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Cicion walked into the outskirts of the city. There were a few tall buildings, but mainly ship docking facilities and perimiter defenses. As he walked into the city's downtown area he was glad the Salrilians were such efficient traders. So much trade went on in Salril Prime that there were at any given time a million non-salrilians in each major city, or more. Much more in the case of this, main city. He even spotted other Phylydions. They were probably all PhylSec agents posing as traders, of course. He quickly proceeded to a terminal and brought up a map of the city. Finding the temple, he proceeded in its direction.
------------------ -Traek Cicion of the Taeskor
"Never tell me the odds!" -Han Solo
"Then we'll do it real quiet-like." -Han Solo
Captain Pharris awoke with a start. A buzzer was sounding insistantly in his ear. The ECM officer was on the comlink with something that required the captain's immidiate attention. Pharris rolled out of his bunk, and in ten minutes he was on the bridge.
The ECM chief had piles of printouts on large rolls of paper piled all over his station. He had a map of the sytem out, and was displaying recorded radar logs on the displays.
"Three hours ago, these special forces bases launched sixty ships each. They cloaked and spread out. Luckily I was watching the sensors when they went under, and got a sample of the cloaking frequencies" he pulled up a line on the screen representing EMF activity within a certain frequency
"When they were close together, I managed to get a nice listen to their cloaking signature. They are all useing a relatively new model emmitter, which is pretty good at masking it's emissions well below the normal noise level. I lost most of the ships, but every so often I keep on catching little bits and pieces of the signature all over the system. I didn't want to wake you, but I wanted to show y- Hold on..." The ECM chief grabbed the earpiece on his headset and looked at the cascade displays. His face lit up. He froze the cascade, pulling the frozen image onto a second monitor. He started to playback the recording he had just captured.
"Got another one! Here, check it out!"
He plugged another set of headphones in and handed them to the Captain. He listened intently, but he heard nothing but the background noise.
"I don't hear anything"
"what? here, lemme tune it a bit more" He adjusted several levels on the translation and played it back again
"Listen for it... right.... Now! there, hear it?"
The Captain strained to listen, but still could only hear the noise
"you must be deaf, Skip, here let me show you" He singled out three cascade lines, and foucused on five seconds of the recording. He extended the cascade display for the five seconds across the screen, enlarging it greatly, and excentuating the fluxuations in what looked like ordinary background noise. "There, see it now?"
The Captain was getting frustrated "No, it just looks like noise!"
"C'mon! look at it! look hard! There, see the pattern?" The ECM chief was running his finger across the cascade displays, gesturing wildly.
"I don't see ****! It looks like noise!"
The ECM chief groaned in frustration, took his grease pencil and started scribbling a wavy line across the screen. When he finished, he turned towards the captain "There! now do you see it?"
Captain Pharris stared hard, matching the pencil line with the fuzzy Frequency line. Then, just for a moment, he saw it. The pattern was there. it was incredibly faint, even with the ECM officer's scrawled guide, he could just make out the peaks over the noise. "wow... How the hell did you find that in all this mess? I can barely see it with your guideline!"
"Well, first of all, I'm the best, second, we've got top notch equipment, and third of all, I got lucky. I managed to get a solid listen to the signature when I saw the fleet cloak, then I went back and cut the recording down and started listening to each frequency individually, trying to find where the pattern was. The trouble is, the cloaking devices have randomisers. They jump frequency to keep from being tracked, but they can't change the EMF signature of their cloaking device very easily, each cloak field generator core gives off a unique pattern. The only way to change it is if you dissassemble the cloaking device and mess with the core itself. Luckily for us, these guys seem to be useing military spec parts, so the ships all sound about the same, but if I spent a couple of hours cleaning these records up, I could probably tell each of the ships apart, but there's really no need to do that."
"Could they track us the same way you're doing?"
"Yeah, I guess so, but they never got a really solid feel for our cloak signature. The only time you can really see it clearly is just as the ship is cloaking or decloaking, and we had those jamming pods going full blast when we went under. Those jamming pods make the mess we're hiding in now look crystal clear. Without a clear picture of our cloaking device's EMF signature, they could be less than ten kliks out before they would notice us. I can see them from much farther away, though it's been pretty sporadic, as you can see."
He pointed to the map that was spread out over the console. The second ECM officer was marking down another few marks on the map. He drew their location, then added a time and a tracking number.
