Chaotic Space

by Vimesenthusiast

Ranma learned on his 'grandma's' knee to look to the stars, and dreamed of going to space when they watched an alien ship crash land on Earth. Now years later after various plans have come to fruition he gets his chance. But is space and the space navy ready for Ranma? Pairing Ranma/Kasumi/Lisa/Miriya

28. Once More Unto the Breach

HOLY bleep, I so did not know how often I switched Invid with Meltraedi, my replace all screwed up big time for some reason. Thanks to Hunter Noventa and G-Force 1 for point this out.

I don't own Robotech or Ranma alas. I mean come on music as a primary weapon? What, are we on Arrakis now? (if you don't get that reference you do not deserve to call yourself a sci-fi fan)

Asking anyone if they know a good Dragon Age harem fic? Could be male Cousland or male mage please. No slash obviously. Or how about a Mass Effect harem fic? I've read Black Dog Sheppard and a few others, but always looking for more to read on my infinitesimal free time that I don't spend writing, especially any that might be off this site somewhere? I am actually thinking of a plot for a Ranma/Mass Effect cross if anyone with knowledge of both is interested PM me and we'll see if it can come about. My Fairy Tail muse has alas not recovered yet from the foul poison that is JErza. Just one new Erza/Natsu moment please! Is that too much to ask?

Some reviews:

This isn't so much a response to a review as a rant: Simply putting two words down, especially if its 'not bad' is not a review, you cockbite! Reviews need to be a genuine expression of your pleasure of reading the story, not just two somewhat insulting words! If you don't have something real to say, good or bad, please don't say anything. Thank you, and now on to the real review response.

Hiryo: Sorry dude, see above. If you like Harry Potter though you could check out my Harry/Marvel story if you're looking for something to read. CJ-cold: thanks for the excellent review. The strategic situation won't be solved in this chapter, but you will see the two groups putting a framework for further growth/learning in place.

Tatieyana: thank you for the sentiment, here is another helping. Now eat all your meat, or no pudding!

TJG: The crystal and the flower of Life will indeed both open new avenues of research and knowledge, which I will attempt to detail in the next chapter, alas other things take precedence in this one. But I will tell you that humanity will take its lumps, but in the long run they will be a hell of a lot tougher than they ever were in canon because of the great thinkers like Lang and the others.

Narsil: Lisa has developed in leaps and bounds from the hidebound, rather personally timid woman she had been. Despite what Henri Gloval may think, Lisa is quickly becoming the captain of the Macross in more than just rank. She will showcase some of the knowledge she gained by talking to Miriya in this chapter, and once more prove her tactical acumen later on. I made some references to how Ranma was building his own training ground a time or two, but never went into detail until now. And if its massive explosions you want…

n0mster: I do plan for the war against various bits of the Zentraedi to continue for a while, though book one will be coming to a close soon. I estimate two or maybe three more chapters in this book. And yes the two thirds was initially just for this, though I've gone beyond that point by quite a bit since. I need to research the Masters and their tech as well as the Invid and the others more. Shampoo will not end up with Max, I have plans for him, somewhat humorous and a bit humiliating, but that's for later. Shampoo will meet a possible love interest in this chapter, tell me if you can see where I took the character from, I'm interested.

Zbox: Not so much when you consider the people doing it my friend. They've always been a bit laid back that way.

JohnC25: Kyle will get what's coming to him soon enough, though alas not in this chapter, too much else to do. I tend to try and match the size of the harem to the universe its set into, as well as the needs of the story. For this work its three, for Lion of Light its five going on six, in Destiny vs Chaos it was three though the third person changed over time. I think any harem more than six is too much and rather unwieldy however. Again respect, and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

I'm sad no one saw the line I stole from the Hobbit, ah well. On with the show, first diplomacy, then the lack thereof.

Chapter 27 Once more into the breach

(The same day Admiral Restuc was sent to Earth in an even more distant star system from Sol)

Breetai allowed a smirk to appear on his face as the five 1,000 ship strong Quiltra-Quelamitz flotillas he had broken off from his fleet after the first clash in this system suddenly appeared right where he wanted them to be, directly below and with a clear run to the Invid factory ship. As massive as those ships were, able to take as much and dish out far more punishment than his own flagship, even it would be overcome in short order to that many gunboats using their main weapon, the converging energy beam cannon. While alone a single gun boat would be destroyed almost as soon as it entered range of a factory ship, 5,000 of them would turn it into scattering atoms quickly.

Breetai had known he needed to figure out a way to strip the factory ship in this system of its defense fleet. That was always the hardest part, because for some reason the factory ship seemed to bolster the Invid into fighting harder, faster than normal within a certain range. that he needed to use something new to do it; say what you would about Invid, but their ability to mind speak to one another long distance meant they almost never fell for the same tactic twice. They didn't understand tactics of course, they were bugs and would have begun to use them themselves if they did, but simple orders such as 'don't move away from the factory ship' were simple enough for them to use.

To combat that he had come in swiftly, attacking one edge of their formation with overwhelming local superiority, then pulled back and to the left and down of his prior assault, as if he had taken losses and was suddenly afraid of taking more. This and the death of a little over a fifth of its command had galvanized the Invid commander to come after him, pulling the factory ship with him but keeping it at the back of the formation.

Imagining the bug commander's look of shock as most of his damaged ships, unseen as he very carefully led the bugs any from the sight of the previous battle, came alive again and turned their convergent energy beams on its charge would warm his soldier's heart for months.

That did not mean the battle was over, but he had achieved his objective, all that was left was simply cleaning up the mess. And killing Invid, he thought almost cheerfully while outwardly he ordered two flotillas forward on his beleaguered left flank, then pushed his reserves (mostly the Meltraedi under Delmera) into the battle along his right flank, stacked so they came over and below the present battle, thus would once more have massive local superiority, able to turn that portion of the Invid's fleet and then push on into the rest of their fleet, crushing each Invid armada in turn. There's always time for that.

The battle did indeed continue, with the Invid leader desperately trying to escape with what forces he could now, his charge gone and thus no reason to remain, but Breetai and his clan-fleet and its allied Meltraedi harried the Invid forces until every one of them was annihilated.

After the last Invid ship blew up, the last Invid Claw fighter died under the assault of a Queadluun Rau, there was a moment of stillness on the bridge as every one of his officers stopped what they were doing to stare at one another. They all knew what this battle meant. Not only was that factory ship the last that had been supplying the assault this fleet had helped stop and even turn around, but it was the only remaining one all along the front between Zentraedi controlled space and Invid controlled space. The Invid had overextended, taken too much damage in their attempted large scale assault against the Zentraedi, and this had left them badly off balance. Now without factory ships along the front it would be months before more factory ships and fleets could be moved up to the front. For the first time in living memory the Invid controlled star systems, the heart of their power and might, was open before the Zentraedi fleets.

It began slowly, a murmur that might well have started at the far end of the ship, until it rose into a crescendo of noise, and every officer on the bridge was shouting and cheering, yelling and jumping and thumping one another's backs in exultation.

Breetai scowled at this lack of decorum and was about to bring them to task most severely when a hand gently touched his shoulder, reaching up above the owners own head to do so. He looked to his side and saw his aide Exedore standing there, his crippled form as un-Zentraedi as you were likely to see, hiding the brilliant mind within.

The far shorter Zentraedi merely nodded, looking around them. "Let them have their moment lord admiral, don't think of it as a breach in decorum, think of it as a necessary release of tension. Think about it my lord, this fleet has just opened the door for the conquest of the Invid, something that was thought impossible for untold years. Let them have their moment admiral, they deserve it, by the stars of space, they deserve it."

Breetai frowned touching his half mask where it covered his ruined eye thoughtfully, but then smiled slightly and nodded. "You are right my old friend, they do indeed deserve it."

He turned and was about to get the attention of his communication officer and send out a small speech of congratulation to his men, but stopped as the long range hologram communicator came on. He turned and saluted Dolza, one clenched fist to his chest. "My lord, I am pleased to report that the last Invid factory ship has been destroyed. The way is clear for our counter-invasion."

Dolza nodded, though his face revealed nothing of his thoughts, as was usual from the giant Zentraedi. "I know, but that assault will not be led by you. I have need of you to return to your prior task, that of capturing the space fortress."

Breetai twitched in shock, while around him the euphoria of their victory disappeared from his men like it had been sucked away by a black hole. Out of one eye he saw his communication officer toggle his system, doing something with it. "My lord? Surely the space fortress, while important, is of lesser strategic importance than taking the fight to the Invid, possibly wiping them out forever?"

Dolza frowned down at him. "That is for me to decide Breetai, remember your place."

Breetai bowed slightly more to keep the giant from seeing the anger and fury in his one remaining eye than because he was truly contrite.

"There has been an odd issue with the space fortress, some very odd readings that that idiot female has discovered." Dolza didn't even bother using Azonia's name, so contemptuous he was of her and her fleet, something that came through clearly in his voice. This did not sit well with anyone in hearing range but the fear Dolza created by his mere image in all Zentraedi kept them from speaking. "Kyron, that mad fool was able to board the ship and somehow damaged something on it so that something onboard is giving off power readings we have never seen. It is more imperative than ever that we take it intact, if the proto-culture generator was in some way damaged then we need to take control of the ship quickly before the problem worsens. The importance of that generator to our people cannot be overstated."

Dolza was actually telling the truth there, not just being a mouthpiece for his masters. The Zentraedi fleets ran on a very raw, unrefined helium/hydrogen fuel, but they were designed to run on the same source as the ships of the masters, what they called proto-culture. The output of their ships was so much less that it was laughable. He put down their losses thus far against the Invid to this reason, not realizing it was a far more dangerous problem that had truly caused those losses. He assumed Breetai had simply been cautious and careful enough to overcome this disadvantage, rather than understanding his tactics and strategies.

"You are to leave immediately for this Sol system, and once there you will capture the space fortress and return it to our control." Dolza went on grimly.

Breetai was speechless for a moment, trying to make sense of this. No matter how important the space fortress and what it carried is, surely wiping out the Invid is more important? What's going on here? "May my clan fleet take several jumps my lord, we are running low on fuel?"

Dolza frowned and shook his head. "No, it will take too long and I want you there as soon as possible. You will leave within the hour Breetai, is that clear?"

Breetai nodded, still clamping down on his anger at this turn of events. "I understand lord, what of our Meltraedi units, will they come with me as well?"

"Of course, but you are too have as little contact with the Meltraedi as possible. They have failed this task, and I wish to inform of how this displeases me in the future. One hour Breetai, that is all."

The communication ended and only then did Breetai realize he had ruined yet another metal panel, his fingers bending and twisting it out of shape with ease under the power of his anger. Around him he heard angry mutterings form his crew too, and knew those same noises of discontent were making their way around his fleet. He knew there could be only one answer to this. He stood up, thumping his fist on (and through) the tactical screen in front of him. "Enough! We are Zentraedi, act like it! We follow orders, no matter our personal feelings on the matter."

It never occurred to him that the way he allowed his men as much freedom of thought as he did was well beyond the level anyone of the other animals allowed. "We will complete this mission just like we have every other mission. We are Zentraedi, that is what we do. On top of that, you are my fleet, and I will lead you to victory!"

