Silence filled the airwaves between Hammerfest and the stealth transport. The prototype aircraft had lifted off over an hour ago, and had been on radio silence ever since it crossed the border. The GDI base personnel had already put the bird out of their minds, but the pilot was anxious to get out of SSI territory. He knew good and well that they were spying on a cordial nation, and if they were caught it could very well mean a much greater problem would arise. The last thing anyone wanted was to give GDI and SSI a reason to beat each other's brains in like GDI and Nod had done for so long.

The commando team had left the transport some minutes ago, and was nearly upon their objective - the old "Scrin" ship. Of course, everyone now knew what real Scrin vessels looked like. That left an interesting question though: if this ship wasn't made by the Scrin... then who made it? It was definitely not originally from Earth. How many more alien races were there, and were any of them friendly? Could any of them be trusted? If one were to believe the words of Hawking, the answers were: "a lot" and "very unlikely" - the second serving as the answer to both of the latter questions. Mobius, when once asked the same questions, had seemed hopeful of it. Now it seemed Hawking was proven right.

When Captain Parker and his team reached the grounds around the crash site, they split into their respective sub-units. Thankfully enough for Parker, finding a way onto the ship wasn't difficult. Once you were up close and personal with it, the large gashes torn open in the vessel's side were easy to see. As soon as he found one that was both large enough to go through, and attached to an interior walkway that wasn't crushed, he made his way inside.

The interior was, suprisingly, not so alien as one might have expected. In fact, the commando noted with interesting, it was similar to a GST. Near the hull were the maintainence access points and reinforcing structures that connected the exterior hull to the interior hull and "body" of the ship. In some ways, it was like how the body of a car was attached to the frame. It was also the same area where the weapons were linked into the ship, and any projectile weapons had their ammunition bunkers. He'd come across one that seemed to be hooked to a missile launcher of some kind or other; the bunker hardly had a dent in it, and the launcher seemed to have been retraced before the eventual crash. Good thing too - it was in a section where, not far away, the two hulls were crushed together. The damn thing had come down hard.

After a bit of wandering around, he finally came to an interior bulkhead and made his way into the ship proper. Unsurprisingly, considering what he'd already seen, the halls were illuminated by red emergency alert lights. For an alien spacecraft, it had many touches of common practices on Earth. What he soon spotted on a bit of the ship's interior confirmed his suspicions. On the wall of the hallway he was in was the old GDI insignia - the version used during the Second Tiberium War and Firestorm Crisis. This was the very same ship that had been to Earth before. GDI had been repairing it, obviously, but what had happened? Where had it vanished to for almost seventy years?

Checking a few of the rooms, he found that they were crew quarters; though these actually had a layer of dust - and the lingering smell of paint, a scent that had likely been trapped for as long as the ship had been missing. They held no furniture, no personal items, and nothing of importance except a can and pan of dried paint - with the roller entombed in the once liquid substance. Why was that important to him? It told him he was right. This section of the ship hadn't been touched, much less had anyone in it, in quite some time. Considering the ship's size, however, that wasn't a real surprise. A GST was large enough for the entire crew of an aircraft carrier, plus an entire infantry regiment and all their immediate families. It really hadn't surprised anyone in GDI that Colonel James had gotten her vessel moving again after it was shot down. Even in a histile place like Tin City, it wasn't too difficult.

This ship was almost the same size as a GST, maybe slightly larger, so the fact that not every section of the ship's crew quarters were being used wasn't overly surprising. Even a GST usually didn't have even half of its regular crew quarters filled, much less what was reserved for landing troops. Hell, after the loss of the First Fleet, the Second and Third Fleets were now mostly skeleton crews. Colonel James had only had as many troops as she did thanks to picking up like-minded troops as she went. Moving on, he made his way deeper into the ship, finding more crew quarters - but now in areas that seemed more likely to be inhabited.

