Post by jadegreen on Apr 19, 2021 0:06:13 GMT
"<<Mayday, mayday, i repeat, fucking mayday!>>"
in a random system near the edges of Gaussian territory, a seeming gravitational anomaly would appear, then expand to quadruple it's size setting off any sensors within the system, as 3 damaged ships practically flung themselves through a tunnel into what looked like a corridor of stars-a cargo corvette and 2 sloops-each varying in damaged-ness from 'i took a couple shots to the squishy places' to 'i am like 20 holes away from being swiss cheese' and leaking a trail of smoke, up to a point where the anomaly once was, replaced only with a half-circle hole in the gas
on the interior bridge of the corvette, christened 'The Sissy' in Zettish, the local captain F'gjan was a very unhappy zet. his fleet was ambushed by a massive freeboot hulk(10km long if he had to guess, practically a cruiser), he'd lost a majority of the ships there, and now they were in the middle of god knows where.
"<<This is 'The Sissy' of Clan Kho'thar, we have been ambushed by pirates and require assistance, over!>>" *he shouted into the comms mic, to noone and everyone in particular. to him, he was worse off than fish being shot in a barrel-atleast there, the gun might get wet.
"<<Oy, you guys in the back, gimme readouts on how fucked our fuser is!>>" he then shouted into the intership comms
"<<We's fixed the holes in it, boss! Should 'old for a good day or so!>>" replied(presumably) the engineering chief
"<<Warp computing's working fine with the spiffy new feature, too.>>" replied someone else
"<<Hu-What new feature?!>>"
"<<The 'random warp' scripts you had the chief work up for the drones. Remember?>>"
"<<NO!>>" replied F'gjan, his face contorted in confusion and stress; his crew was in enough disarray, now wasn't the time to learn about the engi chief fabricating work orders. whatever, he'd get the stick later.
his attention shifted back to the comms board in front of the standing area, and he picked up the interfleet line. "<<Oy, you two holding up?>>"
"<<Yes.>>" replied sloop one
"<<%^E$#%R^#$A%>>" replied sloop two. shit, their comms rays got drained going through, some wires for their jumper must've gotten fucked in the chaos.
"<<Uh-right. You two focus recharge to weapons, I'll get the sensors up and running. You get that?>>"
"<<On it.>>" "<<$Y%#$^C>>"
"<<Good. Sissy out.>>" he replied, and his attention focused to the intership commsmen
"<<You guys, send orders to engineering. Prioritize sensors section recharge over all else until they come back online. Can't get caught on our asses. Shouldn't take more than 15 seconds.>>"
the order heard, the one with the functioning communications line began to send orders, the one who didn't got a nice tone in f sharp through the speaker and giving him a nice tinnitus surprise. the sensors operators began to feverishly find ways to reboot their systems, since they were so used to the jumper generator punching the consoles online for them they could only press the big red button on the sides of their consoles like bystanders on a sidewalk pressing the traffic button on lightposts-with roughly the same level of effectiveness.
the captain returned to shouting mayday calls, since there wasn't much better to do anyways besides yell at the chief for doing fringe shit without his consent; last time that happened, they nearly got sent on a suicide mission. all over some jerry-rigged roasted runt-thigh maker, too. the clanlord was a bitch.
The signal was promptly received by border bouys in the following minutes, a honeycomb of autonomous satellites spaced a few light weeks apart marking an eternal vigil around gaussian space. Immediately upon detection of the anomaly the information was forwarded to the ranking authorities in the area.
The GDAN 9th fleet headed by Admiral Tamadu Tanari and Fleet Marshall Forchet Yahotu which had distributed themselves throughout this sector of dominion space in anticipation of attack from Furrelians, Coronans, Merger… or worse. Regardless they were alerted to the gravitational anomaly and subsequent distress call.
It was common wisdom that any self respecting captain did not venture outside of the safety of dominion space without being apart of one of the large and well guarded cycling trade caravans that ran between their home and a scant few critical destinations. So they knew it was not one of their own. Admiral Tanari was also well aware that the distress calls claiming to be under attack from pirates were often sent by the pirates themselves, often hoping to pray on some unsuspecting samaritan who came to help. This same wisdom was known to the local mining colony, who may have been able to orchestrate a swifter response than the military.
However the Blue Sun mining corporation’s lumber mobile processing ships ticked nearly all the boxes for being the absolute worst ships for a dangerous rescue mission. Slow? Check. Laden with precious minerals and sophisticated processing and manufacturing equipment that a pirate might want to steal? Check. Minimally manned with little in the way of medical supplies or accommodations for taking in extra crew? Check. Unarmed? Motherfucking check.
It was for that reason that admiral Tanari politely declined their offer to help, instead delegating the duty to Commodore Baeumura.
“There was an FTL transition approximately three light hours off from Bouy 71422 and subsequent distress signal. There’s no reason this has to go all the way to high command. Commodore Beaumura, investigate the situation.”
“Aye, boss. It’ll be my pleasure.” The Farrian woman returned with a thick dritonese accent, before delivering a formal bow to her cyborg go’shii superior. He bowed in return before the photorealistic hologram of him faded away. “Right boys…” She turned to her bridge crew and speaking somewhat informally. “You heard the admiral. We’ve got a distress signal, numbers should already be in the system. Take us ta’ condition yellow, I want all hands general quarters. Nodes armed and guns primed ‘f its pirates or the furbags or the scrotum-heads. Docs and eggheads prepped if they’re for real.”
She turned, drawing the hood of her admiral’s robes and mouthing to herself privately, running through her head worst case scenarios. That they might be a small fleet detachment about to blunder into the staging ground for an invasion. “My god… if it’s really an attack… Kragleosha help us.”
She drew a deep breath, clearing her head and pushing the thoughts aside. What would the chances be of such a thing. No. This was to be a simple rescue mission… At worst she would have to put on a stern persona for some pirates who might want to rethink where they sent their false distress signals. She had willingly assumed the burden of leadership for this detachment and the rank of commodore, the responsibility of the crew and this mission was her’s alone.
“Subspace trajectory set.” Her flag-captain reported.
“Engage spinner.”
…
The ship’s exit from subspace was surprisingly graceful. Seeming to expand from nothingness with a sharp crack of exotic particles, distortions in the hull rectifying as they fully transitioned back to the comprehensible third dimension. Several smaller interdictictors and support ships escorted the main battleship. Falconer class, the name “Kragleosha’s Vindication” emblazoned on the bow in scarlet kimbeau half a kilometer tall. The immense battleship eclipsed the light of the nearest star, plunging the stranded vessels into darkness.
“Holdup.” The Commodore ordered. “They may still be bait or terrorists. Protocols are protocols. Get me ’n induction scan and pick up visual scanning for all vectors, and try to raise them on comms. Deploy omnidirectional interdiction to 15 light seconds.”
The sensor officer obliged, sweeping a subspace scan through the unidentified vessels to build high resolution full 3d maps of them, to perhaps ascertain their origin and level of technology… more importantly if the ships they were about to recover concealed strange matter bombs or giant spheres of antimatter and were but a cheeky attempt to take out a dominion battleship. Once completed, the interdiction officer nodded and began orchestrating the deployment of the field.
Her senior communications officer nodded, gesturing to his holographic display he opened all frequencies of tachyonic and radio communications. Disabling encryption and ensuring the universal translation algorithm was engaged. The burly Cauldarion seemed to bark into the mic with a no-nonsense attitude.
“This is the GDAN Kragleosha’s Vindication. We are here in response to a distress signal. Please respond, over.”
well, a battleship sure is one hell of a way to make a first impression.
on the bridge of the Sissy, the captain was busy mulling over the recently rebooted sensors readouts on the main bridge screen, trying to scry what the weird geometrically spaced signals were on the long-range readouts were to no avail; the sudden expansion of something that could block out the sun right in front of all 3 ships, to put it lightly, threw him off guard.
"<<HOLY-!...w-Sensors, how big is that thing?!>>"
"<<Looks to be a cruiser, sir. Unknown allegiance.>>" classification was based on size to the zetyans; the thought of something smaller being powerful wasn't a thought that occurred often in naval doctrine outside of small craft.
"<<Shit.>>"
the message sent by the Gaussians reached the ship just as he was beginning to reach for the interfleet line; the first half rendered unintelligible due to the lack of translation software, then becoming understandable as the translation packets wormed their way into the ship's system.
"<<...right, ok, they're... friendly. Probably. Hopefully.>>" F'gjan said to noone in particular, his mind doing laps to try and figure out what he would do next.
meanwhile, the twin sloops stood on guard; they wouldn't be much in their damaged state, but they were atleast something, and that much was good.
what little visual feed the Sissy could provide was activated and fed between the trio; some questioned why these unknowns put so many flashy lights on their vessels, most just waited in baited anticipation for the captain to do something.
that 'something' happened when, after some internal arguments with himself and wondering whether they should just turn tail and come back another day(preferably with more ships), F'gjan reached for the general broadcast line. the translator, of course, did it's duty.
"kzzt This sis tHe-fuck. ahem This is 'Theg#$%sSissy, of clan Kho'thar, we were ambushed by pirA$%s and require repairs and res%^#$ies, over."
"Scans complete. No WMDs detected." The sensor officer reported.
"Their comms are fucked, but I think they're saying they need repairs and resupply." The Cauldarion said.
"Inform them we're on approach to dock. Take us in slow, we don't want to startle them. Medical evac drones at the ready.” Tanari said, accessing the intuitive holographic controls and brining the battleship into close proximity.
The Cauldarion opened comms.
"Confirm. We are on approach to dock. I repeat we are on approach to dock. Over.”
As the battleship drew nearer, the hangar shutters on the eastward side opened revealing a line of hangars that ran along the cardinal axes of the ship. From the few that did not have their secondary blast shutters opened the ship appeared to be aligned to thrust gravity, at least in those sections. The ship’s reaction thrusters able to produce a surprisingly delicate boil of plasma to carefully match velocities with the drifting vessels.
Several large robotic docking arms around a half-dozen meters in thickness and hundreds in length that sat flush with the outer hull unfurled and extended, clasping hold of the cargo skiff with magnetic four-fingered hands. Only a pair were needed to collect each of the combat sloops. Finding the external airlocks the arms carefully adjusted the orientation of the ships such that a gangway could connect the two. The docking mechanisms were incompatible but this appeared to be of little consequence as high pressure airbags around the airlock aperture inflated to create a seal.
When the airlock opened there was a loud hiss as a rush of fresh oxygen filled the alien ship followed by a spray of white mist carrying a salty but vaguely pleasant aroma. This was followed by several small drones, approximately the size of softballs which darted around the ship with blinding fast speed on miniature plasma thrusters, sweeping every open corridor and room they could find with neon-blue scanning beams. Then came a thundering march of heavy foot taels as around three dozen quarter-ton war droids entered double-file, accompanied by more of the small drones hovering above their shoulders. Taking up defensive positions at corners and exits to the area immediately opposite the airlock, laser sights swept the area, but they did not seem aggressive.
They were followed around a half dozen individuals of varying shapes and sizes, all in tawny and silver combat suits and more drones. These appeared to be walking beds which trotted in place on four legs before switching to small spherical wheels, arranging themselves into neat formation.The individuals had their weapons holstered, though the droids did not as they began making their way to the bridge.
as they began the docking process, many on the zetyan side breathed sighs of relief; finally, they would be able to get help after what felt like hours of drifting. upon the bridge of the Sissy, the good captain watched the only functioning hangar bay cam in bated-if mildly concerned-wait, to see what their newfound saviors would look like.
what he expected to see coming through the airlock was medical teams, supply teams, maybe a few soldiers-such precautions were not unexpected.
what he did not expect was, to him and his cohorts, what looked like a full on ship capturing operation beginning in his hangar bay.
the hangar bay was relatively empty, save for a dead body and some loose shipping crates of ammunition. there were 4 elevators-1, 2 on each side of a decently large entryway into an equally sized hall. deeper in, it looked as if it had been hit by penetrative rounds from whoever these stranger's assailants were, or if not that then generally swiss-cheese'd by something fairly massive-easy shortcuts to other sections of the ship, if you could manage the sharp edges and exposed wires.
there was a reason for the rather cold welcome; everyone in fighting condition was either making sure their dying didn't die in medbay, managing the megafuser/engines or waiting in the bridge, and the ones that weren't were either getting patched up in medbay, being fed to the quick incinerator as cadavers or being sent on their asses towards wherever needed bodies.
ah well, only two ways to go. only, what was that odd 'doot' sound coming from over there?
