"Code Dar'Tuk-Zero-Zero-Niner-Jon!"

Fingers danced over the holographic keyboard, entering code after code, command after command to find what happened to the ship. The bridge was a mess, wires flying everywhere, fire spewing out of vents and burning crew, raw electricity lashing out at crewmen too slow to move out of the way. There was no structural damage or even hull damage but the Flingshot Drives and the PlasEngines were haywire.

"Lana! Get me the remainder of our Guard compliment over here! We need to put this fire out before it kills too many crew for us to even move the ship! Tell them I understand their sorrow for the loss of half of their regiment but we need them to get moving." A petite and currently scared out of her mind, purple skinned Tayt nodded, her white eyes fearful but determined. She ran out of the broken blast doors leading out of the bridge and headed to the barracks.

The Guard were the Marines of the Democracies, landing after the Tayt Drop Troopers but before the normal Army. They specialised in boarding and defence in the tight corridors of VoidShips but they can fight on the ground as well. Instead of the standard rocket boots, they have mag plates on the underside of their boot so they can stick to the outside of a ship's hull. They were incredibly useful and used by most captains as impromptu emergency crew. Unfortunately, half of the Guard have been killed or injured due to the Flingshot explosion and the Ranger's are currently offline

Prince-Captain Herr Jon Von Zimmerman was having a very stressful day. Separated from the main fleet, landing in a completely separate coordinate from where intended, they were extremely lucky that they didn't arrive straight into a sun or even a black hole. Nothing from his thirteen years of captaining could've prepared him for this. He was completely alone in this fight, with only his crew to help him.

During his musing, the bridge has stabled with the Guard arriving to tend to the broken equipment and wiring. The medics came to the injured and carried the dead and dying away from the bridge. Lana, the one that Jon sent out to get the Guard, saluted the Captain/Prince and went on with her duties.

'Sir, we have an incoming message. We have rebooted our scanners and their fleet is of an unknown, alien design. It seems that we have just encountered an Alien race. They do not seem to be hostile and have sent a non-aggressive message, though we do not know if their way of speaking is the same as we do. Me and my fellow Tar'Lik are currently translating the message through relaying it between each of us, translating it piece by piece. Do you want to send a non-aggressive message to the foreigner?'

The telepathic message definitely took the Admiral by surprise. In his 18 years of living, he could never get used to the Tar'Lik way of communicating with others. Nevertheless, Jon responded in a quick fashion. 'When you have finished translating, give me the message and I will tell you how to respond. This is a first contact situation, we don't want a third First Contact War. You know how the other two went, fortunately we don't have one Adolf Von Hilfer to mess this one up. And we will send this in standard format, not the quicker Tar'Lik telepathic way.'

@Mihndar

Legacy Territory
Outer Boundary
Icaroa System
Proximal to Gas Giant Nemt'urye.

The New Verdant ship appeared within the outer boundaries of the unexplored star system, and found a scene in disarray. Once their sensors were able to sweep the entire system, they would discover the presence of three gas giants, all with numerous moons, and two smaller planets. One of the smaller planets would appear volcanic, but possessing a potentially promising large moon with its own atmosphere. The last remaining planet was simply a barren rock.

Elsewhere in the system though, life stirred and buzzed errantly in a foreign manner to the inhabitants of New Prospects. More than eight hundred million kilometers away in orbit above the volcanic planet lay an alien fleet of considerable size; though anomalous energetic signals emanating from the fleet made discerning its exact makeup difficult at that range.

More pressing was the abrupt appearance and approach of a lone alien craft that had appeared out of nowhere, as if it had just emerged from faster than light travel as they had. The vessel was made of sleek and darkened metals, with no traces of the organic and plastic materials the Liliate preferred. Immediately, New Prospects was pinged by several consecutive signals from the alien ship - varying forms of radiation, radio-waves, and electromagnetic static - one of which, a tightbeam laser transmission, registered as valid to New Prospects' sensors.

