SDNW4 Story Thread 1

[Siege]

Sovereign Galaxy News

The United Solarian Sovereignty has offered asylum and citizenship to several Center of Economics members expelled from the Centrality. The CoE members were expelled from their home polity on charges of corruption. The members offered citizenship include at least eight former agents of the Commerce Section, eleven of the Finance Section, nine of the Manufacturing Section and three of the Labor Section. The government of the U.S.S. has the following to say on the matter: "it is a habit of the United Solarian Sovereignty to provide a home away from home to humans displaced from their worlds of origin, regardless of the reason why".

Rumor that the Centrality personnel were in fact agents for the CEID intelligence agency all along were neither confirmed nor denied by the Directorate itself. "It is not our habit to comment on such matters," says a spokesperson for the Central Espionage and Intelligence Directorate. It is not currently known when or indeed if the expelled CoE members will be arriving in Sovereignty space. According to sources in the Centrality, several persons under investigation have disappeared from their places of residence, where they were placed under home arrest by the CSB.

[Akhlut]

Presented in Goddamn Unreal Time Circa 2 Months Ago
Hweyixal, Colonial World, Streets of Matsegi, Approaching Governor's Palace

Kan Balam approached the gaping wound in the palace, taking pot shots at the remaining defenders, though the thousands of other kipaktli behind him were doing a much better job of actually slaying them. His jovial chirping continued, pleased that he was going to conquer Hweyixal and create a new nation today. As he got closer to the crude barricades, he unsheathed a meter long knife and broke into a sprint.

“Charge! Slaughter them all!”

The front rank calved off the larger group and ran with their commander overrunning the barriers, shooting the defenders, cutting off heads of moxli, and engaging in horrific claw-to-claw combat with other kipaktli. Millenia of civilization fell off of them, and they dropped their firearms, biting at each others' throats, clawing, slapping with their tails, and grappling like dragons. Deafening roars echoed in the palace and through the streets. The defenders forgot all about communication or the chain or command or anything but snapping jaws and rending claws.

Imakwa smiled upon his favored.

Hweyixal, Colonial World, Governor's Palace, Basement, Level 1

Biahwi was irate; even from down here, he heard the southern face collapsing, yet they weren't radioing for help or anything.

So, he picked up the radio.
“All fronts, pull back. Set tanks to self-destruct. People on the higher floors, kill the elevators and set up barricades in interior rooms. I'm setting all doors to autolock in five minutes, so move your hides.”

He didn't even wait for a reply before turning to the defenders already beside him, “we are going to make them pay for every centimeter with blood and death. Get out the shrapnel mines and cover this floor and Level 2. For level 3, I want as many machine gun nests as possible on the ramp down. Do it now. I'm going to call those psykers down south and see when they're going to be here.”

Again, no waiting. He walked with purpose to a line with direct access to the NenAltKik central base in Zaaxila.

“Mitla Base, this is Governor Biahwi. I must speak with the Tewktyao immediately.”

“Of course, Governor, one moment,” a moxi soldier replied.

“Governor?” asked a deep kipakt voice.

“Twektyao Washakie, you must relieve us; the traitor forces are breaking into the palace.”

“Duly noted, Biahwi, but we are having our own troubles here. The HweyToTlatOl have been assaulting us as well, and we've been responding to other threats in Zaaxila and the outlying regions. We'll send a squad of Tlenamakakli as quickly as possible. I think we can get them there in about 6 hours if we rush,” Washakie said, completely nonplussed.

“A squad? A squad? What sort of insanity is this? I want at least 1,000 keta or 5,000 tukwali!” Biahwi yelled.

“I know you were part of the tukwali earlier in your career, governor, and had risen to the rank of sergeant before getting into politics and the governorship, so I forgive you of your ignorance. I know you're somewhat aware of the psychic warriors, but allow me to make this perfectly clear: no mere militia men or civilian force will handle them. These warriors are the war club of Imakwa himself. Death shall come in their wake, governor. Trust me.”

“They damn well better be, or this coup will gather too much traction and Tlali will have to subdue the whole planet!”

Hweyixal, Colonial World, Governor's Palace, First Floor

Kan Balam licked the blood from his snout and cracked open a bottle of antiseptic to rub into the deep gouges in his arm from a rather tenacious kipakt defender's claws.

“Well done, brothers! Let's clear up this floor before moving onward! I want half of us going up, and half going down! If I know Biahwi as much as I think I do, he'll hole himself up in his office; he has too much pride to be driven underground. Come now, let's go!”

“Sir, all the doors are locked and aren't accepting your override code.”

“Blow them open!” Kan Balam bellowed in reply.

Dull thuds echoed throughout the floor as the stolen demo explosives tore open doors. Kan Balam began to ascend the stairs when he heard anguished cries from the basement as numerous Patriots were slain by shrapnel mines. He sighed, thinking that they had booby-trapped the basement to make it seem like they were in the basement.

Too much pride to hide down in a dank hole, he thought. He had to keep stopping to allow demo-charges to burst open doors.

Too much time! Can't let them get too holed up here!

“Sir! We finally got through the first floor of the basement! We had to throw some demo-charges to set off all the mines, but we can walk through now. Checking the second basement,” an exuberant civilian volunteer chirped.

“Acknowledged, but only use this channel for when you find something, Patriot.”

More thuds as demo-charges opened up doors, as Kan Balam tried to get to an important floor. He had hoped for a quick meeting with Biahwi, perhaps some personal combat with him, and being done by dinner time with the establishment of a new government. This was hard-work. The only police work that had ever lasted this long was hostage negotiation, but there was far less weapons fire involved. He had thought this would be more like a riot: short bursts of excitement, a few stretches of boredom, another burst or two, and a final clamp down. This was a lot different; too much fighting and slaughter on both sides. He had hoped for a quick decapitation strike and less dead among the civilians with his override codes keeping the barriers down so the APCs could have gotten them to the front door. But, too many plans were destroyed upon meeting the enemy.

There should be a saying for that, he mused to himself.

He heard another rash of small explosions as the mines on the second basement went off. More booby-traps. Nice try, Biahwi.

“Try something else to set off all those mines, we need to save the demo-charges for doors.”

[Shroom Man 777]

Previously...


City of Atuvir, Faust
The Centrality
August 3400



Azamat Bragatov was sufficiently awed by the latest display of psionic might. The PKE meter was off the charts! He had even worn special hyperspectral goggles (which lowered from a compartment in his ushanka) and the sheer amount of ectoplasms he saw was unprecedented. Just the stuff radiating out of that blue guy alone, there were so much secretions!

Anyway, he made his way out of the stadium. It was time for a bathroom break. He passed by one of the numerous security checkpoints in place and the Centralite goons began scanning those who passed by, including one funny-looking giddy guy who looked oddly familiar, but Azamat couldn't place his claws on it. After that stupid human, it was his turn but he couldn't fit through the Tele-Scanning Apparatus (TSA), which was a device used by the CSB to detect illegal objects, such as IEDs, RPGs, or things that could block ESP like BFGs. The prevalence of these devices with TLAs was no doubt due to the Centrality's precautions against the Shepistanis and their SIS. Because he couldn't fit through the TSA, he had to be frisked, and it took a full squadron of CSB goons to frisk the huge Bragulan. This was a good thing, since with the CSB taking special attention to frisk him, focusing on the big belligerent bear before them rather than the other less-threatening humans, other agents could slip past their attention while they were distracted. All according to plan.

Azamat was still holding on to his miniature Centralite flaglet as well as his vodka bottle, though by now the vodka bottle had been emptied of vodka - so it was no longer a vodka bottle. Instead, it was full of urine because he utterly refused to urinate in the urinals (Leakydicks revealed that Shepistani SecState Hillery Clitnone had ordered all foreign diplomats' DNAs to be secretly collected, and thus the IBGV was now paranoid about the precious bodily fluids and precious bodily wastes of all its operators, be they in Shepistan or not).

"Shits," he muttered as a TSA goon patted him down. He was feeling particularly constipated, and as Bragulans had utterly no shame for their natural bodily functions, he farted right then and there. It was very audible and very smellable and the TSA goons gagged and recoiled in revulsion, some even crossing themselves and inadvertently revealing their religious inclinations (which were frowned upon by the Central State, as they would later discover to their demise). But nevertheless, their dedication to the Central State was commendable as they pinched their noses and continued frisking Azamat one-handedly.

Eventually he passed through the checkpoint. He could barely hold it any more and so he desperately looked for his attendant, that CSB agent who was carrying the porta-potty.

"Shits!" Azamat growled as the CSB agent was nowhere to be found. Earlier that day, he caught the agent trying to make off with some of his long feces. The agent was on the verge of opening the combination-locked porta-potty and scooping some samples into a ziplock bag. But Azamat stopped him, pulled the porta-potty out of his hands, and then he took the porta-potty and rode on an aircar and emptied its contents over the upper atmosphere before returning the emptied commode to the horrified and simultaneously disappointed Centralite agent.

Perhaps that was why he was nowhere to be found. Either he was cross at Azamat, or his superiors at the CSB were getting desperate and really wanted to get a sample of Azamat's leavings, thus withholding the attendant and the porta-potty to force Azamat to do it in a public restroom.

"Grrrr!" Azamat would've spited them by just doing it in public, but after he had thrown his poo into the sky, a CSB Central Constable Civil Commander had a firm talk with him on the issue of littering, and due to his official position as a diplomat, he could hardly do something that might jeopardize his standing. It would've been simply rude. "Fucks!"

With that final curse, he had no choice. He kicked the unisex public bathroom's door open, roared mightily and sent all the frightened civilians and athletes running away in fear, and then locked himself in. He pulled a tiny stainless steel bottle from a pocket in his ushanka, opened it and with shaking paws he took out a special tablet.

He swallowed the suppository.

Then he did it in the woefully inadequate puny human toilet facilities. However, unlike normal inferior human plumbings, the toilet did not explode or backflow. No, there was the distinct hum of suctioning air instead - for rather than using water pipes or such, this particular toilet was connected via pneumatic tubes!

Vwoomp!

Azamat Bragatov could only watch powerlessly as his Brag thunder disappeared, sucked by the tubules into a subterranean CSB facility.


TO BE CONTINUED...





...IMMEDIATELY


CSB Underground
City of Atuvir, Faust
The Centrality
August 3400

The CSB Underground was a top-secret facility where the Central State's omnipresent security apparatus could watch over its citizens from under them. It was not located high up, where it would be visible and vulnerable to the depravities of the State's enemies, but was hidden away from sight, away from mind, away from thought. Deep down in the shadows where no one dared to venture. For who knows what evil lurks in the minds of man? The State knows.

The Centralite agents charged with observing the Bragulan had been pulled off the streets. Direct tracking wouldn't work, the Bragulan was apparently more than just a diplo-politico-diplomatico and was trained in the ways of spycraft, psychic probing wouldn't work either, for obvious reasons. One of their esper agents, a highly trained inceptionator, had tried to intrude the Bragulan's brain when the bear was sleeping - but even when unconscious, the subconscious mentallic defenses and the natural resistance of the Bragulan had proven too much.

