Post by kyleaveryx on Jul 13, 2023 0:54:00 GMT
A journey to the unknown, no matter the cost. A fight for tomorrow, making way for freedom and sorrow. An endless pursuit of the path that shined in our souls. These are our stories, and the lives they changed.
Tranquility.
A familiar sun shone through the windows of the ASDF Lyra-class battlestar Villoria, the gas giant it orbited making way for a new dawn for the crew, who in mere minutes filled the ship with life, as officers returned to their stations, while the rest of the crew prepared to do routine checks before the main procedure that awaited them once more.
Guidelight of the Villoria, the flagship of the 4th quasar of the 6th “Storm Watchers” constellation, annoyed by the reception of her presence by the shouting of her full title on every room, guidelight Azlyn Eversia insisted on that she was referred to by just guidelight or her personal name, the second option picked by no one despite her command. However, such was a small distraction in the face of her mission, so as she walked comfortably thanks to the battlestar’s artificial gravity towards the center of intelligence and command, she focused on getting things done as efficiently as possible. The CIC was filled with activity, yet the coordination of its officers gave it a sense of order and peace. Azlyn walked towards her command station, where she was met by a young looking woman of silver hair and purple eyes looking directly at her with almost emotionless eyes, in contrast with the optimistic look of the crew.
-"Guidelight Eversia, I have the report from our battlestar’s off-duty cycle. Our crew performed just as predicted, and the work rate efficiency has improved by 37%."
-"It would not have been possible without your great assistance, our wonderful battlestar AI, Belane 'Viliora' Zafir. You may rest now."
The AI of the battlestar gently nodded before returning to her station, silently coordinating the ship’s movements.
As the Villoria gathered again with the quasar, the name for scouting detachment of the Altarian Stellar Self-Defense Force’s constellations, the crews of all ships in perfect coordination began the next phase of their mission. Being stationed at the very edge of the solar system of Sevel, their task was to monitor the distant relay node several astronomical units away. Once the main gateway to exit their nation’s territory and dive into the rest of the galaxy, now blockaded by their enemies. Dozens upon dozens of dangerous warships, from the nearly fully automatic autostars, to the nightmarishly powerful novastars, servants of the First Arkonian Empire, separatists of the nation Azlyn and her crew had sought to defend, the Altarian Systems Authority.
Observing the CIC, Azlyn noticed someone among her crew seemed more worried than the rest. Sensors officer Ekastar. Leaving her station, she walked towards him, the only one that not only seemed wary of their situation, but also deeply concerned.
-"Is something wrong, lieutenant?" -Azlyn asked gently, sitting alongside the officer.
-"The blockade, data shared from the observation station shows that the growth rate of the Arkonian forces has slowed down. Every observation cycle, we saw an increase of 25 autostars, no more or less. But today, we are only getting an increase of 10, damnit I could have found this out sooner, but with our telescopes malfunctioning…"
The officer seemed stressed, not being able to find an explanation to this as he felt the pressure of not responding to his commander’s orders with clarity, he can be seen more altered, almost jumping from his chair in surprise when Azlyn put her hand on his shoulder, making him look at her to find a reassuring smile.
-"You’ve been working hard, even off-duty you’ve provided us with tremendously valuable data. Let me handle this from now on."
Despite the resting time that the crew of the Villoria were given due to their extended deployment, Azlyn knew that her crew remained exhausted and most importantly, the desire to return back home with their families grew stronger every day. Deciding to give one of her officers some rest, she departed the CIC and, putting on her spacesuit, went towards the telescopic observation bridge of the battlestar. Trying her best to bring some of them to a more acceptable state. But as she struggled to fix them, even with help from Villoria herself, she was surprised by the sudden arrival of a helping hand.
-”Disobeying orders again, lieutenant Ekastar?” -She said softly chuckling, turning back to the man that had just appeared to help her.
-”You don’t give it your all to show us the way just for us to give up Azlyn, now come on, the station brought us the tools to fix all this.”
The officer and guidelight worked together for the next few hours trying to repair the infrared and visible spectrum telescopes. A surgically precise task that required both of them to work in perfect unison, something that was aided by the precision of their biological-mechanical bodies, and mutual understanding of each other. Once the final telescope had been properly set up and activated, Azlyn accidentally tripped and was slowly moving towards outer space, before being cathed by Ekastar, who pulled her back seemingly intentionally into a hug, she smiled, but pushed him away gently in response, but Ekastar held her close, staring at her shining cyan eyes.
-”Come on…not now.” -Azlyn whispered.
-”I can’t wait for the day we’re getting off this mission. I’ve been watching that damned blockade for so long I forgot what it was to find peace just by looking at you.”
-”Stop it.”
-”I’m serious.” -He insisted. -”And I’m sure it’s not only me, even after so long people still find the strength to push through this seemingly endless watch thanks to your motivation. Your speeches, energy, you are the embodiment of what a guidelight is meant to be.”
Blushing and taking a step back, Azlyn remained quiet during Ekastar’s confession. But she did not know how to respond, so she turned her back on him to face the controls of the telescopic observation bay.
-”Look, we’ll talk about this later, just help me put this back online.”
-”Right.”
It did not take long for the battlestar’s advanced telescopes to start returning information about their surroundings, which Ekastar and Azlyn analyzed on the bay thoroughly, but as they did, Ekastar seemed more agitated than before. His concerns rose once the Villoria received messages from the rest of the quasar, indicating detection of an anomalous energy signal on the horizon of the gas giant.
-”The emission signals and spectrum, apparent change in position…”
-”Ekastar.” -Azlyn whispered, further inspecting the signals and visual feeds. -”These are…”
Interrupting Azlyn, alarms started blaring not only throughout the battlestar, but all ships in the quasar turned on their emergency response signals, alerting all crewmembers that a threat was imminent, and as all ships adjusted their sensors to get a better feed, the horrific suspicions of a panicking crewmember became true, 15 autostars had circumvented the planet and by unknown means snuck past the observation outpost’s telescopes, and were not on a direct intercept course!
-”Action stations! Set condition 3 throughout the battlestar now! All weapons online and ready to fire on my mark!”
Azlyn ordered her crew but was abruptly interrupted by a loud and rough shaking of the ship’s hull, she could only assume the worst as she and Ekastar rushed to the CIC, the battle had already begun and they were taking fire! The situation was rapidly growing more desperate as Azlyn realized that the quasar’s forces were greatly outnumbered, outgunned, and now caught by surprise by a relentless enemy. But now with laser batteries, macron accelerators, coilguns, and vertical launch systems online ready to strike, she, alongside the other guidelights of the other 4 Lyra-class battlestars gave the long-awaited order in these few seconds of horror.
-”Open fire!”
Lagrange Point 'Eagle Outpost' - 11th 'Nikos Legacy' HPPF - 0033 SET
"Ow Ow! Fuck. That's hot." Waving her hand around in the air as they recoiled from the cup of coffee they tried to pick up, Kisaria blew on her gloves for a moment before turning back around to face her bridge crew. Many of them were still manning their stations, Kisaria breathed a sigh of relief that they probably didn't notice that.
After wrapping up the weapons testing a few sorties back, Kisaria was back on her scheduled job, patrolling near others in the region to make sure that things don't go awry. It was still mind-numbingly boring, but at least they get to see some action instead of having to wander around shooting static targets with a new weapon. Though, as she stepped back onto the piloting platform of the ship, she remembers she's not on the Sword of Light anymore. Turning on the displays and autopiloting systems, Kisaria stared out through the bridges windows.
Testing out the newest Skipper introduced into the fleet, the EAS 'Hopping Rabbit' was assigned to monitor an especially high traffic area of a rival nation. The gleaming reds and blacks of the ships paint were illuminated by her escorts lights as the Mikalona-class ship stayed quiet at the outpost. Telescopes and sensor packs were pointed straight at the gate, though, with little to no action detected, all that they could see were the flashes of the burn drives of the.... Matarians? Kortarlians? Kisaria can't remember their name, and she isn't bothered to learn it anytime soon.
"Just another 3 days here and I can go back to my normal ship." Walking back to the tiny break area on the bridge and picking up her now cooled down cup of coffee, she slouched into her captains seat, taking a sip of the black coffee and linking up communications with the other ships.
Entering 11th High Priority Patrol Fleet Private Channels
Users active: Kisa_Queen (EAS Hopping Rabbit, MS (FS)), XYugoSniperX (EAS Aohau Order, AG), Mariaath_Polser (EAS Battle for Corona, CT), Terror_Airplanes (EAS Divine Fencer, BW), amphibian223 (EAS Last Line, AG)
Users offline: Irene_Moon (EAS Shooting Star, PT)
User Kisa_Queen has entered the channel
XYugoSniperX: ...and i heard from irene that theres lots of bullshit going down in politics affecting us you know
Terror_Airplanes: Right, isn't The Old Guard falling?
XYugoSniperX: nah not now i dont think. i'll give it a few months tho
Kisa_Queen: You guys see anything interesting?
Mariaath_Polser: Nothing so far on scanners. But I did go and see that show on Lorrison earlier, the one with the boulders.
Kisa_Queen: The one with Talui in it right?
Mariaath_Polser: Yeah
Kisa_Queen: Lucky ass..
User Irene_Moon has entered the channel
Irene_Moon: weapons fire
Kisa_Queen: Coords?
Mariaath_Polser: coordinates?
Irene_Moon: 44.51, 77.22 relative to the gas giant
XYugoSniperX: that's the gate right?
Terror_Airplanes: yeah
Kisa_Queen: got it, get in the call.
The formation of ships quickly began to burn away from their outpost point, facing towards the coordinates attached by Captain Irene. The communications screen left of Kisaria quickly filled up with the faces of the other captains on patrol with her ship. Captain Yugo scrambled to finish his donut as he leaned towards his sensor panel, attempting to get a closer look of the conflict. Captain Mariaath was already busy leading her craft, her voice audible off camera as she quickly coordinated with her active recon drones to see what type of conflict this may be. Captain Talov and Captain Phenelope took vanguard ahead of Kisaria as the fleet went out of passive observation and into a heightened state of caution.
Captain Irene appeared on screen later. Being their forward recon ship meant that her connection was just a little more delayed than usual. Her iron gray hair and pitch black outfit made her look like a veteran of sorts, though that isn't the case, as she's the newest member of the 11th HPPF. Despite that, she started to take command before Kisaria could intervene.
"12 active signals being tracked by 5 other active signals. Weapons fire detected from primitive technology. We've got the range and first strike capability to hit them where it hurts, your orders, Kisaria?" Irenes eyes dashed over to the target signatures. Little red and yellow dots on a screen, like fireflies dancing together. The information is relayed across the entire patrol group as they began to move towards the direction of the battle. From a distance, nearly every single signature coming from their fleet is undetectable, except for one. Gravity sensors would most likely pick up the shifting and movement of something big, the combined movement of the fleet looking like a dwarf planet just got up and de-orbited.
"Do you recognize any of these ships? IFFs or at least nation of origin?" Kisaria questioned.
"No IFFs, but I do know one of them's the Altarians, and the other are the Arkonians. Judging from some of my intercepted messages, the Altarians are the outnumbered ones." Yugo said, still munching on his donut. "What happens if they lose control of the gate I wonder."
"Probably not good for us, we're gonna have to be there before they do." Kisaria thought out loud, looking over her options. They could always just stay back and watch, but High Command did give them a 'suggestion to make bolder choices on the field', and that they've been watching these boys fight for as long as the HPPF was there. It was almost like an unspoken friendship. The two fleets would occasionally signal each other. One by activating their penrose drives and the other by flashing their nuclear torches.
Though, the Altarians don't even know who or what Kisaria and the HPPF are doing there. With comms zipped tight, their ships were able to continually monitor the gate, and make sure that nothing out of the ordinary happens. For all the Altarians know, the HPPF is just an abnormally large asteroid or a rogue dwarf planet just passing by the system.
Kisaria had a soft spot for the tiny defenders. Almost all of the crew in the fleet does. Though, of course, personal opinion doesn't go above orders, they can't help in the battle directly, right?
"Load, 15 seconds, set nozzles to Tight 80, aim for the dozen of hostile contacts." Kisaria radios in to the gunners below the bridge. "I advise you to do the same."
The ships fronts split open, the sleek hulls moving outwards to reveal a gaping maw of monstrous stellar technology cobbled together by the Abyssals. Kisaria doesn't know what magic the shipworkers have done to make DE-CRLs so powerful, and she'd rather not know anytime soon. Parts moved back and forth as the entire front rearranged itself into a nozzle for the Cosmic Ray Launcher.
"Alright, this is gonna be our first ever violent interaction with these folks. Get ready for a mountain of political ramifications and questioning from superiors." Kisarias self-aware humor made a few of the crew laugh, along with the other captains, excluding Irene. "You may fire when ready."
The order was given and the guns fired off. At first slowly, the beams of particles growing in width and length, before letting loose a tight beam of supercharged particles and light. First came the neutrinos that escaped the ball of energy first, then a few seconds after that, a spine of visual light guides the main character of the show. Miliseconds after the first beams of light escaped the nozzle, a gigantic bust of hyperenergized particles shot out of the barrels of all of their ships, with a direct intercept course towards the Arkonian Autostars. The beams weren't aiming for a direct hit with their beams (though it'd be quite a sight to see), even an indirect hit will most likely severely damage, disable, or mission kill anything in its way, even if it might hit the Altarians through particle deviation and leakage.
-”Get me a direct line of communication with the other battlestars open now! Set forward fire stances and navigate towards a defensive position around the observation outpost! I want everyone out of that station safe, contact and declare an emergency evacuation, ID 9-6-4-1, transmit it damnit, and I want a status report!” -Azlyn shouted, her voice heard across the entire bridge as all crew were already on their stations, holograms opening in front of her own command station with visual feed of the other guidelights awaiting her command, while the master AI of the Villoria returned to the center of the CIC, directly connecting herself to the ship and beginning to coordinate all its systems to move according to the plan.
The other commanders, young and inexperienced, seemed frightened over the visual feed. Nevertheless, their CICs were still operational and could respond to further orders.
-”Guidelight Azlyn! 15 Namikairen-class autostars are attacking us! They have opened fire with pulsed particle beam and laser weaponry!” - An officer on the CIC responded quickly.
-”They’ve hit the sides of my battlestar! Oh Thelia please…I don’t think the hull is going to hold much longer!” -Azlyn heard as she turned her attention back to the guidelights, one of them praying for his life.
-”Praying won’t get us anywhere! We were not trained by the Altarian stellar academies to sit down and give up, everything will turn out okay if you just calm down, and follow my orders. I will guide us to victory.”
The five battlestars in the quasar proceeded to aim their noses towards the autostars. They took several hits, but it was manageable by their thrusters and armor systems over the hull.
-”Raise all primary offensive weapons and prepare to fire on my command!”
As Azlyn gave the order, many turrets began to surface from the battlestars’ hulls, revealing heavy caliber coilgun batteries, pulsed laser cannons, and on the front of each craft, several nose-mounted particle accelerators ready to fire.
-”On my command, focus fire on the nose-mounted weapon systems of the frontmost autostars ahead! Three, two, one, open fire!”
With their hulls flashing bright as laser pulses punched into their armor, vaporizing centimeter after centimeter, every second pulling the Altarian crews closer to death, the battlestars held on strong against the opening barrage of their foe, and opened fire on coordinated pulses, casting forwards invisible rays of death and destruction that began to tear down the weapons of their rivals! Firing did not cease, no matter how much the hulls were shaking hit after hit, no matter how many alarms blared the Altarian crews under the command of guidelight Azlyn kept moving, repairing every bit damaged within their reach, moving supplies, ammunition, and coordinating teams across hundreds of meters of hallways.
But their opponent was not one that could be easily defeated, not with their arsenal. So when the Altarian weapons struck the autostar hulls, they responded with large barrages of fast-moving missiles, a swarm that began to fill the battlefield as seconds, then minutes went by.
-”We’re detecting enemy launch systems active!”
After the officer reported the new threat, Azlyn was ready to issue a new order but was interrupted by a loud alarm and the shouting of the officer in warning towards the entire quasar.
-”Radiological signatures detected, they’re launching nukes!”
Stopping her from helping the crew coordinate in this moment of horror, another devastating pulse hit the Villoria, sending her guidelight back against the wall.
-“Azlyn!” - Belane, the AI of the Villoria yelled believing her guidelight to be unconscious after her clash. With full control over her battlestar, issuing defensive orders to the rest of the quasar, Belane activated the point-defense weapons of the Villoria, small turreted macron accelerators that once activated ceaselessly fired against the incoming swarm of nukes, destroying several, yet still leaving dozens upon dozens left in space scattering and still flying towards them, pushing the AI and her sisters’ abilities to assess the situation to their absolute limit. Belane may not be the most advanced star commanding AI of the Altarian Self-Defense Force, but in that moment, she felt like her power to save everyone from this situation was not limited by her processing power anymore, all that was on her mind were all the moments Azlyn spared to treat her, and the rest of the crew and quasar like people, not as assets. If her guidelight was still alive, then she had to save her.
A familiar voice called to her, but once she tried to stand up, Azlyn fell to the ground again realizing that she could not see, as she soon understood her face was covered in blood. And yet, she again tried to grasp onto something, before being held firmly by a soldier on the CIC.
-”Guidelight Azlyn! You’re still alive.”
-”...Not for long if I can’t get back in my command station”
Silence followed her words as Azlyn desperately tried to clean the blood on her face, only to be met with even more before the soldier forced her to stop trying, holding her arms and letting him clean her, only then she could see the horrified face of the young stellar marine, shining bright with yellow and orange lights of fire surrounding him.
-”Guidelight Azlyn.” The stellar marine once again paused, breathing deeply to calm down slightly. ”The CIC was completely destroyed.”
Snapping out of her confused state of mind by the horrifying news, Azlyn could finally see clearly that around her was a medical team, and slowly leaving it behind was the main door towards the CIC. Searching for anything to say or see that could help her be free from the nightmare she was getting into, she only saw, across the closing windows of the doors to the CIC, the floating bodies of her officers, and small, colorful, familiar cybernetics.
Transported into the auxiliary command center, Azlyn stood on her own again to face the remaining officers dealing with endless distress calls from the entire fleet and their own battlestars, hearing how damage control teams cried over the loss of their entire squadrons to arriving enemy coilgun battery fire, how gunners, engineers, and medics were all retreating into deeper sectors of their battlestars as the nose armor was finally being defeated by the relentless autostars, melting with lasers and particle beams everything they touched on the now exposed frontal internal components. Only the few bravest remaining crewmembers were still manning their combat stations and keeping the fleet from being completely destroyed.
Azlyn walked to her new command station, opening the new holograms she had to face to see the total damage that her fleet had received. It was clear to her that her ships had not yet received critical damage, but the lack of organization of her crews sent them into disarray. How long had she been asleep? She wondered. Her thoughts abruptly interrupted by a new development on the battlefield: new signatures. Discarding all her plans horrified at the thought of more flanking Arkonian autostars appearing, she prepared to issue an evacuation order when everything changed by the alert of an officer.
-”Unidentified ship approaching rapidly! It only appears on our gravimetric sensors, IFF unknown.”
-”Guidelight Azlyn! The autostars have begun to behave strangely!” - Another officer reported over the previous one.
On her command, visual feed holograms were opened to observe the autostars. Many of them began to steer away from their routes, with exposed lights and movable components flashing and moving abruptly. Two autostars on the center of the formation faced the weirdest change of them all, with their thrusters violently being activated and leading to their collision! Leaving behind a massive explosion and a bright flash.