"Basically, we have to do this all by ear. The computer's pretty good, but this sort of thing is almost more of my gut feeling than any sort of algorithm I could write for the computer. It's not something any old ECM guy can do, you gotta have a real solid grip on your equipment, and you gotta have the ears for it. Most people couldn't see the pattern I just showed you if you gave em a million years, Hell, Most computers wouldn't have picked that one out. Basically, right now all we have Ensign Malloy here listening to the live feeds and recording the time and locations of anything he hears. The trouble is, we can usually only get a solid glimpse of them during gaps or irregularities in the background noise, otherwise they're doing a good job of staying in levels of high interference. Maloy and I have been switching off for the last five hours. Malloy's got good ears, better than any of the others in ECM, but he still can't catch everything, I have to run back through the tapes again to make sure they're clean. Then I'm gonna bring the next watch up a bit early and see how they do at picking out patterns. They've been listenining to this pattern in their walkmen since I first got it, and most of them should have it down pretty solid by now, we just gotta see who's got the ears to catch a Sal cloaking device."
The ECM officer smiled. He looked incredably tired.
"You make sure to get some sleep when the watch comes up, You can't hear **** if you're passed out on the console"
The ECM chief chuckled "All right sir, if you insist... oh yeah, you probably want to check out that map, It's got a listing of all the contacts and the last solid reading we had on their position."
The ECM Officer slumped down in his chair and started to play back the latest tapes. He watched the cascades slowly go across the screen, his skilled eyes watching for patterns so subtle even the best ECM computers would have trouble seeing.
Captain Pharris looked at the map. There were points and circles. The points represented the actual contact, and the circle represented the distance the target could have moved since it was last acquired. There were a few large, heavily escorted science vessels cruising around the system, but they were obviously a decoy, or a secondary effort at best. The cloaked Special ops ships were undoubtably the most dangerous. While it was possible to occasionally get a glimpse of them, sustaining any sort of tracking on them was quite difficult. They were searching out all the EMF hot zones in the system, the asteroid belts, the Inner Smog clouds, the rings and most worrisome, many were already patrolling around the star. They hadn't made any abvious moves indicating that they had spotted him, but he didn't expect them to do anything arouse suspiscion. He didn't know whether to try to risk bugging out now, or to sit tight and wait. If the Sals kept up like this, they would eventually find him out of dumb luck. If he tried to sneak out, he would first have to run past the science vessels patrolling the open space of the system, and eventually he would have to get through the static sensor perimeter, which had been difficult to run when the Sals had their guard down, now the slightest hint of his ship would bring the entire Sal defence armada down upon him.
Captain Pharris got on the turbolift and went to engineering to check on the Chief's progress with the cloaking device.
He walked into engineering, and saw half the Engineering team wearing protective clothing, working on the Cloaking device in the "hot" side of the Engineering bay. Sparks were flying, and the power conduits were glowing white. The Chief engineer finished a spot weld he was working on, and walked out of the Shop through the double doors. Now on the safe side of the glass, he pulled off his mask, and watched his team at work. His face was red, and his hair was soaked with sweat.
"This is absolutely crazy. We're fixing the damn thing while it's still running. it's insane. At least I left all my diagnostic leads inside it when I put the thing back together. I still don't totally understand the thing. When I went with XO to buy the thing, it looked pretty normal, just sort of beat up, once I got it on board and opened the sucker up, I realised how ****ed up the thing was. It wasn't even finished yet! I had to build half of the relay switches from scratch, not to mention that generator core. I'd never seen anything like it, It was amazing, the only problem was it couldn't stand the sustained duration we needed, so I had to open the core up and rebuild it. It worked, but we still need to do more work on it, and just about the only thing we can't mess with while it's running is the core itself. I think I could give you an extra week, if we shut the thing down for about six hours of work. The only problem is that there's no safe place to hide for that long, so I think we have about six more days out of it before the core will just stop functioning. Then we'll need to overhaul. We're in deep ****."
"Tell me about it. Worst thing is, ECM is all over the place, The Sals sent some of their best hunters after us, and in this mess, ECM can hardly see them, let alone track them, so we can't really get a good idea of what we're dealing with. ECM thinks that they don't have a good record of the cloaking device's EMF signature, and that they won't be able to see us without running into us first, which is good, but If they have our sig, we're ****ed, but really, we're ****ed either way, there are enough of them that we can't stay hidden for long."
"We're between a rock and a hard place, Skip."
"I'll find us a way out, I'll think of something..."
I'd better...