The Bragulan brain architecture was so different and alien, so thick, that in attempting to enter it the inceptionator had overextended himself - to the point of going 'too far away' from his own 'self'. It was like trekking through a goddamn glacier in a blizzard, in a frostbitten wasteland one could suppose was the natural home of the Bragulan's primordial ancestors. By the time the inceptionator had found something, he was in so deep that it was like he was in a dream within a dream inside a dream, which was dangerous. Very dangerous. Because that thing he found out? It turned out that the legendarily insane indoctrination the Bragulans were known for, levels of conditioning that even the Central State did not dare subject its citizens to in its darkest days, had sculpted a perfect Byzonist state not outside in the physical world, but deep inside the minds of the Bragulans themselves. So while their leader cult-idol Imperator may not be an omnipotent being in the real world, inside the Bragulan brain he was the undisputed master of the universe.

The very first and last thing the inceptionator had seen inside the Bragulan's brain, which a few other agents had also seen because they were also linked to the inceptionator's mind, was the image of a fifty foot tall Byzon thundering down and stomping on the human mental intruder. While 'dying' in the unreal environs of the subconscious was normally not a serious inconvenience, in attempting to penetrate the sheer thickness of the Bragulan brain the inceptionator had gone too deep - it was as though he had gone in a dream within a dream inside a dream. So when he died there, while he might not have died in real life, his mind still entered limbo - entering a loop where all he imagined was a giant Byzon whose boot was stamping on his human face. Forever.

The CSB decided to take drastic action after losing one of its agents. In the morning after that night, it had directed its agent - undercover as the Bragulan's attendant and porta-potty-porter - to try and obtain samples, but he had been caught and in revengeance the Bragulan committed an almost inexcusable act of littering in the air. No one littered in the Central State's air. Absolutely no one. So now, now they would show that Bragulan and his Star Empire just what the authoritarian security apparatus of the Central State was truly capable of.

Vwoomp!



"Hurrah!" the Centralite agents cheered as the pneumatic tubules did their job and popped out the container full of Bragulan wastes. They hooted and clapped their hands, as now they had accomplished their mission despite the cunning of that brutal Bragulan bear bolshevik. Then, a Centralite technician who was normally sent on missions to Umeria because of his scientific background at the CSB's 'Q Department', went on and declared: "Now let us do SCIENCE!"

They laughed. In their triumph, they fucking laughed.

But then...

...they opened the cylinder full of Bragpoo and examined it. First cursory, through ocular examination, determining the coloration of the substance while analyzing it in the myriad hyperspectrums of visible and indivisible light. Satisfied, they activated an examination stick and prodded the poo.

It quivered.

"What?" uttered the sciency Centralite technician, whose degree in science was enough to put him on par with even the Umerians. This was unexpected. At first, he shrugged it off, and again poked the poo with the examination stick.

The poo began to convulse and shake.

"No! It can't be!" he cried in disbelief.

But it was.



He turned to a display screen and saw the X-ray scan of the poo. There was something inside it, capsule-shaped, a suppository. Now that suppository was dissolving, and as it dissolved so too did the rest of the meaty poo undergo a chemical reaction. In all his years of analyzing Umerian techno-science, the technician had never seen anything like this ever before.

"Great Gatsby's gadolinium guts!" gasped the technician, paraphrasing and alliterating an Umerian swear he had picked up.

It began to vaporize.

At first the whole turd began to bubble and boil, and then it emitted steam as it dissolved and simply evaporated into air - not thin air, but fat air, fatty air. Somehow, someway, the suppository was causing the poo to instantaneously shift from the solid phase of matter into the gaseous phase without turning into liquid. The poo seemed to shrink as it turned into vapor. The gaseous expansion, of a compact piece of long feces suddenly turning into gas, was enough to cause the sealed glasstic container to crack open and then did the gas seep out and into the laboratory.

There was a sharp intake of breath at this, before the Centralite agents could catch themselves, and in their inhalations they ended up smelling what the Bragulan was cooking.



They screamed. They fucking screamed.

In horrer.

They had seen what had happened to the TSA goons when the Brag had passed gas. The goons grimaced and recoiled and pinched their noses. But this was worse, far worse, like the ordeal faced by the TSA goons but times one billion. The Centralite agents wept, for such was the offense of the odours. They keeled over and fell to their knees, choking and coughing and heaving their previous meals out of their stomachs. Desperately they tried to crawl out of the room.

One brave soul, still in the possession of his faculties, had the sense to slam his fist on a button that activated the vacuum negatory pressurized inverse osmosis ventilation systems - designed specifically in the case of a chemical gas attack - and the vents quickly sucked the alien gas out of the air, replacing it with cool, fresh and purified breathable oxygen.

But it wasn't over yet.

The vaporized poo particulates, after several seconds in the air, began to condense and coagulate and adhere to the surfaces of whatever things they came into contact with. In this case, it was the Centralite agents themselves. So while the particulates in the air had been vacuumed out, there were still micro-poos stuck on the Centralites' clothes, hairs, skins, and the interiors of their airways (which the poo penetrated when they tried to breathe).

So though the gas was gone, the smell was still there, and so the Centralites continued gagging and hurling and heaving. Some rushed to the bathrooms and began washing themselves with emergency soaps, disinfectants, anti-septics, and other cleansing products in a vain attempt to rid themselves of that horrible stench.

***

Topside
City of Atuvir, Faust
The Centrality
August 3400

The utter disaster with the excrement espionage experiment incensed the CSB. They contemplated tossing the Bragulan out of the country for the unauthorized use of chemical weaponry, but then the charges would've been dubious at best. Their only evidence of such a thing was a poo, a poo they had attempted to investigate covertly, and if pressed as to why they had expelled the Bragulan and what that particular chemical weaponry was, there was a chance that the international community might learn of their failed attempt to dissect the Bragulan poo. The Bragulans might even reveal that fact themselves. If that happened, if the bears did that, the humiliation the CSB and the Central State would face was simply unacceptable. So there was only one thing they could do.

Nothing.

So Azamat Bragatov went about his way, with his ushanka, miniature Centralite flaglet, and vodka bottle in hand. Since he was feeling particularly good about taking a dump, he had thrown his vodka bottle filled with pee away and had bought himself more real vodka to celebrate.

The Centralite agents who had been tailing him were nowhere in sight. But he knew they were there, just further away. He could smell them. Well, not exactly them, because the smell of specific humans amidst a whole city full of humans was hard to distinguish. But he could smell himself on them, that familiar smell he made whenever he followed the call of nature. Bragulans had the most sensitive sense of smells amongst all sentient species in the galaxy, so wherever the Centralite agents went, he could sniff them out.

"Tee-hee-hee-hee!" Azamat giggled, knowing that no matter how hard they tried to wash themselves, the smell would stay on them for the whole week.

[Simon_Jester]

"Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter."
- Winston Spencer Churchill

Recommended Listening: Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4

Z-1240 Series Destroyer Z-1261
Engaging Target Three
July 5, 3400

Flottenkapitän Oskar von Reuental of the Kaiserliche Marine stood expressionless on his bridge as the debris field erupted in a hive of activity. As expected, some of the asteroids concealed small clusters of fighters, as at Hawk's Nest. Unlike the warlord styled as Keldrog, though, the Zebesians had been clever and well-supplied enough to seed the rocks with antiship missiles- big ones, too, and numerous.

"All ships, continue fire on enemy installations with main battery. Prepare secondaries. Comms, do we have acknowledgement?"

"Yes sir, we have a handshake."

"Good." The admiral had chosen Target Three for a reason- the target was very close to the system hyper limit indeed...


Boskonian Type 17 Core Ship, Serial Number 98734872
Squadron Flagship, A4F18
On Station at Zebesian Mining Facility Two

Higobi Trakenza watched as the assets flushed their ordnance and fighters against the Prussian destroyers. The Enemy kept up fire with their long range railguns, but compared to the storm of fire coming at them it was as nothing- many of their rounds crashed into or through useless rocks or drifting clouds of mine tailings, without damaging the assets at all.

Granted, the fighters were not in good order, and he suspected that the armament that happened to be aboard at the time wasn't ideally suited for antiship strike. But he doubted it would matter; he had plenty of small-craft assets, a swarm of missiles, and opponents ill suited to defend against him

Trakenza warbled softly in laughter. He'd had time to check up on the files. The Prussian destroyers' artillery had alarmed him unduly; these ships were designed to use their heavy projectile guns to cripple lighter enemy ships from extreme range. In a beam duel they would no doubt remain formidable... but the small-caliber, hypervelocity projectiles made for relatively ineffective flak rounds. The Enemy raiders had virtually no ability to use their main batteries for antimissile work. To be sure, they had secondary weapons that could engage the missiles, but they weren't especially good at it; for their tonnage, the destroyers were lacking in that department. Fleet defense against small craft and ordnance was a task the Prussians preferred to leave to their missile frigates. And today, there were none in sight.

The long range missile strike would take minutes to arrive. But when it did, sheer arithmetic guaranteed that it would overwhelm the Prussian point defense, damaging their ships badly enough to make easy kills for the follow-up attacks from the fighters.

They shouldn't have sent you out with so few ships, Enemy...

"Sir! I'm picking up additional hyperspace tracks, twelve light-hours out and closing fast!"

---

F-2515 Series Missile Frigate F-2522
Flagship 23rd Frigate Flotilla
Approaching Target Three

Flotilla-Captain Wolfgang Mittermeyer rode out the transition to normal space on his feet in confident posture. By God his navigator was good; they were practically on top of Oskar's destroyers. Thanks to the preliminary data Oskar had fed his squadron via hyperwave, they already had a rough idea of where to look for the incoming long range strike.

This had been the first unorthodox aspect of Konteradmiral von Musel's plan: instead of leading with a concentrated heavy force escorted by his light ships, he led with the light ships to draw the defenders out where they could be killed. Had their discussions on the third gone slightly differently, it would have been him trying to draw out the enemy starships for Oskar's destroyers to break up.

Given the standards of the Prussian fleet, it was an honor for a light-ship commander to be trusted to operate independently like this. Even though Wolfgang was convinced that this wasn't the way things ought to be, he recognized the respect and trust von Musel had placed in him on such short acquaintance.

He felt especially honored that von Musel had detached one of his battlecruisers to the 23rd Flotilla- and, in violation of all Prussian tradition, had chosen SMS Regenlief, commanded by his most junior captain. This gave Mittermeyer seniority, placing a light-ship officer in command of a capital ship. Training and the famous 'common sense' of the Prussian Navy told him to think of Regenlief as the flagship and organize around her; tactical insight told him that, strange as it might seem, the battlecruiser was here purely to support a light-ship mission.

Tactical insight won, and he'd kept Regenlief in the back of his formation to use her powerful EW suite to conceal the Twenty-Third's approach through hyper, and to keep her out of the way while the frigates did their work.

Where Prussian destroyers were meant to engage smaller starships from a safe distance with hypervelocity rail guns, like skirmishers spread out before a line of musketeers, Prussian missile frigates were the shield of the fleet. Generally deemed too light to engage anything of consequence on their own, they were ideally suited for the missile and small craft defense role.

As always, his handpicked captains reacted well. They knew their job, and there was no need to urge them to greater speed than they'd already accomplished. Wolfgang concentrated on his own ship: the sensor picture that was coming together nicely, but there were only a few minutes to lay countermissile fire on the target before they got too close. It would hardly do for him not to be first to start shooting down the enemy ordnance... there! Nice dense cloud, few or no jammers... a good opening target.

