Disclaimer: Star wars and Aldnoah Zero belong to their respective owners, not me.
Disclaimer 2: I am no expert on Government, Culture, Religion, Military technology, Military structure, Science, or anything really. Suspension of disbelief might make this fic less painful to read.
Chapter 1
Thomas Millson, Councillor
What did we know about the Empire before the meeting? They knew we were here, since they sent an envoy specifically to meet us. They had the technology and the resources to build massive space faring ships, likely military in nature, and they could produce plenty of them if they are willing to send one to our little corner of the milky way. They had hologram technology, and could produce a human like figure using it, whether the messenger themselves was human was still an unknown, we could not discern colour in the hologram or internal features, and even then, the holographic image might have been entirely generated by whatever technology they use. The messenger who delivered the recorded holographic message also had the shape of a human, but they wore plastic white plated armour, so again, we couldn't really discern more than shape from that.
Though we knew little, we knew enough to not be surprised when the opposing door of the conference room opened to reveal the uniformed human captain who served as the imperial ambassador, escorted by two of those white armored soldiers.
Deciding to represent our planet, I rose first and spoke "Greetings ambassador, it is my pleasure to welcome you to earth, I hope that we can both leave this meeting satisfied."
The captain stared with an iron grip on his facial expression, politely waiting for me to finish, after which he turned to a bipedal robot that had walked in after, which proceeded to translate my words over to their alien language. It was expected of course, alien languages and customs come hand in hand with alien civilizations, which is also why I didn't offer him a hand to shake.
He stood straight, his hands held behind his back. An intercultural military stance it seems. He took a moment to pass his glance over the six of us sent to meet him, parking his gaze on Inaho for a second longer than he needed, in particular, he eyed the weapon at his side.
Then he turned to the protocal droid and spoke in his foreign tongue. He then turned back to face us and made a motion to one of his escorts as the droid began to translate.
"Yes, it would be beneficial for the both of us to come to an agreement ambassadors of earth. We are fully aware of who you are, but we feel we need to properly introduce ourselves and our Galactic Empire."
By the time the droid had finished, one of the troopers had retrieved and placed a device on the table, a holo-projector.
The device flared to life and he explained the empire and it's intricacies, the senate, the importance of strength and order, the emperor, and the position we could hold within the empire.
After listening intently, I spoke up again "This has been very informative, but we feel we need a minute to discuss this properly first"
After the droid translated, the captain nodded and left the room along with his escorts and droid.
We were probably all thinking the same thing as the silence violently took over like the ashes of a sacking. We couldn't accept, we valued our independence and our democracy, even if the senate did exist it was clearly the military and the emperor that held the power.
So I voiced these thoughts, "Are we agreed that we can't accept this offer?"
The rest looked hesitant, Jahid spoke up "The foreign trade would greatly benefit our economy and expose us to a number of new new luxuries..."
The inquisitive Gustav spoke up as well "The advanced and different technologies would open up grand new avenues to explore..."
Then the stern Hao Tsung finished the line "...but it is not worth putting ourselves in the jaws of a tyrant."
Grim nods followed from the entirety of the council, and the captain returned with the droid.
We all rose and turned to face the captain.
"As lucrative as the offer is, we must decline." I said.
The captain sighed, and spoke to the droid, then put a hand to his ear, and gave orders, or I assumed they were.
The droid with it's lifeless eyes stared into us and said "That is unfortunate, but it seems you are mistaken: you are joining the empire, whether by choice..." the roar of engines resounded through the sky and the building "... or by force."
Inaho brought his radio to bear "Intercept those transports."
The droid translated for the enemy captain, and he gave another order of his own.
In an airfield barracks, a number of young men and women were calmly adorning their uniformed jumpsuits. When the speaker in the corner blared out.
"Pilots! Get ready for combat, this is not a drill!" A moment of pause "I repeat, Pilots! Get ready for combat, this is not a drill!"
Everyone suddenly hastened their pace. A young man slotted his arms in, pulled up the zip, grabbed his helmet and jogged out. He arrived to his jet, climbed up the ladder, equipped his helmet, and closed the cockpit as he flipped various switches controlled the beast of a machine, which though lifeless, hummed with a silent quake of fury.
