Another Left Turn at Albuquerque
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement – sadly all Robotech and Star Wars characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold, Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Notes: This story is an AU version of A Left Turn at Albuquerque, though nobody panic as this does not mean that the original is abandoned as I will be continuing to work on that story as well. It's just the idea for this AU telling came to me when I was starting to reread the original prior to continuing – which I routinely do if I haven't updated something in awhile as its my way of remembering where everyone is and what they're actually doing – and the persistent little plot bunny, though aren't they always, refused to leave me alone. In this AU we will be exploring the absolute havoc the REF could cause if they appeared much earlier in the Star Wars timeline and the size of the monkey wrench they could throw into the plans and machinations of Sheev Palpatine/Darth Sidious.
Also for this AU while I will use some Disney canon – though I will say right now that I am ditching this whole 'the Force is female' nonsense that Kathleen Kennedy and others like her have been pushing ever since The Rise of Skywalker as well as this 'anyone can learn to be a Jedi' nonsense introduced in the Ahsoka series – I will also be using quite a bit of Legends content as well where it is appropriate. Now then let's crack on with the story shall we.
Chapter One
UES Pioneer
Omicron Sector, Milky Way Galaxy
"T-minus five minutes to neutron-s missile test."
Sitting in the command chair at the back of SDF-3 Pioneer's bridge Admiral Rick Hunter resisted, just, the impulse to frown at the announcement from chief tactical officer Lieutenant Kyler Pren. Oh, not at the announcement itself but at what it represented. The test of one of the dozens of neutron-s warheads that had fallen into their collective laps after the defeat of that traitorous bastard General Thomas Riley Edwards and his Grey Squadron.
He wasn't sure that they were doing the right thing by allowing these things to continue to exist. Let alone allowing anyone to use them. Information downloaded from the computers recovered from the remains of Edwards compounds as well as his former flagship the UES Icarus on the weapons was frightening. According to the information the superdense plasma – harvested through some method he didn't understand from the corona of a neutron star – used in the warheads was capable of producing a blast of truly staggering proportions. A blast that if the analysis was right would be capable of completely destroying the surface of a planet as well as setting the atmosphere on fire.
He couldn't help but wonder what the hell they, and indeed anyone, needed a weapon like that for.
After all it wasn't like they didn't already have weapons that were fully capable of destroying the life support capability of a planet in short order. They had had such weapons for decades now after all as even conventional beam cannons, generated as they were from protoculture, were capable of reducing large areas of the surface of an Earth-like planet to molten glass in short order. To say nothing of what reflex weapons – both in the cannon and the torpedo/missile version – could do to a planet especially when used on mass. One only had to look back at the Rain of Death to see that devastation.
Given such power did they really need a weapon that was capable of completely destroying the surface of a planet as well? Should they have that power as he couldn't help but worry what they'd do with it? It would, after all, be far too easy to let that power go to their heads and end up on the same dark path that both the Invid Regent and the Robotech Masters had walked as he understood that there was a great deal of truth in that old Terran saying about how absolute power corrupted absolutely. Having the capability to destroy the life supporting capacity of a planet with a single weapon was, in his mind at least, a dangerous step on the road to becoming potentially as bad as the Masters or the Regent if not worse.
His unease about the weapons had only increased after Dr Lang had gone over Dr Zand's notes on the technology and compared them to the information on this kind of advanced plasma explosive that the Haydonites had shared with them. Emil had noticed discrepancies in numerous areas, discrepancies that suggested that the weapon that they now possessed was both more powerful and more dangerous than they currently believed. After Janice, had agreed with him – that the math didn't add up right – Emil had approached him with his concerns already being aware of his own concern about the missiles. Which had led to their current situation.
"T-Minus four minutes to neutron-s missile test."
Rick sighed aloud. If he could have, he would have ordered the Liberation Fleet, currently being led by the SDF-4 Liberator under General Gunther Reinhardt, gathering at Moon Base Aluce in preparation to drive the Invid off Earth to leave the four neutron-s missiles they had with them on the base. At least until after this field test was run and they had hard information on the true level of destruction this weapons technology could unleash. But sadly, that had not been his call to make but the Plenipotentiary Council – which had become the default government of the Terran race after Earth fell to the Invid Regis – which, in its infinite 'wisdom' had allowed a limited number of the weapons to be issued to them though the majority remained in storage at Space Station Liberty. The most he had been able to do as the fleet admiral was give Reinhardt strict instructions on when the weapons could be used and when they couldn't be.
