[IC] From Stardust, To Stardust

[darkwolf687]

New Condria

The largest ship scanned the new comers ships and tried to match them to known EU patterns. When there was no match, the voice of S'Luk echoed out to the new forces

"This is not your fight... but you are welcome in it."

The six battleships continued with their assualt, the two taking up position above the planet as the transports maibtained formation approximately 10,000 years from the plabet. The largest ship remained still, doing nothing but holding its position, though energy readings revealed that it had raised its shields.

The voice continued
"Will you identify yourselves. new ones? Are you one of their... acquaintances?"

[null123]

New Condia
The Iscandarian fleet had already moved into position, there shields having managed to hold against the beams the S'Luk forces had fired onto them. The fleet formed a barrier of sorts that included the defense stations of New Condia. The shields all melted into one, forming a solid wall between the S'Luk forces and New Condia. The first wave against them was a series of magical lasers and balefire missiles, followed by a massive spam of anti-matter missiles and a few balefire megaspells. There was no actual response, but the way they acted was clear. They would not let them take New Condia.

The Iscandarians beamed a message in binary, and when translated from binary it read the following.

"Greetings, we are the Eternal Union. However at the current time we cannot conduct a official meeting as this planet is under attack. If you could provide assistance we would reward you greatly with various raw materials. As for what is attacking us, from what we have seen of them in the past what they seek to do is obvious. They wish to consume all sentient life."

Nouvelle
Upon receiving the message the Iscandarians aboard the scout ship were suspicious. The content of the message seemed to suggest that it had been intended for everyone in the area, but scans showed it had been specifically beamed at the Iscandarian ship. Furthermore scans of the ship revealed there to be nothing wrong with it, atleast with what the Iscandarians scans showed.

"The Septonians as you called yourselves invaded our world and ignored all attempts at diplomacy. You are obviously aggressive and violent, a threat to galactic peace. Why should we assist you?"

[darkwolf687]

New Condria

There was a wail from one of the battleships as it shut off its beam and moved forward. The battleship paused from a moment as it diverted energy from engines and weapons to another device... then emmited a single pulse which sent the Iscandarian anti-matter missiles backwards, repulsing them and detonating them, the blasts consuming the balefire megaspells. There was a shimer on the ships surface as the shields absorbed the magical lasers.

Then the S'Luk fired back; The beams converged into one location and destabalised the atomic fields of the magical energy shields. The Iscandarians had merged their shields, which might prove to unexpectedly aid the L'Er. Electrons were lost, positively charging the shield. A single slug smashed into it next and shattered, releasing negative ions all over the shield, causing the two to bond. As magic was not conventional energy and thus existed outside the laws of physics, while the incoming energy was standard, the result was a highly unstable non-documented and impossible compound... And the bonds instantly broke, releasing a torrent of energy which travelled back into the Iscandarian gems in an attempt to either overload them or simply cause enough damage to render them inert.

The L'Er battleships moved forwards, aiming to blast at the Iscandarian ships. The force was heavily outnunbered.

The ships engaged an override of their generators safety restrictions to produce a higher level of energy. Without the need for life support, communications or other systems often needed by other species, the L'Er were able to overcharge their weapons and shields to protect themselves

There was a signal broadcast from the largest L'Er ship on thousands of channels towards the EU ships, as they spammed the computers with meaningless snippets of code in an attempt to slow them and divert processing power

The transports began to move towards the planet, preparing for an invasion. The voice boomed out again on New Condria

"Do you really think this rock is yours? Listen to the wind 'No', It says 'You do not own us, you will never own us, even as you build your rotten titans upon this dirt'"

[null123]

New Condia
Contrary to what the L'Er had tried the magical energy had not bonded with the standard energy as they had hoped. It takes much more then what they had done to force magical energy to bond with standard energy, even the Iscandarians had trouble with it, having needed to come up with a whole new series of spells and they had to invent complex magical machines to accomplish it. The shields had still suffered, but were still holding, at least for a little while. The ships stopped using missiles, instead relying off entirely bursts of balefire and magical lasers plus there large amount of kinetic weapons. Several balefire megaspells were released again, this time without any missiles for them to detonate against.

The computers upon the spamming simply intimated a emergency process where every foreign data packet was rejected, accepting only EU data packets. A captain also had a clever idea, releasing several remote-controlled shuttles full of anti-matter and crashing them at high speeds into the L'Er battleships.

New Condia's planetary shield was fully active and online, and would be near-impossible to reach without dealing with the fleet first.

Message beamed to Sazkarjhia
"This is the New Condia Defense Authority, under attack by the Hive parasites. Assistance is requested."

