EliteCommander

The Cradle

Once they had their scan of the system, and the orders that followed, it only took a quick jump for the various fleets to converge on their rally point. The moment they dropped out of FTL, Admiral Matir’s orders were delivered by his ship’s computer to every single other ship in the fleet. Each vessel was assigned to one of the battle groups supporting five separate “core ships”, including his own heavy carrier, the Tindrel’s asteroid, the Qalian-Vosh supercarrier, and two Rothian battleships. Every battle group contained ships from every species’ fleet, distributed about as evenly as possible. They were assigned according to their capabilities such that each battle group would have all necessary roles filled appropriately. Outremer’s fleet in particular had an abundance of specialized ships that could fill in for weaknesses that any particular battle group might have possessed. On paper, every team had the capabilities to be an effective fighting force. All that remained to be seen was if they could execute properly on that potential.

As the fleets were arranging themselves into formation, the Admiral began to assign the battle groups to their objectives. The large enemy craft was a primary objective, though it would not be their first to assault. The large craft could require more resources than a single battle group to defeat, and the smaller objectives were more pressing. The Tindrel’s battle group was assigned to assist with the distress calls near the factory complex, while the Qalian-Vosh’s supercarrier was designated to facilitate the evacuation of the space station. Of the two battle groups led by Rothian battleships, one, which also contained the supercarrier OSC Cataphract, was assigned to stave off an ongoing attack on a simulated settlement on one of the moons of a gas giant, while the other battle group was to position itself roughly equally between all of the other objectives and remain momentarily on standby. The enemy was going to react, so they needed at least one battle group available to adjust to the enemy’s response and provide reinforcements where needed.

The final battle group was the one commanded by the Admiral himself. The Rothian AI facilitating this simulation was, for the most part, operating independently to keep the fleets from knowing what was coming next. However, it had been given instructions to carry out one scenario according to plan. As an inhabited planet, one objective was to keep Psi-Helios itself protected. The Admiral’s battle group, which included the Barbarossa, was to position near the planet and keep it protected from an encroaching enemy attack. All the while, the Magnificent Horizon, the exploration ship being used by the science team, would be scanning the planet ostensibly for “survivors”.

The Cradle

It was not long after Admiral Matir had confirmation back from the rest of the officers that the exercise was scheduled to begin. With nothing meaningful to delay them, Matir gave the word to commence. As per the simulated scenario, each species’ fleet would be arriving in a separate part of the system. Part of the challenge would involve making contact with one another, identifying a rendezvous point, and gathering into formation. A meeting point was specifically not planned ahead of time to force them to make such decisions quickly, in the moment. A Rothian AI had given each ship a program to run for the duration of the exercise and would be directing the actions of their simulated foe. Artificial ships would appear on sensors, weapons fire would be simulated from both sides, and they would even appear on view screens. An FTL connection between all participating vessels would ensure that the simulated vessels were synchronized accurately between different ships, no matter where they might be in the system. Additionally, all battle groups would also have designated observer ships present. They would appear on sensors, but were clearly marked as non-participants. Their sensors would be unaffected by the simulation, so they would essentially be “lookouts” to watch for any actual threats that could disrupt the exercise.

---

Arrival in the Psi-Helios system for the Rothian fleet brought them dead into the middle of empty space, which, granted, was far and away the most likely outcome for a random jump. The vast emptiness of space, even within a star system, made arrival near any sort of celestial body exceptionally rare. Regardless, the exercise had begun, and the Admiral stuck to established protocol. Immediately, he ordered a wide-range FTL scan of the system to identify the current location of all known celestial bodies, as well as to start locating allied and hostile ships. Based on the locations of their known objectives, the ship computer began marking off potential sites for strategic rally points. Within a few minutes, Matir had made his decision: a location roughly equidistant from each marked objective within an asteroid belt.

For the purposes of this exercise, the fleets had established an encrypted FTL comm channel to allow them to communicate across the system. “Marking rally point now. Move immediately to asteroid designated PH-238-02. Coordinates following.” The Admiral ordered.

---

Whilst the Sacred Band and Void Company both were preparing for the possibility of battle, the science team was getting ready to begin their scans as quickly and efficiently as possible. While much of the process was automated, the process was likely going to require adjustments on the go, based on what they detected. The Object, if it was there, would be difficult to detect, and they would need to be able to identify the smallest anomalies to be able to refine their parameters to eventually locate it.