A couple of mechanics pulled away the ladder and the young man directed the aircraft onto the runway, moving in along side his flight partner, a young woman of a similar age. Though she didn't know it, he'd been planning on proposing to her sometime in the following weeks.
The young man locked the mask onto his face, hit the throttle, so that the hum quickly rose in magnitude and evolved into an earth shattering roar, and soon the two crafts were in the air, followed and accompanied by dozens of others.
In the ears of the helmet, the man received his orders, he and his partner were to intercept the transport above Russia.
The man nodded, and radioed an acknowledgement in return.
They flew in a simple formation, the man ahead, and the woman behind on his right.
The three transports came into the young mans sights, but he questioned why the ground based anti air missiles hadn't managed to scratch them yet, they hadn't even attempted to fire yet. Nevertheless, he armed the missiles and prepared to fire... but the heat based system wouldn't pick up a lock on any of them.
He thought that maybe his system was broken and reported the problem to his partner, but she had the same problem.
So they switched to simple projectiles and opened fire, but they didn't manage to catch more than one before they were interrupted by a roaring engine from above. The sound would very soon be recognized as the roar of the twin ion engines that the imperial fighters employed. But that was later, at the time the man heard a cry and the sound of an eject system over his squad communications.
He gave a silent prayer, before the alarms indicated that his own craft was in danger, the display told him that it was the left wing that had been hit, it was going to be difficult to fly, and definitely didn't have much air time left. The mechanics surveying the wreckage would later realize that the implementation of energy absorbing features meant to deal with Vers technology was the only reason it had managed to stay airborne so long.
He gave priority to his attackers, over his target and did a loop to try to catch the offending craft, again he noticed that he couldn't get a lock on them either, and even if he could, the super heated plasma that functioned as their ammunition would throw it of anyway, so he again switched to the machine guns again.
The stream of bullets managed to catch one of the unsuspecting fighters, before the rest abruptly turned away in a cluster of different directions.
He had noticed four total, making it three enemies still in action, he was sure he couldn't take one those odds, so he focused on surviving while he reported in. New orders came quickly: retreat back to base.
So the man moved his craft to motion to attack the transports again, waited for the TIEs to shift formation, switched of the engine, let the jet spin and drop, and then, once the jet had spun enough to face the opposite direction, turned it back on with a full throttle.
The TIEs took a few seconds to realize the change in course, but as soon as they were able they continued the chase.
Halfway across the ocean the jets left wing, what remained of it, ignited due to the built up heat from the multiple laser like shots. When the base in in sight, the fire reached one of the armed missiles. The missile then proceeded to explode, and the man was forced to eject to avoid the crash.
Inaho Kaizuka, UFE General
The enemy captain spoke again, this time he was addressing me. As usual the droid translated.
"You are foolish to believe you can stop us. You have no forces, as expected of a peace loving people such as yourself, that you would even come to this meeting is horrendously embarrassing, almost as embarrassing as your horrible tactics. It was obvious that we had forces to intercept, yet you still deployed your responding force and revealed your hand, which does nothing seeing as we had been scouting your pathetic defenses for the last five years." He raised his hands in a grand gesture, and the holo-display showed the imperial TIE fighters chasing and eliminating the retreating jet fighters. "Behold our might and tactical genius, and surrender before it."
The two escorts dashed in through the door, and I pulled my pistol out and shot them both before they could make it in.
On the screen, more of earths defenders fell, but then the airbases flak and machine gun based anti air defenses opened fire and started picking the fighters out of the sky.
From my ear piece I hear the words that I needed: "Deucalion operational, and standing by."
The captain reached for his own pistol, but before he could reach it, I slid over the table, kicked him behind the knee to knock him down and restrained him by the arm with the gun to his head.
"Call off the attack"
He tried to turn and face me and growled out a sentance "Even if you kill me, you can't stop this, we have your forces on the run, and we can easily call in more star destroyers, and inumerable legions of the emperors finest, you stand no chance."
I shot him in the ankle and brought the gun back to his skull, and repeated my demand,
"Call off the attack."
He bent over and bit down to stop his screaming, before bringing a hand to his ear and speaking.
I waited, and soldiers of both sides came in through the doors at each end of the room. My troops having taken cover behind the various chairs and the long table in the center, and his troops in contrast positioning themselves in a straight line, exactly 15 cm apart from each other. Both sides had their guns trained on their opponents.