That had some of those listening into that little speech cheering again, though the fleet as a whole was much more subdued. Still there was nothing he could do about that, simple do his job and hope that the other admirals didn't mess it up too badly in his absence. "As soon as we have gathered survivors, this fleet will leave this system and go into fold, destination, Sol."

Breetai sat down and leaned back in his chair, watching the hubbub on his bridge while within him the small flower of rebellion was watered once more and began to grow.

OOOOOOO

Vice Admiral Gloval's first thought was to summon the military police and have them take the woman away to make sure she first that she was sane and if so clap her in irons to be questioned at length. But looking at Ranma and his somewhat protective stance he figured that wouldn't be exactly the best plan or indeed the healthiest plan both for himself and for the military police in question. Ranma may ape the mannerisms of a soldier, but his deference to those in higher positions than his own extended only so far as he respected them.

After the full story came out he realized that he would have another issue, since if this woman was anywhere close to Ranma's lethality they could probably fight their way off the ship if they wanted to. He listened intently for a few minutes after Miriya's presence was explained then nodded calmly "I see," he said, proud that his voice came out so calmly. "Ranma if you could escort your friends to the meeting room, I believe number three is open today, then we can discuss this further there shortly. I will summon my other officers, but I would first like to talk Captain Hayes for a minute in my ward room."

Ranma nodded agreeably and led Miriya off the bridge and down into the conference room a few floors below. One the way down they passed another elevator going up, not that they realized this of course, but the individuals in that elevator would be a help to Lisa soon.

Henri and Lisa left the bridge, leaving Claudia in charge of the bridge. The black woman was looking back over her shoulder at them as they walked, her face a mix of shock, surprise, and worry for her friend.

As soon as the door closed behind them Henri laid into Lisa verbally, his voice colder than most ever heard it. "What were you thinking Captain Letting an alien aboard ship, an enemy combatant?! You knew what she was and you never reported this in?! My God I should have you broken back down to commander!"

"Sir," she replied calmly, not responding at all to his outburst or his anger. "You mistake the fact that Miriya is an enemy combatant for Miriya is a spy, they are not one and the same I assure you. She is here for precisely the reason she said, to fight Ranma and to see how he is so good. The message she relayed was merely that, a message from her Admiral. The Meltraedi are almost completely without guile. Besides which, how would you have gone about questioning her, torture? I truly doubt you or anyone else could do anything to her that could make her talk if she didn't want to. Instead I got to know her in a social setting, where I learned quite a lot about their fleets and their ships over the last few days."

"That was not your call to make captain! Regardless of your personal beliefs, this is a major breach of operation and ship security, not to mention military law. You may well have ruined your career with this stunt, no matter what else happens."

At this point the door opened, and Henri turned to shout at whoever was interrupting them only to pause as he saw Nodoka and Cologne standing there." I'm in the middle of something dear," he said much more calmly than he felt, "could you wait a…"

"If this is about Miriya then we both knew about it as well," Cologne said cackling a little and hopping over next to Lisa. "how are you doing young one?"

Lisa replied easily, looking over at her superior officer, not judgmental or angry about the harangue she had just endured. "I'm fine elder, just explaining why I didn't turn Miriya in for an enemy combatant."

"It would've been utterly pointless," said Nodoka, smiling a little. "She's such a dear anyway."

Nodoka and Miriya had met a few times when she spent time with her son and the girls, and Nodoka had a very shrewd notion that there would soon be a third girl in her son's bed and his heart, an idea that had her breaking out the fans once or twice to herself. She found Miriya a interesting conversationalist, almost as devoted to her craft as Ranma was. Indeed if she hadn't already chosen Motoko as her daughter/successor, she could well have seen her way to adopting Miriya to teach the ways of the sword.

She had also found her to be completely innocent in the ways of society and culture, a empty shell that Nodoka was slowly filling with the knowledge of the samurai caste and with the help of Cologne the Amazon culture. Cologne was in fact tempted to officially adopt Miriya into the tribe. She was merely waiting for an opportune moment, such as when Shampoo realized that she had lost her chance with Ranma and moved on with her love life, though hopefully not with that Max boy, who seemed to strike her as the wrong type. He was far too interested in the physical aspect, and did not seem to be willing to settle down anytime soon, an odd disconnection from his somewhat unassuming appearance and (falsely) humble nature.

"So you were all in on this," Henri asked looking coldly at Nodoka.

"Of course we were. It's not like we try to keep it a secret Henri," she said a little condescendingly. "All the Amazons knew as well as a few others. In fact I dare say that several of Ranma's other friends had figured it out too, but none of us said anything because Miriya wanted it that way. We knew she would reveal herself officially when she wanted to, and we could tell that she wasn't here for any ulterior motive. We saw it as a great idea, being able to almost suborn an alien combatant."

Henri frowned a little but saw her point. Reinforcing that was the fact he had been impressed by Nodoka's ability to understand people. It was almost as if it was a martial art she had discovered, the ability to see the real person inside of other people. Leaving that aside for now, not because he suddenly agreed with the decision but because it had already been done he went on. "How do you think I'm supposed to act here? I can't broker a peace deal, I don't have that authority."

"If you don't," said Lisa grimly, "who does? Sir, in a way you have more authority than any ship captain has since the Age of Exploration. You can broker deals out here, and I have no doubt they will be ratified back on Earth. Admiral Prescott will get behind it and push if no one else will, and you know his word carries a lot of weight, now more than ever with him named the fleet admiral for the first space fleet. On top of that what do we have to lose? The Meltraedi are going out on a limb here to make peace with us because they've learned too much. The questions they are asking each other will get them destroyed by the Zentraedi once it is found out they are asking them. The Meltraedi may be able to fight the Zentraedi on a 1 to 4, even a 1 to 5 ratio, and in terms of their power suits that's even higher, but that's not going to be enough!"

She let a note of concern, even a bit of fear enter her voice as she went on. "The Zentraedi just have too many ships! Too many fleets! I found out their numbers do you want to hear them?" She went on before Henri could respond, speaking faster now. "A Zentraedi battle fleet has upwards of 500,000 ships in it! The Meltraedi, when their fleet is all together, have barely 100,000! There are 10 main fleet's, and Dolza's personal fleet is even larger, though Miriya doesn't know how much larger, and over a 100 skirmish fleets, each with around a thousand ships! The Meltraedi can't stand against them. you think we could without help? The only reason we've survived up to this point is because the Meltraedi and the Zentraedi were ordered by Dolza, probably at their masters' behest, to capture this ship intact. This proto-culture generator thing is worth more to their masters then any number of their slave's lives." She emphasized the word slave as she finished, calming down a little.

Henri frowned. Numbers like that and a willing ally to court made his anger at there being an enemy combatant on his ship seem to not have a leg to stand on. It just stuck in his craw about was all, but he realized this was probably a case where his instincts from fighting humans had gotten the better of him. He sighed, "Very well, let us adjourn to the meeting room and hear the details of how this peace talk will begin." This won him a kiss on the cheek from Nodoka, and he led the way out of the room with a small smile on his face from this.

Once the command group was brought together, minus most of the civilians of course, though Cologne and Nodoka took part, Miriya began." I'm here as a personal representative of my Admiral Azonia. We of the Meltraedi constitute an elite force among the Zentraedi. We are all females, and until very recently we really didn't see any problem with that kind of segregation or isolation. However interacting with you humans has made us start to question many things, questions started by our three spies that we put aboard the ship several local months ago."

Henri Gloval grimaced at that, wondering how the hell those spies and gotten aboard and stayed hidden. The others however simply took it in stride, after all if the Zentraedi had figured out any weaknesses they would've exploited them by now and obviously that hadn't happened so something else must have taken priority.

"I was not selected for this I volunteered, primarily because I needed to get aboard the ship for my own personal reasons." She glanced over at Ranma who gave her a thumb up and she grinned briefly.

She then turned to the others and went on. "I am here to broker a cease-fire so that my Admiral may come aboard to… to negotiate a peace agreement." That thought seemed to make her frown a little, but she went on quickly. "I am to send a single indicating that you are willing to talk with a codeword imbedded in the message. Afterwards a single ship, the flagship of our fleet, will come alongside and the Admiral and one other will come aboard. They will share as much intelligence as they have, in return for your aid and peace. I have been told that long term lady Azonia wishes to rebuild our culture by studying yours. Talking to your experts, talking to people like elder Cologne, scientists like this Dr. Lang who I have not met to recreate or restart our own culture. To that end we will need to make peace. I know she hopes to keep our alliance a secret for as long as possible, and that she figured out some kind of ruse to tell Dolza about you that would make him leery of sending further troops, but I don't know enough about it to explain it, or that it continues to work, I'm sorry."

"General Mannstein leaned forward threading his thick fingers together and leaning on his interlocked hands. "While I am all for peace, I would like to get more of a handle on your Admiral first. What kind of commander is she, we have seen that she isn't like that madman Kyron, but how much in control of her fleet is she? Will there be any elements who do not wish to go along with this peace process? Will there be dissent of any kind, and will she uphold any agreement we reach, or merely use it as long as it is convenient?"

Gloval looked around at his officers and suddenly realized that he and the intelligence officer were the only ones who didn't seem surprised that there was an alien in front of them. the others had taken in stride far more easily than he had expected them too. In Mannstein's case this was simply a show of his trust in Ranma and his ability to figure out people, as well as his mother and Cologne. The two of them had many interesting discussions about history since the diminutive elder had come abroad, and the older woman's sharp mind had impressed the massive German.

"Yes, she will," said Miriya calmly, not taking offense. In their position she would've been asking the same questions. "In terms of control over the fleet it is absolute. She is not a dictator or a despot, I believe those are the words that could be used to describe Kyron and those like him? She rewards loyalty and performance, she listens to those under her command, and she cares for them. All of that is almost unheard of among the Zentraedi, where the difference between the officer class and the regular class are sharply defined, and no one questions the admiral because he is the admiral. That caring is precisely why she has done this I think, her loyalty is to the fleet before it is to Dolza. She has come up with many of what you call tactics and strategies to lessen our losses. Indeed it has been many, many years since we lost more than 1,000 ships or so in any given clash even with the Invid and that is all to her and the innovations she has pushed. Though her command staff, I believe is the way you term it, though her command staff is not at the moment together here, she has the majority, and from what I understand they are all backing her decisions."

Miriya herself was a part of that command staff at time, along with Athena and a few other Queadluun Rau operators, but Miriya only rarely took part, knowing that her place was at the front in her powersuit, not making long term decisions or plans.

The head intelligence officer, Roberto Eqiustore, who had only come abroad ship the day before it left Earth, leaned back smiling faintly. "I think we are you are getting ahead of ourselves here. By your estimate how long do we have before this ruse of your admiral's stops working? And how long would it take for a force of these males Zentraedi to get here? Would they send a skirmish fleet, or a main fleet?"

If a main fleet was he sent he prayed that the colony ships had already left before they got here. Because if it was a main fleet and they came to kill with those numbers there was very little humanity could do to stop them. They could go down swinging, and he made a vow that they would do just that. And swing hard if he had anything to say about it, a thought shared by every other person at that table, but there was no point in trying to ignore reality.

