Part 1, the artifact
In orbit of UEC fueling world of Dervish in the Tymer system oort cloud.
31:00 local standard time
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117AC
Captain Star Shimmer crossed her delicately manicured hands behind her back as she gazed out at the green and orange gas giant overhead. Ships made by the United Eternal Conclave, formerly the United Equestrian Conclave before political pressure from non-Equestrian races demanded equal representation in naming conventions, and had windows. Large windows allowed the vessel's occupants to view out into the void with their naked eyes, and as a prey species who evolved on open plains equestrians loved to see potential threats with their eyes.
They needed to see the open spaces and fresh air around them. Even if it didn't make much sense to the black carapaced guard standing just inside the doorway. The large four-legged, and four-armed spider-like alien was a kleese, but not any kleese, his four red eyes told the universe that he was a Zaltule warrior named Thak.
The spider's large furr speckled abdomen bobbed behind him as he cradled his large rifle in two arms, with the other two crossed over his broad chest. He watched the activity around him with a critical eye, with special attention paid to the captain and her command staff as they discussed their next course of action while pacing around the large raised holo platform.
Captain Shimmer crossed her delicately manicured hands behind her back and approached the ship's science officer, currently operating a specialty mineral scanner of her own design. "What exactly do you think it is that we've found Miss Sparkle?"
The mare looked up from her calculations, her eyes still shining with the reflected light from the strange display. "It looks like a ship of some kind… but it doesn't match any UEC signatures in our database."
"Human? Changeling maybe?" Captain Shimmer leaned in over Twilight's shoulder. The ship was indeed strange. The structure was colossal in scope, resembling a large segmented ring, making even The One's claw ships pale in scope.
"What.. is that?"
"I have no idea Ma'am." The clone said. The science officer was a clone of the original head of Royal Research and Development who'd attached herself to the ship as it was chartered to explore the border and look for new minable worlds or asteroids.
"It has a cable of some kind snaking down to the gas giant. There's a lot of power in that line, I recommend we position ourselves as far from the cable as possible."
The metallic tic tac of armor-sheathed legs on the deck made the hair mare's neck stand on end. The knowledge of what he could do to not just her, but most of the bridge crew if he so desired. The only thing that kept the Kleese loyal was their own twisted honor and the fact that the UEC held their last queens in undisclosed locations across the UEC’s controlled space. And because of this most of their zaltule warriors were kept in reserve where they could be used as shock troops, at least they were until the new war, before the humans.
The Human Equis war had pushed the Zaltule into the forefront of the fighting as humans by and large possessed superior technology to their equestrian counterparts. And while the UEC's specialty units such as the dragons and minotaur closed the gap, the humans had always seemed to be a step ahead in the infantry war. In space the war was reversed, the UEC could replace its ships at a rate the Humans seemed to not be able to match, and while the beginning years of the war had seen the introduction of new human designs into their fleet, their technology seemed to have met a plateau. The UEC's top scientists were working around the clock to reverse engineer their machines and technology from captured outposts and colonies with some rather interesting results.
However, as time went on the UEC too seemed to run into a wall. Leaving their only reverse-engineered alicorn mechs and the Zaltule as their best way of fighting the humans. As well as the humans and their on-and-off-again allies, the Lankies, massive seventy to one-hundred-meter vaguely avian monsters who marauded through the stars for reasons the UEC still couldn't understand. And then there were the red ships, rare lanky cruisers, and seed ships made from Iron-rich worlds high in rare minerals. These ships seemed to follow a separate initiative from their black cousins, seemingly following the unspoken directives of an ancient living starship simply known to both factions as The One.
“hoooo….” Shimmer let out a shuddering sigh as the light from the system's star shone from the bronze monster through the window. With the system's sun visible on the other side of the ring the artifact looked like an eye staring deep into her immortal soul. “Is the dating finished?”
“Yes, captain… but something has to be wrong with the sensors.” The clone Twilight said, her brow screwing up into a look of utter consternation.
“Run your test again, I can wait… I don't think the artifact is going anywhere.” Returning to her command dais and taking a seat in the commander's couch, Shimmer waited for the overly dramatic unicorn to finish her calculations. Several minutes later during which time Shimmer had turned her attention to the matter of the ship's dwindling medical supplies. As it turns out, when you could return to life after death one tended to be rather reckless leading to a rather high rate of accidents and injuries which tended to be caused by these accidents.