He just hoped the man, who had a notorious hate for the Invid, wouldn't jump the gun, defy his orders and use the planet killing weapons at his first opportunity. There were seven million humans – a sizeable percentage of their surviving race – living there after all. Seven million who were for the most part slaves to the Invid, people they needed to save, and they couldn't well do that if Gunther used the neutron missiles to kill everything on the planet now could they.
"Something's troubling you isn't it, Rick," a familiar voice said from beside him as a dainty hand touched his arm. Looking over he saw his wife former Admiral Lisa Hayes turned ambassador to the Sentinels Alliance – which allowed her, for the first time, to use her married name of Hunter in a professional capacity without causing confusion in the ranks – looking at him in concern. "This test bothers you?"
"It's not the test, Lisa but what it represents," Rick admitted, "I'm not sure we're doing the right thing by allowing these weapons to continue to exist. Do we have the right to wield such terrible weapons and what could our possession of such power ultimately turn us into?"
The context that they could potentially become as bad as – or worse than – some of the alien villains they'd been fighting on and off for the past few decades went unsaid, though Lisa heard it as clearly as though Rick has said it aloud. And she frowned. She could see where Rick was coming from, she really could. Indeed, she'd be lying if she said that she hadn't wrestled with many of the same questions, and come up with no answers, that Rick was currently wrestling with. They both after all came from a time when many had been unease in many parts of the military about the development of reflex weaponry and the utter devastation that the quantum energy reaction that said weapons exploited could unleash. Now they were talking about a weapon that could potentially be orders of magnitude more powerful than even those immensely destructive weapons.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But one thing I do know this field test is taking longer than we originally thought it would. We should send a message to the liberation fleet advising how were going to be late."
"T-minus two minutes to neutron-s missile test."
"Good point," Rick answered as it had taken them much longer than anticipated to get this test set up. Doctor Lang had wanted them to be a bit further away from the test weapon – five hundred thousand kilometres instead of the originally planned three hundred thousand – and to sync up the instruments and recorders on the Deucalion with those on Liberty which would be monitoring in real time via foldspace comm link. "Communications get me General Reinhardt at Moon Base Aluce."
"Aye sir," communications acknowledged before carrying out the order to hail Moon Base Aluce on fold comm. The distant base answered immediately, and a projector field activated allowing a holographic screen to coalesce into existence in front of Rick showing the face and torso of General Gunther Reinhardt with the physically very imposing form of Captain Vince Grant standing in the background.
"This is Command Base One we read you SDF-3," Reinhardt said.
"General it is good to hear your voice," Rick said in greeting.
"Is there a problem, Admiral we were expecting your arrival an hour ago," Reinhardt asked sounding genuinely concerned.
"There's no problem. Doctor Lang noticed that some of the calculations on the neutron-s missiles weren't adding up," Rick explained. "Janice agreed so we're running a field test. Unfortunately, it's taking longer than expected."
Reinhardt nodded in understanding, like Lisa he was aware of Rick's unease about the neutron weapons even though he didn't personally share it. "Should we delay the attack until you arrive," he asked.
Rick frowned and considered that for a few moments. He knew why the other man was asking the question, between the Pioneer and the squadron of warships that the Plenipotentiary Council had permanently – due in no small part to them having the only currently operational protoculture matrix aboard – assigned to protect and escort her there was a lot of firepower tied up in this battlegroup. Especially as they were all top of the line ships and packed to the gills with the very latest robotechnologies including the new shadow technology. Not to mention they were carrying full loadouts of ground combat mecha and a few divisions worth of infantry and marine forces including some STORM Commandos.
It was a significant force to be sure and one that would be of great help against the Invid hoards that had kept their long suffering homeworld from them for more than twenty years now. But after thinking about for a few moments he decided that his ships wouldn't make much difference, certainly not enough of a difference to significantly delay the start of the attack. After all Reinhardt had the SDF-4 Liberator present along with the whole of the First and Second Fleets - giving him a force whose size and firepower would have given even the Zentraedi at the height of their enslavement to the Robotech Masters pause. He easily had enough firepower and manpower to take Earth back from the Regis and her Invid, especially using all the new weapons and technologies that the Haydonites had either provided to them or - like in the case of the synchro cannons - helped them develop.