[Arkay]

Jalag
Off the Port of Old Yal'thque
Operative 079

Receiving permission to fire when ready, 079 leaned back onto the large rocket focusing all of his helmet cams toward the runway. Readying his energy manipulators for what would be a very 'interesting' ride, he soon heard a loud voice over the radio. "Hold 079! Phalcorna is in your flight path." He grumbled as he saw the head of the large creature pop out of the water just at the end of the runway. The large herbivore, looked around calmly before noticing the small group of soldiers shooing it away. Although the beast is 3 times their size, it swiveled its fins and swam away quickly. Receiving a thumbs up from the small group they cleared the runway as 079 got back into position. Turning his head back toward Ariamas, he noticed the lieutenant whispering something into her ear. Turning his head back toward the runway he rested his finger on the trigger. One final check of his and the rocket's systems and 079 began to charge his manipulators. Fulling the trigger for the rocket, he was quickly thrust forward with a large amount of force and speed. Using the manipulators to adjust his pitch and yaw, 079 quickly acclimatized to the g-forces he was now subjected to. It was a bit of a struggle to keep his head up, but his power armor allowed him to compensate for the weakness in his neck. He would need to ask Aria to help with that later. About 2 miles out now, 079 began to notice the fuel for the rocket was beginning to deplete. Putting his finger on the detach switch, put the energy manipulators on his feet to full power. As the fuel was finally depleted, he flicked the switch and slid across the surface of the water until finally coming to a stop 4 meters from where he made impact with the water. Using his energy manipulators to hover above the water, he radioed back to the rest. "So.... did we get any good results? I hope so, my neck is aching." Ariamas calmly came on the line. "You did fine, though it will be a while before we actually use something like this practically. We sending someone to pick you up. When you get back get prepped to move out and be briefed. It would seem that we are now at war."

[darkwolf687]

New Condria

There was a slow whirling sound as the battleship that had ended its beam assualt activated its other weapons... And them giant holes were punched in the remote cargoshipsn releasing the antimatter and consuming the ships before they reached the L'Er. The "crack" sound from the firing of the weapons sounded a few moments later. The calculations must have been done in a fraction of a second to target so many of the cargoships before impact.
The remaining ones impacted with the ships, and crumpled on impact with the shields, the anti-matter spraying over the shimmering shields. The ships stopped their beam attack to divert their power to shielding to withstand the assualts. The balefires impacted with the shields, followed by the lasers, but only the shields of one ship failed. Fires erupted over its deck, and the lights along its lateral lines died as it drifted, dead in space.

There was another pulse, blasting back the physical weaponry towards the EU lines before it impacted

The largest ship finally did something. Seven large holes opened in a circle on the front of the ship and lit up, and a larger pne opened in the centre of the circle. A screech erupted, and black-blue beams from the seven holes met in the center. There was a glow from the largest hole as it began to charge up. Energy spiked at the device, and there was a link between the nearby star and the device, which seemed to be participating in an energu transfer

There were disturbances on the edge of the system, signs that something was about to enter no doubt...

The voice sounded out again

"It says 'Your kind come but they never leave; They do not understand the cosmos, how it gives life, and how it takes it. And so they die, and we grow stronger. The dead, now, the dead can not pass on their new found knowledge. So more of them come, keep trying to spread into the stars...'"

There was a silence for a moment as the device charged and the ships reinstated their core safeties, and began to transfer power back to weapons and engage once more with their beams. Then the voice continues
"What do you think, under your shimmering umbrella? That you might escape the coming fire? That shield will not protect you, and if you stay we will flood like water over your world, we will fill your holes and drown you. But we are not without mercy..."

[Keyguyperson]

Earth, Space Forces High Command
The room was dark, lit only by the red glow of negative mass in the center. A sword sat upon the slab of negative mass, floating in the air. One of the many high-ranking personnel in the room picked it up off of the slab and examined it, looking for any abnormality, any slight sign that what the scientist had said was true.

"No, that's impossible." She said, continuing to examine the sword. "Quantum entanglement does not occur naturally, and certainly not between so many particles. Are you sure your scans are correct?"

"Yes, Admiral." Said a man in a white lab coat, turned red by the glow of the negative mass. "The particles of the sword are interconnected. What's more, their spin keeps changing, and none of our scanners are picking up any energy readings."

"Do you mean-"

"Yes. This is most likely caused by magic."

"It's a human design though, and our linguists say that those markings are in Navajo. Even among humanity, only a select few know that language, there's no way that the Eternal Union built this... thing."

"We have already confirmed it's point of origin. The materials are from Prefecture 15 of The District, and it was forged during the colonial period."

"Nobody in that time had any knowledge of quantum entanglement! Your analysis has to be wrong!"