“Um Captain… I'm finished… but it's just not making any sense.”
“Well spit it out Twilight. What's the issue?” If she was being honest Shimmer was getting a little annoyed with the alicorn. Sure she was in fact an alicorn, but she wasn't the real princess Twilight, just a copy attached to the ship for its mission. She doubted the clone even had a quarter of the real Twilight's grace and…
“Captain… the dating says that that ring predates the Conclave.”
“Now that is surprising. But not much of a shock, we know the Kleese empire for example predated our empire, as did the Lankies if you recall…” But before she could continue Twilight cut her off with a slightly frightening look in her violet eyes.
Twilight gave a tentative glance up towards the monster that hung above them before dropping her voice as if the segmented ring could hear them. “No captain you're not understanding. That ring… it's old, older than the Conclave by millennia…”
Now that was surprising, perhaps Shimmer could be the first to discover another Civilization. The Zaltule cut her off however, his deep booming voice vibrating the sternum of both mares. “How old is the artifact Scientist Sparkle?”
“The dater… puts the age of the artifact at..” Twilight swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
“Well?”
“I'm sorry ma'am. The Dater puts the artifact at approximately 4.7 billion years old.”
All activity on the bridge ceased when those words were spoken and all eyes turned to the unicorn who gave a nervous squeak. “That can't be right,” Shimmer said as she tried to wrap her head around such an astronomical claim.
“Faust, Equis's home star is only 3.5 billion years… and the humans… their star might be slightly older but… but are you saying this… this thing has been out here since before even this system's star formed?”
“That's exactly what I'm saying, Captain. Whoever built it… whatever made that ring made it for a purpose and I don't think we should go anywhere near it.”
“I think that might be the smartest thing I've heard you say Twilight.” The captain said turning her eyes upward once again. “That would mean that monstrosity was built by whoever built the warp nodes…”
“Alcubierre nodes…” A Caleb, or human volunteering to work for the UEC against his people said. The human's pale skin and slicked-back hair only accentuated a distinctly ratty face, this was Shimmer's head of Engineering and second in command, sub-captain Elias Zimmer. A nonsensical name is fitting for someone belonging to such a barbaric race.
“You have something to say, Mister Zimmer?”
“Yes, captain. When I was with the NAC, we ran a few tests on our alcubierre nodes. All of them were old, several million years old, which matched up with our histories of the Lankies. But they weren't this old, none of them dated back past 50 million years. But…” He rubbed the stubble under his chin as he stared up at the ring seemingly undisturbed by the mind-boggling age of the artifact above them. “But they were all built off of a template… like the designers of the Milky Way network used someone else's work to make an inferior copy… which seems familiar.”
Shimmer snarled at the underhanded comment. “What was that”
“Oh don't worry captain I'd never besmirch our
Conclave Captain…” He said it with a tone bordering on insubordination and Shimmer snarled knowing that she couldn't do anything about it. “But this… this explains so much. The Lankies spoke of a race of ancients when they temporarily allied with the COG, a race that had built them and the gates. But even they were said to be young compared to those that had come before.”
“But the gates predate all of our species, Mister Zimmer.”
“I know… which is why I sent a probe to investigate the gate while you and Twilight were having your conference.”
Shimmer shot to her hooves and gestured to Thak who scuttled forward in three languid strides and snatched the human in a huge claw forcing him to his knees. The male hissed in pain as he felt his shoulder joint grinding against bone. “What the hell? You can't do this to me, Captain.”
“And why not? You sent a probe without my express orders to…”
“Ah ah, I do have orders. And they superseded yours the moment we found that monster.”
“Really?” Shimmer didn't sound very convinced and the human's arrogant smirk only seemed to anger the mare even further. “I'd like to see these orders for myself. Who knows if I like your answer then I might even let you live, you insubordinate.”
“Regent Belle. Specifically, Grand Admiral Rarity Belle look at my terminal if you don't believe me.” What? How in discords name could a human…
“He's right ma'am… you'll want to take a look at this.”