I brought my pistol an inch closer, and the captain ordered his men to stand down.
Up on the bridge of the star destroyer 5S-T7, a communication played for all to hear. "This is captain Darwen Durnstar, return all forces." The officer who was substituting for the captain, listened, with a stern face. "I repeat, call of the attack."
One of the communications specialists looked up at the officer.
"Sir?"
The officer took a moment to savour the attention of the crew, before he shouted "Send in the next wave. We have our orders, and I for one intend to fulfill them!" The bridge got to work and soon enough he could see another ten squadrons of fighters and transports approaching the planet.
Satisfied, the officer walked down to the communications specialist who had received the message, and he told him "Inform the former captain Durnstar, that it is clear that he is compromised, and that as such, he has been relieved from duty." This was protocol, this was standard, and this was expected. Good soldiers follow orders, orders come from commanders, not prisoners.
"Yes sir"
He moved to what was now his post on the bridge as captain, and got ready for the scent of victory, which was surely in his grasp, those anti air defenses would not be able to hold off this next wave.
"Sir, we've detected another ship in the planets atmosphere, from the region that they call Russia."
Amateurs the officer thought, "You don't need to tell me every time they launch a fighter."
"That's the thing sir, it's not a fighter, the signature would suggest that it is at least a capital ship."
"Impossible! They don't have that kind of military technology, the sensors must be broken."
"They're fully functional sir, we've ran maintenance on them just before the operation under Durnstars orders."
"Then run them again!" the officer shouted. " For now bring up live feed of the main battle." Even if they had such ships nothing could stand up against a star destroyer, he realized quietly to himself, managing to reign in his own temper.
"Yes sir."
A holographic screen appeared in front of him showing the view from one of the TIE fighters, the base would soon be destroyed, along with all the pathetic primitive enemy fighters defending it.
"Sir, diagnosis complete, all scanners are fully functioning."
The officer realized that this meant that the mystery ship was real, the enemy must have simply kept it hidden. The officer thereafter proceeded to with what he considered to be the most obvious route and ordered the ships crew to prepare for combat. Though it would be impossible for the primitive ship to defeat the star destroyer, any damages would be an unnecessary expense later on, and that was not something he needed on his record.
"Sir, the ships not leaving lower atmosphere..."
He looked over to the radar specialist with mild curiosity. 'What are they planning if not to try to take us on.'
"Actually..." the radar specialist said, leaning closer to the screen, before suddenly turning as if the sight had burned him "Sir, it's heading towards the main battle!"
Impossible, the officer thought, in the empire it is known that ships of that size just couldn't function properly that close to any planet surface: the gravitational pull and large size made it impossible to maneuver properly, making combat nigh impossible and opening up the ship to a large number of likely collisions. For the empire this was usually not a problem, the majority of their ships are outfitted with long ranged weaponry. Of course their ships were also outfitted with short range weapons, only for the need of dealing with... fighter craft.
As is if by design, the officer was also infected by the panic that plagued the communications specialist, and he roared "Fall back, retreat our forces!"
The empire wasn't afraid to lose troops and armour, but wasting them was a crime of the highest order, the fact that his younger brother was among the exposed fighters did not hinder his decision in the least.
"We can't sir, all channels are occupied, we are still relaying attack orders!"
"Can we provide orbital bombardment?" He demanded
"No sir, the asteroid belt is in the way, we can't get any shots through it!"
"Sir, the ship has made contact with our fighters!"
The deck silenced, and the markers on the map indicating their own fighters started to disappear in a much more rapid manner. From the communication desks, the sound of explosions and the cries of their pilots echoed across the walls.
The officer felt the weight of his mistake bring his head down, but he couldn't see the battle below him, just the repeating iron tiling.
'I was fooled' he thought, dying his nail red with blood.
'I was foolish' he thought, as he brought his hand across his vision, he imagined that the red wasn't his own blood, but the blood of his pilots, for they were his. He had taken the initiative and deemed that his former commander was compromised, so it was his duty to take over, and those men and women were, from that moment, his responsibility.
'Never again' he thought, bringing his head up in time to see an earthling bring his weapon up to shoot out the camera feeding the live footage, positioned in the pilots helmets, quickly resulting in the feeds abrupt end.