-
F'gjan stared impotently at the camera feed, his hands now unconsciously gripping tightly on the railing he was previously only leaning upon.
a flurry of emotions went through his head, the irrational thoughts he normally had now bolstered by the sudden rush of chemicals, adrenaline and what-have-yous in his brain. the only things preventing him from calling out a code red and ordering everyone to arms was a mixture of both some slight optimism he still had regarding the boarders, and the fact that he doubted he had enough zets to fight them in the first place.
his being too focused on his thoughts may have contributed as well, though. it almost drowned out one of the newer guys shaking his shoulder.
"<<Ey, Boss! Snap out of it!>>" was what caught his attention, piercing through a long monologue about how he was had and how now he was fucked, blah blah blah.
"<<AH-eh, uh-fuck. What? What is it?>>"
"<<The hell do we do now, sir?>>"
a good question, and one he could only placate the FNG with by saying a half-hearted 'was asking that myself...'. thankfully, broken out of his little trance, he began to think a little more clearly and slightly more optimistically. maybe they weren't going to hijack the ship, and he was just overthinking things and he'd live to kill another day. this changed to trying to think of ways to contact them while they were aboard to find out why they brought so many soldiers, going over everything but the most obvious way and, humorously, greatly misjudging how long a distance of 3.5 kilometers is. his memory was thankfully jogged by his eyes wandering over to the intership comms line.
"<<..Is the cargo buzzer still working?>>" he asked after a few seconds of mulling over, getting a response in the form of the FNG picking up the line and doing the testing buzz, before offering the mic to the now slightly less stressed captain.
he is thanked for his service by the captain promptly mashing the shit out of the call button.
The drones began navigating the breaches through the inner bulkheads, gradually consolidating a holographic map of the interior of the ship for the boarders. When one arrived in the medical bay, two of the soldiers seemed to converse briefly before more medical drones poured through in addition to yet another form of drone. This one seemed to resemble a modified skateboard of all things, two spherical wheels and a standing platform in the middle. The others resembled the walking (or rolling in this case) beds but instead laden with supplies. Once they arrived they turned and headed down the hallway like a fleet of emergency vehicles rushing to a disaster scene.
In the hangar where the others assembled they initially didn’t seem alerted to the buzzer. Instead they seemed to briefly converse. One of the small airborne drones swept it with a scanning beam, tracing the conduit up to the ceiling of the hangar. One of them walked over and tentatively pressed the button.
“Ya’man?”
It was a female voice, given a robotic quality by the external microphone of the armor and further distorted by the cargo buzzer. She had a sweet singsong voice underneath it all, but spoke a stern no-nonsense inflection. Apparently she had misspoken the first part in a native tongue rather than basic.
“Ahem… Can you hear me? Who is this? Where are you located? Do you need help?”
"<<Oh, oh good, this thing still has audio, good. Yeah. Great, even. light chuckle>>" said the captain's voice in Zettish from the slightly damaged buzzer, a sort of throaty, trashy animalistic frothing with some bits of actual language haphazardly shoved into it's many cracks and crevices.
Then, in the background, that same voice can then be heard asking "<<...what the fuck did they even say??>>" [somewhat muffled speaking from another zet intersperses the dialogue] "<<That was-oh, it's not...? Oh. Uh, d-do we have a translator? Like one of the balls or something? Wher-oh. Ok. Bring it here.>>" [rustling and stomping sounds] "<<Right, say that again?>>"
Meanwhile, as F'gjan operated the cargo buzzer, the second-in-command took the time to give some early warning to the parts of the ship with people in them using another ball drone as a sort of fancy texter by sending voice messages through it to various ball drones and forcing them to bark out tts conversions of that message-they had three spare models charging in the bridge, might as well use what you can. It would definitely help if-or, more likely, when- the soldier drones came around; judging by how the medbay cams displayed it, the quick arrival and departure of the orbioid floater nearly had people reaching for their guns. Last thing anyone needed was to screw themselves out of getting needed help at the best time for said help.
Hearing chattering from above and recording it, she routed the chatter through the ship's translation matrix... the one they had sent them with the initial hail. A simple affair with a few intuitive gestures within her exoskeleton.
<<There is no need for that. You have already given us the translation matrix.>> The microphone roughly transcribed her voice into Zettish. Her phonetics were stilted and computerized to say the least, with odd gaps to compensate for the differences in word length and pronunciation and the occasional moment where the computer took just a bit longer. But stilted communication was vastly better than none at all. <<Who is this? Where are you located? Do you need help?">>
Meanwhile the medics had arrived in the packed medical bay. They too had linked to the ship's computer through their exos, and had far more complex questions about the biology of the aliens which lay before them as well as taking scans, requesting of the doctors in the medical room to know which drugs would be compatible with their biology. Being a civilization that had no less than 7 carbon-based species not counting hybrids of ancerious natives, their hope was that at least a few among their vast assortment of medicines which would be compatible.
"<<Uh-...w-um...c-captain. Bridge. Send help.>>" The words stumbled out of his mouth independent of his line of thoughts; if it wasn't already scattered and fuzzy with how the good captain's emotional rollercoaster was going this evening, his brain might've complained.
The medical bay, meanwhile was in quite a rush, with various crew members and ball-shaped drones with platters of drugs going from bed to bed and administering what could charitably be called the bare minimum of care. Those with broken limbs/fingers/etc. had them gratuitously unbroken then/or put in makeshift slings and then practically booted out to elsewhere, others were getting quickly wrapped up with bandages in various places or having their wounds sprayed with medical foam before also being shoved out, and a spare few were undergoing quick and dirty surgery for internal injuries, either through large robotic surgeon stations or with various actual doctors(disconcertingly, without any adequate protection beyond gloves and masks).
The Gaussian scans would reveal, beyond the interior biology of the zets and how much some of them could complain to anyone in earshot, that a lot of the patients present had cardiovascular drugs and painkillers pumping through their system. For the inquiries, only a few doctors had an adequate answer to most of the Gaussian questions; the other 'doctors' just seemed to be conscripted crew members whose first response was to either give them the cold shoulder or(regarding medicine) to practically shove nearby drugs and/or syringes at them. Either way, they get their answers-from what they see and hear, they seem similar to humans in what they can and cannot take medically.
<<We’ll be right there. Just hold on.>>
The remaining troopers got onboard their skimmers and began making their way up to the bridge. Within a few minutes they had arrived.
“Marshall Yahotu. We’re heading up to the bridge now.”
“Good. Commodore Beaumura will want to speak with their captian personally and arrange to get them back into a friendly dockyard.”
Upon arriving on the bridge, the squad leader, her subordinates and the associated war droids looked about, as if to say “where’s the emergency?”
<<Help is here. What’s going on?>>
…
The medical teams went right to work with this knowledge in hand. Many of them were not professional doctors or augmentators either, simply the two members of the squad which happened to be trained in field medicine. In spite of the panicked atmosphere in the medical room they remained relatively calm, thanks in part due to their training and their relative detachment to the individuals involved. They had brought their own cargo which included clotting agents, healing stims and painkillers which they freely administered, and went to work assisting however they could.
Their arrival in the bridge was, to put it lightly, fairly anticlimactic.
The majority of the crew in the bridge was hardly even injured, sans a few who had broken limbs in slings and makeshift casts. A few consoles were damaged, but nothing too major. In fact, the only other person in the room besides the breakies who appeared to need help was the good captain, who was curled up below the main bridge consoles with a hundred-yard stare on his face-as best as one could guess, the best thing to do was to give him a couch to lay down on and some dude for him to vent to.
"<<..those guys. Help those guys. Broken limbs. Whatever their names are. Them.>>" He sort of half mumbled the words as he pointed loosely at his newfound scapegoats. Inside his head a million questions, comments and concerns burned in his head like thermite set alight, combined with a shattered ego that was a hand-me-down from anyone born in clan Kho'thar. It would repair itself, given time-shame he didn't accept that.
In the medbay, the gauss medicines were found wanting, and eagerly snatched up by many 'doctors' as they set to work upon their patients. To this end, the gaussian medics would encounter an irritating problem-for a concerning number of patients, the zetyan doctors worked too fast to provide adequate help in time before the patient was sent out. Thankfully, there was still more who could receive help, and plenty of new patients rolling in.
The squad leader turned to her subordinates and nodded. They split off around the bridge. There was little they could do aside from adiminister pain meds and healing stims that they could carry. Sure a reconstructor bed could have done the job better and quicker, but they were no augmentators.
With that more individuals began to board the ship, quickly following the same route up to the bridge. One of the individuals bore red-painted armor, escorted by the others. As more individuals began to filter onto the bridge two of them held sprayers. Without asking permission the began to spray down the whole bridge. Whatever the mixture was it seemed to be a harmless mist, smelling of a salty ocean and sweet flowers. Through the mist one of the small hovering drones was deployed shortly thereafter, sweeping the room with scanning beams and lasers.
Seemingly having finally ascertained that it was safe, the leader stepped forward. The helmet of her exo-suit came apart, the seamless panels unfolding on an intricate series of mechanical latches and hinges, folding away into her collar. She looked to be a human, or nearly human. Tall, with chestnut skin and sapphire blue eyes. Her hair was striped like a mackerel tabby, alternating between black and bronze and tied back in a tight bun to fit within the helmet of her exoskeleton. One of the small drones lingered in front of her face, cancelling her actual voice through destructive interferance and translating as she spoke.
<<I’m Commodore Beaumura.>> The woman bowed. <<The captian of this ship. I understand you require repairs and escort back to your home system, and have been sent on the order or the GDAN High command to assist you by any means necessary. Could you please provide me with the appropriate navigational data, and if possible, contact your superiors and inform them that we will be escorting you on your return. As this is a first contact situation, on your arrival we may need to make contact with prime minister to establish more formal diplomatic relations. I have already ordered a tug to assist in your transit. It will be arriving within the hour. Do you have any questions or concerns?>>
The misty spray was regarded by the Zettish crew with an aloof, but genuine curiousity; such cosmetic sprays had gone extinct before even their Great Awakening, and they were so used to the grungy, industrial, nose-decaying smell of their everything that the introduction of something sweet-smelling was, to them, not too dissimilar to seeing a new shade of color.
Meanwhile, as the commodore was talking, the captain took a bit to digest the info, the mopey stare wearing off as older questions were replaced with analysis of the commodore's words. His inner thoughts rattled off at him in single file order, a semi-reflex turned skill from having to deal with the ever-dreaded bureaucratics in his position.
["Learned her name. Weird hair thingy. Telling me why she's here blah blah blah move on i know. Nav data. Don't know that. Shit's complicated. Tell them to pester the nav guys. Maybe engineering if no nav guys. They manage the drones. Contact superiors? Say we beat the pirates. Tell no-one but fleetmaster the whole truth. He's good.-even if he named this goddamn ship in the first place-First contact, talk with higher ups. Ok, standard I guess. Prime minister-
...Prime mi-?
Fuck it, go with the flow. Prime ministers exist now. Formal whoever whatevers. Tug in an hour. It does tug things. Like tug. Questions? Too many. You say nothing. Pester nav guys, lie to big guys at home. Say the things, F'gjan."]
And so he would, getting up as he did so and turning towards the consoles.
"<<No, no questions here. I'll try to send messages to local command. I don't know the nav data. Pester the navigation board, they'll know. Ask how to get to 'Gh'hala'.>>"
He then looked to the various pockets of crew around the bridge, and shouted at them. "<<RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE WITH NAVOPS!>>"
3 hands. F'gjan looked back to the Commodore.
"<<...if they can't squeal, yell at me.>>" With that, he began to fiddle with the consoles, calling over a comms op to help him.