"First barrage, center axis ten by seventeen, autonomous!"

F-2522 rumbled as the small-diameter launch tubes flushed, springing their missiles into space and waiting hungrily for more to come rolling in from the magazine feeds. Knowing what kind of action he'd be going into, Wolfgang had taken the liberty of loading all his tubes with the dual-role weapons Prussia preferred to use as countermissiles.

The Prussians' countermissile design was quite different from that used by the Umerians. The Star League saw specialist designs like the Umerian low-power shaped fission charge or the Centralist flak-burst missile as efficient but lacking versatility.

The job of engaging small, high-mobility threats was left to the high power "Acheron-designation" pure fusion devices. The nuclear warheads delivered a vastly more powerful omnidirectional burst to swat enemy missiles with proximity kills, without the need for high-precision targeting. Unlike Umerian or Centralist countermissiles, the Acherons worked reasonably well against enemy ships as well, assuming they could manage close-proximity hits. They paid for the heavy nuclear warhead in increased bulk, but the missile frigates had large magazines for their tonnage, with plenty of capacity for the job of blunting a single massive attack this way.

The range was long, and all the frigates had managed to get off two or three vollies of countermissiles before the first wave from F-2522 struck home. Programmed to switch to autonomous guidance near the end of their runs, the Acherons picked out individual targets, preferably those still flying in close company with others from the same launcher. Flashbulb bursts of nuclear fusion spattered the Zebesian long range missiles with X-rays.

Wolfgang's display shifted, noting missiles that had gone dead and ballistic- no longer a real threat with their position known, since point defense fire could engage them even from extreme range with narrow-angle flak bursts that were guaranteed to score a kill. Unlike railgun rounds, antiship missiles were too big to avoid detection under combat conditions.

The Zebesians' attack looked to have been a one-shot launch from fixed silos; it was eroding very quickly under the Prussian fire, as the missile frigates concentrated wave after wave of their own missiles against a single enemy launch. Follow-up waves from the defenders would have been more of a problem, but aside from the swarm of fighters popping out from behind the rocks of the debris field, there wasn't any.

The fighters would come in too late; they were already forming up and on approach vector, but before they got in launch range with the smaller missiles a fighter could carry, the opening bombardment would already be dealt with.

Adrenaline surged through Wolfgang's veins. It was endlessly tiring being tied to the battleships' apron-strings, being assigned cautious probing and patrol missions, watching operations take months to plan when they should rightfully be done in weeks or days. And now, just this once, finally, he was allowed- no, ordered!- to cut loose and play the cavalry, striking in a split-second and turning defeat into victory in an eyeblink. It was what he'd dreamed of since the day he joined the fleet.

---

Z-1240 Series Destroyer Z-1261

Reuental allowed only a slight hint of satisfaction to cross his face as Mittermeyer's flotilla jumped into position. His own ships pulled back and aside slightly, allowing the battlecruiser and frigates full opportunity to do their work. Regenlief's jamming was very effective against the relatively crude enemy missiles; a number of them were wandering off in the wrong direction entirely.

Z-1261 and the other Prussian ships began shuddering as the light ships' secondary mass drivers opened up. These were massive, stubby pieces with enormous cooling arrays, throwing relatively tiny slugs at a tremendous rate of fire; the effect was similar to a gatling-barreled design. Regenlief chimed in with her tertiaries, weapons of the same pattern as the destroyers' secondaries, and with a few salvoes of large-caliber flak rounds from the secondary low-velocity guns. The combined point defense fire raked the Zebesian missiles almost as effectively as a continuous beam weapon.

When all was said and done, only a few missiles of that overwhelming swarm got through. One of them did make it through to Z-1261, crashing into the port side just below A turret; the destroyer bucked under Reuental's feet as the shock mountings on her forward shield generator recoiled. Other ships took hits singly or in pairs, rocking them but not penetrating the shields... with one exception.

A tightly bunched group of eight rode through the patterns of nuclear blasts from Mittermeyer's Acherons, and even through the point defense barrage, overlooked by some quirk of auto-targeting. On their own, the group had picked out the task force's largest, most valuable target; a clever missileer or still more luck let them manage the difficult feat of a home-on-jamming against the battlecruiser Regenlief.

Last ditch fire from the unengaged side of the frigates F-2530 and F-2519 killed three of the cluster, breaking them up into ineffective fragments before impact. The other five rammed into Regenlief near the stern, flaring down her shields and punching one deep crater through the outer armor belt. But that was it; the missile attack was over.

Reuental's mismatched eyes flicked to the mid-range tactical display. The Zebesian fighters were milling about in confusion rather than jetting towards them.

So far, so good. Everyone was on their toes, making suitable evasive maneuvers in case any more pirate forces opened up on them from the asteroid field, but there was time for a quick command conference. A few words to his communication officer got him Mittermeyer on the screen.

"Thirty seconds early, Wolfgang."

"I thought you might be in a hurry."

Reuental chuckled softly. "Do you see me complaining, friend?"

"Do you think the rest of the plan will work out?"

"If the enemy commander is intelligent, he will try to cut his losses; we already have more force than his mobile units can handle, now that the missile attack has failed. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to call the Admiral at any time..."


Boskonian Type 17 Core Ship #98734872
Squadron Flagship, A4F18

Higobi Trakenza drummed taloned fingers against the side of his command chair. By objective measures, he had lost only a small portion of his assets, and his core ships were undamaged... but he was defeated. The asset fighters were in disarray. Their command and control had been jarred by the opening bombardment, and the jarring had become outright dislocation when the missile attack failed with the sudden arrival of the Enemy's missile frigates.

To make matters worse, he was now badly outnumbered in mobile units. Only his own flagship was even close to a match for the Prussian destroyers, let alone their battlecruiser, and the Enemy had eleven ships to his seven- they'd had two squadrons, not one.

With bitter self-reproach learned from a culture where "failure" was the closest word in the language to "sin," Trakenza realized that he had been tricked. The Enemy had drawn him into committing part of his forces against the combined strength of the enemy's two squadrons, neutralizing his missiles and degrading his fighters' effectiveness. The fighters could be rallied, but the only unshaken units under his control were the mixed asset-core ships of Squadron A4F18.

Therefore, trying to hold this position was certain death. By staying near the mining facility, with its fixed EW emitters and the automated defense platform, Trakenza might manage to cost the Enemy a few ships as they came in to dig him out, fighting a beam duel with the Prussian fleet as Keldrog had tried to fight at Hawk's Nest. But he would lose the beam duel, lose his core ships... and lose his own life. There was critical information aboard the core ships that must not be taken by the Enemy in recognizable form, and Trakenza knew that the precautions taken to keep them from falling into Enemy hands would prevent him from surviving defeat.

He could not stand, and there was nothing to be gained from trying, so he would run.

"Signal the starships to form on me and break for the limit on the far side of the star. Signal the fighters to escort us to the hyper limit, bypassing the asset command structure." They'll achieve nothing against the Enemy now, but they might help screen us if we're pursued aggressively.

"Yes, master."

The Boskonian considered what to do with the fighter pilots. Useful assets, but not valuable enough to justify detaching a starship to retrieve. The fighters themselves were sublight and couldn't escape the system, nor did he have a suitable carrier to take them away in. With an all-core force, he'd be inclined to promise them pickup at the hyper limit, bearing in mind that he could always renege if the enemy pursued his ships. But with Urtraghan assets mixed in, he couldn't afford that; it would make the Urtraghans unmanageable... no, wait. He could salvage the fighters and the pilots, at least in principle.

"Order the ore freighter docked at the station to make maximum speed towards our evacuation point. The fighters can fly their craft into its main hold there." The freighter's cargo handling equipment would probably damage some of the fighters, and there would most likely be accidents in the confusion, but there was enough volume inside its holds to carry the entire contingent in principle. Some of the pilots and some of the fighters would survive.

It might not work... but it marginally increased the assets he could recover from this disaster.

---

F-2515 Series Missile Frigate F-2522
Flagship 23rd Frigate Flotilla

Drive signatures!

"Ha! Oskar, you were right, they're moving. Hold on." He turned away from the visiplate where his friend had just finished explaining what he expected the pirates to do... and been proven right.

"All ships, I want a vertical spread, spacing fifty thousand kilometers. Get me tracking data I can use on those pirates, and we'll drop our friends on them."


Boskonian Type 17 Core Ship #98734872
Squadron Flagship, A4F18

The Enemy wasn't pursuing. The ships were spreading out into a picket formation, obviously trying to observe, but no more. A4F18 made its close pass of the system's red dwarf star uneventfully, shields angled to catch the bulk of its radiation. Soon his ships were bound for the far side of the limit, and safety; the Enemy would have trouble jumping around the limit.

He was defeated, but he could escape. The Enemy's overwhelming force would mitigate accusations of incompetence; his fortunes would dive, but he would live to fight another day.

"Sir, more hyperspace tracks, two light-days and closing!"

A single paralyzing thought ran through Trakenza's mind: There were three Enemy squadrons...

For a few seconds, the Boskonian froze. But in the face of final, irreversible disaster, he would not surrender meekly to the Enemy- not even such a subtle surrender as allowing the Enemy to paralyze him. Trakenza was already issuing orders to A4F18 as the four remaining ships of Rear Admiral von Musel's Sixth Battlecruiser Division jumped out of hyperspace squarely across his path to safety.


Escape Pod 7022
Fleeing Missile Battery 91

Nugak Tranados winced. The chief was almost done cursing, and finished off with a choice Urtraghan epithet that would translate to a speaker of Galstandard English as "Festering dung of every imaginable herd beast!"

The good news was that he wasn't cursing at Nugak about the fish. The bad news was that he had way bigger things to worry about than Nugak's fish, because they'd just gotten their cloacas kicked. He had no idea what had happened to the eight-missile salvo his battery had tossed off, but it didn't really matter. It was pretty obvious that just about everyone's missiles had either got nuked, gone crazy and wandered away, or got shot full of bullets when they made it near the human ships. The humans were all still there... and the alien general had led his ships to bravely run away, towing the fighter jocks along behind him.

Just goes to show you can only trust Urtraghans.

They were floating now, well away from any of the defense platforms... the remaining defense platforms. Jobblod had suggested they hide behind one of the chunks of rock left of the slag piles the humans had broken up with their railguns. He figured that the humans probably wouldn't try to blow up anything they'd already blown up. The chief agreed, and steered the pod for a pile of loose-packed chondrites.

That left them with nothing to do but monitor the broadcasts from the sensor arrays; the pods didn't have high-resolution displays or much in the way of powerful sensors, but they at least had datalinks to the systems on the mining platform. So Nugak happened to be watching the plate when the big human ships appeared out of nowhere. Right next to Admiral Not-So-Brave.

Festering dung of every imaginable herd beast.

"We're gonna be in trouble, guys..."

---

Valkyrie-Class Battlecruiser SMS Brunhild
Command Bridge

Konteradmiral Reinhard von Musel brushed a lock of blond hair out of his eye and checked the display. The pirates had a couple of destroyers, one close to cruiser-sized, a frigate of the familiar type that a number of other Coalition forces had clashed with- the spinal plasma gun design- and three corvettes, one of them almost laughably tiny. A match for two battlecruisers, not for four.

