS Atrania to investigate an area of nearly 23 light years.

With the Fabrexta acting as a comms and navigation pylon a dozen light years away, utilizing the robotics cruiser's high-powered arrays and cosmographic suites, the New Atraliah had scheduled a series of jumps following a trail that brought it closer and closer to a large anomaly that seemed to terminate in the system she had arrived in. Three days ago, the cruiser had logged one final jump in this leg of the mission to a newly discovered system, and remained nearly submerged in the massive chasms of asteroids and ice at the far reaches of the system.


In the bowels of the cruiser, a Starfleet Captain stood with two hands locked behind his back. In front of him, projected from an opaque window looking out to the rest of the bridge, an image of the flowering yellow star looped again and again. For Captain Agim Besnik, something sat awkwardly as he glared through the holographic image. He had inspected hundreds of stars in the past year and a half in the Local Region, perhaps thousands, but this one had him unsettled in a considerable manner. Though there was no one (human at least) in the crow's nest Agim was keen to hold any insecurities, even from himself.

"We have re-established TETHER with the Fabrexta: Captain Masalus is uploading navigational and cosmographic telemetry now."

The AI on the other hand, seemed to be taking the daunting possibilities in rather impeccable stride. While the crew of the New Atraliah had been pulling triple-details maintaining the Fabrexta's Astroscope cohesion using her own digital hardware and RAILS sensors, the AI had been parsing through the droves of information the robotics cruiser had found as she sat perched in the shadow of a star: the light at her back the perfect condition for distant observation.

"Masalus either already sees what we're getting from this close and doesn't care, or is a fucking idiot." Besnik replied, dismissing the visual feeds for a dataspread of the Fabrexta's most recently downloaded findings. He put one hand against the desk stretching out from the wall in front of him and palmed at his chin with the other.

"Captain Masalus seems to be anticipating radiation signatures from the anomaly within F2-377n will dissipate once the New Atraliah breaks the Oort cloud."

"Yeah, you mean 'get closer'? That sounds brilliant Amber." Besnik said quietly, folding his arms in front of him and looking upon the array of various displays, false-positive images and readouts on the star system. "When does the next general broadcast begin?" The Captain requested, glancing sideways for a moment at a hardened communication's terminal linked directly to the New Atraliah's powerful comms-entangelment arrays.


This is the Starfleet, broadcasting to any who can receive or the IRV Aeniad. The Apparatus has mounted a search mission into the Local Region. If there are any persons within broadcasting range please respond. This is the CNS New Atraliah of the 3rd Exogarden Fleet, broadcasting to any that are receiving ...
 
as written by Tiko

The response that came was one of distress as a civilian ship picked up on the Atraliah's broadcast and hailed them.

'This is Captain Adair of the Pioneer. You have no idea how glad we are to hear someone. We thought we were alone out here, been stranded two days now. We're a civilian mining ship, and in need of immediate assistance.'
 
as written by Azrican

Within the confines of the cruiser's impressive communications landings and electronics decks, a hail for assistance had been received by the third-line crew of the New Atraliah's signalling and comms team. Junior Lieutenant Yeksa stood at the helm of an audiodrive, transferring the signal through a variety of programs: a spectroanalyser to begin approximating location, and digital softwares converting format and language, to name a few. His aid, Technical Sergeant Mikata, read from a holographic tablet in one hand. "They're broadcasting in a strain of common -- an SOS."

"Is it the Aeniad?" He inquired, and felt his interest notably dissipate when the ship was revealed to be the unknown Pioneer. "Shovel it to Amber then, use F-deck for a search and rescue op." Yeksa ordered, ushering the Technical Sergeant off with a subtle flit of one hand.

"Give them a pulse, maintain the Attie's nav-spoofing though." The Captain ordered to a bobbing pall of light a few meters behind him.


This is the CNS New Atraliah, responding to the Pioneer -- we are preparing a search and rescue team, standby for instructions and assistance.
 
as written by Krysis

The Queen's Mercy had been a salvage ship for years, floating around the Sol system without making any waves in any of the conflicts. In fact, it was mostly civilians and criminals that even knew it existed, as the ship often looked like a clump of space trash with how it collected metal and parts for salvage. It was a profitable time for salvage, plenty of raw materials floating around and banged up ships needing repairs, which they could get at the Queen's Mercy.

When it picked up the signal from the CNS New Atraliah, the Mercy was lingering beneath the rings of one of the uninhabitable planets of the outer edge of the system. The three person crew, which was all that remained, gathered to listen again to the message, and then the subsequent one from the Pioneer and the response there to. Misfits and oddities, these three had no homes to go to when the troubles broke out, and they traded glances.

Cleo, the defacto captain, shrugged, "Doesn't sound like our problem. Is there any pressing reason not to ignore it?" Tall and thin, the captain had a reptile-like aspect to her, as if someone had crossed a snake with an elf and come up with something savage and graceful.