Besides the test wouldn't take much longer - he could hear on the other channel Janice over on the Deucalion counting down the final thirty seconds to detonation - and once it was completed and all the data collected for later analysis, they'd space fold straight to Sol.
"Negative," he said at last "just continue as planned. The test won't take much longer and we'll fold to Sol as soon as it's done."
On the holographic screen floating in front of him Gunther nodded and started to open his mouth to speak again - presumably to acknowledge the order. But before he could do so a tremendous boom, like a billion bass drums being hit at once, filled the air and the ship shook fiercely as though suddenly gripped by an earthquake. It was all Rick could do not to be thrown out of his command chair as the sudden shaking was so fierce. Alarms went off, filling the air with a desperate emergency clamour, while sparks and smoke shot out of numerous junction boxes around the bridge.
"Rick what's going on there," Vince Grant asked from the holoscreen where he was standing behind Reinhardt. Rick didn't have chance to reply as a second even more violent shockwave tore through the ship, this time pitching him out of the command chair to the hard metal deck. Simultaneously one of the secondary consoles exploded sending bits of hot plastic flying like razorblades. Flames licked up from the damaged console but only for a moment as fire control nozzles on the ceiling automatically swivelled around and squirted fire retardant at the flames instantly snuffing them out.
Groaning Rick picked himself up off the floor and staggered back to the command chair. A moment before a third violent jolt rocked the ship. A glance showed that unsurprisingly the holographic screen had vanished indicating that long range comms - foldspace comms were always fragile, and sometimes annoyingly buggy, systems - had been temporarily lost. The loss of communication would certainly cause a small panic at Aluce and certainly prompt Reinhardt to dispatch at least one ship to investigate what had happened. And if he knew Vince Grant - and he did as they'd been as close as brothers ever since Vince's elder sister Claudia had died, a pain Rick understood all too well having lost his own adoptive older sibling, Roy in the same war that claimed Claudia's life at the end - then that ship would be the Icarus.
Rick put that out of his mind for now he had other things to focus on. "Report," he ordered "what happened?"
"Sir the neutron-s warhead exploded as planned however the blast was much larger than expected and created an unexpected gravitational and charged particle shockwave. Nothing that we couldn't handle, "Lieutenant Pren reported before checking her console to check the condition of the test planet and gasping in a combination of shock, amazement and sheer horror at what she beheld. In Haydon's name what have we unleashed, she thought.
"Lieutenant? " Rick asked hearing her sharp gasp. The look on the half-Praxian woman's face immediately set numerous alarm bells ringing inside his head.
"Sir the test planet it's... sir it's gone. Sensors confirm that eighty percent of the planets mass was instantly vaporised with the rest, mostly the remains of the core being shattered into asteroids. We are also picking up a spatial anomaly of some kind forming at the flashpoint of the blast."
Jesus Christ an entire planet destroyed by one weapon, Rick thought both stunned and horrified by the destructive power of the neutron-s missile technology. Stunned because while he'd known that the weapons were powerful and destructive enough to effectively kill a planet, he'd never expected they'd be powerful enough to completely destroy one. Horrified for the exact same reason, especially the knowledge of what they could do to an Earth-sized planet. We need to get communications with Earth restored, Rick thought, under no circumstances must they use the neutron-s missiles they have with them. Even if it means Earth remains in the hands of the Invid I will not be responsible for our homeworld's destruction. Though what did Pren mean by a spatial anomaly forming where the planet was?
"Show me," he said after a moment of shocked silence.
"Aye sir."
Immediately a projector field activated, and a holographic screen coalesced into existence in front of him showing an image of where the planet they'd used as a target for the weapons test used to be. As Pren had said the planet was gone, almost completely vaporised by the weapons detonation with only a few large asteroids, themselves shattered fragments of what had once been the planets iron core marking where there had once been a planet. Asteroids that weren't moving outwards as he would have expected them to be, instead they were being drawn towards a large orb of bluish-white light where the warhead itself had been sitting just ten thousand kilometres outside the atmosphere. An orb that was pulsing in a very ominous fashion and periodically emitting brilliant lightning like forks into space that as they passed seemed to make the asteroid debris that they encountered dissolve. Just looking at it set every mental alarm bell he had ringing.
