From his station on the small ship, the Lt calls, "Captain, Sleeper Lure has reached target location. Time to activation T minus 120 minutes… Mark."
The captain nods, "Well done Lieutenant [Lt]. Helmsman, take us to the Mass Relay and prepare to head back to Shaanxi."
The helmsman calls back, "Aye, aye, sir. Proceeding at full speed."
The captain sits back to keep an eye on the goings on until they arrive.
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Nearly an hour later, the peace of the bridge is shattered by one of the midshipmen, "Captain, we have bogies on scanners, they don't show up on the magic detectors."
The captain sits up in his chair, "Helmsman, how long until Mass Relay activation?"
Calling over his shoulder, the helmsman responds, "10 minutes sir."
The captain calmly clicks on the ship wide comms, "Very well, prepare for evasive manoeuvres, keep in range of the relay if at all possible. Comms, open radio channels and broadcast greetings. Doc, break out the living death. All crew, be prepared for emergency dive. I repeat, all crew be prepared for unscheduled dive. May the goddesses be with us, and allow us through the relay. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say I don't fancy learning to be an adult again if we have to dive."
Once he's switched off the ship wide comms, the captain takes a deep breath before lifting a clear plastic cap on the console in front of him. With trembling hands he turns the dial to level 12 and closes the cap. "First officer, please confirm dive drive settings."
The first officer looks at their own console, "Dive drive set to level 12. Sir, is there any reason why we're not retreating to level 4 now?"
In lieu of the captain, the ship itself responds, "Due to how tightly bound the first four realms are, it is possible that taking weapons fire could draw us back to realm:2. Naval doctrine states that unshielded travel to realm:5 is not allowed for any ships except during an emergency dive. Emergency doctrine is to dive to at least realm:12 and activate the emergency beacon."
The first officer grimaces as he remembers how long it takes to enable the shields for aether travel, "I retract my query."
The crew member on comms calls out, "No response on to our radio messages. Repeating on all known channels."
A minute later, an able shipman jogs onto the bridge and hands everyone a vial of living death. As the captain receives his, he lifts the protective cover on the emergency dive system.
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With five minutes till relay activation, the unidentified vessels reach long range for their weapons and open fire. As they do, the Lt on sensors calls out, "Incoming fire, evasive manoeuvres!"
Less than a second later, there a large bang echoes through the superstructure of the ship. In response, the ship cries out in pain, "We're hit, mundane engines are offline."
Grimly, the captain flicks the emergency dive switch before activating the ships comms, "All crew, Diving! Diving! Diving! This is not a drill. Take living death in 10 seconds."
As the aether drive activates, the helmsman turns around to face the captain, "Emergency recall anchor is active. Good luck captain, see you on earth."
As the last of the bridge crew drink their potions and slump lifelessly at their stations, the captain stands up from his chair to make his mandatory tour of the small ship and ensure that all the crew are accounted for.
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Tiredly the captain sits at his desk, "Dicta quill log. All crew are in slumber and Magicite shielding has been disabled. The aether anchor has activated correctly, and life shielding is powering on correctly. Time to completion, 48 hours ship time. Time to lure activation, 45 days ship time." He sighs, "The ship is now running on runic controls and the MI [Magical Intelligence] has full control. Status of the electronic systems is unknown, presumably non-operable."
With the official log completed, the captain fills a glass with his personal store of whiskey, "Personal note. This is odd. Not five minutes ago we had less than an hour to vacate the system before the lure went off. Now we have all the time we could ever need, but we can't leave just in case we attract the sleepers ourselves."
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The captain looks at his empty bottle of whiskey mournfully, "Dicta quill log. Live shielding has just activated. All crew have shown normal acclimatisation to aether levels. With all systems confirmed operating nominally I will be taking my own living death potion shortly."
The captain picks the bottle up and checks it for any liquid left, "Personal note. This is creepy, like being on a ghost ship. The only sounds on the ship are the ones I make myself, as the aether drive is absolutely silent. The crew. Oh goddesses, the crew are dead. I know that they're still alive, same as everyone that's been through training. But living with it for two days is a different matter. I drank the last of my whiskey three hours ago. Before I join my crew in the living death, please tell my wife that I'm sorry. I'll try to get retraining on Shaanxi, but the planetary life shield there is still so new."