<<Very well. I hate to cut my stay short, but if you wish to bypass the formalities I will return to attend to my ship. Show my team your kindness.>>
The commodore gave a bow as her lead engineering team stepped forward. She turned to leave, her helmet reforming over her face. Judging by the shapes of their exo suits they were not all human. Some were only about a meter in height, a long tail-like protrusion trailing their head. Two of them bypassed the nav crew entirely proceeding to the consoles behind them.
Removing a series of small devices approxomately the size of a stick of lip balm or thumb drive, complete with a cap which needed removal. They searched for a place to plug them in, be it a proper port of some kind or merely a damaged or cracked section in the console. The devices when unsheathed contained dozens of tiny and delicate mechanical arms which proceeded to seek out points of contact within the electrical systems. Once they had found an interface the arms seized up, soldering themselves solid. Holographic screens projected from the opposite end, displaying dizzying jumbles of computer code and random flashes at a breakneck speed, each frame of the hologram only visible for a blink. The signs of the ship's Cyber specialist Cies working at lightspeed attempting to reconcile with an otherwise a completely alien computer system that was no doubt structured and coded in a fundamentally different matter. However their intentions were more than to simply read the ships navigational charts, she needed to call and retrieve the ship’s entire data log to be analyzed and decoded. If they were simple The Commodore still held some suspicions about their true intentions and origins, and wished to have more to go off than the zetyan’s word.
All the while the Go’shii got the attention of the crew, withdrawing his own helmet. His fur was a leopard print and his eyes an icy light blue, and he looked relatively bored with a ‘Let’s get this over with’ tone of speaking. He produced a modestly sized hologram from the palm of his exoskeleton, a map of the Ancerious galaxy yet with all of the sectors highlighted. A ping emanated from a spot in the mid south of the galactic south where they were presently located. The tiny drone maneuvered about, hovering in front of his face and translating him much as it had done for the commodore.
<<Where in the galaxy are you from?>>
As she left, F'gjan was secretly relieved to not be the exact center of attention anymore, though now newly refocused his thoughts shifted to both book-cover judgement of the gaussians(if anyone could read his mind, they'd think he had a grudge against short people), internally raging at the console/his assistant for not doing what he wanted them to do, and considering all the places he could go resume his nervous ego breakdown once this was done with as he prepared to send his message to the local Gh'halan command.
Bit by bit, byte by byte, Cies' connection would begin to yield results from across the publicly available board, everything from the lunch menu for the day to the aforementioned navigational data, perhaps some of the most colorful chat logs she'd seen, engineering/combat logs(concerningly, the former was being updated every few seconds), and more. A great deal of data, definitely more than needed, but there's only so many ways with so many languages that you can write a synonym to if();then(). Nothing a filter can't handle.
A few members of the nav crew eyed the mediocines(and generally most of their gaussian crew, but the midgets more so) with a suspicious, analytically judging gaze as they worked, though they didn't really suspect anything specific-from what one could figure, they were just doing electrical repairs of some kind. They were just runt-sized, and runts weren't exactly celebrity material.
For the Go'shii, the one to answer his question, or perhaps test his patience would be what seemed to be a senior navigational officer, who was unwillingly pushed forth after a debate that lasted the very long time of 15 seconds. After mulling over the map for a few seconds, with a few uncomfortable glances downward at the Go'shii interspersed between said seconds, he pointed to an area just a little below the ping, affirming his choice with a vague "<<there..ish..>>". His head made a slight tilt back to his comrades as he waited for a response.
GDAN Kragleosha’s Vindication
“Ci Ambient Star, your report.”
“Mostly just a lot of irrelivant data. We found some jump coodrinates though. Their home territory is actually not far from our own.“
“Alright.” The commodore fidgeted slightly, still somewhat reluctant to partake in this operation. But she knew not if the ones they were helping were fugitives or pirates or escaped convicts and that was not information they were likey to reveal upfront. Even if she hadn’t revealed it, she could at least if questioned, say that she had done her due dilligence to check.
Zeytan lead ship
Once the data dump had finished, the Mediocines had continued their work on the console, though still seemed to be much more stumped by the alien technology. They removed a handful of fried computer boards, taking scans of them before moving on. Without solid replacements there was little they could do besides cause accidental further damage. Before long they became compelled to simply abandon the endeavor and simply cosigned themselves to standing around awaiting further orders.
<<Alright. The tug will be here shortly.>>
The Go’shii turned to the Mediocines who had consigned themselves to sitting about telling jokes in their native language and laughing. A carrier drone approached carrying a hull patch kit. The mediocines looked annoyed, as though they had to do more work.
<<We’re going to enact some basic repairs in the meantime. See if we can’t restore atmospheric pressure in some sections of this ship. Will you be requiring anything else… also are there any customs or conflicts we should be aware of before returning you home, or a more specific locale you would like your ships delivered to?>>
The map zoomed in to a sector of space approximating their territory. Amidst their data dump they had retrieved their territorial boundaries and names of systems.
There was an awkward silence as the zetyan crew looked at each other, save for the nav officer's quiet, but aggressive bantering with one of the guys that pushed him forward as he quickly slinked back into the group of bridge crew. The captain began to speak after a good 10 seconds, saying "<<No, i think we're..uh...>>", but being cut off by the bantering escalating to a full-on argument.
The bridge crew, in turn, focused their attention on the two belligerents, as colorful insults such as "line-eyed crustlicking anal bead dislodged from a whore's ass" and "runty little cankicking runtfucker who shits in other people's ass for a living cause he likes it" began flying around the bridge like bees from a beehive. Without context, it'd be easy to think they were lifelong enemies with how much they soon began to scream at each other-and perhaps they had just became their own arch nemeses, if only for today.
The captain's assistant soon gleefully ditched the role of tech support and practically jogged into the newly-forming fight club ring, joining the rest of the crew as they began to egg on the two soon-to-be-physical combatants hidden within their jeering mass.
F'gjan managed a slight smirk, then turned to the Go'shii captain. "<<Get some crowbars.>>" he remarked dryly, "<<Fistfights are boring.>>" Then, after clicking some buttons and shutting off the console, he bent and sat down while observing the outside of the small fight club ring. He'd sent the message-a curt little thing boiling down to lying they won and that they 'found' some help-so he might as well take a rest and calculate the odds he'd lose his job and respect.
Or arm. Or head.
Either or.
His face and mind discarded their masks and went back to how it was before, self-woe, hundred-yard stare and all. The sounds of punching noises started coming from the ring, competing with the small crowd's cheering to see what could be louder.
The Go'shii let out a grunt, his ear twitching with annoyance as the juvenile insults were exchanged and the fight started. A drone lingered above the crowd surrounding the two fighters to get a better look at their style of hand to hand combat.
"Come in. Lieutenant... did you find out where we're supposed to be taking them? The tug has arrived and they're requesting that I give them jump coordinates for the destination."
"No..." He returned, annoyed. "They seem to have decided to host an impromptu Yah Habanbaraka to decide that. Let's just take them to the border of their space.” He grunted.
"That might not be the wisest idea. If they're anything like the Cauldarions... particularly before their first contact this could be a more volatile situation than we're initially let on. They could be divided into houses or some other form of sub-states. We could just end up dropping them in the hands of some antagonistic house who will just as quickly kill them, and all our efforts to help them would be for naught. My instincts are telling me we should let this fight play out and let them come to that conclusion."
The two Mediocines came back in the room, each one carrying heavy duty military armaments almost bigger than themselves. Rotary belt-fed RPG-launching coilguns.
<<They could fight with these!>> The mediocine said with a snicker.
The Lieutenant snarled at them, wordlessley communicating that if they fought with those… everyone on the bridge would lose. Not that such a thing would have worked anyways; the weapons needed to be connected to a suit of power armor to even fire. The lieutenant had a bit of trouble interpreting if the Captian was being sarcastic or not.
<<You sure... okay?>>
He turned to a severaly damaged console; one well beyond usefulness or repair and drove his four fists deep into the mangled set of wires and electronics, proturbing further sparks and smoke from the depths. Gripping something, the servos of his exosuit whined for a moment before two lengths of conduit tubing broke free. Smashing them together with a deafening clang to get the attention of everyone on the bridge he made his way through the crowd.
He increased the volume on his microphone.
<<If you wish to duel for the destination system, I will be the impartial judge. To the yield… or to incapacitation… whichever comes first.>> With that he tossed the equal lengths of pipe to each combatant visibly, such that they could be caught.
Outside the Tug ship had arrived. Approximately half the length of the battleship it wasn’t an elegant dagger, but rather a long octagonal tower with an engine on the end. It peeled open to reveal a single vast hangar bay along its keel, large enough to swallow all three ships and secure them via a series of mechanical arms.
And catch them the two belligerents did, confusion turning to still-confused-but-agreeable understanding, then to bloodlust as psychotic grins from eye to eye appeared on their faces as they proceeded to resume beating the shit out of each other while the crowd cheered-albeit now with steel, rather than flesh and bone.
The captain-and honestly everyone present-couldn't help but be surprised by the Go'shii lieutenant-no one would've expected him to even consider participate in the impromptu matchup, much less find a weapon for the brawlers. Maybe they weren't so bad after all.
The fight continued for a concerning amount of time, going far beyond "yield" and possibly beyond "incapacitate" as the victorious senior officer delivered some last few hits into his downed opponent's upper back. A primal roar then came from the bowels of his throat, striking a pose while the crowd cheered...
...well, it was a roar for a few seconds. Then it sharply degraded into a stifled, squeaky 'ow' as he clutched somewhere around his left breast and winced in pain. Still, they continued to cheer, even if the winner showed some signs of weakness. Of course, it died down rather fast, and then...
...
Silence. It seemed to be a recurring theme, yet this time it seemed more natural as those present besides the victor began to return to where they were in the bridge, a few congratulating him for the fight. One broke off from the group to halfassedly drag the loser away after a quick game of saying "no you do it" with two other zets, but he stopped before he started when he realized that there was other people to do that and went back.
A few with memory of what the Go'shii said took due notice to the fact that the senior officer wasn't doing much besides sitting down to catch his breath. After some more waiting, one who gave enough of a shit got up and walked over to the officer.
"<<Hey, uh, dude?>>" he asked.
"<<W..what? There something i forgot?>>" replied the officer.
"<<Furry guy wanted to know where to go. Something about a 'destination system'.>>"
"<<..huh? I, I thought you guys gave them the.. the deets on that stuff...>>"
"<<I mean, like, specifically.>>"
"<<Yeah, I thought you guys gave them the deets.>>
"<<Well, he wants clarification, I guess.>>"
"<<Uh... ok? Sure, fine, whatever ᵐʸ ᶠᵘᶜᵏᶦⁿ' ˢᶦᵈᵉˢ ʰᵘʳᵗ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ʷʰʸ ᵈᶦᵈ ʰᵉ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗᵒ ˢᵗʳᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ᵈᵃᵐⁿᶦᵗ>>"
With their little convo over, and the other guy returning to where he was, the senior officer got up and half-limped to a console on the navigational section of the bridge, typing a little on the keyboard and bringing up some text on it's honestly outdated-looking screen, then throwing a quick gesture at the lieutenant with his head, wherever he was at the current time.
A drone simply observed the screen, transmitting the coordinates for translation. As it did, he took pause for a moment. For how new and different these outsiders seemed, they also seemed to act just like Cauldarions after a couple drinks. He was expecting a slightly more… adverse reaction to him going out on a limb and retrieving the tubing with which to fight, but instead seemed to be getting subtle glances of admiration instead. Knowing that such information would be important for how to conduct themselves in furture diplomacy.
The tug had carried on with its docking procedure, the three zeytan vessels thoroughly secured by massive crane arms within its vast interior. The immense hangar bay was shared with a quartet of Indomitable-class cruisers near the rear. For the most part clean; albeit skeletal construction. Small elevators ran vertical and horziontal back and fourth along the walls carrying crates of supplies. It was a far cry to the jet-black expanse of space to have the entire window filled by bluish-white lighting conduits and honeycomb industrial paneling.
