Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 44
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Seto smiled to herself. Tenchi had proved to be sowhat of a problem. He had reacted very poorly to his new 'fiancee', who happened to be Noike, Setos adopted daughter. Even if Noike was never to be a real finacee, but could rather be considered an undercover GP agent for looking out for the Masaki household.
Seto looked over to Minaho. It seemed that her chief of intelligence was missinformed. Only her mother Airi and Tennyo, had been the ones to inform her about the changed situation on Earth. Of the most powerful beings at the Masaki household only Sasami and Ayeka had remained. The others had gone to other places on the planet. Washuu was currently working on establishing the Terran Institute of Technology in a city called Geneva, while Ryoko had been offered the citizenship of three different nations of Earth, through she only took one. It was unknown where she was at this moment or what she did.
And than there was Tenchi. He had changed, according to the reports of Yosho. It seemed that he had been thrown into another reality by an experimental teleporter of Washuu and had remained there for twenty to thirty years, bringing back a very powerful ship, Dark Knight, and technology that was now lifting Earth straight from sub-Quantum 0 to mid-Quantum 2 level.
Worst was that Earth didn't seem to suffer any problems from the transition of technology level. But not only that, Earth had befriended the remains of the Dilgar Empire and the Nomads.
And the Nomads had given Seto the means of becoming an observer and get close to Tenchi to observe him by herself. It had mostly been Seiryo, who had informed Azusa about the Jurian treeships in possession of the Nomads, or rather the fact that the Nomads where at Earth. Even Seto herself had thought that Earth and the Nomads would roll over and give the ships back and than accept Seto as observer.
However, no one had expected the 'fourth national power', as the Earthers dubbed their press, to make such a ruckus about it and actually do something about it. Even if it was just Misaki, who had been floored by the sheer cuteness of a white furred fluffy Nomad kid hugging a cloth puppet, while looking at the camera with tear-filled eyes. Heck even Seto herself had been stuck by the sheer cuteness. Azusa would have to sleep on the couch for the next one or two decades and had been forced by Misaki to revoke the demand to give the treeships back.
At least the Earthers had permitted Jurai to send observers as an act of 'good will'. She had eventually gone to insist to be observer on Dark Knight.
And that had led her to plan a great entrance at Earth. The Tripple Z attack, would show the humans that there were other ways of dealing with ships.
She chuckled, the Tripple Z was a very old relic of a long forgotten war and it was present in all navigational computer systems in the galaxy. Essentially it was a backdoor in the system that was never really discovered. Only dump luck had given Seto the code to use just this backdoor to literally freeze up all ships with the use of this backdoor. All it needed was heavy jamming following a specific matematical code and the code was only known to Seto and her ship, Mikagami.
Now Mikagami was sitting right on top of Earth in slipstream and projected the jamming to the outside. There shouldn't be any ship out there that wasn't effected by the Tripple Z by now.
"Jump back into normal space," she ordered and smiled.
"Multiple contacts," she heard one of the tactical officers in a normal tone before her tone changed to something akin to panic." We are hit by targeting systems from all ankles."
"What?"
While Seto kept her cool, Kanemitsu Hirata, her chief of operations, was staring at the holographic display that appeared in front of them. And everyone could see ships moving on the display, while a number of smaller contacts were zipping towards Mikagami.
A smaller screen popped up to show these smaller contacts, strange X-shaped craft, moving in on Mikagami only to spread out and closely follow the treeships hull with the occasional firing of reaction thrusters. As the had followed the hull, they zipped past and turned about to do the same maneuver in reverse.
"Number of targeting signals increases!"
"Incoming communication!"
Seto just nodded and a Earther in a black uniform appeared on a screen.
"Attention Jurian Vessel," he said," This is Admiral Jackson of GDI Earth Defense Center Shabazza. You are to deactivate all formsof active jamming. Under other circumstances it might be considered as Act of War."
Everyone stared at the display. Seto was impressed. The Earthers had guts to do something like this.
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Admiral Robbie Jackson narrowed his eyes as he glared at the holographic display. Just a few moments ago heavy jamming had started and flooded the entire Earth Moon gravitational system. While it was now jamming normal radio communication and part of the sensors, nothing more had happened. Laserlinks were established between the ships and satellites above Earth and the TacNet was getting busy.
However, the Nomad ships were now floating dead in space, while some systems on the ships docked with Shabazza were flickering and shutting down.
"Can we pinpoint the source of that jamming?"
"We're working on it, sir," was Seilers response.
Lines began to appear on the display and slowly began to move, crossing at a single point in space.
"We have the source, sir."
Jackson nodded.
"Order to all ships to target that area of space. The Pods and GODs as well."
He glared at the display, where he only could see the area of space where the jamming originated. Something in the back of his mind, he knew that something was different from any attack that could be coming. Mostly because the jamming was on several unusual frequencies.
As he stared at the screen, a large wooden ship slowly seemed to raise from empty space like a submarine from the ocean.
He frowned.
"Jurians," he muttered," Figures that they would do a 'Great Entrance'."
So that would be the ship that brought Lady Seto Jurai and her adjutants.
"All ship, do not fire," he ordered." And get me a connection to that ship."
Seiler nodded and Jackson knew that he could speak. While he couldn't set them a shoot in front of their noses without risking a diplomatic incident, he could at least scare them a bit.
"Attention Jurian Vessel," he said," This is Admiral Jackson of GDI Earth Defense Center Shabazza. You are to deactivate all forms of active jamming. Under other circumstances it might be considered as Act of War."