------------------
The ECM officer stared at the display in front of him, drifting in and out of a daze-like sleep. He had been staring at it for almost six hours, and aside from the occasional subtle frazzle of a Salrilian EMF signiture (which had become commonplace now) he had been staring at and listening to nothing but background noise. Once again, he found himself drifting off again, as the dream image of Wermer Luxury Yacht began to sail in fron of him once more. Before he could climb into its welcoming hottub, the image disappeared when a distortion slid past the window and the EMF reading spiked. He woke up with a start and knocked a stack of disks on the floor as he scrambled for the console. The disks made a clatter so loud he thought the Salrilian vessel may very well have heard it. He let out a yelp and froze, then a smile began to grow on his face. The Sals had gone right past them, and didn't do anything. They couldn't see them! The Officer began to laugh uncintrolabley.
Captain Pharris marched in, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "What's so funny?" He asked grogily.
The ECM Officer gathered himself for a response. "They flew right over us and didn't even see us!" He went back to laughing.
Pharris nodded agreeingly, acknowledging the fact that he wasn't awake enough to fully react, and headed back to his quarters.
The ECM officer continued to laugh.
"Is that a positive Identification?" The voice crackled over the radio.
"It has been for some time. I am transferring their position right now. Orders?"
"None. Send the message to Cal Sev where they are, and let us simply observe their movements for now."
"Yes, your excelencey. One more thing I should point out,"
"Yes?"
"They didn't react when a straffed them. They cannot track us."
This puzzled Verad. "If they stole that cloaking device, they should have searched for EMF signitures identicle to theirs..."
"They may not have figured that out."
"They would have to be incomprensibley stupid to overlook that, and they obviously are not. They must have been given the device by their employers. We must observe them for now. We will force them to move when Cal Sev arrives."
------------------ Verad Ex-Taeskor and Salrilian Auspex
An Audemedon sentry stood silently in the darkness. Its eye was tuned to infra-red signals. Unfortunately for it, knives do not give off heat, except for the minimal amount on the handle from the hand of its user. The user was not holding it, and the sentry dismissed the minimal trace as nothing. In a nanosecond, one was lodged in the sentry's head, through the eye. A shadow silently jumped down to the ground next to the sentry and retreived the knife. Cicion walked past it and into the main Temple entrance, then stopped and crouched. Two Salrilian guards were blocking the inner chamber, as he had expected. He took a vial of red powder from his pocket and spread it on his knifeblade. He then ran silently and gave them both a nick on the tail. Both instantly fell dead. Still bearing his blade, Cicion walked through into the chamber of the spheres, and found the one he had been sent to retrieve. He started to walk back, then frowned and extracted his sense tendrils. #Someone else is here,# he thought, and then, with surprise, #A Phylydion!# He turned and prepared to fight.
A Phylydion stepped out, silently, from behind a pillar, and stood, legs spread wide apart, twenty feet away from Cicion. He was wearing Salrilian-style garb, but there could be no mistaking the boots. They were identical to the ones Cicion was wearing, excepting the fact that all Pure Taeskors' boots were tailored to exactly fit their feet. The man smiled slowly. "What better way to kill you than with another of your kind?" He stepped a few feet into the room and drew his blade. It was a proper KeuTae(KAY-oo-TAY-uh, "TaeBlade"), but it had been altered by the "Profits", as Cicion jokingly called them, and had a channel down the blade, undoubtedly a poison channel which drew from a supply in the handle. Cicion had the advantage that the renegade did not know that his blade was also poisoned. The Renegade Taeskor put himself into fighting stance, and Cicion also prepared himself. The renegade lunged forward, and Cicion dodged and counterthrust. his blade was deflected by the renegade's, and they went into a fight that more closely resembled a sword fight than a knife fight. #This is taking too long,# thought Cicion. Suddenly he got an idea. It would only work if he first obtained the proper information. "So," he taunted, "You must protect these orbs. You have failed pathetically." "I've only begun to fight you," he said. "My assignment will be completed upon your death, and I will be rewarded." #Ah!# Cicion thought. #He has revealed that it is indeed his job to protect the orbs!# With that thought, Cicion walked over to the orbs, picked one up, and said, "Catch!" He threw the orb at the renegade, who caught it with a look of horror. Cicion began throwing them two at a time, with the renegade dashing back and forth to catch them and set them down. Cicion tossed the last orb high in the air, and before the renegade could catch it, he was on the floor with Cicion's KeuTae in his chest. Cicion ran forward, caught it, and placed it in his sack. He also retrieved his blade and sheathed it. He ran out of the temple, only to be surrounded by a dozen Audemedon guards. He couldn't figure out what to do until he remembered somthing. As the Auds raised their weapons, they all short circuted. Cicion started running back to the Tear, thinking, #So that safety program Jralla and I installed worked after all.#