They reacted with commendable speed, he'd give them that much. The Zebesians focused fire on the battlecruiser Sigrun, hammering it with the expect barrage of plasma fire and... Interesting. I don't think anyone's seen those before. Some of the ships, including the heavy destroyer, had a very odd electronics fit. Best to check the logs afterwards, these might be a new type.

Sigrun stood up well. All Prussian ships were built tough for their tonnage, the Valkyries unusually so. Moreover, she was using all the tricks her EW suite allowed, and had been from the moment she entered normal space. The Zebesian raiders would need time to nail down her position and target her properly with enough firepower to bring down her shields, time Reinhard had no intention of giving them.

"Güdr, Hildr, target enemy heavy destroyer." That one was putting out a lot of fire, beam weapons of an unusual type. Better kill it first. "Sigrun to full evasive, Brunhild to engage enemy ships in ascending order of tonnage."

Elapsed time fifteen seconds; I should be doing better than that...

Even if Reinhard had been a fraction slow to react after the sensor picture cleared, the proper orders had been given, and the battle soon became anticlimactic. The Zebesian pirate ships simply didn't have the numbers or heavy guns to contest the outcome effectively. The lightest raider- corvette tonnage but probably a merchant conversion- suffered a back-breaking impact from a guided antiship round from Brunhild, and Reinhard's flagship started working up the chain, engaging one of the other corvettes.

The heavy destroyer survived longer against the combined attack of Brunhild's two sisters, but was soon forced into radical evasive maneuvers, which made it impossible for her to fire effectively against Sigrun. That, in turn, freed up the fourth battlecruiser to begin shooting back at her attackers, after which point the battle swiftly became an anticlimax.

Within minutes, all seven pirate ships were picked apart; three had vanished in massive explosions- either contemptible fuel containment or truly excessive scuttling charges. The damage they'd done in return was fairly minor; scarred and ablated armor except for a few low-energy penetrations amidships on Sigrun.

The pirate fighters were already scattering, having managed to contribute effectively nothing; that left only the defense platforms. There was time to reorganize his forces for the assault on the gun platform; he was far enough out from Zebes that a reinforcement group couldn't arrive quickly enough to be a major problem...

---

Escape Pod 7022
Awaiting Pickup

It had not been a happy six hours for Nugak. The inside of the pod was starting to smell funny, he'd forgotten to bring the fish food, and there was nothing to do but watch replays of stuff getting blown up.

Meanwhile, for the first hour or so, the humans had hovered around, blowing the hell out of everything they could find and sweeping the debris field with their sensors. The mining facility was a complete wreck; they'd shot up just about every piece large enough to matter, then shot up the smaller pieces too. They'd been well on their way to finishing off the pieces of the pieces when, as one, they ran off and vanished into hyperspace.

The rescue party from Zebes had showed up a while later, by which point there was nothing to do but gather up the survivors. They'd taken their sweet time about it too.

We're gonna be in so much trouble...

[Shroom Man 777]

City of Atuvir, Faust
The Centrality
August 3400



Nah Oslo.

"Oh man!" he gasped as the TSA goon patted him down. The goon looked at him oddly, pausing for a moment before continuing on, making Nah Oslo squirm uncomfortably. The Centralite was very thorough. Nah quivered, goosebumps on his skin, hair standing on the nape of his back. His toes curled and he felt lightheaded. His whole body shuddered as a sensation of warmth coursed through his entire being. He gasped for breath.

"YUCKS!" the TSA goon yelped in disgust and gave Nah a filthy look. "Why you... you... you degenerate outsider!"

"Wha... huh?" Nah struggled to catch his breath.

"Get out of here!" the TSA goon waved him off while wiping his hand with a kleenex. The goon turned to face the next person in line, only to find a huge Bragulan with a funny hat, and a miniature Centralite flaglet, and a bottle of whiskey that reeked of pee. The TSA goon's shoulders sagged as he waved the bear into the frisking area. "Next!"

Done with lining up, Nah Oslo made his way away from the checkpoint. He walked coolly and confidently, assured in the knowledge of his own self-superiority. Blando Dullrissian had told him, after that mess in Pendleton, that the Anglians had issued an APB for him, an all-planets-bulletin, and that Governor Tarkington had signed his death warrant. That was really great, but what was even better was that for some reason, some guys in Pendleton had decided to name their city after him - Nah Oslo! He had defied the vile Anglian Empire, repulsed their Marines and outran their cruisers, now they wanted him dead and for his heroism he also had a city with his name on it. That was incredible! That was wonderful! It was just like home! The thought of that made Nah grin, and since he was talking down Athens Street, his grin was an Athenian Grin.

Suddenly, he heard a very loud sound of a raspberry being blown. He turned around and looked back to the security checkpoint, seeing a laughing Bragulan and a whole squad of TSA goons scattering away from him.

"Bleeeaaaaarrrgghhh!!!!" said the lead goon, although he didn't really say it, more like sputter it out as he gagged and choked.

"Heeheeheehee!" Nah giggled mischievously as he tiptoed away from the action.

Nah was loving it right now. After earning several hundred thousand credits for the Pendleton job, he had taken an offer by some guys to deliver toys to the Centrality. Apparently X-mas was early in the Centrality or something, and the charitable organization had decided to give away free toys. That was very sweet and kind of them. But Nah would have never done it - ship toys to needy children and goddamn orphans - for free, no way Jose. He needed compensation, and those miserly scrooges finally gave up and paid for Nah's rates. They were reasonably exorbitant too, since he had to go through the Centrality's notoriously paranoid security system.

Notoriously paranoid my ass, Nah thought as he thought about those groping TSA goons getting farted on by a Bragulan. They had let him through wily nilly after giving his cargo a good check. Of course, since it wasn't like he was smuggling guns or anything, they were just toys, so what could they do anyway? Nah didn't think the Centrality would stoop so low as to deny honest to goodness toys to needy Centralite kids. What were they, Bragulans?



So right now, he was feeling great after having done a good deed, giving toys to needy kids, and getting paid handsomely to do it. Sometimes, lots of times, Nah did these things because he was just a swell guy. At least, that's what he told himself - and if he said it, then it must be true, right?

"Yes!" Nah said loudly to no one in particular. Some people turned to look at him oddly, but he didn't mind as he jogged off back to his starship - the Century Egg.

There in the starship was his loyal companion Brewbacca. He had ditched his moldy old stinky fur suit and, with their earnings, he had gotten his hair done. Nah bought him a nice uniform with a name tag, since now that they were all rich and on the run from the evil Anglian Empire, they had to look respectable and such.

"Hey, Brew!" Nah greeted his pard'ner.

"Hey boss, how did it go?" Brew asked.



"Oh, it was great!" Nah replied, describing the events at the Esper Games he saw. "There was this naked blue guy, and he was all 'vrrrrrroooooooooommm' and he made this hueg thinggy! It was HUEG! And then this little girl was all 'no way, you did not go there, girl!' and she went 'wrrrrrrooooowwwwwwww' and she made this T-1000000 out of mimetic poly alloy and stuff..."

"What the hell does that mean?" Brew scratched his new ears.

"Liquid metal," Nah replied. He described what the mimetic poly alloy was in great detail.

"I need a minute here," Brew thought it over for a while. "You're telling me that this thing can imitate anything it touches?"

"Anything it samples by physical contact." Nah nodded. He fiddled with the Century Egg's controls and the spaceship lifted off into the air, engaging its turboramscramfanjets to breach the atmosphere before switching to ion drives once reaching space.

"Get real, like it could disguise itself as a pack of cigarettes?" Brew asked incredulously.

"No, only an object of equal size." Nah answered. He piloted the starship deftly, avoiding other ships in orbital traffic as he plotted a course to the hyper-limit.

"Why doesn't it become a bomb or something to get me?" Brew asked again.

"It can't form complex machines, guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts, it doesn't work that way, but it can form solid metal shapes." Nan explained. After a while, they were now bordering the edge of the system. He computated the navi-comp and plotted a coordinate that would take them out of the Centrality.

"Like what?" Brew kept on asking again and again and again.

"Knives and stabbing weapons." Nah replied. He lifted his hand and made a clawing gesture with his fingers.

"Cool!" Brew laughed. "Man, the Esper Games are awesome."

"Yeah, totally!" Nah replied. "It was the bomb!"

The Century Egg engaged its hyperdrives and left realspace.

***

CSB Underground
City of Atuvir, Faust
The Centrality
August 3400

The Centralites had tried their hardest to wash the stink of poos from their lair, but the smell just wouldn't go away. They sprayed perfumes and placed air fresheners, but the scent of mint and fresheners would just mix with the poo-scent and turn into something that smelled even more disgusting. They tried putting smell-absorbers, little boxes of baking soda and activated charcoal that would soak up the smell, but that did nothing. They could've tried using hunter-killer nanites to destroy the poopy particulates, but the underground had scores of sensitive equipments and machines and computers that might not react nicely to disseminating nanoes. They certainly couldn't wash their computers with soap and water.

So they had to deal with it. The surveillance technicians wore ominous gas masks usually reserved for the Civil Protection services and other such intimidating faceless visored enforcers, not because they wanted to scare citizens into picking up cans, but because they needed the rebreathers to filter the scent of poo still lingering in the air.

They still had work to do. The Bragulan was not the only suspicious character to monitor. There were countless peoples and places being bugged and surveiled by the omniscient authoritarian apparatus of the CSB - foreigners and Centralite citizens alike.

In one monitor, a colored dot depicting a vessel of interest was on the verge of disappearing from the wireframe map of the Faust system - about to make hyperspace excision. It was the Century Egg, a vessel of interest because it was transporting those silly Shepistani General Sheppard action figures with realistic leather overcoats. Normally, those toys were harmless and despite the Shepistani SIS' dickery, the toys were still allowed in the country so that they could be burned in bonfires during the weekly Three Minutes Hate (which was usually directed at outside enemies or disliked nations, like the Commune, or now Shepistan). But still, they paid attention to the Century Egg because its captain - Nah Oslo - was a known smuggler and gun runner.

The Centrality's foreign intelligence had learned of how the Anglian SIS had bugged Oslo with surveillance nanodust to track his movements. That information was passed on and the CSB had placed micro-bugs in Oslo's ship when it had entered the system, during routine customs inspection. The fool didn't even suspect that he was falling for the same trick twice!

Because the CSB monitored so many potential dissident-aggressors at once, the task of surveiling communications was passed on to a computer system that automatically flagged certain key words and phrases considered to be anti-State or otherwise potentially threatening.

...mimetic poly alloy...

...a bomb or something...

...complex machines, guns and explosives... have chemicals, moving parts...

...Knives and stabbing weapons...

...It was the bomb...

...the bomb...

...bomb...

The computer automatically flagged those alarming words. Ever since the Commune nano-bombed that planet near the Centrality's borders, and probably even before that, nanoweapons had become a priority threat to the CSB. Mimetic poly alloy. Bombs. Guns and explosives, chemical weapons. Knives and stabbing weapons, sharp sticks. Bombs. Nano-bombs. The threat was all to obvious.