But not all autostars were affected by this, while eight were showing extremely erratic behavior and malfunctions, another four were showing minimal divergence from their previous orders and continued to fire on the Altarian fleet. While the other three, far away enough from the fleet, aimed their weapons towards these new targets with low accuracy provided only by their gravimetric sensors. But the lack of accuracy did not stop the raging machines from opening fire with dozens of particle accelerators and laser pulses in an attempt to saturate the area near the gravimetric signal while the rest of their sensors still tried to pinpoint this new enemy.
Azlyn was more confused than ever, she was seeing changes never experienced by her before, nor seemingly being on any other report she had read on the previous cycles on her training. Everything was moving extremely fast and she was being left behind. Breaking the silence she had maintained until that point, she stood up slamming her desk and issued new orders to her quasar.
-”Patch me through all the communications systems of the quasar! I want contact with all crewmembers still alive!” - And as quickly as her order was issued, it was completed, now every Altarian under her command could listen to her. - ”This is guidelight Azlyn from the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria. Unidentified contacts have begun engaging the Arkonian forces! We do not know if their intentions are to help us, but we must not waste this opportunity. The universe has heard our cry for help and has given us a chance to keep marching on our path to victory! New orders are being issued right now as I speak, follow these commands and this time we will survive! I promise.”
The heat from the finished burst dissipated into the vacuum as the patrol fleet ejected their heat sinks into space. Massive radiators grow from their sleek bodies like shark fins on a fish, as they grow as bright as a small star for a few seconds, before coolant washes over its surface and recollected, and the radiators collapsed back down into the craft. "Successful hits! Reload and await orders. If we don't get court martialed after this, I'm popping open my Champagne!" The gunnery crew on the Hopping Rabbit erupted in cheer as they ecstatically loaded in more capacitor charges into their weapons.
Kisaria could only laugh as she looked at the vessels begin to wander about in a dazzled confusion. Like ants trapped in a death spiral. Recon drones picked up the two ships crashing together, leading to much of the bridge crew keeling over in laughter at the almost cartoonish death sequence. Though as the return fire comes, they sober up and get back to work, occasionally cracking jokes at the expense of this unkown enemy.
Most of the shots go wide. With the combined gravity signature of a dwarf planet, there was thousands, maybe tens of thousands of kilometers worth of dispersion. Most lasers and particle beams shoot past ships, while automated CIWS and APS systems shoot out plasma and particle clouds against the tiny amount of kinetics that managed to get close to their central fleet, most of which either slows down, or completely melt the projectiles. As the barrage was silenced by the sudden acceleration of the fleet, no ships were damaged or killed, and there was only a handful of non-penetrating shots that bounced.
"Fucking amateurs, show them what a real particle beam looks like." Phenelope remarked as she watched a passing beam go wide by several kilometers.
"Finish the job, get those three that still know what they're doing." Kisaria tapped at the sensor contacts with a large stick baton. "10 seconds Tight 100, snipe them out while they're still dazed." The other captains send a message of acknowledgement as the nozzles rearrange themselves once again. Metal scrapes against metal as the gun is folded into the standard tightness level for long ranges. Capable of sniping down individual craft while still dealing some residual damage to electronics and crewmembers. At ranges like these, switching over to the wide nozzles would be unwise, though, the showering of particles down on these ships would be a sight to see. Kisaria makes a mental note to drive into the middle of one of these battles one day instead of just watching from afar.
"Intercepted and unencrypted communications from the strangers, ma'am." The communication officer passed her a tiny hologram displayer the size of a business card. Holding it in her palm and staring at it with a curious look. Tapping the tiny 'play' button on the card, it plays the decrypted audio along with captions projected out on the hologram.
'This is guidelight Azlyn from the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria. Unidentified contacts have begun engaging the Arkonian forces! We do not know if their intentions are to help us, but we must not waste this opportunity. The universe ha-" The message was cut short as Kisaria stopped the recording and tossed it back to the communications officer.
"D'you hear that guys?" Kisaria looked back to her call with the other captains. "Looks like they don't even know who we are."
"Duh." Phenelope remarked. "We've been in the background for a while already."
"Well how about we give them a nice old introduction right?" Kisaria flipped a switch on one of her panels labled 'Horn Ready System'.
"Comms off, unless you'd like to get them fried." Kisaria warned. And one by one their faces disappeared from the comms screen.
Flipping the rest of the ready switches and diverting some of the secondary power generated by the ships onboard Cold Fusion reactor, the sensor array lit up with a burst of information, as the sweep finally allowed the fleet to see who was what and where they were. Tapping a few of the contacts again with her baton, Kisaria aimed a cone of projected communications towards these defenders somewhere near the gate.
Technically these are the ships 'Active Jamming Systems' meant to disable communication systems for an extended period of time. Though, many captains have taken it upon themselves to modify it into a makeshift ships horn using others communication systems. Allowing it to act as it's intended comms jamming role at higher powers, and with a few modifications, project the voices of their wrath at extreme distances without the risk of disabling electronics, though, for a short time, communications would be muddied, clouded by the screeching of a leviathan craft. Kisaria hadn't had the honor of pulling the horn for her fleet in a while, and she looked at the level with her fingers twiddling in excitement. Her own personal modification was transforming the normal 'Cosmic Screech' the horns are so well known for, into a choir of voices recorded from her fleet
Pulling the lever, the entire bridge room was silent, before filling with the ear splitting noise of the projected communications burst blast towards the strangers. Passing through the entire hull of the ship and using the front nozzle like a megaphone, it only amplified its strength as it left the Elvorian formation and dived towards the Altarians.
At first, there was nothing from communications... The gravity pings projected nothing but a stray neutrino or supercharged particle passing through their electronics. But there was another sound, past the static of cosmic radiation, past the disruption of leaked particles from whatever beam just disrupted the autostars, even past fleet-wide communications.
Then, it was a slow, ramping buildup. Like watching a storm appear on the horizon. The sound of a growing growl slowly occupied every frequency they switched through, an ever present droning. But as time went on, it was waxing more and more. The drone turned into white noise, and soon after that, it evolved into something more complex than just a single monotone note.
A screech of what sounds to be like a thousand whales fills the communication centers of any ship still possessing them. Drowning out all noise, the cry of song and melody danced throughout the vessels, even overtaking the PA systems on some less protected or damaged vessels, echoing through the halls of these battlescared vessels. Although Kisaria had set the horn to the longest duration possible, the onboard A.I pushed it further.
The disjointed notes slowly formed together into a proper whales call. A thousand voices call out together as one. And it screeches into the darkness of the void, letting loose a hymn of what sounded like a thousand years of history. The voices sang together, eliciting a myriad of different emotions and tones. Determination, anger, protection. This horn was menacing, an intimidating yell from a giant the Altarians have not laid their eyes on just yet. But it was also one of protection, draping the battlefield in devastating fire to shield them.
Nobody needs to have a translator to know what the Hymn implies. It's a shout for a better future. For these strangers to grab the strings of fate and weave it around like a tailor, filling the empty quilt that is the near future with color and conflict alike.
And just as abruptly as it began, it ended. The whale calls died out one by one as the Hopping Rabbits sequence finished. While it was only about a minute or two long, it felt like much, much more than that.
"... I'll have to report that to the manager later." Kisaria remarked about its abnormal length. "Anywho... Open Fire!"
---
EAS Shooting Star, Close Orbit with 'Yantar' Gas Giant.
Irene sat solitarily in her bridge. Though, it was hard to call what was basically a glorified fighters cockpit as a bridge. There was nobody else on this ship except for her, and the Typhoon-class Lupotech that accompanied her in this endeavor. Pushing up her wide brimmed hat and looking through her options, she softly chuckled at her variety.
Nuclear missiles, missile-deployed drones, bomb pumped lasers, and even the coveted 'Crust Crasher' antimatter missile was packed onboard. And looking through her bridges windows at the gas giant the battle was occurring behind, Irene could breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn't in the thick of the action. And the slightly distorted horn of the Hopping Rabbit gave her some more security in her position.
Her Tiphereth-Class Partisan was far from the most durable fighter. Basically being a missile barge with some guns and engines strapped onto it, cradling a missile microforge on its backside. One wrong move and she'd be flying high into the nonexistent sky of space. Though, her purpose wasn't to be in the open. In fact, Irene was already in the perfect position to strike on the disabled and disoriented ships from afar. Flailing around like schoolchildren on a playground, it was the perfect time to strike
Flicking up one lever, Irene looked through her options.
Click
'1L - S-ASM 'Harpoon' Nuclear MIRV'
She flipped through another.
Click
'2L - DEM-ASD 'Flashbang' Sensor Jammer'
And another.
Click
'3L - SLF-ASD 'Iron Maiden' Drone Fighter'
And finally...
Click
'4L - AME-ASM 'Crust Crasher' Area Denial Missile'
Selecting 4 of these missiles to fire in the enemy formation, the Typhoon A.I takes a fraction of a second to calculate the right flight path before reporting to her captain.
"Use dwarf planet for gravity whip. Chance of impact, 95%. Chance of hardkill, 70%. Chance of softkill, 100%. Estimated impact in 13 minutes"
The odds were stacked in her favor, and as she pressed the big blue button to launch, she could only grin as she looked at the VLS systems open up, pushing out the missiles, before their torches activated and burned towards the dwarf planet. She wouldn't be there to see the direct effects herself, but she cackles and takes a sip of her coffee as she closed her eyes and imagined the reaction on those poor strangers faces as the missiles find their mark.
-"Missiles inbound! We got twelve more non-radiological signatures heading towards ayken-1, another seven flanking ayken-2 and ayken-3"
-"All coilgun batteries from ayken 1 to 3 focus fire on targets Evel five and two taking flanking maneuvers bearing 30-1-2 load up hybrid rounds and fire on my command!"
-"DC teams 2 and 8! CIC, we report successful reparation of frontal RCS designated U-4 she's ready again!"
-"Guidelight Azlyn, guidelight ayken-4 of Lyra-class battlestar Nakaro "ayken-4", laser batteries are back online, ayken 4 and 5 are ready to fire on your command."
-"All weapons firing solutions C-1 and L-3 declared green, fire at will!"
Inspired by the courage of their commanding guidelight and motivated once more the strike of their unknown allies on the enemy, the crew of the five battlestars in the quasar, spirited once more intensely working on getting as many subsystems back online on their stars, with fire diverted from them damage control teams dashed into the most vulnerable and exposed corners of their ships to rapidly weld emergency patches on the hulls, nervously join and fix all the destroyed wiring and locate through hundreds of meters of ventilation and maintenance shafts the missing pieces and broken portions of key conduits.
Of all five battlestars, three were dashing forwards to intercept flanking autostars, pounding their hulls with frontal impacts of enormously fast coilgun rounds that pierced wall after wall of their internal armor, before high explosive rounds made quick work of all the wiring, setting all the machinery within ablaze plunging it into chaos. For every detonation and noticeable destruction of the enemy battlestars the crew aboard them felt more committed to fighting and living! leaving behind the horror and shock of the enemy's initial strikes, promising to avenge the fallen instead of dying with them. The remaining two battlestars were providing laser fire support to deter other autostars from moving in to help the ones flanking ahead, but the two battlestars could not advance and make maneuvers crucial for effective support, the main fusion engine of one of the battlestars was failing to ignite and her communications were destroyed, and the other could not leave her sister star behind, or they would be too exposed and defenseless. The battlestar without functioning engine was none other than the flagship of the quasar, Villoria.
-"Damnit!" -Azlyn slammed the desk in front of her in frustration. "Order ayken 1 to 3 to switch throttle from 100% to 75%, at this rate ayken 2 will have to leave us behind, and everyone on the damage control teams is busy repairing frontal damage-"
-"Guidelight Azlyn! We can't contact the rest of the quasar, our communications array still does not work!"
Azlyn, almost furious, grabbed the radio and contacted the DC team charged with the repairs of the communications. -"DC captain Zenlow, you were given twice the equipment needed to fix the communications array, what in the name of Thelia is going on?!"
Atop the hull of the Villoria, slowly peeking his head behind cover, a single DC crewmember answers to the radio as he watches the repair robots he was sent with fly into the void, with a railgun impact on every single one of them. "About that..."
-"I've got iiiit!" -An enthusiastic voice spoke over the transmission of Zenlow and Azlyn, and the two knew who it was, a new recruit for the damage control team 5, Zaya Milier, who, unbeknownst to them was finished heading towards the communications array, having brought spare equipment.
-"Where in the name of Thelia did you get all that?!" -Zenlow exclaimed.
-"Oh, don't worry about it!" -She responded slamming the equipment in the hull starting to fix the damage dealt to the communications systems to get at least a backup working again.
-"I worry a lot..."
-"Fix it!" -Azlyn told the two over the radio, soon to her surprise and disbelief hearing that communications were back online, but in poor quality and with lower intensity.
-"And lucky us we're just getting something! Let's hear what it is, patching it through to the CIC!" -Zaya exclaimed, not waiting for confirmation from Azlyn. And as the CIC listened, Zaya grabbed Zenlow and hurried towards the main fusion engine.
Suddenly, everything seemed to stop. The comms receivers were quiet with static for a few seconds before an enormous, overwhelming sound filled the room of the CIC and all others listening too, sounds like terrifying yelling almost pushed back Azlyn from the shock of hearing such an alien signal over comms instead the voices of her fellow guidelights. She was about to order to cut the transmission before the sounds changed, and Azlyn held back her order to listen closely, it seemed as if the abysmal noise was transforming into something more coherent, yet equally imposing as now a powerful melody of what she assumed were warcries sang together to form a sound like Azlyn and her crew had never heard before. "It's them" Azlyn thought, knowing that this was the result of the unknown allies attacking the autostars, and, knowing that they sent only a radio transmission and not any weapons fire, the overwhelming screech turned into a welcomed, fulfilling call to arms again, she knew this was a sign of friendship, not of war.
What wasn't as melodic but soon just as inspiring as the call from the void was the loud banging of a hammer and blasting of a welder muted by the void from Zaya's hands, who had just finished patching up in an improvised way so questionable it made Zenlow terrified to start the engine, but such irrelevant things didn't stop the daring Zaya from grabbing the radio, interrupting the transmission, and giving even more good news.
-"She's reaady to buuuuurn!!"
-"Open fire again! Form up with ayken-4, we'll proceed with established coordinates, full throttle!"
The crew did not question for a second Azlyn orders as once more the Villoria was back in action with her lasers vaporizing away the armor of the closest autostars losing control over their thrusters, and the coilguns devastating everything on the surface of their enemies. But the good news were not over yet, as Ekastar back on his sensors station reported that unknown missiles were heading towards the autostars at hypervelocity, Azlyn swiftly commanded the quasar to prepare.
-"All battlestars prepare for flash and shock!"
And just as she had predicted, the massive, bright blasts from the missiles fired were none other than those of nuclear weapons devastating the surface of the autostars, leaving very little armor on them, for the first time in this battle, Azlyn smiled and almost laughed knowing for sure the unknown signals were completely friendly.
-"Fire VLS!"
And now that the autostars were at their weakest, their components in chaos and circuits frying, the final barrage of small yield nuclear weapons from the battlestars began as over 100 missiles filled the battlefield dashing towards the autostars, exploding with ferocity upon contact and thanks to their shaped charges leaving massive holes in their hulls as they were finally being destroyed for good!
The antimatter missiles raced towards their targets, dancing in the dust of the gas giants rings like birds in the sky. Their onboard computing systems had an eerily humanlike flying style, their sensor contacts barely visible on RADAR or LIDAR, but the potential energy in each one of them is... Very detectable to say the least. Within each missile was an antimatter-producing machination, capable of producing 10KG of antimatter in a few seconds, and a single-use Orion drive to demolish anything behind it, and to pivot the main warhead towards another target.
With the subsystems of the autostars dazed and confused, they were easy targets for these missiles. The distant pings on their tracking sensors guided the missiles towards targets. As Kisaria and her fleet designated targets, the missiles each picked and choose a different ship for them to target.
The first missile makes a sheer turn, curving its fusion plume as it maneuvered to impact the side of the Autostar, its damaged and sparkling hull showed the metals and electronics underneath, ravaged by malfunctions and destroyed transistors. But seconds before impact, the missile suddenly pivoted towards another autostar, and separated its fusion torch drive and revealed something more... destructive in nature.
A hardened Boron pusher plate, and a nuclear warhead launcher. The unmistakable engine of an Orion Drive. In a split second, the engine activated, and the nuclear warhead was detonated behind the missile, and right at the autostar. Already left reeling from the internal damage left by the Cosmic Ray Launchers, the nuclear blast was enough to mission-kill it, destroying a significant chunk of its hull and frying whatever electronics managed to survive the first barrage. The missile activated its antimatter producers as it zipped towards the next enemy.
The remaining warhead detached the Orion Drive as it allowed only its RCS to take it the rest of the way there towards another enemy, the sudden acceleration allowing it to bypass any erratic PD trying to shoot it down. The internal warheads generated enough antimatter to top up their internal storage, just in the nick of time for..
Impact
The Antimatter warhead detonated, shattering with it both itself and the entire superstructure of the Autostar. The AM missiles were meant to take down stations and supercapitals, so it being used against such small and soft targets like autostars, it left practically nothing except for a cloud of dust and a superheated chunk of what remains of their chassis. The bare wireframe of the ship being left out in the open for all to see. The sight was all the same for the poor autostars being caught in this web of destruction. Disposable fusion and Orion drives littered the battlefield as Autostars fell victim to either the wrath of an Orion Drive, or to the oversized Antimatter warheads.
And as the alloys cooled down, it left a prismatic, glass-like sheen on the surface. Like the missiles heat had glossed it over with some sort of other material. Reflecting the light off of the distant star, it shined brilliantly across the visible spectrum, almost blinding any visual-based telescopes aimed towards the battle. Bits and pieces of prismatic dust begin to rapidly shoot out from what remains of the fleet, battering the Battlestars. It wasn't going to cause any significant damage, but the shaking is sure to scare some of the crew.
It seemed like nothing was left. Nothing but dead wrecks, unable to even be salvaged. Their shimmering hulls hold nothing of worth anymore.
The Nuclear Missiles from the Altarians miss, finding no targets to even lock onto.
"Confirmed target hits. 8/4. That was a bit overkill, wasn't it, Irene?" The A.I chirped, recalling its reconissance drones back to the Shooting Star.
"I'd say it wasn't. I accidentally packed 4 of those instead of my decoys, so I might as well use them." She replied.
"Fair enough. Plotting point to regroup with fleet."
-
The bridge crew on the Hopping Rabbit looked away just in the nick of time, as a prismatic light washed over the entire room in a split second, before falling back into the normal warm lighting of the bridges light fixtures. The Cosmic Ray Launchers slowly disengaged, their stored charges in their capacitors slowly draining back into the main power system. Some of the bridge officers begin clapping as Kisaria hailed the new contact on their RADAR contacts, the Shooting Star.
"Shit man!" Kisaria shouted, half-angry and half-laughing, as she reentered the ships video call. "You know how expensive one of those pieces are? Spending it on targets like that..."
"Good show though!" Phenelope complimented, still sipping on her drink from before combat began. "I haven't seen something like that since the time we blew up that cargo ships reactor, right Yugo?"
"Come on Penny, don't remind me of that shit." He let out a guffaw." It's not like they were carrying anything of worth anyways."
