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Warringer

Chapter 13

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Tenchi could feel the burning heat of Dark Knight hate towards the Shadows hovering in the back of his mind. It only served to fuel his own hate on them. They had helped Clarke, one of the worst human scum since the 20th century. He hated them, because they had forced the Earth Civil War, a war where he had lost a few friends. He hated them generally because they were what they were.

He couldn't see it, but his eyes seemed to glow in an inner fire as he glared at the screen and at the part of the screen where the Shadow should be.

"Slowly," he heard Setsunas voice, but didn't respond to it.

Dark Knight weapons got to the maximum load and were ready to fire as he looked at Setsuna for a moment. He could see the same determination in her eyes as he could feel in DK, beside her hate.

"Full Alpha Strike," he simply said without raising his voice, but everyone in the bridge crew could feel something cold run down their spines.

"Fire."

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From the outside nothing happened much as Tenchi gave his order. But only for a moment.

It was a glorious display of destructive forces as Dark Knight fires her Alpha Strike and continued it.

The two G.O.D. Ion Cannons were the first to lance out at the stealthed Battle Crab, immediately followed by the blast of the large Quantum Discharge Cannon and the blasts of smaller Discharge Turrets and Railguns. Four large conventional missiles, each as long as a GP patrol boat, left the twin launchers of the Vorlon-hybrid Warlock and streaked out towards the Shadow ship.

The Shadow Battle Crab literally didn't know what hit it, as the first Quantum Discharge served several spines from its body, followed by the Ion Beams slamming into its armor, eating through it and destroying its shield generator in a secondary explosion.

With a loud mental scream its stealth collapsed and it lashed out at the ship that dared to attack and injure it.

A massive dark violet Disintegator beam, normally enough to slice through any shield and the ship behind it, slammed into Dark Knights Light Hawk Wings, sending lightnings through it as the beam hit, but held.

More Ion beams and Quantum Discharges hit the massive black body of the ship eating large chunks out of its hull and serving spines from the ship.

The Battle Crab continued to scream out in pain and slowly lost what little focus it had since the beginning of the Alpha Strike. It lashed out in pain at any target that seemed appropriate. It sliced through a gap between the Light Hawk Wings of one of the smaller 2nd Generation trees, serving part of its starboard drive cluster. Another beam went wide and completely destroyed a Minbari Tinashi.

But that was all it was able to claim as the repeated strikes from Dark Knight took their toll. The last thing it could do was to launch a ball of the small fighters it carried. They would be all needed to deal with the ships here, as no race cared much about the concept of fighters and point defense.

The last the Battle Crab saw were four strange objects heading towards it, before all went white in the glowing ball of a 10 Megaton fusion detonation. Its last loud mental scream was immediately stopped.

The shock wave of the thermo nuclear detonation from four missiles burned away the remains of the large Battle Crab, but ten fighters were able to get out of range before the nuclear fire ate them.

The fighters streaked out towards the vessel that had destroyed their mother ship, but they soon were facing something else.

Dark Knight had a full load of 48 Thunderbolts and even through they were piloted by fighter pilots that weren't exactly used to their new flights, they still were the best Earth could offer. And the Shadow fighters were still dazed by the death of their Mothership as the furball began.

Rapid fire plasma cannons meet a Quantum Bold cannon.

It was one of the most intense furballs ever seen in space. In fact, it may as well have been the first furball ever.

Salvos from the Plasma Cannons found their mark, burning into low powered shields, even a few bolts managing to burn through the shields before slamming into the armor of the Shadows fighters, maybe the only armor in the Galaxy deserving to be called armor.

In the end all ten Shadow fighters were destroyed and the pilots and weapons system officers of seven Thunderbolts floating in space inside their cockpits-turned-escape-pods.

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The com channel hadn't been turned off as the fight began, and while Azusa was looking at the new tactical display, he also got a look at the bridge of Dark Knight. He saw the grim determination on Tenchi's face and again he shuddered.

"Full Alpha Strike," he heard Tenchi say, wondering what an Alpha Strike was.

"Fire."