Ideally, there would be no need at all for anyone to visit the surface in person, though they needed to be prepared for any possibility. Vreta would have much preferred there to be no need to bring anything resembling a soldier to the planet, but he understood that, in the current circumstances, why they might be necessary. Still, bringing them would be a last resort. For the science team, at least, they would not be gearing up like soldiers, regardless. For many species, personal shielding devices were something of a rarity, but to the Rothians, they were more available. Vreta, at the moment, was already wearing his shield belt, and they had secured enough personal shield devices to outfit an entire field team. In the event that it was necessary, they would have their own personal protection that would at least make them seem not quite so threatening.

Void Company was arming up across from the Sacred Band. Among them, Mar’Ghel, the sniper, had already mostly prepared herself before they had even arrived, so she stood, leaned back against the wall, watching the others. The particle rifle resting at her side had a length over half of her rather imposing height. Her helmet was not deployed, so one could see her slightly inquisitive expression as she looked over the Humans. Out of everything about her, it was her eyes in particular that could draw attention. In casual circumstances, there was a filter applied over her cornea that made them appear perfectly normal. Now that they were potentially about to be deployed, though, one could see that her eyes were wholly artificial. Both appeared to have multiple pupils of varying sizes, each of which could move and focus independently. At the moment, many of those pupils were focused on her counterpart in the Sacred Band.

The Cradle

For the vast majority of those participating in these exercises, they were unaware of their true purpose. For most crew or even ship captains, such knowledge was irrelevant and would merely serve to place greater risk to operational security. Among the Rothian navy, only the Admiral and a select few others were aware of their true objective on Psi-Helios. However, he was well-aware of these exercises’ importance in maintaining plausible deniability, so they needed to be taken seriously. For all intents and purposes, these exercises were exactly why they were here.

Being that the scenario would call for them to split into multiple teams, they had to decide how they would divide said teams according to the distribution of forces each navy had brought. The simplest would be to have each separate tackle an objective, but that would also accomplish very little. The purpose of these exercises was to test how they could coordinate with different military doctrines. They needed to make attempts to combine their forces to identify any conflicts or inefficiencies that could arise.

The plan that Admiral Matir had forwarded to the other fleets involved creating battle groups centered around “core” ships. The most capable individual vessels they had available would form the backbone of the battle groups’ formations and tactics. For the five objectives they needed to accomplish, the overall fleet would be divided into five groups. The Qalian-Vosh’s supercarrier, the Tindrel’s weaponized asteroid, and the Rothians’ heavy carrier would be core ships for three battle groups. Outremer did not have any ships that could serve as core ships for this exercise. Even the Barbarossa could not match the firepower of a specialized Rothian battleship, hence why the remaining two battle groups would each utilize a Rothian battleship as core ships. However, the advantage that Outremer had brought to the table related to the sheer size of their fleet relative to the others. Outremer’s navy was massive, and even for just an exercise, they had brought far more ships of cruiser-class and above with different specializations, along with numerous support ships. Given the significant variations in each navy’s doctrines, Outremer’s adaptability was key to this strategy. They needed to be able to round out each group’s strengths and weaknesses to ensure the enemy would not have any glaring flaws to exploit. Every battle group would contain vessels from every species, but the core ships would dictate the tactics for their respective objectives.

Once sufficient time had been given for each fleet to review the proposal, Admiral Matir opened a channel to each fleet’s ranking officers. “The exercise shall be commencing in one standard hour. Requesting confirmation that all parties have reviewed and understood the operational orders for the exercise. I am also requesting any formal objections or tactical input be delivered prior to the start of the exercise.”

The Cradle

For the combined fleets, their gathering was deep in space, far from any settled planets. They had alerted both Earth’s government and any nearby planets that this exercise would be taking place, though it was still a rather substantial collection of military force. Keeping a respectful distance from settled worlds was simply courtesy to avoid causing any unease among the civilian population.

For this exercise, the Rothian navy had deployed the 2nd Carrier Group from the Fleet of Vigilance. Compared to the rest, the Rothians had barely half as many ships participating, though that was to be expected for Rothian military doctrine. For their capital ships, the Rothian navy emphasized the highest quality possible in their vessels. On a galactic stage, technology was generally the Rothians’ greatest advantage, so they formed their military and its tactics to leverage that advantage to its greatest extent. For centuries, their ships had been built to modular designs with the intention of facilitating simple and relatively easy upgrades to integrate new developments into existing ships. Though some ships had bore the same names, and even some of the same crew, for centuries, there were none that had not, over time, been essentially rebuilt completely and retrofitted to modern standards. Smaller craft, like strikecraft and drones, tended to be automated and much more numerous.