“Alright. We’re all set here. All ship’s standby to jump.”
From the inside; the transition into subspace was not even noticable.
<<I’ve just been informed we’re underway to the provided coordinates. We should be arriving within a few hours. In the mean time I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Standard first contact procedure.
Question 1: When was the last time you walked through a doorway?
Question 2: How many internal pentagonal faces can you construct using a platonic icoscahedron?
Question 3: A Nushu is trapped in a box with a box of poison that has a 50% chance of opening. Without looking in the box, is the Nushu dead or alive?
Question 4: Two infinitely long, straight lines converge at exactly two points equidistant from each other. How is this possilbe?
Question 5: The deck of a seafaring ship sits ten meters above the waterline. A dock sits five meters above the waterline. The water rises and the dock is now only one meter above the waterline. How high above the water is the deck of the ship?>>
F'gjan exhibited muted confusion by what the Go'shii said-a few hours in FTL? 'The process surely doesn't take that long', he thought, and questions like 'was theirs just slower somehow?' drifted through his head. He felt little, if any drive to voice his concerns, however-it was one among many that he'd rather keep bottled up.
Not that it would trouble him long-it was quickly overtaken and washed away by the 5-part questionnaire.
He took some time to ruminate on his responses after the Go'shii asked his questions-even if half that time was spent wondering what a nushu was, then giving up and pretending he knew-then gave his response.
1: "<<An hour ago. Hour and thirty tops.>>"
2: "<<...uhhh... t-three? Four? I dunno.>>"
3: "<<If it's a stupid 'nushu', it's dead.>>"
4: "<<They cross. Or they're the same line... or... something.>>"
5: "<<6 meters. Right?>>"
Simple answers, but perhaps it was to be expected by this point.
The captain paused as he waited to see if the Go'shii had anything else to say, scrutinizing his ears and wondering what the tuft on the end was for while he awaited his response-anything to take his mind off of the circumstances. At least he'd be in familiar territory in a... few hours. The thought was odd.
<<"I see...>> He said, contemplating the answers thoroughly. None of them were correct. <<Thank you for your time... I'm sorry I don't believe I caught your name in all the confusion... your people do have names right? Do forgive my manners, I am Lieutenant 6th degree Feldi Gulimira. There is one other thing...">> He said, grabbing a communicator wired to a high powered transmitter from a droid and passing it to the Captian. <<"Given the extenuating circumstances of your return, I would like for you to make an announcement to the system upon our arrival, simply to provide assurance to the local authorities and legitimize our assistance... Our good commodore will make her own announcement and give you the all clear to speak immediately after.">>
[2 hours later]
The fleet arrived at the edge of the system, the half-dozen escorts followed by the battleship and the tug. Moments after arriving the ship let out a hail.
<<This is Commodore Beaumura of the GDAN Kragleosha's Vindication. This is not an attack. We are escorting the Zettish ship "Sissy" along with its accompanying skiffs back to friendly territory after it fell under attack by pirates.>>
The belly of the tug hastily opened and began to lower the ship into open space, giving credence to the commodore's claims.
<<You're on!>> Lieutenant Feldi urged.
"<<Oh. Yeah, r-right. F'gjan. Captain F'gjan Y'hola.>>" He merely nodded with the rest of what Feldi said, forcing a tentative smile while he listened. Inside, he was dreading having to personally talk to the rest of the system, but again he tried his best not to show his emotions to the foreigner. It'd only take a few more hours...
--
Reaching the given coordinates, the system itself was a bit sparse planets-wise, only two lifeless protoplanets and one normal, if uninhabited planet, a decently large station slowly orbiting around it. Despite the rather spartan nature of the area, it seemed to be bustling, as tiny lights went to and fro in slightly askew lines.
Onboard the station, as the bridge crew were busy directing various cargo ships and military ships to drydock, the onboard FTL sensors received a signature far, far different than all the others. As the entire sensory operations team was alerted to the fact that yes, there was now about 7 ships that just warped in, and as they prepared to yell at comms at full volume to hail the newcomers, the hail announcement was broadcast by the Vindication.
To everyone in the system.
The ensuing hail of confused counter-hails, thankfully, was absorbed by the Sissy, with only a few going to the Vindication herself; various skewed selection priorities meant that friendly ships were higher above anyone else, and the Sissy was the first thing locked onto rather than the Vindication. What a hail of... well, hails it was, however, a flurry of messages from various other captains that could be split into three categories based on the message content:
1: "<<who tf are you people>>"
2: "<<those guys? [laughter]>>"
3: "<<shut up i'm doing shit rn>>"
Eventually, after roughly 15-20 seconds of constant radio chatter, it was succinctly stopped by F'gjan and his new toy-putting ones mouth directly next to the microphone and shouting ["<<SHUT THE FUCK UP!>>"] usually works pretty well at doing that.
["<<Holy shit. This is the Sissy. This is F'gjan. These guys are friendlies. Shut the fuck up. Ad'rosa Station, establish a line, please. Rest of you, save it for when we dock.>>"]
As the words exited his mouth, and his hand turned off the communicator, he suddenly seemed rather surprised with himself, muttering "<<..w-wow. I.. didn't know i had that in me...>>"
He had little time to reflect on himself, however; the main display in the bridge suddenly flickered to a view from inside the station, the face of a comms op greeting all present.
"<<Sissy, this is Ad'rosa. Line is open, other broadcasts should be silenced for now. Thanks for shutting them up. So, uh...
...yeah, who are these guys?>>"
"<<I dunno, we warped somewhere after dealing with the pirates and they just kinda... showed up? You got the message, right?>>"
"<<Yeah, we did. But we were expecting you guys a few hours ago.>>" He did some typing as he spoke, presumably bringing the message from earlier up.
"<<That's because, uh...
...i'm not sure why.>>" He suddenly remembered Feldi standing near him. "<<Oh, uh, r-right, you, you can explain it better than me.>>"
He then backed up a little, letting the lieutenant come into view.
The Lieutenant rolled his eyes. What sort of Captian couldn’t talk himself out of a situation like this? What sort of station controller would be more concerned about a freighter being a few hours late than a pirate attack and a first contact with an entirely new civilization. They were bizarre. Informal. Brutish might have been a bit of a stretch as they did seem to be reasonable beneath all of that.
<<His ship reportedly fell under attack by pirates and made a blind jump to our border. It took us some time to provide aid to the crew and ascertain where to escort her. She is still badly damaged as we only enacted the most immediate of repairs. If I can, I would like to request some tugs or emergency ships be deployed for their aid such that we can depart.>>
"<<Well... yeah, that's what he sent us in the message. I meant more... eh, whatever.>>" He shrugged, then turned left to someone offscreen, shouting "<<Hey R'ylah, get some tenders out there, will you?>>" He then turned back after hearing this 'R'ylah's' confirmation-or atleast, what sounded like it.
"<<Tugs should be heading out. You can release the ships from the, uh... He took a moment to scrutinize the Gaussian tug on cameras. ...long tube ship when you're ready.>>"
Meanwhile, a few underside hangars on the station began to open, releasing a small group of tender sloops from it's various luminous maws. The small swarm of steel then headed towards the Gaussian fleet's location, 3 sets of magnetic arms unfolding from phantom plates on their sides as they proceeded forwards.
As he monitored the progress of the tug group on the sensor readouts, he also began to type up something, pausing for a moment before looking back to the main display.
"<<Uh, just for the record, you guys are from the...?>>"
<<This is Commodore Beaumura of the GDAN Kragleosha's Vindication...>> She paused for a moment, realizing she had repeated herself. <<We are representative of the Gauss Dominion Astronavy.>> She gestured to work her control console, and began compiling a sizable data packet autonomously translated into Zettish.
The first stage of the datapacket displayed a number of key star systems and their relative positions in the galaxy. Each one briefly displayed the stars and planets in their orbit.
Assiduous
Kon Galon
Tausangrool
New Toplin
Honkaga
Manatari
Deg Yahzan
Kojunfourge
Then came a list of frequencies for tachyonic communication; listed out as urgent military and diplomatic matters. Either used for direct planet-to-planet communications and frequencies applicable to ship-to-ship communications. This was followed up by a registry of all actively serving GDAN vessels; around 2300 in total, then a registry of privately registered vessels, nearly a hundred times as many. Even great passenger liners and lumbering cargo freighters that never left a handful of star systems.
"Madame Commodore. We've just received urgent orders from Galactic Admiral Sulumai Luss. We've just received a declaration of war from the Furrelian Union and we are to proceed to Manatari to reinforce the defense fleet."
<<"I am sorry, but I must be going on short notice. In due time a diplomat will be arriving to formalize relations.>>
The data-packet was duly received by the station, silently downloading itself into the archives and asserting itself amongst datastreams and file readouts. A console offscreen caught the operator's gaze, his eyes silently skimming over a datastream before returning to his typing.
"<<Uh... thanks. We'll get someone ready too.>>" The operator made mental notes to compile a small infopacket for this 'dominion's diplomats when they came back, giving a curt wave as Feldi announced his abrupt farewells.
F'gjan, meanwhile, slightly winced at the operator's statement, practically feeling the op's gaze turn to him. It was not an uncommon occurrence to appoint whoever came into contact with supposed unknowns first as 'the guy' for future contact at a whim, and while part of him knew the target was already painted the second he caught sight of these odd foreigners, a far larger part wished he could scrape it off somehow. He could direct the spotlight onto another guy, maybe, or stall for time...
...
'...hey, that might work!' he thought, suddenly reaching a rather rushed conclusion. He began to turn to Feldi, already compiling a list of potential questio-
Oh.
Alas, for the lieutenant had announced his intent to leave. The local clanlord would have to hear his pleas against a promotion instead.
As he muttered his farewells and thanks to the lieutenant, and returned to the main console board, F'gjan hoped the words he spoke wouldn't fall on deaf ear holes.
----
In the vacuum, the tender swarm neared the Gaussian tender ship, silently beginning to form a crowd near where each of the three ships were drifting, like giant piranhas waiting to collectively swarm prey. A few captains sent transmissions from ship to ship, correcting positions of errant tenders or just making small talk.
As quickly as they had arrived, the gaussian relief forces departed the Sissy with the same efficiency and coordinated speed with which they had arrived. Picked up by a handful of shuttles they left; along with all of their equipment. Seeing that the ship was now in safe hands; one by one the ship's transited into subspace with a flash.
---
Not long after a diplomat did make contact via their long range Tachyonic communication. The diplomat being a Cauldarion; overweight but still well muscled and standing with a large ceremonial battleaxe.
<<"Gentlemen... I am Representative Gabuk'tur. I will bypass the formalities typical of these diplomatic meetings. I know our people have only known of one another's existence so breifly. But I come to you in a time of need. A malignant empire threatens our home and has burned our outermost colony. Our good commodore Beaumura was willing to lend assistance and asked for nothing in return. Now I ask of you to return the favor. I understand it may sound as though I am asking of you disproportionate favor in return. But in truth, all I ask is that you send someone of authority to attend our diplomatic conference.>>
The Sissy received an unceremonious tug into the station's confines, the crew being taken off to debriefing or to be tinkered with by medical personnel. Her captain would certainly have a more interesting reputation now, and the fickle miss fortune would see fit it wouldn't be the last he saw of the Gauss Dominion.
--
The Gaussian message found it's way to the same station, passed from surprised comms op, to less surprised comms op, to binary computer, and finally arriving through networks of wire and data into the office computer of the local station overseer. It was played, filed, and noted, and then overshadowed by a station-wide urgent request-three men needed in the overseer's office, one called by name.
And three did come, each from differing clans yet sharing the same ship. A senior officer, the captain's second-in, and the captain himself-by no means the true people of authority Mr. Gabuk'tur would expect, but despite their vigorous complaints about, well, everything, the overseer would not hear it.
Briefed, given orders, and sent out on a sloop on their asses, their destination was no longer their habs, but some weird place they never heard of. A simple response dashed far ahead of them, data packet and voice recording intertwined through vacuum and steel and wire.
"<<Your request is accepted, Representative. We have ours on the way, they should arrive shortly.