Griftel and the high command had tried that and look where that got them, the Italian thought amusedly. He had never really liked most of the high command, especially Hayes, though his daughter seemed cut from a different cloth. But the images she had captured and the data Drake, who was now serving as his aide and main analyst, had gathered pointed to an ugly picture in terms of numbers. In the long run however, that might be a different story. The information about the lack of maintenance on the ships, the fact the Zentraedi for the most part didn't understand tactics, those were exploitable weaknesses in the long term.

"I don't know," answered Miriya bluntly. "I do not concern myself with such long-term thinking so you will have to ask her. I will say that this duty, was apparently given to Lord Admiral Breetai first but he and his clan fleet are now leading a campaign against the Invid at the present moment." She sighed sadly, "Those battles must be glorious."

Ranma smirked at that while the others simply rolled her eyes having already deduced this green haired woman was much like Ranma, a combat junky.

Henri looked around him seeing interest, amusement and a glimmer of hope in many cases and he sighed knowing that this was going to cause trouble for him back on Earth. No matter what Lisa said there were going to be those that thought he had overstepped his bounds, and they were going to make him pay for it. "Very well, send the signal in an hour tell her we will be ready to have her board in a four hours."

Miriya nodded and left the room, followed quickly by Ranma after he threw a hasty salute towards the vice-admiral.

Roberto touched his fingers to his lips hiding a small smile there. "This is going to be an interesting event."

Cologne cackled a little. "So long as it isn't the Chinese curse kind of interesting I think we can get by."

Everyone laughed at that, and exited the room. It was time to get their dress best on.

OOOOOOO

"Are you sure of this Lady?" asked Azonia's flagships Captain, a woman almost as old as Azonia and Sonya, experienced at her craft beyond anything most Zentraedi fleets could call on. Of course like all Meltraedi and Zentraedi she did not show her age on her body, which remained toned, taut and well muscled despite her somewhat sedentary life as a ship captain. Ilea was not one to allow herself to grow complacent or fat.

Azonia smiled at the younger woman shaking her head. "Certain no, I'm not certain this will work. Certain that this is the best move forward for our people, yes. Yes," she repeated herself, coldly, a state of mind her face followed swiftly, "I am that. Someone did this to us Ilea, some other race has been using us as their attacking animals like those dogs that you sometimes see on TV shows of the Mic… of humans. I think it's time we slipped out of our leash, and taught them the error of their ways."

The captain smirked a little evilly at that and nodded grimly.

Mira had understated the facts about the fleet's mental and emotional state and the questions being asked, mostly because she hadn't ever cared enough about rumors or anything else to know how far it had spread or the anger that was building just below the surface.

Azonia had kept the link to the human Internet open, and every ship had been able to access it as often as they wanted to. The questions of 'why don't we have that' had long since replaced by 'who made us this way', and 'how did they take our freedom away'. Azonia had been astonished at how quickly the women of her fleet had realized their actions might well be controlled by some exterior source for its/their own benefit. She wondered if there had been a sense of rebellion just bubbling beneath the surface waiting to get out that this had jumpstarted somehow. Regardless, she was riding the crest now and her whole fleet wanted to make peace with the humans. They wanted to learn about culture, they wanted to learn about clothing designs, about how to create their own designs, about food, about everything that had been denied them.

And then they wanted to go out and find who did this to them and destroy them so utterly not a single remnant of their people would remain. To say the fleet was enraged was an understatement. Everyone, from the lowest Queadluun Rau operator to the most experienced commodore was behind Azonia 100% in this. Never again would the Meltraedi blindly follow Dolza's orders, never again would they simply assume that the fleet had to be the way it was, that there was nothing else out there, no other way to live. They would have answers to their questions, they would rebuild their culture and they would move forward into the future with their heads held high.

Azonia had never been prouder to call herself a Meltraedi when she realized that to a woman they had all decided to move in lockstep with her regardless of the danger.

"You have command of the ship until I return, relay anything that comes in from our scout vessels but other than that I will probably be incommunicado for a time." The captain nodded again and Azonia turned and walked off, heading towards the powersuit bay.

There she found Sonya already waiting for her. The site brought a smile to her face and she moved over, turning so that the youngsters around them couldn't see and clasped her friend's arm firmly, keeping her voice low. "Thank you for joining in this Sonya, you didn't have to volunteer to come with me, you know."

"Yes I did," Sonya said smirked smiling a little, the only emotion she would show around the youngtsers, though she returned her friends arm clasp firmly. "After all, it was my questioning that got us to this point and you are my Admiral," she said then went on a lower voice "and my friend. Whatever else happens we will face it together. Like everything we have since we first met."

"Yes," said Azonia, straightening up, "we will face it and we will defeat it together with these humans." A final nod and the two turned and moved toward their Queadluun Rau.

These powersuits had been set aside decades ago, and Azonia's case at least. Sonya had remained in the powersuit wings for a while longer than her Admiral but had eventually given it up and moved on to command of a ship as Azonia had and then to being her chief advisor and senior division commander. Her Athena, Ilea, Delmera and several other commodores were the fingers that Azonia used to control her fleet. Yet it was only the shoulder plates that showed any kind of personalization. On the right shoulder plate of each unit was the image of the lizard beast that Sonya had tattooed on her face delineated in silver, for one of them and gold for the other.

Moments later the two Queadluun Rau exited the ship, and moved through the fifteen kilometers to the space fortress, a very short distance and all of it under the range of the guns of the space fortress which was trained on the Night Dagger. Azonia had no issues with this, if their positions were reversed she would probably have been doing the same thing, or at least she would have if she could have thought that way before interacting with the humans as they had. That peace was possible was still a foreign concept at best, but her people had seen the benefits of it.

Within two minutes of them exiting from the Night Dagger they were setting down into the hangar bay that they were escorted to by a small flight of the human Valkyries transforming spacefighters. Azonia noticed with a corner of her mind that they had been painted with the image of a skull and crossbones on them, and wondered what that signified.

The only force marker she could really recognize were the ones with the blue flame on them, since that was connected to the pilot Ranma whose exercise videos had made their way around the fleet. Azonia hadn't really seen the point to them, though the ones with the female Ranma were interesting to say the least. Again she had thought of watching them with Sonya and had in fact gone through with that idea. The two of them had watched the entire thing and by her flushed face it had affected Sonya just as much as and had her. She was uncertain why that made her happy, or why she had an urge to experiment like the two women had in that 'porn' thing with her friend, but the idea was becoming more difficult to ignore every time she was alone with her friend.

For now however she put aside such notions and prepared to step onto the human space fortress and to take the first step to creating a future for her people.

OOOOOOO

Inside the hangar bay Henri waited with a full military style welcoming party set up around them, despite the fact that Ranma and Miriya had both stated it was utterly pointless. One simply because he thought that most military panache and pageantry was pointless, if you could fight and do your job that was enough for Ranma, the other simply because the Zentraedi had no place for it in their lives, and wouldn't understand it at all.

The two massive powersuits touched down in the ten story tall hanger and as the hatch finished closing behind them they opened up at the front revealing the two giant Meltraedi. Gloval stared at them from his height on a walkway on the fourth floor of the hangar bay, looking a little askance at the sheer size of the two women as they came forward.

One was dressed in a form fitting suit, with built up pads on her elbows and knees, though she had a bit of a cape with silver trimming which she put around her shoulders after she exited the vehicle. Gloval supposed this must be the uniform used by the powersuit operators, and this woman wasn't a normal operator, or at least this wasn't her normal uniform any longer given the strange mix of the suit and the cape. Behind him he heard a gasp of shock, and was that an amused gurgle he heard from Nodoka? He ignored both sounds and kept his eyes on the two huge female Meltraedi in front of him.

The one in the lead, who had short cropped hair and an angular face must be the admiral. He knew this with certainty, the sheer presence that woman gave off was rather imposing, the commanding presence she radiated something he had seen in Prescott and a few other admirals in his time. She wore a uniform that was made of somewhat tight pants and a shirt done in dark blue with a red stripe going down one side, with a red cape falling to her feet and clasped around her neck tightly.

The one named Azonia turned looking around them at the noise of the trumpets playing the song the UNSF used to welcome flag officers aboard ships and shook her head amusedly. "I understand what this is, I think," she said in a slightly booming tone but that was more because of her size than anything else, "but there was no need. We Meltraedi have no equivalent in our culture, but that could be because we don't actually have one could've it?"

She gazed over at the welcoming party and smiled a little when she spotted Ranma and Miriya one of whom was at attention the other simply leaning on the railing beside her. "You must be Ranma. You and the one named Minmei and your songs are quite the topic of conversation among my fleet's personnel." Ranma awkwardly waved one hand at her in greeting but keep most of his attention on the woman behind her, who was looking a little sheepish under the combined stares of Ranma and Nodoka.

The welcoming party was comprised of Gloval, Lisa, Mannstein, Nodoka, Roberto, Drake, Fokker (who had just been cleared for duty the day before) Ranma Elder Cologne and Miriya. To one side of this delegation stood a crew of cameramen, capturing this moment and sending it direct back to Earth, since they were still well within communication range. What the humans back on Earth did with it would be up to them, but Gloval had decided not only to save himself from irritation later but also to show this historical moment to as wide an audience as possible.

He stepped forward saluting in welcome since offering his hand to shake given their size disparity wouldn't work. "I am vice Admiral Henri Gloval, it is good to finally meet you face-to-face."

"Is it?" said Azonia dryly, amused at the comment. "I can't help but think that my life would've been much simpler if the events leading up to this meeting had never occurred. But then I would still be under the invisible yoke of whoever has enslaved my people.

"Could you elaborate on that please?" said the intelligence officer stepping forward quickly. "How do they control you exactly? Have you any idea why you were able to throw this off now rather than at any time before?"

Sonya answered for Admiral stepping forward to join her looking across at the humans on their railing, but Ranma spoke up before she could. "I can't believe you were one of the spies Miriya told us about Sonya."

Sonya flushed a little then nodded. "I hope lady Nodoka and Ms. Kasumi did not take it wrongly that the three of us left. But our duty compelled us to return to her fleet. We would not have…"

Ranma waved it away. "Doesn't matter. I guess you kinda got distracted the moment you got on board."

"That's pretty much what happened," Sonya said shaking her head amusedly. "You humans are so strange, so different and chaotic we lost ourselves in trying to figure you out rather than your defenses."

She then turned back to the intelligence officer who had a bit of a smile on his face at the interaction, learning a bit more about these Meltraedi in that quite friendly bit of interaction. The Meltraedi truly were more like humans than unlike, though it remained to be seen if that was the case with the Zentraedi. "To answer your question, you humans and interacting with you showed us what we have been missing. The term 'progress' fascinated me at first, and I delved deeper into it. How was it that your people were able to move forward, to change your technology to be different now than it was 100 years ago? There's been no change no progress in technology or weapons or anything of that source in our fleets in a far longer time."

"If anything," she said thoughtfully as if the thought had just occurred to her, which in fact it had, "there has been degradation. That got us questioning things then we figured out that you weren't all warriors, another concept that simply, what is that phrase you humans use blew our minds? Yes, it blew our minds. Then you add in the clothing styles which appeal to us greatly, and chocolate and other food precuts to a lesser extent and you have an equation which makes us question why we don't have such things, why we only have the fleet. The only outcome, the only answer any of us could come up with was that there was some exterior reason for it. No calamity, no single event would've taken everything away from us so thoroughly and leave nothing behind for us to rebuild from."