"Twenty did."

"Not once has someone even come close to proving that story!"

"We just did. The soldier carrying it was Lieutenant Anderson, who was involved in the Topeka Riots. He also owned a large corporation at the time, a small arms manufacturer. I went through their sales records and found that they had sold 'Custom Model #581' to Yuuki Sora. As you all learned in Terran History class, Yuuki Sora was the right hand woman of the instigator of the Topeka Riots..."

Everyone's mouths dropped open, and it seemed like they had a hard time closing them. In shock, the woman responded.

"Archangel."

"Fergus McClain claims to have been Archangel, in addition to hundreds of other identities. I did some searching, and one of his claimed identities appears in an ancient Japanese legend, speaking of a man who wielded a straight katana. The legend dates back to 1431."

"That's before the Europeans discovered the Americas, there's no way it was the same sword."

"The sword is over ten thousand years old according to our scans."

"But you said it was forged in the colonial period!"

"It was."

The woman's expression changed from shocked to confused, then back to shocked.

"No, no, no... you are NOT suggesting that. No, that's literally impossible in every imaginable way."

"Apparently, it isn't."

Mercury Orbit, Sol
A Poland-Class escort approached the odd vessel, a haze of red hydrogen plasma surrounding it. It's two warp rings were spinning, slowly gaining velocity as if preparing for something. Through the plasma shield, four large, tri-barrel turrets could be seen on the top and bottom of the ship, two on each side. A circular window surrounded a small hole, about a meter in diameter, it's sides glowing red with heat as the vessel floated closer to the alien vessel. A message was sent out from the ship, along with a standard SETI image set.

"This is the United Terran Federation Poland-Class escort Powstanie. Your vessel appears heavily damaged, do you require assistance? I repeat, do you require assistance?"

Septonian Planet, Uncharted Space
A giant burst of radiation erupted from what seemed to be empty space, so powerful that it illuminated the planet below like a sun. The effect dissipated after only a few moments, leaving behind a gigantic starship falling towards the planet. Whatever FTL it had used, it obviously preserved the velocity of the ship before it activated the drive. After mere seconds of descent, the ship suddenly stopped falling, the device it used to counteract gravity generating a lens-like distortion below two gigantic rings on both ends of the ship. Three giant engines on the back of the ship fired, pushing it into orbit.

A minute after the radiation blast, a haze of red surrounded the ship as dots of blue light appeared all over it's hull. Fighter craft launched off of platforms on the top and bottom of the ship, maneuvering to fall into escort positions. About half of the platforms that the fighters launched from rotated around, revealing threatening, three-barrel turrets on the other side. On both sides of the awesome vessel, markings in an alien language appeared.

Iceland

A radio transmission was sent from the intimidating dreadnought, multiple pictures of humans (many of them within spacesuits), the planets in the Sol system, the Pioneer plaque, and the UTF seal.

"This is the United Terran Federation Dreadnought Iceland. Do not fear us, for we come in peace. We apologize for our intimidating appearance, this vessel was designed to be a planetary assault and space combat vessel, deployed in large numbers with the intent of invading and capturing a developed enemy world. However, as we recently negotiated a cease fire with the nation this ship was meant to be used on, we sent it out to search for allies. Along with this message, we have sent an audio-visual dictionary. If you have no translation technology, then you can use it to decipher our speech. In the event that you need to do that, then we suggest that after translating this message, you allow us to land and set up a face-to-face meeting. We have technology that can translate, but only if we meet physically."

Nouvelle
"Theatrics? I had a feeling that would be in there. I don't know about anyone else here, but us Terrans greatly enjoy theatrics."

After the Eternal Union diplomats had spoken, she turned to them, hiding her annoyance.

"Again, our comms systems are slow, and the fast ones cost billions of W.C.E. to send a single qbit of info. It would take multiple years for a message on the slower communication system to reach us, so we have no way of knowing what happened unless the government decides to spend a trillion W.C.E. to tell us that we don't need to keep our ship's weapons charged anymore, we won't know about the peace deal. You don't look like you're lying, so I'll believe you for now."

[Apollo26]

Special Forces Group 1
Two man Recon team
Unknown Planet ( Cherac,Nouvelle)
Sgt. Decroix ( Kacha)
Cpl. La’vrue ( Ura)

Seeing it was getting dark, the team started breaking down their hide. Starting by packing all the electronic and communications equipment followed by the staged weapons in ammo. Each operator carried a rather large rucksack containing water, their waste, communications equipment, up armored laptops and around 1500 total rounds of ammunition for both the heavy sniper rifle and the spotters battle rifle. In total each member of the team carried around 15 stones worth of equipment and they were definitely going to feel the weight on the way out. Their extraction point was back up over the mountains they came over, avoiding the pass they took to insert themselves. “ 8 kilometers in and 16 kilometers out” said Kacha, finishing packing up his gear “On what heading”? Ura said laying on his packed rucksack. “ 320 for 8Ks then 160 for another 8k, our extract will be by a farm house. Its supposed to be abandoned”. Ura raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything other then “alright”, how did intelligence know wether or not the farmhouse was abandoned? It really didn’t matter to them, they would have to figure it out on their own anyway.