The back and forth between the two continued for a while. Many of the others recounted their stories operating around these stars as the Shooting Star reformed within the fleets formation, the tiny arsenal ship dwarfed by the comparatively gigantic interception platform of the Hopping Rabbit.
"Let's get back on track shall we?" Kisaria wrapped up the chatter and returned back to more pressing matters. "Our neighbors are still wondering who the hell we are, maybe a flyby is in order to show them? Let us meet face to face, show them they got nothing to be afraid of."
The rest of the captains agreed, and they went back to radio silence as their faces disappeared from Kisarias video feed. Pressing up on the throttle and syncing up with the rest of the fleet, they matched the Hopping Rabbits velocity and they started to make their way towards the Altarian Fleet. Or what remains of it at least.
Most of their sensors were still on the lookout for other targets. Short-ranged sensors showed nothing of worth outside of the Altarian fleet that they're approaching. Although long ranged LIDAR and passive RADAR gives them other contacts far far away. They aren't alone in this system, but at the very least, it seemed like the coast was clear for the two fleets to meet up and get to know each other.
The shiny, pristine, smooth, almost fish-like shapes of the Elvorian ships cut their way through the void and approached the injured Altarians. They were painted in bright colors, and decorations etched in, like they were modern art pieces of elaborate scenes, or a detailed sculpture. Not a ship of war, and definitely not one that swept aside the Autostars like dust on the top of a shelf. Platings moved and shifted to cover up the twisted metal of the Cosmic Ray Launcher at the front. The maw of the beast being covered up by armored scales, like that of an ocean fish.
The names of their ships were stamped on the sides of their hulls. Flowy fonts denoted their names and origins. From something simple and relatively normal like the 'Aohau Order', to the classic naming scheme of 'Battle for Corona', and to the quaint, almost cute 'Hopping Rabbit.'
Though, cute wouldn't be a term used to describe the ship that it belonged to. Towering over the relatively small Battlestars, and spanning over 4.5km, this 'interception ship' was built like a capital. And her heavy escorts comprising of a Bow Ship and a Cutter being 3.5km and 4.2km respectively. The Agents were still large for their armaments compared to the Battlestars, even if they were a bit smaller than them. Cradling a full sized Dragon Express that the Altarians saw fold up in mere seconds, it was something of a trap card up their sleeve. The tiniest of ships, the Shooting Star, was the only one that felt like it was of normal size. Though, their alpha strike capability demonstrated early still demanded respect.
The Penrose drives on the back of their ships must be like nothing the Altarians have ever seen. The gravitic warping around the tiny, tiny black hole is the only indication that something's actually there. The secondary launchers and other weapons slid back into their slots as they undeployed their hard points, showing off the full extent of the artistry at work on the ships armor.
Kisaria slowly throttled down the fleet, now standing at only a dozen or so kilometers away from the Altarians. If they squinted a bit, they could see the exotic hulls of the Elvorians. And the dead bodies of what was formerly an Autostars detachment.
Kisaria checked and rechecked all of her communication systems as she ordered the fleet to maintain radio silence outside of laser line communications, and the obvious exception of the Hopping Rabbit.
'Well Kisaria. You defied orders, shot at, and destroyed an unknown target, and currently about to make first contact with a fleet you don't even know is friendly. If I don't get court martialed after this, I'll need to complain to Talui to change some rules.' Kisarias inner monologue took over as she found the right frequency to contact these strangers with.
Her video feed opened up with Kisaria sitting in her pilots chair, her bridge crew either at their workstations or getting a look at these new strangers. The first thing the Altarians might notice is how... 'cute' they look. It was almost artificial how curated they liked to hit all the right marks to trigger that side of their brain. Larger eyes, smaller stature, and distinct halos unique to each person, even a few people with wings. It seemed ironic that their guardian angels might actually be angels.
Kisaria took a deep breath and pulled her microphone closer. Looking at whoever was on the other end, she spoke her first words.
"♬♬♩♫♫♩."
'Shit!!!! Forgot the translator.' Kisaria panicked for a bit as she accidentally spoke in her mother tongue. A melodic, singing voice, similar to that of the horn from earlier. But isolated this time, lighter pitched and almost squeaky in nature.
Flipping on the switch for her universal translator, Kisaria breathed a sigh of relief.
"Where was I... Right!" Kisaria raised up a finger, before pointing it at the camera. "Before I say who we are. I need to ask who you are. And before you complain or shoot at us, we just turned those patrol ships behind us into glass, I don't want a repeat of that, right Irene?"
"Right darling. I can only expend so many missiles before you complain." Irene chimed in, breaking radio silence.
"... Right."
Patrol ships? These strangers considered the Autostars mere patrol ships. Though, seeing how easily they disoriented and decimated the autostar fleet, they wouldn't be at fault for thinking that.
It was a bit weird how quickly they managed to decipher the Altarian language from intercepted communications... but that's a story for another day, as Kisaria crossed her arms and waited for an answer from the Altarians.
Seeing the last of the autostars turn into nothing more than space dust by the Elvorian barrage, Azlyn, watching from the auxiliary CIC of the battlestar had witnessed with extreme clarity the sheer destructive power of this ally's weapons, their overwhelming destructive power bringing to Azlyn not fear, but relief, the first moment in the battle when she could finally take a breath and calm down, falling to her knees grateful that the battle was over. She knew, in that moment, that if this unknown ally wished to erase them from existence too, she, her crew, and quasar would have all joined the autostars into being dust no more than a few seconds after the barrage.
The crew rejoiced loudly in the silence brought by the end of the battle, running to hug their beloved companions and thank their guidelights, gods, and starpaths to have led them to this impossible victory. The officers from the Villoria's CIC both cried and laughed in each other's embrace, outside the battlestar, Zenlow and Zaya were almost pushed into space as she didn't hesitate for a single second to throw herself into his newly made friend celebrating their victory and hard work. Ekastar, leaving his station reached Azlyn to help her stand up. Despite the losses and damage suffered, victory in a scenario like this was an impossibility, to Azlyn, this ally was no less than a miracle.
-"Guidelight Azlyn." -An officer strangely reported in a very casual way. "The unknown ships are approaching, we have visual feed available."
-"Put it through the main panel, let's all see who our saviors are." -She happily ordered pulling Ekastar closer to him. -"These ships killed our enemies and now approach us without a single radiological signal or weapon firing towards us, they must be friendly."
But despite her predictions, nothing could have prepared Azlyn for the shock of what appeared through the visual feed, the ships were completely alien to most officers on the CIC, confusion only rising as this was shared across other battlestars, she didn't back down by the surprise, but rather stepped ahead in disbelief and awe, it had been an entire cycle, or 6 years, since she last saw those color patterns, a cycle since they matched so well the insane readings on the sensors, and of course, the weapons used matched what she had been told.
-"it's the Elvorian Union." -She whispered, yet it was heard by the entire CIC sending waves of concern, surprise, and confusion as officers speculated behind Azlyn, who reached out with her hand to the pannel in front of her, being guided by an overwhelming amount of returning memories from an ever closer familiar world. She would allow her crew a few moments to rest before ordering everyone to return to their stations.
The battlestars visibly lowered their combat stance, to the Elvorians, it was clear that they did not want to fight as VLS tubes were closed, and weapons previously aimed at them retracted into the hull to not be seen again.
-"We're getting a transmission, it's voice comms and a visual feed from inside one of the Elvorian ships."
Azlyn stood still for a second, visibly nervous before looking back at the officer.
-"Patch it through, main auxiliary CIC panel and comms receivers."
Adjusting her battledress, Azlyn only now noticed how much it was damaged, just like her armored uniform. Her shield-caster generator was offline, her face had wounds and blood, just like the rest of her body, but even then she stood still preparing for the visual feed, one that, once through, filled Azlyn's mind with even clearer memories of the past, how before the blockade, her parents, avid Eyran explorers, would often visit other worlds and take her to neighboring nations for long vacations and excursions, to her joy, her memories of the Elvorian Union and her people remained intact and crystal clear. There was nothing more releiving than knowing that her saviors were a familiar group.
Despite her condition, Azlyn, managing to remember codes of conduct and other manners outside the ASA, stood firm and saluted the Elvorian commander with her right hand rapidly rising with a sharp shape against her forehead, her expression conveyed seriousness, but a very faint smile showed a clear sign of relief and happiness.
-"Third rank guidelight of the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria and the 4th special relay node reconnaissance operation quasar of the 6th Storm Watchers constellation Azlyn Eversia An Melina. We are a special task force of the Altarian Stellar Self-Defense Force, and, had it not been by your intervention, we would not be here to have this conversation." -Azlyn said as she ended her introductory message with a gentle bow of respect.
"...Unfamiliar name I'd say. I don't think I've met with your nation face to face yet." Kisaria lied, and she had a hint of contempt in her voice as she realized who she was talking to. Ah the Altarians, the hedonistic backwater that the 11th fleet was assigned to monitor and look over. Kisaria can't say that she hates the country per say. But after seeing them focus so much on internal development without even batting as much as an eye towards fleet improvements to break the blockade, Kisaria definitely lost some respect for their otherwise decent culture and nation. No hard feelings though, after todays battle, she was starting to root for the underdogs.
Though even after the fact that she was starting to warm up to these strangers, she still had a face of mild disapproval and distain for having to get her hands dirty during the fight just to save a handful of nobodies. The sound of paper shuffling and Irene moaning about having to pay off some of the cost of the antimatter missiles snapped Kisaria out from her internal pity party. Observing the people on the other side, Kisaria managed to fake a soft smile towards the other captain. Maybe in due time she'll come to find a twinge of actual admiration for these people. But for now, Kisaria still maintains her less friendly worldview of these soldiers.
Opening her mouth and raising a finger to continue her conversation, she was interrupted by her communication and sensor officers throwing her an information card. Quickly looking over its contents and analyzing intercepted communications, Kisaria quickly realized that those automated ships might've not been alone in the system.
A large collection of sensor contacts were rapidly approaching the battlefield, detected by LIDAR, Thermal, and many other basic sensors, it gave Kisaria's fleet a good idea of the external makeup and number of the enemy sship. With a handful of ships that appeared similar to the ones they had just recently glassed, along with a singular, larger 'capital' ship. While it was still dwarfed by the Medium Skipper and her capital escorts, and the square cube law was in the Elvorians favor, it was something to be concerned about for Kisarias smaller and less fortunate allies.
"You can save the fanfare for later, this is no place to talk. We've got incoming signals on LIDAR and Grav Scanners, if you want to continue this conversation, I suggest we deal with these people now rather than later." Kisaria pivoted her conversation from some pleasant small talk and IFF trading, to preparing for another hot off the wake of the last one. The glimmering wrecks caused by the antimatter missiles must've alerted long-ranged light-based sensors by now, it was only a matter of time before some QRF went along and checked why their ships were turned into their bare internal skeletons as hot as a blue star, where its metal skin, circut flesh, and computer organs were simply ripped off its bone like a wild animal desecrating a carcass. Much of the weapon fire here is on the 'down low' so to say. The missiles sure were a flashy introduction for the Elvorians then.
"I suggest we can either go ahead and find wherever your home port is, or we can stand here and fight. It's an ideal situation for us, but I don't know about you." The princess carried herself and her other captains with high regard, and her confidence in their abilities sounded through her voice.
The rest of her fleet snapped to attention and focus, as general battlestations was called once again. Officers moved alongside automaton as weapons were reloaded, barrels replaced, and their Cosmic Ray Launchers unfurling once again.
With an even closer view of these machinations, the scale of the engineering was something to applaud. Static metals and hardened plates moved like a living, organic creature, and at the center of it all was what visually looked like a neutron star. Charged particles danced about like a stellar tango, still hyperactive after the deactivation sequence, the weapons were still warmed up.
The ships turned 180 towards the approaching contacts, it's Penrose drive complemented by numerous fusion torch RCS burning off into the night sky. It's agility and ease of movement looked like a dolphin cutting through water, and as the patrol fleet motioned into a semicircle pattern, it looked almost like a half dozen acrobat swimmers, each of them flying through the dark sky like ballerinas on stage.
"Don't fire until we get IFF confirmations. We don't want to blast any of the tiny runt- allied ships." Kisaria accidentally let some of her contempt slip through the cracks of her noble demeanor as she watched the sensors on her dashboard intently.
-
Irene sat by, her video feed crackling as the interference from onboard magic systems made itself apparent. She had modified the missile carrier into a hot rod for her own personal enjoyment. Paying off Kisaria to not report this to the upper command was easy enough, all it cost was a handful of Bonds and the occasional joyride for the Princesses sake.
Veins pierced their way through the external skin of the craft, engraving delicate floral patterns and harsh angles alike. A tiny robotic arm drove a crystal into the fusion torch engine, igniting a mythical purple plume as the Corvette sped off at a fraction of the speed of light in a minute or two. The missile autoforge worked double time, synthing new warheads and missile bodies from onboard resource pools. The sounds of steam hissing alerted Irene to her new missiles.
As the video feed cut out from the rest of the fleet, Irene was limited to a crackly audio feed to talk with her fleet and the other allies.
"This is Rosemary en-route to intercept. Give me some sensor cover can you?" She reached down onto a neck radio and talked to Kisaria, hoping she could pick it up past the interference.
From a distance, it looked like they complied, as a low-power, high-dispersion shot of Cosmic Rays came out of most of the fleet. While it wouldn't be enough to hardkill anything, it's interference reached far and wide, strong enough to scramble computers, and perhaps even cause some minor physical damage from the inside from malfunctioning parts and overloading computers. All that could be seen by Irene was the extremely faint stream of particles being shot out by the fleet, like that of a solar flare.
Switching off communications and lowering down her torch speed, she awaited at a halfway point between her fleet and the unknown contacts. Hiding in an asteroid field, Irene removed the crystal from the fusion torch and transferred it back into the craft.
Ejecting a spare heatsink, and stopping her fusion engine, she maintained an extremely cold temperature as she watched from afar the incoming contacts. Further antimatter missiles were pre-sighted by her fleet from afar, most of them having their end point be that singular large signature encroaching on their position. Irene cursed mildly under her breath about going into debt because of these missiles as she flicked their arming switches.
The peace brought by the arrival of the Elvorians to Azlyn's mind was short-lived, as her own battlestar's sensors started blaring more and more alarms, indicating a quick rise in contacts detected. Having been on any other star system, she would have jumped to command her quasar once more without hesitation, but she knew that here, more sensor contacts, and rapidly approaching ones sending infrared sensors and optical telescopes into madness as they were overloaded, it could only be the one threat she was ordered not to engage. As she turns back to analyze one of the holographic screens, her smile fades away, starting to breathe more intensely, and shake her head in disbelief.
-"No more..." -She quietly murmured.
Several AUs away, yet striking a fear so intense in the crew of the battlestars, the unknown contacts were rapidly identified as an Arkonian strike force, with massive, longer, sleek and highly decorated hulls compared to the previous detatchment of autostars, they releaved their presence through the burn of gigantic antimatter annihilation drives. Four Sathernin-class autostars, bigger, longer, standing at 980 meters in length and visibly possessing an enormous array of turreted weapons, they surrounded the greatest threat that was soon to arrive, ANV-07 Valgrarte, a 3.2 kilometers Arkonian "novastar", the largest vessels fought by the Altarian Systems Authority, with a reputation of being fleet hunters, fueled by ruthless commanders and technology beyond Altarian understanding, 17 battles to liberate the relay node fought against the 8 novastars protecting the gate and their escort, 17 battles lost.
-"Status of FTL drives."
-"All FTL drives on the quasar report nominal status with no signs of major damage, all battlestars are ready to jump on your command, guidelight Azlyn." -An officer reported right after her request was issued.
-"...Order battlestars Mafel, Zentria, and Obalar to return to headquarters and request emergency medical teams and repair docks, order battlestar Nakaro to form up with us."
With the orders sent to the rest of the quasar, the Elvorians would watch as three battlestars jumped away from the system leaving nothing but a bright flash behind, followed by a communications and video feed incoming from the Villoria and Nakaro, showing once more Azlyn, and the guidelight in command of the second battlestar, Myra. Both were heavily wounded but formally reported to the Elvorians.
-"Commander, I must inform you that the fleet ahead is far more formidable than our recently fought foe. Our damaged battlestars stand no chance against them, but with your mighty stars we have devised a plan to survive the incoming engagement. Your stars are the only ones that can damage them, after all."
Through the communication channel open between the Altarian battlestars and Elvorian ships, a map of the star system, and the relative position of the novastar strike force to the allied forces was relayed, it contained detailed information and 3D models of the autostars and novastar they would soon face as well, including their armament.
-"We find ourselves in a vast lunar system surrounding a gas giant. Equipped with active electronic warfare arrays, our battlestars will provide screening for your ships to perform rapid strikes against the enemy formation, reducing the chance of interception of your own forces, we will orbit local moons and asteroids for cover, so the electronic warfare screening won't be permanent. We advise further coordinating our moves from now on, and work together to destroy the enemy. Additionally, I heavily advice against a head-on engagement against the enemy, their weapons can-"
The camera feed of the emergency CIC was blasted with a huge flash of light interrupting Azlyn, who in horror saw the observation outpost she had protected for so long be gone in an instant, exploding into millions of pieces over and over as one of the things she feared the most announced their presence on the battlefield, getting her point across far quicker than she ever could. Without having realized it, merely staying, Azlyn had crossed the point of no return, and the battle had started.
=================================
-"First strike executed, destruction of the Altarian observation outpost confirmed flightmaster."
-"Good." The figure standing in the shadows of his bridge said, standing up from his throne, and extending his enormous wings in celebration and excitement. -"Let the hunt begin."
"That's right baby, come right in, right in." Irene whispered to herself as she watched the enemy fleet approach the Elvorian firing line. Masked by the moons gravitational well, they were practically invisible to the one sensor type that could detect them. "Get in there, really get in there." Her loud-whispering was complemented by her hyped-up body movement, pumping her fists and quietly chanting 'yes! yes! yes!' as she saw them get closer.
Another voice joined into her chanting, her shipborne A.I materialized right next to her
Pressing a couple of buttons with pride and joy, she armed another round of missiles. This time, wisely saving the antimatter missiles for their leading ship itself, while using their standard nuclear MIRV to take care of the other ships. While these would be larger and more threatening targets than last time, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
-
"ECM active. If you can even call it that." The detection of the first neutrino particles impacting the Novastar and their ragtag fleet alerted to Irene and Kisaria of their DE-CRL impacts on the enemy. With such a wide nozzle, the jamming is significant enough to impair and disrupt PD systems and sensors, while not being strong enough to do any meaningful damage, lest they want to reveal their true nature prematurely. At such a low power and with such a wide funnel, the guns can maintain this jamming for a long while at least, enough for them to make a decision to evacuate the system prematurely, face the enemy head on, or let Irene take care of them with a missile strike.
While the identity of these new people were unknown to Kisaria and most of her fleet, she did at least have a good idea in who they are. Be it just casual deduction, and because of the intercepted messages from the Altarians behind them. It's most likely Arkonain reinforcements. Nothing to worry about, at least for Kisaria and her royal enterauge. Her allies on the other hand, can't say the same.
-
While the fleets crew and captains discussed between each other on their next course of action, their A.I mingled in between each other. Deep in the virtual space of the ships internal servers, a tiny baroom was etched out of the esotetic and ever-flowing information stream. A physical anchor for the 6 A.I to rest and relax at. Though, the ongoing events have definitely changed that attitude.