Azonia took up the tale, her voice grim and stern. "We were warned about the Micronian Infection, but we never knew what it was, and before we knew it we were infected in such a way that our unseen 'masters' had worried about. Because of this we know now we have been enslaved with a yoke we never even saw, it's power felt but not understood. Now we come before you asking for peace so that we may in some way reclaim what we lost."

"And what would this peace entail?" said Henri quickly, wanting to move back to the main point of this meeting.

"An exchange of information," answered Azonia briskly. "And a mutual defense accord. More, we want access free access to chocolate and other things foodstuffs in quantity that we can actually eat given our size, experts to come aboard our ship and talk to us about bettering their abilities and to discuss the different cultures of you humans. We are in a unique position," She actually let her lips form into a smirk for a moment, "And we would like to look over all the examples out there. In return we will endeavor to protect you as best we can while we rebuild our culture."

There was some murmuring about that, since given their size that would be quite a lot of food. "Are you saying you won't simply adopt human culture?"

Azonia shook her head firmly. "No, we will build our own. That way no one will be ever able to take it away from us again."

Ranma grinned at that sentiment and Miriya nodded her head firmly. Cologne chuckled a little, seeing in this woman an Elder as determined and experienced as most she had met, and resolved to talk to her later. If the Meltraedi as a whole weren't perfect Amazon material she didn't know what was. Hah, her name would go down in history as the Amazon elder that brought an entire race into the tribe!

Henri and the intelligence officer looked at one another then nodded. "I believe we can agree with all those points, though the food portion may have to wait. After all I don't think the human race can make enough food to satisfy your entire fleet, not without starving itself."

Azonia waved that off. "That is in fact the least of our concerns, though chocolate in massive quantities would be a good start." She smiled a little. "That and anything with caffeine it. We use stim packets to get much the same effect but I believe coffee works better, at least that is what Lucretia, one of our other spies, said."

"Wait," said Roberto, now making the connection. "All those little attacks you made on Earth in the past few weeks battles have been to steal food and eat it, not analyze it to find an exploitable weakness in us?"

"Analyze? Why ever would we do that? The food and clothing were what we wanted in every raid that was sent out. Your cultures so open that we were able to figure out quite a lot from that, but experts in history and science and farming in space in other things would help the process along."

"We will have more time to discuss that in detail later, right now it is imperative that your people begin to spread out from your third planet. You are too vulnerable there. Any main fleet could wipe out your entire species in a single hour if they were ordered to so."

"Plans are already in place for that," replied Gloval calmly. "We were in fact supposed to lead your fleet away so that other forces could retake our orbitals and then move out into the solar system elsewhere."

Sonya nodded. "We will also need fuel at some point for our ships. We believe that the people who did this to us control our people through Dolza, who controls the means of resupply for anything, which we obviously can no long use, some kind of indoctrination, and other mental controls. In the case of the Meltraedi we broke ours through interacting with you humans and your internet, but the fear of Dolza is still there, and unfortunately the indoctrination wasn't hiding anything else beneath it."

Gloval nodded at that. "I believe we can also help you with the fuel situation at least." In fact he knew they could since he had been the one to order the resupply ships put into orbit of Jupiter. "It may take some doing to get it out to you but eventually we should be able to produce enough fuel for all of your ships."

"Which brings us to another point," said Azonia, her face grave. "The ruse I used to mislead Dolza in order for him to not our shoulders and demand progress towards capturing this ship worked for a while, but he is sending one of the skirmish fleets in to take over the operation." She scowled a little, angry at the amount of contempt Dolza had allowed to show when he informed her of that about 19 local hours ago.

"I assume it is more because they are expendable and nearby more than anything else, but their Admiral apparently has knowledge of this ship's structure, though why if he had that he wasn't sent in first before us I don't know. I estimate we have about five more days before they get here."

Henri took over the discussion again. "And what should we expect? What is your standard tactical doctrine when entering a solar system? Is there a way we could ambush him?"

Sonya, Miriya and Azonia all chuckled a little at that. Azonia waved her hands as the humans looked at them. "I'm sorry but that was just funny. A standard tactical doctrine for a Zentraedi? Every Zentraedi bar Breetai himself thinks that you just need to throw enough bodies at a problem to solve it, that's the extent of their tactics. We Meltraedi were different of course, we always have been slightly but I have made a point of emphasizing the difference once I had risen to command. Breetai too is different, but this will not be Breetai."

Her mouth firmed a little and she frowned. "If Breetai is sent after you I doubt there will be much of anything that even my fleet will be able to do. For one thing he will have access to 25,000 of my ships which will come with his clan-fleet, and as a strategist and tactician he is simply on a whole other level in comparison to me, which added to his numerical superiority would make fighting him and winning an impossible task."

She then turned back to the matter at hand. "But in order to set up a trap or ambush for this admiral Retsuc, the only thing you would have to do is simply make a big enough sign and put it somewhere and allow him to come at you."

"And how many ships will be in this fleet?" asked Roberto.

"The normal strength for a skirmish fleet at full strength is a mere thousand ships, no match for us." said Azonia waving her hand airily. "If we had some way of blocking interstellar communication my fleet wipe could wipe it out easily. I doubt we'd lose even a single ship. But as it is, we want to keep our alliance secret so will not be able to use our full force against him until the battle has begun and he is fully committed. Once that occurs he will be too busty directing the battle to try to report our betrayal."

"No," said Gloval shaking his head firmly. "We can't be certain of that and keeping your alliance with us a secret is more important in the long run than aiding us in wiping out this skirmish fleet. We humans must take this on ourselves. With this ship and a few other little surprises we should be able to do it if we can pin them in place and survive long enough for our siege gun to do it's work."

Azonia nodded judicious agreement. "But surely you would want at least a few hundred Queadluun Rau to bolster your fighter strength?"

"That will be fine I suppose, two or three ships you could explain away as having been captured or joining us for whatever reason, that Micronian Infection you mentioned perhaps. We could even record videos of it at some point. An elaborate trap like this is going to take a lot of time and planning however."

Azonia shrugged and sat down on the floor of the hangar bay. She leaned against her power suit and looked up at the humans. "Well then let's get down to what is the phrase, brass tax? Let us get down to specifics at any rate."

Thus as the world watched the first Meltraedi/human peace talks went on.

OOOOOOO

The plan the group came up with was composed of two parts. The first part would be using the scout ships Azonia had spread out beyond Pluto on the most direct route from Zentraedi held space to this solar system. The Zentraedi would probably come out of fold space there first, then move into the system in a series of random jumps looking for their prey. The scout ships would get in contact with them, and inform them of the space fortress's location and Azonia would inform Admiral Retsuc that she had lost a few wings of Queadluun Rau to the Micronian Infection, though she would be vague with how exactly the infection worked, which would make it more mysterious and therefore worrisome to him and to Dolza in turn.

If Retsuc asked for aid Azonia would refuse on grounds of not wanting to expose more of her forces to it. So even if he got off a message to Dolza before or after the battle was joined the Meltraedi were covered, for now anyway. In the long term it probably would not matter, but in the short term it might save them from an immediate assault from a battle fleet or even worse by Dolza's own fleet.

Two of the carrier class ships from the fleet would remain with the space fortress, launch fighters and fold out right before the battle was to began. This would give them to full wings of power suits, a force which in and of itself would be almost equal to the combined battle pods of the skirmish fleet they were not going to be facing. Combine that with the space fortress and they would be well protected against the Regulds of their enemies.

To this Earth added a bit more, well, once it got over their consternation at the idea of peace talks that didn't involve diplomats of any nature and the fact the Meltraedi had only a vague idea of what a civilian was as well as their demands. Two of their new drone carriers would be added to the mix as well, the kind with the heavy weapons type designed to take out enemy battleships. These drones would be launched immediately as would the power suits, then they too would fold out to a point just on the edge of their control range, which hopefully would put them well out of the battle zone, since said range was around the size of two Jovian sized planets combined. The two carriers in question, the Hood and the Queen Elizabeth had immediately broken away from Prescott's 1st fleet to meet up with the space fortress.

Earth would have sent more, but production of the barrier shields that were now seen as a necessity for any ship hadn't yet met the demand, and most of those that had been created, about two thousand in total, were unfortunately placed on the colony ships and their escorts, ships that might not even need them now, but you couldn't argue sense with civilians, especially civilians that had already gone out on a limb to go along with the colonization idea in the first place. So the rest of the fleet would need to remain near Earth for the foreseeable future until they were brought up to the minimum number of barrier shields Prescott and his advisors felt was necessary (a hundred per ship minimum, with ten activated at any time during combat).

Once Retsuc's flagship was destroyed however, was when the Meltraedi would move in. Azonia's forces would attack from every angel they could, wiping the fleet out once its head had been removed.

All in all, everyone was happy so far with the peace agreement, and agreed to address the long term concerns after this skirmish fleet was taken care of, though of course plans were already in place to meet the Meltraedi's needs.

OOOOOOO

The response on the space fortress in regards to the Meltraedi was mixed to say the least. A large portion of the civilian population didn't really know what to make of it. Many factions were for it, the Amazons in particular were amused by the idea, and the Indian forces too were behind the idea of a slave race breaking their bonds. Other groups however weren't so welcoming, and the naval side as a whole was split straight down the middle by the idea of making peace with the group that had done them so much more damage than the mad Kyron.

When this was brought to his attention by Lisa the night after the peace talks Ranma decided to handle it in his own way. He found out which bars most of the malcontents were meeting at, and went there with Miriya.

The silence as they walked into the bar was profound. Miriya smirked a little as everyone stared at them with anger in their eyes and a few others with some other emotion that she couldn't quite place. The sight of it however made Ranma crack his knuckles, something that made those individuals turn away hurriedly and stare at their drinks, so she endeavored to ask him what it was later. That and what a bar was at all. The Spies had tried to explain alcohol to the fleet at times, but Miriya couldn't see the point of imbibing something that would cause you to lose control of yourself. It was a very odd concept to her.

"Alien freak," one man muttered into his drink thinking that it would not be heard. Two other pilots, veterans from the Macross, looked at one another and swiftly pulled back from the bar moving over to another chair in one of the room's corners and hope that whatever was going to happen wouldn't include their own faces smashed in by Ranma. Everyone who had been aboard before the ship returned to Earth knew his skill in hand-to-hand, and it was only the new guys, most of which rather strangely were the ones who were the most against peace with the Meltraedi, that didn't. They both hated the Meltraedi, but didn't want to make a point of it if it meant running into Ranma. They simply stifled it for now, knowing it to be a far safer option in the long run.

Miriya stood in the center of the bar looking around at the crowd of drinkers arrogantly. "If you have something to say to me say it to my face."

"I understand you guys got a problem with us making peace with the Meltraedi?" said Ranma standing next to her, his hands in his pockets, his apparent nonchalance a sign of arrogance even greater than Miriya's.

One of the new guys aboard stood up angrily, his voice rising in protest. "Hell yes I do! These alien bitches have been messing with the Earth ever since they arrived, who knows how many people they killed!"

"We killed only those that got in our way," Miriya replied calmly. "But then again we were in a state of war at the time weren't we?. Are you saying you would do differently, to an enemy that had something you wanted, when it was the only way you knew to get it?"