The Tear streaked up into the atmosphere and into space, being followed by three Salriliran cruisers and a gunship. "I knew I should've checked the cloaking field before I took off," said Cicion as the Tear's powerful turret rotated to face the rear fire arc and took a few potshots, which slowed the cruisers down even though they missed by twenty feet. He sent the Tear into a roll as she barreled past the main defenses of Salril into deep space, but the cruisers and gunship still followed. Once clear of the Salrilian fleets around the planet, he started to bring her around for an attack. Just then, the gunship scored three direct hits on the exact spot where the Tear had skimmed the shield when it entered Salril. The shield-skimming had weakened the hull almost twentyfold, and the three rapid plasma bursts from the gunship knocked the engines out. He still had his turret, however, and he returned fire. One cruiser was hit and sent spinning back towards the planet pouring smoke. The other two ships, now knowing where the Tear's weak spot was, moved in for the kill. A massive multi-colored flash went across the area as a Phylydion Heavy Battlecruiser dropped out of Omni space. The ship's left main compression cannon fired, and a projectile the size of a tennis ball with the mass of the Titanic sped out and hit the gunship, causing its superstructure to collapse and explode. The right cannon fired, and the cruiser met the same fate. A Phylydion female appeared on the communication screen. "It is an honor to rescue you, My Lord Taeskor. But we'd better get out of here. I'm reading a Salrilian heavy patrol with escorts coming our way. We'll pull the Crimson Tear in. Hold on." Cicion's ships started to move, and was pulled into the Battlecruiser's repair bay. Seconds later, the cruiser went into Omni space, heading for the bar.
Cicion leaned against the window, viewing the checkered patter of Omnispace. He was bored out of his skull. Coffee. he thought. I want coffee. He slid over to the main food terminal and pressed the menue button. However, instead of cofee a clear goop appeared making a horrible mess all over the outlet.
"We've been having problems like this ever since we retreived your ship." The chief engineer hissed into Cicion's ear, expecting to surprise him.
Cicion turned calmly. "I'm a taeskor. Don't ever do that again."
"Sorry. The commander would like to see you on the bridge."
"She didn't page me?"
"The comm system's down. So are the turbolifts so it look's like we'll be taking the engineering tubes there."
A while later, a slightly dusty Cicion stood before the commander on the bridge. "Allow me to introduce myself, Cicion. Commander Daria at your service."
"You wanted to see me?"
"When we linked your ship up to our regenerative systems we detected a virus in your main banks that had only been transferred there a few minutes earlier."
"What?!" Cicion exclaimed. "I haven't had any computer linkups for nearly a year!"
"The virus was transferred to your ship the moment your computer banks went down from that barrage of plasma."
"A transmission would be impossible while my only computers were down for that microsecond. Unless.... no....."
"No?"
"The plasma itself physically made a series of connections when it impacted. Could it be that it somehow tranferred a program into my banks?"
"Yes."
Cicion winced. "Then it's on this ship."
"It's messed up all our systems. Whoever wrote the virus has complete control over us."
"Who?"
Daria thought a moment. "We are on a course for Salril Prime, even thought the navigation banks say we're headed for the bar. The Salrilian government?"
"No," Cicion mused, "That is not their style. This... Salrilian obviously is a newcomer to the Salrilian Stellar Navy. But it wouldn't be Sargatanus. Who....."
"Damn! Our visual systems have been totally re-written!" An Astrometrics officer exclaimed from the corner of the bridge.
"Delete all program outliers and reboot." Daria yelled back.
"Wait!" Cicion had suddenly had a stroke of brilliance. "Put whatever it is on the screen."
Yellow and Black static frizzled on the screen. "It's still being rewritten." Said the officer.
Cicion watched as the yellow and black seperated and began organizing into shapes. "Program complete." It was a Salrilian Battle Logo the Taeskor both reckognized and dreaded.
(url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/slugsoft/SlugBattleLogo.jpeg")(image)(/url)
"Slug." Cicion growled.
"Window open, ready for go"
"Burn on my Mark, 3... 2... 1... Mark"
There was a rumbling as the ships engines were powered up to full, accelerating it into a much larger, eliptic orbit of Salril. It had taken three days to get this window, and it offered the best lane for escape. In a few minutes, a solar flare would expel several billion tons of ionized Hydrogen Plasma four thousand kilometers from the solar surface. the energy release was tremendous, powerful enough to damage any sensitive Sensor Equipment not locked down. The Barbarossa whizzed over the site of the eruption, a sunspot that had been festering for the last half of the seven year cycle. The carefully planned path led the Barbarossa out along a large belt of asteroids, which would provide cover until they would thrust next, and find a cozy spot in the midst of the shipping lanes, looking for any outbound traffic that they could hide in.