"Well, we are low on organic supplies of all sorts. That is more your problem than mine, but it is cause for concern eventually." answered the heap of spare parts in a surprisingly pleasant female voice. Somewhere inside there was a powerful computer with magic and organic components, controlling the slow swirl of rusty bits that would eventually become fuel. Andrea 362 was the mechanic of the ship for obvious reasons, and probably would have been able to run the whole thing on her own. However, the machine had gotten lonely and preferred to have sapient company.

"I'll set a course to observe the Pioneer. If we decide to jump to their defense, or pick up what they leave behind, we'll need to be closer." The final member of the crew decided, swiveling the pilot's chair around to get to work. The girls looked at Fred, Andrea even moving three optic sensors to the front to peer at him more directly.

"Isn't that my decision?" Cleo asked stiffly, folding her arms.

"It is, but you made it five minutes ago. You just haven't admitted it." Fred looked human, broad in the shoulders and chiseled features, except that his eyes tended to glow darkest blue when he was excited. He grinned at Cleo, flashing teeth too sharp and white for plain human until she responded in kind and gave a nod.

"You're right. Make it so."
 
as written by Tiko

'Acknowledged. Awaiting instruction.'

The ship had been fortunate to have been situated well clear of the battle grounds between Celion and the Aschen, but unfortunate enough to have been caught broadside by the ring of energy that had bisected both fleets clean in two.

The attempt to plot a jump to Valore after their ship had sustained damages had left them far from their intended destination and lost among the clutter of the system's Oort cloud. Nothing more than another bit of debris on any long range scanners.

The hull of the ship had taken the brunt of the damages, but there were numerous breaches and piles of debris and bodies floating through space around it that had been vented out.

The energy readings of the ship suggested they still had power, at least in some parts of the ship, but it was simply drifting aimlessly.
 
as written by Lobos

The transmissions pierced across the system, drawing the electronic gaze of the spread elements of the mysterious armada that still held it's position near Valore itself. Wary attention was directed towards the new arrival, passive sensors quietly eyeing the Atraliah, but remaining off at a respectable distance. Remaining silent.
 
as written by Azrican

Captain Masalus was a Tyrzgivan, men that sported dark olive skin and coarse black hair. Built like a typical Marine, he adjusted the holster for the Mk. 98 on his chest and returned a gaze to the holographic prompt, putting two hands in front of him as Besnik scrolled through a holopad. “It seems the Pioneer has been derelict for several days, perhaps from the events that have resulted in the anomalies in the system.”

"Are you sure we should be taking a search & rescue request at face value, Captain?" Besnik replied haphazardly, setting the holopad down on Amber's holotank and giving the artificial intelligence a dismissive wave. Something pricked at him, just listening to what the Captain said. The Pioneer ... "Spectroanalysis matches the composition of the vessel to the local system, but something -- "

"Something feels off about the whole system, Agim -- if there's a habitable planet in here, there's even more cause for concern." Masalus said, a short return that caused Agim to bristle slightly in response to Masalus' forward tone. "If there are souls lost in the system, it is the Starfleet's duty." He commanded, giving Agim one curt nod and signing off with a click.


Agim stood silently in the crow's nest, hands in his pockets and burning holes through several holograms with his eye. "Amber ... " He inquired, one hand slowly drawing out of his trousers and tapping at a spectroimage of the Pioner. "Yes Captain Besnik."

"When did we relay our data on the Pioneer back to the Fabrexta?"

"We received the first distress signal from the Pioneer at 13:00, Captain."

" ... Bring up the Fabrexta's sensory logs."

A golden terminal sprung to life in the air, and Agim tapped at a few keys as he began to pour over the transmission and broadcast logs from the Fabrexta's powerful comms decks.

7:40: Determined 7,000,000 sq.km area where an unknown distress signal was picked up
8:12: Identified geospatial anomaly, low-powered Messier Object
8:32: Identified small craft, possible civilian vessel
8:50: Unknown but Identified (UbI) craft between 20 and 200 meters
...
13:09: Captain Besnik of the New Atraliah identifies object as Pioneer, a wounded civilian vessel


Meanwhile, in the hull of the New Atraliah, a five-man team of Military Police, known as gesetzjaegermarine, strode from a personnel lift towards a waiting M/CT-93 AvKing. The airjet's powerful engines hummed and throbbed, bright tongues of flame occasionally sprouting from the atomic turbines. Lieutenant Max Wilson carried a flight helmet in one hand, leading the four other Marines who would undertake the boarding of the Pioneer.

As Wilson exchanged greeting's with the AvKing's crew chief, he stood with the Chief Petty Officer and keyed into a mike on his throat. "Calling to the Pioneer, this is Lieutenant Max Wilson of the New Atraliah's Marine Security Force; we will be bringing a transport jet with personnel and equipment to stabilize the vessel, your crew will be safely transferred to the New Atraliah for any medical emergencies. The ship will begin broadcasting on a general wideband for instructions on protocol and policies -- how copy, Pioneer?"
 
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