The data transmitted by the beam was a simple series of information in binary, ternary, quintal, hexadecimal, octal, decimal, and duodecimal number systems. Each set of information, when converted from one to the other, proved to be equivalent - though the message itself was still incomprehensible, matching no media format known to the Lilliate.



Irodien Empire
Havadar Region
System Sector Fortress

The Fortress world that watched over the worlds of the Sanfur within the Havadar Region had, until now, been untaxed by any serious events not pertaining to logistical problems or shipping errors. That changed, however, when an unidentified craft appeared some eighty million kilometers away. Its arrival was heralded by an intense gravitational distortion that every orbital installation detected it immediately, the nearly instantaneous and subtle perturbation of spacetime just significant enough to be register on spatial-coordinate sensors long before luminal sensors had any time to register the new arrival in the system.

The craft was a long, oblong structure more than two kilometers in length, seemingly seamless in construction and constructed of a material greatly resembling roughly hewn stone. The only indication that it was a spacefaring vessel were the intense electromagnetic signals it emitted. The craft itself remained stationary and largely inert apart from its passive emissions, and it made no effort to communicate with or so much as scan the surrounding system.



Unknown Space

The pirates would not remain lost for much longer however. As they crossed blindly through space, a number of distant stars began to abruptly emit signals indicative of the presence of intelligent life - a large number of stars, all clustered together in a relatively small region of space. The arrangement of the stars did not match that of any territory the pirates were aware of, but their only other option if they chose not to investigate was to continue drifting aimlessly.

Deep Space Mining Controller Ship Torr
Supernova Remnant-Alpha (SR-Alpha)

“What’s the status of the point matrix shields?” Barked Commander Nym Orym-Bialaer.

The radiological warning alarms on the bridge of the colossal Torr were beeping in ‘precautionary’ mode, signaling to the crew that radiation levels were nearing action stage. It was over this beeping that the shields specialist had to raise her voice.

“Energy spectrum is fluctuating sporadically. The atomic shield matrices is meandering through safe ranges, and then falling at erratic intervals.” The shields specialist turned to look at her commander. Her lupine eyes showed fear.

“If we don’t stabilize the energy input into the matrix, we’ll be annihilated by the radiation, sir.”

Nym’s canines clacked together in grim frustration. Ever since the Torr had arrived in SR-Alpha, on the heels of the VUR’s historic prospecting expedition, chaos had reigned. The harsh conditions of the supernova remnant were picking apart the ships that had departed to uncover the wondrous riches held within the star’s ethereal corpse. Waves of deadly radiation of nearly every spectrum bombarded the fleet constantly, acting like the waters of some angry sea, eating away at the sandy monuments of Valeth engineering.

Seven ships had already been lost, their crews cooked alive within the fleshy confines of their own fur. While the Valeth vessels were equipped with advanced, responsive shielding, never before had any such system been tested to the rigors experienced within SR-Alpha. The new capital ships of the 5th Fleet fared better than their merchant counterparts, having been recently constructed with the most cutting-edge shielding technology known to the VUR. Yet, even the navy struggled in this place of beautiful perdition.

The Torr was a large vessel, with nearly the bulk of a small station. She had been commissioned for the sole purpose of establishing forward operating bases for deep space mining. Built with the combined capital of the wealthiest private space conglomerate in all of the VUR, the Torr was an engineering marvel. It was deployed only to the most lucrative and promising regions of space, and following the findings of the prospecting expedition, SR-Alpha was a veritable treasure trove. So much so, that the very real danger of losing the Torr—not to mention the rest of the expedition fleet—was a worthwhile risk for the shareholders to take. At the moment, none of that mattered at all to Commander Nym Orym-Bialaer.

A sudden flash of inspiration came over the aged Valeth, and his amber eyes widened in an almost child-like aura of hope. He spun on his heels, his tail whipping behind him, until he faced another of his bridge crew.

“Give me a full sensor buoy cloud! Set the hold-range at one klick from our center mass.”