By the way, you gave us your info, so here's ours.>>"
Off to Tausangrool.
in a random system near the edges of Gaussian territory, a seeming gravitational anomaly would appear, then expand to quadruple it's size setting off any sensors within the system, as 3 damaged ships practically flung themselves through a tunnel into what looked like a corridor of stars-a cargo corvette and 2 sloops-each varying in damaged-ness from 'i took a couple shots to the squishy places' to 'i am like 20 holes away from being swiss cheese' and leaking a trail of smoke, up to a point where the anomaly once was, replaced only with a half-circle hole in the gas
on the interior bridge of the corvette, christened 'The Sissy' in Zettish, the local captain F'gjan was a very unhappy zet. his fleet was ambushed by a massive freeboot hulk(10km long if he had to guess, practically a cruiser), he'd lost a majority of the ships there, and now they were in the middle of god knows where.
"<<This is 'The Sissy' of Clan Kho'thar, we have been ambushed by pirates and require assistance, over!>>" *he shouted into the comms mic, to noone and everyone in particular. to him, he was worse off than fish being shot in a barrel-atleast there, the gun might get wet.
"<<Oy, you guys in the back, gimme readouts on how fucked our fuser is!>>" he then shouted into the intership comms
"<<We's fixed the holes in it, boss! Should 'old for a good day or so!>>" replied(presumably) the engineering chief
"<<Warp computing's working fine with the spiffy new feature, too.>>" replied someone else
"<<Hu-What new feature?!>>"
"<<The 'random warp' scripts you had the chief work up for the drones. Remember?>>"
"<<NO!>>" replied F'gjan, his face contorted in confusion and stress; his crew was in enough disarray, now wasn't the time to learn about the engi chief fabricating work orders. whatever, he'd get the stick later.
his attention shifted back to the comms board in front of the standing area, and he picked up the interfleet line. "<<Oy, you two holding up?>>"
"<<Yes.>>" replied sloop one
"<<%^E$#%R^#$A%>>" replied sloop two. shit, their comms rays got drained going through, some wires for their jumper must've gotten fucked in the chaos.
"<<Uh-right. You two focus recharge to weapons, I'll get the sensors up and running. You get that?>>"
"<<On it.>>" "<<$Y%#$^C>>"
"<<Good. Sissy out.>>" he replied, and his attention focused to the intership commsmen
"<<You guys, send orders to engineering. Prioritize sensors section recharge over all else until they come back online. Can't get caught on our asses. Shouldn't take more than 15 seconds.>>"
the order heard, the one with the functioning communications line began to send orders, the one who didn't got a nice tone in f sharp through the speaker and giving him a nice tinnitus surprise. the sensors operators began to feverishly find ways to reboot their systems, since they were so used to the jumper generator punching the consoles online for them they could only press the big red button on the sides of their consoles like bystanders on a sidewalk pressing the traffic button on lightposts-with roughly the same level of effectiveness.
the captain returned to shouting mayday calls, since there wasn't much better to do anyways besides yell at the chief for doing fringe shit without his consent; last time that happened, they nearly got sent on a suicide mission. all over some jerry-rigged roasted runt-thigh maker, too. the clanlord was a bitch.
The signal was promptly received by border bouys in the following minutes, a honeycomb of autonomous satellites spaced a few light weeks apart marking an eternal vigil around gaussian space. Immediately upon detection of the anomaly the information was forwarded to the ranking authorities in the area.
The GDAN 9th fleet headed by Admiral Tamadu Tanari and Fleet Marshall Forchet Yahotu which had distributed themselves throughout this sector of dominion space in anticipation of attack from Furrelians, Coronans, Merger… or worse. Regardless they were alerted to the gravitational anomaly and subsequent distress call.
It was common wisdom that any self respecting captain did not venture outside of the safety of dominion space without being apart of one of the large and well guarded cycling trade caravans that ran between their home and a scant few critical destinations. So they knew it was not one of their own. Admiral Tanari was also well aware that the distress calls claiming to be under attack from pirates were often sent by the pirates themselves, often hoping to pray on some unsuspecting samaritan who came to help. This same wisdom was known to the local mining colony, who may have been able to orchestrate a swifter response than the military.
However the Blue Sun mining corporation’s lumber mobile processing ships ticked nearly all the boxes for being the absolute worst ships for a dangerous rescue mission. Slow? Check. Laden with precious minerals and sophisticated processing and manufacturing equipment that a pirate might want to steal? Check. Minimally manned with little in the way of medical supplies or accommodations for taking in extra crew? Check. Unarmed? Motherfucking check.
It was for that reason that admiral Tanari politely declined their offer to help, instead delegating the duty to Commodore Baeumura.
“There was an FTL transition approximately three light hours off from Bouy 71422 and subsequent distress signal. There’s no reason this has to go all the way to high command. Commodore Beaumura, investigate the situation.”
“Aye, boss. It’ll be my pleasure.” The Farrian woman returned with a thick dritonese accent, before delivering a formal bow to her cyborg go’shii superior. He bowed in return before the photorealistic hologram of him faded away. “Right boys…” She turned to her bridge crew and speaking somewhat informally. “You heard the admiral. We’ve got a distress signal, numbers should already be in the system. Take us ta’ condition yellow, I want all hands general quarters. Nodes armed and guns primed ‘f its pirates or the furbags or the scrotum-heads. Docs and eggheads prepped if they’re for real.”
She turned, drawing the hood of her admiral’s robes and mouthing to herself privately, running through her head worst case scenarios. That they might be a small fleet detachment about to blunder into the staging ground for an invasion. “My god… if it’s really an attack… Kragleosha help us.”
She drew a deep breath, clearing her head and pushing the thoughts aside. What would the chances be of such a thing. No. This was to be a simple rescue mission… At worst she would have to put on a stern persona for some pirates who might want to rethink where they sent their false distress signals. She had willingly assumed the burden of leadership for this detachment and the rank of commodore, the responsibility of the crew and this mission was her’s alone.
“Subspace trajectory set.” Her flag-captain reported.
“Engage spinner.”
…
The ship’s exit from subspace was surprisingly graceful. Seeming to expand from nothingness with a sharp crack of exotic particles, distortions in the hull rectifying as they fully transitioned back to the comprehensible third dimension. Several smaller interdictictors and support ships escorted the main battleship. Falconer class, the name “Kragleosha’s Vindication” emblazoned on the bow in scarlet kimbeau half a kilometer tall. The immense battleship eclipsed the light of the nearest star, plunging the stranded vessels into darkness.
“Holdup.” The Commodore ordered. “They may still be bait or terrorists. Protocols are protocols. Get me ’n induction scan and pick up visual scanning for all vectors, and try to raise them on comms. Deploy omnidirectional interdiction to 15 light seconds.”
The sensor officer obliged, sweeping a subspace scan through the unidentified vessels to build high resolution full 3d maps of them, to perhaps ascertain their origin and level of technology… more importantly if the ships they were about to recover concealed strange matter bombs or giant spheres of antimatter and were but a cheeky attempt to take out a dominion battleship. Once completed, the interdiction officer nodded and began orchestrating the deployment of the field.
Her senior communications officer nodded, gesturing to his holographic display he opened all frequencies of tachyonic and radio communications. Disabling encryption and ensuring the universal translation algorithm was engaged. The burly Cauldarion seemed to bark into the mic with a no-nonsense attitude.
“This is the GDAN Kragleosha’s Vindication. We are here in response to a distress signal. Please respond, over.”
well, a battleship sure is one hell of a way to make a first impression.
on the bridge of the Sissy, the captain was busy mulling over the recently rebooted sensors readouts on the main bridge screen, trying to scry what the weird geometrically spaced signals were on the long-range readouts were to no avail; the sudden expansion of something that could block out the sun right in front of all 3 ships, to put it lightly, threw him off guard.
"<<HOLY-!...w-Sensors, how big is that thing?!>>"
"<<Looks to be a cruiser, sir. Unknown allegiance.>>" classification was based on size to the zetyans; the thought of something smaller being powerful wasn't a thought that occurred often in naval doctrine outside of small craft.
"<<Shit.>>"
the message sent by the Gaussians reached the ship just as he was beginning to reach for the interfleet line; the first half rendered unintelligible due to the lack of translation software, then becoming understandable as the translation packets wormed their way into the ship's system.
"<<...right, ok, they're... friendly. Probably. Hopefully.>>" F'gjan said to noone in particular, his mind doing laps to try and figure out what he would do next.
meanwhile, the twin sloops stood on guard; they wouldn't be much in their damaged state, but they were atleast something, and that much was good.
what little visual feed the Sissy could provide was activated and fed between the trio; some questioned why these unknowns put so many flashy lights on their vessels, most just waited in baited anticipation for the captain to do something.
that 'something' happened when, after some internal arguments with himself and wondering whether they should just turn tail and come back another day(preferably with more ships), F'gjan reached for the general broadcast line. the translator, of course, did it's duty.
"kzzt This sis tHe-fuck. ahem This is 'Theg#$%sSissy, of clan Kho'thar, we were ambushed by pirA$%s and require repairs and res%^#$ies, over."
"Scans complete. No WMDs detected." The sensor officer reported.
"Their comms are fucked, but I think they're saying they need repairs and resupply." The Cauldarion said.
"Inform them we're on approach to dock. Take us in slow, we don't want to startle them. Medical evac drones at the ready.” Tanari said, accessing the intuitive holographic controls and brining the battleship into close proximity.
The Cauldarion opened comms.
"Confirm. We are on approach to dock. I repeat we are on approach to dock. Over.”
As the battleship drew nearer, the hangar shutters on the eastward side opened revealing a line of hangars that ran along the cardinal axes of the ship. From the few that did not have their secondary blast shutters opened the ship appeared to be aligned to thrust gravity, at least in those sections. The ship’s reaction thrusters able to produce a surprisingly delicate boil of plasma to carefully match velocities with the drifting vessels.
Several large robotic docking arms around a half-dozen meters in thickness and hundreds in length that sat flush with the outer hull unfurled and extended, clasping hold of the cargo skiff with magnetic four-fingered hands. Only a pair were needed to collect each of the combat sloops. Finding the external airlocks the arms carefully adjusted the orientation of the ships such that a gangway could connect the two. The docking mechanisms were incompatible but this appeared to be of little consequence as high pressure airbags around the airlock aperture inflated to create a seal.
When the airlock opened there was a loud hiss as a rush of fresh oxygen filled the alien ship followed by a spray of white mist carrying a salty but vaguely pleasant aroma. This was followed by several small drones, approximately the size of softballs which darted around the ship with blinding fast speed on miniature plasma thrusters, sweeping every open corridor and room they could find with neon-blue scanning beams. Then came a thundering march of heavy foot taels as around three dozen quarter-ton war droids entered double-file, accompanied by more of the small drones hovering above their shoulders. Taking up defensive positions at corners and exits to the area immediately opposite the airlock, laser sights swept the area, but they did not seem aggressive.
They were followed around a half dozen individuals of varying shapes and sizes, all in tawny and silver combat suits and more drones. These appeared to be walking beds which trotted in place on four legs before switching to small spherical wheels, arranging themselves into neat formation.The individuals had their weapons holstered, though the droids did not as they began making their way to the bridge.
as they began the docking process, many on the zetyan side breathed sighs of relief; finally, they would be able to get help after what felt like hours of drifting. upon the bridge of the Sissy, the good captain watched the only functioning hangar bay cam in bated-if mildly concerned-wait, to see what their newfound saviors would look like.
what he expected to see coming through the airlock was medical teams, supply teams, maybe a few soldiers-such precautions were not unexpected.
what he did not expect was, to him and his cohorts, what looked like a full on ship capturing operation beginning in his hangar bay.
the hangar bay was relatively empty, save for a dead body and some loose shipping crates of ammunition. there were 4 elevators-1, 2 on each side of a decently large entryway into an equally sized hall. deeper in, it looked as if it had been hit by penetrative rounds from whoever these stranger's assailants were, or if not that then generally swiss-cheese'd by something fairly massive-easy shortcuts to other sections of the ship, if you could manage the sharp edges and exposed wires.
there was a reason for the rather cold welcome; everyone in fighting condition was either making sure their dying didn't die in medbay, managing the megafuser/engines or waiting in the bridge, and the ones that weren't were either getting patched up in medbay, being fed to the quick incinerator as cadavers or being sent on their asses towards wherever needed bodies.
ah well, only two ways to go. only, what was that odd 'doot' sound coming from over there?