"Analysis?" he ordered after a moment, while watching an asteroid disappear into the mass which pulsed even more ominously as the mass of rock was absorbed.
"Admiral our sensor feeds from the Deucalion indicate that we're looking at a large gravitational and spatial disturbance. It looks like the space inside the anomaly is somehow collapsing. The lightning-like discharges coming off the anomaly appear to be comprised of a combination of positrons and antiprotons," Pren reported a moment before her console chirped indicating fresh data. "Sir gravitational fields are spiking."
As the young woman spoke the orb pulsed more violently than ever, sending out more arks of antimatter lightning before suddenly starting to shrink, collapsing in upon itself folding tighter and tighter until it was only a tiny speck of light. A microsecond later it exploded outwards again sending out a rippling wave of energy and gravitational force that had almost reached the ship when it stopped and began pulling back into a small sphere of pure darkness. A sphere that almost immediately began to be surrounded by an ominous halo of light and he could clearly see the beginnings of an accretion disc forming around the equator,
The anomaly had become one of the deadliest and most destructive forces in the universe. A black hole.
"My god," Lisa breathed, her words hanging pregnant in the air as they clearly summed up the feeling of the bridge crew, and indeed everyone in the fleet who was seeing it, as they saw what the ultimate result of a neutron-s weapon detonation was. The neutron weapons weren't planet killers – that would have been bad enough – no they were at least an order of magnitude more powerful than that. They were star system killers, adding a whole new and devastating meaning to the term weapon of mass destruction.
It made them all determined to stop the weapons with the liberation fleet from being used on Earth. As not only would they destroy the planet but ultimately the whole of the Sol system as everything up to an including Sol itself would eventually be drawn into the hole and out of existence.
After a few seconds, Rick shook off the horrified paralysis that had gripped him upon seeing the singularity form, urgency replacing it as he knew that the fleet couldn't stay here. "Navigation are our space fold generators still online," he asked.
"Yes, sir they are," navigation reported, "all ships are reported that space fold generators are still online and functioning normally."
"Excellent. Alright all ships are to execute an immediate fold to Sol. We have to stop the liberation fleet from using those missiles," Rick ordered the determination in his voice making everyone spring into action, beginning to prepare the ship for the jump to Sol. All of them hoping that they would get there in time to avert a catastrophe.
It was at that moment though that a violent jolt shook the deck.
"What was that," Rick demanded with a frown of concern and confusion. Like everyone on board he was depressingly familiar with the feel and sound of weapons fire striking the side of the ship and that didn't feel anything like that.
"Sir the black hole's gravity field is expanding exponentially," Pren reported after checking her sensors. "At its current rate of expansion, it will start pulling the fleet in within the next twenty minutes."
"Is the gravity field strong enough to affect our space fold yet?"
Pren checked her instruments. "Yes, sir it is," she reported grimly.
"Damn it. Navigation, engage the main engines at full power move the ship out of the gravity field, communications instruct all the other ships to do the same."
"Sir I'm afraid that won't work; the gravitational field is expanding too rapidly," Pren said in response. "There is no way we can outrun its expansion on sublight engines, certainly not from our current standing start. Our ships just mass too much, we'd be fighting inertia too long."
"Then we have no choice but to chance it," Rick answered with a sigh knowing from experience that initiating a fold within a gravity well - especially one as strong as the one being created by the black hole - wasn't a very good idea as it completely randomised both the foldspace entry and exit vectors so you were never precisely sure where you were going to come back into normal space. They'd found that out the hard way back on the SDF-1 when a planned space fold from Earth to the dark side of the moon ended up dumping them out by Pluto. And that had just been a space fold inside a planetary gravity well, he hated to think where space folding inside a black hole's gravity well would take them. Unfortunately, they had no other choice but to take the risk. If they stayed here, then their destruction in the black hole was assured - something that was further reinforced by another violent jolt through the deck beneath his feet as another gravitational wave assaulted the ship - only by taking the risk did they stand a chance of survival.