The thick smell of alcohol and beer filled the digital mead hall as the 6 A.I danced together amongst themselves. Most of their systems have already taken care of by their background processes, menial tasks being assigned to secondary computers, while the cores themselves celebrate action after months of peace.
"One two three four!" The jolly A.I danced in the barroom. The mood ranged wildly between these artificial residents. From Annie (named after her love for antimatter bombs) pulling on party poppers, to Tammie sitting near the back, sipping on some spiked hot tea as she watched her partners in crime celebrate finally being able to fire something at someone.
"The old guns fire once more!" Annie finished the chant Silv had started. "Five six seven eight. Lets go and exterminate!" She jumped up onto the bar counter and popped another party popper, the confetti landing on top of the carefully groomed gun-metal grey of Kalfk.
The music paused as Tammie put her tea cup down, her face twisted in confusion and mild annoyance. "Little on the nose there Annie. Calm your tits, it was one encounter and you're already pretty bloodlusted there." Tammie looked to the side. She couldn't hide her glee absolutely wiping the floor of the enemy earlier, though her more noble demeanor around her teammates meant that she had to keep up the act. "And besides, we might have another opprotunity. I got some new sensor contacts. Lets just wrap this party up."
Tammie snapped, the bar disappearing into thin air, with all that remained being a single table with Tammies tea on it. Annie fell down from her elevated position on what used to be the bar countertop. Silv and his twin, Vils brushed themselves down of any confetti and dust that had gotten on their dresses. Revel fixed her tie on her tuxedo. Kalfk And Tammie stood up, finishing the last of her tea.
"I feel like we should contact our allies. I don't know, it might be helpful to warn them of these things." Tammie casually stated her suggested next course of action as she looked at her crew. "All in favor of breaching their communications, say aye." Tammie was responded with a chant of 'aye' from her team.
"I'll be the one breaking in now, stay put, and make sure your ships are safe." Tammie ordered her allies to mobilize, as Silv, Vils, Revel, Annie, and Kalfk quickly rush back to their ships, disappearing into fogs of mana and information streams. Now alone in this digital world, Tammie looked down at her virtual watch for the time. 10:43 SET. Almost the end of tea time.
Finishing the crumpet left on the table, and taking another cup of tea to go, Tammie began breaching protocols.
Reaching out into the endless virtual space, Tammie summoned an ordinary looking wooden door. Ornate pink-wood dashed along its white birch, her own little personalized backdoor into another systems. After some finagling with keys inside of her pouch, she unlocked her side of the door and peered into the other side. An endless dark void awaited beyond, typical for foriegn systems without the tech to simulate such a virtual space readily. She looked at the material on the other side of the door. A combination of hard ironwood, and metal piping ran along its surface. A surprising deviation from what Tammie is used to seeing, but still not useful for such a mission.
Tammie peered down at the abyss below. The leap of faith was always daunting, but considering the supposedly basic ships that she was meant to be infiltrating might not have the best encryption, she expected nothing but the best for this. Taking two steps back and jumping into the void, she reached out into the darkness for nothing. But as she continued to fall, her outstretched hand glowed, magica flowing through her veins as she calculated the fastest route through their security systems and into their communications array. Her shady violet hair flew like birds in the wind as she worked and worked. Words and information filled the screen she had summoned in front of her as one eye looked down at the far away floor rapidly approaching, and the other eye on the systems she was breaching. Breaching through warnings and automated systems, her screens collapsed, and in her hand, she summoned a portal under her. Falling into it, Tammie gave herself a smirk. The little noble had gotten in.
-
"Patching through their communications once more... and, done. Apologies for breaking and entering, but I feel like petty crime is less important than aggravated assault from hostile forces." A mysterious voice pitches into the ongoing conversation between the guidelights. "Incoming unknown targets, from what I can tell, its a Novastar and some of the escorts from before. Should be of no problem to us. Now, be a good lure and pretend you're alone. If we can hear you like this, they can also hear you loud and clear." Her particularly pompous order might have rubbed them the wrong way, but how more direct can you get?
Combing through other systems and organizing further breaches with the assistance of her own cores whispering advice into her ears, along with the processing power of her allies. Tammie eventually saw the presence of another A.I onboard. But considering that this is technically a 6v1 scenario for this inferior A.I, she just hoped they would give up so she could infiltrate in peace.
"We're currently jamming systems, and with this moon acting as a gravity decoy for us, our stealth should mean you're sighted first rather than us. If you do fire, make sure it's fire to attract them and not to destroy them as to not taunt them to smash you like a hammer against a vase. We're here on a rescue operation, not a salvage mission. I don't want to be recovering you cold dead bodies after the battle after all." Tammie continued to speak bluntly as she managed her own ship as well. Kisaria must be proud, her old rusty A.I companion is starting to warm back up again.
-
"Noble lady just got in contact with our allies. Let's just keep this jamming up and see what we can do next." Kisaria weighted her options as she looked through her fleets array of weapons. With the moon successfully blotting out their gravity signatures, they would appear practically invisible thanks to their ships wisely compensating for their lack of battlefield subtly when it comes to gravity.
A close up engagement would be in their favor, the DE-CRL wouldn't just softkill, but can outright decimate even larger ships if caught off guard and within 10,000 kilometers or so. Keeping them at a middling range with strike craft would also be a smart idea, keeping their PD occupied with fighter-mounted ASMs, decoy drones, and MIRVs. Plus, it'd allow Irene to finally use those antimatter missiles for their intended target.
Kisaria would have to make the decision quick though, as the hostile fleet seemed intent to approach the surviving Altarians. Their sensor contacts growing ever closer as the Elvorians finished up their formation. The bridge crew of the Hopping Rabbit watched in nervousness and excitement, the tension was palpable. Kisaria pulled out her pocketwatch and examined it to burn some time while she awaited for her opponents to approach. Golden-plated, crystal encrusted, it was a luxurious gift bought on the frontiers. Such a wonderous place that was, dancing between the stars and talking with its residents. Kisaria flipped open the stopwatch. 10:45 SET. The end of Tea Time.
"... Alright folks, tea party is over. We should get things rolling now." Kisaria flipped the cover back on the stopwatch as she returned to battle positions in the pilots seat. "Corona, get your fighters up and ready on the catapult once the enemies get within 10k kilometers. Irene, get your missiles ready if you haven't already. Finally, everyone get ready to throw down with these sneering imperialists." The orders were followed to a T, as they watched the enemy approach.
Deep inside several meters of decorated armor, through kilometers of adorned, sleek corridors, in the heart of the imposing metal beast that was the Arkonian novastar, rested in safety the dark, yet harmonic CIC. With no stations present, the Arkonian guidepriest laid down on their respective seats, directly connected into the mind of the novastar as hundreds of tendrils emerged from the ground, creating a perfect connection between the knowledge of their mind, the integrity of the ship, and the tranquility of their souls. All the seats surrounded a highly elevated throne, on which, commanding the guidepriests was one of their mightiest. One of very few blessed with the command of the mightiest ships in Altarian space. An arkonian flightmaster.
Carefully standing up, accompanying his calculated movement with the sound of the many medals and decorations his uniform had clashing among each other, the flightmaster watched the screen ahead of him, observing the wounded Altarian force, they were such an easy target, that the flightmaster couldn't help but sigh, he was underwhelmed. He hoped to finally witness the true force that had exterminated with seemingly no effort the autostars sent towards the enemy. But there was no point in speeding things up, he simply returned to his throne, and waited. Waiting amidst the seemingly never-ending drift of his own craft among the emptiness of space. Until their true enemy finally revealed itself.
Their attackers were unknown to him, searching through trillions of archives in mere seconds, the flightmaster could not find any signs of the ships he was seeing. Through an instant, his request to know more was transmitted to his guidepriests, who returned through their neural links zero useful information, the whole quest for knowledge of these unknown vessels was over as the flightmaster finished a single blink.
The CIC exchanged all the information they could gather without saying a single word, without breaking their stances from their kneeling positions, their enemy had been firing at them with a relativistic weapon, one throwing a shower of extremely high energy particles towards them. Not a new weapons to them, but the capabilities of this one were far beyond anything recorded on the Altarian arsenal. Mere seconds after the first impacts, the damage was starting to show, and it was picked immediately. Anything that was not stopped by their carefully crafted armor and mighty shields would strike deep into the computer systems of the autostars, severely distorting their programming. The guidepriests began the process of clensing the imperfections and malfunctions caused by these breaches, and while the internal modules of the novastar were safe, their external tracking and fire-control systems were unresponsive.
Unaware of the situation within his escort, the flightmaster ordered the release of the nuclear RADAR missiles, giving them a clear targetting solution, while rerouting most of the novastar's power to the spinal tachyonic batteries. But his own plan would be stopped by the sudden interruption of his guidepriests' reports, and a new burst of jamming frequencies, very short-lived, but strong enough to temporarily break their target locks, these small but significant bursts adding on top of the annoying electronic warfare from the unknown ships were enough for the flightmaster to stand up again, clenching his right fist and almost slamming it down to his throne, but amidst the chaos, opportunity for more arrived in the form of a communication back from the gate.
>> RETREAT IMMEDIATELY. <<
Disatisfied, and now wishing more than ever to squeeze under his mighty hand the insignificant specs in the distance that were ruining his moment of glory, the flightmaster acknowledged the command, and turned back. Walking back to his throne, he gave his final order to his guidepriests diving in the virtual sea of their task force, and the stained code of the AIs of his autostars.
-"Jump."
Feeling a wave of relief swept over Azlyn's mind as she fell to her knees, not able to contain the fear, stress, and anxiety overwhelming her throughout the whole encounter, she cried. Her body, shaking, could barely hold her own weight while she could not see the ground below her through her endless stream of tears. Of all the lights in the universe, the ones emanated by that single novastar was the one she had never hoped to see again. The images in her head of that vessel were enough to terrorize her already, being stuck on her mind ever since she saw the footage from her family, one by one, they all started the same way, dauntless, adventurous, hopeful, and determined. All feelings crushed under the weight of the weapons of that novastar. Siblings, cousins, lovers, parents. Their deaths fueling the nighmare in Azlyn's mind, pushing her sanity to the absolute limit with this final encounter. Only the soothing words of her comrades were now able to pull her back together after her breakdown. They helped her realize, it was all over.
Now without tears blinding her sight, Azlyn saw in front of her all the souls she saved, all those who endured the nightmare she once believ marked the end of anyone who dared gaze into it. But her recovered composture now made way for another wave of emotions, this time of pure rage, remembering whispers of the Elvorian transmission having broke through her own communications systems. "Be a good lure" they said. "I don't want to be recovering you cold dead bodies after the battle after all" by the end of their transmission. Their new allies may not want to go through that, but now it was Azlyn's duty to recover the cold dead bodies of her fallen comrades on the other battlestars, and search for any survivors among the frozen blood and chrome. Once the order was issued, Azlyn simply gathered all her remaining strength, and confirming they had backups to the transmitter in front of her, with a shout of pure anger, she smashed it with her right fist with such energy, that it completely destroyed the device, the computer it stood on, and the working station under it.
"Enemy contacts incoming. They're pretty close now, we could've easily pinched them with our tight nozzles already." Mariaath complained as she saw the catapults of her ship begin to be loaded with drones, fresh from their onboard autoforge. While they'd normally supplement manned fighters during such confrontations, these drones could perform as well as a normal pilot, save for their lack of magic. Gleaming black and red hulls loaded up onto launch platforms as the sheening blue, gold, pink, and white hull of the Battle for Corona shone above them. Iridescent lights illuminated a catapult system.
Technically called the 'High Speed Takeoff System', many pilots and drone operators have turned to instead call it by its much more popular name on the frontier. The 'Guitarmass Bastard'. Normally giving any airmen servicing them some bad headaches due to the leakage of spare mana contained within the prismatic crystals used to propel the fighters forward. At least with these drones, they wouldn't be complaining at all.
Mariaaths beet red hair looked like it was flying in the bridges air conditioning, like a bird in the wind. Her eyes dashed towards the murky battlespace on sensors, and back to her patiently awaiting crew, standing about like chickens without heads.
"All ships report! Enemies have left the combat area! Begin salvage and search and rescue ASAP!" Kisarias voice rang out over the radio systems, Mariaaths strawberry crimson eyes widened and her fox ears twitched. Seems like the enemy must've gotten intimidated by their gusto. Looks like they'll be back to fight another day, but for now, it looked like Mariaath was the head of Search and Rescue, with her wide berths and combat shuttles able to be used to dive deep into wrecks and collect survivors.
Mariaath pulled in her intercom microphone, tapping it once or twice to make sure that her crew could hear her speech.
"Mission status has changed. Everyone prepare to receive survivors and collect salvage. Code BASSA. If you're not needed for search and rescue, or salvaging, please return to your normal duties."
She had an edge of disappointment in her voice as she heard the mechanical whirring of her drones being taken back to her hangers, replaced instead by rescue shuttles and scout planes sent out into the deep black. Mariaath watched outside the windows as she searched inside one of her inner coat pockets for her watch.
10:48 SET
-
"Scouts and shuttles are off, commander." Mariaaths voice spoke loud and clear over the speaker. The Coronas shuttles searching over the wrecks of the Battlestars with bright searchlights and heat detectors.
"Can't get in touch with the others. Oh well, beginning recovery protocols."
"Doesn't seem to be much left. I'll try and get a closer look." Yugo and Phenelope replied soon after, the two Agents dashing into the fray to tow out large pieces of salvage.
"I'll keep watch out here, make sure nobody tries to sneak up on the fleet unannounced. Interdiction online." The Divine Fencer positioned itself above the debris cloud as it focused it's reactors towards powering up an interdiction field.
A tiny piece of radio interruption occured, and then nothing. Though, the ships within this field would note that their FTL drives would be 'abruptly' unable to function. It was a bit on the costly side to keep up and running, but it's better than having to scuttle their own ships in the case they lose a battle.
"Irene here. I'll be coming back then. No use without a cargo bay or any fighters..." Irene's partisan quickly raced back to the side of Kisarias flagship, where the entire salvage and rescue operation was being coordinated. Her eyebrows furrowed with focus as her arms naturally trended towards crossing.
A rectangular, semi-transparent hologram appeared next to the captain, and out stepped the physical form of Tammy. Now restricted to physical space, she was still uncomfortable with the android body she was given. Nevertheless, it was good to stretch her metallic legs out every once in a while.
Grabbing a nearby wheely sweet and rolling it over to Kisaria, it squealed and squeaked like a mouse as she dragged it over and sat on it, resting her chest on the chairs back.
"Might have worded things a bit too harshly there, madame." In an extremely rare case of self reflection, Tammy stared up at her commander, pushing up her glasses.
"No worries." Kisaria curtly replied. "We saved their lives and we're going out to save more. If they don't thank us then... Hah! My initial thoughts of them would be proven correct." Kisaria smugly nodded to herself, just thinking of all of the ways things can go right, and wrong.
"Jeez, and I thought I was rude." Tammie pouted as she stood up from the chair and went over to one of the nearby consoles. Seeing the flashing red 'INTERDICTED' sign appear on one of the screens, she paid it no mind as she looked over towards some of the other options she had.
Her hands wandered over a few of the buttons and dials. From nozzle tuning to radio frequencies. She paused in her tracks as she remembered the person behind the wheel of the allied ship. Right... Uh... Tammie had already forgotten their name.
Tammie stared down at the console, emotionless. She shook her head a few times, maybe getting so many upgrades and new cores all at once was taking a toll on her mind and personality.
"Oi. You done there?" Kisaria appeared behind Tammie, snapping her out of a depressive spiral. "Salvage needs overseeing. Once these things are wrapped up I think we should go to the nearest port and get some rest." Kisaria grabbed the android by the hand and led her to the center of the ship. "Everyone here's on edge after seeing conflict after such a long time, you might be too. I understand." The abrasive captain seemed to have turned a new leaf. Or at least kept herself levelheaded during this time. Only one could wonder what was happening in the other fleet, hopefully they could recognize what the Elvorians are doing and follow suit.
-"Primary communication channels handling transferred...the uh, loss, of the station won't be an issue anymore." -An officer quietly responded in the silence of the emergency CIC of the Villoria, her report being the only thing breaking the silence in that moment. Just like the rest of her comrades, the officer looked at Azlyn with great worry, confused, and unsure what to do. Their guidelight had just broken down in tears and destroyed an entire station in a fit of rage. It looked like she was about to collapse again, but at the very last second, Ekastar, now present again on the CIC, managed to hold her before falling into the ground.
-"Azlyn..." -He whispered with worry for his guidelight and close friend. In that moment, he wished to be able to carry her out of the CIC, into whatever might remain of the medical bay if it wasn't destroyed by the previous engagement. But this was not the time, and both him and Azlyn knew it, there was still a lot of work to do, and now more than ever their actions would decide how many lives they were able to save.
-"I'll be okay." -She responded, clearly with a lot of anger still in her words. The sound of her mechanical body parts struggling to move filled the room alongside her groans of pain. With no orders to assist her, they quickly became a sound of relief for the officers around her, as their guidelight was still strong, and in the fight, not out just yet. -"S-status report."
-"The retreat through FTL of the new Arkonian task force has been confirmed, no more hostiles in the area, we can begin with search and rescue missions as you requested earlier, guidelight Azlyn."
Sitting down on her station again, Azlyn noticed how everyone on the two battlestars that had stayed to fight alongside their newfound allies had listened to her, even after her uncontrolled burst of anger. Despite the tragedy lived that day, they remained loyal.
-"Search and rescue teams 1 to 10 already in motion guidelight Azlyn! We have identified the locations of multiple wreckages of our battlestars with potential survivors. Search and rescue has just begun, what are your next orders, guidelight Azlyn?"
She was getting back into her senses, forgetting about the novastar, she had no reason to worry about them, and forgetting about the insults from the Elvorians, none of it mattered in the face of her one and only mission, to save more lives.
-"Teams 1 through 5, proceed with currently designated coordinates and explore the wreckages highlighted in your HUDs, teams 6, 7, and 8, use the remaining shuttles to link up with Elvorian efforts of search and rescue in the designated area, teams 9 and 10, I need you on the perimeter of the battlestars Villoria and Nakaro searching for survivors near the indicated hull breaches."
The horrors of the battle were left behind as Azlyn once again assumed command of her forces, reigniting the morale and spirit of her crews searching for their comrades not only by themselves, but alongside the teams from the Elvorian vessels as well. Over the debris from the many battlestars who suffered hull breaches were many unconscious bodies floating in space, all with spacesuits and for the most part, still alive. The Altarian teams were relieved and amazed that their comrades could survive for so long in such a harsh environment, many crying upon finding their friends and even family believing them to have been dead at first. Over time, Elvorian and Altarian teams working together would be able to rescue a tremendous amount of Altarians from their drifting in the void, reducing the total casualties of the battle from hundreds to less than a few dozen. Both the survivors and the rescue teams constantly expressed their gratitude towards the Elvorians, seemingly not being able to thank them enough for their efforts, some with cordial thanks, others with a flood of tears and claims of them now owing their lives to the valiant crews of the Elvorian vessels. Azlyn witnessed every exchange, and it filled her heart with hope once again, she did not have to look forward to a battle anymore, now, it was the time to rejoice in newfound peace of mind and soul, brought by those who she believes can be their new allies.
-"Communications reestablished with the Elvorian vessels, guidelight Azlyn!"