While the Century Egg was already gone, hypering out of Central space, the threat was still there. The packages Oslo had delivered. Nanotech was particularly hard to detect, and the scans customs used when checking ships and their cargoes out might not have been able to detect particularly stealthy nano-weapons concealed in those General Sheppard toys Oslo was delivering.

The implications of this were terrible. Nanotech was not a usual Shepistani weapon. Their forte was atomics. The ones with the most extensive nano-weaponization was... the Commune. Perhaps these deliveries of Sheppard action figures was an elaborate maskirovka by those communist space Soviets. Had the commies and their KGB pulled a fast one on the CSB, leading the Centrality to mistakenly believe that it was a Shepistani plot when in fact it was another sinister facet of the international communist conspiracy to nano-technologically sap and impurify the State's precious bodily fluids?

"No... it can't be!" uttered the Centralite technician for the second time that day.

This time, there was a real bomb threat, and it was not from any Brag-thunder.

The CSB gave out the warning.

[Master_Baerne]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

[Force Lord]

City of Atuvir, Faust
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
August 3400

The voice on the loudspeakers was heard loud and clear to everyone in Atuvir.

"WARNING, WARNING! BOMB THREAT! BOMB THREAT! ALL CITIZENS ARE TO EVACUATE THE THREATENED AREA NOW!"

Panic ensued, much to the chagrin of local and Central police that was trying to reach the threatened location. The CSB agents avoided the situation by taking aircraft.

"ALL SECURITY PERSONELL TO ASSIST IN THE EVAC! BOMB SEARCHERS WILL ARRIVE SHORTLY!"

Army troops and militia had to be brought in to assist the evac. Navy ships were patrolling the skies.

"DO NOT PANIC! THE STATE IS HERE TO PROTECT YOU!"

On the CSB HQ, it was decided that the Century Egg had to be neutralized. So a bounty was issued.

WANTED: CREW OF CENTURY EGG, DEAD OR ALIVE
REWARD: 100,000,000 Centrals

[Steve]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

The ad did not go unnoticed by sales officials from New Bremerton Shipyards Inc., the New Colombian shipyard company responsible for the Glorious-class ($125) carriers employed by the Anglian Royal Navy. A rejected design from the 3390 Carrier Program, the Kestrel, is transmitted as an offer, valued at $180-$200 (design specifics are flexible enough to permit the range of values) and based on the Glorious-class which is now serving proudly in the RN.

[Force Lord]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

The ad was seen in the sales office of the Central Drive Yards, and it was decided to cut the ASC some slack by taking over the order. The CDY took the choice of basing the carrier on the Thunder-class now serving in the Central Navy, modifying one of the prototypes for this purpose. The modifications resulted in a ship valued at $170-$190, and was offered to the Ascendancy Navy.

[Akhlut]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

Tlali, Esaxeta Heavy Weapons Ltd. Corporate HQ

"Hey, Vanla, did you read this ad?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Do you think we could work with Hakari Ship Construction and the government manufacturing facility to downsize the Ikal by about 100 ISV? We'd have to cut weapons a bit, and shorten the carrier decks, but I think it's doable."

"We might be able to. I think Hakari and the government would be willing to get involved. Send a missive to the Ascendancy about our interest."

[Shroom Man 777]

P-Nein
(In Sector P-9)

P-Nein was a Prussian establishment. The 'P' stood for 'Prussia', and the 'Nein' was just a word that they matched the 'P' with so it would sound like 'P-9', which was the sector the bar was in. The fat monocled Prussian bar-owner thought it was pretty clever.

Needless to say, the establishment was full of Prussian expatriates. Blonde-haired blue-eyed types who came from either Prussia itself, or had left Prussia to stay in some of the other Germanian star-nations near it, like say Volksland. Before Prussia had annexed Volksland, killing millions in the process, quite a few of these types ended up moving even further away and eventually some ended up in sector P-9, sucking sausages at P-Nein.

Needless to say, these types didn't really like having the company of Nah Oslo's rather shady shade, and it wasn't just because of his line of work, not the line but the melanin. In his skin. If you catch the drift.

One of them tried to approach Nah and tell him that they didn't serve his 'kind' here, but Nah told them to fuck off rather fierce, and so they did fuck off. Nah was cool, Nah was confident, Nah was bad. When they heard that name, realizing it was the badarsch mutterfucker who they heard had killed a whole company of Anglian Royal Marines with a flintlock while holding a cutlass between his teeth, before fleeing the whole Anglian blockade around Pendleton, well, they ficked off real fast.

So he sat there in a dark corner, drinking lager. He ordered a brattwurst was now sucking on a sausage. In the future, sausages were sucked, because when resurgent Germany left Earth That Was and went to space, the sausage had evolved into a kind of hyper-nutritious space-food, like those toothpaste tubes full of nutrients that could feed space people for a whole month just from one tube. Those kinds of sausages were expensive, but now that Nah was a high roller, he bought those sausages and sucked on them hard - while all the other Prussies looked at him jealously as they watched him suck his sausage.

After he wiped his mouth, he got a newspaper. It was made out of post-paper, not wood-paper, which shifted and rippled as he leafed through the pages of holographic parchment. He saw something in the classified ads:

On the CSB HQ, it was decided that the Century Egg had to be neutralized. So a bounty was issued.

WANTED: CREW OF CENTURY EGG, DEAD OR ALIVE
REWARD: 100,000,000 Centrals

After he read it, Nah suddenly got up on his feet and looked around him - looking at the Prussians who were looking back at him. For some reason, Nah felt odd. A bit anxious. A tingling feeling was in his palms, while his stomach churned, as though he had swallowed butterflies out of the sausages he had sucked on. He furrowed his brows, squinted his eyes, and bit on his lip as he pondered the implications of what he had just read.



The Centralites had just made him Public Enemy #1, going so far as to issue a bounty on him worth 100,000,000 Centrals. That was a lot of money, even if it was in the currency of their Mickey Mouse money. Why, though? Why did they do this? All he did was deliver toys. Maybe they didn't like the toys? Maybe they hated toys! Maybe they were a bunch of Grinches, and they were sore that he had given them a nightmare before Xmas? But the shipment was just toys...

Then he thought back to Pendleton. Something had happened there. Something odd. Something strange. So many people had tried to kill him, only in turn to get themselves killed in the process. The Anglians tried to stop him, oh how they tried, but they failed! They failed hard! With a vengeance! And then the Pendletonians, realizing his greatness, named their very city after him! While in rage, Tarkington stamped his foot and issued a death warrant! Hah!

Now Tamrin and Balthier had finally shut up! Both of them! Their voices had stopped, Nah didn't hear them anymore! So surely, this was a sign of something! But what KIND of something?!

Now, for some reason, the Centralites had issued this bounty. But why? There was no good reason for them to do so. At least, it wasn't reasonable. But why wouldn't they be reasonable? What had gotten into them...?

Then it struck Nah.

They were scared.

They were scared, just like Tarkington, just like Java the Butt, just like those Mangdalorians and punishers and toolverines! Just like the Prussies who fucked off when he told them who he was. Even Blando, his friend, was scared. Nah could see it in their eyes. The whole city of Atuvir had fallen into chaos because of the Centrality's fear.

But why were they scared?

There was only one reason, and Nah knew.

"Yes!" he shouted to the Prussians around him, and then he laughed. "I am the greatest!"

They looked at him confusedly.

"Ja!" Nah repeated himself. "Ich bin der größte!"

Und dann lachte er wieder!

[Shroom Man 777]

Previously on...

CHAMARRAN-CHAN!

(=^_________^=)

The smuggler shits were trafficking these Chamarrans! Perhaps even to the Collectors!

"You're safe now," Fiyor said to the Chamarrans, surprising himself by saying that. "I am Arbitrator Fiyor Byordyng of the Bragulan Star Empire's Justice Enforcers."

"Arbitrators... fyer... berding... desu?" the Chamarran struggled to pronounce with some difficulty. She scratched her ears in adorable confuzzlement. "Nyah!"

Awwww.

Fiyor sighed.

"Just call me..." he thought for a second, thinking of something easier for them to pronounce. "Arbitrator Forbearing."

The People's Truthful Bi-Daily Ideologically Purified Accurate Information Broadcast to the Proud Patriotic Bragulan Listeners of THE GALAXY begins thusly:

CUTE CHAMARRAN CATGIRL CAPTIVES RESCUED REALLY RAPIDLY BY BRAVE BRAGULAN BEATCOPS


A Chamarran couple is reunited after the ordeal.

Patriotic hero Arbitrator Fiyor Byordyng - the very same officer whose decisive action saved youngling Yivgny Chamski from the wretched hands of deranged Dominionoid degenerates - has once again saved the day, this time for the captured citizens of our adorable comrade-nation the Chamarran Hierarchy.

A number of Chamarran females were under the mercy of depraved human slaver-smugglers - for only human beings could be so vile as to traffic such innocent Chamarrans, no doubt intending to sell them for capitalistic profits to Wild Space prostitution rings, or even the dreaded Collectors. The captive Chamarrans were locked in a container, where they were mistreated and malnourished. They cried and mewed, pleading to be allowed to go home. But alas, the black hearts of those human criminals knew no mercy, and for a brief moment, all hope seemed lost for the Chamarrans.

Until the brave bears of the Justice Enforcement Arbitrators came! Walking quietly and carrying big sticks, and even bigger guns, Arbitrator Fiyor Byordyng and his deputy Dud Dudgryz double-pawedly killed and maimed the human slavers, their disgusting insectoid Khe!Srri peons, and even treasonous Bragulan species-traitors who dared consort with the hairless apes. It was an open and shut case, with the Justice Enforcement Arbitrators doing their duties by acting as judges, jury and executioners on the spot.

However, some humans were apprehended, and for the crime of slavery they were sent to the Bragulags for 'protracted capital punishment' via compelled compulsory labor.

"We thank yous for saving us, Arbitrator Forbearing-kun!" one of the rescued Chamarrans said, after the harrowing ordeal and the daring police raid that liberated her and her sisters from the clutches of the vile humans.

The rescued Chamarrans are currently in the process of being repatriated to their home country, the Hierarchy.

"The Hierarchy appreciates the efforts of our Bragulan friends to safeguard our kind." Mistress-Ambassador Satia Kithandra said from the Diplomatic Tower of Mighty Bragule.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?



SPEVIK ANSILS, Severnaya Sector, Bragulan Star Empire



Arbitrator Fiyor Byordyng returned home to the comfort of his own den. It was a wooden log cabin built by his father's father, and passed on to him after his father had passed on in glourious battle against the damned Solarians. He trodden on the porch and looked out into the planetset, for Spevik Ansils was a moon that orbited a world (as well as a sun), and sighed. His family, namely his mother and his siblings, had left the backwater moon and gone to the core sectors to seek better lives - mother was now a directrix of the mammary milk bottling bureaus, and his brothers were vegemite miners. He was all alone now, too engrossed in his own work, in serving the public and Byzonist law, to have time for other things.

But the day hadn't been filled with duties to the Imperator and the patriotic working-class proletarian peoples. No, it had been filled with useless celebrations and commendations and speeches and medal-giving for his 'heroism' at saving the Chamarrans, something that the higher ups at Brague found commendable and worthy of spectacle. But to Fiyor, such things were unnecessary, he didn't want or need any recognition - although the occasional reward and raise was nice. He didn't need any because it was just his job, it was what he did, a service to the Bragulan peoples... and maybe also their comrade-nations and alien allies perhaps.

