Master Greggory Wick sat within his ship, mulling over what he heard. With help from R5 he was listening in on his padawan's message, and the reply. It was confusing to say the least. Last Greggory checked, the Oni were a militant species who often found work as merc's, but he'd never heard of any UNSC. The fact that the one who responded identified as an Admiral was also somewhat curious.

Deciding that the best course of action would be to pick up from where his apprentice left off Master Wick said though his headset, "Admiral Pantera Faye, I am Jedi Master Greggory Wick of the Jedi Order on Coruscant. Myself, my fellow Master Olu Bumdoa, and my Padawan Wrenu Tipolan were sent here in order to investigate an anomaly, your wormhole I presume? Perhaps it would be better to meet in person to exchange information, the Salen-Vardi has a wonderful salon-pod for just that kind of thing, unless you'd rather we meet up on your fine vessel?"

Looking over the ship, the Marathon Cruiser as the Admiral called it, Greggory took in it's far greater size. Compared to the Salen-Vardi the thing was a titan, and looked like it had some amount of firepower, more so than the Jedi's diplomatic vessel and two starfighters. With luck and tact, those facts will not have to be brought up.

Owen Magnus/Count Dooku

As the transmission comes through, Magnus steps over to the com screen and speaks first. "This is Admiral Owen Magnus, of the Terran Dominion ship Perelliator. To whom am I speaking?"
On the screen, an older man with neatly groomed grey hair and inset dark eyes, with a brown cape thrown over his shoulders appears and replies. "I am Count Dooku, I represent the Confederacy of Independent Systems. I am not familiar with this Dominion, and I don't recognize your ship's design. We detected the manner in which you entered this system, and I confess some curiosity as to who you are and where you come from."
Magnus nods thoughtfully. "Let me first address the third of your statements, and tell you that we ourselves do not fully know the manner in which we've arrived here, and apologize for what must be a violation of your space. Now before we drag this communication out too far, might I suggest a proper meeting to discuss this matters in person?"

Dooku nods in turn. "Indeed you might. I would be happy to invite you aboard one of my ships in orbit for such a meeting, unless you would prefer the surety of your own vessel."

"I would be willing to go aboard your ship, provided I am allowed to bring a small escort."

"Such is quite acceptable. I'm sending you the ship coordinates, and will await your presence with great anticipation."

Magnus reaches over to the comm control. "I look forward to meeting you in person, Count Dooku." He cuts the communication. "Adjutant, tell the Ghost team to prepare for deployment, they're escorting me to this meeting. And tell them to meet me at the dropship in hanger 12." He strides quickly off the bridge.

Perelliator Ghosts

"Ghost operatives prepare for shipboard escort mission and rendezvous at hanger 12."
Two of the other Ghosts on board the Perelliator stride into the armory, grabbing their own weapons and preparing themselves for the mission, before heading to the mentioned hanger.

The adjutant's voice brought the Ghost operative known as Crimson out of his zone as he was doing a physical work out in the battle cruiser's training room. Looking towards the speaker, he took a moment to map out a route in his head before standing from his sit up position and heading for the armory. The trip lasted about three minutes, in which time he manage to catalogue every potential reason he could for the call for a Ghost escort; foremost among them being that he was meeting with someone he didn't trust on a potentially hostile location.

Walking in, he pays little mind to the marines that were getting armored up and retrieves his own HES, suiting up and checking the gas valves, tanks, and tubes. Confident it was all in order, he retrieved his rifle and machine pistols from their racks, holstering the latter pair and carrying the former as he lowers his visor into place and heads for the drop ship bay. He'd wondered where they were since it had been made public knowledge to the crew and kept waiting for the Zerg or some rebel group to hit them as they scrambled to figure it out. He had hated waiting the most, because it meant he wasn't en route to do something, to do his job. It meant he could do nothing but endless target practice and working out. And that grew very dull very quickly.

Still, he didn't question the admiral on why he called the Ghost Team when he arrived, instead opting to cut to the point. "Who are they and will we need to be prepared for rebels?"