"Sir are you sure," Pren asked. "This deep in the gravity well…"
"… I know but we cannot stay," Rick answered, "and we can't escape any other way. Dangerous or not there is no choice. All ships continue fold computations. Sync up navigational timers, we will all fold together as soon as the last ships are ready."
"Aye sir."
"Admiral Hunter I have a suggestion," Janice said reminding him that the short range comm channel to the Deucalion was still open.
"Yes Janice?" Rick asked the android as another gravitational wave jolted the ship.
"Admiral while the mass of our ships prevents any of us from having the power to escape the black hole's gravitational influence a probe would not have such difficulty," Janice said. "I propose that before we execute the space fold we launch as many probes as we can, each loaded with a copy of all our data along with a warning about the effect of the neutron-s missiles. Probes that any ship dispatched to find us from either Earth or anywhere in Sentinel Space will be able to retrieve."
"At least that way they'll have a warning about the missiles even if we end up who knows how many light years off course," Rick said thoughtfully. "Proceed with your plan, Janice. Launch the probes as soon as you're ready. We'll space fold immediately afterwards. Navigation relay that to all ships."
"Understood, admiral," Janice acknowledged her voice intermingling with the automatic 'aye sir' from the navigational officer. A moment later another holographic screen came to life showing numerous probes launching from what on a normal Garfish-class light cruiser would have been their VLS missile launchers but which on the Deucalion had been refitted to house long range probes. The probes rocketed away, spreading out as they did so, their engines having just enough power to push them out of the gravity field of the black hole.
"Admiral all ships report hyperspace fold computations completed," navigation reported.
"Execute space fold," Rick ordered as Lisa came up beside him and put a hand on his arm, offering silent support. He looked over at his wife of twenty-two years with a smile and took her hand in his own even as a thrum of power echoed through the ship. Through the viewports at the front of the bridge they could both see the frosted-glass effect of the hyperspace field forming around the ship…
...a moment before all hell broke loose.
Fold spheres enveloped all twenty-two ships of Rick Hunter's command battlegroup, appearing with the normal ripple of energy followed by an effect like a whirling ball of frosted glass as was the norm for a ship about to enter the specific hyperspatial domain known as foldspace which every species known to Terran kind used for faster than light space travel. Again, as normal the outlines of the ships within the bubbles blurred and turned indistinct as they started to shift phase, even as the spheres began to contract. Rapidly shrinking till each was not much bigger than a standard tennis ball.
It was here however that things changed in comparison to a normal fold operation.
Instead of immediately shooting off into the distance on a specific vector – that would see them instantly disappear into foldspace – the spheres became caught in the gravity well of the singularity. Immediately they begam to orbit around it, with each orbit increasing their speed immensely and allowing rippling waves of exotic particles – that could only be produced in the malleable spatial environment around a black hole – adhered to the spheres even as their speed increased exponentially.
For a full minute of relativistic time – or just over an hour at non-relativistic time – the spheres continued to orbit the black hole. Until that was their speed overcame the incredible pull of the singularity and the spheres shot free only a specific vector – vanishing into foldspace with the faintest of ripples and travelling far faster than any fold sphere ever had in the history of any fold capable species. A speed that would take them not just clear of the galaxy and its satellites but the entire galactic supercluster and into another supercluster and a galaxy that had not been visited in countless eons by anyone from the local group.
Haydonite Battleship A109
Omicron Sector. Milky Way Galaxy
That Same Time
In the command room of one of its people's mighty battleships the Haydonite known to Terrans and the other Sentinel races as Ambassador Veidt observed the neutron-s missile test and its consequences with the kind of cold detachment that only a machine race was capable of fully encapsulating. It was mildly disappointed by the outcome as the Awareness had hoped that the SDF-3 – and the protoculture matrix being carried aboard her – as well as the battlefortress escort would be destroyed in the test of the weapons that they'd originally allowed General Edwards and his Grey Squadron followers to acquire.
Which would have ended the threat of protoculture addicts once and for all. After all, while the Terrans had been nothing kind and helpful ever since their first meeting with them the Awareness had foreseen that that would not last - not while they continued to possess and use protoculture. Sooner or later the incredible power that was contained within the Flower of Life would go to their heads. The Haydonites over the last five hundred years had seen where the abuse of such power – power organics could never be trusted to have – led with the rise of the Robotech Masters and the centuries of tyranny they had subjected multiple galaxies too.