Now he had to wait for a response and he didn't have to wait for long, as the screen of the unknown treeship was replaced by the face of a green haired woman in robes, with a commanding presence who seemed to be used to get her way.
Jackson had meet several people like that and he wasn't intimidated by her, even with reading the file on Seto. She might be different from most Jurians, but as far as he could tell, she had the same arrogance, maybe even more arrogance because of her status.
"Lady Seto Jurai of Mikagami," she said." You have guts, Admiral, I have to give you that."
Jacksons facial expression didn't change.
"It doesn't have to do anything with having guts, Lady Seto. Its just a healthy bit of paranoia. In the current situation and the War with the Doranians, that should be understandable."
Seto frowned slightly.
"Very well," she said finally." Now I would like to get aboard of Dark Knight."
Jacksons eyes narrowed slightly. That request had sounded more like an order.
"We will forward you a set of Galaxy Standard nav points for a docking port with Shabazza," he answered." Earth Defense Center out."
As the connection was cut, he knew that he could have talked to her longer and that she most likely had awaited him to bow before her or something, but he had long since decided that he didn't like her, so she would only get as much as she deserved from his point of view. He would be damned if he would exchange any pleasantries with her.
"I wonder how she and Commodore Masaki will react to the Last-minute Dilgar representant?" he wondered out loud.
He looked over to Seiler.
"Do we have the data of the jamming?"
Seiler nodded.
"From second one, sir. All on HD."
Jackson nodded.
"Good, forward the data to the spooks at Langley. Maybe they can do something with it. Could turn out to be useful in the future."
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"Leaving Slipstream."
Korvettenkapitän (OF-4) Daniel Petersen nodded. He was the commander of Mainz, a Pegasus Cutter of the Raumflotte. He sighed slightly as he looked over towards his guests and the reasons why he was further away from Earth than anyone before, a good thousand lightyears deep into space of the Galactic Union, in essence Jurian space in all but name.
His guests were the six Shin'bi that had been rescued from Doranian slavery several month before. Only now, even if Earth wasn't completely safe, GDI could send a ship to the Shin'bi homeworld to get them back home. Through no one had really thought about slight complications.
Petersen chuckled a little as he thought about that. It seemed that one of the Shin'bi, their de facto leader Haruka, had fallen in love with von Bismark, who had fallen in love with her. With von Bismark being the number one celebrity in Germany at the moment, that had caused quite some ruckus. He could still remember the headline of the BILD, one of the German rainbow press papers.
'Love conquers all! Even over racial borders!'
Than there were also the reactions of Neo Nazis and their ilk. Peterson himself hadn't many problems with it, through he knew that is was strange.
"Okay people," he said." I want a full sensory coverage while we make our way towards the planet. I don't want them to think of us as pirates."
From what Haruka and the other Shin'bi had told GDI, the Shin'bi had been the target of piracy raids for more than one hundred years and that it was the thing that had united the nations/factions of their planet. Petersen had been surprised to hear that the Shin'bi in fact had been slightly more advanced than Earth when the first Pirates had begun to plague them.
He sighed and leaned back. He had been ordered to get the Shin'bi back to their world, open diplomatic talks and aid them against piracy raids if needed.
He looked at the screen. It showed the blue-brown-green-white marble of an Earth like planet, the Shin'bi homeworld Zaitaku, through from what he could tell at the moment, it had less water than Earth. The amount of information about Zaitaku was not very much. Some infos from a Galaxy Police database and some from his Shin'bi guests.
"Two contacts," he suddenly heard from his sensory officer." Approaching from behind. Low Radar return, indicates RAM paint or coating. Low Lidar return, indicates light absorbing coating. Low EM radiation, aside from a low powered micrometer wave radar. If they weren't as hot as they are I would have missed them. They got one large IR footprint."
Petersen snorted. He knew that most races in the galaxy didn't use any sensors like classical optical ones, as they were obsolete compared to most other sensors. He was pretty sure that most of the other races would have missed those two contacts.
He glanced towards the Shin'bi to see them being surprised that they had picked up the two ships.
"Can I get an image?" he asked.
"Yes, Kap'tän."
The image on the main screen changed from Zaitaku to showing a black patch of space, with a pair of very faint silhouettes. Petersen blinked and squinted his eyes to try and make out more.
"IR?"
The sensory officer chuckled a little.
"Would be slightly better I guess..."
The image changed again, now showing a multiple colored image of a pair of sleek ships with a rotating section, much like the Omega class Destroyer, through it was more of a ring than the Leonov style section of the Omega. At eight parts of the ship he could see that space was literally blotted with IR radiation, lancing out deep into space.
"Can you get any information about them, Mainach?"
Mainach chuckled.
"Hey, this baby got better sensors than our old Type 206."
Petersen chuckled. He and most of his crew were old submariners and had done most of their service in those old tin cans.
"Lets see... Length about 330 meters, and about 100 thousand tons. No idea what weapons or their performances, but at the moment they seem to run silent on Ion Engines."
Petersen chuckled.
"Okay," he said and breathed in deep." Lets hail them. Tight band I don't want that anyone else listens to what we have to say."
The communications officer nodded and Petersen crossed his fingers behind his back.
"This is Korvettenkapitän Daniel Petersen of the Raumflotte Cutter Mainz, representing GDI. I am calling the two Shin'bi vessels. We have no hostile intention towards you. Please respond."