New Shores

AWarringer

Disclaimer:

Nothing in here belongs to me, except for the story.

PERRY RHODAN belongs to the Pabel-Moewing-Verlagsunion.

Ranma 1/2 belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi.

Tenchi Myou belongs to A. I. C. and to Pioneer.

Infinity's Shore belongs to James Barnhill. I've used it with his permission.

Chapter three

First Contact

-----------------------------------.

Present

A fleet consisting of twenty Juraian cruisers and battle ships, a few Oni frigates, a Lemurian carrier and ships of the former Galaxy Police made their way slowly through hyperspace. One of the ships was the flagship of the resistance movement, the Juraian treeship "Throne".

Kiriaade, part of the being that had helped Tsunami to navigate in Omega Centauri, had found the trail of the six ships from the other universe. It was only a matter of time before they found them.

Tenchi Masaki, former Emperor of Jurai and leader of the Resistance sat in a comfortable chair in the middle of the 'Throne's' bridge.

"Return into normal space in ten seconds," the voice of the female navigator said.

Tenchi just nodded. Hopefully they would find the ship this time, before the Empire found them. He looked at the main view-screen. He only saw the red swirls of hyperspace.

"Return to normal space," the navigator said.

The view changed and showed deep space, littered with the small lights of distant suns.

"Contact. We got three contacts. No imperial energy signatures."

Kiriaade looked over the shoulder of the sensor tech and nodded.

"That are energy signatures of LFT ships," she said in her soft voice.

Tenchi nodded.

"Hail them."

-----------------------------------.

"Contact, we got thirty-six unknown vessels," said the steady voice of Nathan Hargrove, the chief sensor technician," They are not imperial ships."

Ranma nodded and Nathan continued.

"The energy signature of these ships doesn't look like anything, I have seen before. They haven't activated shields or weapons."

"We are hailed," interrupted Mei-Lin'Hey," I put it through."

A holographic screen appeared in the center of Command. It showed a man in his late twenties to early thirties. He had a small beard and radiated a calm that Ranma only had seen in the immortals at home.

"Unknown vessels, this is Tenchi Masaki of the Resistance-vessel 'Throne'. Welcome in our universe, even if you may had some troubles. We mean you no harm."

Ranma looked at Nathan from the corner of his eyes. Nathan shook his head. Those ships wouldn't be more of a threat than the imperial ships. Ranma nodded at the man on the hologram.

"My name is Ranma Saotome," he answered." I'm the commander of the 'Marco Polo'. And yes, we had some trouble."

"I can only hope that more ships are coming to help us fight the Empire."

Ranma frowned a bit.

"I'm sorry, but we are the only ships that can help you."

'When you really are of this Resistance,' he added in his mind.

Masaki raised an eyebrow.

"I hope that one of the immortal is aboard your ship. Perry Rhodan or Reginald Bull maybe?"

Ranma shook his head negative as his eyes narrowed at the face and frowned.

"How do you know about the immortals and the LFT?"

Another face appeared on the 2D holo-screen. Ranma remembered the woman from one of the data files of Rhodan's adventure with VESTA-class cruiser in Andromeda. The face was of a regular shape and definitely female. Her immaculate features were dominated by an aristocratic straight nose and full, pale lips. Her skin was pale as well, a soft light brown with some freckles around her nose. That was contrasted by her flaming red hair and the black eyes that looked like little black holes. Ranma knew that she was the bodily incarnation of a collective being that consisted of more than one million consciences.

"Kiriaade," he stated.

"It is nice to be remembered," Kiriaade said smiling.

Ranma shrugged.

"I only read the files about what happened in Andromeda," he said, causing Kiriaade to nod.

"How is the Solar Resident? And how about the conflict with the 'Inquisition of Reason'?"

"The Resident is fine. And we won the war. But we still help Tradom cope with the reconstruction."

Masaki looked at her and she moved away from the screen.

"Anyway," he said," Kiriaade never told anything about a ship of this size. The biggest she knows of are the 1.8 kilometer diameter Discoverer-class super-dreadnaughts."

"I think we can talk about this later," Ranma said," We should move before the Empire finds us."

"Agreed."

-----------------------------------.