After another quick peak around the team donned their helmets and raised the grass top off their hide, one scanning the area with his rifle while the other hopped out to cover the other teammate. Rucksacks were lifted out of the hole and the grass top was replaced before both member put of their heavy rucksacks and began walking back up towards the mountain.

STC Acheron
Lt. Cmdr Zilicin

The commander raised an eyebrow but nodded, he was in no position to refuse a superior officer. The idea of the empress of the entire nation showing up was both exciting and frightening, he need a diplomatic corps officer and not his military crew. That would not happen however and the responsibility would fall to Commander Zilicin and his crew until the diplomatic corps shuttle could get there, in a week at full speed. As for this Eternal Union, it wouldn’t hurt to meet two possible allies in one setting, this could prove to be a most promising day. If he ever managed to get back to the core world this would be his ticket to becoming a senator and possibly even the next leader of the concordant.

“ Admiral, if you would allow it, I would like to be present for this meeting. We are also looking for possible allies and if they are willing to meet with you I would imagine they wouldn’t mind meeting with us as well. It is up to you though sir” he said, hoping his eagerness didn’t betray his intentions.

STC Syren ( BH-109)
In the space around Nouvelle
Cmdr. Vellais

The offer was broadcasted around the ship, asking for volunteers to pilot the shuttle for a sucide mission. At first no one responded but then one of the shuttle pilots stepped forward, walking down to the hangar bay to tell the commander himself. “ You understand that the likelihood of death during this operation is high….right?”. The pilot nodded and looked over the shuttle being packed with explosives before turning to face the commander again “ I will save the bullshit patriotism that usually accompanies these things, but I am doing this for glory. If I die, and I will everything in my power not to, I want my name remembered and my family honored.”. Commander Vellais nodded “ It will be done” she said turning to look at the shuttle “ All communications will originate from that shuttle, you are to play ignorant to any information regarding our two nations. Think of it as, you have been lost in open space for weeks and you are running low on food and oxygen.”. The pilot responded almost reflexively with a “yes Ma’am” before walking off to don his flight suit, within the hour he was in the cockpit and ready to fly. To keep the location of the Syren hidden, the crew affixed compressed air canisters to the Kaave shuttle and physically pushed the vessel out of the open bay doors. The pilot let the craft drift for a few moments before activating the compressed air canisters, propelling the ship some distance away from the Syren before the pilot turned on the systems.

To the EU scout ship ( the message would be a little staticky, as it pushed the limits of the shuttles communications range”

“ W-What?! I know nothing of these actions, I am in desperate need of oxygen and food and my craft is running low on fuel. I beg of you please provide assistance” The pilot of the shuttle said, remaining calm but urgent at the same time.

Some Septonian planet ( TBD)

The small sun generated in the sky did more then raise a few heads, it alerted every man woman and child to the presence of something up there. Fearing it was an asteroid or a sun exploding, the military was called to evacuate the citizens from the area. After the small sun quickly dissipated reports of a large ship over the planet quickly worked its way through civilian and military channels, cities were evacuated anyway and the marine and army companies that called this planet their home were brought to the highest alert status. All orbital defense stations were brought online and their 16in magnetic accelerator cannons were loaded and aimed towards this new ship. As the fighters spewed from the ship their alert level rose drastically, this was beginning to look like an invasion. A mayday transmission was sent to the other core worlds asking for more ships and troops to come to their aid, while the small number of ships in the area responded to the new vessel, moving into extreme weapons range but remaining non-hostile.

To alien vessel, broadcasted on all channels “ You are now within the realm of the Septonian Concordant, please state your business, you are causing quite a bit of alarm’

[TehAlphaGamer]

Hollie, Nouvelle

The Rakora-Class Corvette PNSS On the Whim of Faith and the Outreach-Class Diplomatic Vessel PNSS Entourage coasted around, encircling their destination on the parade grounds surrounded by settlers of the city. Entourage was harmless enough. Outreach-Classes were known for being unarmed, and this was shown as the boxy, white, t-shaped vessel circled around with its escort. The pilot of the small vessel took note of the small, extremely primitive double-winged aircraft composing nearby traffic; maybe of not to take to the Ambassador.