The Awareness had determined that eventually the current Terran desire to help others and protect those who couldn't protect themselves – an admittedly admirable sentiment – would change. Would metamorphose into a desire to control and dominate much as it had with the Tirolians. Only the Terrans would be a million times worse than the Robotech Masters had ever been. Especially as the Terrans had shown – repeatedly – that they had a level of martial skill, as well as a gift for innovation that had let them defeat all who stood against them with them defeating even the Robotech Masters. Thus the empire they'd build would subjugate all before it to an even greater degree.
Which was something to be avoided at any cost.
The destruction of the SDF-3 would have ensured that future never came to pass. And the best part of it would have been the Terran leadership would have put it all down to a weapons test gone horribly wrong, if they weren't destroyed themselves either by the Invid or by using the neutron weapons on their own homeworld. But that had not happened.
"Inform the Awareness," Veidt instructed the lesser units manning the control stations that were flush against the walls of the command room.
"As you command ambassador."
"What about the probes launched from the Deucalion," Vowad, one of his fellow command triumvirate members, asked from another part of the command platform which was built around a holographic emitter. "They certainly contain the sensor records of what happened here. We should destroy them so the Terrans never find out; if they do not know the battlefortress containing the protoculture matrix survives they will not search for it and will - once they run out of protoculture - cease to be any threat to us."
"Agreed. Dispatch fighters to intercept and destroy the probes."
"Ambassador, sensors indicate a Terran warship is unfolding nearby, we read one Shimakaze-class artillery cruiser, its transponder identifies it as the Icarus," one of the other lesser units reported, "Captain Vincent Grant commanding."
"They responded quicker than we anticipated. No matter we cannot allow them to interfere with our destruction of the probes," Veidt said. "Dispatch our escort to intercept the Icarus. Detain her and prevent her interfering with the completion of our mission or, if necessary, destroy her, engage with standard weapons only."
"As you command ambassador."
Veidt watched the holographic display as their escorting frigates and cruisers broke off and began to advance upon the Icarus. The Terran warship showed no sign of being aware of them as their stealth systems, which were several generations more advanced than the systems they'd provided the other Sentinels with, keeping their approach hidden from her sensors. Instead, the vessel seemed to be manoeuvring out of the gravitational influence of the black hole, using what per their sensors was a modified fold sphere only using the dimensional shift field of the stealth system instead of her space fold generators to create and maintain the sphere.
Ingenious and showing again why the Awareness regards them as a serious potential threat, Veidt thought as he watched the small but powerful warship emerge from the black hole's influence, the sphere around it collapsing as it did so. New information appeared on the holo display informing him that the Icarus had begun thoroughly scanning the area – the pattern of the scans being a clear search pattern. The scans quickly detected the probes and the cruiser instantly changed course moving to intercept the closest one, her intention to recover it perfectly obvious.
Thankfully the first of their escort frigates distracted her unleashing a barrage of anti-ship missiles towards her. The salvo was small and wouldn't tax the cruisers defences to any appreciable degree - but then it wasn't meant to. Instead. it was meant to distract which it did admirably as, despite being obviously too startled to launch their lethally fast and nimble defensive missile in time to stop the salvo, the Terrans opened fire on the incoming missiles; their defensive pulse laser batteries throwing out a dense web work of energy flak that even the Invid – the galaxies undisputed masters of swarm tactics – had learned to be cautious around. Instantly missiles began dying, punched into hazy balls of vaporised metal by the bright yellow energy pulses. Only three making it past the initial cordon of defensive fire, another missile died a moment later - another victim of a laser pulse - but the other two slammed into a faintly glowing translucent silver screen of energy that appeared right in their path and instantly disintegrated on contact with the pinpoint defence barrier.
Obviously annoyed, and unwilling to let the attack go unanswered, the Icarus fired back at the offending frigate with her main turret. Her initial salvo fell short, the aim thrown off by the frigates stealth, but not deterred the Terrans fired again and this time the frigate was hit dead on. Immediately the frigates shields flared into visibility, crackling with static-like arcs of energy as they fought to resist the beams of supercharged protoculture=generated particles. The beams disappeared and still the frigates shields glowed with the strain of dispersing and deflecting so much imparted energy. Icarus fired again and this time the frigates shields failed allowing the beams to cut deep into the hull inflicting a brutal amount of damage. Secondary explosions erupted and the now burning frigate spun away out of control as the beams disappeared.