“Ughhh! Thak keep him restrained.”
“By your command Captain. Please move human, my claws haven't tasted blood in months.” The human only rolled his eyes and continued to ease the tension on his bruising shoulder.
Crossing to the engineering console the Captain was greeted by two techs who had already begun debugging the human's console. There did indeed seem to be a message from the admiralty, supprised and enraged that the human had seemingly gone over her head the captain gestured for the techs to play the message as she took the headset and slipped it onto her ears. Immediately an image of the Supreme Commander of the 3rd exploratory fleet and mistress of the campaign against the human's southern border appeared on the screen.
“As we've already discussed Mister Zimmer, while I find your kind disgusting and brutish you do seem to find more results than my own. With that said, I won't be accepting your request to be promoted to captain of the Sparkling Note. She is too new to be commanded by a human in any case. That being said, should you find something in your investigation of the strange signals emanating from our northern border then you have full reign to do whatever is necessary, within reason mind you, to further the goals of the 3rd fleet and the Conclave. Impress me, human and I may even grace you with the vaunted position you've been begging for since you joined us on Bagmare…”
“The message ends there captain…” Shimmer shook with rage as she turned on the human who was now smirking at her from his kneeling position. “You… you traitor! You deliberately went behind my back and up the chain of command because I passed you over!? Are you so blind as to!”
“Oh please captain! Everyone knows you hate humans. I'm lucky that I didn't get spaced the moment I stepped on board.”
“Yes! And it's because you humans are dangerous. Your impulsive and stupid children who don't know what…”
“Captain the probe… it's doing something. I think it's reacting with the artifact.”
“What!? Sparkle recall the probe now!”
Twilight paled as she rushed to her console and angled every dish the ship had in the direction of the probe in the hope that one of the tight beams could contact the fast-moving converted torpedo in time. But something seemed to be wrong, and before she could voice her concerns the artifact came to life above them.
“Captain! We have to move the ship now!” came a voice came from the piloting pit.
Shimmer rushed over, hooves squeaking against the metal deck as she slid to a stop above the four pilots. “Give me a status report Now Star Shine!”
Above the artifact was beginning to emit light at its core as its entire frame seemed to vibrate. “Captain, there's huge amounts of gravitic turbulence coming from the artifact. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. Captain requesting to..”
“DO IT get us to a safe distance now! Stand by Yellow with all hands, Shields up, get unicorns to their stations.”
With orders from their Captain, the bridge seemed to calm some. Despite their herd and prey mentality, the mostly Equestrian crew were still part of the UEC navy. Whatever happened next they would face it with the poise and discipline typical of the best naval officers in the Orion arm.
Part 2: Striking Sidewinder
Scutum
Zagatha battlezone Prime
1st Lance
Ri'karus roared as alarms blared both inside his head and inside the cockpit of his mech. Below him, his warriors ran forward pinning the human warriors of clan Raptor under a hale of shard fire and laser fire. His own human troops joined the first element in their advance up the main street of the colony while cries of pain and anguish rang out from the buildings around them.
The Avin warriors of Clan Silver Raptor had begun this trial for the same reason the white-scaled saurian had moved his clan to Zagatha in the first place. CrysSteel. Zagatha was practically made of the ultra-light and ultra-dense material. The human smiths were the first to set up a mine on the once barren world and had laid claim by beginning mining operations and exporting goods to the rest of the nearby worlds in the Saurian Alliance. One of these clients happens to be the mercenary clan, Striking Sidewinder, under the leadership of Clan headman Ri'karus.
“Headman come in, we're detecting four enemy mechs inbound on your position. Count one heavy and three mediums.” Came the tinny voice over the saurians' battle-net computer.
“Affirmative, first Lance spread out, funnel them, and watch your fields of fire.”
“AFF FIRST-MAN! Got it, skipper, As you order my clan leader.”
“Stay calm people… this is it. We win this one and this land as well as the contracts that come with it will be ours.” Ri'karus reminded his people before he ordered his infantry into the buildings with their magma launchers at the ready. With luck they'd be able to score some hits and maybe even a kill with their launchers once the Raptor mechs were engaged with his lance. Ri'karus hissed his cockpit heating up as he backed his mech up through a massive firestorm that engulfed one road before firing his jump jets.