"Shut up you alien bitch!" said another soldier getting to his feet beside his friend. "Why the hell should we listen to you anyway, you're one of them! I bet you were sent here to seduce us or something and weaken us from within!" There was a muttering of agreement from the rest of the crowd, though a few of them were looking as if they wouldn't mind sampling the goods so to speak.

Miriya sighed. She had learn what the word bitch meant, though why it had such a negative connotation eluded her, wasn't it just the proper name for a female dog, which was apparently some kind of 'pet' animal, whatever that meant. The rest of what the man said went right over her head too, but simply standing and allowing others to insult her wasn't something she was willing to do, so she turned to Ranma. "Is this the time we kick their asses like you said or must we keep talking?" Someone from back in the dimly lit bar threw a glass at her, and she reached out a hand negligently slapping it aside, staring at the direction it had come from.

Ranma shrugged, moving his head just slightly to avoid another thrown bottle. "I've always gotten better results talking to people after I beat their faces in so we can start that now I guess."

That seemed to be a cue and the next second everyone had charged forward at the two pilots, except for the two who knew Ranma skills. They simply buried their head in their hands as they knew this was not going to be pretty.

They were swiftly proven correct in this prediction. While Miriya didn't have Ranma's skills (and learning that he hadn't been in top shape during their first match aboard had galvanized her to train even harder) she was head and shoulders above anyone else aboard, except perhaps for Cologne but even that was based more on the fact Cologne was so much more experienced than her rather than having better physical skills.

The two pilots went through the crowd like lions through a pack of hyenas. Not once were they even hit, or even forced to move from the place they had assumed in the center of the barroom. Their kicks and punches struck with bone crushing force, and their attackers went down injured, unconscious, or simply flying back as if they had been hit by a rail gun round. The funny thing was they kept the conversation going at the same time, simply commenting on how pathetic this or that attacker was, insulting their opponents with every word and phrase they could think of.

Eventually the fight died down simply because there were no more bodies coming forward, the room now fool of groaning, moaning and simply unconscious bodies. Most of them were on the ground, but several had landed and overturned benches and tables. Two were flung across the bar itself, while another one was hanging from a rafter after a particularly vicious uppercut from Miriya, and another had crashed halfway through a wall and was now stuck there like a particularly ugly decoration.

Miriya, sighed sadly lowering her fists to her side. "This was no challenge all! I thought these people were supposed to be tough."

"Well there's normal soldier tough," Ranma said, throwing his pigtail back over his shoulder. "And then there's martial artist tough. Two very, very different things, let me tell you. You want to go first now or should I?"

Miriya shrugged. "I'll speak my piece first I suppose." She went around kicking the unconscious individuals awake, and when they were all together in a very surly and demoralized group she began. "I assume you're all in a position to hear me and more in a frame of mind to listen now? Unless you wish to go another round?"

The soldiers all looked at one another grumbling a little but subsided as she cracked her knuckles. None of the people in the bar wanted another set to with Ranma and Miriya, either singly or together. They had all heard about the marital artist's aboard, but most of them were vets and had taken such rumors as mostly hogwash. Feeling the reality had swiftly dispelled that idea.

Seeing this Miriya smiled and began. "You all know of American history yes and of slavery?" There were some quizzical nods at that question, after all in some countries a type of slavery was still in place, though it was based more on who had the money than anything else. "So would you blame a slave if he was ordered to attack you? Moreover would you blame him if he did it poorly or halfheartedly? Or would you blame the master? Here, we Meltraedi have recently learned that we are not masters of our fates. Someone else made us into weapons for them, and we hope to overcome that with the help of you humans. We learned this by sending in those raids when we were holding the orbitals above your world, and I will not apologize for the losses incurred in those attacks. Your defenders fought valiantly, and we went out of the way to avoid a loss of life in your civilian caste. We are making peace with you humans because of this, because you are no longer our enemies."

There was an introspective silence after she stopped speaking and they all looked at one another, wondering but a few refused to be cowed by this and simply glared hatefully back at her.

Ranma spoke up then. "And if that don't matter to you, here's my bit. I've been aboard this ship since the beginning, fought the Zentraedi since before I even became a soldier. Don't believe me ask around. I've lost friends, I've lost comrades, and my mentor, I've got more reason than most to hate the Zentraedi and the Meltraedi too. But I don't. I define myself as a warrior, but I don't hate my enemy, that takes too much energy, blinds ya to reality. Hate is a mindless emotion, and leaves ya far too closed to anything else. Don't fall into that trap."

That drained some of the anger out of the room as well, and a few more people turned away looking at something only they could see. There were still a few glares around, but that didn't matter much to Ranma. There would always be people willing to hate those different than them or that they could not understand. "In any case, if any more Meltraedi come aboard they'll be under my protection and the protection of the other marital artists aboard. Anyone with a problem with them has a problem with us. I won't stop at bruises if Miriya or any of 'em is attacked I'll put their asses in the ground in such a way that they will be drinking through a straw for the rest of their natural lives! Spread that word ya hear?"

With the now fearful group looking after them the two martial artists walked out the door now, talking about where they wanted to go for food as Kasumi was busy on a new interior design project, leaving behind a group of rather disgruntled sore yet thoughtful soldiers.

OOOOOOO

Later that night, Miriya was woken up from where she was sleeping on the couch (as had become her new norm) by a low moan of what she thought at first was pain, though it didn't quite seem right for pain.

She silently got up from the sofa and moved silently towards the sound of the moaning, swiftly realizing it was coming from the upstairs loft. She crept up the stairs stealthily, no longer wondering if whether or not it was the most word of pain as she heard Kasumi's voice muffled but still discernible saying "oh yes, Ranma more!"

She opened the door to the second-floor bedroom a crack and looked inside. There she saw Kasumi kissing Ranma deeply as she for some reason bounced up and down on his lap. They were both naked, but from this angle Miriya couldn't figure out what they were doing. She had never watched any of the videos from off the human Internet, and so had of the only a vague idea of what might be occurring. It was something that obviously they both enjoyed greatly given the vigorous nature they went about it and the fact that Lisa was laid out next to them a smile on her face as she watched them made it obvious it was something all three had been doing.

The sight touched her in ways she had not yet words to understand and she felt a heat build up in her body and a tingling sensation begin in odd places in her body. She reached for those areas with her hands, and nearly gasped aloud at how sensitive they were to touch.

As she watched Kasumi seemed to stiffen, the noises she was making rising to a crescendo before she fell back, he body limp, while some strange white stuff began to leak from out between their bodies were somehow connected.

After a moment they came apart in some fashion Miriya could not discern, and something, some kind of part that she supposed made Ranma a male instead of a female appeared standing straight up in such a way that looked almost painful. That sight made the heat in her build up even further and she again wondered what she was feeling.

Lisa slowly sat up, kissing Ranma for a moment before reaching for a glass of water set on the table by the bed. She and Kasumi murmured something one after another to Ranma, their voices not carrying far enough for Miriya to hear from where she was. Ranma blanched and tried to shake his head, but Kasumi spoke softly, her voice even as a murmur a calming influence. In response Ranma closed his eyes, and after a moment nodded. Kasumi leaned in kissing him again and Lisa poured the glass of apparently cold water over his head. The two full time women took turns kssing the now far shorter red-haired girl, who seemed to in some fashion be unable to respond to the stimuli.

As Miriya watched Lisa moved down the redhead's body slowly, each kiss making the redhead jolt up from where she was sitting, and then Kasumi dove down into her breasts, and Ranma let out a loud moan.

Miriya was unable to understand what she was seeing, but it was making her feel very strange, the heat and the sensation building up in her, almost demanding she do something. She resolved to ask Kasumi what this was later, but for now retreated to her sofa. Once there she tried to calm down, only to find the heat in her still there, refusing her calming exercises.

She gently lowered one hand to the junction between her legs, where the heat she was feeling was hottest. The feeling that shot through her as she touched herself sent a jolt of pleasure through her, more than she had ever felt, far more than destroying a Invid battleship, more even then chocolate. Her other hand soon joined the first and several minutes later the feelings within her rose into a crescendo, and she bit her lip to keep from screaming aloud as her first ever orgasm raced through her.

Once more resolving to ask Kasumi what it was she had felt, the now strangely exhausted ace pilot fell back onto the sofa and was asleep in moments.

OOOOOOO

Within 10 hours of the peace talks ending Prescott had been given clearance to take his fleet out into orbit. With the Meltraedi no longer in their way it made retaking the moon base and what was there very easy. It would take several more days for the SDF 2 to be powered up and operational, but Prescott had his flagship, and his crew was quickly moving about performing their tasks with efficiency, getting the ship ready for its maiden voyage. They had all been trained on mock-ups of the ship in secret since the original Macross had returned, and now that time spent training proved its worth.

While that was going on Prescott left that task to his flagship captain and moved with the rest of his fleet to drop off the colony ships in Jupiter's orbit.

His fleet was now twenty strong even without the two carriers broken off to meet up with the Macross, and they would stay in orbit over Jupiter performing war games and training simulations together while the colony ships moved into its atmosphere and set up shop until the SDF-2 was ready for launch.

This meant that they would probably miss the fight against the skirmish fleet that, but it would put them in a much more powerful position going forward against any other incursions. Not only were there now colonies to continue the human race off planet, but the majority of Earth was now on a wartime footing, and their fleet would have the time to get to know how to make war in space before being thrown into the fire.

The peace agreement with the Meltraedi had shaken up all of the governments and power blocs on Earth, and the blunt assessment of Earth's ability to survive, even after Gloval, had rather stupidly in the opinion of many informed, Azonia of the Grand Cannon scheme, had galvanized all the parties to put aside their differences and put as much effort as they could to make certain humanity survived.

Admiral Hayes was arrested for insubordination and treason, while his backer the former president was simply jailed and undergoing psychiatric evaluation. Unlike in the military gross misconduct and stupidity was not a jailing offense in civilian life, but he had lost all his credibility and his power base. The charges for him would be much more severe in the end however after all instigating a civil war was obviously an act of treason.

Despite the fact that Azonia had heaped so much scorn on the project the Grand Cannon projects went forward in some of the areas where they were being built, simply because China and America had the industrial capacity to do both that and to build up their military forces to a wartime footing. Combined both of them had put down thirty new hulls, all of them based off designs created by the think tank, but even with the massively sped up building times allowed by modern robotics and technology it would be some time before they were ready to add to the growing human fleet. The hulls would take a few weeks, but after that would be the fiddly bits which would take just as long.

Russia disdained the idea of the Grand Cannon, building its own two colony ships in record time to add to the group already built. They also put down even more hulls than before. The new Akula class (Russians were not very imaginative when named ship classes) long-range missile stealth battleships would as their name described be stealthy long ranged and, their designers hoped, deadly. They took shortcuts in this by decommissioning every one of their submarines and other platforms, taking the metal and parts of those ships to build their new ships and reassigning their crews. This gave them a large surplus of crew people, all of whom were put into fast track schools to prepare them for their new jobs.

The future looks bright, Prescott thought, if we can survive the next month or so Humanity will build itself up into a much tougher nut to crack. He knew it probably wouldn't be enough to save Earth if a main fleet was sent after them, but it might be enough to ensure that humanity survived, and that was the main thing. He briefly thought of transferring his family, which were now living in his rather cramped quarters aboard the heavy beam based battleship Rommel, to one of the colony ships, but decided against it. After all, they may well be safer on the SDF-2 if that ship could survive as well as its predecessor.