It exploded a few seconds later as compromised reactors let go.
Had he been capable of it Veidt would have scowled as he saw one of his ships be, seemingly effortlessly, destroyed. Though it wasn't surprising, Terran particle beam weapons were incredibly sophisticated and powerful things even by Haydonite standards. As he watched the other frigate and one of the cruisers attempted to avenge their comrade, sending vicious barrages of blood red positron beams towards the Terran warship. Most of the shots, their targeting systems being disrupted by both the black hole and the Icarus electronic countermeasures, went wide. Only one or two actually hit the cruiser and were easily intercepted and blocked by her pinpoint barriers.
The Icarus responded to the attack by firing a barrage of anti-ship plasma missiles at her antagonists forcing the cruiser and frigate to defend themselves.
"Ambassador, sensors indicate that the Icarus has established a tight-beam radio link with one of the probes and is uploading the data," another lesser unit reported even as their ships began shooting down the Terran missiles. Which was far from easy as Terran missile technology was frighteningly advanced, if anything it was even more advanced than their energy weapons were, and as such the missiles would and did take evasive action even as they continued to close on their targets. Still, they managed to down all but two of the missiles the two survivors detonating harmlessly against the shields of the cruiser.
"Destroy that probe now. We cannot let them take the data."
"It's too late. They have disengaged the signal and are initiating space folding."
"Instruct our ships to switch to disruptors we cannot allow them to escape."
"Too late," Vowad commented as the holo display showed a fold sphere envelop the Icarus and contract before shooting into the distance as the ship vanished into hyperspace - just ahead of a salvo of beams that would have in concert with the ship's dimensional shift field initiated a disruptive wave in the ship's reflex furnace causing the energy loci in the core to become completely desynchronised resulting in first an overload and then energy implosion - which would destroy the ship.
"Well, that was not foreseen," Veidt said showing no irritation - or in fact any emotion at all - to the fact that the Icarus had escaped. Emotions were for organics not by nature superior cybernetic creatures like himself. "But it matters not. The Terran forces have already engaged the Regis' forces in combat and will soon be forced to use the neutron weapons. Even at maximum speed the Icarus will not reach the planet in time to warn them."
"We should still inform the Awareness of this development," Vowad counselled. "We should also begin working to precisely identify and track the hyperspace vector of Admiral Hunter's battle group. Just in case the Awareness decides that pursuit is required."
"Agreed though even for us it will be difficult considering the nature of the environment in which they folded, and the extreme acceleration imparted by the singularity," Veidt agreed prompting Vowad to nod in agreement, both understood the difficult at the best of times job of tracking a ship through foldspace would be even more difficult now. Even with their methods as while the Haydonites had the most advanced technology of all the known spacefaring races even they had their limits.
"Difficult or not we will do it if the Awareness asks it of us."
"Agreed."
Authors Note: Well this first chapter of the AU version is done. It is mostly the same as the original as the original as the events that send the SDF-3 and her escort to the Corusca Galaxy haven't changed from the original. Just some minor rewriting was necessary as some of the scenes were bothering me a bit on rereading them and I couldn't resist the temptation to redo them to be more to my liking – what can I say I can be my own worst critic at times – and I have reclassified the Icarus again as she seems to me to be more of a long range artillery vessel – a sniper meant to lay down fire from long range with her synchro cannon and missiles – than her canon designation as a battlecruiser. Though as before I have upgraded the defensive capabilities of the vessel – seriously what is it with canon third and forth generation robotech warships and not having sufficient point defences when their first generation ships had very formidable ones that even the Zentraedi were wary of?
Finally I will say they will be arriving in the Corusca Galaxy at some point during the prequel trilogy though when exactly – and how big of a monkey wrench they could throw into Palpatine's plans just by being present let alone potentially intervening somewhere – I will leave to your imaginations for now. Oh and let me reassure you all once again that the original story has not been discontinued in favour of this one as it is still being worked on and I have no intention of stopping, though I will ignore some of the more ridiculous stuff to come out of Disney with regards to Star Wars in recent years. Until next time.