"Conn, ECM. Engaging Shields on primary sensor array"
The sensitive main sensors were shut down and shielded. The ship was now useing only their radar ranges. The old kilohertz range Radar was rarely used anymore, it was not very sensitive, but it was not likely to be damaged by the EM Pulse that would blanket half of the system for the next few hours.
The Barbarossa began a second burn just as the Solar Flare lit up the ECM boards. The Solar flare hid the course change that turned the ship to the asteroid belt. After a few moments, the Barbarossa slid into the asteroid belt, gently arcing outwards from the star, Salril.
"Conn, ECM. All i have a blank, nasty white screen. Can't see ****, and I won't be able to for at least two hours."
"Good" Pharris picked up the intercom "Engineering, you have two hours. Get cracking"
The cloaking field dissapated around the ship, as it cruised up to a large asteroid and latched on.
"We are now running EMF blackout"
The captain hung up the reciever, and for the first time in a long time, there was true silence on the Barbarossa. The rumbling of the fusion reactor and life support system slowed and stopped. Main lighting was shut off, leaving only the blue emergency lighting. The ship made less noise now than when she was cloaked, and it would be difficult for the Sals to detect them with active pinging near all these asteroids. None the less, if they were discovered now, they would be helpless for almost a minute while Engineering powered up the engines and the reactor. For now, the power cells were providing power only to life support and ECM, though ECM was barely listening at all, the solar flare had most of the Asteroid belt and half of the core of the system blanketed under an intense ion storm.
Captain Pharris walked down to Engineering to watch his chief work on the Cloaking Device.
"Phylydion sabotage!" The cybernetic Obiard exclaimed as he slammed a large report down on the table.
"I am already aware of that, Kahgstz." Sargatanus replied sternly.
"And why aren't we tracking down the culperate?"
"I already know who it was, and where to find him. When the time comes, I will deal with him personally."
"And surely we won't be turning a blind eye to this crime..."
"No, we won't." Sargatanus began as he stood up. "Which brings me to your next assignment."
Kahgstz raised an eyebrow.
"You are going to compose and send a message to the Phylydion High Octicate. In it you will express our disgust for this recent crime, which is in violation of section 207.225.63.200:5500 of the Rights of Privacey and Soverighty Act (a document of their engineering I should add), and that it does constitute as an act of war. Any further actions will be regarded as such.
"You will also include that this act of aggression will not go without consequences. As of this message, all ships of the Phylydion Primary armada, as well as those of the Phylydion Trading and Commerce Legue are barred from the Free Trade Zone. If our stolen goods are not returned to us within 10 galactic days, we will respond further by banning all Phylydion trade and travel in every sector of Divine Galactic Axis space, as well as recalling all of our ambassadors and diplomats from their space."
Kahgstz looked up in a slight shock. "Are you sure? This could make for an unpleasant situation..."
"They've had it coming for a while. And now they are in a position where their alies won't wish to be involved. Not that it would matter anyway; the only other power in the UGPA not crippled are the Elejeetians, and they won't involve themselves in a war unless their very existance is at stake."
Kahgstz let out a reluctant agreeing grumble.
"And wrap up your message with a sugar coated line to the effect of 'these acts of aggression do nothing for our already tattered relations, and it would be an unforgivable shame if they were to force us into an armed conflict in the future.'"
"And what if they should respond with a war?"
Sargatanus let out a slight chuckle. "Personally, I couldn't care less." He moved toward the window and observed a cloud of newly built, top of the line warships. "Besides," He added. "I'm pretty sure they know better."
------------------ Throughout their history these "unenlightened" beings have continually opposed and fought abuses of power wrought by their own bretheren. We, as the prophets would do well to learn from these Humans. -Final statement of the Salrilian reformist Sirthis shortly before his execution.
"I've got her up to full power, sir. An eighteen second burst of power: we'll be imposssible to catch for even a science vessel."
Pharris turned "Ok get her out of her!"
For a brief moment the Barberosa stood in all it's glory for all to see, uncloaked and in clear view. Then the rear naceles glowed brilliant red and with a crimson flash it disappeared from the system."
Pharris stood on the bridge, watching, scanning for any signs of pursuit. There was none. He picked up the mic. "We're out." A sigh of releif ran through the whole ship like aair through a broken organ. Everyone grinned. "Helm, compile that data packet and transmit it back to UNS. I want them to know of our success." He grinned broadly a lopsided grin.
