StarDestroyer.Net BBS

First there was nothing. Then there was slim ship plunging through the void of space. The ship's lines were smooth and rounded, with large engine tubes clustered at the back, armour plate and shield generators covering its length, and a cluster of sensor and communication antenna at the front.

The command center was buried deep within the scout cruiser's hull. A dozen crew, men and women, attended their stations. A dark haired, olive skinned human spoke. "Transition completed. Jump successful."

"Thank you Mister Wren," rasped Captain Clarke. "Begin drive recharge. Sensors, location?"

"Aye Captain," said a stocky blond woman. She had light brown skin and was connected to her station by datalinks that connected to ports on her temple and on her wrists. "Sensor data is a near match for Wallum, a colony of Old Sol. There is com traffic. A lot of it."

"So they survived," said Clarke. "Communications, keep your ears open for a government com request."

"Aye Captain," replied Hassan Chen.

"Sir," said the sensor operator. "I'm picking up a ship in Wallum orbit."

"They're signaling us captain," said Chen. "In Lazaxan." The bridge got tense.

"Put it through the translators and send it through," said Clarke.

"Aye Captain." There was a brief pause. Then a voice rumbled from the speakers.

"This is the merchant ship Argratez, hailing from the Emirates of Hacan. We are peaceful traders, in accordance with galactic law and custom. Please identify yourselves."

"Send this through Mister Chen," said Clarke. "This is Captain Clarke of the Federation of Sol vessel Beagle. We are on a mission of peace and exploration."

There was a minute of silence, then a reply. "We are pleased to hear that the Federation of Sol has survived the long darkness. The Emirates have been engaged in peaceful trade with others of your species on Wallum. I'm sure the trade envoy and the local government will be eager to speak with you."

"Sir," said Chen, "we're getting a request from Wallum to identify ourselves."

"Do so Mister Chen and respectfully ask to speak with a government representative."

"Well Bill, I have to say I didn't think it would go so well," said Taylor. "Finding a lost colony and peaceful contact with a survivor civilization."

"We aren't out of the woods yet Jack," said Clarke.

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On board the Argatez, a powerful leonine humanoid swiveled his form fitting command couch to face the rest of his crew. Even the least among them wore robes of smart silk and bore a small fortune of jewels. "This," Hrusk growled, "is going to be a problem."

"Or maybe a solution," replied Grath. "That's for the Emirs to decide. For us, this is new market."

"If they are what they say they are," said Hrusk. "They could be another Barony. We do not need to walk two tightropes. One is bad enough."

"The Emirs' problem," replied Grath. "That is why they have the largest shares. We need to figure out what they have. And what they want."

Hmmm, very short but looks nice. I need to re-read the species descriptions first though, in order to get any of the nuances. (Hint, hint ).

<3 TI. I'll be watching this one with interest.

An empire dies, strangled in its crib by a remorseless assassin. The killers emerge from jump in ships of black steel. One moment the void is empty an in another they have arrived.

The warships bear an ancient symbol, a blood red four pointed star superimposed over an X. Their ships' master is not without his own ambitions and he and his people are driven by necessity to expand and a ruthless will to conquer.

The largest of the warships is a kilometer long dreadnought Endless Night. He is a tapering wedge with heavy gun decks on his dorsal and ventral surfaces. Shield generators and missile tubes line his hull and his prow is home to a massive spine mounted laser cannon.

Flanking him are a pair of vessels that not quite as fearsome, although deadly in their own right. The cruisers Red Ruin and Bloodthirst are shorter, slimmer, and skinnier wedges than the blocky Endless Night. Both cruisers have a pair of outrigger weapon pods attached near the aft of the ship containing powerful Hylar V assault lasers.

Four destroyers, cone shaped ships with a pair of assault lasers protruding from their engine sections, form the outer layer of the formation. They lack the heavy gun decks and the anti-capital ship missile tubes of their larger brethren, instead mounting lighter guns and missile launchers to engage small craft with.

Following in their wake is a pair of carriers, long cylindrical ships half full of soldiers and war machines. The other half of their space has been given over to hosting light assault ships. The thirty meter long craft detached from the carriers like blood gorged ticks as the task force orientated itself for the attack. The fighters had blocky bodies hosting their crew of a half dozen, a pair of long laser lances, and a host of nuclear and kinetic kill missiles attached to their short, bat-like wings.

Before the killers lay a lush green world, both a rival and a prize. Another planet in the same system contained the commercial heartland of the fledgling empire, but the killers had little use for that. Retillon would be taken as intact as possible. Shalloq would burn.

As the warfleet closed on Retillon alarms were raised on both worlds. The doors to huge missile silos opened in the ground and titanic missiles burned through the skies towards deep space. On the space station Haarsuh, orbiting distant Shalloq, fighters were fired into the void to join the battlefleet emerging from Shalloq's shadow. The hand of the Yssaril had been forced.

Ship killing missiles preceded the Yssaril fleet, or more properly, the core of the Yssaril fleet. The rest of the fleet was still under construction, trapped in construction cocoons as the killers moved through their system.

The anti-ship missiles closed on the fleet. A hail of weapons fire greeted them as particle beams, hyper velocity pellets, lasers, and multiple megaton nuclear detonations was unleashed by the invaders. The missiles were large enough and expensive enough to be shielded. Most were consumed by the storm of death. Two penetrated.