Cinder sits bolt upright on the bench at the announcement, grinning. She leaps to her feet, snatching her C-20A canister rifle, grenades, psyblade, and other equipment, opting for her Nyx cloaking device instead of her jetpack. Upon double-checking her gear at lightning speed, she deploys her headpiece, waiting for it cover the majority of her face before going on the move again.
Scooting out of the glorified locker room, she sprints down the corridor and dodges personnel as she heads for hangar 12.
Finally, something to do.
Her smile slowly fades as she gets closer to the bay, though, as she contemplates the possible hazards of this escort mission.
Where are we going for this escort mission? Could it be a hazardous environment? Will we have to fight? Whom are we meeting? We must be meeting someone, or the admiral himself wouldn't be going...
Though nobody could possibly read her expression through her mask covering the top half of her face and quite a bit of the bottom half, she schools her expression into mischievous, careless glee out of habit.
Arriving at the hangar, she whips through the doors, sliding to a stop next to the other ghosts on her team.
The admiral arrives shortly after her, and she hears the team leader ask a question which she, too, wishes to know the answer to.

The Admiral crossed her arms, gently pacing the ship's bridge as the Jedi called Greggory spoke. It took her an awkward moment to reply, pondering to herself rather than consulting with anyone else on making her decision. So as to break the presumed awkward silence, she spoke.

"We will meet on my vessel. You have permission to dock your squadron on my bay. Come cleanly, unarmed and peacefully."

"Magellan, patch me through to hanger 3." "Channel is open, Admiral." "Lieutenant Sharon, prepare the Hangar for usage. Three visitors coming in on yellow alert."

"Understood, Admiral. Why--" "Now, Liuetenant." "Y-yes, Admiral!"

Faye turned around, brushing her dyed bangs. "Captain Dean, take this lovely fireteam of Spartans to Hangar 3. Take more marines with you if you wish. Secure the Hangar, and escort our guests to Mess Hall 2 upon arrival. I trust you'll know how to handle their arrival, be it heated or not. For the sake of my sanity, please try to keep them alive if things go south. Savaymin, follow Captain Dean."

The Admiral turned once more, pacing her bridge as she usually did. She briefly stopped past the glass window, focusing her gaze on the Jedi fleet. She hoped they knew what was best of them and came into her vessel without question, she wasn't a woman of patience after all.

"Has anyone finished a scan on their vessels yet?!"

Solar Winds Magellan

Magellan speaks up as the Admiral asks about the scan of their ships. "Yes, admiral. The two fighter-class ships seem to have light weapons systems on board, reading similarly to Covenant fighter-mounted plasma cannon. No other weapons signatures detected. The rings surrounding the fighters seem to have high power readings and engines, but little else...my guess would be long-range fuel pods, or similar. They are clearly separate from the fighters themselves, attached via docking clamps. They might be targets of opportunity if we want to prevent the fighter's escape. There are seven total life signatures, two in the two fighters, five aboard the larger ship. The major point of notation that I can see is their method of arrival. There was no trace of Hawking radiation, of any other typical slipspace readings as they arrived, however they did not travel here through simple realspace FTL travel. It seems to be some alternate method of jump technology I am entirely unfamiliar with."

Wrenu Tipolan

Wrenu sat there as he waited, letting his master speak as he nervously awaited more information and quietly tried to analyze the ship from the readings he was getting. As he heard that they were to land without weapons he would slowly help the pilots next to him guide the ship in along with the two ships of his Masters into the hanger bay. "Stay here everyone, please, and keep the weapons where they all are..." Wrenu reminded them all before he headed over to the ramp and released it down to slowly walk out of his vessel, tendrils twitching in the air nervously as he kept up a slight grin.

Admiral Owen Magnus

Magnus walks into the hanger bay over towards the arriving Ghosts while giving rapid-fire instructions into his com to the Adjutant. "Bring the ship to an orbit three klicks out from the meeting place and hold respective position until further orders." As he approaches, he hears the question from Crimson.
"No rebels. Our new friends are entirely unknown, and we are about to fix that. Crimson and Cinder, the two of you will escort me as I meet with this Count Dooku. Keep equipment usage nil, but watch and record the meeting, we want to keep knowledge of our tech and capabilities as close to absolute zero as possible."
He looks to the next two Ghosts.
"Raven, you are on stealth recon. Pull a data dump off their computers and learn everything you can. Record every bit of sensor data possible, but top priority is on stealth. Any risk at all of detection, you pull back. Zero footprint. And Hades, you're running ops from the Perelliator, keep everything smooth. I want all of you to maintain contact via telepathy, we don't know how much of our chatter they can listen to. And keep me posted on progress while you're at it, but again via telepathy. And on one last note...Crimson, in the future, I'd advise you to pay closer attention to respective rank. Habits formed on ship transfer best into the field, and we'd like to maintain a clear image of discipline to our new acquaintances. Now on board the dropship team, any questions while we leave?" He finishes up his briefing as he steps on board the dropship.