But from the helm there were no cheers as was throughout the bridge. "Uh, Captain, you might want to see this." Pharris strolled over to the helm station. "We've been looking back on the past sensor readings and... something just doesn't add up."
"Ensign?"
"We detected EM rediation almost a day before the sun emitted the flare. It was on the same frequency too, but these energy spikes look like nothing I've ever seen before...." He motioned to several 'pillars' on the 3D plane. Pharris's face changed to a look of suspense. "It's almost as if they're following us."
"Give me an equation match on those readings. I want to know when they occured."
"Sir.... they occurred every time we shifted position, and they've always been several hundred meters behind us.... except for this one," He motioned towards a very large spike, "which was a kilometer off our port."
"And the matches?"
The ensign punched in the numbers. The computer terminal buzzed back. "Processing.... comparing to library data.... processing..... match found. Sublight interface with solar particles." A rough bit map formed. Pharris's face paled.
"Engineering, we need more power! Damnit we've got to get to friendly space and we've got to get there fast."
The ensign spun around from the terminal before seeing the bitmap. "Sir! We've got several more EM spikes right behind us!"
Pharris darted to the mic and grabbed it, practically strangling it. "All hands to battlestations!"
The curious ensign turned back to see what was on that bitmap the captain was making such a fuss about and reckognized it instantly. A Salrilian stealth field. Lots of them.
Verad stared at the screen with slight disgust, which seemed to add to tha already bitter taste of the synthetic Phylydion Red-eye he had just finished drinking. The timing was absolutely perfect; he had to give his prey that credit. They took off just as the ionic storm began. "Can you track them?" He asked with what could almost be considered as contempt.
"Not through this flare." The voice crackled. "However, they initiated a burn with a rather simple trajectory. By these calculations, we should be able to estimate where they are within 8,000 kilometers."
"Excelent. Where have they ended up?"
"On the fringe of the asteroid belt about 55 degrees from here; just behind the Ring."
"That should be about where Cal Sev is at. Comm,"
"Sir?" The Salrilian responded.
"Inform Cal Sev of the situation immediately."
"Aye, sir."
Pharris was sidetracked on his way to engineering by the sight through the large obvervation window. Through an opening in the asteroid clutter was the arch of the spectacular Salrilian Ring. With a width of nearly one million miles, a radius of almost one hundred million, and an arch that extended and disappeared behind the star, the sight was beyond that of any scale he had concieved before. His paralysis was interrupted by the buzzing of his commlink. "Yes?"
"Captain, you'd better get to engineering. We have a problem..."
(Silly Narrator, I'm writing the tale of the Barbarossa!)
don't make me come over there, Slug...
(High Octi-con. An Octi-cate is a member of the High Octicon.) Drion Nerec strolled up and down the bridge of the Phylydia which was in orbit around Dominus, along with the rest of the Primary Armada. Three other major fleets were also in the Dominus System. He reflected on this legendary ship's history. It alone had defeated the entire slaver race's fleet and freed his species from a life of toil and drudgery. It had the firepower to take on half of the rest of the Primary Armada, which was huge. Her surface was studded with turrets and she had sixteen forward-firing heavy weapons. Her secret main weapon had been revealed at the Battle of the Ring during which she destroyed the enemy flagship with one shot. In addition, he noted, as he looked out the window, she carried a dozen squadrons of fighters. One of these squadrons, the best, Jackal Squadron, was flying around in perfect formation, weaving in and out of the ships of the Armada. She may well play a large role in what happens next. He then looked to one of the hundred shipyards in orbit around dominus, being pushed and pushed to churn out warships. He watched a ship being built of a brand new type. A Kiojea(Sovereign)-class Heavy Battlecruiser. Design teams had come up with the new type of ship just a month ago, and nobody else yet had any specs. It was armed with the newest weapon: The Compression Gun. These ships could also play a role in the situation, but only after enough of them were built. Only 25 had been built so far. #One of these was the ship that rescued Traek#, he thought, and then remembered that this ship had been taken off course en route. Whoever now had one of these in their possesion had enough firepower to wreak untold havoc on trade routes and spacelanes.
"Good luck, fellow warriors of the Imperium," said Cicion as the Ice Blade, cloaked, sped from the captured heavy battlecruiser's repair bay and immediately engaged omni drive to keep it from meeting the same fate. "I have some business with Angel." He patted the satchel behind his seat in which the orb rested, and took some time to think on the trip back to the bar.
Verad's brow furrowed. No. This wasn't right, Pharris was supposed to be here hours ago.