At once he felt his stomach drop from under him as air was passed over the super-heated metal of his mechs reactor and forced through ports in his mechs legs and back. Eighty human tons of CrysSteel lifted from the street and into the air, and the mech's lumbering mass slammed down onto the roof of a building a moment later.
The humans of Zagatha had approached Ri'karus aboard his clan command vessel Spear in the Night and had given his people an offer he couldn't refuse. A home, a land of their very own which had been denied them for so very long, a place to recruit, to grow families and breed freely, somewhere they could call their own. How could he refuse such an offer after the treachery of his mother had seen the destruction of his clan's previous home. Had it not been for Sidewinder's allies in the clan's Ice Viper, and HellHound, as well as the honorable Tabrins 2nd fleet, his clan could well have lost over a third of her warriors. Had that happened Rikarus doubted he'd have been able to hold off any clan or local power seeking to absorb his clan into their own forces.
Now, however, now with a land his people had not only a future but a way to defend themselves. A way to support themselves in the form of fresh minerals, with their factories back up and running thanks to fresh supplies of CrysSteel his clan's artisans could once again begin construction of new battle mechs and weapons, instead of only maintaining the weapons and armor they already had. At last, he'd brought some semblance of honor back to his clan, some kind of hope back to his people and Ri'karus the son who never wanted his position as clan leader would be damned if he'd see his people take one backwards step on the road to ruin ever again.
BattleMechs used the pilot's own inner ear mixed with their Neural interface to keep their balance. Ri'karus's own Warmaster was no different. The mech's feet slammed into the roof and he took a lumbering step behind the bulk of a second tower while hurriedly working to cool his mech for the coming final push.
“Clan Leader, we're detecting energy signatures from the Shard Gate around Zagathas star.” Came the voice of his ship's sensor operator. High in orbit the fleets of both clans held in close formation.
The trials were sacred ancient rights that both preserved the peace and kept vital worlds from being tainted by ship-grade powerful weapons should shots go wide and miss their target, as they are always in ship-to-ship engagements. That wouldn't save any who refused a trial, however, should a change refuse or be unwilling to negotiate the sacred Rights of War set in stone by the first Saurians to leave their homeworlds and form the alliance.
“Show me.” Ri'karus's eyes flickered with light as he activated his implant. Like all saurians, he was given a full Neural implant as well as nanite enhancements to his body at a young age.
The image of the systems shard gate, an ancient device said to have been built by the Eternals in their war with the Zarkan, began to glow brightly, drawing energy from the system's star as it began to collect power. Apparently, the gate once thought to be dormant had awakened, and that could only mean that someone on the other side had activated its phase. The people of Zagatha had claimed to have come through the gate several hundred years ago in their escape from what they called Lankies. An enemy the Saurian Alliance had long since defeated in their controlled space as well as the sectors beyond.
“Move the fleet into position. Alert the Raptors and Send a message to the council. Whatever lies beyond that gate will feel the Sidewinders bite for trespassing upon our land.” Movement caught Ri'karu's eye and he sent the image to be displayed in a corner of his cockpit window as the first of the enemy mechs came into view.
“Yes, Head man!”
“Is this your doing? Ri'karus! Do you think that activating the gate will save your pathetic clan from the Raptors? After I kill you your clan will fall in line. Come out, coward! Face me like a warrior, not a sniveling mammal.” The voice of the Raptor's Headman was sharp and held an exasperated hiss. Mistress G'lak's trial forces had faced heavy losses during the course of the trial and her bold strategy to cut the head from his clan was exactly what he'd expected of a headman of clan Raptor.
He waited several more seconds and smiled under his helmet as the G'laks mech came into view. At seventy-five tons he didn't have much of a weight advantage but he knew with his lines breached he was presented with a perfect opportunity to not only quadruple his clan's numbers but also send a message to the other clans that Striking Sidewinder wasn't to be trifled with. Ri'karus came to the decision as he glanced out of his cockpit and saw Z'kar his first ready to pounce in his old sixty-ton Crusader, he wouldn't be known as the clan leader who let the Sidewinders fall not after everything his forefathers had gone through to get them this far.
“Activating enhanced imaging.”