Crimson follows the Admiral, taking his seat near the door and looking to him. "Just one more, Admiral. If things go south, standard extraction procedure?" While waiting on his answer, the black and red clad Ghost reviewed what they knew about this other faction. And it was admittedly nill. Now that he thought about it, Count Dooku was the first real piece of information he'd heard they had. Cinder, you've got stronger telepathy than I do. Sense anything on the ship we're going to? How many minds? He trusted his team, something he'd had to learn to do when the Ghost Program had fallen under the control of the Dominion, and so he'd opened up to them with what his weaknesses as a psionic were. Of course, in response to his weak ability to expand his telepathy, he was taught how to have strong mental defenses.

But that was all moot in the given situation, so he focused back to the task at hand.

Greggory listened to the silence, until the admiral responded, "We will meet on my vessel. You have permission to dock your squadron on my bay. Come cleanly, unarmed and peacefully."

closing the communication the Jedi noticed that the Republic Cruiser was already moving, Greggory smiled at his padawan's quick action. Greggory allowed R5 to guide his ship in, though not before separating the starfighter from the hyperspace ring. Gliding into the hanger bay Master Wick gazed down at the assembled host from his cockpit while R5 dealt with the landing.
Running around the hanger were uniformed personal, clearly preparing for the docking of the ships, however what drew Greggory's attention was not the hanger crew but instead the calm in this storm.

His fighter's landing pads gracefully extended and fell upon the grey metal of the hanger floor, and the cockpit opened, revealing the robed jedi as he stepped out, who placed the radio headpiece back within the ship while R5 turned his head and beeped. "Don't worry my friend, your body is still in the temple, you can stay safe with the ship." Then Greggory turned to face the soldiers that caught his eye a moment before.

Four armored, and armed men, though Greggory couldn't be certain what their species was. Mostly due to the armor, which covered the entire frame of the soldiers, and most likely contributed to the immense height. Greggory considered if the armor could repel a lightsaber blade, it was at least more intimidating than Mandolorian armor.
Along with them was also a man in, while less so than his comrades, still rather good looking armor, though it did look beaten up.

Bowing slightly in an act of respect the Jedi Master said, "I am Jedi Master Greggory Wick, consider me you're envoy of the Galatic Republic. If you give my Padawan a moment he should be out of the cruiser any second." Greggory hoped that Olu would land soon, likely Bumdoa's droid causing some amount of grief.

The ship lights up in an array of orange and black colors as Savaymin activates her Promethean vision. This may be what her admiral had in mind when she ordered her to greet the visitors herself. Thanks to her Promethean vision, she could instantly locate any and all personnel of the enemy ship, and in the process determine whether or not they are a threat. If one of their members so much as thinks about snooping around the ship, she would instantly know. Safety is probably the most important part of a diplomatic meeting, which explains why her leader did not come along with them.

That would leave either herself or the captain to do the diplomacy talks. Considering how much of a teachers pet the captain is, she didn't expect him to be much of the type to take the initiative in these types of situations. Not that he couldn't... but she's had a sufficient amount of training in diplomacy, so putting this meeting in the hands of someone she didn't know that well wouldn't sit very well with her. As she was thinking this over, one man stepped through the docking bay. Either that man was very powerful, or very foolish to come alone without protection. In fact it was borderline insulting the fact that he would just waltz into the ship as if the UNSC posed no threat to him at all. And considering the high stress circumstances, it could very well be in the next few seconds.

"Hello Jedi Master Greggory," she greeted. Quite interesting how they could speak the same language, and they also appeared human. Maybe they were a part of the UNSC? A lot of questions were swimming through her head at the moment, but she'd have to ask about them later. "Make no mistake, I will be your ambassador for this meeting. I am Savaymin Rholise of spartan fireteam Ra, but you may call me Savaymin. I hope you'll be able to give some explanation to the rather strange events that have been happening recently. It has put a lot of us on edge recently. I truly hope you weren't the cause of such spatial anomalies. It would not sit very well with our crew or the admiral if you were."