These halls had the Brotherhood's old insignia on them. Most doors were inscribed with a name, number, and the Nod scorpion symbol. What he found on this level that intrigued him was the symbol on the armory - it was the symbol of the Black Hand from the First Tiberium War; Nod's elites. Looks like they were relegated to tactical and security forces, if that door was any indication. For a brief moment he thought to enter the armory or the rooms to investigate further, but decided against it. Someone could be in one of those rooms, and the good Captain doubted that any of them probably believed in ghosts. Moving on, he began using the ship's map plaques to find his way. He was heading for the bridge. Of all places, it was the least likely to have anyone guarding it right now.

Thanks tot he signs, it took him mere minutes to find his way to the bridge. Unfortuantely, he had been wrong about nobody guarding it. Not only were there security personnel, but engineers, technicians, and officers present to oversee repairs. It had everything a command center required, and enough personnel to command a brigade in the field. Just with a quick glance he could see two Majors and a Lieutenant Colonel. They were probably here in the stead of their superiors. Lord knew where the higher officers were - probably meeting to discuss what their next move was. The task he faced now would be accessing the ship's computer without anyone noticing.

==X==X==X==

Along the exterior of the vessel, First Lieutenant O'Connell was scanning the guards and weapons of the ship. He'd noted with interest that both SSI MP's and... whoever these guys in the black cloaks and metal masks were... were guarding the ship. The MP's were armed with fairly basic weapons. Elderly AK-74 machinguns were the order of the day, as well as combat knives that could be fixed as bayonettes, and usually a personal sidearm. Nothing special there. They were meant to be cops on a military post, not front line combat troops. They were in friendly territory, so the old weapons were no surprise. The cloaked and masked figures, however, were somewhat unnerving to O'Connell.

Their weapons were obviously much more potent. No magazines, no moving parts but a trigger and sights, and nowhere to change an energy cell - but also, and very obviously, some sort of ranged weapon. Without a magazine to store ammunition, it couldn't be a railgun... but it also couldn't be any energy weapon he could think of if there was no battery pack or power cell to replace. Yet, what else could it be? If it was, that would have to mean some kind of internal power source. He'd scanned them for any kind of radiation, but got nothing. No tiberium rad' signatures, no microfusion, and no chemical could be in that weapon to power it. The weapon was a total unknown, but if it had an internal, non-nuclear, non-tiberium reactor that made enough energy to make it effective... what were the limits on its power?

Worse, in an eerie way, these troops were remeniscent of the Black Hand. Specifically, they looked similar to the Confessors that had once been in the ranks of the Brotherhood. What set them apart from the Black Hand Confessors was their distinct lack of any kind of insignia or color other than black. There were no ranks, no name badges, no unit patches; no military designations of any kind. Black hooded cloak, black armor, back mask, and their weapon; that was it. They stood as still as statues, totally rigid, weapons at the ready - as if, in one swift movement, they might suddenly raise and fire them. The SSI MP's were relaxed, even laughing and joking amongst themselves, but the black-cloaked sentinels stood like stone. It was as if someone put a bunch of Weeping Angels in Darth Vader costumes and stuck blaster rifles in their hands just for kicks.

Finding an analysis of their weapons as a dead end, O'Connell decided that perhaps an alaysis of their armor might prove more insightful to their roll in combat. He was correct in some manner, but baffled in another. Their armor seemed to be made primarily of a dual layer polymer; two thin layers of titanium hafnium carbide with a middle layer of what appeared to be some sort of Kevlar. The odd thing was that this seemed to be backed up with silver coated nanofibers interwoven with the Kevlar and attached to the two polymer layers. A closer analysis of the nanofiber revealed that the fibers were actually made of long strings of nanites that entirely coated the inner portion of the polymer layers where they touched the Kevlar.