Among the 2nd Carrier Group, the majority of capital ships were cruiser class, similar in size to the Barbarossa, with some being specialized as battleships that sacrificed carrier space for greater firepower. The flagship of the battle group, the Valiant, was a heavy carrier, about fifty percent larger than a cruiser. The Admiral, Matir’Setla, commanded from the carrier. On his order, his plan for formations and maneuvering tactics had been sent ahead to the other gathered fleets as they awaited the scheduled start of the exercise.

The Cradle

Vreta was still positioned between both, his posture upright and firm as he looked down upon them. He did not bother moving out of the way of the mug, and gave absolutely no reaction to its impact. “I cannot ask you to like one another. That would be quite unreasonable. However, in all my centuries of life, I have come to have certain expectations for men, women, and other individuals of science. In lifetimes past, I was a researcher myself, and I consider that experience to be a highlight of my life. Scientists, to me, are exemplars of their species, who push the boundaries of what a mind can do. They are the ones who elevate a species from their primitive origins and push entire societies to the stars, and they have always had my utmost respect. As the peak of a species’ mental prowess, I would expect them to be consummate professionals whose work can speak for them far more than leveraging baseless accusations or flinging small objects.”

For a moment, Vreta paused, his gaze moving slowly between Gazes and Chitnarit. “Was I mistaken?”

Halo: Aegis Team

Vael 'Virisusai

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The armored column had to move quickly to take advantage of the surprise they still had over their enemy. The open ground outside the walls would have made for a strong defensive position, had the city’s garrison been able to see the attack coming. The plasma turrets alone atop the walls were far from sufficient to stop, or even slow down an armored assault. At the moment, they were able to push forward at max speed to close the gap to the city walls. Weapons fire from the mantis and scorpions at long range could tear apart the plasma turrets long before they could do meaningful damage to the vehicles. The plasma turrets were intended for anti-infantry or anti-aircraft roles, while other defenses would normally handle heavy vehicles.

The push to the wall had been simple, with little resistance, but now that they were approaching the opening their ship had made, they were about to be stepping into much more danger. While the breach was not small, two scorpions side-by-side would only barely squeeze through. For their entire column, it was going to be a choke point. They caught a few glimpses of infantry through the opening, but machine gun fire from the scorpions forced them back into hiding. No doubt, they were scrambling to establish a defensive position inside.

At the moment, the team could not know how many anti-tank weapons were already in position inside. The defenders would be scrambling to deploy them to the breach, but it had been less than a minute since landing. If they were lucky, they would be able to get a foothold inside before the enemy could arm themselves to deal with them, but the longer they took, the more the enemy would be able to fortify.

”Shadows, stay back until we have a foothold inside. Everyone else, push forward!” Vael ordered. They were going to be pushing into an urban environment. The city did have streets wide enough to accommodate their vehicles, but it was still going to be far more cramped than the field they were in now. For armored units, urban fighting could be particularly dangerous, so they would need to be adaptable and alert for threats that could come from any angle. They did not know exactly what the other side of the breach looked like or where the enemy was positioned on the other side. There was only so much planning that could be done ahead of time; at a certain point, they had to adapt and improvise. How they decided to cross the choke point would be important to improve their odds.

The Cradle

Vreta was much closer to Chitnarit than most of the others, so he was able to move himself directly between her and Gazes. He may not have been a supersoldier like Rareth or Void company, but he was still enhanced enough to allow him to present himself as an effective barrier. He did not try to be directly threatening, but he did make it clear that he was not moving. “We have received information that one of these objects, these ‘crew’ members, may be located on Psi-Helios. As life-seeders, these objects are likely to be found in inhabited places. The Navigator itself was found buried deep within Rothia’s crust. Our objective is to find this object and recover it, preferably without complications.”

Roughly in the center of where everyone was gathered, Vreta brought up a hologram of Rothia, with the location that the Navigator had been found highlighted. Alongside it was also a hologram of Psi-Helios. “Locating the Navigator required weeks of deep scans. It was giving few traces of its presence, hence why we had not discovered it previously until we knew to look for it, specifically. We are hoping we are now in a better position to locate this Object more quickly.” Vreta gestured to the spectrogram of a signal detected from the Navigator. “If this new object is anything like the Navigator, any EM signature it has will fade easily into the background, but now we know what to look for. The Navigator’s signals are similar to those of the Cradle. This Object’s may not be identical, but if it is close enough, then this ship’s sensors should be able to detect it on a detailed surface scan. We are equipped with some of our best sensors and stealth capabilities. All goes well, and we’ll be able to secure our target without any major disruptions to Psi-Helios.”

The Cradle

Vreta nodded over to Freyr. “With what everyone had to gain from this project, we’re going to get the best they have on offer. Especially if they don’t want the other side to end up getting more out of it than they do. Maybe some healthy competition will even help us be more productive; we just have to make sure that competition stays ‘healthy’. I don’t have any intel on Gazes either, though. Might be that they wanted to send someone to look after their team, though if I were them, I would have at least made up a personnel file for them.”