(I'm gonna try using a font color from now on.)
@neogreggory

Olu Bumdoa

Right as if Wick was the master of predictions, R7 blaired out some robotic bloops, Olu's starfighter soon going absolutely crazy. It flipped, and turned, and flopped, the poor Nautolan inside able to do nothing except withstand the recoil and yell at his droid. "R7! The haaaaaangar! Noooot theeee simul-" Suddenly, Olu's communication cut off, and Wick nor Wrenu could hear him any longer. He'd blasted off into a hyperspace lane, no doubt R7's doing. Shortly afterwards, the starfighter re-emerged from FTL near the Solar Winds cruiser, and set its course for the Hangar. Among Olu's now constant bickering against his droid, Wrenu and Greggory, if still in their ships, could also hear what would be R7's robotic cackles. Without further ado, Olu finally got his starfighter to exit its hyperspace ring and briskly enter the Hangar, clamping its docking pads down on the sturdy titanium panels. With the cockpit slowly opening, the Nautolan, a green-skinned humanoid with clothed tentacles over his head, nauseously rolled out of the ship and onto the floor.

Fixing his Jedi hood, he stood, his lightsaber hidden beneath the layer of his cloak as he approached Greggory, stumbling every now and then. R7 blooped and beeped, removing himself from the starfighter and setting down on the floor, casually rolling up to Olu's leg. Catching his breath, he undid his previously ruffled hood and let it fall over his neck and upper back. "Nice... Little ship they've got here. That one looks human as well..." Olu took a look around, eventually setting his eyes on the so called Savaymin. "Greetings, Savaymin. I am Jedi Master Olu Bumdoa."

Master Greggory took in what Savaymin said before Olu stumbled over. The spartan sounded female, and judging from the complete lack of non-humans was probably one herself, though an advanced droid wasn't out of the question. "I shall assure you now, I am not capable of causing anything so curious, and I doubt that if anyone on the Council could they would have reason to, but regardless. As charming as this hanger is I'm sure there is better locations to speak."

As Wick said that he heard a sharp hiss, and without turning to look at the opening ramp on the cruiser said, "It would seem my padawan won't be too long."

Cinder salutes cheerily at the admiral upon being given her assignment.
"Yessir. Always did want to meet a count. Should I bring some garlic, I wonder?"
She grins, looking absently towards the ceiling.
Cinder, you've got stronger telepathy than I do. Sense anything on the ship we're going to? How many minds?
Cinder glances sideways at her team leader, nodding infinitesimally in acknowledgement before blanking her expression and mind. She extends her consciousness outwards, feeling a multitude of human minds bumping up against hers. She pushes out further until she feels nothing but the void of space, then pushes further. Still feeling nothing, her brow slightly furrows in concentration and frustration as she shoves out to the furthest reaches of her ability. She touches a couple of minds, all seemingly human, but finds herself unable to reach any further, much to her chagrin.
All this takes place in the space of a few seconds, and she turns to Crimson with a just the barest hint of a grimace to her smile.
Sorry, Crimson. All I can tell you is they're human. Or, at the very least, a few of them are something like human. I can't reach far enough to tell how many there are. We're heading in blind.
Her eyes lower and slide off to the side as her smile fades a bit.
Fekking hell.
She adds, a bit more weakly.