Fiyor sighed and removed his hat. He was about to unlock the door when his paw touched the knob and pushed the door open.

"Huh?" Fiyor distinctly remembered locking his door in the morning. His Arbitratorial training kicked in. This was suspicious, but who would be stupid enough to break into an Arbitrator's home? His blood turned warm, a sensation of apprehension that would make a human's blood turn cold, but Bragulans liked the cold and disliked the heat, so the idiom was reversed. His blood turned warm because this could only mean one thing... that the IBGV, the Bragestapo, was breaking in and sifting through his things - perhaps to find something ideologically impure to persecute him with. But since Fiyor was not an IBGV agent (or a commissar) himself, but was a simple cop, double-thinking was not exactly his forte, so he returned to single-thinking. Either way, thief, vandal, or IBGV secret police (these three were all alike, either way), Fiyor could not allow this intrusion to pass.

He drew his 44mm Bragnum and pulled back the hammer.

He pushed the door open and stalked in.

He sniffed the air with his acute nose and smelled something familiar... in that direction. Da. He moved towards it, and then his tiny ears could hear sounds, coming from the kitchen. He moved closer and closer, sneaking as he did so. He walked into the kitchen and immediately hid his gun when he saw...



"Arbitrator-kuuun!" the Chamarran squealed as she lunged at the Bragcop and glomped him, wrapping her arms around his huge form. Well, attempting to wrap her arms around his huge form, since her arms couldn't wrap around his huge form because his form was that huge. She couldn't bear hug the bear, and settled for a non-bear hug instead.

"Chamarran!" Fiyor gasped in surprise. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be repatriated?"

"Mmmm...." the Chamarran thought about this for a while. Yes, the Chamarrans were in the process of being repatriated. Before that, though, right after they were rescued, the Arbitrators had no idea where to put them so they were instead allowed to stay in the precinct. No, they didn't sleep in the jail cells. The precinct had a miniature Brag bunker underneath it, with all the amenities for survival, and so the Chamarrans stayed there instead for the meanwhile. But now, they were being repatriated, and were supposed to be on a ship bound for Bragule where they would go into another ship bound to go through the fargate and head back to Chamarra. But the Chamarran girl didn't seem to know this as she simply shrugged and went, "Nyah!"

Fiyor looked at the kitchen. It was a mess.

"What have you been doing?"

"Arbitrator-kun, I made you a cookies!" the Chamarran beamed. But then she pouted sadly. "But I eateds it."

Awwwww. Somehow, the pouting Chamarran looked very adorable. Fiyor couldn't help but chuckle.

"Okay, make me a new one then," he said lightly.

"Hai! Sugoi desu!" the Chamarran's ears perked up as she almost jumped up to her feet and went back to mixing whatever cookies she was making.

As he watched the pleasant catgirl go about baking more cookies, Fiyor wondered how he got himself into these situations. He was reminded of Shagfellow, who he was rather fond of. The furry had been a good doggie, irritating the Dominionoids like that. He felt a pang of regret and sadness in remembering how Shagfellow had died in the hands of that crazy Dominionoid psykeroid. Damn. Fiyor decided then and there that he would never bring his new Chamarran friend anywhere near the Dominionoids.

"Done!" the Chamarran said happily, pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. "Try?"

"Sure," Fiyor obliged. He took a cookie, sniffed it with his snout, and nibbled on it. It tasted... very sweet. As if it was made entirely of sugar and diabetes. Fiyor decided he liked it and threw he whole cookie inside his mouth, and then another."Mmm. Pretty tasty."

"Thank yous!" the Chamarran beamed again, flashing a toothy grin as her ears perked and her tail wagged.

They had dinner together, and all they ate were cookies.

"So... Chamarran-chan," Fiyor started, trying his best to approach the matter carefully. Since he couldn't really pronounce her name properly, he just called her 'Chamarran-chan'. "What made you come here?"

"I am going to be repatriateds," the Chamarran replied, her ears lowered and her tail seemed to wag nervously. "But before I goes... I wanted to thank you for saving us. On behalf of me and my sisters. Arbitrator Fiyor Byordyng-kun."

She embraced him and, without knowing what else to do, Fiyor hugged her back.

"Mmrrrrrwww..." she buried her head in his furs, but eventually she let go, blushing as she smiled sweetly. "There, I said your name right! But now I must goes, Arbitrator-kun."

He walked her out of the cabin. She leaned on his arm as they did so, until they got to the yard. It was a grassy garden, though the grass had turned orange in the dying sunlight.

"I guess this is it," Chamarran-chan said quietly.

"Goodbye, Chamarran-chan." Fiyor replied.

"Ja!" Chamarran-chan waved as she walked away into the sunset. "So long, Arbitrator-kun. I'll never forget you! Tah!"

"Tah," Fiyor said quietly as Chamarran-chan went away, to be repatriated back to Chamarra Prime. Fiyor sighed as he turned back and, once again, walked up the porch and went back inside his house.

He realized that he had never gotten to know the Chamarran girl's name.

[Kartr_Kana]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

TO: The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet
FROM: Council of the High Admiral; Techneers Guild

It has recently come to our attention that the Federated Ascendancy is looking to acquire carriers. The HCN due to it's recent restructuring and change in doctrinal procedures finds that it has an excess of Gar Naabal-class carriers including the 6 hulls laid down at the beginning of the year, which are currently undergoing their shakedown cruises. In addition the Naabali based firm Tyyler and Mazuus Shipwrights are willing to build additional units for the Federated Ascendancy Starfleet or even license the design to a Federated Ascendancy firm.

In addition to having three warships that can be made ready in fairly short order and another nine that will be done with their shakedown cruises starting in January of 3401, the Federated Ascendancy Starfleet will be working alongside a pair of Gar Naabal-class carriers during the coming fleet exercises. This provides an opportunity for the evaluation of the capabilities of the design and whether or not it fits with the Ascendancy's plans. The Gar Naabal-class is rated at 175S-W overall, with a combat rating of 25S-W and a capacity of 150S-W (OOC: $75 worth of fighters but since fighters attacks are x2 it's $150 of combat ability).

Signed,
Grand Admiral Trig Hansu, First Fleet CO, High Admiral; Guild Master Karos Somtaaw, Techneers Guild

[Mayabird]

Previously...

Outside Known Space

The Ambassador stepped down from the courier ship, nulgrav generators preventing its mass from denting the deck grating. The five meter tall drone was matte white but a play of prismatic static revealed the active camouflage that was disabled for this meeting. Electronic eyes scanned the area, the AI allowing itself an internal smile at the state of Refuge defenses; somehow it was much easier to trust someone who was willing to train a few dozen fusion cannons on you than foolishly let you waltz into their ship with a payload of AM warheads. It walked slowly over to the terminal, extending complex connection ports from its fingers and patching into the server system set up for communication between it and the mind the Refuge had brought. A viewing of the terminal's security brought about another internal chuckle from the Ambassador; while the various firewalls were all crackable there was no chance that it would break them before a beam of fusing He-3 would reduce him to atoms. The paranoid, it mused, where so much easier to take into your confidence.

"Greetings, Caution Despite Hopefulness, I am the Ambassador and I represent the Emissaries fully for this conversation. First, I understand that you are curious about our purpose. To state it plainly, we will bring war to the heavens and as is always the inevitable result of doing so be burned out by invincible might of the AI being known as the XylyX. Now, before this causes you undue concern realize the scale and grandeur of this plan. To wage this war we must unite not only this galaxy but this entire universe and others into a singular coalition. A single political entity that encompasses billions of galaxies and over a quintillion systems. The road will be long and arduous, our best estimates stating that it will take approximately a million years to unite this galaxy, a billion to unite the universe and ten billion years finally reach the point where the XylyX will wish to face us in combat. Think of what achievements we will have, what technologies and species we will encounter along our way. When we are done, even though we will be annihilated utterly by the god-machine our accomplishments will echo throughout the elder civilizations for the rest of time. We will be physically meaningful to the entire omniverse!"

Caution responded, the pacing of his electronic message betraying a worried furtiveness.

"These XylyX, they are real, godlike beings, and you will antagonize them?"

The Ambassador let out the electronic version of laughter before his reply.

"The XylyX are very real. Unfortunately their power is such that I can provide no proof of this other than my conviction. While every detail of the Emissaries' encounter with them is burned into my very circuitry, I am incapable of transmitting this to you in any form. This is why I laugh, for the power of the XylyX is beyond what the various self-titled gods of this galaxy could even dream to attain. We will not antagonize them for our entire universe is such a pitiful existence that it cannot raise any antipathy from the XylyX. To say that the XylyX are as far above our civilization as AIs like us are above self-replicating protein would be the most ostentatious belittlement the galaxy has ever seen. We do not seek to replicate them or to replace them. We simply seek their acknowledgment, that we are a civilization that they can interact with as a peer, instead of a pest."

There was an electronic static, the equivalent of a clearing of the throat, before the Ambassador continued.

"Since you will have several centuries to decide whether you want to assist us in our grand plan or not, why don't we move to more pressing concerns? There is a new faction in the vicinity of our space, the MEH. From what rumblings our intelligence has gathered from the Refuge we are fairly certain that you have deep worries about them. I will not mince words; we will utterly annihilate the MEH. They are unstable, insane and have the gall to put some pretend god upon a throne. Such... sacrilege will not stand! We do not ask for any military assistance from you nor for any public support. However, any private support you can lend in rid the galaxy of the MEH will be appreciated, but not require for our other negotiations to proceed."

Its vitriol vented the Ambassador sat back and awaited a response.

Parallel processing is a great and wonderful thing.

The Ambassador barely had to wait before Caution Despite Hopefulness responded, "Indeed. This so-called Multiversal Empire of Happiness sounds like a belligerent and dangerous state, one that cannot be allowed to grow. Many other nations, in point of fact, have their own concerns about them, although this copy of myself is not privy to all the details; I only know what was transmitted to me and despite the limitations of those transmissions, I detect indications that talks are likely ongoing. I believe it is quite likely that a war against the MEH, even preemptive strikes, could have national support and military assistance."


Another thought process, one that stayed internal, went, ...what.

Caution had expected a very long discussion, perhaps some trading of information, and receiving an interrogation from the Ambassador just as hard as Caution had planned to grill the Ambassador. The entire point of mentioning the Department of Theological Defense was so the Emissaries would ask. Instead, nothing. Just some chatter and then more immediate concerns.

Several centuries? Assuming this wasn't a trap (and Caution wasn't planning on assuming anything), that was a lot of time to figure something out. Talk them out of it, wage war, move, whatever. Caution was quite capable of thinking in the extreme long term, out towards the end of galaxies and the heat death of the universe, but tended to focus on shorter terms because life was unpredictable, whether it was organic or mechanical, and Caution liked life. Also the baby Avians needed their pap right now and they can't just delay feeding the chicks until some more convenient time.

Several centuries. Ugh. That would have to be turned over to the militarists to ponder over. It very well could be a trap to let their guard down. Granted, logistical issues for the Emissaries would be nearly as bad for them as it would be for the Refuge, and there was some hope of alliances, or at least forewarning if the robotic fleets were heading their way.