Azusa's not spoken question was answered by all of Dark Knight forwards firing weapons opening fire. For a moment Azusa was ready to feel the Throne rock, while the weapons of Dark Knight slammed into the Light Hawk Wings. But the ship didn't shake and the weapons beams passed under Throne only to meet something invisible a kilometer away from the ventral hull.

He shuddered as a long drawn wail echoed through his mind and something appeared beneath the Throne. Whatever it was it was of a black color that seemed to swallow all light. Some of the bridge crew members of the Throne collapsed as the wail went through their minds, while the others tried to get any thing they could from the sensors.

The black spider like ship answered in kind, firing a dark violet beam of energy at Dark Knight, but the beam was stopped by the Light Hawk Wings, lightnings dancing across the Wings surface.

Azusa swallowed dry as energy balances of the beams from both Dark Knight and the black spider were displayed. The energy produced by the beams were insane. While he was sure that any Light Hawk Wing could survive the weapons, he doubted that another ship could.

The black spider slowly lost its focus on Dark Knight, one of the violet beams managed to strike through a seam in the Light Hawk Wings of an escort of the Throne, serving part of its starboard drive cluster from the rest of the ship, while another beam sliced through the shield of a Minbari Tinashi as it it wasn't there, destroying the ship as its Singularity reactor lost containment.

For a moment, something dropped beneath the black spider before the Thrones sensors were blinded by the close energy flash of several exploding fusion bombs, rocking the massive Throne even through the Light Hawk Wings.

As the sensors could receive again, the battle had ended, the small craft from Dark Knight were moving back to their Mothership, while Azusa idly wondered why they had been away from it anyway. He failed to notice that several of the small craft were missing and that some were towing escape pods.

Azusa couldn't see himself, but he was pale from the witnessed not-even-thirty-second-fight, just like everyone else as he faced Tenchi again.

"Please explain me what just happened," he said with a slightly shaking voice.

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Dukhat swallowed after witnessing the pretty one sided fight. He had been able to identify the black spider like ship beneath the Throne.

"Shadows."

Dukhat, while still being a member of the Religious Caste, knew that he was by far the most logical Minbari in the Gray Council, but it still was a shock to see an unknown ship, even if it seemed to be partly Vorlon, destroy a Shadow ship.

The shock at seeing the worst nightmare of the Minbari in reality, was something that was still present in the crew as Dukhat heard the sounds of a Vorlon encounter suit behind himself.

"We leave," the electronic voice of the Kosh said.

Dukhat turned around to look at the Kosh.

"But..."

"We leave," the Kosh said again before turning himself, leaving the bridge.

Dukhat swallowed again. While he had hoped not to fight the unknown ship, he was disturbed at the fact that the ship had destroyed a Shadow, something that only the Minbari should be able to do, and the Kosh. It had ordered them to leave and so the Minbari wouldn't learn anything about the ship, besides what he had witnessed.

"Later," he muttered to himself." Later."

He knew that the screams of the Shadow ship would haunt his dreams for the future.

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Tenchi looked at the screen in front of him. He knew that he couldn't tell Azusa the truth about the Shadows. Neither could he really tell his crew and Earth about them. He had had a dialog with Nathan about that and Nathan affirmed his decision. But neither of them had thought that the Shadows would really show up this fast.

Now Tenchi had to prove once again that he was fast on his feet.

"It was one of Kagatos creations," he said, not too fast." I already had to deal with them before coming back."

Essentially the last part was true. He had dealt with the Shadows during the Shadow War, even through that was years ago, at least from his point of view.

'Smooth bullshitting,' he could hear Setsuna in the back of his mind, but ignored her, seeing how Azusa's face went white before getting red.

"Kagato," the Jurian Emperor cursed." How many of these things are there?"

Tenchi shook his head. It looked as if his BS was falling on fertile ground.

"I don't know. Neither Ryoko, nor Washuu seem to know anything about them. And I just encountered this and another."

Azusa looked at Tenchi with a fire in his eyes, telling Tenchi that Azusa would try and actively hunt down Shadows.

"They got very good cloaking devices," Tenchi said." Better than the Minbari."

Azusa actively growled.

"Everything can be breached," he said before calming down sowhat.

"Maybe you can now tell me where you got that ship?"

Tenchi smiled a bit.