Perelliator GM post

As three of the Ghosts and the Admiral boarded the dropship, with the Admiral nodding at Crimson in response to his question, the dropship doors closed and the ship lifted off and shot out of the hanger bay, heading toward the appointed meeting point. As they clear the asteroid ring around the orange planet, the dropship pilot calls back over the intercom, "Is it just me, or does that ship look like someone took a bite out of the sector's biggest doughnut?" Naturally since dropships have no windows in the personnel bay, no one is able to validate her observation. Though she does sound impressed as they approach and it is clear how much the new ship outsizes the Perelliator. They make a smooth landing in one of the massive ship's docking bays, and as the dropship's doos open again, Agent Raven activates his cloaking device, opting to stay on the dropship unseen until the party had gone. As the two remaining Ghosts and the Admiral step out onto the polished metal surface of the huge hanger bay, they can see numerous slender...skeletal, in fact...tan robots swarming the place, making it look like a mechanized version of a typical Dominion hanger. Strange walker-looking things hang from the ceiling in places, and here and there are clearly alien beings in robes and funny hats and greenish-brown skin. Near the dropship is the small vessel noted on scans earlier, looking like some sort of alien private limo in space. Approaching from that direction is the elderly human, Count Dooku, from before. Complete in a black tunic, brown cape, and a curved cylinder on his belt...maybe some kind of comm or transponder beacon. Flanking him are two larger steel-colored machines with bulges for heads and small twin-barreled guns on their arms, which point upwards in a safe stand-by position. He walks up to the Admiral, stopping a few feet away.
"Admiral Magnus, a pleasure to meet you in person. If you would accompany me, I have a more comfortable setting arranged elsewhere."
He gestures off towards the side of the hanger, awaiting the reply.

Solar Winds Environmental post((Gotta give the NPCs some love!))

As the Jedi and the Spartans meet for the first time, they might be able to look around and get a feel for this new ship. Several crewmen rush to and fro, doing checks and maintenance and whatnot on the Pelican Dropships neatly positioned across the hanger. One of the nearby ones can be seen with the number 479 stenciled on the side of it with the pilot doing some work on a panel underneath, taking breaks every thirty seconds to yell at another crewman with a crate nearby. "Not there in front of you, there in front of you! Right there where I'm pointing, come on!"
Over on another side of the hanger, a number of marines in forest green battlegear were jogging across the bay, assault rifles held chest high and chanting a quick marching cadence...utterly drowned out by the sergeant in the lead, with Sgt. Lazarus on his nametag for the keen of eye. "Come on, let's go girls, my pappy could sing better than you cheerleaders and he had mandibles! Move it marines!" As they pass the group of Spartans and Jedi, the sergeant gives a quick hand signal to the marine in back, who quickly alters his course to pass near Captain Harbit, jogging on his foot as he did so. "Sergeant's compliments, sir!" He quickly fell back into line with the others as they headed to another part of the bay. "Get moving, Larry, or someone's gonna shoot you again!"
All in all, quite the hive of activity.

Crimson mentally sighed and returned the imperceptible nod. Blind. Well, that always mixes things up. As the drop ship took off, he made one more quick inspection of his rifle and checked to make sure he wouldn't experience any issues with it during a potential extraction if it got violent before settling in for the short flight. The pilot's remark earned a slight frown from the Ghost Agent, but no other reaction could be seen. In his mind, he contemplated on how many personnel that would mean if it was larger than what he'd assumed they were going to be on. The drop ship's landing, however, discouraged anymore thought on the matter before they disembarked.

Standing with the Admiral, Crimson let him lead the way down the ramp and followed, making sure that Cinder had her visor down as well to hide her eyes. As he cleared the bottom of the ship, the reason for so few minds on board suddenly made sense as the sight of skeletal brown droids rushing to and fro met his eye sight. Not betraying any emotion, he waited for the Admiral to speak while addressing Raven. Pull their drone schematics as well if you can find them, make sure that your being cloaked isn't negated by thermal sensors or some crazy thing like that. Don't count on too many aliens, because it looks like this place is mainly maintained and guarded by the drones, but if you stumble across their operators, non-lethal only. We don't want them to know we weren't completely honest. Report any special units you come across.

Once all three of the envoys from the Jedi's spacecraft made it aboard, she couldn't help but grin. Instinctually, she couldn't help but heavily examine these new people in front of her, like a predator examining it's prey. It wouldn't take a genius to tell that these three are heavily trained warriors. From the moment they walked in, she instantly spotted what would appear like unidentified weapons holstered to their sides. The way they present themselves shows discipline and training. Add these together and you've got a formula for danger.

What made her so confident as towards the inferiority of these soldiers was given away by multiple aspects. For example, they seem to lack battle experience. It was not training that gave Savaymin the ability to quickly and efficiently annalyze the abilities and psyche of an individual. It was quite obvious that these men were quite possibly less knowledgable then they were about the current situation, and about the UNSC in general. This gave her the upper hand on total info. And indirectly, the upper hand in these upcoming diplomatic talks as well.