With a last look at the parchment, and it's six hourly reports, the captain picks up the quill and lays it down beside the parchment. Standing up, he walks over to the media player and restarts the play list he was listening to.
As he does the ship speaks up, "Captain, thank you for keeping me company while all my systems were coming online."
The captain smiles, "It was my pleasure. I'll see you on the other side."
The ship sounds doubtful, "I doubt that sir, after all, this is a relay ship and you are now disqualified to captain one."
The captain sits on his bed before lifting his vial in a salute, "Then it was a pleasure to serve with you. Bottoms up."
A few seconds after his drunk the contents of the vial, the captain falls back onto the bed as if dead.
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On board a turian frigate, the comms officer calls out, "Sir, the unknown vessel is broadcasting on radio frequencies, but has not ceased trying to operate the Mass Relay."
The patrol leader gives the turian equivalent of a sigh, "Send the data back to Palaven, and fire a warning shot across their bow. Then broadcast the standard cease and surrender message. Signal the other patrol ships to cut off access to the other relays in case they try to run."
Around the bridge crew member start their assigned tasks as the patrol leader continues, "They're probably just suit rats trying to find another hole to hide in." Almost as an afterthought they call out, "If they cease trying to activate the relay, hold fire."
A few seconds later the turian on sensors calls back, "Patrol leader, they have started evasive manoeuvres using an unknown propulsion method!"
The patrol leader nods, "Fire at will, try to disable the ship if possible."
Sensors calls back, "We hit their engines patrol leader… Patrol leader, the ship, it's just disappeared!"
The patrol leader shouts, "Comms, notify all ships. All ships, search the area, find anything you can."
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An hour passes while the three-ship patrol combs the area looking for any wreckage.
Comms calls, "Patrol leader! Something has just happened on Theta 1!"
The patrol leader looks over in surprise, "What happened?"
"I don't know. It's like something took a bite out of the planet."
"Bring up a visual if you can. Comms send all the data and communications we have since we detected the unidentified ship. Then keep streaming live until I countermand the order."
As a holo projector starts to show a 'live' view of what's happening on the planet, the entire bridge stare as they watch something with far too many tentacles take a visible chunk out of the planet before disappearing as another thing appears.
After a few seconds the patrol leader hisses, "Spirits!" Pulling himself together he starts calling out orders, "Comms, signal the patrol, full retreat. Helms, get us out of here."
As the helmsman tries to activate the drive, the wing leader calls, "Patrol leader, the engineer reports the eezo reactor is offline. They also claim that we're rapidly losing eezo!"
"Helm, get that relay open! Comms, signal the patrol, we are leaving through that relay!"
Comms calls back, "Patrol leader, comms and computers are all showing massive errors."
Sensors calls out, "Patrol leader, contact coreward, 20 thousand klicks and closing at 0.6c. No energy signatures to speak of…"
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As the holo projector turns off, patrol leader Voluvia turns back to flight leader Naevia, "Hunt leader, we lost contact with the patrol during their routine inspection of relay 314. As you have just seen, their last communication said that they discovered a ship trying to activate the relay."
Naevia chirps irritatedly, before saying, "Where did the ship come from?"
Voluvia lets her crest droop, "Unknown hunt leader. They're still going over the data, but so far the sensor readings don't match any known vessels. They also didn't detect any eezo emissions, which is why it took them so long to detect the vessel."
Naevia lets out an amused squark as her crest flares slightly, "The STG know that trick, just switch off your FTL drive after you've dumped the heat. They use it to run silently while activating relays. They keep forgetting about their ships heat profiles."
After tapping at her datapad for a few minutes Naevia looks up, "Notify hunt leader Kandros, as his reaction fleet is closest. If the aliens aren't using FTL then they can't have gone far. If we can catch the updraft, we can find out what the dirt crawlers thought they were doing, once we can communicate."
