Chapter Two
General Malcolm Granger
Star Destroyer Olympia
Entering Courasnt atmosphere
0559 Hours Local
I woke up in the newest one of our capitol ships. I named her myself after the Olympia, an aircraft carrier that went down in the Mediterranean Sea. An alarm started sounding as we began our approach and I walked groggily to the bridge.
"Status report," I muttered, trying to keep my eyes open while I waited for my coffee.
"Sir," a young radio officer said. "We're being targeted by local air defence fighters. Already identified as 'A-Wings'. They're demanding identification."
It took a few moments for the information to seep into my still-sleeping brain, but when it did finally get through, I snapped my eyes open.
"Put them through," I said. "Visual, on screen."
The crew did what I ordered them to do, and soon I was looking into the face of one of the three A-Wing pilots.
"State your vessel identification immediately." The pilot said calmly.
"Star Destroyer Olympia, registration number 7723-1169-0032."
"What faction are you with?"
"Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, we're requesting an alliance."
There was a pause, and then: "Affirmative. Come to bearing 010 degrees and prepare for boarding." The transmission stopped after that, and I sighed wondering where in Gods name my coffee was.
"All right boys and girls, you heard the man. Come to bearing 010, and put her into hover."
We got a lot of information about these ships from the Imperials themselves as well as the Republic cruisers, but for some reason, they never figured out how to implement them effectively in the atmosphere. Luckily for us, several ships were already completed at their original manufacturing plant, and in the short amount of time we had, we struck the plants hard and fast capturing over 80 of them before the rest were destroyed. We moved slowly and eventually set the massive ship into a stationary hover above part of the city.
Shortly after that, my coffee finally arrived, and I drank it without worrying about its temperature. The boarding party arrive shortly afterwards and in the lead of it were several people we had already identified through prior reconnaissance. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia among many others. They asked if we could talk alone and I offered my personal quarters.
They accepted and soon later, we were talking. I explained them the current situation, and even let them talk to the Supreme Commander via hologram. They asked me how many ships we had, and I told them the number of craft we had. Mostly they were Protoss Carriers, or Terran Battlecruisers, but we had about thirty Star Destroyers with one Super Star Destroyer. I also told them that we were currently reverse-engineering one of the Star Destroyers to find out how they worked and so we could make our own.
While we did have them, we had almost no idea how they worked. We didn't know what to do in case of a breakdown and we had even less knowledge of how to make one. What we knew about these ships we had gathered from the plans that were left behind when we had taken over the manufacturing plants.
After a while of exchanging information, we eventually agreed that it would be best if we work together in this to take down what was left of the Empire. While their numbers were relatively few in number, they were still quite large. Because of that, we needed to mostly launch pre-emptive strikes designed to take down the largest and most important targets first.
The others agreed and we set to work of making our plans. The Soviet Union would mostly act as a distraction to keep the Empire busy, while they would go in and destroy the main targets. That would be easy enough, but it would require lots of forward thinking. The Empire had superior technology to anything we had so far, although if we used the Zerg, we had a considerable advantage. If we also used Tiberium weaponry, we could possibly win this.
Supreme Commander Romanov
Somewhere in Northern Siberia
Experimental weaponry division
1800 Hours Local
When I got word of General Granger's deal with the new Republic, I went to find out what Kane and CABAL had managed to do given this massive length of time with some of our potentially most lethal weapons.
When I entered, Kane was doing checks on what looked like an Annihilator Tripod, a unit that was encountered during our final war, before we started traveling to other universes. We had been in possession of these units for a very long time, and I needed to know if they would EVER be ready for actual battle. We kept these weapons underground for one reason: we didn't know how to use them, and in case we overloaded something, we could easily channel it into the ground.
Kane looked up as I entered. "Well Commander, I think you'll be pleased to know that we've actually managed to decode most of the Scrin's technology. Now we should be able to use it freely, without complications."
"What about their infantry?" I asked, wondering how the Scrin managed to attack so effectively with them.
"Well, after Yuri began helping us, we've managed to clone all their various kinds, and we also figured out how the Buzzers are formed."