Past

2867 AD, Jurai

Ryoko materialized in front of her husband and co-wife, while they were having fun. It appeared that the two had started without her. She was caught up in some trouble that popped up in the intelligence department earlier. Frowning, she coughed to try and get the attention of the two on the bed.

Ajeka and Tenchi looked up and at the former Space Pirate. They were both grinning.

"Why don't you join in?"

Ryoko didn't move.

"Tenchi, I'm sorry to cut in, but we just lost contact to the listening post in the Sol-System."

Tenchi blinked.

"Huh?" was the very competent and knowing answer of the Emperor of Jurai as he blinked.

"Don't worry that much, Ryoko. Come and join in."

Over the last centuries the two former rivals have come to love each other as much as Tenchi and so it was normal to share the 'fun'. They still fought, but that was just to blow some steam.

"I would, but there is a problem with the destroyed listening post."

Tenchi blinked. He just knew that the listening post was there to monitor eventual survivors of the asteroid 'Loki' that had hit earth in 2017. Up to date there was no luck, as the planet was still surrounded by dark clouds.

"The listening post was build by my mother. And you know how tough her creations are."

Tenchi looked concerned. I really was a feat to destroy one of Washuu's creations.

"Who did it?"

Ryoko shook her head.

"We have no idea. There were no ships near the post."

"Were was it stationed?"

"On the planetoid Ceres in the asteroid belt."

The three never knew that this was the beginning of the end for the free galaxy.

-----------------------------------.

Present

Ranma's fleet followed Masaki's fleet through hyperspace at a relative slow pace of 20 million times he speed of light. The hyperspace sensor array measured high quantities of energy consumed by the ships, so the Intel and Tech department of the crew assumed that this was the highest speed those ships were able to reach, but compared to the maximum speed of 90 million times the speed of light for the LFT-vessels, the juraian ships very awfully slow.

After the ships had entered hyperspace, the computer department had deleted the virus that had contaminated the computers of the ships and transmitted the position to the Empire. The last orientation stop in normal space had been used to inform the 'Energy Shadows' of the fleet to delete their viruses and do recon flights before meeting the 'Marco' again.

At the moment they were on the last part of the way to their target, Omega Centauri. Ranma's eyes were sweeping over the files that contained everything the LFT knew about the star cluster. It wasn't that much.

Omega Centauri was the biggest star cluster in the halo of the milky way. It had a diameter of 120 light years and consisted of 4 million stars. The space of Omega Centauri was a special case for navigation and 'Faster than Light'-flight. Hyperspace waves and constant hyperspace storms made it impossible to use any FTL-drive save for one option.

The Transition Drive. It created a hyperenergy field around the ship to dematerialize it and rematerialize at the target coordinates. It was the perfect FTL-drive, hadn't there been severe problems. The maximum range of the drive was around 5000 light years and it used very much energy. It also needed high computer power to calculate the correct calibration of the hyperenergy field for one specific jump.

The constant hyperspace waves and storms also created interferences that disturbed the sensor systems, so they only had a maximum range of 100.000 kilometer instead of a few light hours, and the shielding, creating a constant stress of up to 50 percent to them. Additionaly the transition drive could only be used to jump from one 'calm' zone to another and never jump a larger distance them one or two light years. The 'calm' zones were pockets of space, where the constant storms created relatively calm spots where it was possible to jump in and out of hyperspace without too much strain on the engines

Back home there were three 'Empires' in the Cluster, none of them ever made contact outside the cluster.

Omega Centauri was mostly uncharted space in the home-universe, as no ships in terran history ever entered this area of space. The only pieces of data came from an expedition by Atlan, the immortal Arkonian about a century earlier.

Ranma closed his eyes and thought about the information. He wondered how the situation in Omega Centauri would look in this universe.

"Reentering normal space."

The view on the ever present holo-cubes changed and showed the star cluster. He really looked impressive from this short distance. It looked like a wall made of stars and rainbow colored nebulas.

Hargrove looked up.

"Ranma, compared to the data from home, the emissions from the storms are more intense here. They also reach down into the frequencies, where the hyper drives of the Imperial ships are working. It looks like someone manipulated the cluster."

Meanwhile Mai-Lin's fingers were racing over her keyboard and the holo's in front of her.