-
F'gjan stared impotently at the camera feed, his hands now unconsciously gripping tightly on the railing he was previously only leaning upon.
a flurry of emotions went through his head, the irrational thoughts he normally had now bolstered by the sudden rush of chemicals, adrenaline and what-have-yous in his brain. the only things preventing him from calling out a code red and ordering everyone to arms was a mixture of both some slight optimism he still had regarding the boarders, and the fact that he doubted he had enough zets to fight them in the first place.
his being too focused on his thoughts may have contributed as well, though. it almost drowned out one of the newer guys shaking his shoulder.
"<<Ey, Boss! Snap out of it!>>" was what caught his attention, piercing through a long monologue about how he was had and how now he was fucked, blah blah blah.
"<<AH-eh, uh-fuck. What? What is it?>>"
"<<The hell do we do now, sir?>>"
a good question, and one he could only placate the FNG with by saying a half-hearted 'was asking that myself...'. thankfully, broken out of his little trance, he began to think a little more clearly and slightly more optimistically. maybe they weren't going to hijack the ship, and he was just overthinking things and he'd live to kill another day. this changed to trying to think of ways to contact them while they were aboard to find out why they brought so many soldiers, going over everything but the most obvious way and, humorously, greatly misjudging how long a distance of 3.5 kilometers is. his memory was thankfully jogged by his eyes wandering over to the intership comms line.
"<<..Is the cargo buzzer still working?>>" he asked after a few seconds of mulling over, getting a response in the form of the FNG picking up the line and doing the testing buzz, before offering the mic to the now slightly less stressed captain.
he is thanked for his service by the captain promptly mashing the shit out of the call button.
The drones began navigating the breaches through the inner bulkheads, gradually consolidating a holographic map of the interior of the ship for the boarders. When one arrived in the medical bay, two of the soldiers seemed to converse briefly before more medical drones poured through in addition to yet another form of drone. This one seemed to resemble a modified skateboard of all things, two spherical wheels and a standing platform in the middle. The others resembled the walking (or rolling in this case) beds but instead laden with supplies. Once they arrived they turned and headed down the hallway like a fleet of emergency vehicles rushing to a disaster scene.
In the hangar where the others assembled they initially didn’t seem alerted to the buzzer. Instead they seemed to briefly converse. One of the small airborne drones swept it with a scanning beam, tracing the conduit up to the ceiling of the hangar. One of them walked over and tentatively pressed the button.
“Ya’man?”
It was a female voice, given a robotic quality by the external microphone of the armor and further distorted by the cargo buzzer. She had a sweet singsong voice underneath it all, but spoke a stern no-nonsense inflection. Apparently she had misspoken the first part in a native tongue rather than basic.
“Ahem… Can you hear me? Who is this? Where are you located? Do you need help?”
"<<Oh, oh good, this thing still has audio, good. Yeah. Great, even. light chuckle>>" said the captain's voice in Zettish from the slightly damaged buzzer, a sort of throaty, trashy animalistic frothing with some bits of actual language haphazardly shoved into it's many cracks and crevices.
Then, in the background, that same voice can then be heard asking "<<...what the fuck did they even say??>>" [somewhat muffled speaking from another zet intersperses the dialogue] "<<That was-oh, it's not...? Oh. Uh, d-do we have a translator? Like one of the balls or something? Wher-oh. Ok. Bring it here.>>" [rustling and stomping sounds] "<<Right, say that again?>>"
Meanwhile, as F'gjan operated the cargo buzzer, the second-in-command took the time to give some early warning to the parts of the ship with people in them using another ball drone as a sort of fancy texter by sending voice messages through it to various ball drones and forcing them to bark out tts conversions of that message-they had three spare models charging in the bridge, might as well use what you can. It would definitely help if-or, more likely, when- the soldier drones came around; judging by how the medbay cams displayed it, the quick arrival and departure of the orbioid floater nearly had people reaching for their guns. Last thing anyone needed was to screw themselves out of getting needed help at the best time for said help.
Hearing chattering from above and recording it, she routed the chatter through the ship's translation matrix... the one they had sent them with the initial hail. A simple affair with a few intuitive gestures within her exoskeleton.
<<There is no need for that. You have already given us the translation matrix.>> The microphone roughly transcribed her voice into Zettish. Her phonetics were stilted and computerized to say the least, with odd gaps to compensate for the differences in word length and pronunciation and the occasional moment where the computer took just a bit longer. But stilted communication was vastly better than none at all. <<Who is this? Where are you located? Do you need help?">>
Meanwhile the medics had arrived in the packed medical bay. They too had linked to the ship's computer through their exos, and had far more complex questions about the biology of the aliens which lay before them as well as taking scans, requesting of the doctors in the medical room to know which drugs would be compatible with their biology. Being a civilization that had no less than 7 carbon-based species not counting hybrids of ancerious natives, their hope was that at least a few among their vast assortment of medicines which would be compatible.
"<<Uh-...w-um...c-captain. Bridge. Send help.>>" The words stumbled out of his mouth independent of his line of thoughts; if it wasn't already scattered and fuzzy with how the good captain's emotional rollercoaster was going this evening, his brain might've complained.
The medical bay, meanwhile was in quite a rush, with various crew members and ball-shaped drones with platters of drugs going from bed to bed and administering what could charitably be called the bare minimum of care. Those with broken limbs/fingers/etc. had them gratuitously unbroken then/or put in makeshift slings and then practically booted out to elsewhere, others were getting quickly wrapped up with bandages in various places or having their wounds sprayed with medical foam before also being shoved out, and a spare few were undergoing quick and dirty surgery for internal injuries, either through large robotic surgeon stations or with various actual doctors(disconcertingly, without any adequate protection beyond gloves and masks).
The Gaussian scans would reveal, beyond the interior biology of the zets and how much some of them could complain to anyone in earshot, that a lot of the patients present had cardiovascular drugs and painkillers pumping through their system. For the inquiries, only a few doctors had an adequate answer to most of the Gaussian questions; the other 'doctors' just seemed to be conscripted crew members whose first response was to either give them the cold shoulder or(regarding medicine) to practically shove nearby drugs and/or syringes at them. Either way, they get their answers-from what they see and hear, they seem similar to humans in what they can and cannot take medically.
<<We’ll be right there. Just hold on.>>
The remaining troopers got onboard their skimmers and began making their way up to the bridge. Within a few minutes they had arrived.
“Marshall Yahotu. We’re heading up to the bridge now.”
“Good. Commodore Beaumura will want to speak with their captian personally and arrange to get them back into a friendly dockyard.”
Upon arriving on the bridge, the squad leader, her subordinates and the associated war droids looked about, as if to say “where’s the emergency?”
<<Help is here. What’s going on?>>
…
The medical teams went right to work with this knowledge in hand. Many of them were not professional doctors or augmentators either, simply the two members of the squad which happened to be trained in field medicine. In spite of the panicked atmosphere in the medical room they remained relatively calm, thanks in part due to their training and their relative detachment to the individuals involved. They had brought their own cargo which included clotting agents, healing stims and painkillers which they freely administered, and went to work assisting however they could.
Their arrival in the bridge was, to put it lightly, fairly anticlimactic.
The majority of the crew in the bridge was hardly even injured, sans a few who had broken limbs in slings and makeshift casts. A few consoles were damaged, but nothing too major. In fact, the only other person in the room besides the breakies who appeared to need help was the good captain, who was curled up below the main bridge consoles with a hundred-yard stare on his face-as best as one could guess, the best thing to do was to give him a couch to lay down on and some dude for him to vent to.
"<<..those guys. Help those guys. Broken limbs. Whatever their names are. Them.>>" He sort of half mumbled the words as he pointed loosely at his newfound scapegoats. Inside his head a million questions, comments and concerns burned in his head like thermite set alight, combined with a shattered ego that was a hand-me-down from anyone born in clan Kho'thar. It would repair itself, given time-shame he didn't accept that.
In the medbay, the gauss medicines were found wanting, and eagerly snatched up by many 'doctors' as they set to work upon their patients. To this end, the gaussian medics would encounter an irritating problem-for a concerning number of patients, the zetyan doctors worked too fast to provide adequate help in time before the patient was sent out. Thankfully, there was still more who could receive help, and plenty of new patients rolling in.
The squad leader turned to her subordinates and nodded. They split off around the bridge. There was little they could do aside from adiminister pain meds and healing stims that they could carry. Sure a reconstructor bed could have done the job better and quicker, but they were no augmentators.
With that more individuals began to board the ship, quickly following the same route up to the bridge. One of the individuals bore red-painted armor, escorted by the others. As more individuals began to filter onto the bridge two of them held sprayers. Without asking permission the began to spray down the whole bridge. Whatever the mixture was it seemed to be a harmless mist, smelling of a salty ocean and sweet flowers. Through the mist one of the small hovering drones was deployed shortly thereafter, sweeping the room with scanning beams and lasers.
Seemingly having finally ascertained that it was safe, the leader stepped forward. The helmet of her exo-suit came apart, the seamless panels unfolding on an intricate series of mechanical latches and hinges, folding away into her collar. She looked to be a human, or nearly human. Tall, with chestnut skin and sapphire blue eyes. Her hair was striped like a mackerel tabby, alternating between black and bronze and tied back in a tight bun to fit within the helmet of her exoskeleton. One of the small drones lingered in front of her face, cancelling her actual voice through destructive interferance and translating as she spoke.
<<I’m Commodore Beaumura.>> The woman bowed. <<The captian of this ship. I understand you require repairs and escort back to your home system, and have been sent on the order or the GDAN High command to assist you by any means necessary. Could you please provide me with the appropriate navigational data, and if possible, contact your superiors and inform them that we will be escorting you on your return. As this is a first contact situation, on your arrival we may need to make contact with prime minister to establish more formal diplomatic relations. I have already ordered a tug to assist in your transit. It will be arriving within the hour. Do you have any questions or concerns?>>
The misty spray was regarded by the Zettish crew with an aloof, but genuine curiousity; such cosmetic sprays had gone extinct before even their Great Awakening, and they were so used to the grungy, industrial, nose-decaying smell of their everything that the introduction of something sweet-smelling was, to them, not too dissimilar to seeing a new shade of color.
Meanwhile, as the commodore was talking, the captain took a bit to digest the info, the mopey stare wearing off as older questions were replaced with analysis of the commodore's words. His inner thoughts rattled off at him in single file order, a semi-reflex turned skill from having to deal with the ever-dreaded bureaucratics in his position.
["Learned her name. Weird hair thingy. Telling me why she's here blah blah blah move on i know. Nav data. Don't know that. Shit's complicated. Tell them to pester the nav guys. Maybe engineering if no nav guys. They manage the drones. Contact superiors? Say we beat the pirates. Tell no-one but fleetmaster the whole truth. He's good.-even if he named this goddamn ship in the first place-First contact, talk with higher ups. Ok, standard I guess. Prime minister-
...Prime mi-?
Fuck it, go with the flow. Prime ministers exist now. Formal whoever whatevers. Tug in an hour. It does tug things. Like tug. Questions? Too many. You say nothing. Pester nav guys, lie to big guys at home. Say the things, F'gjan."]
And so he would, getting up as he did so and turning towards the consoles.
"<<No, no questions here. I'll try to send messages to local command. I don't know the nav data. Pester the navigation board, they'll know. Ask how to get to 'Gh'hala'.>>"
He then looked to the various pockets of crew around the bridge, and shouted at them. "<<RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE WITH NAVOPS!>>"
3 hands. F'gjan looked back to the Commodore.
"<<...if they can't squeal, yell at me.>>" With that, he began to fiddle with the consoles, calling over a comms op to help him.