However, where the Diplomatic Ship was unarmed and safe, the same could not be said about the Corvette. While technically the smallest jump-capable ship with a length of 90 meters, the Rakora-Class Corvettes were known to be heavily armed, and with the right captains were fierce combatants. The ship had four magnetic accelerator cannons in the fore, with plasma and missile launchers adorned on the sides and stern with a bristling network of Mark II point-defense cannons. As it neared its landing zone it opened valves under the ship and fired bursts from its landing pedestals as it slowed down. Once it reached over the parade grounds with the ship it escorted both lowered their landing pedestals. However, unlike the larger ships these were more like oversized skids often seen on HV-6 Hovercraft. The Rakora had 4: One in the fore, two under each wing-like extension, and one in the aft. The Outreach had five: One fore, one mid, one aft, and two on each side of the box sections housing the engines.

They slowly touched down together. Both ships opened underside bays and released swarms of Peoples' Army Private Affairs Security Soldiers, and among them stood a Sazkarjhit clad in white, with a star-pattern on their chest and pack showing the Sazkarjhit colors of silver, bronze and blue. They looked around, the Nouvellians slowly walking closer as they saw that the duo took up much less space than originally believed.

EU Diplomacy and New Condia Support
"After much consult between myself and the Vesselage, we have come to the conclusion that we will sign onto the terms provided. We can soon begin to assist you as this station is constructed, and help develop both of our nations into domineering superpowers."

Vessel Pumar'kum of Mazdabar, the Sazkarjhit God of War, stood to the call for help. "Three Sazkarjhit Assault Fleets--005, 011, and 032--have been dispatched to New Condia to once again provide support. They should reach there shortly, but seeing as we have never combated such a foe expect our effectiveness in battle to be limited."

New Condia
Once narrowly avoiding a major loss when helping the Union fight the Ethereal enemies, a massive Sazkarjhit flotilla emerged from Slipstream Space and approached to help with defense of the colony from the parasitic invaders. Taking a similar approach to when fighting the Ethereals, the combined fleet formed several tightly-packed phalanxes, shielded at the front by bulky destroyers as fighters erupted out of the ships' docking bays like swarms of angry hornets, and fired at their invaders. Legions of nine meter ferrotungsten slugs were fired by the destroyers in the direction of the enemies, and the three Marku-Class battlecruisers, the flagships of each fleet, fired volleys of antimatter slugs, and an amassed cloud of thousands of missiles and globs and lances of plasma arced across space.

Within moments of approaching the threat, Sazkarjhia had made its mark.

[MrFoxNews]

Sol, Mercury
The massive craft dwarfed the escort craft. Measuring 20 Kilometers in length there was no doubt the wounded ship was created for a one purpose. War.

The Escort crafts comms crackled to life with several disturbing noises filling the ears of the comms officer then replaced by a snide but powerful voice.

"I am Lord Nullus of the NightLords legion. Assistance would be greatly appreciated, it seems power systems have failed. What is the Terran Federation?"

The voice said through a forked tongue.

[WilsonTurner]

VALKIANS

---

Nouvelle
The Valkian bowed his head, mimicing the sign of respect, and then asked, "If I may, sometime or the other, mark the walls or floor around your seat, or the seat itself, and I think your arm. Our version of literature and writing is that of what you might call a maze- what will mean nothing to you will mean anything and everything to us. If I give you a certain... ah, what's the word... tattoo, whether on your seat or your arm, any Valkian will know you to be a friend, even though you do not speak the language we do. Part of the reason I ask to do this is because I must also secure access to the materials in the system in case... conflicts arise. If you would not like the tattoo, it is fine. But someday, you will have to see our cities. They're very exquisite, though rather colorless and dark. I suppose-"

He cuts off suddenly, his eyelids opening even wider. The Eternal Union, whatwith their magic, would sense something, as if a very faint, refreshing breeze blew across their faces. The next moment, the black pupils of the Lord Tinkerer seemed to clear, the inky blackness literally appearing to drain out into the sides of his eyes. In the place of it, shockingly white pupils, and with deep purple irises... mysterious eyes, they seemed, but were very foreign. The Valkian took a deep breath, processing images alongside of 3-D mental mapping, and collapsed, smacking into the table, crystal spikes scraping across the beautiful surface, and slid to the ground. Both of the other Valkians were up in a second, and quickly lifted him up and set him back down, panicking only slightly. They didn't appear to look at anyone else, but they knew very well that his eyelids being closed hadn't happened in CENTURIES.