A Buzzer was the Scrin's anti-infantry unit. It was essentially a cloud of flying razor blades that sliced anything near them. They had some sentience, but not much. They could also swarm around the Scrin's vehicles forming a protective barrier around that unit. Once Kane showed me most of the Scrin's technology and showed that we could actually use it, I asked about the Mothership.
"Yes… about that… we haven't looked at it very much. We were more concerned with the other units, seeing as the Mothership is quite unlike anything we've ever seen."
"But the other units are ready for battle?"
Kane nodded.
"Good," I said. "Send a large contingent of Scrin troops to each of our generals. See what modifications they can use." I pulled out a small radio to the GDI. "Da, it's me. Send your most advanced units to each of the generals."
The officer on the other end of the line acknowledged and started mobilizing the latest GDI technology. I turned to Kane. "And be sure to send your units out to each of the generals as well."
Kane smiled. "Don't worry Commander; I've already taken care of that myself. I sent MCVs over to each of their bases this morning."
"Excellent, carry on with the Mothership, and see if you can decode it in a reasonable amount of time."
I left after that and went outside to see the units. A fleet of Scrin Planetary Assault Carriers were taking off, their ion storms covering their hulls. The Invader-Class fighters flew out shortly afterwards, protected and enhanced by the storm that their carrier was generating. After the Carriers took off, several Devastator warships took off and rapidly caught up with the larger Carriers, followed by the Stormrider Fighters, also powered up by the ion storm.
On the ground, I saw a large number of Masterminds and Shock Troopers materialise via their own teleporting technology and they quickly formed battalions, which then moved off to the other General's bases. The Drone Ships were among the last units to leave. They packed up, and lifted off, moving slowly in the air. The very last unit was the Scrin Targeting Ship. Those behemoths took off slowly and started moving at a snail's pace towards their destinations. The Targeting Ship was essentially a colossal wheel-like rim with four energy beams holding up the center weapons 'pod'. The ship was enormous, and by itself, its power rivalled that of the Ion Cannon employed by GDI, however when coupled with the Mothership's weaponry, this unit could annihilate entire cities in a single shot.
I called up all the Generals to let them know that these new troops were coming to their bases, and also let them know that the forces would be under their control. Seeing the Scrin approaching would not be a good thing for any of our generals. Most, if not all of them, still occasionally had nightmares from their invasion. We beat them back and eventually allied with Nod before we set off into other universes.
Anyways, after I let everybody know about the new reinforcements, I took a contingent of troops and went to engage the Imperials on one of their few planets. While I was using the Superstar Destroyer we had as a command ship, the smaller Planetary Assault Carriers dived onto the planet as though they were possessed. The Devastators and Stormriders went down first, blasting everything below them with their plasma weapons. The attack was so sudden, so unexpected that only the handful of troops actually on guard were able to fight back to the sudden onslaught. Thaws further compounded by the problem of bombardments from the other Star Destroyers in my fleet as well as the Ion storm the Planetary Assault Carriers were generating causing not only the other Scrin ships to become better at fighting, but also the Imperials were now fighting blind as all their sensors were overloaded by the massive amount of energy produced by the storm. Their weapons weren't working that well either, and several of them fried themselves with feedback when they did manage to get a few shots off. When the ground forces started descending rapidly, the Imperials never had a chance. As soon as the first Nod Avatars started walking out of their transport ships, the forces there were already surrendering.
With the ferocity of the attack, I wondered why we didn't use this technology in our other theatres of war as well. Then I remembered my reason for keeping our most advanced technology secret: the local technology level. The Assembly of Factions (the heads of the GDI, Nod, Soviet Union, Allied Forces, Yuri, CABAL, Zerg, Protoss, Terrans, Yuktobania, Osea, Belka, Usea, and the Interracial Counsel, among many others) had made a joint decision regarding the level of technology that can be used in other universes. That rule was that we couldn't use anything significantly more advanced then what the local population of a given universe had.
Well, while we were in this universe anyways, we could display our full might by using everything we could take and everything we already had. If the Yeerks were watching, we'd give them quite a show of Shock and Awe. If they weren't… well, once we finished up here, we would take the fight back into orbit in the Animorphs Universe. One way or another, they'd see what Scrin and Imperial technology could do sooner or later.