Rejecting her peace with death, looking forward to a bright new future for her nation, Azlyn picked up the communications device, and took the first step on weaving the destiny of all Altarian and Elvorian lives.
Tranquility.
A familiar sun shone through the windows of the ASDF Lyra-class battlestar Villoria, the gas giant it orbited making way for a new dawn for the crew, who in mere minutes filled the ship with life, as officers returned to their stations, while the rest of the crew prepared to do routine checks before the main procedure that awaited them once more.
Guidelight of the Villoria, the flagship of the 4th quasar of the 6th “Storm Watchers” constellation, annoyed by the reception of her presence by the shouting of her full title on every room, guidelight Azlyn Eversia insisted on that she was referred to by just guidelight or her personal name, the second option picked by no one despite her command. However, such was a small distraction in the face of her mission, so as she walked comfortably thanks to the battlestar’s artificial gravity towards the center of intelligence and command, she focused on getting things done as efficiently as possible. The CIC was filled with activity, yet the coordination of its officers gave it a sense of order and peace. Azlyn walked towards her command station, where she was met by a young looking woman of silver hair and purple eyes looking directly at her with almost emotionless eyes, in contrast with the optimistic look of the crew.
-"Guidelight Eversia, I have the report from our battlestar’s off-duty cycle. Our crew performed just as predicted, and the work rate efficiency has improved by 37%."
-"It would not have been possible without your great assistance, our wonderful battlestar AI, Belane 'Viliora' Zafir. You may rest now."
The AI of the battlestar gently nodded before returning to her station, silently coordinating the ship’s movements.
As the Villoria gathered again with the quasar, the name for scouting detachment of the Altarian Stellar Self-Defense Force’s constellations, the crews of all ships in perfect coordination began the next phase of their mission. Being stationed at the very edge of the solar system of Sevel, their task was to monitor the distant relay node several astronomical units away. Once the main gateway to exit their nation’s territory and dive into the rest of the galaxy, now blockaded by their enemies. Dozens upon dozens of dangerous warships, from the nearly fully automatic autostars, to the nightmarishly powerful novastars, servants of the First Arkonian Empire, separatists of the nation Azlyn and her crew had sought to defend, the Altarian Systems Authority.
Observing the CIC, Azlyn noticed someone among her crew seemed more worried than the rest. Sensors officer Ekastar. Leaving her station, she walked towards him, the only one that not only seemed wary of their situation, but also deeply concerned.
-"Is something wrong, lieutenant?" -Azlyn asked gently, sitting alongside the officer.
-"The blockade, data shared from the observation station shows that the growth rate of the Arkonian forces has slowed down. Every observation cycle, we saw an increase of 25 autostars, no more or less. But today, we are only getting an increase of 10, damnit I could have found this out sooner, but with our telescopes malfunctioning…"
The officer seemed stressed, not being able to find an explanation to this as he felt the pressure of not responding to his commander’s orders with clarity, he can be seen more altered, almost jumping from his chair in surprise when Azlyn put her hand on his shoulder, making him look at her to find a reassuring smile.
-"You’ve been working hard, even off-duty you’ve provided us with tremendously valuable data. Let me handle this from now on."
Despite the resting time that the crew of the Villoria were given due to their extended deployment, Azlyn knew that her crew remained exhausted and most importantly, the desire to return back home with their families grew stronger every day. Deciding to give one of her officers some rest, she departed the CIC and, putting on her spacesuit, went towards the telescopic observation bridge of the battlestar. Trying her best to bring some of them to a more acceptable state. But as she struggled to fix them, even with help from Villoria herself, she was surprised by the sudden arrival of a helping hand.
-”Disobeying orders again, lieutenant Ekastar?” -She said softly chuckling, turning back to the man that had just appeared to help her.
-”You don’t give it your all to show us the way just for us to give up Azlyn, now come on, the station brought us the tools to fix all this.”
The officer and guidelight worked together for the next few hours trying to repair the infrared and visible spectrum telescopes. A surgically precise task that required both of them to work in perfect unison, something that was aided by the precision of their biological-mechanical bodies, and mutual understanding of each other. Once the final telescope had been properly set up and activated, Azlyn accidentally tripped and was slowly moving towards outer space, before being cathed by Ekastar, who pulled her back seemingly intentionally into a hug, she smiled, but pushed him away gently in response, but Ekastar held her close, staring at her shining cyan eyes.
-”Come on…not now.” -Azlyn whispered.
-”I can’t wait for the day we’re getting off this mission. I’ve been watching that damned blockade for so long I forgot what it was to find peace just by looking at you.”
-”Stop it.”
-”I’m serious.” -He insisted. -”And I’m sure it’s not only me, even after so long people still find the strength to push through this seemingly endless watch thanks to your motivation. Your speeches, energy, you are the embodiment of what a guidelight is meant to be.”
Blushing and taking a step back, Azlyn remained quiet during Ekastar’s confession. But she did not know how to respond, so she turned her back on him to face the controls of the telescopic observation bay.
-”Look, we’ll talk about this later, just help me put this back online.”
-”Right.”
It did not take long for the battlestar’s advanced telescopes to start returning information about their surroundings, which Ekastar and Azlyn analyzed on the bay thoroughly, but as they did, Ekastar seemed more agitated than before. His concerns rose once the Villoria received messages from the rest of the quasar, indicating detection of an anomalous energy signal on the horizon of the gas giant.
-”The emission signals and spectrum, apparent change in position…”
-”Ekastar.” -Azlyn whispered, further inspecting the signals and visual feeds. -”These are…”
Interrupting Azlyn, alarms started blaring not only throughout the battlestar, but all ships in the quasar turned on their emergency response signals, alerting all crewmembers that a threat was imminent, and as all ships adjusted their sensors to get a better feed, the horrific suspicions of a panicking crewmember became true, 15 autostars had circumvented the planet and by unknown means snuck past the observation outpost’s telescopes, and were not on a direct intercept course!
-”Action stations! Set condition 3 throughout the battlestar now! All weapons online and ready to fire on my mark!”
Azlyn ordered her crew but was abruptly interrupted by a loud and rough shaking of the ship’s hull, she could only assume the worst as she and Ekastar rushed to the CIC, the battle had already begun and they were taking fire! The situation was rapidly growing more desperate as Azlyn realized that the quasar’s forces were greatly outnumbered, outgunned, and now caught by surprise by a relentless enemy. But now with laser batteries, macron accelerators, coilguns, and vertical launch systems online ready to strike, she, alongside the other guidelights of the other 4 Lyra-class battlestars gave the long-awaited order in these few seconds of horror.
-”Open fire!”
Lagrange Point 'Eagle Outpost' - 11th 'Nikos Legacy' HPPF - 0033 SET
"Ow Ow! Fuck. That's hot." Waving her hand around in the air as they recoiled from the cup of coffee they tried to pick up, Kisaria blew on her gloves for a moment before turning back around to face her bridge crew. Many of them were still manning their stations, Kisaria breathed a sigh of relief that they probably didn't notice that.
After wrapping up the weapons testing a few sorties back, Kisaria was back on her scheduled job, patrolling near others in the region to make sure that things don't go awry. It was still mind-numbingly boring, but at least they get to see some action instead of having to wander around shooting static targets with a new weapon. Though, as she stepped back onto the piloting platform of the ship, she remembers she's not on the Sword of Light anymore. Turning on the displays and autopiloting systems, Kisaria stared out through the bridges windows.
Testing out the newest Skipper introduced into the fleet, the EAS 'Hopping Rabbit' was assigned to monitor an especially high traffic area of a rival nation. The gleaming reds and blacks of the ships paint were illuminated by her escorts lights as the Mikalona-class ship stayed quiet at the outpost. Telescopes and sensor packs were pointed straight at the gate, though, with little to no action detected, all that they could see were the flashes of the burn drives of the.... Matarians? Kortarlians? Kisaria can't remember their name, and she isn't bothered to learn it anytime soon.
"Just another 3 days here and I can go back to my normal ship." Walking back to the tiny break area on the bridge and picking up her now cooled down cup of coffee, she slouched into her captains seat, taking a sip of the black coffee and linking up communications with the other ships.
Entering 11th High Priority Patrol Fleet Private Channels
Users active: Kisa_Queen (EAS Hopping Rabbit, MS (FS)), XYugoSniperX (EAS Aohau Order, AG), Mariaath_Polser (EAS Battle for Corona, CT), Terror_Airplanes (EAS Divine Fencer, BW), amphibian223 (EAS Last Line, AG)
Users offline: Irene_Moon (EAS Shooting Star, PT)
User Kisa_Queen has entered the channel
XYugoSniperX: ...and i heard from irene that theres lots of bullshit going down in politics affecting us you know
Terror_Airplanes: Right, isn't The Old Guard falling?
XYugoSniperX: nah not now i dont think. i'll give it a few months tho
Kisa_Queen: You guys see anything interesting?
Mariaath_Polser: Nothing so far on scanners. But I did go and see that show on Lorrison earlier, the one with the boulders.
Kisa_Queen: The one with Talui in it right?
Mariaath_Polser: Yeah
Kisa_Queen: Lucky ass..
User Irene_Moon has entered the channel
Irene_Moon: weapons fire
Kisa_Queen: Coords?
Mariaath_Polser: coordinates?
Irene_Moon: 44.51, 77.22 relative to the gas giant
XYugoSniperX: that's the gate right?
Terror_Airplanes: yeah
Kisa_Queen: got it, get in the call.
The formation of ships quickly began to burn away from their outpost point, facing towards the coordinates attached by Captain Irene. The communications screen left of Kisaria quickly filled up with the faces of the other captains on patrol with her ship. Captain Yugo scrambled to finish his donut as he leaned towards his sensor panel, attempting to get a closer look of the conflict. Captain Mariaath was already busy leading her craft, her voice audible off camera as she quickly coordinated with her active recon drones to see what type of conflict this may be. Captain Talov and Captain Phenelope took vanguard ahead of Kisaria as the fleet went out of passive observation and into a heightened state of caution.
Captain Irene appeared on screen later. Being their forward recon ship meant that her connection was just a little more delayed than usual. Her iron gray hair and pitch black outfit made her look like a veteran of sorts, though that isn't the case, as she's the newest member of the 11th HPPF. Despite that, she started to take command before Kisaria could intervene.
"12 active signals being tracked by 5 other active signals. Weapons fire detected from primitive technology. We've got the range and first strike capability to hit them where it hurts, your orders, Kisaria?" Irenes eyes dashed over to the target signatures. Little red and yellow dots on a screen, like fireflies dancing together. The information is relayed across the entire patrol group as they began to move towards the direction of the battle. From a distance, nearly every single signature coming from their fleet is undetectable, except for one. Gravity sensors would most likely pick up the shifting and movement of something big, the combined movement of the fleet looking like a dwarf planet just got up and de-orbited.
"Do you recognize any of these ships? IFFs or at least nation of origin?" Kisaria questioned.
"No IFFs, but I do know one of them's the Altarians, and the other are the Arkonians. Judging from some of my intercepted messages, the Altarians are the outnumbered ones." Yugo said, still munching on his donut. "What happens if they lose control of the gate I wonder."
"Probably not good for us, we're gonna have to be there before they do." Kisaria thought out loud, looking over her options. They could always just stay back and watch, but High Command did give them a 'suggestion to make bolder choices on the field', and that they've been watching these boys fight for as long as the HPPF was there. It was almost like an unspoken friendship. The two fleets would occasionally signal each other. One by activating their penrose drives and the other by flashing their nuclear torches.
Though, the Altarians don't even know who or what Kisaria and the HPPF are doing there. With comms zipped tight, their ships were able to continually monitor the gate, and make sure that nothing out of the ordinary happens. For all the Altarians know, the HPPF is just an abnormally large asteroid or a rogue dwarf planet just passing by the system.
Kisaria had a soft spot for the tiny defenders. Almost all of the crew in the fleet does. Though, of course, personal opinion doesn't go above orders, they can't help in the battle directly, right?
"Load, 15 seconds, set nozzles to Tight 80, aim for the dozen of hostile contacts." Kisaria radios in to the gunners below the bridge. "I advise you to do the same."
The ships fronts split open, the sleek hulls moving outwards to reveal a gaping maw of monstrous stellar technology cobbled together by the Abyssals. Kisaria doesn't know what magic the shipworkers have done to make DE-CRLs so powerful, and she'd rather not know anytime soon. Parts moved back and forth as the entire front rearranged itself into a nozzle for the Cosmic Ray Launcher.
"Alright, this is gonna be our first ever violent interaction with these folks. Get ready for a mountain of political ramifications and questioning from superiors." Kisarias self-aware humor made a few of the crew laugh, along with the other captains, excluding Irene. "You may fire when ready."
The order was given and the guns fired off. At first slowly, the beams of particles growing in width and length, before letting loose a tight beam of supercharged particles and light. First came the neutrinos that escaped the ball of energy first, then a few seconds after that, a spine of visual light guides the main character of the show. Miliseconds after the first beams of light escaped the nozzle, a gigantic bust of hyperenergized particles shot out of the barrels of all of their ships, with a direct intercept course towards the Arkonian Autostars. The beams weren't aiming for a direct hit with their beams (though it'd be quite a sight to see), even an indirect hit will most likely severely damage, disable, or mission kill anything in its way, even if it might hit the Altarians through particle deviation and leakage.
-”Get me a direct line of communication with the other battlestars open now! Set forward fire stances and navigate towards a defensive position around the observation outpost! I want everyone out of that station safe, contact and declare an emergency evacuation, ID 9-6-4-1, transmit it damnit, and I want a status report!” -Azlyn shouted, her voice heard across the entire bridge as all crew were already on their stations, holograms opening in front of her own command station with visual feed of the other guidelights awaiting her command, while the master AI of the Villoria returned to the center of the CIC, directly connecting herself to the ship and beginning to coordinate all its systems to move according to the plan.
The other commanders, young and inexperienced, seemed frightened over the visual feed. Nevertheless, their CICs were still operational and could respond to further orders.
-”Guidelight Azlyn! 15 Namikairen-class autostars are attacking us! They have opened fire with pulsed particle beam and laser weaponry!” - An officer on the CIC responded quickly.
-”They’ve hit the sides of my battlestar! Oh Thelia please…I don’t think the hull is going to hold much longer!” -Azlyn heard as she turned her attention back to the guidelights, one of them praying for his life.
-”Praying won’t get us anywhere! We were not trained by the Altarian stellar academies to sit down and give up, everything will turn out okay if you just calm down, and follow my orders. I will guide us to victory.”
The five battlestars in the quasar proceeded to aim their noses towards the autostars. They took several hits, but it was manageable by their thrusters and armor systems over the hull.
-”Raise all primary offensive weapons and prepare to fire on my command!”
As Azlyn gave the order, many turrets began to surface from the battlestars’ hulls, revealing heavy caliber coilgun batteries, pulsed laser cannons, and on the front of each craft, several nose-mounted particle accelerators ready to fire.
-”On my command, focus fire on the nose-mounted weapon systems of the frontmost autostars ahead! Three, two, one, open fire!”
With their hulls flashing bright as laser pulses punched into their armor, vaporizing centimeter after centimeter, every second pulling the Altarian crews closer to death, the battlestars held on strong against the opening barrage of their foe, and opened fire on coordinated pulses, casting forwards invisible rays of death and destruction that began to tear down the weapons of their rivals! Firing did not cease, no matter how much the hulls were shaking hit after hit, no matter how many alarms blared the Altarian crews under the command of guidelight Azlyn kept moving, repairing every bit damaged within their reach, moving supplies, ammunition, and coordinating teams across hundreds of meters of hallways.
But their opponent was not one that could be easily defeated, not with their arsenal. So when the Altarian weapons struck the autostar hulls, they responded with large barrages of fast-moving missiles, a swarm that began to fill the battlefield as seconds, then minutes went by.
-”We’re detecting enemy launch systems active!”
After the officer reported the new threat, Azlyn was ready to issue a new order but was interrupted by a loud alarm and the shouting of the officer in warning towards the entire quasar.
-”Radiological signatures detected, they’re launching nukes!”
Stopping her from helping the crew coordinate in this moment of horror, another devastating pulse hit the Villoria, sending her guidelight back against the wall.
-“Azlyn!” - Belane, the AI of the Villoria yelled believing her guidelight to be unconscious after her clash. With full control over her battlestar, issuing defensive orders to the rest of the quasar, Belane activated the point-defense weapons of the Villoria, small turreted macron accelerators that once activated ceaselessly fired against the incoming swarm of nukes, destroying several, yet still leaving dozens upon dozens left in space scattering and still flying towards them, pushing the AI and her sisters’ abilities to assess the situation to their absolute limit. Belane may not be the most advanced star commanding AI of the Altarian Self-Defense Force, but in that moment, she felt like her power to save everyone from this situation was not limited by her processing power anymore, all that was on her mind were all the moments Azlyn spared to treat her, and the rest of the crew and quasar like people, not as assets. If her guidelight was still alive, then she had to save her.
A familiar voice called to her, but once she tried to stand up, Azlyn fell to the ground again realizing that she could not see, as she soon understood her face was covered in blood. And yet, she again tried to grasp onto something, before being held firmly by a soldier on the CIC.
-”Guidelight Azlyn! You’re still alive.”
-”...Not for long if I can’t get back in my command station”
Silence followed her words as Azlyn desperately tried to clean the blood on her face, only to be met with even more before the soldier forced her to stop trying, holding her arms and letting him clean her, only then she could see the horrified face of the young stellar marine, shining bright with yellow and orange lights of fire surrounding him.
-”Guidelight Azlyn.” The stellar marine once again paused, breathing deeply to calm down slightly. ”The CIC was completely destroyed.”
Snapping out of her confused state of mind by the horrifying news, Azlyn could finally see clearly that around her was a medical team, and slowly leaving it behind was the main door towards the CIC. Searching for anything to say or see that could help her be free from the nightmare she was getting into, she only saw, across the closing windows of the doors to the CIC, the floating bodies of her officers, and small, colorful, familiar cybernetics.
Transported into the auxiliary command center, Azlyn stood on her own again to face the remaining officers dealing with endless distress calls from the entire fleet and their own battlestars, hearing how damage control teams cried over the loss of their entire squadrons to arriving enemy coilgun battery fire, how gunners, engineers, and medics were all retreating into deeper sectors of their battlestars as the nose armor was finally being defeated by the relentless autostars, melting with lasers and particle beams everything they touched on the now exposed frontal internal components. Only the few bravest remaining crewmembers were still manning their combat stations and keeping the fleet from being completely destroyed.
Azlyn walked to her new command station, opening the new holograms she had to face to see the total damage that her fleet had received. It was clear to her that her ships had not yet received critical damage, but the lack of organization of her crews sent them into disarray. How long had she been asleep? She wondered. Her thoughts abruptly interrupted by a new development on the battlefield: new signatures. Discarding all her plans horrified at the thought of more flanking Arkonian autostars appearing, she prepared to issue an evacuation order when everything changed by the alert of an officer.
-”Unidentified ship approaching rapidly! It only appears on our gravimetric sensors, IFF unknown.”
-”Guidelight Azlyn! The autostars have begun to behave strangely!” - Another officer reported over the previous one.
On her command, visual feed holograms were opened to observe the autostars. Many of them began to steer away from their routes, with exposed lights and movable components flashing and moving abruptly. Two autostars on the center of the formation faced the weirdest change of them all, with their thrusters violently being activated and leading to their collision! Leaving behind a massive explosion and a bright flash.