Give us the time Gloval, just give us the time and humanity may live through this, he begged silently, staring out into the dark of space.

OOOOOOO

"Oof!" Shampoo bounced off the wall that had suddenly appeared around the corner of the hallway she had been running down. Her great grandmother had held her up for her assignment to a Valkyrie squadron talking about how she would need to take order from Ranma and maybe other males now that she and her sisters had graduated from the academy. They and Kotatsu had finished the accelerated course at the academy intended to bring them up to speed on the technology and terminology they would be using as pilots in the Veritech wing, well before the others and having a small graduation ceremony the day before this. Everyone knew they would need as many pilots as possible brought up to speed before the skirmish fleet got here, which fueled the push to get martial artists up to speed quickly. The commandant wasn't happy about it, but had agreed when the Amazons had risen to the challenge of understanding the technology far better than he had truly expected.

Cologne wanted to impress on Shampoo even more than her sisters that they needed to get along and work together with the males of the normal military, and was leaving along with Dr. Lang in a few hours with a few others to look at Matriarch (let the silly males and the military people call her admiral, Shampoo knew a Matriarch when she saw one) Azonia's flagship at her behest. It would be the first show of the new alliance and would hopefully open up new avenues of technology and understanding for both species.

Cologne and Lang were both honored and excited, yet at the same time annoyed that it would take away from their searching out the strange readings they were getting from deep within the space fortress. They both wanted to find out if it came from another example of the strange vine thing that gave off so much ki, but it was buried, almost hidden in the superstructure of the massive ship, and would take days, maybe even weeks of concentrated searching to find the source of the reading, which alas they didn't have enough time to do right now. Nor did either of them want to hand off the work to others, not trusting them enough to not mess it up somehow. On the other hand Emil's little project had been finished, and was only awaiting testing before going to production. The missile ship proponents would be very happy when that happened…

Back in the here and now Shampoo rubbed her head irritably. "What stupid ass place stupid wall in corridor?"

A deep rumbling baritone voice interrupted her musings and she looked up in shock as what she had called a wall spoke. "I've been called stupid many times alas, though mostly when I was younger admittedly. A wall is new though."

Shampoos gaped up at the man who was speaking. He was taller than even Henri Gloval, who was a few inches taller than Mannstein, the next tallest person aboard the ship. But where Gloval was thin and almost wiry, this man was massively muscled, almost as much as Mannstein, and where Mannstein gave off the aura of an immovable object, this man, despite Shampoo's first impression, was built for speed as much as muscle. He wore the uniform of a Spartan operator and had the rank tabs of a captain on one side of his monstrous chest.

He was also one of the most ruggedly handsome men Shampoo had ever seen, almost as much as Ranma. His face showed his Indian heritage easily, and he had neat trimmed goatee, deep yet lively black eyes set into a somewhat thin face dominated by a wry smile.

Shampoos scrambled to her feet, cursing the blush that she knew was appearing on her face and her clumsiness. "Sorry, sir, didn't see you there, I was running late and…"

The man waved off her apology. "That is alright, I can tell you are one of the Amazons yes, the ones who were sped through the academy? You're getting assigned to your squads today I believe."

Shampoo nodded. "Yes sir, some of us anyway. Assigned to the roster positions left open for us in some of the squadrons." Only about half of the graduating Amazons would be placed in their squadrons immediately, the others would form a small and ready reserve force to be added into any squadron that took to many losses in the battles against the skirmish fleet. Eventually Lisa wanted every squadron to have at least six pilots ready to be rotated in, regardless of any considerations. For now though they didn't have that large a reserve of ready pilots, though the Valkyries were there, and would remain there for a time going forward.

"I see, well good luck. You won't catch me gallivanting about in space, I'll keep my feet firmly on the ground thank you very much. Now, I should allow you to go, a beautiful young woman such as yourself shouldn't be penalized for being late for your first squad meeting."

Shampoo blushed a little more at the compliment but saluted and went to go when she realized she hadn't learned the man's name. "Thank you sir, but um, can I ask who you are?"

The man walked on, waving one large, sinewy hand in the air in farewell. "Rana Sanga at your service miss."

OOOOOOO

Lord Admiral Retsuc shook his head blearily as his fleet at last came out of fold. Long folds like that were always irritating, but they saved time, and that was all to the good in his opinion. The sooner he could get this over with the sooner he could rub it in Breetai's and Azonia's faces.

His thoughts were interrupted by one of his bridge's crewmen speaking up. "Sir, we have a Meltraedi scout ship on the screen, it's hailing us, says it's linked to their admiral."

Retsuc sneered at the idea of talking to one of the females, especially that jumped-up useless female Azonia. Still, they might have information that would make his job easier. "Put it through."

Azonia's image appeared on his screen. "Admiral Restuc, I understand you are now in charge of taking the space fortress. I have its present position and course if you want it, the humans can't seem to realize our radar is better than their own, so my ships have been able to keep track of it easily."

Retsuc sneered at the female. "Yes I have been given this task by Dolza himself, you're idiocy with that young fool Kyron has shown Lord Dolza he can't trust you to complete it after all. And I understand that the great Breetai," he said the name scornfully, safe in the knowledge that its owner was far away from here, "wasn't able to do it either. How the mighty have fallen."

Azonia took his words calmly, though if you were better able to read a person than Retsuc had seen her, they would have seen the fury hidden in her eyes, as well as certain amusement carefully hidden, a excitement waiting for something to happen. "Indeed, I understand your knowledge of the space fortress will give you an edge. Just remember you're supposed to take it as intact as possible." She nodded to something off screen then turned back. "I'm sending the space fortresses latest coordinates now. I will warn you that two of my ships and the wings on them were brought low by the Micronian infection. It seems to be some kind of mind control thing, as they have turned against us and the fleet."

She grimaced as if in pain for a moment before going on. "We Meltraedi seem susceptible to that more than the Zentraedi, since the same never happened to Breetai of Kyron's fleets, but they will still need to be a factor in your thinking."

Retsuc sneered again. Never having worked with the Meltraedi before, he ignored the rumors about how good their powersuits were, how much better their pilots were, he cared not for two measly ships. "Then they will die like the Micronians. Enough, I have a mission to perform. Just stay there nice and safe wherever you are, and watch a true Zentraedi fleet in action."

Again Azonia's eyes told a far different story than the rest of her as she nodded sharply and cut the connection.

Retsuc turned to his bridge crew. "Power up the fleets fold drives, we'll fold in right on top of the space fortress and launch all our fighters in one unstoppable force. Within four hours at most victory will be ours, and the glory too!"

OOOOOOO

Azonia shook her head disgustedly, sharing an amused glance with Ilea. "Did you identify the flagship?" Ilea looked over at one of her officers who nodded her eyes hard. "Good, tell the humans, the idiot and his forces are on the way. Once our sensors tell us that ship has died, we will move in and wipe out the rest of his fleet. Probably doing the universe a favor too, stupidity like that needs to be culled at every opportunity."

The women around her laughed at her joke, and she turned to Elder Cologne, a fascinating individual who was sitting on her console, her diminutive size nearly disappearing in the massive bridge. Dr. Lang was down in the engine room with his team, having found something intriguing down there. "Well, now it begins. I hope your friends on the space fortress perform as well as we think they will."

The old crone cackled. "Oh don't worry dear, one thing you can count on is that the space fortress and those aboard it are survivors. They'll do their part."

Azonia smiled in response and turned back to watch the tactical screen, waiting.

OOOOOOO

Henri Gloval stared out of the main viewport of the space fortress, shaking his head in wonder at the sight of two of Meltraedi ships in visual range yet not attacking them. Even with battle immanent something chosen by Azonia's best estimate for how long it would take a skirmish fleet to fold from Zentraedi-held space to here, this still was an amazing sight.

The two ships in question were from what the Meltraedi called the Quiltra Queleual class, or what the humans called the carrier ships of the Zentraedi fleets. Not that the other ship types didn't have Gargoyles or as they were called by their owners Queadluun Rau, a name that Henri felt did have a certain something to it, well matched with the lethal nature of them and those that used them. It was just these ships held more.

These two ships could hold as many as two wings of the battlepods, or Regulds, fully 4,000 pods at full load out. The Meltraedi variant each held a full over strength wing of 1,000 powersuits. Normally only 400 would be used at a time, but in this fight they would all be sent out en masse, the better to utterly overwhelm the Reguld forces of the skirmish fleet. Indeed having seen what the Queadluun Rau could do Henri felt this was rather overkill, but wasn't about to complain.

The wings were led by a veteran wing leader named Karina, who had requested this assignment, as well as asked both Azonia and the humans leave to board the space fortress and meet someone, in her words 'the one who got away'. Henri had temporarily okayed that visit for after this battle, and Karina had agreed to the delay happily.

He smirked a little as he looked around the bridge at Lisa who was calmly speaking to Karin and her officers about the battle plan, having already done the same earlier that day. He was a vice admiral and thus was supposed to be in charge of a fleet's maneuvers during battle, but there were no others capital ships that were going to be involved in this battle. And since he hadn't come up from a carrier/Air Force background, Lisa had taken over controlling the movement of the fighter core. Eventually he would be in charge of a fleet, but until then, he was back being a simple battleship commander, which was fine by him. Even in siege mode there were still things he had to be in control of after all.

His musings were interrupted by a call from Claudia. "Sir, the Meltraedi report the skirmish fleet has arrived. Estimate another two hours before they arrive here."

Henri nodded, his formerly whimsical thoughts hardening. "Sound battle stations, destroids to battle stations for siege mode. Launch Valkyries, and tell our allies to launch and then get out of here. It's our show for now."

OOOOOOO

Wildfire, Skull and Vermillion led the way out of the hanger bays of the space fortress racing to take position along the sides of the massive ship, still under its secondary guns but slightly out of range of the tertiary weapons systems. The defense of the ship for this battle would lie solely in the hands to the tertiary weapons systems and the Destroids, the Valkyries had their own duties to perform. Whether this would remain the case throughout the battle was anyone's guess of course.

The two carriers, the Hood and the Queen Elizabeth, were kilometer long cylindrical tubes with a cross-wise head on the front sort of resembling that of a mace, and a bulbous end holding the massive engines with hundreds of hatches along the center cylinder. Those hatches opened now, disgorging the newest space fighter of the UNSF, the Sabers. The sabers were built around one large engine with two swept back wings on either side and a single massive beam weapon that was the same class as the three main guns on a Monster class destroid. Besides this they had maneuvering thrusters, and the new fold-space communication devices which allowed their operators to fly them by remote control. The saber operators were housed in small compartments along the cross sections of the mace-like front of the ship, with the bridge and leaving quarters in the center.

The Sabers were nowhere near as maneuverable as a Valkyrie or regular jet, but they were not designed to be, their primary function was to destroy capital ships. This would be the first time they were used in combat however, so it remained to be seen if the design was a viable one.

As the carriers let loose a little under 2,000 Saber's each, the operators took control of them, forming them into packs of twelve, moving them to be spaced evenly around the space fortress. A second later the two carriers folded out, reappearing at the edge of their control envelope. After a brief moment of disorientation the operators were able to re-establish contact with their birds, and thus one aspect of the carrier's design was proven up to the job.

