Draco galaxy

Acallarian space

2183

Leverick Aetross and his crew armed the ship. Drecian forces have been doing hit and run bombing offensives for the last few hours. The Dreda scout fleet only consisted of around 200 ships. The next offensive would be happening anytime in the next few minutes.

Leverick was stationed on Elios a garden world recently conquered form one of the Dreda States.

He was a honorable member of the Coulic clan or ash clan known for detonating nuclear devices on planets to realise ash and in turn lower the temperature of the planet making it more hospitable.

The dreda idea of warn and the acallarian are very different. To avoid one of their planets enting nuclear winter the dreda would attempt to recapture Elios in mass numbers. The main Retaliating Dreacian fleet would be fairly large especially if they mustered any ally forces, anywhere from 2300 to 3000 ships.

But for now it was priority to destroy the scout fleet which was primarily there to take down Eliot's makeshift defenses.

Long range scanners picked up the scout armada as it weaved back into the area. He set the weave drive to point at the fleet's flagship

"All boarding ships prepare to engage" said Leverick He made the signal to his 2nd engineer to activate the weave drive. The ship the CAS Aetis around 100 meters long was a angular long ship designed purely for ramming and boarding ships. It wings folded up and the thrusters leveled as the Aetis initiated the weave the ship teleported within a couple hundred miles of the enemy flagship exiting the weave hundred of thousands of miles per hour.

The ship shook violently as enemy fire whittled away at their shields. But it was nothing the aeitis couldn't handle. It definitely wasn't the biggest flag ship he had seen either that title would have to go to the wreckage of the Drecian super dreadnought Vavrictor which was estimated to be 6000 meters before it was slammed into Feara.

But this ship was no joke every inch of Artis's shield displayed red on the control panel signaling they were under fire. But a millionth of a second before they reached the enemy ship disaster struck.

The Drecian flagship had activated its weave drive and disappeared in a flash. Normally this would have smaller repercussions but with a ship of that size it was more drastic.

When a ship weaves it in a way stretches space and once the weave is completed space rebounds greatly even more so if the weave it to a further distance.

This "elastic" energy not only can fling ships and smash hulls it can have enough energy to activate nearby by ships weave drives

And that is exactly what happened to the Aetis. Not a second after the flag ship disappeared. The overflow of energy violently activated the weave drive frying many of the computers and sending the ship to an unknown location. The initial shock and abrupt change in direction and speed knocked Leverick out immediately.

He awoke,looking down at his HUD. According to his body scanners he was fine with only bruising. He was at the commander's terminal before the rebound. The blast slid him across the whole deck and smashing into the fore deck wall, his helmet leaving a large dent. The slide catched his fall.

Leverick looked up to see the familiar armour of Avres staring down at him. When she realized he was awake Avres dropped to one knee and stood back up again the common gesture one does before speaking to a superior officer.

"Leverick are you okay your vitals report you are undamaged but they could be off…" she said calmly

"I'm fine. How is the rest of the crew?"

"Dead" she said without the slightest inflection. "Reak was killed instantly by the overload, I guess he was too close to the engines. Faresil was smashed into the front of the ship by the recoil, broken neck. We're lucky we were so undermanned or else a lot would have died."

"I see" He didn't know these men well Reak and Faresil but they were good men and they died with honor.

"When can we get back to Eliot and bury the dead?" He said halfheartedly.

"We can't"

"What do mean we can't?!"

"Run the calculations,you're the engineer"

With that Leverick went over to the terminal and began punching the numbers.

"Ok so we were a foot away from hitting the ship, then it weaved and it was about dreadnaught size, it was also warping to a very far away location so… Holy Heaven were in the milky way!" He checked the astronomical charts, they weaved 200,000 plus light years. The Aeits was about to enter some alien world only named by some useless pin astronomers gave it. Avres watched idly as Leverick Ran around turning on the forward thrusters and preparing automatic landing gear, this landing was going to be tuff.

"Avres were about to enter some unknown world be reading for anything, and hold on to something"

He was lucky she survived. He outranked her on his ship but in the invasions forces she was higher up the ladder and had much more combat experience as indicated by her armour and plumed helmet.

She grabbed a terminal as the ship shook violently as it was pulled into the planet.

Scanners indicated life forms, intelligent life forms with large building and infrastructure on the planet.

"Shit" he said under his breath. Out of the millions of inhabitable planets he had to crash land on a garden world with life let alone intelligent life.

"Prepare for first contact with the species of the milky way" said Leverick grimly

Avres drew her sword, a long broad blade that was red hot able to cut most metals quickly and the blade will not bend. "I will show them the might of the Colliac clans"

"Put your sword away Avres the last thing you want to do is start another war."

"I will not hesitate to strike down breakers of our code of war."

"But they do not even know it"

"It is better they learn now than later"

Leverick sighed "So be it"

As the Aeitis got ever closer to the planet and the impending collision his detection instruments were picking up explosions and gunfire. Cross projection and radars were also picking up a 3 km sized dreadnaught.