<<Very well. I hate to cut my stay short, but if you wish to bypass the formalities I will return to attend to my ship. Show my team your kindness.>>
The commodore gave a bow as her lead engineering team stepped forward. She turned to leave, her helmet reforming over her face. Judging by the shapes of their exo suits they were not all human. Some were only about a meter in height, a long tail-like protrusion trailing their head. Two of them bypassed the nav crew entirely proceeding to the consoles behind them.
Removing a series of small devices approxomately the size of a stick of lip balm or thumb drive, complete with a cap which needed removal. They searched for a place to plug them in, be it a proper port of some kind or merely a damaged or cracked section in the console. The devices when unsheathed contained dozens of tiny and delicate mechanical arms which proceeded to seek out points of contact within the electrical systems. Once they had found an interface the arms seized up, soldering themselves solid. Holographic screens projected from the opposite end, displaying dizzying jumbles of computer code and random flashes at a breakneck speed, each frame of the hologram only visible for a blink. The signs of the ship's Cyber specialist Cies working at lightspeed attempting to reconcile with an otherwise a completely alien computer system that was no doubt structured and coded in a fundamentally different matter. However their intentions were more than to simply read the ships navigational charts, she needed to call and retrieve the ship’s entire data log to be analyzed and decoded. If they were simple The Commodore still held some suspicions about their true intentions and origins, and wished to have more to go off than the zetyan’s word.
All the while the Go’shii got the attention of the crew, withdrawing his own helmet. His fur was a leopard print and his eyes an icy light blue, and he looked relatively bored with a ‘Let’s get this over with’ tone of speaking. He produced a modestly sized hologram from the palm of his exoskeleton, a map of the Ancerious galaxy yet with all of the sectors highlighted. A ping emanated from a spot in the mid south of the galactic south where they were presently located. The tiny drone maneuvered about, hovering in front of his face and translating him much as it had done for the commodore.
<<Where in the galaxy are you from?>>
As she left, F'gjan was secretly relieved to not be the exact center of attention anymore, though now newly refocused his thoughts shifted to both book-cover judgement of the gaussians(if anyone could read his mind, they'd think he had a grudge against short people), internally raging at the console/his assistant for not doing what he wanted them to do, and considering all the places he could go resume his nervous ego breakdown once this was done with as he prepared to send his message to the local Gh'halan command.
Bit by bit, byte by byte, Cies' connection would begin to yield results from across the publicly available board, everything from the lunch menu for the day to the aforementioned navigational data, perhaps some of the most colorful chat logs she'd seen, engineering/combat logs(concerningly, the former was being updated every few seconds), and more. A great deal of data, definitely more than needed, but there's only so many ways with so many languages that you can write a synonym to if();then(). Nothing a filter can't handle.
A few members of the nav crew eyed the mediocines(and generally most of their gaussian crew, but the midgets more so) with a suspicious, analytically judging gaze as they worked, though they didn't really suspect anything specific-from what one could figure, they were just doing electrical repairs of some kind. They were just runt-sized, and runts weren't exactly celebrity material.
For the Go'shii, the one to answer his question, or perhaps test his patience would be what seemed to be a senior navigational officer, who was unwillingly pushed forth after a debate that lasted the very long time of 15 seconds. After mulling over the map for a few seconds, with a few uncomfortable glances downward at the Go'shii interspersed between said seconds, he pointed to an area just a little below the ping, affirming his choice with a vague "<<there..ish..>>". His head made a slight tilt back to his comrades as he waited for a response.
GDAN Kragleosha’s Vindication
“Ci Ambient Star, your report.”
“Mostly just a lot of irrelivant data. We found some jump coodrinates though. Their home territory is actually not far from our own.“
“Alright.” The commodore fidgeted slightly, still somewhat reluctant to partake in this operation. But she knew not if the ones they were helping were fugitives or pirates or escaped convicts and that was not information they were likey to reveal upfront. Even if she hadn’t revealed it, she could at least if questioned, say that she had done her due dilligence to check.
Zeytan lead ship
Once the data dump had finished, the Mediocines had continued their work on the console, though still seemed to be much more stumped by the alien technology. They removed a handful of fried computer boards, taking scans of them before moving on. Without solid replacements there was little they could do besides cause accidental further damage. Before long they became compelled to simply abandon the endeavor and simply cosigned themselves to standing around awaiting further orders.
<<Alright. The tug will be here shortly.>>
The Go’shii turned to the Mediocines who had consigned themselves to sitting about telling jokes in their native language and laughing. A carrier drone approached carrying a hull patch kit. The mediocines looked annoyed, as though they had to do more work.
<<We’re going to enact some basic repairs in the meantime. See if we can’t restore atmospheric pressure in some sections of this ship. Will you be requiring anything else… also are there any customs or conflicts we should be aware of before returning you home, or a more specific locale you would like your ships delivered to?>>
The map zoomed in to a sector of space approximating their territory. Amidst their data dump they had retrieved their territorial boundaries and names of systems.
There was an awkward silence as the zetyan crew looked at each other, save for the nav officer's quiet, but aggressive bantering with one of the guys that pushed him forward as he quickly slinked back into the group of bridge crew. The captain began to speak after a good 10 seconds, saying "<<No, i think we're..uh...>>", but being cut off by the bantering escalating to a full-on argument.
The bridge crew, in turn, focused their attention on the two belligerents, as colorful insults such as "line-eyed crustlicking anal bead dislodged from a whore's ass" and "runty little cankicking runtfucker who shits in other people's ass for a living cause he likes it" began flying around the bridge like bees from a beehive. Without context, it'd be easy to think they were lifelong enemies with how much they soon began to scream at each other-and perhaps they had just became their own arch nemeses, if only for today.
The captain's assistant soon gleefully ditched the role of tech support and practically jogged into the newly-forming fight club ring, joining the rest of the crew as they began to egg on the two soon-to-be-physical combatants hidden within their jeering mass.
F'gjan managed a slight smirk, then turned to the Go'shii captain. "<<Get some crowbars.>>" he remarked dryly, "<<Fistfights are boring.>>" Then, after clicking some buttons and shutting off the console, he bent and sat down while observing the outside of the small fight club ring. He'd sent the message-a curt little thing boiling down to lying they won and that they 'found' some help-so he might as well take a rest and calculate the odds he'd lose his job and respect.
Or arm. Or head.
Either or.
His face and mind discarded their masks and went back to how it was before, self-woe, hundred-yard stare and all. The sounds of punching noises started coming from the ring, competing with the small crowd's cheering to see what could be louder.
The Go'shii let out a grunt, his ear twitching with annoyance as the juvenile insults were exchanged and the fight started. A drone lingered above the crowd surrounding the two fighters to get a better look at their style of hand to hand combat.
"Come in. Lieutenant... did you find out where we're supposed to be taking them? The tug has arrived and they're requesting that I give them jump coordinates for the destination."
"No..." He returned, annoyed. "They seem to have decided to host an impromptu Yah Habanbaraka to decide that. Let's just take them to the border of their space.” He grunted.
"That might not be the wisest idea. If they're anything like the Cauldarions... particularly before their first contact this could be a more volatile situation than we're initially let on. They could be divided into houses or some other form of sub-states. We could just end up dropping them in the hands of some antagonistic house who will just as quickly kill them, and all our efforts to help them would be for naught. My instincts are telling me we should let this fight play out and let them come to that conclusion."
The two Mediocines came back in the room, each one carrying heavy duty military armaments almost bigger than themselves. Rotary belt-fed RPG-launching coilguns.
<<They could fight with these!>> The mediocine said with a snicker.
The Lieutenant snarled at them, wordlessley communicating that if they fought with those… everyone on the bridge would lose. Not that such a thing would have worked anyways; the weapons needed to be connected to a suit of power armor to even fire. The lieutenant had a bit of trouble interpreting if the Captian was being sarcastic or not.
<<You sure... okay?>>
He turned to a severaly damaged console; one well beyond usefulness or repair and drove his four fists deep into the mangled set of wires and electronics, proturbing further sparks and smoke from the depths. Gripping something, the servos of his exosuit whined for a moment before two lengths of conduit tubing broke free. Smashing them together with a deafening clang to get the attention of everyone on the bridge he made his way through the crowd.
He increased the volume on his microphone.
<<If you wish to duel for the destination system, I will be the impartial judge. To the yield… or to incapacitation… whichever comes first.>> With that he tossed the equal lengths of pipe to each combatant visibly, such that they could be caught.
Outside the Tug ship had arrived. Approximately half the length of the battleship it wasn’t an elegant dagger, but rather a long octagonal tower with an engine on the end. It peeled open to reveal a single vast hangar bay along its keel, large enough to swallow all three ships and secure them via a series of mechanical arms.
And catch them the two belligerents did, confusion turning to still-confused-but-agreeable understanding, then to bloodlust as psychotic grins from eye to eye appeared on their faces as they proceeded to resume beating the shit out of each other while the crowd cheered-albeit now with steel, rather than flesh and bone.
The captain-and honestly everyone present-couldn't help but be surprised by the Go'shii lieutenant-no one would've expected him to even consider participate in the impromptu matchup, much less find a weapon for the brawlers. Maybe they weren't so bad after all.
The fight continued for a concerning amount of time, going far beyond "yield" and possibly beyond "incapacitate" as the victorious senior officer delivered some last few hits into his downed opponent's upper back. A primal roar then came from the bowels of his throat, striking a pose while the crowd cheered...
...well, it was a roar for a few seconds. Then it sharply degraded into a stifled, squeaky 'ow' as he clutched somewhere around his left breast and winced in pain. Still, they continued to cheer, even if the winner showed some signs of weakness. Of course, it died down rather fast, and then...
...
Silence. It seemed to be a recurring theme, yet this time it seemed more natural as those present besides the victor began to return to where they were in the bridge, a few congratulating him for the fight. One broke off from the group to halfassedly drag the loser away after a quick game of saying "no you do it" with two other zets, but he stopped before he started when he realized that there was other people to do that and went back.
A few with memory of what the Go'shii said took due notice to the fact that the senior officer wasn't doing much besides sitting down to catch his breath. After some more waiting, one who gave enough of a shit got up and walked over to the officer.
"<<Hey, uh, dude?>>" he asked.
"<<W..what? There something i forgot?>>" replied the officer.
"<<Furry guy wanted to know where to go. Something about a 'destination system'.>>"
"<<..huh? I, I thought you guys gave them the.. the deets on that stuff...>>"
"<<I mean, like, specifically.>>"
"<<Yeah, I thought you guys gave them the deets.>>
"<<Well, he wants clarification, I guess.>>"
"<<Uh... ok? Sure, fine, whatever ᵐʸ ᶠᵘᶜᵏᶦⁿ' ˢᶦᵈᵉˢ ʰᵘʳᵗ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ʷʰʸ ᵈᶦᵈ ʰᵉ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗᵒ ˢᵗʳᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ ˢᵒ ᵐᵘᶜʰ ᵈᵃᵐⁿᶦᵗ>>"
With their little convo over, and the other guy returning to where he was, the senior officer got up and half-limped to a console on the navigational section of the bridge, typing a little on the keyboard and bringing up some text on it's honestly outdated-looking screen, then throwing a quick gesture at the lieutenant with his head, wherever he was at the current time.
A drone simply observed the screen, transmitting the coordinates for translation. As it did, he took pause for a moment. For how new and different these outsiders seemed, they also seemed to act just like Cauldarions after a couple drinks. He was expecting a slightly more… adverse reaction to him going out on a limb and retrieving the tubing with which to fight, but instead seemed to be getting subtle glances of admiration instead. Knowing that such information would be important for how to conduct themselves in furture diplomacy.
The tug had carried on with its docking procedure, the three zeytan vessels thoroughly secured by massive crane arms within its vast interior. The immense hangar bay was shared with a quartet of Indomitable-class cruisers near the rear. For the most part clean; albeit skeletal construction. Small elevators ran vertical and horziontal back and fourth along the walls carrying crates of supplies. It was a far cry to the jet-black expanse of space to have the entire window filled by bluish-white lighting conduits and honeycomb industrial paneling.
“Alright. We’re all set here. All ship’s standby to jump.”