"We're receiving navigation data and a plotted course with stable 'calm' zones."

Ranma nodded and looked to the navigator.

"Plot a course and start the calculations for a transition."

-----------------------------------.

Past

2981 AD, Throne

Tenchi frowned as he looked at the assembled fleet. Hopefully they would be sufficient to put an end to that 'Solar Empire'. He hated the fact that someone had appointed herself as Queen of some Utopia. And now she tried to conquer the galaxy from the planet he was born on.

He gazed at Washuu for a moment. She had gone back to the Academy after he had become Emperor of Jurai. And she followed his call and was now researching the technology of this 'Solar Empire'. But they had never been able to get their hands on working technology. All they knew was the fact that the hulls of their ships were made of an alloy that was more sophisticated than any other alloy Washuu knew of.

His gaze went back to the tactical display with a graphical representation of the Allied fleet of the galaxy. Everyone knew about the threat the Solar Empire represented. Everyone had lost colonies to them. He had ordered the entire Juraian fleet, around 20.000 ships, to take part in this battle. The Oni had given half of their assault fleet, 35.000 ships, to the Allied Fleet, and Galaxy Police two thirds of their fleet, 75.000 ships. Other races also came and their fleets added 35.000 ships to the Allied Fleet. 165.000 ships were waiting for his orders.

He massaged his neck. He just hoped that this would be enough. Ryoko had gotten some Intel that the 'Solar Empire' would attack this system next. Bolares was a yellow dwarf with 1.1 sun-masses, with four planets. The second Planet Biso was colonized by Juraian settlers, but they forgot the origin of their ancestors.

If the fleet lost this battle another planet would change hands. Washuu never found out why the inhabitants of occupied planets supported their invaders so fast and so intensive.

"Contact," one of the sensor technicians said.

The tactical display changed. The fleet was zoomed out and a second cluster of contacts appeared on it. Several data appeared beside the cluster and the ships of the allied fleet went into a three-dimensional defensive formation, looking like a bowl, the opening pointing at the 'Solar Fleet'. They on the other hand was already in a lose formation of 85.000 ships.

The enemy fleet had only about half the ships of his fleet. Math alone had him clearly favoured, but the Solar Empire still had technology, the Allies didn't know about. They never knew what the 'Solar Fleet' would do or use next.

Clusters of several thousand ships disappeared for a short amount of time to reappear between the Allied fleet. Washuu was only recently able to uncover the secret of the enemies FTL-drive. They didn't use the Subspace-diving technology like the other races in this part of the galaxy. Instead they entered hyperspace. As Subspace was a space "below" the normal layer of reality, where particles like tachyons existed, the "Hyperspace" was completely disconnected from normal space. It used more energy than subspace-drives, but was faster at the same time. But now they were able to predict where and when an Empire ship left hyperspace. The only problem was that the sensors weren't very sophisticated and had an error of up to 50 percent. Not to mention that the sensors were too expensive build and so big that only a few ship had them.

Even with the new sensors, the battle was still hard. The defensive shields of the Empire ships were more than a match for the weapons of the Allied ships, only Juraian ships had a chance to get through them. Adding to that was the fact that the imperial ships were employing a 'Hit and Run' tactic. They would enter hyperspace for a short time, reenter normal space near a part of the Allied fleet to fire their weapons at them. After their weapon discharge they entered hyperspace again to change direction and repeat the maneuver.

There wasn't much the Allied fleet could do to fight the Empire vessels while they were doing these maneuvers. The result on the Allied side was chaotic. When the Imperial ship sped through the Allied lines, friendly fire was a constant. Several hundred ships weren't destroyed by Imperial ships but by their own allies. After just one hour of battle, the Allied fleet had lost nearly half of their ships, while the Imperial fleet just lost maybe 5000.

Another hour into the battle, the Allied fleet could just turn tail and run. 110.000 lost ships on side of the Allies to 9500 destroyed imperial ships.

-----------------------------------.