"Sir, we've found 'em on the long-ranged scans. They appear busy."
Verad stood up. "Order the fleet to move in and-"
"Sir, they're under heavy attack by Salrilian vessels! This is most unusual.... scanning..."
"What's their battle insignia?"
"Under command by General Gath. At least we know where he is."
"This is most unlike him. Bring up a profile on the databanks....."
The computer clicked for a moment and the information appeared on the main screen. _General myrth'swtm'Gath, Gath, Commander of the Ninth Stellar Fleet of Salril. Current missions (non-classified): Surrender all ships to the high octicion.
Previous assignments (non-classified): -Salrilian Wargames, ex-confederate Admiral. -Commander in the Boodan War. -Served under the command of Supreme Admiral gyth'mlil'Slug, Slug, during the battle for the ring on galactic standard date four-nine-five point eight-four-seven. -Defector to unknown leader_
"An unknown leader." Verad spat sourly. "He was scheduled for execution when he disappeared from his cell. I beleive he's found his friend."
"Friend, sir?"
"Slug"
"Torpedoes, tubes two and four."
"aye sir"
The Bridge was deathly silent. ECM had begun listening on the large sensors again, the Helm and Weapons stations had been powered up to standby.
"Conn, ECM. Got him again, just for a second. He's closing. He'll come into view in another three minutes"
"What do you know about it? Tell me everything."
"Its running the same Sal Cloaks that have been tracking us all week. Judgeing by the interferance size, I'd say its just larger than a cruiser. At the moment, I register no transmissions, no active sensors"
"Will he be able to see us?"
"I don't think so. Without the fusion reactor or the engines running, we give off less noise than most household appliances, thanks to this shielding."
The ECM officer reched up and banged on the hull with his fist, indicating the three layers of insulation that isolated most circuits in the ship from the outside.
The captain was only somewhat relieved "That's fine and dandy if they're going passive, what if they start scanning?"
"That's what torpedoes are for, skipper."
The torpedoes were the only weapons that could be fired without additional power. They were designed for ranges over thirty thousand kilometers, so they were entirely self powered, and once fed targeting information from the ECM station, could be entirely independent of the ship. They would be overkill on such a small ship, but they were the only option open to the Barbarossa.
"Engineering, Standby to bring engines online. How long till we have our cloaking device back?
"I don't know. Could be twenty minutes, could be another hour, sorry boss, those are the shakes, this thing is Fubar!"
He clipped the reciever back in place. then he walked over to the ECM station and looked over his shoulder.
"What about visuals? how's visibility outside?
"Well, they may have their windows open, whether or not they're looking for us visually is a different story. We probably blend in pretty well, the asteroid's surface is pretty messed up."
"I suppose we're about to find out..."The Captain walked to the large bay window, and began scouring the sky with his binoculars. "ECM, where is it?
"It should just be coming into view, try around +45 mark+72"
Pharris turned his Binoculars and started looking for a disturbance. Nothing. He just caught a glimpse of the ship as it crossed in front of a distant asteroid, breaking up the smooth outline as it passed. Pharris immediately centered it in his binocs and zoomed in, following it meticulously. It was a good ten klicks out. He was already having trouble following the hazy outline. Unless the Sals knew where to look, it was unlikely that they would see the Barbarossa nestled in to the huge rock formations of the asteroid. The Captain sighed with relief. He called up a lookout, and talked the ensign's binoculars onto the cloaked ship. As soon as the lookout saw it, Captain Pharris put down his Binoculars, and took a long, slow breath.
"Get someone to relieve you as soon as you start to feel tired, I don't want to let that ship out of your sight." The captain called up a second lookout, who went to the massive front windows of the bridge, and began to admire the view.
"As long as that guy keeps his distance, there's no need to do anything drastic. I think he's trying to be stealthy too, otherwise he'd be going crazy on the active sensors like everyone else is out in the open."
The ECM chief looked at his monitord, to the lookouts with the binoculars, and back at the Captain. "This is nuts, boss. Go tell Engineering to get their asses in gear on that cloaking device, The storm will start to clear up in a few more hours, and we'll be sitting ducks..."
As Cicion's ship approaches the bar, now at sub-light speed, a grey shadow detaches itself from a nearby asteroid and streaks towards the Ice Blade. With a mere split-second to decide, Cicion orders the defenses to open fire on the onrushing fighter.
Twirling through the arcs of fire, the Serraphim opens fire, red beams of energy lancing from its twin cannons to impact on a ship just behind the Ice Blade, previously unnoticed. In a shower of glowing sparks, it disintegrates. The entire event lasts merely a few seconds as the fighter gracefully evades the last of the fire from the Ice Blade 's now-silent weaponry.