Battlezone Zagatha
Semi-abandoned city Northwind
Enhanced imaging
“NOW!”
“WHAT! TREACHEROUS LITTLE, GAAAGH!” G'lak hissed, forced to watch as her mate was crushed under the Eighty-ton mass of Ri'karus Warmaster. Worst of all it had been her fire-support meaning she was down to just herself and the three other mechs that had managed to breach the Sidewinder line.
A stream of missiles impacted her mech's left side making alarms and damage reports stream her peripheral vision at the same time her cockpit's warning lights lit up like a victory day celebration. Rotating her mech's torso to spread the damage across her salamander's considerable armor the saurian female scanned the smoke with narrowed eyes. All around her, her remaining mechs were engaging the enemy Lance, streams of concentrated photons stitched molten lines across the armor of her remaining mechs. Then she saw it, the bone and blue of the Striking Sidewinders First Z'kar, perfect she'd kill him in front of his master before destroying the upstart of a clan head herself.
She turned to engage the crusader, the fool had left himself open and with a jerk of her finger, she sent a scarlet particle bolt searing into the lighter mech's shoulder. CrysSteel boiled and popped, glowing a bright orange where the armor had been weakened by her blast, and seconds later explosions began to rack the mech from behind rocking the Crusader forward and forcing it to take several stumbling steps forward to regain its balance.
“How dare you attack my Mistress Coward. I'll tear you from your cockpit and…. Static bondsman!” Came the voice of her own first as he emerged from the smoke to aid her.
However, before she could fire a second packet of condensed particles several beams of light burned hotlines in her mechs flank forcing her to stagger to the side for cover. Turning to engage the new threat she hissed as Ri'karus Warmaster emerged on a headlong charge to defend his first.
Stepping back she managed to just avoid having her cockpit caved in by a massive fist. Her eyes went wide, she didn't expect him to go straight to melee, G'lak would have to be careful, her mech lacked any hands of its own to engage in such an engagement, and while she could kick, the female knew when it came to close quarters her mech was at a clear disadvantage.
Neither opponent spoke to the other as their assault-class machines began exchanging blistering amounts of fire. With G'lak backpedaling to maintain some kind of distance between her salamander and the more heavily armored Warmaster. When it came to weapons their mechs were almost evenly matched, his six middle laser emitters, particle cannon, short-ranged missile pack, 150mm autocannon, and twenty tons of armor. When matched up with her two particle cannons, four middle lasers, and two short missile packs were more or less equivalent. Then the dye was cast and with a roar of challenge, both clan headman charged into the smoke and away from their support.
Ri'karus fired his jump jets and dove his mech behind a destroyed building as G'lak unleashed a hellish alpha strike managing to clip his mech's right hip actuator with a particle bolt. Ablative armor boiled away in time for a stream of missiles to impact the CrysSteel beneath just in time for him to make it to cover. Rolling his mech back onto its feet he rounded the corner and fired his own weapon. His right arm particle cannon sent out a jade bolt of lightning that struck the salamander in its shoulder a moment before he fired his mechs left arm autocannon.
Four 150mm shells spat from the muzzle of his cannon with two connecting and staggering the salamander to the right before he broke his mech into a run to get some cover as G'lak regained her balance on a savaged right leg. Slapping his mech's thermal warning override Ri'karus began to pant as the temperature inside of his cockpit began to spike.
“where are you going coward! Running like the snake you are?!”
The Warmaster strode from behind another building and advanced on the Salamander spotting a nitrogen line above the raptor clan leader's cockpit. Ri'karus couldn't let her see it and potentially cool her mech, not with his own so dangerously close to cooking off its ammunition stores.. or worse himself inside of his cockpit.