Present

Ranma massaged his neck as the pain of rematerialization faded. A look around showed that everyone in Command did the same. He looked at the main hologram, which displayed the view outside the ship. The MAXIM sensor phalanx tried to analyze the vessels, which surrounded his ships in a two light-seconds diameter. The 35.000 ships seemed to be some kind of sentry fleet that guarded this 'calm' space as it was one of only five places where a fleet could jump into Omega Centauri, without getting lost in the hyperspace storms.

A few other holograms showed diagrams and graphics of several ships. Ranma noticed that half of those ships were spherical ships with a ring around the equator, the biggest of them with a diameter of 1.8 kilometer. Detailed data about the spherical ships followed. Those ships had been build by descendants of the old Lemurians, the first mankind.

Around 52.000 years ago the Lemurians had developed on one of earth's two sunken continents, Lemur. They never left Lemur, but earth and build a large interstellar democratic state. 50.000 years ago, they tried to build a time machine, which got the attention of a species, who felt threatened and went to war. Lemur was destroyed and the continent sunk by an orbital bombardment after a period of 100 years of interstellar war, in which the Lemurian Empire was destroyed. Most off the lemurian colonies were evacuated to Andromeda, using giant transmat-devices powered by suns. The forgotten people forgot about their history and developed again on their own. With this history it wasn't surprising that a good part of the races in the galaxy were extremely humanoid and able to crossbreed with humans from earth.

The Lemurian colonies in Omega Centauri still knew about their past, but they had been too afraid to leave their secured star cluster and never knew what happened outside.

Ranma looked to one of the displays of a lemurian battleship. He blinked at one of the weapon systems and looked for it in the database. The result made him nervous. The Conversion-cannon, the main weapon system of the lemurian ships, was comparable to the Transform cannon. A bit more primitive, but the result was the same. He doubted that the 'Marco Polo' would survive the bombardment of the lemurian ships more than two minutes. Not with the reduced power of their shields.

Another great part of the assembled fleet consisted of long pointy cylindrical ships. These were ships of the Mograk, a reptilian race that resembled big frogs. They were a race native to Omega Centauri and didn't really like Lemurians or their descendants. But Ranma figured that the 'Greater Good' made them suppress their 'dislike'. If possible, Ranma sweated some more at the gaze to the diagram of a Mograk-ship and it's main weapon. It just had to be an Intervall-cannon.

"Great," he swore," Hopefully not from the frying pan into the fire."

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Past

3105 AD, Omega Centauri, Throne

Tenchi's throat was dry as he shook of the after effects of the hyperspace-jump. He was glad that Washuu's new FTL-drive worked like it was intended to, even in Omega Centauri. He gazed over to the glowing white sphere that floated near Tsunami. Even after ten years he still felt the overwhelming mental presence of the Nexus.

The Nexus was a collective conscience of several hundred thousand sentient beings. It didn't need a material embodiment as the raw mental power held it together. Core of the Nexus were 35.000 humans who had parapsychical abilities and were forced to leave their bodies by a megalomaniac alien being. They hadn't be able to do anything against him and where assimilated by a chaotic, parasitic creature. After the destruction of the alien being the Core of the 35.000 human consciences had been left, the original Nexus. It had chosen to wander the universe and help others.

A few years later the Nexus had helped during an invasion over in Andromeda. A few years later, the Nexus helped with an invasion in the Andromeda-galaxy, where it was forced to use almost all of it's energy. To support it, a group of about half a million natives then joined with the Nexus, making it into the powerful being, that now hovered on the bridge of the vessel.

Space shook with gravitational and hyperdimensional waves of tens of thousands of ships rematerialized inside one light-minute around the Throne. In the end, about five million ships drifted in space around the flagship of the Juraian Empire. The majority of them, almost 99 percent, where civilian ships - commercial cruise ships, freighters and shuttles of almost any type known to the empire. The rest were military vessels of the Galaxy police, the Oni empire and the rest of the Juraian navy. Every now and then a ship was too damaged by the journey through hyperspace and exploded. Some of them jettisoned escape pods, which where then rescued by other ships.

Tenchi closed his eyes. These ships were all that was left of the old interstellar states from before the expansion of the Solar Empire. And in them were the ten billion refugees. Now it was time to go look for a planet or two to create something like a Resistance. Omega Centauri was perfect for that. No one had ever entered this starcluster. No normal FTL-drive had been able to work near it and so no one ever bothered to go here. Only some tips from the Nexus had helped Washuu build her Hyperspace Jump Drive. Or Transition Device as the Nexus called it.