"I think we shouldn't do it over a com channel. How about your majesty coming over? I would like to show you my ship."

Azusa looked at his off-screen wifes for a moment, before nodding.

"We will be over in a short time."

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Washuu looked at the man in front of her and than at the screen. Marco Ramius interested her. He was maybe the epitome of Earth's mankind. He had done what he thought was right, fought overwhelming odds and was triumphant, while making sure that the world saw what they wanted or needed to see.

"I want to be in command again," he had said with a sigh." But it would only be for a short time."

Washuu had asked why and Ramius had answered that he had an inoperable form of cancer, he would live for several years, but he would go down slowly. The scans Washuu had made told her that the human medics were true about that, even she would have problems to remove the tumor, but it would be possible.

It also had given her a reason to renew her studies of the Earth human genome. What she had found was very interesting. A great number of inactive genes spread over all chromosomes could be found in not just Ramius DNA, but also in the CNA of the people who had received the rapid schooling. She had taken the DNA samples to better adjust the schooling systems.

She had run several simulations on the genes, trying to find out what they would do if they were activated. The results also had been interesting. An activation of the genes would increase strength and nerve speed by about ten to twenty percent. Other changes were in the more active immune system, it would deal with diseases more easily, there was even the possibility that it would be able to weaken the effects of AIDS and even Ebola. There was also the speed up regeneration of wounds. The biggest change was the longer life. Maybe 600 years, maybe slightly longer.

As she had seen the results for the first time, she had felt something she couldn't explain. A desire to activate these genes in every human on Earth.

There it was again. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in deep.

She had only spoken with Ramius about the genes, as activating them would make it more easy to operate the cancer. After some thought he had given her permission to activate them.

This was now why he was floating in a glass tube in front of her. It sounded strange, but since she had activated the genes, he had actually gotten younger and was now looking like he was about 30 years old. She chuckled as she had noticed that Ramius looked like Sean Connery while he had played James Bond.

Now it was time for the operation. She pressed a sensory button and several specially programmed nano machines were pressed into Ramius' blood. They would do the job. While he would recover, she would perform a rapid schooling for him.

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"... announced today that the Thyssen-Krupp Marine Systems AG are going to build the first European shipyard for atmospheric capable spaceships, such as the Monsoon class gunboat and a civil fright Monsoon variant, the Kogge. The new shipyard will be build in Emden, Germany, and it is planned to finish the first earth build European Space Defense space ships in seven month. In other news..."

zap

"...that the Philadelphia Naval Shipyards will be put back into full service after being officially closed six years ago. This will cause a great new investment into Philadelphia as the Department of Defense announced that more than 40.000 workers will be needed to get the production of Earth build space ships under way. This will be the highest number of employees since World War II."

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"...we will not stand by while aliens start to breath down our necks and threaten with the destruction of Earth. Or worse slavery! The galaxy out there isn't a pretty place! It won't ever be! This is the real world! NOT STAR TREK!"

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"Let us pray brothers and sisters. Let us pray that our brave men in space will protect us from heretic..."

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"... I am standing here in the ruins of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. A large number of volunteers are still trying to find one of the one thousand missing. But chances of finding them is not high."

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"... two hours ago. With that the National Republic of China is the sixth nation with a beginning space fleet. - One moment. - I'm just learning that the Republic of China under General Luo Cong and the remains of the Peoples Republic of China also announced to form a space fleet. This will certainly change the pace of the conflict over the remains of the old Peoples Republic of China."

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"... announced by Heckler & Koch. They are now the first cooperation to build hand held particle weapons. But if the H&K PPC-1 will be as successful as their other products remains to be seen."

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"... In fact, I just see how the Malaysian Task Force is leaving the Fleet Harbor of..."

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"... is the fourth day of the UN talk about the formation of a multinational Earth Defense Force. Observers tell that mostly African nations..."

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"...we have just received news from NORAD that ten minutes ago, several fleets of unknown ships have approached Earth. One of these fleets has withdrawn very fast, while a second fleet withdrew after witnessing a brief and intense fight between Dark Knight and an up-to-date unknown ship that doesn't seem to belong to either of the three fleets. We now go to Dave McCollin at NORAD. Dave?"