The hot-headed Raptor, not used to being charged took several steps backwards taking advantage of her mech's superior cooling potential and unleashing a second alpha strike with all of her weapons. Alarms and sirens blared in Ri'karu's vision, and he raised his mech's right arm in front of the cockpit to protect himself from the worst of the damage as he rolled his mech's shoulder into the assault. He had to win, and to do that he needed to cool down his mech. “
“Surrender Qu’ek, power down, and exit your mech, I hereby claim you as karaksha, a bondsman of clan Striking sidewinder!” That was the voice of Z'kar over an open signal which could only mean…
The pained voice of G’laks first came over the battle net on an open signal. “I accept. I… surrender…”
G'lak, enraged made a fatal error. After firing a final alpha strike and watching Ri'karus’s right arm go spiraling off into the pipe which made the whole thing crash down on him she turned her mech’s torso in the direction the signal had come from. So set on destroying her first and his mech to deny the enemy was she that she lost crucial seconds, in which Ri'karus had emerged from a cloud of liquid nitrogen, his mech’s temperature reading back in the green and near zero.
Six jade lasers connected the humanoid Warmaster to its slightly hunched cousin, boiling armor and exposing fiber muscles as 17 meters, 57 feet of CrysSteel, and primal rage barreled towards the raptor clan leaders mech. The ground shook with each road-shattering step as 80 tons of metal and fiber muscles barreled forward at 75 kph drawing G'lak's attention back to the battle at hand. But by that point, it was too late.
“No! Why won't you just…” A four-fingered fist slammed down into her mech's cockpit at 46 miles an hour, instantly cutting the Raptor headman off as her canopy was completely destroyed and crushed.
With his opponent defeated Ri'karus pulled his fist from between the savaged salamander's shoulders and strode onward back towards his people. The salamander would stay, not just as a monument to the salvation of clan Striking Sidewinder, but to the day their clan would strike out on their own as a Prime among the alliance. All clans would know the name Striking Sidewinder he was sure, and soon many would flock to Zagatha to explore these new lands beyond the Shatter Point.
“HEAD MAN THERE'S BEEN A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT! Some kind of probe has impacted the Koris Dream!”
Part 3 Shatter Point
Tymer system
Tymer prime
Outer limits of Sintel city
00:00 Local standard time
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117AC
Fallon ducked his head low as Miiora pointed out an incoming Drakeds patrol. It had been a week since that wired pulsing light had started. Since then the military presence on the world had doubled throwing his and Miiora's planned scouting operation into a mad scramble. The Galactic, formerly Galactica, was positioned inside of the system's planetary nebulae, of which the system sported two. Miiora had explained to him that they were called Ibos, and Pakara respectively, with the one the Galactic was residing in being the smaller and more condensed of the two Ibos.
On the night they'd first made love the sky had light and a halo of light shined for almost two full days, far in the sky like a second star had somehow just appeared at the edge of the system. Now Admiral Graves had to play cat and mouse with the Equestrian fleet that had arrived in the system. While not large enough to go toe to toe with a proper COG fleet, the Galactic was just one battered siege carrier with only four remaining ships to latch onto her docking clamps. With just the old siege breakers Manitoba, and Acheron docked, as well as the stealth cruiser Defiant and the changeling noncombatant fleet tender Queens Bounty the flotilla had suffered long and hard over the past ten years on the run.
If it hadn't been for Bounty and her fabricators the fleet would have likely been run ragged and ran out of ammo and spare parts long ago. But even with their aid, with no dockyards or anchorages, the fleet was doomed to a slow death, their supplies were always low these days, but with the attrition rate of new and veteran troops alike, Fallon had doubts they could make it another year.
Miiora suddenly snapped her head up and to the side. “Darling… look, something is happening on the screens.”
Looking up from his data pad Fallon gestured to his team leader Felix, who snapped his fingers gaining the attention of the rest of the viper team. “What have you got Hab?”
The tymerian maiden gestured with her snout to a growing crowd across the street. Dozens of civilizations and UEC soldiers all mixed together to stare up at the many screens depicting the strange artifact that had taken up every news feed for the past week. “Shhh…”
“It appears the artifact found by Captain Shimmer of the second fleet has begun some kind of vibration. Science officer Twilight 7 is here with me now, miss Sparkle can you elaborate on what's happening?”
“Well Thunder, the artifact appears to be pulsing with some kind of resonance with every other warp gate in the UEC and we suspect in Human space too. We suspect that this device is the precursor to all of our nodes, both human and pony.”
“How can that be?”
“We're still running studies, but rest assured the moment we know the people of…” A green-furred mare stepped up to the two and handed them a piece of paper as the image began to shimmer and shake. “what's happening?”
“You don't know?”