At the same time as the two human carriers let loose their craft, the two Meltraedi carriers did the same. Soon space around the space fortress was full of the different unit that made up this battle, and the humans and their allies were ready to go to work.

Shampoo was flying under the call sign Wild 5, despite the fact she wasn't an officer and her flight was composed entirely of Amazons. Directly behind her was third flight, led by Ben, who was in overall command of her flight and his own.

Ranma had rearranged Roy's new order of battle a bit. Instead of having each flight have a GPB 1-S to supply long range cover fire, he had grouped the three together and had put Kotatsu in a normal Valkyrie with them, thinking that, since he had the best idea of fighting in space of all the newbies he would be able to look after their close in defense the easiest. Ranma was also interested in seeing if the male kunoichi could get any of his ninja skills to work through his Valkyrie.

The Armored Valkyrie's would use their superior firepower, range and lock on ability to destroy any Regulds that threatened the Sabers in their range. Third flight and second flight would be protecting the Sabers as they went about their business.

First flight led by Ranma would be attacking both Regulds and capital ships as they could. This flight was made up of Ranma and Motoko and two blooded Amazon warriors named Tiger and Lynx, both of whom had some Musk blood in them, and were the best in their age brackets. Not quite as good as Shampoo, but far more experienced and hopefully good enough to keep up with Motoko and Ranma.

Miriya had taken command of one of the wings assigned to this battle, letting Karina have command of the other one, though this really didn't amount to much since she had informed all of her fellow pilots to follow orders issued from the space fortress. This would have been unthinkable if Gloval was in charge of the fighter movements, but he wasn't and Lisa had swiftly impressed all the flight leaders with her professionalism and her sharp mind. None of them had ever even attempted to control a battle as much as she did, but if it kept their casualties low then that was all to the good.

Now Miriya and a flight of Queadluun Rau flew up to take position alongside Wildfire. "So, no singing this time Ranma?"

Motoko smirked. She and Miriya had hit it off quickly, indeed over the last few days she had gotten along with practically every Meltraedi she had interacted with preparing for this battle and now she joined in the gentle pre-battle teasing. "Yes, how can we go into battle without the voice of our very own goddess of war driving us on?"

Ranma smirked a little. "Heh, I'll remember that remark next time I'm asked to put on a concert, I heard some of the organizers wondering if they should add dancing girls to the act."

Motoko spluttered and Miriya, who only barely understood the joke laughed, but her laughter cut off as the call came in from the space fortress. "Estimated arrival time for the skirmish fleet in one minute and counting, time to get your game faces on people, and remember, your job isn't to die in the line of duty, it's to make sure these bastards die doing theirs."

Every one of the elite pilots laughed at that, though some of the humans from earth that hadn't gotten used to the laid back nature of the military life aboard the ship shook their heads at the strange note of levity in Lisa's voice.

Ranma closed his eyes breathing deeply, gathering his ki and sending it out into his Valkyrie finding once again that it was as easy as sending the ki to various parts of his own body, and soon his Valkyrie was bathed in blue and gold fire, visible in the dark of space by anyone who looked his way.

The story of his act of defiance after his final set to with Miriya back on earth had gone around the Meltraedi fleet and while all of them had agreed with Azonia on the need to ally with the humans, not all the pilots assigned to this battle had believed that particular story. Now they did.

As Zentraedi ships began to fold out all around the space fortress Ranma breathed out and opened his eyes, but where before they had been blue as the ocean, now they glowed gold, crackling with power. "Let's start this party right!" With a single thought his Valkyrie zoomed forward, faster than any save Miriya could track, appearing to teleport form his former position to right in front of one of the skirmish fleet's capital ships, already transforming faster than it had ever been able to do before the Valkyries own energy source, merging and amplifying Ranma's own.

He threw out a fist bathed in gold light impacting the front of the ship, his voice a trumpet a clarion call to war. "MOKO HA REIKU!" A beam of power, tiny in comparison to the size of the Zentraedi ship, shot out from the point of impact into the ship, burning through everything in its path until it burst out the other end.

Ranma zoomed away, clicking his music player on and blaring a new song already on the chorus over every frequency. "Sound it off this is the call, rise and revolution! It's our time to change it all, rise and revolution! Unite, and fight to make a better life! Everybody one for all, sound off, this is the call, tonight, we rise!" Tonight, we rise!"

Miriya zoomed forward a mere heartbeat after Ranma had begun to move, and her missiles impacted another battleship at its most vulnerable point, a little patch right where the engineering section met the rest of the ship, blowing through into the delicate fold drives. That ship too exploded, and seemed to be a signal for everyone else to follow the two aces' lead.

OOOOOOO

Gloval gaped at how fast Ranma and the Meltraedi Ace had reacted, but shook it off quickly, this was not the time to be wool gathering. "Fire main cannon, go to continuous fire on all guns! Secondary target the class known as Quiltra-Quelamitz," he stumbled over the odd name but went on swiftly, "destroy as many of them as you can before targeting the other types."

At his orders the massive siege gun of the Macross spoke with a roar, and a tenth of the skirmish fleet disappeared, reducing to their constituent atoms under the power of that ravening beam of energy. "Turn to redirect the beam!" Gloval ordered and the ship began to turn like a man turning in place, the beam licking out and destroying more ships as it did.

At the same time, the secondaries under Sammy's command locked on their targets, and still more Zentraedi ships began to die, and others began to fire back, launching fighters.

Lisa however left the ship to ship portion of the battle in the vice-admiral's capable hands, concentrating on her portion. "All Saber attack groups in delta and epsilon quadrants, Wildfire has given you a whole, follow it in! Wildfire flight two and three, protect those Sabers, Green and Gold squadrons do the same. All Queadluun Rau are cleared to advance, Sabers follow them in!"

OOOOOOO

For all the things he had in common with Kyron there were some things where the self styled lord admiral Retsuc differed from Kyron. For one thing, he was a personal coward, and had never, not even once, led a battle from a command Reguld or even from the front at all. His ship was positioned dead center in his fleet but thankfully (for him) not directly in front of the space fortress. This allowed him to survive the first few minutes of the shocking reverse ambush but even so it took him a moment to realize what was happening. They were supposed to surprise the space fortress, not vice versa!

Still he shook it off for the moment, turning to his flag captain. "Pull us back from the battle, get us behind the rest of the fleet!" He looked at the screen, gulping as the space fortress's beam cannon did its work. "Order all ships to spread out, move out of the plane of that beam gun! Launch all Regulds and Gnerls!"

Breetai hadn't made extensive use of his Gnerl fighter pods after a few initial clashes. Not only were they slower and not quite as maneuverable as Regulds, they were far easier to lock on at range by any of the human mechs, which made them death traps with little return. Of course Retsuc didn't know that, and even if he did, he wouldn't have cared.

He watched aghast as some kind of small spacefighter worked with two of its fellows to carve into one of his ships with heavy lasers, soon destroying it. "Wh-what are those things!"

The strange new spacefighters had gotten among his fleet and were now slashing in at any target they could hit, and he shivered at the amount of damage the little things were doing. "Order half our Regulds to defense of the capital ships, all Gnerls to attack the space fortress!"

Many of his ships hadn't been able to escape the siege cannon's beam, and fifty more died before they could escape from its area of attack. "All ships, weapons free, target the space fortress!"

His captain looked at him aghast. "But sir, we were ordered to capture the space fortress as intact as possible!"

Retsuc sneered at him gesturing at the battle. "Fool, we need to survive to take it don't we?!

The man gulped a little at the losses already sustained and passed the orders along, but Retsuc's attention had been grabbed by what looked to be a very small blue/gold star zipping in and around his ships. Where it went destruction followed and he gaped in astonishment at the strange thing. "What in the hell is that!"

OOOOOO

Shampoo and her flight and Kotatsu had been delegated to protect Ben and the other 'artillerists' as well as the Sabers and once the Zentraedi had begun to launch their own fighters Shampoo had found herself almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of targets and dangers around her. It was only her training with her grandmother in multiple threat environment situations that saved her from being destroyed in the first twenty minutes, but after that she got the hang of it, and was soon moving through the clouds of Regulds easily, always staying within range of the GBP-1S weapons, who were reaping a horrible toll on their enemies. And with the new and improved ammo expansion technique emplaced on every Valkyrie in the force, they could continue to do so for hours on end.

Kotatsu didn't have nearly as much trouble acclimatizing to fighting in space, but mindful of his duty he stayed close to the Armored Types, protecting them and any Sabers in their combat envelope with ease. He hadn't been able to get any of his kunoichi techniques to work through the Valkyrie, but he had brought along a tanto blade (made by Mousse at his new shop, much like Motoko's katana) and used it just as well as he used all of his other weapons, racking up a insane kill total.

Motoko followed Ranma into the center of the attacking fleet, finding herself hard pressed just to keep him in sight let alone stay on his six. Whatever had been done to his Valkyrie had made the thing even deadlier than it had already been, and it was performing moves and attacks that she had never seen it capable of doing before.

But that didn't mean she was without her own new tricks. She pushed her ki into her Valkyries' blade, having figure out how to do so back on Earth and having spent the time since perfecting the technique. She used her rifle to destroy first five Regulds between her and the nearest ship, then two of the ships own anti air guns. With that done, she raced forward, her now glowing blade slamming into the outer hull of the ship right over its bridge like a knife through butter. "Special attack, God-slaying BLADE!" the blade suddenly grew for just a moment to a hundred times its former length, and with a roar she swung it, biting deep and actually slicing through the ship, cutting away a full fourth of its length. She kicked off, transforming into jet mode mid-leap and raced away.

Behind her the two veteran Amazons followed her easily, and she shook her head. "Wild 3, wild 4, stay on my six, don't even try to go off on your own!" The two older women replied quickly, not a little awed at the martial display Ranma and Motoko were putting on.

Miriya destroyed yet another battleship, cutting across Ranma's path and almost negligently destroying ten Reguld pods that had been trying to follow him while he did the same for her. Fighting Ranma had helped her get even better than she had been, and she dodged the defensive beams of another battleship easily. Closing in swiftly she ripped off a section of its engine's armor with her powersuit's hands, firing into the exposed section with her cannons before boosting away, letting the ship explode behind her.

She keyed her com system. "Would you like to make a wager Ranma?" None of the Meltraedi understood the point of call signs, and refused to use them.

"What kind of wager?" Ranma grunted a little as he finished speaking dodging the fire of one of the carrier ships before slamming six missiles into the ships engine. They ripped off much of its armor, and a few ki enhanced shots from his rifle did the rest, and the ship exploded violently even as he ducked and rolled into his guardian mode, using his head lasers and rifle to destroy several Reguld pods.

"I bet I can destroy more of these scum then you. One point per Reguld, two for each Gnerl, fifty per capital ship?"

Ranma absentmindedly crushed a Regulds center with a kick then spun into jet mode, lazing away to come up behind another group that had been about to ambush a Saber that had been cut off from it's pack. "And the stakes?"

"Loser has to do obey the winner's orders for a set amount of time?" Miriya asked, almost hesitantly. She hadn't thought that far ahead to be honest.

"Heh, alright," Said Ranma, though if this was back in Nerima he would never have taken that kind of wager.

