First Contact…..Again
Onboard The Batarian Heavy Cruiser The Kurhes
Helm is that Relay Open yet?" Not long before a hurried reply met his ears
"Sir it…it won't turn on, keeps saying something about debris Blocking it".
The Captain sat back putting his feet on his console, "Have you run the Clear Function yet?".
For a moment Dead silence Claimed the Bridge "Errr well no we aren't cleared to " the captain stopped halfway through leaning back into his chair "Wha.? by who?
The Helmsman dawns a confused look "The Citadel sir the relay could break small moons up with the clear function they would want us to ask for-"
"Oh, I don't give a shit about the citadel's laws we don't follow any of them, to begin with, just open the damn thing!" The helmsman looked almost shocked "Sir we can't just ignore the citadel's laws we have to-"!
"OPEN THE RELAY we are Batarians we have ALWAYS ignored their laws I knew you were new but holy fuck you won't make it far in the Hegemony at this rate".
"Oh, and comms tell the frigates to form up on us and prepare for a Relay jump".
Onboard The SDS Destroyer Cobalt in Sol
Captain Vass was about halfway to the bridge elevator before he heard his XO call out on the comlink "Sir we have some sort of anomaly not far from the orbit of Pluto huge amounts of electricity and heat in one of its moons" Vass stopped in his tracks "what's its distance from us?"
"About 9.7 Million kilometers sir it's a miracle we saw it. Even given its size and thermal signature" Vass Sighed internally there was no other ship In the portal zone far out whatever this was it was his problem "Well that settles it then too far for normal flight, commander prep us for an intersystem jump to a distance of 125,000 Ks"
He got a response from her quickly "Will do sir" Vass had both his behind his back as he walked back to his terminal, "this is going to be one of those days I guess" he thought to himself.
Onboard The Batarian Heavy Cruiser
"We are jumping in 3..2..1" The ship lurched forward before arriving at its destination
"Report!" the Captain yelled out.
"Well, we only drifted 15,000 Ks. The systems seem to be green, the two frigates just dropped in with us each with about a 12,000 K drift and…. Wait, what is that?" the Captain was quick to respond "Good I'm going to take a slave to My quarters get the bridge crew up and moving i want this whole system checked before I'm back" He was halfway out of his seat Before he was met with a response.
"Sir We have Contact!" "WHAT" he fell straight back into his chair scrambling to pull up the holomap "What is it god dammit!" The captain was scared shitless, tales of the Rachni War already bouncing around in his head. "some sort of Super Cruiser or light Dreadnought less than 150,000 Ks from our position!"
"DID YOU JUST SAY A DREADNOUGHT!"
Onboard The SDS Cobalt
They had exited FTL nearly 1 minute ago but had not so much as made a sound they had just sat awestruck at the 26-kilometer long…. Well, no one was sure what it was, their time to think was soon to be up.
He had been simply unable to understand what he was seeing but after the first, well however long he had just been staring at it he saw right off its side what looked almost like a streak of blue lightning "New Contact 149,000 Ks out and 695 Meters in length with 2 195 meter long cutters not much farther!" This snapped the crew out of their awe of the 26-kilometer-long object "Back us up 15,000 Ks NOW! Lock rail guns and missiles on the larger contact and relay to high com Earth is getting up to something!" and get me a visual of that new contact!"
He heard a stream of yes sirs and ayes and before he even got a second to process all of this "I uh I got the contact on camera sir" "Put it on then!' what he saw made his blood run cold.
That wasn't the UNSA "Call the admiral"
Onboard The Batarian Heavy Cruiser
The bridge was silent for a moment before one of the up till now silent crewmen spoke up "Bah, these are mere primitives no Ezzo detected no wonder it has a dreadnought tonnage it has no mass distortion" The captain seemed to process this slowly before snapping out from his daze.
"No Ezzo detected on their ship there fucking prims with a dreadnought how did they manage that?" The captain seemed both confused and excited with all his new information and first contact with a pathetic race that hadn't even mastered the relay's easy pickings for the slavers. "Get all crew to action stations and prepare to engage these primitives. I want live samples for the hegemony."
Deadsiliance ruled the room no one so much as coughed "SIR ARE YOU INSAN-" BANG the helmsman who had finally tried his luck one too many times slumped back into his chair with a new hole in his skull "Any other dissonance what to speak up!"
One of the crewmen said, "Sir, are you sure about this? It's one thing to break a rock without their permission but starting a war the council will be pissed."