The Throne started to gather status information from the ships of the Juraian Fleet, only 10.000 of them were left, who in turn got status information from the rest of the refugee fleet.

One of the technicians turned to look at Tenchi.

"Sir, we have five hundred contacts. They are on a stationary position a few light-minutes away from the fleet."

"A few light-minutes?" Tenchi asked. He didn't like vague information.

"I can't tell more. The data isn't accurate. There are too many subspace-anomalies in the area."

Tenchi nodded.

"Monitor them."

The technician worked on his console and main view screen showed the fleet. The ships reminded Tenchi of over-dimensional pencils. For a few minutes nothing happened, other than the explosion of a few more 'scrap heaps'.

"Sir, one of the ships tries to contact us. They are using a hyperspace channel."

Tenchi nodded and a screen appeared in front of him. It showed the face of a being that looked like a giant frog. At first Tenchi could read surprise in its face, something he had learned while dealing with other non-human species. The surprise quickly turned to hate. Tenchi was surprised about it. The being then said something in a human-sounding language, before cutting the connection.

Tenchi blinked and looked at his technicians and Washuu. They were working on their consoles to translate the words.

A few minutes later they had the translation.

"Lemurians, you better leave our space before we have to take more drastic measures. You have one hour."

-----------------------------------.

Present

Ranma took a deep breath. He was still a little edgy about the fleet that had their weapons pointed at his ships. But there was a good thing. This Masaki was coming aboard the 'Marco Polo' to talk.

Ranma had used the time to clean up and put on a fresh light-green coverall, something that was sort of a uniform aboard LFT-ships. One of the briefing rooms had been specially prepared. Now he stood in one of the empty hangars. Beside him only the people of his command crew were present.

They looked as the shuttle landed inside the hangar that normally was occupied by a VESTA-cruiser. The airlock of the shuttle opened and a two armed guards came to line up next to the airlock. Masaki was the next to leave the shuttle, followed by Kiriaade, two other women and two men.

Masaki went up to Ranma and they shook hands.

"Welcome aboard the 'Marco Polo'."

"Thank you."

"I have thought that a high member of the Resistance would come aboard."

Masaki smiled.

"And you have. I am the head of the Resistance."

He pointed at the two women and than at the two men.

"These are my wives Ayeka, head of the Fleet, and Ryoko, head of the Military Intelligence. Hiroshi Makasi, responsible for logistics. And Soval Miratek, the representative of the people native to Omega Centauri."

Ranma just smiled and nodded.

"My pleasure."

He than went to introduce his staff.

"Ian Zarkov, my XO, Mey-Lin'Hay, Operations officer, Nadja McIntrey, my Navigator and Helmsman, Jakus, my Head Engineer, my daughter Tijana, head scientist, and…"

As he got to Hiroshi, he could see the people around Masaki tense.

"…Hiroshi Yamasaki, head of the computer department."

No one said anything for a few seconds.

"I think we should get into one of the conference rooms."

-----------------------------------.

3630 AD, somewhere in the Halo of the galaxy

Slowly Ryo-Ohki made its way through this part of space. It had been some time since Ryoko left the security of Omega Centauri to scout out some highly secured systems, where normal Resistance scouts couldn't get in. In the last weeks they had found large amounts of ships transferred to a system in the Halo.

A few hundred years ago the Empire had found this planet and the ruins there. A scientific station had been all there in the last centuries, but now they had built a large fleet base. The planet was too far out in the Halo and the next other system was 10.000 light-years distant.

The sensor systems of Ryo-Ohki, build by Washuu after the last refit of Ryo-Ohki, scanned space and tried to find the reason why all these ships where here.

Ryoko looked at the screen in front of her.

"Nearly a quarter million ships," she muttered," A tenth of the imperial fleet."

"Mya," Ryo-Ohki replied.

Ryoko blinked, as another screen opened. It showed a second diagram, displaying a distant sector of the system. 1000 unknown ships just appeared there. Ryo-Ohki needed just a few seconds to show ten different diagrams of those ships.