From the inside; the transition into subspace was not even noticable.
<<I’ve just been informed we’re underway to the provided coordinates. We should be arriving within a few hours. In the mean time I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Standard first contact procedure.
Question 1: When was the last time you walked through a doorway?
Question 2: How many internal pentagonal faces can you construct using a platonic icoscahedron?
Question 3: A Nushu is trapped in a box with a box of poison that has a 50% chance of opening. Without looking in the box, is the Nushu dead or alive?
Question 4: Two infinitely long, straight lines converge at exactly two points equidistant from each other. How is this possilbe?
Question 5: The deck of a seafaring ship sits ten meters above the waterline. A dock sits five meters above the waterline. The water rises and the dock is now only one meter above the waterline. How high above the water is the deck of the ship?>>
F'gjan exhibited muted confusion by what the Go'shii said-a few hours in FTL? 'The process surely doesn't take that long', he thought, and questions like 'was theirs just slower somehow?' drifted through his head. He felt little, if any drive to voice his concerns, however-it was one among many that he'd rather keep bottled up.
Not that it would trouble him long-it was quickly overtaken and washed away by the 5-part questionnaire.
He took some time to ruminate on his responses after the Go'shii asked his questions-even if half that time was spent wondering what a nushu was, then giving up and pretending he knew-then gave his response.
1: "<<An hour ago. Hour and thirty tops.>>"
2: "<<...uhhh... t-three? Four? I dunno.>>"
3: "<<If it's a stupid 'nushu', it's dead.>>"
4: "<<They cross. Or they're the same line... or... something.>>"
5: "<<6 meters. Right?>>"
Simple answers, but perhaps it was to be expected by this point.
The captain paused as he waited to see if the Go'shii had anything else to say, scrutinizing his ears and wondering what the tuft on the end was for while he awaited his response-anything to take his mind off of the circumstances. At least he'd be in familiar territory in a... few hours. The thought was odd.
<<"I see...>> He said, contemplating the answers thoroughly. None of them were correct. <<Thank you for your time... I'm sorry I don't believe I caught your name in all the confusion... your people do have names right? Do forgive my manners, I am Lieutenant 6th degree Feldi Gulimira. There is one other thing...">> He said, grabbing a communicator wired to a high powered transmitter from a droid and passing it to the Captian. <<"Given the extenuating circumstances of your return, I would like for you to make an announcement to the system upon our arrival, simply to provide assurance to the local authorities and legitimize our assistance... Our good commodore will make her own announcement and give you the all clear to speak immediately after.">>
[2 hours later]
The fleet arrived at the edge of the system, the half-dozen escorts followed by the battleship and the tug. Moments after arriving the ship let out a hail.
<<This is Commodore Beaumura of the GDAN Kragleosha's Vindication. This is not an attack. We are escorting the Zettish ship "Sissy" along with its accompanying skiffs back to friendly territory after it fell under attack by pirates.>>
The belly of the tug hastily opened and began to lower the ship into open space, giving credence to the commodore's claims.
<<You're on!>> Lieutenant Feldi urged.
"<<Oh. Yeah, r-right. F'gjan. Captain F'gjan Y'hola.>>" He merely nodded with the rest of what Feldi said, forcing a tentative smile while he listened. Inside, he was dreading having to personally talk to the rest of the system, but again he tried his best not to show his emotions to the foreigner. It'd only take a few more hours...
--
Reaching the given coordinates, the system itself was a bit sparse planets-wise, only two lifeless protoplanets and one normal, if uninhabited planet, a decently large station slowly orbiting around it. Despite the rather spartan nature of the area, it seemed to be bustling, as tiny lights went to and fro in slightly askew lines.
Onboard the station, as the bridge crew were busy directing various cargo ships and military ships to drydock, the onboard FTL sensors received a signature far, far different than all the others. As the entire sensory operations team was alerted to the fact that yes, there was now about 7 ships that just warped in, and as they prepared to yell at comms at full volume to hail the newcomers, the hail announcement was broadcast by the Vindication.
To everyone in the system.
The ensuing hail of confused counter-hails, thankfully, was absorbed by the Sissy, with only a few going to the Vindication herself; various skewed selection priorities meant that friendly ships were higher above anyone else, and the Sissy was the first thing locked onto rather than the Vindication. What a hail of... well, hails it was, however, a flurry of messages from various other captains that could be split into three categories based on the message content:
1: "<<who tf are you people>>"
2: "<<those guys? [laughter]>>"
3: "<<shut up i'm doing shit rn>>"
Eventually, after roughly 15-20 seconds of constant radio chatter, it was succinctly stopped by F'gjan and his new toy-putting ones mouth directly next to the microphone and shouting ["<<SHUT THE FUCK UP!>>"] usually works pretty well at doing that.
["<<Holy shit. This is the Sissy. This is F'gjan. These guys are friendlies. Shut the fuck up. Ad'rosa Station, establish a line, please. Rest of you, save it for when we dock.>>"]
As the words exited his mouth, and his hand turned off the communicator, he suddenly seemed rather surprised with himself, muttering "<<..w-wow. I.. didn't know i had that in me...>>"
He had little time to reflect on himself, however; the main display in the bridge suddenly flickered to a view from inside the station, the face of a comms op greeting all present.
"<<Sissy, this is Ad'rosa. Line is open, other broadcasts should be silenced for now. Thanks for shutting them up. So, uh...
...yeah, who are these guys?>>"
"<<I dunno, we warped somewhere after dealing with the pirates and they just kinda... showed up? You got the message, right?>>"
"<<Yeah, we did. But we were expecting you guys a few hours ago.>>" He did some typing as he spoke, presumably bringing the message from earlier up.
"<<That's because, uh...
...i'm not sure why.>>" He suddenly remembered Feldi standing near him. "<<Oh, uh, r-right, you, you can explain it better than me.>>"
He then backed up a little, letting the lieutenant come into view.
The Lieutenant rolled his eyes. What sort of Captian couldn’t talk himself out of a situation like this? What sort of station controller would be more concerned about a freighter being a few hours late than a pirate attack and a first contact with an entirely new civilization. They were bizarre. Informal. Brutish might have been a bit of a stretch as they did seem to be reasonable beneath all of that.
<<His ship reportedly fell under attack by pirates and made a blind jump to our border. It took us some time to provide aid to the crew and ascertain where to escort her. She is still badly damaged as we only enacted the most immediate of repairs. If I can, I would like to request some tugs or emergency ships be deployed for their aid such that we can depart.>>
"<<Well... yeah, that's what he sent us in the message. I meant more... eh, whatever.>>" He shrugged, then turned left to someone offscreen, shouting "<<Hey R'ylah, get some tenders out there, will you?>>" He then turned back after hearing this 'R'ylah's' confirmation-or atleast, what sounded like it.
"<<Tugs should be heading out. You can release the ships from the, uh... He took a moment to scrutinize the Gaussian tug on cameras. ...long tube ship when you're ready.>>"
Meanwhile, a few underside hangars on the station began to open, releasing a small group of tender sloops from it's various luminous maws. The small swarm of steel then headed towards the Gaussian fleet's location, 3 sets of magnetic arms unfolding from phantom plates on their sides as they proceeded forwards.
As he monitored the progress of the tug group on the sensor readouts, he also began to type up something, pausing for a moment before looking back to the main display.
"<<Uh, just for the record, you guys are from the...?>>"
<<This is Commodore Beaumura of the GDAN Kragleosha's Vindication...>> She paused for a moment, realizing she had repeated herself. <<We are representative of the Gauss Dominion Astronavy.>> She gestured to work her control console, and began compiling a sizable data packet autonomously translated into Zettish.
The first stage of the datapacket displayed a number of key star systems and their relative positions in the galaxy. Each one briefly displayed the stars and planets in their orbit.
Assiduous
Kon Galon
Tausangrool
New Toplin
Honkaga
Manatari
Deg Yahzan
Kojunfourge
Then came a list of frequencies for tachyonic communication; listed out as urgent military and diplomatic matters. Either used for direct planet-to-planet communications and frequencies applicable to ship-to-ship communications. This was followed up by a registry of all actively serving GDAN vessels; around 2300 in total, then a registry of privately registered vessels, nearly a hundred times as many. Even great passenger liners and lumbering cargo freighters that never left a handful of star systems.
"Madame Commodore. We've just received urgent orders from Galactic Admiral Sulumai Luss. We've just received a declaration of war from the Furrelian Union and we are to proceed to Manatari to reinforce the defense fleet."
<<"I am sorry, but I must be going on short notice. In due time a diplomat will be arriving to formalize relations.>>
The data-packet was duly received by the station, silently downloading itself into the archives and asserting itself amongst datastreams and file readouts. A console offscreen caught the operator's gaze, his eyes silently skimming over a datastream before returning to his typing.
"<<Uh... thanks. We'll get someone ready too.>>" The operator made mental notes to compile a small infopacket for this 'dominion's diplomats when they came back, giving a curt wave as Feldi announced his abrupt farewells.
F'gjan, meanwhile, slightly winced at the operator's statement, practically feeling the op's gaze turn to him. It was not an uncommon occurrence to appoint whoever came into contact with supposed unknowns first as 'the guy' for future contact at a whim, and while part of him knew the target was already painted the second he caught sight of these odd foreigners, a far larger part wished he could scrape it off somehow. He could direct the spotlight onto another guy, maybe, or stall for time...
...
'...hey, that might work!' he thought, suddenly reaching a rather rushed conclusion. He began to turn to Feldi, already compiling a list of potential questio-
Oh.
Alas, for the lieutenant had announced his intent to leave. The local clanlord would have to hear his pleas against a promotion instead.
As he muttered his farewells and thanks to the lieutenant, and returned to the main console board, F'gjan hoped the words he spoke wouldn't fall on deaf ear holes.
----
In the vacuum, the tender swarm neared the Gaussian tender ship, silently beginning to form a crowd near where each of the three ships were drifting, like giant piranhas waiting to collectively swarm prey. A few captains sent transmissions from ship to ship, correcting positions of errant tenders or just making small talk.
As quickly as they had arrived, the gaussian relief forces departed the Sissy with the same efficiency and coordinated speed with which they had arrived. Picked up by a handful of shuttles they left; along with all of their equipment. Seeing that the ship was now in safe hands; one by one the ship's transited into subspace with a flash.
---
Not long after a diplomat did make contact via their long range Tachyonic communication. The diplomat being a Cauldarion; overweight but still well muscled and standing with a large ceremonial battleaxe.
<<"Gentlemen... I am Representative Gabuk'tur. I will bypass the formalities typical of these diplomatic meetings. I know our people have only known of one another's existence so breifly. But I come to you in a time of need. A malignant empire threatens our home and has burned our outermost colony. Our good commodore Beaumura was willing to lend assistance and asked for nothing in return. Now I ask of you to return the favor. I understand it may sound as though I am asking of you disproportionate favor in return. But in truth, all I ask is that you send someone of authority to attend our diplomatic conference.>>
The Sissy received an unceremonious tug into the station's confines, the crew being taken off to debriefing or to be tinkered with by medical personnel. Her captain would certainly have a more interesting reputation now, and the fickle miss fortune would see fit it wouldn't be the last he saw of the Gauss Dominion.
--
The Gaussian message found it's way to the same station, passed from surprised comms op, to less surprised comms op, to binary computer, and finally arriving through networks of wire and data into the office computer of the local station overseer. It was played, filed, and noted, and then overshadowed by a station-wide urgent request-three men needed in the overseer's office, one called by name.
And three did come, each from differing clans yet sharing the same ship. A senior officer, the captain's second-in, and the captain himself-by no means the true people of authority Mr. Gabuk'tur would expect, but despite their vigorous complaints about, well, everything, the overseer would not hear it.
Briefed, given orders, and sent out on a sloop on their asses, their destination was no longer their habs, but some weird place they never heard of. A simple response dashed far ahead of them, data packet and voice recording intertwined through vacuum and steel and wire.
"<<Your request is accepted, Representative. We have ours on the way, they should arrive shortly.
By the way, you gave us your info, so here's ours.>>"
Off to Tausangrool.