---

---

DRACONIANS

---

New Condia
Confused by the stupid fact that an alien race had just tried to talk to them with their native language translated into binary, the Draconians ignored and pushed on, approaching the rapidly-escalating battle. As they watched, a somewhat-massive fleet appeared some distance away, accelerating towards the ships that had somehow spoken to them. They quickly sent out coordinates via ansible to the other two exploring fleets, and prepared for action. To gang up on such a small foe is dishonorable; this must be corrected.

The Cruisers began slowing down, and as they did so, they began launching solid ballistic shells out of their 8 cannons at the projected spot of where the densely-packed ships will be when the rounds arrive. The Destroyers, too, fired, launching 'inactive' ballistic missiles, missiles that only come online when an unknown entity is detected on passive sensors. They both flew silently and quietly towards the overwhelming force, so small and moving so fast, with so few emissions that it'd be next to impossible to detect them. What would probably happen is one ship being torn apart, and then hitting another ship, and another ship, and another ship. Really, it was bad planning if you were expecting ballistic weapons- it's almost impossible to miss against such a densely-packed enemy formation.

As the Cruisers began to pull back, and the Lightships moved silently towards the rear of the now-enemy formation, the great giant Battleship-X flagged the enemy ships with all active sensors. This would, effectively, blind all their radar, if for a few moments, while making it insanely obvious that someone was watching them. It was like a laserlight in your eyes with an odd twist- you just got blinded, and if you just following the light, you'll know EXACTLY who's doing it. Hopefully, it's enough to ensure the hit of the 8 cannons firing 4 salvos of ballistic material, and up to 200 inactive/passive antimatter missiles.

Meanwhile, some distance from the rear of the enemy formation, the light orbs and powerful energy appeared, lashing out, but well away from the optimal combat range from the advancing fleet. After half a minute, the second fleet of the Draconians appeared, ready to rock. They were already behind them- a great benefit of teleporting. They took several minutes to reorient themselves, and several messages were beamed across between the Battleship X of the two fleets, exchanging a quick conversation. Then the 2nd Fleet started to catch up, while the Cruisers and Sleipnirs stayed behind with six Destroyers. The Cruisers turned towards the planetary shield of the planet- interesting concept, something they hadn't explored, but would now. They began firing as many ballistic rounds as they could into the shield, knowing they wouldn't singly break it, but it'd put stress on it. They had the Sleipnirs, with enough materials to keep them going for quite some time.

A distance behind the 1st Fleet, came the 3rd Fleet. They appeared out of the teleportation, only to panic. Several of the falling-behind Cruisers and Sleipnirs from the 1st Fleet had very nearly impacted several Destroyers and Cruisers of the 3rd Fleet, narrowly avoiding catastrophe. All the Cruisers and Sleipnirs detached, moving away from the First and Third Fleet, and continuing their barrage, now increased with reinforcements.

Three Draconian fleets with one Hivemind fleet against three Sazkajiht fleets and one Eternal Union fleet. Should be interesting- and the Draconians had better positions.

[null123]

New Condia
A message was transmitted to the new contact, this time with the universal translator active.

"What are you doing!? Those ships attacking us are parasites! They have come purely to consume everything in there path, they will do the same to you sooner or later. We already lost innocents to them, we shall not loose more!"

The EU fleet still stood strong, focusing on powering up shields now and relying entirely off laser weapons to attack the L'Er ships. New Condia already survived two alien attacks, it would survive third.

Nouvelle
"We are sending a small shuttle out with supplies needed for your ship."

Upon the transmission ending one shuttle dropped out of the under-belly of the scout ship. It burned through the void of space as it approached the Septonian shuttle.

[darkwolf687]

New Condria

The massive L'Er ship had yet another energy spike, and a single black beam from the center struck the focal point of the second beam. There was massive disturbance around the weapon as it fired... A large beam shot towards the planetary shield, obliterating a hunk of debris fron the battle that had gotten in the way as it touched it, completely annihalting it.

Another battleship again activated its pulse, sending the Sazkarjhit ballistical weaponry and delivery systems swirving off course. The plasma however, impacted the small battlegroup. Another ship drifted away from the group, its lights fading as holes melted in its side and the lasers impacted. The group diverted all power to shields and engines, and overclocked their reactors again, falling back away from their foes in order to better defend the transport craft, which moved behind the larger ship, using it for cover as it drifted towards the planet, firing its massive beam weapon.

The disturbances on the edge of the systen were replaced by more ships. 10 Craft drifted forwards, 4 more battleships, 4 smaller craft and 2 more transports. The smaller ships darted towards the EU battlegroup, taking up the right hand flank (From the perspective of the Iscandarian forces), the battleships moved after then, slower in their assault. The smaller craft seened to rely more on theor agility, darting in erative patterns a thousand miles apart. The same weapon type that had attacked the freighters opened fire again, causing unseen impacts on the EU shields.