Each of the ships was basically a cube with two kilometers length. Hundreds of ledges, depressions, antennas and unidentified devices in the superstructure gave each of them a chaotic and unique appearance. At first, Ryoko thought that these ships where something from one of those old, hilarious earth Science-Fiction series.

The Imperial fleet started to move. More than half of the ships powered up their shields and weapons, then accelerated and advanced toward the unknown cubes. As the Imperial vessels arrived at a distance of around 14 million kilometer to the other ships, they started to explode without warning.

"MYA!"

Ryoko was as shocked as Ryo-Ohki as she looked at the readout of the unknown ships. Every time when an Imperial ship blew up, her sensors read an energy spike that resembled the energy spike of the Conversion-cannon.

As the first Imperial ships entered their weapons range, they delivered everything they were capable. The cubic ships just shrugged the energy of the weapons of as if the Imperials would throw stones at them, something only the Juraian ships could do. But other than with the Juraian ships, Ryo-Ohki's sensors didn't read any use of Juraian or similar energy.

Two hours later the battle was over. The cubic ships had just destroyed every Imperial ship in the system and now moved to the planet to bombard it from orbit. Ryoko swallowed as Ryo-Ohki did a flyby through Subspace and made some pictures from the bombardment. Atomic mushrooms appeared everywhere and the entire surface of the planet was reduced to a giant see of molten rock.

With these pictures and data Ryo-Ohki left the system.

Two years later spies were able to get alarming news. The unknown enemy with the cubic ships, called Posbis by the Empire, was nothing more than an entire civilization of robots. These robots had a positronic main computer connected to a bio-plasma, giving them a limited ability to just override their programming and limited emotions. And the Empire had won their war with the Posbis by finding their main planet; a systemless single world in intergalactic space surrounded by hundreds of artificial suns, and simply reprogrammed them to do everything the Empire wanted them to do.

With this victory the Empire had gained new space, were able to throw the Posbis into every war they wanted and the ability to patrol the halo of the galaxy. Attackers from outside the Galaxy would have more problems then before.

-----------------------------------.

Present

Ranma seemed to look at the people who were the head of the 'Resistance'. But he didn't look at them; he looked at the small patch of plants that was present in the briefing rooms of every LFT ship. More specially he looked at a small group of seven individually colored plants that looked much like tulips.

He had just listened to the explanations of Masaki and Miratek. Ranma had become a good judge of character since he left this universe; he had to be as the commander of a space ship. He knew that something was fishy about Miratek and he looked at the 'tulips' waiting for them to do something.

And one of them did. It moved its blossom and a single eye looked at Ranma.

'You are right,' the telepathic voice of Long-Stem, the leader of the 'tulips', said,' He isn't was he seems to be.'

Ranma frowned internally at the confirmation of the plant intelligences and was glad that he had asked them to monitor the emotions of the five 'Resistance'-heads. They were a group of plant-intelligences that had developed on a now destroyed planet. With seven different genders, these seven formed a family. For the most part, they were emphats, but when you let them, they could speak telepathically to you.

How could he uncover what Miratek concealed?

-----------------------------------.

3843 AD, somewhere in the Lesser Magellan Cloud

Ryoko swallowed as she stared at the sensor display in front of her. The Empire had drawn nearly half of their fleet and half of the Posbi-ships in this single system, to end a war that had begun ten years ago. A fleet of unknown ships black spherical ships had assaulted earth, destroying a forth of the surface.

They had called themselves 'Time Police', a group that hunted down any race who dared to play with time. It seemed that they had found out about the Time Gate. In the ten years of war, the 'Time Police' had destroyed a few dozen worlds and the Empire had hunted them down to the Magellan Clouds. At first the shielding of the black ships and the following red conic spaceships of the 'Time Police Chiefs', the head race of the 'Time Police', had been impenetrable, but then the scientists and mages on Mercury had created a device, which could weaken the shields. It was not much, but enough for an Imperial fleet to destroy a 'Time Police' fleet.

And now the Empire had found the home system of the 'Time Police Chiefs'. The only problem with this system was the fact that the 'Time Police' had hid their homeworld in some sort of temporal pocket. At the moment the ships just sat there, waiting for the Sailor Senshi to finish their job of destroying whatever created the temporal pocket.