"Angel! You should have known better than to pull a stunt like that! I nearly atomised you!"
Sundered Angel's face appears on the screen "However, you did not atomise me. My apologies, Cicion. You had a tail- one of those new Infiltrator cruisers, and I felt it best gone before we spoke further."
Cicion nodded, carefully setting his computer to analyze the design of Sundered Angel's ship- something powerful enough to destroy a cruiser with mere seconds of firepower beared watching. Then he spoke. "I suppose that means the bar is out of the question for our little discussion?"
"It is safe, for now. Dock quickly, and we'll talk. I suppose you must have a few questions for me."
The dark grey fighter cruised to the station, glowing red veins of light pulsing as it flew.
------------------ Sundered Angel , The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy
Kraen Braad, commander of all Phylydion ground forces, looked over the army assembled before him on Dominus Plaza, a huge open area just east of the main section of the city. He was observing from a high platform, admiring their ranks. Blocks of soldiers were arranged in perfect order, and not one of them moved in the slightest. He then moved his eyes to his favorite section, the one he personally commanded. They stood in light armor and full helmets with sleek flare bolt rifles in their hands, a pistol in each belt, and a KeuTae concealed in the shin armor. These were the Taeskor Commandos, the most feared and respected group of soldiers in the Imperium and most other governments. They were the ones who had not quite made Pure Taeskor and were placed in the second highest place a warrior of the Imperium could attain to. And now, standing before him, were three full regiments of them. They were usually deployed in regiments rather than armies or legions because there were fewer of them and their fighting ability made up for that anyway. Plus, there were the various tanks, missle vehicles, and transports the troops used splayed out. He silently drew his forefinger up his right cheek, around his center eye, and down his left cheek. The soldiers followed. He raised his hand, pointing right. As one, the entire grouping turned, the thousands of boots creating a shockwave, and walked into their assigned space transports for whatever ground attacks lay ahead.
Cicion piloted his sleek blue fightercraft to the bar, testing her maneuvering capabilities. He wondered what would happen to the Crimson Tear. The Ice Blade drifted into the bar's bay and landed. Cicion popped the cockpit, stepped out and walked into the bar, his blue cloak flowing around him.
Sundered Angel waved Cicion into a back room, closing the door with a click. His gaze scanned the room carefully, looking for the tell-tale shimmer of a cloaking device. Satisfied that there was none, he turned to Cicion.
"Have you brought the sphere?"
Cicion nodded, withdrawing it from beneath his cloak. The transparent-cyan sphere, a mere half foot in diameter, glinted dully in the low light. Sundered Angel reached out, taking the sphere and holding it up to eye level.
"Yes, this is the one. I can feel it..." he smiled to himself, and concentrated. The orb left his hands, hovering in mid-air in the centre of the room. Sundered Angel nodded, and motioned for Cicion to move away.
"Take a few steps back, if you will Cicion. This might get a little bit pyrotechnic."
Cicion smiled grimly, moving back to give Sundered Angel room to work whatever magic he was going to work with the orb. He had to hand it to the guy- whatever gizmos he used, he knew how to use them with style.
Sundered Angel approached the orb, slipping black gloves onto his hands. The atmosphere in the room slowly became charged, sticky with a build-up of energy. As SA placed his hands on either side of the orb, as if clasping it through an inch-thick invisible cloth, the temperature in the room began to increase. Soon, like a plasma ball in reverse, little arcs of energy began leaping from his black palms and fingers, probing at the surface of the orb.
Increasing his concentration, the probing beams of energy began to envelope the orb. As they did so, a hazy blue aura became apparent, surrounding the orb. The red arcs splashed over the aura, unable to penetrate it. The temperature in the room climbed higher. Sundered Angel's eyes glowed bright red as stabbing thrusts of light attacked the orb, crackling against the fading aura protecting the orb.
The temperature in the room soared higher, the very air shimmering with heat, playing tricks on the eye. Then, with a crack, an arc of energy thrust into the orb. Then another broke through, joining with the other beam in the centre. Beam after beam cut through the outside of the orb, until the orb was nearly filled with dancing beams of red power. Sundered Angel backed off, turning away.
"Cover your eyes!" he called just in time, as a bright flash of light singed the air itself. The temperature suddenly dropped back to normal, revealing Sundered Angel peeling off his gloves, wiping sweat off his forehead. In the middle of the room, the orb, now a translucent red, sank to the floor.
"That got a little hot, didn't it?" smiled Sundered Angel.