"Excellent." Replied Miriya, then the two warriors turned back to business.

OOOOOOO

Not everyone was having as easy a time of it. Marcus Prescott was a little overwhelmed by his first brush with the truly insane world of combat in space against the Zentraedi. They had no grasp of organization or self preservation or anything like what he was used to. They just kept coming! It was only because of the three GBP-1S armed Valkyries in his squadron that kept him and his men alive in that first hour of combat, and even that would not have been enough if they had been ordered to follow up on one of the assaults launched by the elite squads.

A part of him, to his credit a small easily ignored part of him, hadn't quite believed Fokker and Sugita about how chaotic a fight in space could be. Now he did, and the fact this was the biggest dustup any of the veterans had seen made it all the worse for the Earth pilots.

Despite the work his men and he had been doing since coming aboard to build up their endurance, they were beginning to flag after only an hour, and the battle was continuing without even a single sign of letting up. He had already lost four pilots down, three recoverable thanks to their armor strengthening technique around their cockpits.

Thus it was something of a relief when Captain Hayes' voice sounded in his ear. "Knight Squadron you've fallen below the acceptable loss range, pull back along the following heading…"

Prescott listened as he killed a triangle fighter that was trying to line up a shot on his second wingman, blowing it up with four shots to its side. "Roger that command one, be advised we have three pilots Dutchman, we'll need to recover them before heading back, our speed will be slowed down by this."

"Negative," said Lisa crisply. "Your squadron is dead on its feet Knight 1, get them back here now. We can recover your downed pilots after the battle, the Zentraedi don't seem to understand the concept of emergency pods. They'll be fine until after the battle."

Unless of course they get caught up in an explosion from one of the Zentraedi ships, Marcus thought grimly, but still nodded. His pilots were all showing signs of fatigue, and fatigue would kill them all unless they got out of here. "Roger that, pulling back now."

OOOOOOO

The defense of the space fortress was not exactly the soft option in this or any other battle. The mobile barrier shields were assigned to guard the space fortress from their enemy beam attacks, which became more numerous as the battle went on, leaving the defense of the rest of the surface of the ship to the Destroids and the tertiary weapons systems.

The new anti-air weapons of the space fortress, called the BFS, or Big-Fucking-Shotgun, system were utterly deadly against any kind of fighter assault. They shot small three inch long spears of metal at insane speeds, filling space much like a old time flak cannon, but at the speeds they were shot out at, even a near miss could destroy any attacking Reguld or tri-fighter in atmosphere. Out in space they weren't quite as deadly, but the difference was minimal. The crews of the BFS guns had all gone to continuous fire as soon as the Reguld and tri-fighter swarm attacked the ship, and where they were, no attacker could get within a thousand yards.

Yet this left a lot of the surface of the space fortress uncovered, which was where the destroids earned their keep. The four Defender companies were dug in at strategic points everywhere along the surface in squad or sometimes company strength, with Tomahawks dug in around the big guns in squad sized groups, with one company acting as a reserve force. Another company of Tomahawks was situated in defense around Mannstein in his Apocalypse where they were situated on the 'foot' of the space fortress, destroying the beam heavy ships of the enemy much like the secondary weapons of the Macross.

The Spartans on the other hand, the two companies of them aboard ship, had been broken into fire teams of four and set loose to roam the outer hull, attacking any group of Regulds that touched down, or lending aid where it was most needed.

Rana Sanga led one such to a breach in the defense where several hundred Regulds had touched down, using the death of an equal number of tri-fighters to get in under a tertiary gun's range. There they ran into a group of Defenders, with two Spartan gun-teams in support.

Three Spartan gun teams fell upon them from behind, loosing missiles into their backs before closing with maul and blade. Most of the destroids now carried both thanks to Mousse and Perfume's weapons shop.

Rana slammed bodily into one Reguld, knocking it off its feet before dropping his weapons to hand in space for the moment as he picked it up bodily and threw the pod into two of its fellows. Another Spartan jumped on the pile, his weapons working and all three died.

The Rajput then grabbed up his blade and maul, clipping the maul to his side via the magnetic clamp in its handle, grabbing up his rifle and blasting away at the Regulds that had attempted to jump over his position. They all went down, but he had taken a shot himself, though thanks to the armor strengthening technique he barely felt it. Unlike the Valkyries all the destroids had that technique everywhere along their bodies.

"Spartan 1-1, report status of company." Mannstein's gravelly voice echoed over Rana's communicator, the deep whuum-thrum of Apocalypse's grazers at work in the background.

"This is Spartan 1-1, company is still good to go, we haven't lost anyone yet, but I've ordered several of my troops back due to damage." A few had even returned by this point in the battle, which had been going on for over three hours now.

"Good," Mannstein grunted. The destroids as a group were doing very well in this battle, and it was all owed to the new energy based ammo case enlarging and armor strengthening techniques. "I am rotating out my reserves, one of the Defender companies along the main body port side is reporting an ammo shortage, and has taken casualties. Send two of your fire teams there to assist." With that he cut the connection, ordering his gunner to turn his attention on a gun boat that was rising beneath the space fortress in an attempt to bring its main gun to bear in an area the space fortress couldn't cover. A moment later that ship joined many of its fellows in oblivion.

OOOOOOO

Despite the fury of the battle outside, Lisa and Gloval kept a tight rein on the bridge of the Macross, an ocean of calm in the ongoing chaos. Four hours in and the last of the Zentraedi gun boats was gone, and with them a major threat to the ship. They alone had the power to punch through one of the barrier shields.

The ship had taken damage, but all its guns were still functioning, and the main gun continued to fire, though the damage it was doing was lessened by the fact the aliens had spread out so quickly. Gloval had also turned the ship on its axis and sometimes onto it's 'back or 'side to bring the siege gun to bear, and he estimated the enemy had lost a quarter of their ships at this point, though later it would be shown that after the first blast the main cannon didn't account for as many as they initially thought.

The barrier shields along the surface of the space fortress had to be replaced several times, and they were down to their last forty now, but still going strong, and Kim had directed the ten reserve shields up, as well as directing her repair crews.

On Lisa's end, her rotating the Valkyries and Queadluun Rau had kept their losses as low as they could be expected to be. Most squadrons had lost people, but not a one had been wiped out, though the squads consisting mostly of pilots that had come aboard from Earth during their time there had all been brought in, their retreats staggered throughout the fight.

The powersuits too had taken losses, but nowhere near as much as they normally would have.

The Sabers despite being defended by the Valkyries had taken far worse losses and were now down to barely half their starting strength but as they were remote controlled drones Lisa couldn't care less.

In return the Sabers and the groups ordered to attack the enemy capital ships had wiped out a little under 350 ships of the enemy. The Regulds of the skirmish fleet had taken even more horrendous losses from the Valkyries and Queadluun Rau, and between them and the main gun swatting them like flies Lisa could actually see that there was a marked decrease in the cloud of Regulds swarming everywhere in the battle.

She looked at her tactical screen and smirked a little, as she knew it was about to get worse for Retsuc and his skirmish fleet. "Beware humans bringing gifts, for they are often explosive," She murmured, before returning to barking out orders.

OOOOOOO

Retsuc stared at his tactical screen, trying to come to terms with what he was seeing, trying to override his growing terror at what he was seeing. His fleet had sustained heavy losses, but it wasn't that so much as the type of losses and the how that terrified him. The Meltraedi Queadluun Rau that had been infected by this Micronian Infestation mind control thing had ripped his Reguld forces into pieces, and the human transforming fighters were nearly as dangerous. They had lost nearly two-thirds of their Reguld and Grelf forces up to this point, and there was no sign that depredation was going to stop.

And then there were those tiny Micronian spacefighters that seemed to have only one purpose, that of destroying his ships! And they were doing a damn good job of it. While they hadn't destroyed at one shot the number of ships he had lost to that damn beam weapon of the space fortress, the cumulative effect was even worse.

On the other side of things the space fortress had been hurt, but not severely. He could still see all of its weapons firing, the siege cannon had yet to stop firing and those odd defenders that fought on its surface hadn't taken many losses.

He was no closer now to winning this battle then he had been at the beginning, if anything his position was rapidly worsening. The loss incurred by his Regulds might already mean they couldn't successfully board the space fortress even if they won through its outer defenses, and the loss of every single one of his gun boats (and how had the Micronians figured out how to tell Zentraedi ship types apart that well?) meant he had lost his most powerful weapon to break the strange mobile shield things.

One other difference between Retsuc and Kyron was he knew when to cut his losses, and was cowardly enough to do just that when the odds turned against him. He turned to his communication officer and was about to order his fleet to fold out and regroup elsewhere when she shuddered, throwing him to the floor of his bridge. "Wh-what?"

One of his officers shouted "We're under attack, left engine gone!"

Retsuc stared at him, and the tactical screen changed to show the exterior of the ship. There by the engines was the Micronian fighter that glowed blue and gold, still glowing and surrounded by the remains of the engine and the anti-air nodules around it.

The ship shuddered again just as the screen went black and Retsuc shook his head, hyperventilating as fear gripped him. "This, this can't be happening, we can't, I can't be defeated like this, not by some minor species like the Micronians! It, It's not possible!"

A moment later the ship exploded like so many of its fellows, and Retsuc found out it was indeed possible.

OOOOOOO

Ranma grinned as he killed another of the countless Reguld that were still swarming around, though he could tell their numbers had taken a real hit by past seven hours of nonstop combat. "This is wild 1, the flagship is gone, repeat the flagship is gone. You can call the rest of the ladies to the dance!" With that he put the bigger picture out of his mind, laughing as he dove into a large group of Regulds, smashing out with hands, feet and weapons.

OOOOOOO

Lisa and Gloval shared a glance and the vice-admiral turned to Claudia. "You heard the man, please tell our allies, they are welcome to join us at any time."

OOOOOOO

Azonia and the rest of the Meltraedi fleet needed no further urging. They had all been watching the fight, and saw how their fellow Meltraedi had been doing, and now were anxious to prove their worth. Azonia smiled grimly at her communication officer. "the 1st fifth and twelfth divisions will advance to add our allies, all other ships to remain on station. Gun boats are to move to optimum position and provide long range support, all other ships fold forward to engage the enemy. In one hour I don't want a single Zentraedi ship in Sol space."

This was answered by a roar of approval from the bridge crew and Ilea nodded firmly. "Your will be done lady." With that she turned and the Night Dagger led three divisions of the Meltraedi fleet into fold, appearing directly behind the beleaguered, increasingly desperate and now leaderless 11th skirmish fleet.

Her troops were as good as her word, and less than an hour after Azonia's declaration the last ship from the 11th blew up under the combined power of three Meltraedi battleships.

Elder Cologne cackled from her position on the top of one of the bridge consoles. "Well done, I must say, a most masterful ambush on everyone's part I feel."

Azonia smiled a little grimly down at the diminutive elder. "Now comes the tough part."

End chapter

As you can see there are going to be major changes from canon. For one thing the humans will be the junior partner in the alliance for now, though it might not last long. there have been a lot of technological advancements and the Meltraedi are with the humans 100%.

Some may think that the Meltraedi might be willing to be a sort of go between, trying to broker peace between the humans and Zentraedi, but remember the Meltraedi see themselves as a separate group, they have no love, and indeed the loathe the wasteful, arrogant Zentraedi.