“No, it's never done this before… but it looks like the fleet is moving into a defensive position around the col…”
The image zoomed in on several dozen points of light that appeared from inside of the ring, those points grew as the screen zoomed in to display what appeared to be hundreds, no, thousands of shards of a translucent material. “What the hell is that?” Michel asked moments before the shards seemed to coalesce into several domes of hard light before all at once shattering like glass.
“Holy…”
“Ships?! That thing's active!”
The communications network of the 2nd fleet contingent was alive with activity as ships rivaling the largest of COG cruisers in sheer scale exploded into existence and began painting the system with active sensors and targeting lasers.
“Look at how they move..” Felix pointed out under his breath.
“What is it?” Fallon asked trying to see what his mentor was talking about.
“It's like they're breaching into a room. Each ship is clearing a sector… it's almost like they're…”
To prove his point a fifth burst of light appeared behind the angular alien ships. A collective gasp went up throughout the crowd, the Moth operators included, as one of the largest ships any of them had seen burst into existence with a shower of ethereal ruby shards. The ship sported two massive serpents coiled as if ready to attack on its two sloped flanks. “That monster's got to be almost double the size of Galactic… WITH its full compliment attached.”
A face appeared on their monitors as four smaller vessels matching those of the first several appeared behind the monster ship. “Greetings alien vessels. I am a diplomat and head Scientist of the United Equestrian Conclave. I welcome you to our space, please we beseech you to disarm your weapons and…”
“Silence…” Another gasp as what was at first thought to be a tymerian appeared on the screen beside the princess. The reptilian was distinctly more savage looking than the tymerians, even their swamp-dwelling cousins. This guy looked closer to a proper dinosaur, like a velociraptor mixed with a werewolf with a bad attitude. Plate-like scales lined his chest which was visible through a ruby-colored metal harness that was strapped around his slim but well-muscled chest.
“You have trespassed upon the land of the clan Striking Sidewinder. Your… probe… impacted one of our transport vessels and destroyed an entire clutch of eggs. We… demand reparation.” He actually growled the last part and Fallon could feel Missara squeezing his hand as her other took him by the arm.
The face of Star Shimmer, the newly promoted supreme commander of the 2nd fleet, replaced Twilight on the screen. “Reparation.. of course surely we can talk in person… mister…”
“I am Ri'karus, Headman of my clan. And by the order of the Saurian Alliance Council, you will pay reparation in the form of two resource-rich worlds for every egg destroyed, or you will be in breach of Galactic law. Harming the next generation is strictly forbidden even if the perpetrators are… savages..”
Another gasp these saurians must be arrogant. With so few ships, how the hell did they expect the Equestrians to listen to such an outrageous demand? “You can't be serious. Even if we took what you said seriously we the UEC won't be bullied by a pack of Tymerians. Power down your ships and prepare to be boarded, in the name of the princesses and the Conclave.”
“If you won't listen to reason, the only course of action available to us is a trial of reparation.” The saurian's voice was cold and laced with venom. Surprisingly a pale-skinned almost gaunt but healthy human stood at his side cradling a rifle that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie. Ri'karus towered over the hard shell armored man with the top of the man's head only coming to the male's chest.
“I stand with thirty lances, four ships…” Whatever he'd been about to list off was cut off by a slash of the fleet commander's hand.
“Shut up Tymerian. We outnumber you four to one. This is your final warning, surrender to your betters and hand yourself over for re-education.”
The saurian snarled, he actually clenched his fist and slammed the butt of the huge ax he clutched in one hand. That axe was ornate and when its head met the deck a transparent amber blade of energy burst into existence over the ax head. “You dare! Deny my Trial! Dare to deny the order of the council!?”
The crowd of equestrians began to giggle at the saurians' rage while Felix gave his team the order to begin falling back. The Galactic had to be told about this, they had to get out of this system before another war broke out. “That's right, scales.”
“All ahead full, and ready my mech, I hereby claim this system in the name of the Saurian Alliance and Clan Striking Sidewinder.”
The saurian's cool demeanor seemed to change. An almost feral excitement filled those eyes even as he snarled out his last words before cutting off the message.
“Then you will face the full might of the Sidewinders Bite.”