As he spoke, Nym stalked across the bridge. His clawed hands clapped down on the shoulders of the technician that was working feverishly at his control panel to comply with his commander’s orders. In mere seconds, a light shudder, accompanied by faint pop-hisses, echoed through the hull. Looking up, Nym watched through the bridge screen as hundreds of individual sensor buoys hurtled outward from the Torr, moving away like a cloud of protective insects hovering around their host.

“Buoy cloud deployed, sir!”

“Very good. Set the buoys’ sensor axes to project outward from the Torr, and have them feed their radiological readings to the shield controller module. Make the shield matrix adjust preemptively in conjunction with this data.”

The technician that launched the buoys cracked an expectant, though still nervous, grin as he caught on to what his commanding officer was trying to achieve.

“Parameters set, sir. It will take a few moments for the shields to initially respond to the new inputs.”

An unusual silence fell across the bridge of the Torr. Harried Valeth eyes peered around them, as if they could somehow see the ship that encompassed them working to save itself from utter destruction. Nym himself did the same. His ears were pricked upward, listening to the incessant beep of the radiological alarm, the faint hum of the tachyon core, and the communal breath of hundreds of his crew.

After what seemed like an eternity, the beep of the alarm suddenly ceased. Crew members turned to their consoles in stunned and relieved surprise.

“The shield matrix energy spectrum is stabilizing, Commander!” The shielding specialist called. “We’ve returned to normal energy compensation rates, and radiation is dropping.”

Nym nodded and sighed, his head hanging between his shoulders in exhausted relief. “Very well. Hail Captain Esta-Athobus of the VRS Venture Star. We need to get this tactic disseminated to the rest of the fleet as soon as possible."

-Planet Edocea, Gakk System, Noviran Socialist Union-

We greet you Noviran Socialist Union. We, the Fay'Ran Jik Democracies, extend our thanks. We have been separated from our fleet due to problems with our FTL drives. We ask you to let us escort a ship carrying a diplomat to talk about future relations between our people. We also ask to allow us for two armed guards to escort said diplomat as we have had problems with other species in the past. To the bonds of our countries!

Colonel Matarahi, waiting patiently for a minute, received a message in reply, astonishingly enough in the Catopian language, confirming the idea that they had some sort of universal translation software.

"Premier?" Sahria looked up from the papers on her desk and straightened her glasses. "Yes, have they responded? What do they say?"

The Colonel read it out to her, tripping slightly on the alien name.

"Those requests seem reasonable. I want you to meet the diplomat in orbit, and to attempt to cultivate positive relations. That they are a democracy speaks well for them, though it is not necessarily a guarantor of peacefulness. Please inform me as the situation develops, and especially if they prove to be hostile."

"Very well, Premier. Thank you for this opportunity."

The Premier nodded, and terminated the video feed.

The Colonel composed a reply, which read:



With that, the Colonel departed the command center and rode the space elevator up to orbit.

---

Jalag
Holkim, outskirts of the capital district

During the first days of the Civil War, the major cities of Jalag were hit hard. The entire city of Holkim had been without power for weeks, the Kumpt forces had the city under siege. Fighting was fierce, with battles raging for days until the Septonian forces pushed them out of the capital. The Kumpt forces in Holkim were now on their last legs with their back to the ocean.

Sector 2
Hill-292 (Holkim, Hradnim district)

The grass on the plain swayed back and forth in the gentle wind, it was a beautiful day. It was early fall and the temperature was perfect for being outside. On a normal day this area would be crowded with people, eating, cooking, whole neighborhoods outside at once. It was a perfect place to gather, a group of 40 buildings grouped around a small square semi isolated from the city on a small hill. The coast was within sight about 10 miles away with nothing but flat grassy plains in-between. Lieutenant Kol Kalai sat in a chair in the top floor of a building, observing the enemy through the window with a spotting scope.

“ Lieutenant…..” a voice whispered from behind him “ more civilians showed up, about platoon strength” he said before chuckling slightly.