The larger ships joined the second Draconian fleet, then moved past then and began to move around the left side of the Sazkarjhit fleet (from the Sazkarjhit perspective), opening fire with the thin beam weapons, hoping to destabise the Sazkarjhit shields and tear their craft apart.

The voice of thw S'Luk continued its attempts at psychological warfare. Its voice did hold an eerie and imposing air, certainly threatening, and disorientating due to its seeming disembodiment

"Even now, as your allies lend their aim they know this world cannot be saved. You are only waiting to be eaten. We are offering you mercy, the other hives would not in our place. Do you not feel lucky?"

The voice again echoed out through the Sazkar ships
"A new foe enters the battle. Do you not see you cannot save this world? Your allies are in denial, you must evacuate this planet to save as many as possible; If you do not then all shall perish in the coming fires, and not even their accursed magicians will survive to crawl blackened from the pits..."

And them to the Draconians
"Your assistance is much appreciated. Well Met! We are S'Luk of the S'L'Er. Or as the prey call us 'Parasite!' May this battle end in our total victory."

[Apollo26]

Kaave shuttle around Nouvellian space

The pilot let out a quiet curse as he heard the message, the situation was becoming more complicated by the second. He looked around the shuttle for a minute, noticing the three crates in the troop bay of the dropship loaded with explosives. There were also charges placed along the wall and ceiling of the dropship, covered by large silver tarps. The crates were aligned in a way that would suggest a bed, with a tarp and a rather worn rucksack acting as a pillow and blanket. The crew did a good job of making the ship look dilapidated and lived in while hiding the literal tons of explosives that were packed in it.

“ Alright, thank you! the Concordant will never forget your hospitality. I will stand by for docking” he said, trying to figure out what he was going to do about this new development. The pilot was armed with an assault rifle that that been modded into a carbine. The caliber of the rounds stayed the same while a wire folding stock was introduced to allow it to be stowed in a cockpit. The rate of fire was more then suburb and it offered an underslung grenade launcher, overkill for what any pilot actually needed. The way he saw it, the pilot had two options; one, kill the crew of the shuttle as they boarded and somehow pilot the alien shuttle back to the scout ship to detonate. Or, affix the explosives to the alien shuttle, let them do their business then detonate when they docked back with their scout ship. Both were complicated and required some degree of luck. There was of course a third option, which was calling SF support. That would require more explosives to be broken down and for a team to quickly make their way to the Kaave shuttle, which wouldn’t happen. It seemed the pilot was on his own for now, he had to rely on his ground training for this engagement. Everyone in the military has been through the same school, everyone has had combat training and everyone has been to the training planets. In the pilots case, he was assigned to a naval wing instead of a marine battalion, based on his early flight aptitude tests. Waiting was the name of the game for right now, waiting for the right time to strike.

[null123]

Nouvelle, Ground
"I have finished all of what I want to say your majesty, however at a later date the EU requests a private meeting just between us and you." said Archmage Cavenus.

Nouvelle
The EU shuttle docked with the Septonian one, and two guards aboard escorted the Septonian onboard, showing him to the supplies needed for his shuttle. While this happened he overheard something from the cockpit, and everything he heard was in a perfect version of the Septonian language.

"Heard about New Condia yet?" said one of the voices.

"Let me guess, its under attack again?" asked another voice.

"Yeah this time by the Hives though..."

"I saw the reports on those things, what they did at Outpost A-5 scares. The turned the civilians there into monsters, ignored all attempts at diplomacy. And while its not mentioned often, we tried to contact a more minor space-faring nation. When we arrived they had already consumed the entire nation. The way they refer to everything as prey and food... Its a parasitic hivemind, we can't reason with it. "

"And then we got the Ethereals on our hands. Also ignored all attempts at diplomacy, and killed 1000s of civilians at New Condia. Trade has also suffered because of there attacks. And what we saw them turn our people into... Those weren't Iscandarians anymore..."

"But were going to have to waste war material on a alien nation instead of uniting to face the greater threat. Excellent."

The two continued talking, and were talking loud enough to where the Septonian could hear them, it seemed they had not realized that the the Septonian had come aboard.

New Condia
The beam had hit the fleet shield as it was in the way of hitting the planetary shield, it fell, but only took a few moments for it to be up back up. Besides one or two kinetic weapons on each ship, the fleet had shutdown most of its weapons to keep the shields going, leaving the attacking to the Sazkarjhit ships. Ships could be seen on the far side of the planet warping in and out, although it was unknown what they were doing.

Alari, the Pearl Fleet
A EU ship arrived near the pearl fleet, this time however it only had a shield and no weapons however, and bore somekind of bird holding a branch on the side.