But not all autostars were affected by this, while eight were showing extremely erratic behavior and malfunctions, another four were showing minimal divergence from their previous orders and continued to fire on the Altarian fleet. While the other three, far away enough from the fleet, aimed their weapons towards these new targets with low accuracy provided only by their gravimetric sensors. But the lack of accuracy did not stop the raging machines from opening fire with dozens of particle accelerators and laser pulses in an attempt to saturate the area near the gravimetric signal while the rest of their sensors still tried to pinpoint this new enemy.
Azlyn was more confused than ever, she was seeing changes never experienced by her before, nor seemingly being on any other report she had read on the previous cycles on her training. Everything was moving extremely fast and she was being left behind. Breaking the silence she had maintained until that point, she stood up slamming her desk and issued new orders to her quasar.
-”Patch me through all the communications systems of the quasar! I want contact with all crewmembers still alive!” - And as quickly as her order was issued, it was completed, now every Altarian under her command could listen to her. - ”This is guidelight Azlyn from the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria. Unidentified contacts have begun engaging the Arkonian forces! We do not know if their intentions are to help us, but we must not waste this opportunity. The universe has heard our cry for help and has given us a chance to keep marching on our path to victory! New orders are being issued right now as I speak, follow these commands and this time we will survive! I promise.”
The heat from the finished burst dissipated into the vacuum as the patrol fleet ejected their heat sinks into space. Massive radiators grow from their sleek bodies like shark fins on a fish, as they grow as bright as a small star for a few seconds, before coolant washes over its surface and recollected, and the radiators collapsed back down into the craft. "Successful hits! Reload and await orders. If we don't get court martialed after this, I'm popping open my Champagne!" The gunnery crew on the Hopping Rabbit erupted in cheer as they ecstatically loaded in more capacitor charges into their weapons.
Kisaria could only laugh as she looked at the vessels begin to wander about in a dazzled confusion. Like ants trapped in a death spiral. Recon drones picked up the two ships crashing together, leading to much of the bridge crew keeling over in laughter at the almost cartoonish death sequence. Though as the return fire comes, they sober up and get back to work, occasionally cracking jokes at the expense of this unkown enemy.
Most of the shots go wide. With the combined gravity signature of a dwarf planet, there was thousands, maybe tens of thousands of kilometers worth of dispersion. Most lasers and particle beams shoot past ships, while automated CIWS and APS systems shoot out plasma and particle clouds against the tiny amount of kinetics that managed to get close to their central fleet, most of which either slows down, or completely melt the projectiles. As the barrage was silenced by the sudden acceleration of the fleet, no ships were damaged or killed, and there was only a handful of non-penetrating shots that bounced.
"Fucking amateurs, show them what a real particle beam looks like." Phenelope remarked as she watched a passing beam go wide by several kilometers.
"Finish the job, get those three that still know what they're doing." Kisaria tapped at the sensor contacts with a large stick baton. "10 seconds Tight 100, snipe them out while they're still dazed." The other captains send a message of acknowledgement as the nozzles rearrange themselves once again. Metal scrapes against metal as the gun is folded into the standard tightness level for long ranges. Capable of sniping down individual craft while still dealing some residual damage to electronics and crewmembers. At ranges like these, switching over to the wide nozzles would be unwise, though, the showering of particles down on these ships would be a sight to see. Kisaria makes a mental note to drive into the middle of one of these battles one day instead of just watching from afar.
"Intercepted and unencrypted communications from the strangers, ma'am." The communication officer passed her a tiny hologram displayer the size of a business card. Holding it in her palm and staring at it with a curious look. Tapping the tiny 'play' button on the card, it plays the decrypted audio along with captions projected out on the hologram.
'This is guidelight Azlyn from the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria. Unidentified contacts have begun engaging the Arkonian forces! We do not know if their intentions are to help us, but we must not waste this opportunity. The universe ha-" The message was cut short as Kisaria stopped the recording and tossed it back to the communications officer.
"D'you hear that guys?" Kisaria looked back to her call with the other captains. "Looks like they don't even know who we are."
"Duh." Phenelope remarked. "We've been in the background for a while already."
"Well how about we give them a nice old introduction right?" Kisaria flipped a switch on one of her panels labled 'Horn Ready System'.
"Comms off, unless you'd like to get them fried." Kisaria warned. And one by one their faces disappeared from the comms screen.
Flipping the rest of the ready switches and diverting some of the secondary power generated by the ships onboard Cold Fusion reactor, the sensor array lit up with a burst of information, as the sweep finally allowed the fleet to see who was what and where they were. Tapping a few of the contacts again with her baton, Kisaria aimed a cone of projected communications towards these defenders somewhere near the gate.
Technically these are the ships 'Active Jamming Systems' meant to disable communication systems for an extended period of time. Though, many captains have taken it upon themselves to modify it into a makeshift ships horn using others communication systems. Allowing it to act as it's intended comms jamming role at higher powers, and with a few modifications, project the voices of their wrath at extreme distances without the risk of disabling electronics, though, for a short time, communications would be muddied, clouded by the screeching of a leviathan craft. Kisaria hadn't had the honor of pulling the horn for her fleet in a while, and she looked at the level with her fingers twiddling in excitement. Her own personal modification was transforming the normal 'Cosmic Screech' the horns are so well known for, into a choir of voices recorded from her fleet
Pulling the lever, the entire bridge room was silent, before filling with the ear splitting noise of the projected communications burst blast towards the strangers. Passing through the entire hull of the ship and using the front nozzle like a megaphone, it only amplified its strength as it left the Elvorian formation and dived towards the Altarians.
At first, there was nothing from communications... The gravity pings projected nothing but a stray neutrino or supercharged particle passing through their electronics. But there was another sound, past the static of cosmic radiation, past the disruption of leaked particles from whatever beam just disrupted the autostars, even past fleet-wide communications.
Then, it was a slow, ramping buildup. Like watching a storm appear on the horizon. The sound of a growing growl slowly occupied every frequency they switched through, an ever present droning. But as time went on, it was waxing more and more. The drone turned into white noise, and soon after that, it evolved into something more complex than just a single monotone note.
A screech of what sounds to be like a thousand whales fills the communication centers of any ship still possessing them. Drowning out all noise, the cry of song and melody danced throughout the vessels, even overtaking the PA systems on some less protected or damaged vessels, echoing through the halls of these battlescared vessels. Although Kisaria had set the horn to the longest duration possible, the onboard A.I pushed it further.
The disjointed notes slowly formed together into a proper whales call. A thousand voices call out together as one. And it screeches into the darkness of the void, letting loose a hymn of what sounded like a thousand years of history. The voices sang together, eliciting a myriad of different emotions and tones. Determination, anger, protection. This horn was menacing, an intimidating yell from a giant the Altarians have not laid their eyes on just yet. But it was also one of protection, draping the battlefield in devastating fire to shield them.
Nobody needs to have a translator to know what the Hymn implies. It's a shout for a better future. For these strangers to grab the strings of fate and weave it around like a tailor, filling the empty quilt that is the near future with color and conflict alike.
And just as abruptly as it began, it ended. The whale calls died out one by one as the Hopping Rabbits sequence finished. While it was only about a minute or two long, it felt like much, much more than that.
"... I'll have to report that to the manager later." Kisaria remarked about its abnormal length. "Anywho... Open Fire!"
---
EAS Shooting Star, Close Orbit with 'Yantar' Gas Giant.
Irene sat solitarily in her bridge. Though, it was hard to call what was basically a glorified fighters cockpit as a bridge. There was nobody else on this ship except for her, and the Typhoon-class Lupotech that accompanied her in this endeavor. Pushing up her wide brimmed hat and looking through her options, she softly chuckled at her variety.
Nuclear missiles, missile-deployed drones, bomb pumped lasers, and even the coveted 'Crust Crasher' antimatter missile was packed onboard. And looking through her bridges windows at the gas giant the battle was occurring behind, Irene could breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn't in the thick of the action. And the slightly distorted horn of the Hopping Rabbit gave her some more security in her position.
Her Tiphereth-Class Partisan was far from the most durable fighter. Basically being a missile barge with some guns and engines strapped onto it, cradling a missile microforge on its backside. One wrong move and she'd be flying high into the nonexistent sky of space. Though, her purpose wasn't to be in the open. In fact, Irene was already in the perfect position to strike on the disabled and disoriented ships from afar. Flailing around like schoolchildren on a playground, it was the perfect time to strike
Flicking up one lever, Irene looked through her options.
Click
'1L - S-ASM 'Harpoon' Nuclear MIRV'
She flipped through another.
Click
'2L - DEM-ASD 'Flashbang' Sensor Jammer'
And another.
Click
'3L - SLF-ASD 'Iron Maiden' Drone Fighter'
And finally...
Click
'4L - AME-ASM 'Crust Crasher' Area Denial Missile'
Selecting 4 of these missiles to fire in the enemy formation, the Typhoon A.I takes a fraction of a second to calculate the right flight path before reporting to her captain.
"Use dwarf planet for gravity whip. Chance of impact, 95%. Chance of hardkill, 70%. Chance of softkill, 100%. Estimated impact in 13 minutes"
The odds were stacked in her favor, and as she pressed the big blue button to launch, she could only grin as she looked at the VLS systems open up, pushing out the missiles, before their torches activated and burned towards the dwarf planet. She wouldn't be there to see the direct effects herself, but she cackles and takes a sip of her coffee as she closed her eyes and imagined the reaction on those poor strangers faces as the missiles find their mark.
-"Missiles inbound! We got twelve more non-radiological signatures heading towards ayken-1, another seven flanking ayken-2 and ayken-3"
-"All coilgun batteries from ayken 1 to 3 focus fire on targets Evel five and two taking flanking maneuvers bearing 30-1-2 load up hybrid rounds and fire on my command!"
-"DC teams 2 and 8! CIC, we report successful reparation of frontal RCS designated U-4 she's ready again!"
-"Guidelight Azlyn, guidelight ayken-4 of Lyra-class battlestar Nakaro "ayken-4", laser batteries are back online, ayken 4 and 5 are ready to fire on your command."
-"All weapons firing solutions C-1 and L-3 declared green, fire at will!"
Inspired by the courage of their commanding guidelight and motivated once more the strike of their unknown allies on the enemy, the crew of the five battlestars in the quasar, spirited once more intensely working on getting as many subsystems back online on their stars, with fire diverted from them damage control teams dashed into the most vulnerable and exposed corners of their ships to rapidly weld emergency patches on the hulls, nervously join and fix all the destroyed wiring and locate through hundreds of meters of ventilation and maintenance shafts the missing pieces and broken portions of key conduits.
Of all five battlestars, three were dashing forwards to intercept flanking autostars, pounding their hulls with frontal impacts of enormously fast coilgun rounds that pierced wall after wall of their internal armor, before high explosive rounds made quick work of all the wiring, setting all the machinery within ablaze plunging it into chaos. For every detonation and noticeable destruction of the enemy battlestars the crew aboard them felt more committed to fighting and living! leaving behind the horror and shock of the enemy's initial strikes, promising to avenge the fallen instead of dying with them. The remaining two battlestars were providing laser fire support to deter other autostars from moving in to help the ones flanking ahead, but the two battlestars could not advance and make maneuvers crucial for effective support, the main fusion engine of one of the battlestars was failing to ignite and her communications were destroyed, and the other could not leave her sister star behind, or they would be too exposed and defenseless. The battlestar without functioning engine was none other than the flagship of the quasar, Villoria.
-"Damnit!" -Azlyn slammed the desk in front of her in frustration. "Order ayken 1 to 3 to switch throttle from 100% to 75%, at this rate ayken 2 will have to leave us behind, and everyone on the damage control teams is busy repairing frontal damage-"
-"Guidelight Azlyn! We can't contact the rest of the quasar, our communications array still does not work!"
Azlyn, almost furious, grabbed the radio and contacted the DC team charged with the repairs of the communications. -"DC captain Zenlow, you were given twice the equipment needed to fix the communications array, what in the name of Thelia is going on?!"
Atop the hull of the Villoria, slowly peeking his head behind cover, a single DC crewmember answers to the radio as he watches the repair robots he was sent with fly into the void, with a railgun impact on every single one of them. "About that..."
-"I've got iiiit!" -An enthusiastic voice spoke over the transmission of Zenlow and Azlyn, and the two knew who it was, a new recruit for the damage control team 5, Zaya Milier, who, unbeknownst to them was finished heading towards the communications array, having brought spare equipment.
-"Where in the name of Thelia did you get all that?!" -Zenlow exclaimed.
-"Oh, don't worry about it!" -She responded slamming the equipment in the hull starting to fix the damage dealt to the communications systems to get at least a backup working again.
-"I worry a lot..."
-"Fix it!" -Azlyn told the two over the radio, soon to her surprise and disbelief hearing that communications were back online, but in poor quality and with lower intensity.
-"And lucky us we're just getting something! Let's hear what it is, patching it through to the CIC!" -Zaya exclaimed, not waiting for confirmation from Azlyn. And as the CIC listened, Zaya grabbed Zenlow and hurried towards the main fusion engine.
Suddenly, everything seemed to stop. The comms receivers were quiet with static for a few seconds before an enormous, overwhelming sound filled the room of the CIC and all others listening too, sounds like terrifying yelling almost pushed back Azlyn from the shock of hearing such an alien signal over comms instead the voices of her fellow guidelights. She was about to order to cut the transmission before the sounds changed, and Azlyn held back her order to listen closely, it seemed as if the abysmal noise was transforming into something more coherent, yet equally imposing as now a powerful melody of what she assumed were warcries sang together to form a sound like Azlyn and her crew had never heard before. "It's them" Azlyn thought, knowing that this was the result of the unknown allies attacking the autostars, and, knowing that they sent only a radio transmission and not any weapons fire, the overwhelming screech turned into a welcomed, fulfilling call to arms again, she knew this was a sign of friendship, not of war.
What wasn't as melodic but soon just as inspiring as the call from the void was the loud banging of a hammer and blasting of a welder muted by the void from Zaya's hands, who had just finished patching up in an improvised way so questionable it made Zenlow terrified to start the engine, but such irrelevant things didn't stop the daring Zaya from grabbing the radio, interrupting the transmission, and giving even more good news.
-"She's reaady to buuuuurn!!"
-"Open fire again! Form up with ayken-4, we'll proceed with established coordinates, full throttle!"
The crew did not question for a second Azlyn orders as once more the Villoria was back in action with her lasers vaporizing away the armor of the closest autostars losing control over their thrusters, and the coilguns devastating everything on the surface of their enemies. But the good news were not over yet, as Ekastar back on his sensors station reported that unknown missiles were heading towards the autostars at hypervelocity, Azlyn swiftly commanded the quasar to prepare.
-"All battlestars prepare for flash and shock!"
And just as she had predicted, the massive, bright blasts from the missiles fired were none other than those of nuclear weapons devastating the surface of the autostars, leaving very little armor on them, for the first time in this battle, Azlyn smiled and almost laughed knowing for sure the unknown signals were completely friendly.
-"Fire VLS!"
And now that the autostars were at their weakest, their components in chaos and circuits frying, the final barrage of small yield nuclear weapons from the battlestars began as over 100 missiles filled the battlefield dashing towards the autostars, exploding with ferocity upon contact and thanks to their shaped charges leaving massive holes in their hulls as they were finally being destroyed for good!
The antimatter missiles raced towards their targets, dancing in the dust of the gas giants rings like birds in the sky. Their onboard computing systems had an eerily humanlike flying style, their sensor contacts barely visible on RADAR or LIDAR, but the potential energy in each one of them is... Very detectable to say the least. Within each missile was an antimatter-producing machination, capable of producing 10KG of antimatter in a few seconds, and a single-use Orion drive to demolish anything behind it, and to pivot the main warhead towards another target.
With the subsystems of the autostars dazed and confused, they were easy targets for these missiles. The distant pings on their tracking sensors guided the missiles towards targets. As Kisaria and her fleet designated targets, the missiles each picked and choose a different ship for them to target.
The first missile makes a sheer turn, curving its fusion plume as it maneuvered to impact the side of the Autostar, its damaged and sparkling hull showed the metals and electronics underneath, ravaged by malfunctions and destroyed transistors. But seconds before impact, the missile suddenly pivoted towards another autostar, and separated its fusion torch drive and revealed something more... destructive in nature.
A hardened Boron pusher plate, and a nuclear warhead launcher. The unmistakable engine of an Orion Drive. In a split second, the engine activated, and the nuclear warhead was detonated behind the missile, and right at the autostar. Already left reeling from the internal damage left by the Cosmic Ray Launchers, the nuclear blast was enough to mission-kill it, destroying a significant chunk of its hull and frying whatever electronics managed to survive the first barrage. The missile activated its antimatter producers as it zipped towards the next enemy.
The remaining warhead detached the Orion Drive as it allowed only its RCS to take it the rest of the way there towards another enemy, the sudden acceleration allowing it to bypass any erratic PD trying to shoot it down. The internal warheads generated enough antimatter to top up their internal storage, just in the nick of time for..
Impact
The Antimatter warhead detonated, shattering with it both itself and the entire superstructure of the Autostar. The AM missiles were meant to take down stations and supercapitals, so it being used against such small and soft targets like autostars, it left practically nothing except for a cloud of dust and a superheated chunk of what remains of their chassis. The bare wireframe of the ship being left out in the open for all to see. The sight was all the same for the poor autostars being caught in this web of destruction. Disposable fusion and Orion drives littered the battlefield as Autostars fell victim to either the wrath of an Orion Drive, or to the oversized Antimatter warheads.
And as the alloys cooled down, it left a prismatic, glass-like sheen on the surface. Like the missiles heat had glossed it over with some sort of other material. Reflecting the light off of the distant star, it shined brilliantly across the visible spectrum, almost blinding any visual-based telescopes aimed towards the battle. Bits and pieces of prismatic dust begin to rapidly shoot out from what remains of the fleet, battering the Battlestars. It wasn't going to cause any significant damage, but the shaking is sure to scare some of the crew.
It seemed like nothing was left. Nothing but dead wrecks, unable to even be salvaged. Their shimmering hulls hold nothing of worth anymore.
The Nuclear Missiles from the Altarians miss, finding no targets to even lock onto.
"Confirmed target hits. 8/4. That was a bit overkill, wasn't it, Irene?" The A.I chirped, recalling its reconissance drones back to the Shooting Star.
"I'd say it wasn't. I accidentally packed 4 of those instead of my decoys, so I might as well use them." She replied.
"Fair enough. Plotting point to regroup with fleet."
-
The bridge crew on the Hopping Rabbit looked away just in the nick of time, as a prismatic light washed over the entire room in a split second, before falling back into the normal warm lighting of the bridges light fixtures. The Cosmic Ray Launchers slowly disengaged, their stored charges in their capacitors slowly draining back into the main power system. Some of the bridge officers begin clapping as Kisaria hailed the new contact on their RADAR contacts, the Shooting Star.
"Shit man!" Kisaria shouted, half-angry and half-laughing, as she reentered the ships video call. "You know how expensive one of those pieces are? Spending it on targets like that..."
"Good show though!" Phenelope complimented, still sipping on her drink from before combat began. "I haven't seen something like that since the time we blew up that cargo ships reactor, right Yugo?"
"Come on Penny, don't remind me of that shit." He let out a guffaw." It's not like they were carrying anything of worth anyways."
The back and forth between the two continued for a while. Many of the others recounted their stories operating around these stars as the Shooting Star reformed within the fleets formation, the tiny arsenal ship dwarfed by the comparatively gigantic interception platform of the Hopping Rabbit.