"Your calls to combat may not have been so rash, we are about to enter a warzone. We must not pick sides but allies in this new world might be useful." said leverick.

Avres drew her sword again. "As said before i will take out any who attack us or break the code."

"And rightfully so" confirmed Leverick "this isn't all bad we might find the machinery and resources in the rubble of battle to repair our ship. "

Just then the Aetis broke through the atmosphere, Leverick turned on the stealth device just in time. The ship caught fire open entry. Not a minute later the thrusters managed to land the ship close to what appeared to be some kind of mining operation or dig site.

Leverick and Avres silently exited the ship swords drawn. They both crouched behind a large concrete support beam. Leverick peered over the pillar. He saw two weird aliens definitely not Dreda their heads seemed to have crests and talons. They both carried the coward's weapon. Both seemed to be allies talking in a very different language his translator didn't even attempt to pick up. One had red skin and white facial markings. The other alien had a much more silver body color had a cybernetic arm with tubes attached all over his body. A repulsive practise that the dreda did not even utilize.

Out of nowhere the alien with the cybernetic arm drew his gun on the other. It was obviously betrayal one of the most dishonorable things someone could do. The other alien wasn't even aware of the gun drawn on him.

With lightning speed leverick dove out of hiding place smashing onto the red alien. The shots fired by the betrayer hit his targets shoulder instead of the back of his head, not killing him but still knocking him out. Leverick placed the unconscious body on the ground and turned around to confront the traitor.

Avres aware of the situation picked up the body and started going towards the ship to try to resuscitate it.

The silvery opponent roared with rage and yelled "You're meddling for over your head human!" These words meant nothing to Leverick whatever these "humans" were it didn't matter he drew his blade shouted the traditional words before combat. He knew he wouldn't understand him but it was practice. "Stand down or fight!" he yelled. It was confused for a split second at the foreign language but quickly jumped into action firing several round of his gun at him.

Leverick reared left dodging most of the rounds and was surprised to find that the bullets that did hit him only put small indentation on his armour. He then sprinted at the aggressor. The alien pulled out a small knife aware he was going to be fighting melee. Leverick instantly kicked the knife out of his hand and smashed the pummel of his sword over the alien's head. The enemy was dazed but still fighting he jumped out of melee range and shot a weird dark energy orb at him.

Leverick saw the strange energy projectile from a mile away due to its relatively slow velocity simply dodged it. It was obvious now that it was trying to run, Leverick used his levitational gauntlet to pull the betrayer back towards him so he could finish this coward. With a swift motion he broke the aliens leg under his boot and cut his cybernetic arm clean off.

Unfortunately the battle was cut short when a strange almost bug like ship flew over dropping of what appeared to be robotic soldiers, they had lights for eyes and made machine like cracking noises.

Thier fire was to much and leverick began retreating back towards the ship. He dodged gunfire coming from all directions. He got back to the ship safely with no pursuers. The duel with the local aliens was fierce but he was a superior combatant making it out with no major injuries. He got in and slammed the bay door shut.

Leverick found Avres mending the aliens wounds in the engine room.

"Why are you in the engine room, the med bay is undamaged"

This alien is used to much warmer climates than ours the engine room is the only place warm enough that he won't get hypothermia."

"So is he going to make it?"

"I'm no xenobiologist but it seems you knocked him out of the way just in time only he's only suffering neck and shoulder injuries opposed to a head shot. Another peculiar thing is ever since he was knocked out some presence has been directly sending a barrage of electromagnetic waves and high pitch sounds trying to mess with this guys head, it resembles the mind control methods the dreda tried centuries ago. I traced the signals back to the dreadnought.

"What about us?"

"Our armour and the ship's armour already have a plethora of special metal sheets to stop brainwashing weapons just like this. Anyways I believe you attacked the aggressor no hero backstabs the villain. Of course we could have just rescued a horrible person who was about to get assassinated for a just cause but that is unlikely.

Leverick slipped what seemed to be a handheld computer device off the aliens arm and crudely hooked it up to the terminal.

"I'll attempt to crack the aliens language so we can communicate when he wakes up" said leverick.

"Very good"

The terminal was having trouble translating the aliens binary code to the Acallari ternary code system. After what seemed like an eternity the bulk of the code was translated and copied onto the terminal. The translation and copy greatly corrupted it but it would still be useful. Then he hooked up a Acallari language data shell into the computer

It began searching for similarity in language structure and started crudely translating words. Every so often it would start over with its prior knowledge to try better translation combinations. After another few minutes the collective computing power of the ship finished the translation saying it was a 4 on a 10 point translation system meaning it was probably not be very good with phrases but would work with basic speech.

"I have the translator working Avres" said leverick as he handed her the translation shell. "so take the alien off any sedatives so we can talk"

The alien slowly got up and then doubled over in pain falling back onto the cot.

Leverick spoke calmly in a plain fashion "what is your name?"

"Nihlus, Nihlus Kryik"