Kol slowly turned his head to look at the man before cracking a smile “ more of them then there are us…” he said rather flatly. “ Kumpt is falling back with haste, sprinting towards the ocean like they have a place to go.” he said sounding disturbingly amused. “ Looks like we are going to go get them…” Kol said before standing and walking towards a small table closer to the staircase. On the table laid most of his gear, helmet, rifle, side arm, magazines and his plated vest. The Mk-1 was not powered armor in the traditional sense, The underlay of the vest has a layer of interwoven titanium threads that amplify the wearers movements. This layer adds only minor protection against small rounds and slashing strikes. The underlay is also sealed off from the environment, securing at the neck, shin and forearm plates to keep the wrist flexible. Closest to the body was a gel layer for cooling and heating, followed by the titanium weave and a thick leathery material that made up the exterior.

The entire underlay was powered wirelessly though the back plate. Whenever the plated vest is put on the suit is powered by a small but powerful battery at the small of the back. The helmet is the most important part of the entire armor set. Offering noise canceling hearing protection, communications, weapon integrated HUD and an IR/NV visor. The helmet had ports for added functions like laser designation or increased communications range and had a rebreather with a two hour oxygen scrubber limit. Both shoulder plates were optional along with the elbow and neck plates.

Kol slipped on the plated vest, testing the weight slightly before clipping in the side. He immediately felt the suit power, letting out a sigh as he felt the familiar sensation wash over his body. With the suits assistance Kol moved eerily fast, swiping magazines off the table and placing them in pouches with uncanny accuracy. Looking down towards his helmet, Kol chuckled and shook his head, opting to forgo the helmet for a headset with a boom microphone before grabbing the rifle and walking down the steps.

Outside marines were laid out everywhere, talking against their weapons, smoking in the shade of buildings or sleeping wherever they can. “One One!…were up!” he yelled, as the marines began to quickly gather themselves, grabbing weapons and equipment.

Unknown space

“ Star charts….useless….Navigation, useless…we are lucky we didn’t jump into a star or something” said as he shrugged. How these ‘pirates’ acquired this ship was rather comical, they were not Septonian military or intelligence, nor were they Hygeia fighters or their allied forces. The ‘leader’ of the group Jai Lahai, was a diplomatic academy dropout, left two days after the civil war started to join the war effort. He was the son of an admiral and a loyal Septonian. The self proclaimed second in command was a woman, daughter of the founder of Jal’jak Magnetics, Gaia Hue. She was a scientific genius and probably knew more about the weapon they were carrying than anyone. The last two were artisans, an architect and his apprentice were at the helm, piloting the ship. Kassili Hessian and his Daughter Mlu just happened to be hangar bay that day, checking the work from the previous day.

“What about those stars? Bearing 030..” Mlu said in a rather matter of fact voice. “ Bound to be something” she said with a grin before turning to look at the dark abyss in front of her.

Jai reflexively chuckled under his breath before nodding with a slight grin, “ That idea sounds grand…” he said in a posh tone, trying to lighten the mood. The room was silent for a moment before Kassili let out a low growl, turning to look back towards Jai. “ Look……” he said sharply before being abruptly cut off by Jai.

“ Not now, we have had this discussion. If we get to those stars and there is nothing there, you can lock me out of an airlock or something” Jai said raising his hands in surrender.

“ Turning to bearing 030” Mlu said in a cheery tone, breaking the tension as she manipulated the joystick on the co-pilots side. “Engineering?” she said keying the intercom “ Are we able to jump?”

A loud sigh could be heard over the bridge intercom, causing it to be louder then normal. “ Umm, I think so…” was the response from Gaia “ I mean….I really don’t know”.

With a shrug, Mlu simply flipped up the plastic cover on the throttle and pressed the button under it before quickly shoving the throttle forward. The ships engines flared slightly before the ship appeared to jump forward, shooting off towards the cluster of stars.