"Now that you have all arrived as it would seem, I would ask if you could please follow us to the mess hall where we will conduct our meeting. Our crew should have a meal ready for us when we arrive." Her tone is effective at masking her overly confident emotions. Together, the group makes their way out of the hangar and through a series of winding hallways. While traversing through the solar winds complex maze, she decides to strike up a small conversation. "So..." she looks back at the alien like being who called himself a Jedi. "Jedi Master Olu Bumdoa was it? I don't ever remember reading about your race in our databases. If you don't mind me asking, could you tell me more about you and your race? I am very curious."

@YaBoiKiba

Dean was the last to arrive at the hangar and subsequently the last to leave.
While in the hangar he refrains from engaging in any conversation with the alien life forms and slowly plots out how he'd manage to get some of the crew to search the vessels for any signs to tie these seemingly independent 'Jedi' as they called themselves to the covenant. In this deep sector of uncharted space, it wasn't a far stretch to tie the locals to being under the influence of the insanity that was the covenant. His eyes continue to flick between the Jedi and their droids. While he imagined the majority of those around him to be interested in the new comers history and culture, he was more interested by what they hid under their robes. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume they were all carrying around high powered weaponry. Hand held plasma weaponry seemed to be at the top of his list of possibilities for their possession.

He barely notices the marine that falls back from his march and takes a look over at him before recognising his facial features. His blank yet thoughtful expression switches instantaneously over to a dirty grin. He feels the privates boot step on his foot and fails to contain his laughter. He wasn't expecting such a fast response and thus, was caught off guard. As the marine starts to jog back in line Dean feels the urge to call out to the sergeant but controls himself in the presence of the foreign ambassadors. Snippets of conversation are picked up through his scheming and the group starts to head to where he believes the mess hall would be. He raises his coloured assault rifle to about waist height before placing his free hand underneath it. He trails a safe two feet behind the group of Spartans and Jedi. As most people upon the Solar Winds could tell, Dean had an unnatural prejudice towards the Spartans and by the looks of it a similar level of disdain for the newly introduced Jedi. Being trapped in a corridor with untested neutral warriors and the UNSC's armies of one was on Dean's list of "Never in my lifetime will I.." Unfortunately for the Captain, these were his orders and so he would obey them despite his personal feelings and inclinations.

The group walk through the strangely empty corridors with zero care factor towards the absence of the crew members who would usually be trying to loiter or frantically pace these communal areas. Dean rationalises this as the hype being tied with the new craft themselves and in turn ignores the lack of those like him. "Jedi Master Olu Bumdoa was it? I don't ever remember reading about your race in our databases. If you don't mind me asking, could you tell me more about you and your race? I am very curious." Dean listens in, awaiting a reply. It was awfully rude of him but he was now beginning to realise that he'd zoned out the entire introductions the two groups had shared in the hangar. He practically wasn't there at all with the amount he talked. Although his presence could have helped to add bulk to the introduction comity. "Guess my presence wasn't useless." he mumbles to himself. Dean had an awful habit of losing himself in his thoughts. Hopefully the Jedi wouldn't take offence to his distance or assume his mumbling was at all intended for them.

snip

Olu Bumdoa

The Nautolan could not help but let his curiosity get the best of him, his large black eyes constantly setting themselves upon each and every corner of each new corridor they happened to walk through. It seemed like they were traveling through a maze, almost, given the amount of turns and elevators they'd taken. He made sure to keep up with Greggory's pace, occasionally glancing back at R7 and Wrenu. His tendrils could pick up mostly only one emotion, which was curiosity, coming from both parties. He felt particularly annoyed at the fact that he couldn't read the spartan, Savaymin, however. "I am a Nautiloid, from the planet Glee Anselm of the middle rim." Olu explained happily, but he obviously left out some details, such as the purpose of his many tentacles over his head, or the struck gills on either side of his head which seemed to pulsate every now and then. "We are an aquatic race." He added then, which should have already been obvious due to his obvious resemblance to cephalopods. "And yourself? Are you a droid?" Olu asked curiously, with R7 adding it a bleep and a bloop; not that any on the UNSC personell could understand it by themselves.