"Let's get back on track shall we?" Kisaria wrapped up the chatter and returned back to more pressing matters. "Our neighbors are still wondering who the hell we are, maybe a flyby is in order to show them? Let us meet face to face, show them they got nothing to be afraid of."
The rest of the captains agreed, and they went back to radio silence as their faces disappeared from Kisarias video feed. Pressing up on the throttle and syncing up with the rest of the fleet, they matched the Hopping Rabbits velocity and they started to make their way towards the Altarian Fleet. Or what remains of it at least.
Most of their sensors were still on the lookout for other targets. Short-ranged sensors showed nothing of worth outside of the Altarian fleet that they're approaching. Although long ranged LIDAR and passive RADAR gives them other contacts far far away. They aren't alone in this system, but at the very least, it seemed like the coast was clear for the two fleets to meet up and get to know each other.
The shiny, pristine, smooth, almost fish-like shapes of the Elvorian ships cut their way through the void and approached the injured Altarians. They were painted in bright colors, and decorations etched in, like they were modern art pieces of elaborate scenes, or a detailed sculpture. Not a ship of war, and definitely not one that swept aside the Autostars like dust on the top of a shelf. Platings moved and shifted to cover up the twisted metal of the Cosmic Ray Launcher at the front. The maw of the beast being covered up by armored scales, like that of an ocean fish.
The names of their ships were stamped on the sides of their hulls. Flowy fonts denoted their names and origins. From something simple and relatively normal like the 'Aohau Order', to the classic naming scheme of 'Battle for Corona', and to the quaint, almost cute 'Hopping Rabbit.'
Though, cute wouldn't be a term used to describe the ship that it belonged to. Towering over the relatively small Battlestars, and spanning over 4.5km, this 'interception ship' was built like a capital. And her heavy escorts comprising of a Bow Ship and a Cutter being 3.5km and 4.2km respectively. The Agents were still large for their armaments compared to the Battlestars, even if they were a bit smaller than them. Cradling a full sized Dragon Express that the Altarians saw fold up in mere seconds, it was something of a trap card up their sleeve. The tiniest of ships, the Shooting Star, was the only one that felt like it was of normal size. Though, their alpha strike capability demonstrated early still demanded respect.
The Penrose drives on the back of their ships must be like nothing the Altarians have ever seen. The gravitic warping around the tiny, tiny black hole is the only indication that something's actually there. The secondary launchers and other weapons slid back into their slots as they undeployed their hard points, showing off the full extent of the artistry at work on the ships armor.
Kisaria slowly throttled down the fleet, now standing at only a dozen or so kilometers away from the Altarians. If they squinted a bit, they could see the exotic hulls of the Elvorians. And the dead bodies of what was formerly an Autostars detachment.
Kisaria checked and rechecked all of her communication systems as she ordered the fleet to maintain radio silence outside of laser line communications, and the obvious exception of the Hopping Rabbit.
'Well Kisaria. You defied orders, shot at, and destroyed an unknown target, and currently about to make first contact with a fleet you don't even know is friendly. If I don't get court martialed after this, I'll need to complain to Talui to change some rules.' Kisarias inner monologue took over as she found the right frequency to contact these strangers with.
Her video feed opened up with Kisaria sitting in her pilots chair, her bridge crew either at their workstations or getting a look at these new strangers. The first thing the Altarians might notice is how... 'cute' they look. It was almost artificial how curated they liked to hit all the right marks to trigger that side of their brain. Larger eyes, smaller stature, and distinct halos unique to each person, even a few people with wings. It seemed ironic that their guardian angels might actually be angels.
Kisaria took a deep breath and pulled her microphone closer. Looking at whoever was on the other end, she spoke her first words.
"♬♬♩♫♫♩."
'Shit!!!! Forgot the translator.' Kisaria panicked for a bit as she accidentally spoke in her mother tongue. A melodic, singing voice, similar to that of the horn from earlier. But isolated this time, lighter pitched and almost squeaky in nature.
Flipping on the switch for her universal translator, Kisaria breathed a sigh of relief.
"Where was I... Right!" Kisaria raised up a finger, before pointing it at the camera. "Before I say who we are. I need to ask who you are. And before you complain or shoot at us, we just turned those patrol ships behind us into glass, I don't want a repeat of that, right Irene?"
"Right darling. I can only expend so many missiles before you complain." Irene chimed in, breaking radio silence.
"... Right."
Patrol ships? These strangers considered the Autostars mere patrol ships. Though, seeing how easily they disoriented and decimated the autostar fleet, they wouldn't be at fault for thinking that.
It was a bit weird how quickly they managed to decipher the Altarian language from intercepted communications... but that's a story for another day, as Kisaria crossed her arms and waited for an answer from the Altarians.
Seeing the last of the autostars turn into nothing more than space dust by the Elvorian barrage, Azlyn, watching from the auxiliary CIC of the battlestar had witnessed with extreme clarity the sheer destructive power of this ally's weapons, their overwhelming destructive power bringing to Azlyn not fear, but relief, the first moment in the battle when she could finally take a breath and calm down, falling to her knees grateful that the battle was over. She knew, in that moment, that if this unknown ally wished to erase them from existence too, she, her crew, and quasar would have all joined the autostars into being dust no more than a few seconds after the barrage.
The crew rejoiced loudly in the silence brought by the end of the battle, running to hug their beloved companions and thank their guidelights, gods, and starpaths to have led them to this impossible victory. The officers from the Villoria's CIC both cried and laughed in each other's embrace, outside the battlestar, Zenlow and Zaya were almost pushed into space as she didn't hesitate for a single second to throw herself into his newly made friend celebrating their victory and hard work. Ekastar, leaving his station reached Azlyn to help her stand up. Despite the losses and damage suffered, victory in a scenario like this was an impossibility, to Azlyn, this ally was no less than a miracle.
-"Guidelight Azlyn." -An officer strangely reported in a very casual way. "The unknown ships are approaching, we have visual feed available."
-"Put it through the main panel, let's all see who our saviors are." -She happily ordered pulling Ekastar closer to him. -"These ships killed our enemies and now approach us without a single radiological signal or weapon firing towards us, they must be friendly."
But despite her predictions, nothing could have prepared Azlyn for the shock of what appeared through the visual feed, the ships were completely alien to most officers on the CIC, confusion only rising as this was shared across other battlestars, she didn't back down by the surprise, but rather stepped ahead in disbelief and awe, it had been an entire cycle, or 6 years, since she last saw those color patterns, a cycle since they matched so well the insane readings on the sensors, and of course, the weapons used matched what she had been told.
-"it's the Elvorian Union." -She whispered, yet it was heard by the entire CIC sending waves of concern, surprise, and confusion as officers speculated behind Azlyn, who reached out with her hand to the pannel in front of her, being guided by an overwhelming amount of returning memories from an ever closer familiar world. She would allow her crew a few moments to rest before ordering everyone to return to their stations.
The battlestars visibly lowered their combat stance, to the Elvorians, it was clear that they did not want to fight as VLS tubes were closed, and weapons previously aimed at them retracted into the hull to not be seen again.
-"We're getting a transmission, it's voice comms and a visual feed from inside one of the Elvorian ships."
Azlyn stood still for a second, visibly nervous before looking back at the officer.
-"Patch it through, main auxiliary CIC panel and comms receivers."
Adjusting her battledress, Azlyn only now noticed how much it was damaged, just like her armored uniform. Her shield-caster generator was offline, her face had wounds and blood, just like the rest of her body, but even then she stood still preparing for the visual feed, one that, once through, filled Azlyn's mind with even clearer memories of the past, how before the blockade, her parents, avid Eyran explorers, would often visit other worlds and take her to neighboring nations for long vacations and excursions, to her joy, her memories of the Elvorian Union and her people remained intact and crystal clear. There was nothing more releiving than knowing that her saviors were a familiar group.
Despite her condition, Azlyn, managing to remember codes of conduct and other manners outside the ASA, stood firm and saluted the Elvorian commander with her right hand rapidly rising with a sharp shape against her forehead, her expression conveyed seriousness, but a very faint smile showed a clear sign of relief and happiness.
-"Third rank guidelight of the Lyra-class battlestar Villoria and the 4th special relay node reconnaissance operation quasar of the 6th Storm Watchers constellation Azlyn Eversia An Melina. We are a special task force of the Altarian Stellar Self-Defense Force, and, had it not been by your intervention, we would not be here to have this conversation." -Azlyn said as she ended her introductory message with a gentle bow of respect.
"...Unfamiliar name I'd say. I don't think I've met with your nation face to face yet." Kisaria lied, and she had a hint of contempt in her voice as she realized who she was talking to. Ah the Altarians, the hedonistic backwater that the 11th fleet was assigned to monitor and look over. Kisaria can't say that she hates the country per say. But after seeing them focus so much on internal development without even batting as much as an eye towards fleet improvements to break the blockade, Kisaria definitely lost some respect for their otherwise decent culture and nation. No hard feelings though, after todays battle, she was starting to root for the underdogs.
Though even after the fact that she was starting to warm up to these strangers, she still had a face of mild disapproval and distain for having to get her hands dirty during the fight just to save a handful of nobodies. The sound of paper shuffling and Irene moaning about having to pay off some of the cost of the antimatter missiles snapped Kisaria out from her internal pity party. Observing the people on the other side, Kisaria managed to fake a soft smile towards the other captain. Maybe in due time she'll come to find a twinge of actual admiration for these people. But for now, Kisaria still maintains her less friendly worldview of these soldiers.
Opening her mouth and raising a finger to continue her conversation, she was interrupted by her communication and sensor officers throwing her an information card. Quickly looking over its contents and analyzing intercepted communications, Kisaria quickly realized that those automated ships might've not been alone in the system.
A large collection of sensor contacts were rapidly approaching the battlefield, detected by LIDAR, Thermal, and many other basic sensors, it gave Kisaria's fleet a good idea of the external makeup and number of the enemy sship. With a handful of ships that appeared similar to the ones they had just recently glassed, along with a singular, larger 'capital' ship. While it was still dwarfed by the Medium Skipper and her capital escorts, and the square cube law was in the Elvorians favor, it was something to be concerned about for Kisarias smaller and less fortunate allies.
"You can save the fanfare for later, this is no place to talk. We've got incoming signals on LIDAR and Grav Scanners, if you want to continue this conversation, I suggest we deal with these people now rather than later." Kisaria pivoted her conversation from some pleasant small talk and IFF trading, to preparing for another hot off the wake of the last one. The glimmering wrecks caused by the antimatter missiles must've alerted long-ranged light-based sensors by now, it was only a matter of time before some QRF went along and checked why their ships were turned into their bare internal skeletons as hot as a blue star, where its metal skin, circut flesh, and computer organs were simply ripped off its bone like a wild animal desecrating a carcass. Much of the weapon fire here is on the 'down low' so to say. The missiles sure were a flashy introduction for the Elvorians then.
"I suggest we can either go ahead and find wherever your home port is, or we can stand here and fight. It's an ideal situation for us, but I don't know about you." The princess carried herself and her other captains with high regard, and her confidence in their abilities sounded through her voice.
The rest of her fleet snapped to attention and focus, as general battlestations was called once again. Officers moved alongside automaton as weapons were reloaded, barrels replaced, and their Cosmic Ray Launchers unfurling once again.
With an even closer view of these machinations, the scale of the engineering was something to applaud. Static metals and hardened plates moved like a living, organic creature, and at the center of it all was what visually looked like a neutron star. Charged particles danced about like a stellar tango, still hyperactive after the deactivation sequence, the weapons were still warmed up.
The ships turned 180 towards the approaching contacts, it's Penrose drive complemented by numerous fusion torch RCS burning off into the night sky. It's agility and ease of movement looked like a dolphin cutting through water, and as the patrol fleet motioned into a semicircle pattern, it looked almost like a half dozen acrobat swimmers, each of them flying through the dark sky like ballerinas on stage.
"Don't fire until we get IFF confirmations. We don't want to blast any of the tiny runt- allied ships." Kisaria accidentally let some of her contempt slip through the cracks of her noble demeanor as she watched the sensors on her dashboard intently.
-
Irene sat by, her video feed crackling as the interference from onboard magic systems made itself apparent. She had modified the missile carrier into a hot rod for her own personal enjoyment. Paying off Kisaria to not report this to the upper command was easy enough, all it cost was a handful of Bonds and the occasional joyride for the Princesses sake.
Veins pierced their way through the external skin of the craft, engraving delicate floral patterns and harsh angles alike. A tiny robotic arm drove a crystal into the fusion torch engine, igniting a mythical purple plume as the Corvette sped off at a fraction of the speed of light in a minute or two. The missile autoforge worked double time, synthing new warheads and missile bodies from onboard resource pools. The sounds of steam hissing alerted Irene to her new missiles.
As the video feed cut out from the rest of the fleet, Irene was limited to a crackly audio feed to talk with her fleet and the other allies.
"This is Rosemary en-route to intercept. Give me some sensor cover can you?" She reached down onto a neck radio and talked to Kisaria, hoping she could pick it up past the interference.
From a distance, it looked like they complied, as a low-power, high-dispersion shot of Cosmic Rays came out of most of the fleet. While it wouldn't be enough to hardkill anything, it's interference reached far and wide, strong enough to scramble computers, and perhaps even cause some minor physical damage from the inside from malfunctioning parts and overloading computers. All that could be seen by Irene was the extremely faint stream of particles being shot out by the fleet, like that of a solar flare.
Switching off communications and lowering down her torch speed, she awaited at a halfway point between her fleet and the unknown contacts. Hiding in an asteroid field, Irene removed the crystal from the fusion torch and transferred it back into the craft.
Ejecting a spare heatsink, and stopping her fusion engine, she maintained an extremely cold temperature as she watched from afar the incoming contacts. Further antimatter missiles were pre-sighted by her fleet from afar, most of them having their end point be that singular large signature encroaching on their position. Irene cursed mildly under her breath about going into debt because of these missiles as she flicked their arming switches.
The peace brought by the arrival of the Elvorians to Azlyn's mind was short-lived, as her own battlestar's sensors started blaring more and more alarms, indicating a quick rise in contacts detected. Having been on any other star system, she would have jumped to command her quasar once more without hesitation, but she knew that here, more sensor contacts, and rapidly approaching ones sending infrared sensors and optical telescopes into madness as they were overloaded, it could only be the one threat she was ordered not to engage. As she turns back to analyze one of the holographic screens, her smile fades away, starting to breathe more intensely, and shake her head in disbelief.
-"No more..." -She quietly murmured.
Several AUs away, yet striking a fear so intense in the crew of the battlestars, the unknown contacts were rapidly identified as an Arkonian strike force, with massive, longer, sleek and highly decorated hulls compared to the previous detatchment of autostars, they releaved their presence through the burn of gigantic antimatter annihilation drives. Four Sathernin-class autostars, bigger, longer, standing at 980 meters in length and visibly possessing an enormous array of turreted weapons, they surrounded the greatest threat that was soon to arrive, ANV-07 Valgrarte, a 3.2 kilometers Arkonian "novastar", the largest vessels fought by the Altarian Systems Authority, with a reputation of being fleet hunters, fueled by ruthless commanders and technology beyond Altarian understanding, 17 battles to liberate the relay node fought against the 8 novastars protecting the gate and their escort, 17 battles lost.
-"Status of FTL drives."
-"All FTL drives on the quasar report nominal status with no signs of major damage, all battlestars are ready to jump on your command, guidelight Azlyn." -An officer reported right after her request was issued.
-"...Order battlestars Mafel, Zentria, and Obalar to return to headquarters and request emergency medical teams and repair docks, order battlestar Nakaro to form up with us."
With the orders sent to the rest of the quasar, the Elvorians would watch as three battlestars jumped away from the system leaving nothing but a bright flash behind, followed by a communications and video feed incoming from the Villoria and Nakaro, showing once more Azlyn, and the guidelight in command of the second battlestar, Myra. Both were heavily wounded but formally reported to the Elvorians.
-"Commander, I must inform you that the fleet ahead is far more formidable than our recently fought foe. Our damaged battlestars stand no chance against them, but with your mighty stars we have devised a plan to survive the incoming engagement. Your stars are the only ones that can damage them, after all."
Through the communication channel open between the Altarian battlestars and Elvorian ships, a map of the star system, and the relative position of the novastar strike force to the allied forces was relayed, it contained detailed information and 3D models of the autostars and novastar they would soon face as well, including their armament.
-"We find ourselves in a vast lunar system surrounding a gas giant. Equipped with active electronic warfare arrays, our battlestars will provide screening for your ships to perform rapid strikes against the enemy formation, reducing the chance of interception of your own forces, we will orbit local moons and asteroids for cover, so the electronic warfare screening won't be permanent. We advise further coordinating our moves from now on, and work together to destroy the enemy. Additionally, I heavily advice against a head-on engagement against the enemy, their weapons can-"
The camera feed of the emergency CIC was blasted with a huge flash of light interrupting Azlyn, who in horror saw the observation outpost she had protected for so long be gone in an instant, exploding into millions of pieces over and over as one of the things she feared the most announced their presence on the battlefield, getting her point across far quicker than she ever could. Without having realized it, merely staying, Azlyn had crossed the point of no return, and the battle had started.
=================================
-"First strike executed, destruction of the Altarian observation outpost confirmed flightmaster."
-"Good." The figure standing in the shadows of his bridge said, standing up from his throne, and extending his enormous wings in celebration and excitement. -"Let the hunt begin."
"That's right baby, come right in, right in." Irene whispered to herself as she watched the enemy fleet approach the Elvorian firing line. Masked by the moons gravitational well, they were practically invisible to the one sensor type that could detect them. "Get in there, really get in there." Her loud-whispering was complemented by her hyped-up body movement, pumping her fists and quietly chanting 'yes! yes! yes!' as she saw them get closer.
Another voice joined into her chanting, her shipborne A.I materialized right next to her
Pressing a couple of buttons with pride and joy, she armed another round of missiles. This time, wisely saving the antimatter missiles for their leading ship itself, while using their standard nuclear MIRV to take care of the other ships. While these would be larger and more threatening targets than last time, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
-
"ECM active. If you can even call it that." The detection of the first neutrino particles impacting the Novastar and their ragtag fleet alerted to Irene and Kisaria of their DE-CRL impacts on the enemy. With such a wide nozzle, the jamming is significant enough to impair and disrupt PD systems and sensors, while not being strong enough to do any meaningful damage, lest they want to reveal their true nature prematurely. At such a low power and with such a wide funnel, the guns can maintain this jamming for a long while at least, enough for them to make a decision to evacuate the system prematurely, face the enemy head on, or let Irene take care of them with a missile strike.
While the identity of these new people were unknown to Kisaria and most of her fleet, she did at least have a good idea in who they are. Be it just casual deduction, and because of the intercepted messages from the Altarians behind them. It's most likely Arkonain reinforcements. Nothing to worry about, at least for Kisaria and her royal enterauge. Her allies on the other hand, can't say the same.
-
While the fleets crew and captains discussed between each other on their next course of action, their A.I mingled in between each other. Deep in the virtual space of the ships internal servers, a tiny baroom was etched out of the esotetic and ever-flowing information stream. A physical anchor for the 6 A.I to rest and relax at. Though, the ongoing events have definitely changed that attitude.