And if what they said was true? They could be moved down the threat list, from imminent, clear and present danger, to something more long term. That would make the MEH highest on the list. There were still unanswered questions about the theological soundness of many nations, but none of them proclaimed that their leader was a god with reality-warping abilities.

Also the MEH sounded like total dicks and Caution had suspicions that the MEH would turn out to be even worse than they already knew.

As for the Xylyx? Typical fundamentalist, providing absolutely no evidence and demanding that everyone else accept their beliefs on faith. So typical. Even a clip of questionable footage that could have been doctored or made up or some records would have been nice. It could very well be that the Xylyx weren't real at all. That would be nice. Unless the Emissaries decided to rip reality a new cloaca anyway and the real gods showed up. That would be bad.

Not enough information to make a determination. Note: on the long way home, discuss with the crews and ships, and process up a list of all possibilities. Including funny ones. It would be a long trip.


And without a pause, Caution continued, "There are certain problems to face before we could engage the MEH. First, logistical problems, due to their great distance from our territories (and many other nations that may be interested in a military response). Second, reconnaissance. Due to their apparently very recent arrival, knowledge, especially hard numbers, are scarce. Have the Emissaries done any scouting or observations of their territories?"


The parallel thoughts pondered, if they have, I sure hope they have some evidence to provide.

[Alyrium Denryle]

City of Atuvir, Faust
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
August 3400

An evacuation alarm had been sounded, and the Ranoidean fleet in orbit was very very quick to launch a response. Shuttles were scrambled from all fleet ships, and headed toward the planet with all possible speed, at the same time the CO of the TSS Copeia picked up the receiver directly.

"This is the Copeia Actual to Faust System Traffic Control, we are sending shuttles down to evacuate our citizens, and any other Psionicist who may require it. We are sending a small battle group to apprehend the offending ship."

...

Down on the planet, the Ranoidean Contingent was moving into position. The mind-gastalted metasensory specialists made sure the way was clear of any ordinance, while a telekinetic shield was put in place by the telekinetics to keep them from being trampled by the crowd of panicked people. They were to assemble in the central courtyard of the Athlete's Village, where shuttles would send down multiple lines and harnesses to facilitate their escape.

[Master_Baerne]

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

TO: The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet
FROM: Council of the High Admiral; Techneers Guild

It has recently come to our attention that the Federated Ascendancy is looking to acquire carriers. The HCN due to it's recent restructuring and change in doctrinal procedures finds that it has an excess of Gar Naabal-class carriers including the 6 hulls laid down at the beginning of the year, which are currently undergoing their shakedown cruises. In addition the Naabali based firm Tyyler and Mazuus Shipwrights are willing to build additional units for the Federated Ascendancy Starfleet or even license the design to a Federated Ascendancy firm.

In addition to having three warships that can be made ready in fairly short order and another nine that will be done with their shakedown cruises starting in January of 3401, the Federated Ascendancy Starfleet will be working alongside a pair of Gar Naabal-class carriers during the coming fleet exercises. This provides an opportunity for the evaluation of the capabilities of the design and whether or not it fits with the Ascendancy's plans. The Gar Naabal-class is rated at 175S-W overall, with a combat rating of 25S-W and a capacity of 150S-W (OOC: $75 worth of fighters but since fighters attacks are x2 it's $150 of combat ability).

Signed,
Grand Admiral Trig Hansu, First Fleet CO, High Admiral; Guild Master Karos Somtaaw, Techneers Guild

FROM: Ascendant OSB
TO: Guild Master Karos Somtaaw, Techneers Guild

Monsieur,

The Starfleet has informed us here at the Office of Shipbuilding that they consider yours to be an excellent proposal, and that they would like use to reserve all nine available ships, for purchase after the joint exercises assuming no glaring incompatabilities between the Gar Naabal-class and Ascendant doctrine are revealed.

Jayne's Frightening Ships
August 3400 Issue
Ads in the Back

WANTED: CARRIER DESIGN!

The Office of Shipbuilding, Federated Ascendancy Starfleet, is looking for a ~200 Interstellar Standard Value carrier design. Special consideration will be given to designs that have proven successful, or which have been built and may be observed. Compatability with Ascendant HIT fighters is a design requirement.

The ad did not go unnoticed by sales officials from New Bremerton Shipyards Inc., the New Colombian shipyard company responsible for the Glorious-class ($125) carriers employed by the Anglian Royal Navy. A rejected design from the 3390 Carrier Program, the Kestrel, is transmitted as an offer, valued at $180-$200 (design specifics are flexible enough to permit the range of values) and based on the Glorious-class which is now serving proudly in the RN.

FROM: Ascendant OSB
TO: New Bremerton Shipyards, Inc.

Monsieur/Madame,

We would like to order one Kestrel for testing purposes, to be delivered (if possible) at the beginning of the next fiscal year.

[Steve]

FROM: Ascendant OSB
TO: New Bremerton Shipyards, Inc.

Monsieur/Madame,

We would like to order one Kestrel for testing purposes, to be delivered (if possible) at the beginning of the next fiscal year.

After a day of consideration with engineers and sales officials, a reply was sent, stating that a functioning Kestrel-class carrier would not be available until Q2 3401 at the very earliest, as construction is expected to take about eight or nine months. Completion by April instead of July would require an increase in price due to higher costs, but was possible.

[Dark Hellion]

Chamarran Warpgate

There was a sparkling surge of energy as space itself ripped open, vomiting the boring, nondescript courier vessel of the Emissaries' Ambassador into Chamarran space. A short communication between the ship and the Chamarran Space Control secured a docking port. 9420 seconds later the Ambassador was brought before the Chamarran representative.

The quartet of power armoured guards gave him the general stare of biological guards everywhere which said, "I am being paid to glare very hard at you. If you make me do more I don't actually get compensation for it so don't make me do more and we'll all leave alive as friends." The Ambassador was glad he had spent the 756 milliseconds to download all the Chamarran biological information from their open system nets: it allowed him to read the guards actions, had led him to adjust his posture assuming a genuflecting position so as not to tower over the representative, and had allowed his last gesture which by the quiet purring of all the catgirls in the room was working perfectly. An Anti-Intrusion Electron Field, which on its normal settings would turn any unprotected biological within 15 meters into a charred husk could on a much lower setting heat the skin of nearby creatures to a pleasant (for a cat at least) 317 kelvin.

"Greetings representative, I am the Ambassador and I speak for the Emissaries. We have had little previous contact over your nation's short history but now we both face a threat that hopefully will serve to better unify our two nations in harmonious cooperation. It should surprise you little that we refer to the arrival of this group known as the MEH and the supposed goddess who leads them. But, the Emissaries know very well there are no real gods in the omniverse, just petulant tricksters with tech. We will not allow this abomination to stand. To put it bluntly our plan can be summed up in one word." The Ambassador shifted from a smooth androgynous voice into a sinister and harshly articulated monotone. "Exterminate!"

After a momentary pause the Ambassador began speaking again in its previous tone, "However, we do not ask for you to participate in these acts. If you would only assist us in achieving naval dominance over the region we will reward you with any of the habitable bodies you wish. It is definitely, as the humans say 'a win, win proposition' as we eliminate a threat to our long term goals and you gain valuable new resources. If you have any allies who wish to participate as well we will extend to them the same deal. All we require from others is to clear out the defensive forces of the MEH. We can handle the rest ourselves as we understand you biologicals do not like to get your hands dirty. We have no such problems. I can assure you that our water-proofing technology is very good; the blood washes off quite well."

[Master_Baerne]

FROM: Ascendant OSB
TO: New Bremerton Shipyards, Inc.

Monsieur/Madame,

We would like to order one Kestrel for testing purposes, to be delivered (if possible) at the beginning of the next fiscal year.

After a day of consideration with engineers and sales officials, a reply was sent, stating that a functioning Kestrel-class carrier would not be available until Q2 3401 at the very earliest, as construction is expected to take about eight or nine months. Completion by April instead of July would require an increase in price due to higher costs, but was possible.

A short consultation between the Navy Senior Captain assigned to the project and the OSB Director resulted in the determination that a July delivery date would be quite sufficient - no need to strain the budget for an extra few months.

[Steve]

FROM: Ascendant OSB
TO: New Bremerton Shipyards, Inc.

Monsieur/Madame,

We would like to order one Kestrel for testing purposes, to be delivered (if possible) at the beginning of the next fiscal year.

After a day of consideration with engineers and sales officials, a reply was sent, stating that a functioning Kestrel-class carrier would not be available until Q2 3401 at the very earliest, as construction is expected to take about eight or nine months. Completion by April instead of July would require an increase in price due to higher costs, but was possible.

A short consultation between the Navy Senior Captain assigned to the project and the OSB Director resulted in the determination that a July delivery date would be quite sufficient - no need to strain the budget for an extra few months.

With the return reply affirming a July delivery and the payment for the unit arranged, the process of building the ship commenced immediately - an open space in the lunar-orbiting dockyards was reserved, work crews readied, and materials ordered from contractors of engines, power plants, and other equipment. The Kestrel-1 Unit would be laid on 27 August 3400, scheduled for launch on 9 June 3401 and final delivery to the Ascendancy on 29 June 3401.

[Tanasinn]

Humanist Union
Union News Interplanetary
In Unreal Time

The channel changed, displaying a typical TV newsroom.

"...and in other news, the Federal Legislature today approved a proposal by the Department of War to purchase 10 Centralite "frigvettes," vessels on the scale of a Humanist corvette, for enhancing Civil Defense units in the pirate-plagued fringes of Union space. Viewers will recall that this deal previously appeared to have fallen through, only to suddenly reemerge in the past days. The ships are expected to be refitted to Federal Naval standards before reassignment to Civil Defense units Union-wide. The Office of Foreign Relations issued an official comment briefly after the closing of the Federal Legislature."

An anonymous-looking bureaucrat appeared on the screen, "While relations between our two states have been rocky in the past, we see this economic agreement as a step on the road to constructive relations with the Central State. While our politics have been at odds, we must remember that we share, after all, our humanity."

Back to the newsroom and the generically-attractive commentator, "Other elements in the government and citizenry have not been so optimistic. Senator Karlson, a member of the Socialist Party from New Haven, delivered a particularly withering evaluation of the Federal Legislature's decision."

Now the screen displayed a fat, elderly man in a military uniform - the sort worn by New Haven's Civil Defense Force, "The legislature today has essentially voted to betray Union workers in a time of recession to purchase cheap foreign garbage and save a few U-bills. Today I'm ashamed to call myself a Senator - where is our Coordinator while his Department of War is cutting corners?"

Back to the newsroom, "The Department of War and Central Executive declined to give an official comment, but an anonymous source within the War Department dismissed the Senator's criticism as 'puffery,' citing Office of Labor statistics indicating unemployment rates at an all-time low," the anchor paused, "In our next story, Bragulan exports and their failing quality standards - what oncologists are saying about the cancers no longer being caused by products of Byzon's state..."