O'Connell could only come up with one real explanation for this that made any real sense to him. The armor was designed to self repair whenever it was damaged. The silver coating had a potential explanation as well - silver could deflect radiation; assuming that these suits might actually be similar to Vader's, and thus had a breathing system of their own... they were like an old NBC - Nuclear-Biological-Chemical - protection suit combined with armor. In essence, they were like a slim version of Zone Trooper armor or Commando Armor. Energy signatures from within the suits might even indicate that they were, in fact, a powered armor. Doubtful that they could take the same weapons' fire that a GDI armor could, or augment one's strength to the same extent, and they didn't have jump jets, but... there was also no telling the power their weapons possessed either, or what specific systems they might have.

To O'Connell, this meant that this ship's security force was, most likely, comprised of his peers in whatever service they were with; they were commandos. Looking closer, he noted that at their hips were two attachments. Upon inspection he found that one was most definitely a sidearm. The other appeared to be an eight inch long, one inch thick, metal cylinder. Scans detected nanofibers similar to those in the armor were contained inside, and an impressive energy signature as well - little else could be learned. O'Connell chalked it up to likely being another weapon of some kind, but found himself wondering just exactly what it was.

==X==X==X==

Second Lieutenants Zhukov and Baker had quickly discovered that the motor pool near to the downed vessel held, nearly without exception, vehicles denoted with SSI markings and the typical bright red color scheme that was used on units of their 'Civil Defense and Emergency Services' organization. In laymen's terms - the corporate government's rapid reaction military police. The few exceptions were some old Nod vehicles that looked like they might well have been held together with bubble gum and paper clips. The Nod units were battered, beaten, in horrid states of disrepair, and Lieutenant Baker was surprised that they'd been able to be moved long enough to park in the motor pool. Lieutenant Zhukov had laughed, and simply told her never to underestimate Nod's willingness to hold out in a fight. GDI had the brute force... Nod had determination.

Something worthy of note was that the SSI engineers who were deployed with the CDES units had already setup a field repair depot and begun working on those old Nod units to get them at least serviceable. It was somewhat slow going, considering the parts were - at least - twenty-three years old and thus some were being fabricated on the spot, but it was a smooth process. SSI MP's stood and sat around the repair depot, helping when asked, and leaving true security to the black-clad troopers.

It was difficult not to refer to them as "Vaders" due to their general appearance - though rather than just a helmet, Lieutenant Baker pointed out to Zhukov a couple differences. First, they had a hooded cloak instead of a cape, and second, their mask - which was a helmet as well - had no real features. Vader's helmet actually looked like a head, complete with eyes, mouth & nose, and arguably a spot for ears. These were big enough to contain a head, but smooth all the way around. In some manner, they were far more similar to Darth Revan than Darth Vader - which was something that Zhukov was lost on. He'd only ever seen the original trilogy. Baker... well... she was into the expanded universe, and this long conversation went to show how nerdy the young commando was. It also served to keep her mind off her earlier nervousness.

"Alright Baker," Zhukov started, "let's head over to those... escape pods, I guess they are. Let's see if we can get any data out of them."

"Good idea. If we can find one that's still open, I should be able to hook EVA into it. That'll, with luck, get us some intel. Meanwhile, maybe you should run scans of the craft. The old starship didn't have these the last time it was here."

Zhukov gave a nod, and while nobody else could see him, Baker could thanks to the suit's sensors. Soon enough they were on their way, and after about twenty minutes of searching they found what they were looking for. The escape pods weren't overly large. They resembled, in some ways, a large coffin - and the interior could fit, perhaps, four people. It was all rather simple looking. Most of them were automated so that upon landing they would open automatically, and once everyone was out, close the very same way. Most did just that. A few, however, were either damaged on landing or landed in such a way that the automated door couldn't close again.