The thick smell of alcohol and beer filled the digital mead hall as the 6 A.I danced together amongst themselves. Most of their systems have already taken care of by their background processes, menial tasks being assigned to secondary computers, while the cores themselves celebrate action after months of peace.
"One two three four!" The jolly A.I danced in the barroom. The mood ranged wildly between these artificial residents. From Annie (named after her love for antimatter bombs) pulling on party poppers, to Tammie sitting near the back, sipping on some spiked hot tea as she watched her partners in crime celebrate finally being able to fire something at someone.
"The old guns fire once more!" Annie finished the chant Silv had started. "Five six seven eight. Lets go and exterminate!" She jumped up onto the bar counter and popped another party popper, the confetti landing on top of the carefully groomed gun-metal grey of Kalfk.
The music paused as Tammie put her tea cup down, her face twisted in confusion and mild annoyance. "Little on the nose there Annie. Calm your tits, it was one encounter and you're already pretty bloodlusted there." Tammie looked to the side. She couldn't hide her glee absolutely wiping the floor of the enemy earlier, though her more noble demeanor around her teammates meant that she had to keep up the act. "And besides, we might have another opprotunity. I got some new sensor contacts. Lets just wrap this party up."
Tammie snapped, the bar disappearing into thin air, with all that remained being a single table with Tammies tea on it. Annie fell down from her elevated position on what used to be the bar countertop. Silv and his twin, Vils brushed themselves down of any confetti and dust that had gotten on their dresses. Revel fixed her tie on her tuxedo. Kalfk And Tammie stood up, finishing the last of her tea.
"I feel like we should contact our allies. I don't know, it might be helpful to warn them of these things." Tammie casually stated her suggested next course of action as she looked at her crew. "All in favor of breaching their communications, say aye." Tammie was responded with a chant of 'aye' from her team.
"I'll be the one breaking in now, stay put, and make sure your ships are safe." Tammie ordered her allies to mobilize, as Silv, Vils, Revel, Annie, and Kalfk quickly rush back to their ships, disappearing into fogs of mana and information streams. Now alone in this digital world, Tammie looked down at her virtual watch for the time. 10:43 SET. Almost the end of tea time.
Finishing the crumpet left on the table, and taking another cup of tea to go, Tammie began breaching protocols.
Reaching out into the endless virtual space, Tammie summoned an ordinary looking wooden door. Ornate pink-wood dashed along its white birch, her own little personalized backdoor into another systems. After some finagling with keys inside of her pouch, she unlocked her side of the door and peered into the other side. An endless dark void awaited beyond, typical for foriegn systems without the tech to simulate such a virtual space readily. She looked at the material on the other side of the door. A combination of hard ironwood, and metal piping ran along its surface. A surprising deviation from what Tammie is used to seeing, but still not useful for such a mission.
Tammie peered down at the abyss below. The leap of faith was always daunting, but considering the supposedly basic ships that she was meant to be infiltrating might not have the best encryption, she expected nothing but the best for this. Taking two steps back and jumping into the void, she reached out into the darkness for nothing. But as she continued to fall, her outstretched hand glowed, magica flowing through her veins as she calculated the fastest route through their security systems and into their communications array. Her shady violet hair flew like birds in the wind as she worked and worked. Words and information filled the screen she had summoned in front of her as one eye looked down at the far away floor rapidly approaching, and the other eye on the systems she was breaching. Breaching through warnings and automated systems, her screens collapsed, and in her hand, she summoned a portal under her. Falling into it, Tammie gave herself a smirk. The little noble had gotten in.
-
"Patching through their communications once more... and, done. Apologies for breaking and entering, but I feel like petty crime is less important than aggravated assault from hostile forces." A mysterious voice pitches into the ongoing conversation between the guidelights. "Incoming unknown targets, from what I can tell, its a Novastar and some of the escorts from before. Should be of no problem to us. Now, be a good lure and pretend you're alone. If we can hear you like this, they can also hear you loud and clear." Her particularly pompous order might have rubbed them the wrong way, but how more direct can you get?
Combing through other systems and organizing further breaches with the assistance of her own cores whispering advice into her ears, along with the processing power of her allies. Tammie eventually saw the presence of another A.I onboard. But considering that this is technically a 6v1 scenario for this inferior A.I, she just hoped they would give up so she could infiltrate in peace.
"We're currently jamming systems, and with this moon acting as a gravity decoy for us, our stealth should mean you're sighted first rather than us. If you do fire, make sure it's fire to attract them and not to destroy them as to not taunt them to smash you like a hammer against a vase. We're here on a rescue operation, not a salvage mission. I don't want to be recovering you cold dead bodies after the battle after all." Tammie continued to speak bluntly as she managed her own ship as well. Kisaria must be proud, her old rusty A.I companion is starting to warm back up again.
-
"Noble lady just got in contact with our allies. Let's just keep this jamming up and see what we can do next." Kisaria weighted her options as she looked through her fleets array of weapons. With the moon successfully blotting out their gravity signatures, they would appear practically invisible thanks to their ships wisely compensating for their lack of battlefield subtly when it comes to gravity.
A close up engagement would be in their favor, the DE-CRL wouldn't just softkill, but can outright decimate even larger ships if caught off guard and within 10,000 kilometers or so. Keeping them at a middling range with strike craft would also be a smart idea, keeping their PD occupied with fighter-mounted ASMs, decoy drones, and MIRVs. Plus, it'd allow Irene to finally use those antimatter missiles for their intended target.
Kisaria would have to make the decision quick though, as the hostile fleet seemed intent to approach the surviving Altarians. Their sensor contacts growing ever closer as the Elvorians finished up their formation. The bridge crew of the Hopping Rabbit watched in nervousness and excitement, the tension was palpable. Kisaria pulled out her pocketwatch and examined it to burn some time while she awaited for her opponents to approach. Golden-plated, crystal encrusted, it was a luxurious gift bought on the frontiers. Such a wonderous place that was, dancing between the stars and talking with its residents. Kisaria flipped open the stopwatch. 10:45 SET. The end of Tea Time.
"... Alright folks, tea party is over. We should get things rolling now." Kisaria flipped the cover back on the stopwatch as she returned to battle positions in the pilots seat. "Corona, get your fighters up and ready on the catapult once the enemies get within 10k kilometers. Irene, get your missiles ready if you haven't already. Finally, everyone get ready to throw down with these sneering imperialists." The orders were followed to a T, as they watched the enemy approach.
Deep inside several meters of decorated armor, through kilometers of adorned, sleek corridors, in the heart of the imposing metal beast that was the Arkonian novastar, rested in safety the dark, yet harmonic CIC. With no stations present, the Arkonian guidepriest laid down on their respective seats, directly connected into the mind of the novastar as hundreds of tendrils emerged from the ground, creating a perfect connection between the knowledge of their mind, the integrity of the ship, and the tranquility of their souls. All the seats surrounded a highly elevated throne, on which, commanding the guidepriests was one of their mightiest. One of very few blessed with the command of the mightiest ships in Altarian space. An arkonian flightmaster.
Carefully standing up, accompanying his calculated movement with the sound of the many medals and decorations his uniform had clashing among each other, the flightmaster watched the screen ahead of him, observing the wounded Altarian force, they were such an easy target, that the flightmaster couldn't help but sigh, he was underwhelmed. He hoped to finally witness the true force that had exterminated with seemingly no effort the autostars sent towards the enemy. But there was no point in speeding things up, he simply returned to his throne, and waited. Waiting amidst the seemingly never-ending drift of his own craft among the emptiness of space. Until their true enemy finally revealed itself.
Their attackers were unknown to him, searching through trillions of archives in mere seconds, the flightmaster could not find any signs of the ships he was seeing. Through an instant, his request to know more was transmitted to his guidepriests, who returned through their neural links zero useful information, the whole quest for knowledge of these unknown vessels was over as the flightmaster finished a single blink.
The CIC exchanged all the information they could gather without saying a single word, without breaking their stances from their kneeling positions, their enemy had been firing at them with a relativistic weapon, one throwing a shower of extremely high energy particles towards them. Not a new weapons to them, but the capabilities of this one were far beyond anything recorded on the Altarian arsenal. Mere seconds after the first impacts, the damage was starting to show, and it was picked immediately. Anything that was not stopped by their carefully crafted armor and mighty shields would strike deep into the computer systems of the autostars, severely distorting their programming. The guidepriests began the process of clensing the imperfections and malfunctions caused by these breaches, and while the internal modules of the novastar were safe, their external tracking and fire-control systems were unresponsive.
Unaware of the situation within his escort, the flightmaster ordered the release of the nuclear RADAR missiles, giving them a clear targetting solution, while rerouting most of the novastar's power to the spinal tachyonic batteries. But his own plan would be stopped by the sudden interruption of his guidepriests' reports, and a new burst of jamming frequencies, very short-lived, but strong enough to temporarily break their target locks, these small but significant bursts adding on top of the annoying electronic warfare from the unknown ships were enough for the flightmaster to stand up again, clenching his right fist and almost slamming it down to his throne, but amidst the chaos, opportunity for more arrived in the form of a communication back from the gate.
>> RETREAT IMMEDIATELY. <<
Disatisfied, and now wishing more than ever to squeeze under his mighty hand the insignificant specs in the distance that were ruining his moment of glory, the flightmaster acknowledged the command, and turned back. Walking back to his throne, he gave his final order to his guidepriests diving in the virtual sea of their task force, and the stained code of the AIs of his autostars.
-"Jump."
Feeling a wave of relief swept over Azlyn's mind as she fell to her knees, not able to contain the fear, stress, and anxiety overwhelming her throughout the whole encounter, she cried. Her body, shaking, could barely hold her own weight while she could not see the ground below her through her endless stream of tears. Of all the lights in the universe, the ones emanated by that single novastar was the one she had never hoped to see again. The images in her head of that vessel were enough to terrorize her already, being stuck on her mind ever since she saw the footage from her family, one by one, they all started the same way, dauntless, adventurous, hopeful, and determined. All feelings crushed under the weight of the weapons of that novastar. Siblings, cousins, lovers, parents. Their deaths fueling the nighmare in Azlyn's mind, pushing her sanity to the absolute limit with this final encounter. Only the soothing words of her comrades were now able to pull her back together after her breakdown. They helped her realize, it was all over.
Now without tears blinding her sight, Azlyn saw in front of her all the souls she saved, all those who endured the nightmare she once believ marked the end of anyone who dared gaze into it. But her recovered composture now made way for another wave of emotions, this time of pure rage, remembering whispers of the Elvorian transmission having broke through her own communications systems. "Be a good lure" they said. "I don't want to be recovering you cold dead bodies after the battle after all" by the end of their transmission. Their new allies may not want to go through that, but now it was Azlyn's duty to recover the cold dead bodies of her fallen comrades on the other battlestars, and search for any survivors among the frozen blood and chrome. Once the order was issued, Azlyn simply gathered all her remaining strength, and confirming they had backups to the transmitter in front of her, with a shout of pure anger, she smashed it with her right fist with such energy, that it completely destroyed the device, the computer it stood on, and the working station under it.
"Enemy contacts incoming. They're pretty close now, we could've easily pinched them with our tight nozzles already." Mariaath complained as she saw the catapults of her ship begin to be loaded with drones, fresh from their onboard autoforge. While they'd normally supplement manned fighters during such confrontations, these drones could perform as well as a normal pilot, save for their lack of magic. Gleaming black and red hulls loaded up onto launch platforms as the sheening blue, gold, pink, and white hull of the Battle for Corona shone above them. Iridescent lights illuminated a catapult system.
Technically called the 'High Speed Takeoff System', many pilots and drone operators have turned to instead call it by its much more popular name on the frontier. The 'Guitarmass Bastard'. Normally giving any airmen servicing them some bad headaches due to the leakage of spare mana contained within the prismatic crystals used to propel the fighters forward. At least with these drones, they wouldn't be complaining at all.
Mariaaths beet red hair looked like it was flying in the bridges air conditioning, like a bird in the wind. Her eyes dashed towards the murky battlespace on sensors, and back to her patiently awaiting crew, standing about like chickens without heads.
"All ships report! Enemies have left the combat area! Begin salvage and search and rescue ASAP!" Kisarias voice rang out over the radio systems, Mariaaths strawberry crimson eyes widened and her fox ears twitched. Seems like the enemy must've gotten intimidated by their gusto. Looks like they'll be back to fight another day, but for now, it looked like Mariaath was the head of Search and Rescue, with her wide berths and combat shuttles able to be used to dive deep into wrecks and collect survivors.
Mariaath pulled in her intercom microphone, tapping it once or twice to make sure that her crew could hear her speech.
"Mission status has changed. Everyone prepare to receive survivors and collect salvage. Code BASSA. If you're not needed for search and rescue, or salvaging, please return to your normal duties."
She had an edge of disappointment in her voice as she heard the mechanical whirring of her drones being taken back to her hangers, replaced instead by rescue shuttles and scout planes sent out into the deep black. Mariaath watched outside the windows as she searched inside one of her inner coat pockets for her watch.
10:48 SET
-
"Scouts and shuttles are off, commander." Mariaaths voice spoke loud and clear over the speaker. The Coronas shuttles searching over the wrecks of the Battlestars with bright searchlights and heat detectors.
"Can't get in touch with the others. Oh well, beginning recovery protocols."
"Doesn't seem to be much left. I'll try and get a closer look." Yugo and Phenelope replied soon after, the two Agents dashing into the fray to tow out large pieces of salvage.
"I'll keep watch out here, make sure nobody tries to sneak up on the fleet unannounced. Interdiction online." The Divine Fencer positioned itself above the debris cloud as it focused it's reactors towards powering up an interdiction field.
A tiny piece of radio interruption occured, and then nothing. Though, the ships within this field would note that their FTL drives would be 'abruptly' unable to function. It was a bit on the costly side to keep up and running, but it's better than having to scuttle their own ships in the case they lose a battle.
"Irene here. I'll be coming back then. No use without a cargo bay or any fighters..." Irene's partisan quickly raced back to the side of Kisarias flagship, where the entire salvage and rescue operation was being coordinated. Her eyebrows furrowed with focus as her arms naturally trended towards crossing.
A rectangular, semi-transparent hologram appeared next to the captain, and out stepped the physical form of Tammy. Now restricted to physical space, she was still uncomfortable with the android body she was given. Nevertheless, it was good to stretch her metallic legs out every once in a while.
Grabbing a nearby wheely sweet and rolling it over to Kisaria, it squealed and squeaked like a mouse as she dragged it over and sat on it, resting her chest on the chairs back.
"Might have worded things a bit too harshly there, madame." In an extremely rare case of self reflection, Tammy stared up at her commander, pushing up her glasses.
"No worries." Kisaria curtly replied. "We saved their lives and we're going out to save more. If they don't thank us then... Hah! My initial thoughts of them would be proven correct." Kisaria smugly nodded to herself, just thinking of all of the ways things can go right, and wrong.
"Jeez, and I thought I was rude." Tammie pouted as she stood up from the chair and went over to one of the nearby consoles. Seeing the flashing red 'INTERDICTED' sign appear on one of the screens, she paid it no mind as she looked over towards some of the other options she had.
Her hands wandered over a few of the buttons and dials. From nozzle tuning to radio frequencies. She paused in her tracks as she remembered the person behind the wheel of the allied ship. Right... Uh... Tammie had already forgotten their name.
Tammie stared down at the console, emotionless. She shook her head a few times, maybe getting so many upgrades and new cores all at once was taking a toll on her mind and personality.
"Oi. You done there?" Kisaria appeared behind Tammie, snapping her out of a depressive spiral. "Salvage needs overseeing. Once these things are wrapped up I think we should go to the nearest port and get some rest." Kisaria grabbed the android by the hand and led her to the center of the ship. "Everyone here's on edge after seeing conflict after such a long time, you might be too. I understand." The abrasive captain seemed to have turned a new leaf. Or at least kept herself levelheaded during this time. Only one could wonder what was happening in the other fleet, hopefully they could recognize what the Elvorians are doing and follow suit.
-"Primary communication channels handling transferred...the uh, loss, of the station won't be an issue anymore." -An officer quietly responded in the silence of the emergency CIC of the Villoria, her report being the only thing breaking the silence in that moment. Just like the rest of her comrades, the officer looked at Azlyn with great worry, confused, and unsure what to do. Their guidelight had just broken down in tears and destroyed an entire station in a fit of rage. It looked like she was about to collapse again, but at the very last second, Ekastar, now present again on the CIC, managed to hold her before falling into the ground.
-"Azlyn..." -He whispered with worry for his guidelight and close friend. In that moment, he wished to be able to carry her out of the CIC, into whatever might remain of the medical bay if it wasn't destroyed by the previous engagement. But this was not the time, and both him and Azlyn knew it, there was still a lot of work to do, and now more than ever their actions would decide how many lives they were able to save.
-"I'll be okay." -She responded, clearly with a lot of anger still in her words. The sound of her mechanical body parts struggling to move filled the room alongside her groans of pain. With no orders to assist her, they quickly became a sound of relief for the officers around her, as their guidelight was still strong, and in the fight, not out just yet. -"S-status report."
-"The retreat through FTL of the new Arkonian task force has been confirmed, no more hostiles in the area, we can begin with search and rescue missions as you requested earlier, guidelight Azlyn."
Sitting down on her station again, Azlyn noticed how everyone on the two battlestars that had stayed to fight alongside their newfound allies had listened to her, even after her uncontrolled burst of anger. Despite the tragedy lived that day, they remained loyal.
-"Search and rescue teams 1 to 10 already in motion guidelight Azlyn! We have identified the locations of multiple wreckages of our battlestars with potential survivors. Search and rescue has just begun, what are your next orders, guidelight Azlyn?"
She was getting back into her senses, forgetting about the novastar, she had no reason to worry about them, and forgetting about the insults from the Elvorians, none of it mattered in the face of her one and only mission, to save more lives.
-"Teams 1 through 5, proceed with currently designated coordinates and explore the wreckages highlighted in your HUDs, teams 6, 7, and 8, use the remaining shuttles to link up with Elvorian efforts of search and rescue in the designated area, teams 9 and 10, I need you on the perimeter of the battlestars Villoria and Nakaro searching for survivors near the indicated hull breaches."
The horrors of the battle were left behind as Azlyn once again assumed command of her forces, reigniting the morale and spirit of her crews searching for their comrades not only by themselves, but alongside the teams from the Elvorian vessels as well. Over the debris from the many battlestars who suffered hull breaches were many unconscious bodies floating in space, all with spacesuits and for the most part, still alive. The Altarian teams were relieved and amazed that their comrades could survive for so long in such a harsh environment, many crying upon finding their friends and even family believing them to have been dead at first. Over time, Elvorian and Altarian teams working together would be able to rescue a tremendous amount of Altarians from their drifting in the void, reducing the total casualties of the battle from hundreds to less than a few dozen. Both the survivors and the rescue teams constantly expressed their gratitude towards the Elvorians, seemingly not being able to thank them enough for their efforts, some with cordial thanks, others with a flood of tears and claims of them now owing their lives to the valiant crews of the Elvorian vessels. Azlyn witnessed every exchange, and it filled her heart with hope once again, she did not have to look forward to a battle anymore, now, it was the time to rejoice in newfound peace of mind and soul, brought by those who she believes can be their new allies.
-"Communications reestablished with the Elvorian vessels, guidelight Azlyn!"
Rejecting her peace with death, looking forward to a bright new future for her nation, Azlyn picked up the communications device, and took the first step on weaving the destiny of all Altarian and Elvorian lives.