One missed the Endless Night by less than ten meters. The other struck the Red Ruin. The cruiser's shields failed as the missile obliterated its bow in a blinding flash. Gas and debris tumbled from the wound as the Yssaril fleet emerged from behind its stealth fields and the shadow of Shalloq.

Two egg shaped cruisers lead the way and a pair of tubby cylinders followed. Three darting, triangular destroyers guarded their flanks and attack ships from the gleaming wheel of Haarsuh joined the hordes launching from the carriers. The ships were gray steel and upon their flanks gleamed a yellow pentagon containing a red five pointed star and a small black circle at the center. All the Tribes of the Yssaril had gathered together to seize the stars. They were too late.

The blocky attack ships of the Yssaril rushed to meet their counterparts. The Yssaril had twice as many fighters as the invaders, each armed with light laser cannons and launchers full of missiles with thermonuke warheads. Despite their lack of a dreadnought, the defenders were confident they would prevail.

They were wrong. Endless Night fired his spinal mount and scored a direct hit on a destroyer. Shields failed in a instant. Armour flash vaporized into a white hot cloud. A collapsing wreck drifted were a warship had once been.

The surviving destroyers on both sides unleashed their entire arsenals as the opposing attack ships and screening their larger brethren. The fighters joined the battle, the invaders striking and evading with inhuman reaction time and g-tolerance wedded to well honed skill. The Yssaril were slower, frailer, and less killed. The invader punched lasers through their hulls, turned their ships into garbage with showers of hard striking iridium penetrators, and consumed them in bright flashes of nuclear annihilation.

Endless Night, Red Ruin, and Bloodthirst trained their gun batteries and assault lasers on the Yssaril cruisers. Colossal energies were sent through space as their missile tubes disgorged deadly swarms at the Yssaril.

The first cruiser's shields failed under the deadly triple hammer of the invader's ship killing lasers. Deadly beams burned through armour plate, destroying guns, killing crew, and venting atmosphere into space in superheated plumes. Systems all over the ship failed under the brutal hammering and soon there was nothing left but slowly cooling mass of white-hot metal.

The Yssaril cruiser did not die alone. Yssaril particle beams hammered the mangled shields of the Red Ruin. They failed. Swarms of missiles died penetrating the point defence envelope. A close proximity nuke blast ravaged the hull. Hyper-velocity iridium penetrators smashed through four points amidships. Flames vented briefly back into space and then particle beams holed the cruiser in three more places. Reactors crashed, killing much of the ship's power as bodies and atmosphere jetted into space. The ruined ship continued drifting on the same course.

The invaders were not finished yet. Volleys from Bloodthirst and Endless Night hammered the remaining cruiser and the carriers Astral Keep and Shadow Wings added their own guns to the barrage. Thermonukes burst around the Yssaril ship, eating up her shields. Kinetic penetrators smashed through weakened shields and armour. Lasers did the rest of the killing work as Endless Night's spinal mount charged for another shot.

The Yssaril's fighter squadrons died hard, but die they did. Bloodthirst, Astral Keep, and Shadow Wings added their guns to the destroyers and fighters, finishing the uneven match. Endless Night fired his spinal mount again, blasting the rear of one carrier to gas. He gun decks swung to engage both carriers simultaneously as the dreadnought closed.

Admiral Nerov strode across the command deck buried deep within the Endless Night. Huge repeater screens lining the upper half of the deck displayed different views of the battle and the status of the ships participating it. Beneath him junior officers worked at their stations. At his level, more senior ones issued orders and awaited Nerov's commands.

The invaders could almost be mistaken for Sol humans. They wore dark uniforms of thick armourweave trimmed with gold. Plates of gilded armour were worn over the uniforms of the senior officers. They were tale people and powerfully built, pale of eye, hair, and skin. This, as much as their insignia, marked them. They were not Sol humans.

"Direct our attack craft and destroyers to clean up the system," Nerov said in the High Tongue. "Bloodthirst is to concentrate on casualty and escape pod recovery. We will escort the carriers to Retillon and commence the invasion after we have destroyed Haarush with long range bombardment from the spinal mount. Proceed."

Captain Strenzin approached Nerov. "Congratulations on your victory admiral."

Nerov turned to the taller man. "We have not won until we have seized the bounty of Retillon." The other man nodded. Industrial might and skilled soldiers the Barony possessed in abundance. Food and other biologicals it did not.

"The Yssaril have a history of proving almost as difficult to subdue as ourselves," said Strenzin. "I am not certain we brought enough troops."

"We will not be handicapped as the Lazax were," said Nerov. "We are Letnev. And we can afford casualties." The thought better casualties than failure went unspoken, but understood. The Baron did not tolerate failure and there was an endless line of soldiers ready to step into their superiors' places given the opportunity.

The Letnev fleet altered course and closed on the Retillon. Defence shields on the planet below would prevent the Endless Night from supporting the invasion by way of bombardment and the Yssaril were stealthy and skillful guerrilla fighters, especially within the lush green jungles of their home worlds. Even Letnev super soldiers with metabolisms in high gear could expect only hard fighting, but that would be cold comfort to the Yssaril. Their dreams of conquest were so much ash as the dark shadow of the Barony of Letnev enveloped them.