Disclaimer - I do not own anything to do with NCIS. Perhaps some language warnings as well, but as there's no swearing on the show there won't be very much here.

"They've stopped." Kinoan's voice was clear and loud through the intercom system inside Timothy's helmet. He paused in readying the Hopper for take-off. A glance through the window to Harriet in the Hopper to his right told him she had got the message too.

"Where?" There was no time to try to figure out what the unidentified ships were planning. If they could be stopped now, all-out war might be avoided. Timothy wasn't so naive as to think the sudden and impossible arrival of tens of thousands of ships on the edge of his galaxy wasn't a sign of impending battle.

The sickly feeling he had noticed upon his arrival on the Orbiter was stronger now. There was a distortion in the fabric of the universe, a dangerous and ominous bulge, and it was had become steadily more pronounced since the radars began to pick up the ships. Timothy didn't need to talk to Harriet to know she could feel it too. They had both travelled in time, albeit mostly unintentionally, and were now very sensitive to these fluctuations.

"Just by the Zsais system." Zsais was a large but fairly new solar system. A binary system with 27 orbiting planets, ten of which were inhabited, Zsais was monitored but not contacted. Its civilisations were in their early stages and were therefore protected under Galactic Law. This protection would remain until one of the developing life forms developed technology advanced enough to contact other planets.

Or until some power hungry race ignored Peace Force directives and invaded, intent on this easy prey.

"Change course for Zsais." Barked Timothy. "Keep us up to date, Kinoan."

"Of course. Just remember, do not attempt to engage these ships."

Timothy didn't answer. The Hoppers were the most advanced ships the Peace Force had; able to travel almost anywhere the universe instantaneously. This required immense power, so the ships were equipped with only the most basic shielding systems and no weaponry. They also had the ability to cloak themselves so they would not appear on any radar systems. Unfortunately, this also meant their own radars were useless.

"Powering up." Timothy ignited the engine.

"Powering up." The Hangar reverberated to the sound of two Hopper engines screaming to be released.

"Taking off."

"Taking off."

The Hopper's wheels retracted and the powerful engine forced the machine up into the air. It generated an immense amount of thrust and the first few seconds were always tricky. Hoppers were generally easy to pilot but take-off took a strong hand.

Shooting straight through the hangar bay door so fast it was barely a blur, Timothy might have laughed if the situation hadn't been so dire. Flying a one-man space ship felt like nothing else could and Hoppers were the best of them all. The ship responded to the lightest touch and always seemed to know exactly what its pilot wanted. All around him, the tiny cockpit vibrated with the power of the engine but, now they were out in deep space, there was no sound to be heard. Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, so the ships moved silently towards their target.

The intercom crackled into life.

"Ready to jump?" Harriet's voice asked.

"Ready. Three ... two ... one."

The sensation of jumping several thousand light years in an instant was one Timothy had never found words to describe. He had once heard a younger pilot say it was like nothing so much as having your brain sucked into the universe's longest and most powerful vacuum. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but Timothy had known worse ways of travelling.

"Cloaking systems engaged."

"Engaged."

For a moment Timothy's thoughts, disorientated by the jump, revolved around Harriet and how well she was responding to his orders. Something of a loose cannon, Harriet was better known for doing whatever she thought was best.

Then, the shock of what he was seeing sank in and there was no room in Timothy's head for anything except the terrible, sickly feeling flooding his body.

In front of him, stretching out as far as the eye could see, was a massive formation of battleships, clearly armed to the teeth and each one almost the size of the Orbiter itself.

Dense, flickering blue shielding surrounded each one individually. He could just about make out, on the ship closest, rows of lights running across its length. A claw-like contraption stuck out of the front of each ship; a cold, dark metal with lines of red lasers criss-crossing between the poles.

These ships were definitely the source of the distortion Timothy had been sensing.

"Christ." Harriet's voice was low, breathless, and very definitely scared. Timothy had never seen anything like this before and nor, it seemed, had she. That alone would have been enough to raise alarm; there was not a war machine in existence that Harriet didn't know.

"The ships seem to have surrounded Zsais." Kinoan's voice seemed faint. Timothy knew it was in his mind, as the radio signal was as strong as ever. His senses were almost overloaded just looking at these things.

"I know." He replied, slightly surprised at how level his voice sounded when, inside, he was on the verge of freaking out. The distortion in the fabric of the universe was nauseating.

The ships were all facing the blithely ignorant young system a great ring of metal. Though Timothy couldn't see where the row ended, he didn't need Kinoan's input to know they had formed a barrier around Zsais.

"What the hell are they doing?"

Timothy didn't get a chance to answer; the ships did it for them. The blue shields flickered once and died and the red laser beams shooting around inside the claws built in intensity, until they were almost blinding.

"What the hell is ..."

Harriet's question died on her lips. In unison the red lasers shot outward, into the Zsais solar system, so many and so fast that the whole place turned red and Timothy and Harriet could not see a thing. They both threw up their hands to protect their eyes from the glare.

It lasted all of ten seconds. When the laser fire died down, Timothy and Harriet lowered their hands and stared. The ships had also disappeared, vanishing without a trace, and Timothy was left staring blankly into an empty void.

It took a few moments for his brain to comprehend what is was seeing. When it finally registered, Timothy swore and had to fight down the urge to throw up.

Where the Zsais solar system had once burned with new life, there was nothing. Not a trace of its twin suns or its 27 planets, nothing left of the ten new species or any of the flotsam and jetsam of a young system.

Zsais had been utterly obliterated.