The particular craft that Zhukov and Baker had found was one of the few that had both come down hard and landed in an odd way. Not only was it damaged, but it landed with the door downward and the servos had it propped open like a metal tent. Lieutenant Baker, being the smaller of the two, and having the most skill with technological interfaces, was the one to crawl under and inside it. Meanwhile, Zhukov remained outside running scans of the small craft. Within about five minutes, Baker had EVA hooked intot he system and gathering data - though mostly it was the ship's communications frequencies and data about the escape pod itself. Apparently, everyone that had been inside this one at least survived.

Outside, Zhukov got a surprise the moment that he'd begun his readings. The hull of the escape pod was heavily irradiated, as if it had been in the vicinity of an atomic blast. At least, the level of the reading would indicate that; the type of radiation was the strange part. It was a tiberium radiation signature that he was detecting, not nuclear, but the only signatures this high had come after the destruction of Temple Prime. This pod had been around during a liquid tiberium detonation? How had it survived? It couldn't possibly had survived in the blast radius, could it?

A whistle came over his comm set. "Zhukov, I'm gonna patch in to their comm frequency; see what we can hear."

"Understood. Maybe we'll get something useful from that."

==X==X==X==

Back on the bridge of the starship, Captain Parker had managed to find an open terminal, but was still working on how to access it. About the time that he figured it out, he heard something that sounded a great deal more important.

"Captain, we have a transmission incoming from Admiral Kane." The vessel's comm officer reported - and Parker's head snapped up at the name.

'No... not after all this time... It has to be someone else!' Parker thought as he watched the officers.

"Patch it through, Mr. Barabus." Came a woman's voice, and with a glance, he spied a tall raven-haired Japanese woman in an officer's uniform - a Nod naval uniform, but with a few modifications. The most noteworthy was that, rather than Nod's sigil as an armpatch, it sported an inverted blue triangle with gold borders and a gold colored trident in the center. The sewn-on name simple read 'Stone'. On the opposite shoulder, the patch was a black field with numerous white stars bordered with gold and, in the center, was a large, crimson, number thirteen.

'Thirteenth Space Fleet, maybe?' Parker idly wondered, 'But whose?' The faction patch with the trident wasn't familiar to him.

Before he could think any more on that little mystery, a hologram of Kane, the former prophet himself, formed from the floor up in the center of the bridge.

'No fucking way...'

"Admiral." Captain Stone stood to attention briefly, heels clicking lightly as she did, and then relaxed once more - though Parker noted that there was a flinch to her right leg. Looking down it, he could see the blood that had stained the pants of her uniform; starting about about the mid-thigh and running down in blotches. It didn't appear to be bleeding anymore, but the injury was certainly recent. "I take it you've found what we came for? And a base for us to use?"

"Indeed I have. I'll transmit the coordinates shortly. Viktor Saveli will be handling the shipping of Legion's core to the ship and providing engineering teams to speed up our basic repairs. I have no doubt he will insist on providing an escort on top of that once we're ready to move the Saving Grace to our base."

"Very generous of him." Captain Stone smiled, "I may like this friend of yours after all." The smile soon fell though, "Unfortunately, there's another matter that I do believe should be attended to; quickly."

"Oh?" At this, Kane seemed genuinely surprised.

"Yes." Captain Stone closed her eyes then, as if focussing. A moment later they opened.

"I see." Kane nodded, "Handle it. I would prefer no fatalities, but do what you deem neccessary. I trust your judgement, Yuriko."

==X==X==X==

Back at the GDI stealth transport, the pilot sat in his seat, kicked back and relaxing while he waited for the commando team to return. He'd been nervous at first, but the more that he thought about things, the less sense worrying made. The bird was stealthed, and could detect stealth with its onboard sensors. Having figured that the team wouldn't be needing an extraction for a while, he leaned back and folded his hands together over his chest. If there was anything untoward destined to happen, the bird's sensors would let him know in advance. Thus, what could one little nap hurt?

Just about the time that he closed his eyes, he heard the faint clicking sound of an old revolver's hammer being cocked just behind his right ear - and he simply sighed sighed.

"Fuck."