"Bah, this will barely be a fight let alone a war they don't care much besides a council member was taking shots at the humans for just as shitty of a reason as we are about to be. Like what 20-30 years ago?"
He watched on his console as the distance between his ship and the prims pathetic as they were trying to run "Now prepare to fire on my command"
Onboard The SDS Cobalt
"Captain Vass I'm sure you have a good reason to be wasting my time with this call" the admiral stated already a look of annoyance on his face present as it always was on Admiral Derhachov.
"Sir, we have possible first contact we need more ships and well, I don't fucking know this is your realm." for once the admiral's unfazed look died quickly and now Admiral Derhachov looked completely surprised 'Wh- what? When did this happen?" but before Either he or the admiral could get so much as another word out the ship Lurched and he was thrown forward almost losing his balance as he felt something impact the ship
the call turned into pure static as it appeared to have lost connection by the looks of it not that it was of great concern at the moment "What the fuck just happened?" "Unknown contact is engaging us, just hit us with an Insane railgun of sorts the 2 cutters are trying to hit our flanks!"
"Give the order that all railguns open fire on the big one!, and get missiles locked on the fast fuckers, and use the heavy warheads, and Get our Skelters up and ready to engage god dammit!"
The ship shook as 4 100 kilogram Slugs moving at 0.5% the speed of light leaped from their barrels and closed the distance of a mere 11,000 Kilometers in an instant slamming into its target.
Doing to the eyes of the crew nothing
Onboard The Batarian Heavy Cruiser
"HOLY SHIT EVASIVE MANEUVERS" Captain Tarak had never seen a single ship that size with such firepower 107 kilotons in one Volly even if they were 4 separate projectiles only the Destiny Ascensions maingun had such strength "Keep firing you dimwits!''
"Sir kinetic barriers down to 2.3%" The ship shook as its gun fired a return hitting the bottom side of the dreadnought causing noticeable but minimal damage "What is that thing made out of!"
But before anyone else said a thing over 900 fast-moving objects started to pour out of the unknown ship "Shit missiles! Warn the frigates!" The captain yelled out hoping they could outrun the damned things but doubting they would, he could only hope they would survive the barrage.
Not to mention his problems with the unknown ship's main guns.
Onboard The SDS Cobalt
"The cutters are changing course sir, they're heading back to the Unknown object!" Vass was confused, to say the least, they seemed to have scared the escorts, "Time till missile interception?" "49 Seconds" not good enough "shit, time till main batteries are recharged?"
The crewmen looked down at his console for a moment before shouting his answer: "Battery crews say 11 Seconds, sir." "Good, fire the batteries on separate targets, hit those cutters when ready, and aim for their propulsion." Vass was praying to whatever god was out there for those shells not to over-penetrate the hull.
No more than 12 seconds later, four more rounds left the barrels of their guns, hurling toward the Batarian ships. One pair hit its mark. A brief golden shimmering overcame the back end of the ship before one of the rounds slammed into the engines, obliterating them. The other salvo, however, zipped out into open space as the other cutter barely avoided the rounds.
Before anyone could cheer or even acknowledge the hit and miss, the Cobalt shuddered as 3 rounds in rapid succession impacted the ship Vass was caught completely off guard "What the fuck was that!" the chief engineer dawned a look of horror "that fucking heavy destroyer just put 2 breaches in the hanger deck we have at least a dozen casualties!"
"Shit, okay then redirect all missiles towards the undamaged cutter and focus all railgun fire on the super destroyer!"
The missiles already close to their targets were near impossible to evade. The one directed to the disabled ship swung right into the path of the undamaged frigates. With nearly 500 making an impact, the ship was decimated, with only 200 being stopped by the kinetic barriers. Only a few small pieces of scrap were left of the ship flinging into deep space.
"Sir the super destroyer is changing course back towards the anomaly!" It's trying to run back to where it came from, Vass had no intention of letting that happen. But before the railguns recharged the ship disappeared in a blue flash as a blue strike of blue lightning shot off into deep space at a truly unbelievable pace. "Sir from what I can tell the ship just entered a form of FTL " Vass was confused. There was no antimatter spike and it was moving way too fast to be using a… unless it didn't need a drive core, because there was one already here waiting for it. The anomaly was a goddamn gateway for hostile aliens, Into Sol.
Onboard The Batarian Heavy Cruiser
"Well, shit" For 37 years he has served the hegemony navy and its various less-than-legal task forces, and not once had he been so sure that he had bitten off more than he could chew that he doubted he would still captain this ship after today. Or any other ship, ever again
Edited and reposted on Aug 28th 2024