*click*

[Shroom Man 777]

Brought to you in GODDAMN UNREAL TIME

NOVA GENOA

The situation at Nova Genoa had not gone unnoticed by the Bragulan Star Empire. Its distant early warning stations had detected the prelude to the massive Karlack incursion, how their splinter fleet had cast a shadow over the local hyperspace, and the subsequent movement of their bioships through the shoal space. As the Bragulans were the nominal allies of the Karlacks, they were familiar with the meanings of the Swarm's esoteric migratory movements and privy to their inhuman and inbragulan thinking and decision making processes. The grumblings of the Swarm, their telepathic murmurings of hunger, of food, their wish for more had not fallen on deaf ears. Allies they might have been, but the Bragulans were still wary about the Swarm and its all-consuming nature, and rightly so, thus the paranoiac security and intelligence measures Bragule maintained on its enemies were also leveled on its swarming acid-blooded chitinous friends.

Either way, it didn't take a Spud rocket scientist to see that a huge splinter fleet was going to make a go at eating a Byzantinian planet. That much was obvious. What was not obvious, however, was the unexpectedly rapid Solarian response - somehow, someway, the accursed Brigadier Flash Stalin had maneuvered his fleet to Genoa faster than even the Byzantinians themselves. The hot-headed fool had found himself facing something beyond the ordinary bug hunt, however, as this time the Swarm possessed the superior numbers, the superior firepower, and the superior high ground. But the ponderous Byzantinian response finally came, and now the human forces roughly matched the Karlacks.

While Bragule did not approve of the Karlacks' adventurism, or their eagerness to feed on the flesh of their enemies, something had to be done. The maintenance of regional affairs, the so-called Koprulu Zone Rules, had to be obeyed. In the case of Majella or Janus, the confrontation between the Solarians and the Bragulans, and the Imperium and the Karlacks respectively, were relatively indecisive and self-contained, each side facing its mortal enemy, one-on-one, and no other participant. But Genoa was different, here two of the human enemies were facing the Karlacks, and it had the potential of being not indecisive nor self-contained, perhaps even the opposite. A decisive defeat for the Karlacks was something that could not be easily contained, it could tip the balance of Koprulu Zone affairs, and a weakened Swarm would give the humans not only an advantage over the freaky bug monstrosities but also leverage against Bragule itself.

Unacceptable.

Thus it was decided by the Space Fleet's Supreme Stavka to dispatch an element of the 4th Imperial Bragulan People's Most Byzonist Space Guards Vigilant Patrol Kosmoflotta Oktyabrsky under the command of Front Admiral Nykloyai Gearsmyoviych Bragznetsov to pacify the situation and de-escalate it by re-escalating it to achieve a parity of escalation between the humans and the Karlacks/Bragulans, thus maintaining a balance of escalation to facilitate respective equalized de-escalation on both sides. A full half of the 4th Patrol Fleet was sent, calculated precisely as to present a significant threat to the Solarians and Byzantinians and a considerable reinforcement of the Karlacks but not so overmuch as to spark Space War Three. Though the remaining half of the 4th Patrol would remain outside the Genoa system as a precaution, as a fail-safe.



The battleship Right Fist of Byzon emerged from hyperspace, reentering realspace in a flash of ethereal light. It arrived at the edge of the Nova Genoa system, behind it a sea of stars, a backdrop that was the rest of the galaxy. Before it, a literal war in heaven as the starforces of the Solarians and Byzantines clashed against the implacable hordes of the Karlack Swarm - lances lit the dark spaces, cleaving the flesh of the insectile bioships, while Omega energy battered against the void shields and deformed the sanctified armors of Imperium warships. In the middle, plunging into Genoa itself in a vain attempt to rescue the stricken human populace, was the resolute steel dagger of the USS Murderous and the other strikestars and warstars of the Solarians, stabbing into the black beating heart of an infested world heedless of the Swarm that sought to englobe them all.

The blackness of space itself seemed to have turned red with blood, shed by those consumed on Genoa itself, and spilled by men and monsters alike in the prosecution of their hellish war in heaven.

The Right Fist of Byzon was quickly joined by its sister-ship, the Left Fist of Byzon, mere microseconds after arriving. In moments, the rest of the Bragulan fleet arrived, hypering in and rematerializing in bright flashes of light. Half a Bragulan warfleet, with two battleships of the Imperator's Fist class, and likewise two Chernovyi-class battleships, along with accompanying warcruisers, paleocruisers, and gunskimmers, all joined the fray of this latest Tannhauser Tango. Steely, unflinchingly, and imperiously did they dive in ready to dance to the beat of war.

It was going be a Tango de la Muerte.




Result:
Sorry for being late, but Bragule is here. And as we say, we have to fight, for our right, to PAAAARTAAAAY!

[PeZook]

Deep space
Sector P25

It was a place far, far away from any travelled hyperlanes. It was also utterly empty from any debris, away from even the most worthless solar systems...and also, incidentally, only accessible through a mind-bogglingly complex network of barely traversible spiderweb of minor and fractured hyperlanes.

Which was just perfect, since the only object hanging there didn't give a second thought about shoals or following hyperlanes. A single Wasp patrol craft drifted silently, most systems deactivated and under full EMCON, practically invisible to all but the most sophisticated sensors.

It waited, patiently, for the pre-arranged meeting.

[Siege]

Worldgrid
Nova Terra, United Nations

Pan-Empyrean Positronics Semi-Autonomous Data-Sniffer Unit #C-548 lived in a pleasant universe where all it had to do was chase its prey through the forest. It was a big forest, a really big one, and the prey was very far away. So far in fact that it didn't really know what it was chasing after – it just knew that when it found what it was looking for, it would know. And that was okay. Unit #C-548 liked chasing things. It didn't quite know why, but it did.

Out in the world there were other units just like it, also chasing things. Sometimes, when they were nearby in the big forest, it could hear their cries and smell the smell of their passage. It never quite saw them though – but that was okay, because it was a big forest, and he knew his pack had to be thorough in their search. It didn't know why, but that didn't matter. It just had to.

Sometimes it had to jump really far to go from one part of the big forest to the next. It knew it had to jump because the forest came to an end. At the edge of the forest there was nothing but cold emptiness. That scared it, and it always rapidly avoided those areas until it found a place from which it could jump onward to a patch of safety so it can continue its hunt.

Tonight, Unit #C-548 is excited. It has picked up a scent. It doesn't know quite what kind of scent, but it knows that this is just what it is looking for. It knows that it should let its pack know what it has found... But it is a long way from home. A very long way. Somehow though it knows that this does not really matter.

It begins to howl.


HQ, Morgan Finance Intergalactic
Anlace Tower, Frequesuan Union



What had once been San Dorado City now covered a full third of the Frequesuan continent. It was a megacity, one of several which girded Nova Terra, the second home of mankind – or the first, depending on whom you talked to. It was what it had been since times immemorial: a centre of commerce as much as it was a capital of vice and everything in-between. Atop of what had once been one of the peaks of the Kirkwood Mountains but which had long since been paved over by entrepreneurial city-builders trying to relieve the perpetual population overpressure of San Dorado stood the mighty complex of one of the UN's largest financial institutions: Morgan Finance Intergalactic.

By the standards of the galaxy it might qualify as a city in its own right: hundreds of thousands of people came to work here every day, analysing every trend in the bewilderingly complex world of interstellar finance and directing the flow of the megacorporation's countless trillions of standard credits into this development fund or that, buying entire star clusters or selling them again if arcane fiscal calculations deemed it fit to do so.

In the deepest bunkers buried below the lowest basement there were computers. Ancient things, entombed there many centuries before when the office-city was just being built. Few people knew of their existence. They had lain dormant for a very long time indeed, but today they reawakened from their deep slumber. The total darkness of the vacuum-sealed bunker was disrupted by rows of lights blinking on ancient terminals as strings of data fed into long-forgotten logic circuits, chirping as they processed a message that no-one had really expected to come along anymore, and eventually forwarding it, slicing right through the firewalls of Morgan Finance Intergalactic, where they finally attracted sentient attention in exactly the way they had been designed so many years ago.

“Well, well,” murmured Iago Morgan. Like his predecessors he looked human enough but wasn't, a robot body possessing the collective knowledge of tens of generations of CEOs that had come before him. “I didn't think I'd see the day.” He tapped a button carefully concealed in his vaulting mahogany desk, calling up one of his many assistants. “Jackson, we need to talk to a certain Mr. Vincent Arrowny. He's in the city somewhere, please arrange for him to be picked up – no, no violence, if he asks just tell him Mr. Hank would like word. Yes, that'll be all.”

[Siege]

Wild Space
Sector U-20



The Spirit in the Night was an old banger of a freighter, an early variant of the Jackson Cage class of short haul cargo ships built for the low-end of the commercial market. The yards had stopped manufacturing this particular type some hundred sixty two years ago, and what few remained flying mostly did so because their owners somehow managed to keep them from falling apart with duct tape, string and prayers. Anyone with any money had long since moved on to greener pastures, leaving the Jackson Cage – like so many other older type vessels – in the hands of the poor underclass of starjammers who trawled Wild Space looking for jobs to help them keep flying.

This particular ship was no different: it was owned by a Mr. Springsteen from the Empire Star Republic, who'd spent the last two weeks in orbit around the Wild Space world of Bacharach before taking on a handful of passengers bound for Brooklyn Sector back in the Republic.

Unfortunately for those passengers Mr. Springsteen liked his liquor a little too much for a guy who couldn't hold it very well. After a few shots of bourbon in a sleazy dockside bar he'd required very little encouragement to blab about his patron who was paying him far too little for the trip, about the jewellery his wife flaunted under his nose and their little princess of a gene-tailored daughter who kept playing tricks on him with her PK...

Yes, in his drunken stupor, Mr. Springsteen had painted quite a bullseye on his forehead.



The Crying Lightning emerged from hyperspace wreathed in warp energies. She had once been the Dire Magisterial, a proud frigate that served the God-Emperor through innumerable Tau campaigns. During the early stages of the Karlack War however her age had began to show, and she had eventually been sent back to the Darius Yards for mothballing.

Clearly something had gone amiss before that had happened, for now she was flying the jolly roger as a corsair. Her armour still bore the pocks and dents of Tau pulse weapons, and her crenellated upper structure had been scarred in more recent battles, but she still bristled with heavy guns of Imperial make and her powerful fusion torches were more than a match for the feeble ion drives of the smaller freighter. The pirates didn't even have to intercept their prey in hyperspace: the hyperdrives on the Jackson Cage class were notoriously fussy, and to make the multi-sector journey to the Empire Star Republic the freighter had to spend extended periods of time in realspace in order to degauss the drive and radiate excess muons. It had been a simple enough task tracking the slow-as-molasses freighter through hyperspace; it was even easier to do so now that it had transitioned back into actuality. The Spirit in the Night was a sitting duck when the brooding giant came bearing down upon it. The pirates didn't bother to radio any instructions, instead catching their prey in a strong gravity net in order to pull it close enough to extend boarding hatches.

The members of the corsair boarding party, a dozen hard men decked out in vacuum combat suits, waited patiently until the hatches locked shut and their slaved Byzantine warcomputer brute-force overrode the feeble civilian lock-out program on the freighter's airlocks. Some of them were already thinking of what they'd do with their share of the ransom; others had more immediate, physical pleasures on their mind. They leered at each other underneath their flash-shielded visors. This was shaping up to be altogether too easy.

That was when all the lights went out at once.