With a shrug, Vreta closed his files and gave one more look around the room. “I think they’ve had enough time to familiarize themselves with the layout. Time for the guided tour, I suppose? They could use a briefing to at least start getting them up to speed. I’ll send out a message to the rest of our team to get everyone here, then you can do what you do best.”

The laboratory was designed to be as convenient as possible for all parties involved, and Vreta supposed this was a decent first test of that principle. They had hologram projectors that could function in and out of water, and access to all of their equipment on both sides of that division. There was a space close to the vault that was meant to be a natural point for all parts of the team to converge. Several of the QV’s tubes were nearby, there was a relatively low, walkable ceiling for the Tindrel, and enough floor space for everyone else. It was intended to, hopefully, allow everyone to congregate without anyone feeling inherently excluded. It was not enforced that anyone must use any part of the lab for any strict purpose, except the vault itself, but that was where Vreta went to start gathering the team’s attention. He had sent out the alert to the Human and Rothian science teams that it was time to gather in the lab, and once they had all arrived, it was time to begin.

“If everyone could join me, please, we have a lot we need to start covering. You’ve all been given the dossier on this team and our goals, so I’m sure you’re all familiar with the basics, but it’s time for everyone to get up to speed on the mission here in Psi-Helios.”

The Cradle

Vreta did not interrupt either party in exploring their new workspace. If nothing else, it was a truly unique, if somewhat bizarre looking space. There was a mix of aquatic spaces right alongside dry areas, with climbing surfaces anywhere they could be reasonably placed. Computers and other lab equipment were almost exclusively Rothian tech, but they had gone through the effort of setting up multiple interfaces tailored to Humans, Tindrel, and QV. Most of their equipment could easily swap between different holographic interfaces designed for each species’ user interface preferences. And at the center of all of it was the Outreman-designed vault for their hopeful prize.

“Please take some time to familiarize yourselves with the workspace. Our goal has been to create a space that could allow you all to optimize your comfort and workflow. You should find that all of our equipment has interfaces that should be familiar to you. Everything is still set in the test environment, not production, so feel free to experiment and get comfortable with it. Now is a good time to look for any changes you might want to make.” Vreta announced to the two teams.

While the rest were fulfilling their curiosity, Vreta stayed with Freyr and simply watched as they familiarized themselves with the space. “You know, for as difficult as all this is, it does feel impressive what we’re making. This kind of a collaborative project between so many species…it’s quite a rare thing. Hopefully, all these perspectives will help you find solutions you wouldn’t have alone. Different brains think fundamentally differently, so it’s not impossible. Who knows, maybe the new environment will help our own creativity too? Can you really say you’ve ever run complex experiments while breathing underwater, surrounded by transparent aliens?” Vreta chuckled lightly.

The Cradle

“Indeed. With all the differences in our biology, it would be difficult to make a ship that would be comfortable to every species simultaneously. We do our best to adapt, though. Please follow us; we’ll show you to the workspace.” Vreta answered.

At the very least, he and Freyr had managed to bring Gazes and Chitnarit’s attention off of each other, which he supposed was a manner of resolving the situation for now. It was going to be a process to try to nudge them into getting along over time. For now, Vreta led the way towards the team’s research lab.

For the purposes of this project, one of the cargo bays had been seamlessly converted into a rather massive research lab; much larger than the sort of space that would normally be used for that purpose. It allowed them to tailor portions of the space to each species without making any one of them feel neglected. At least a quarter of the total space was entirely submerged in breathable liquid for the Qalian-Vosh, separated from the air by a tough, transparent polymer. The QV’s area alone was at least as large as an average research lab, so they would not be lacking for space in their preferred environment. In order to avoid making them seem too separated from the rest of the team, their area had not simply been shoved into one corner. Rather, there were tubes leading to tanks spread out among the rest of the lab as well to allow them to be close to the rest of the team if needed. There were doorways separating air from liquid with walkable energy shields to allow any member of the team to move between the two quickly and easily if needed, with physical barriers available as backups in the event of total power failure.

The Tindrel too would find accommodations for themselves. Walls and ceilings were made largely from a material far more malleable than it appeared on the surface. Their legs could easily pierce it to allow them to climb as much as they desired, and it could even repair itself afterwards to cut down on maintenance. Some parts of the ceiling were closer to the floor to allow them to be in proximity to their ground-based peers, while others were higher up to allow them more space if needed. Floating platforms would allow them to move much of their equipment to different heights with relative ease.