"We have come here in dire need. For you one of our colonies is under-attack by a parasitic hivemind. We can understand if you do not believe us, but a fleet to assist would be helpful. A unknown contact has also arrived and is ignoring all attempts at contact, and is assisting these parasites. There will be great rewards if you help, even if in the end we do fail to defend it. We also believe you may have come into contact with a nation we call the Septonians. They attempted a invasion of one of our colonies and we would like to try to sue for peace now, as we need to stand against greater threats."

[Apollo26]

Kaave shuttle around Nouvellian space

The pilot dropped down to his knees as the Iscandarians came aboard “ Thank you….Thank you” he kept repeating as he was escorted onto their shuttle. Upon seeing the crates of supplies on the ground the pilot simply pointed to them “ I can take those onto my ship” he said to the two Iscandarians that were talking amongst themselves. He heard the conversation but didn’t really care what they were talking about, he was still working out his own plan on how to get the explosives onto the the enemy shuttle. “ Do you want these crates back?” the pilot said to the two Iscandarian pilots.

[null123]

Nouvelle
"Nah, keep them. There just some plastic and metal." said the guard. The two motioned for him to get back onto the shuttles, as the two pilots prepared to undock and head back for the scout ship.

[Apollo26]

Kaave shuttle around Nouvellian space

The pilot nodded and took one crate back to his ship placing it on the floor. As he turned around to walk back and grab the second crate the pilot discretely grabbed the rifle from the wall mount and silently flipped the fire selector to full auto. This was all very close range and he had no doubt in the rifles ability to penetrate their armor. As he rounded the corner between the two docked ships the rifle was already leveled and at the ready. At this range there would be no doubt that he would hit his target, putting a two second burst into the first guard’s chest before taking two striding steps and diving towards the floor, into the EU shuttle. As he dove he turned his body towards the other guard and slid across the deck on his side, waiting to come to a stop before putting another two second burst into the second guard’s midsection. Without getting up, the pilot leveled the rifle towards the cockpit bulkhead, he roughly had two more bursts left in his magazine.

[null123]

Nouvelle
The 1st guard and 2nd guard fell, there blood spattering across the floor. The 2nd guard's rifle slid into the cockpit, as one of the pilots came out. He was a caster, putting up a weak shield around him that could survive at least 8 rounds, give or take. He hid behind a crate as the other pilot sealed the cockpit and the shuttle lurched foward, moving towards the scout ship. The pilot that was hidden behind the crate did not peek out, instead putting his weapon on the crate and blind-firing into the room.

[Apollo26]

Kaave/ EU shuttle

The pilot quickly flattened himself on the deck as the EU pilot began blind firing over the crate. He could hear the snap of rounds flying what seemed like centimeters over his head as the Iscandarin swept back and forth with his rifle. Suddenly the ship lurched forward and the pilot was thrown towards the back of the ship, smacking against the rear wall as the ship continued to accelerate. Turning his head the pilot could see the docking collar between the two ships flex due to the acceleration, yet the two ships remained attached. As the Iscandarian pilot stopped to reload, the Septonian pilot quickly brought the rifle up to his shoulder and fired the remainder of his magazine toward the crate and the exposed Iscandarian hand, trying to keep its head down. The click of the rifle going empty seemed to echo around EU ship as the pilot reflexively checked to see if the bolt had locked back before chucking it to the side and running for the relative cover of the docking collar between the two ships. The pilot had to make a fateful decision pull the explosives into the EU ship and save the Kaave shuttle or escape while both shuttles were attached. The thought of surviving this ordeal excited him, but he didn’t want to fail the mission because of his own greed. If the EU crew got to the explosives before they reached the scout ship they would certainly know what they were. Thinking quickly, the pilot grabbed the first guard by the arm and dragged him into the doorway to keep the airlock from closing. Dropping to the ground to avoid the next round of fire, the Septonian pilot quickly snatched the first guards rifle and ducked back behind the docking collar wall before running back into the Kaave shuttle.

The EU ship was now completely visible in the cockpit window and getting closer by the second. Without another thought, he ran back towards the EU shuttle and sprayed another couple bursts of fire back towards the Iscandarian pilot before running back to the Kaave shuttle, donning his helmet and shooting out the cockpit window. The air rushed out of the shuttles almost instantly and it suddenly became extremely cold, in the pilots helmet a small air meter was now displayed, he now had about 15 minutes of air left. Climbing out onto the roof of the ship, he stole one last look at the EU scout ship before jumping off, floating up above the shuttles as they got closer and eventually went inside the ship. The next thing he saw was a light almost as bright as a sun followed blackness….