Never in her live Ryoko had seen such a fleet. Nearly one million Imperial ships and a quarter million vessels of the reprogrammed robot civilization. This wouldn't be a battle, it would be carnage.

Some time later a second fleet appeared from somewhere. A quarter million of the conical ships, accompanied by half a million of the black ships.

It really resulted in a carnage that lasted for nearly six hours. After the battle and the destruction of the 'Time Police' fleet, the Imperial fleet had lost half of its ships and another quarter was in need of repairs. Just a short time later, a gas giant and its moons broke through space-time, reappearing in the system. A few thousand ships were destroyed, as they had occupied the space where the planet and the moons appeared.

While defensive forts on the moons and in satellites started to fire upon the Imperial Fleet, the ships went into a formation around the moons, Ryoko had seen countless times. White energy fields snapped into existence between the ships and covered the moons. Ryoko closed her eyes as the moons were 'Cleansed' by the Empire.

The fire from the moons and satellites ceased, as the 'Time Police' started to wonder why they even fought the Empire. The fleets over the moons now did their last thing in this system. Hundreds of thousands of thermonuclear, biological and chemical bombs were dropped from orbit onto the moons surface, destroying every single live forms on them, like they had done with several hundreds of worlds in both Magellan Clouds.

Ryoko couldn't take it much longer. She let Ryo-Ohki plot a course out of the system and simply fled the field of slaughter. She never even noticed the hundred faint objects on the edge of the system.

-----------------------------------.

Present

Ranma looked at Miratek, trying to find a way to get him to talking. The information of the 'tulips' weren't really reassuring. All they could say was that Miratek wasn't what he seemed to be. And it didn't made sense. When Miratek was some sort of spy, Kiriaade would have known it.

'I know it,' another telepathic said voice in his head,' I know that Miratek is a spy and everyone else knows too.'

Ranma twitched as the voice said this. He wasn't prepared for another voice beside the voice of the 'tulips', but he knew that this was the voice of Kiriaade. And he was able to put two and two together and get four.

'You use him to give false information to the Empire,' he thought.

'Yes,' answered Kiriaade,' 'Topaz' is really useful for this.'

He jerked back to reality when he heard Tijana asking something.

"You mean, the Empire is in war with someone beside the Resistance for more than eight hundred years?"

Masaki nodded.

"Yes, they call themselves 'Masters of the Isle' and they are from Andromeda."

The jaws of every LFT-member in the room hit the floor. Ranma had always been interested in the history of the LFT-universe, particularly the early years from the first moon landing in 1971 AD to the 'Second Genesis'-crisis in the 29th century AD. In 2400 AD, the terran fleet had found a artificially build constellation of suns near the center of the galaxy. During the examination of this discovery, terran ships where transported through the suns in the Andromeda galaxy, where a war started with the descendants of the Lemurian refugees, the so called "Masters of the Isle" The war ended in 2404 AD with the death of the last of nine 'Masters' and the destruction of the galacto-centric transmats in the Milky Way and Andromeda. It had been one of the biggest wars in terran history.

Ranma swallowed. Now he could understand why the Empire wanted the LFT-technology. The 'Masters of the Isle' were monsters. But there was a problem. When they helped destroy the Empire, the 'Masters of the Isle' would be able to overrun the Milky Way and it would be a jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Ranma's thoughts were interrupted as a call came through the ship internal communication. Ranma taped the sensor and opened the communications channel.

"Yes?"

"Commander, one of the 'Vesta's', the 'Unna', just entered Omega Centauri. It looks like they brought guests with them."

Ranma blinked.

"What guests?"

"From the communiqué they are from the 'Republic'. The 'Vesta' will arrive in half an hour."

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Appendix:

Intervall-cannon: A hyperdimensional weapon system that uses focused hyperdimensional waves to penetrate most energy shields and induce heavy mechanical stress to matter. The stress is great enough to pulverize the matter of the target, even when it is a very sophisticated alloy.

Conversion-cannon: A weapon comparable to the Transform-cannon, but less sophisticated. This weapon has a lesser range, around 10 million kilometer, a lesser payload, maximum 1000 GT, and needs more energy.

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Next Time:

The Hidden Republic