April Forth, 118 SDE, 1440 hours, Zem star system:

Zem was a system in dispute, there was nothing of value in the system. Just a few barren worlds, and scattered minerally poor asteroids. There was a gas giant that had some useful gases, but that was just about it. The real value of the system was its strategic position. For both races fighting over it wanted full control of the valuable jump points in the system. Zem happened to be a nexus for twelve different jump points, eight of which were valuable border systems for either the Tylani Flock or their long time enemies the Syndali Broods. The two races had been at war for much of their spacefaring history.

Right now several massive fleets were deployed in the Zem star system by both sides for control of the system. The forces were about equal, and neither side had a clear advantage.

The admiral watched the screens from her command ship. She was commanding a smaller fleet on the rear of the Tylani lines that was currently being held in reserve. As such she really didn’t have much to do, other than to watch the battle unfold. Well that, and act as a rearguard in case the enemy tried to flank their position. Her officers were keeping an eye out for that, however. Suddenly her sensors her officer, turned away from her console her feathers ruffled in distress. “Sir, I am picking up massive energy fluctuations in grid 57. I have never seen anything like it, but the energy readings are off the charts.”

She rushed over to the console and double-checked the readings herself. She too felt a bit disturbed by the readings. The values were so high, that the sensors couldn’t accurately measure the fluctuations. For good reason, she felt very concerned about these readings as they rivaled the output of your average star. The odd thing was that there was no apparent source, so she ordered the grid to be put on screen.

Moments later, space itself seemed to start glowing and it began to swirl. Then with a sudden eruption of energy, a vortex opened up in the middle of the grid. A massive spinning bluish looking vortex, that resembled a theoretical wormhole in form and appearance. Her science officer despite her emotional state dutifully analyzed it, and reported, “It appears to be some kind of conduit through subspace. The structure appears to be artificial. I think someone just punched a hole through the barrier between normal space and subspace. The conduit doesn’t appear to be fully stable though, something is feeding it energy and keeping it open.”

At that moment before she could even say a word in response, a single ship emerged from the conduit. Sensors indicated that is was approximately 769 Renars long(800 meters). The ship was about the size of a medium cruiser. The ship itself looked like it had been through hell. Its dark coloring made it hard to make out, but visual enhancement allowed a decent enough look at the hull. She had a saucer-shaped forward hull, linked to a rear mount half-disk from which a pair of swept back linking struts connected to what should have been a pair of nacelles. The starboard one was still there, but the other one had been ripped from its housing. Nothing but jagged metal sat at the ends of the linking strut. The primary hull was pockmarked with battle scars and had multiple hull breaches that ran clean through the hull and out the other side. A large chunk of the forward saucer was also missing. Long furrows along the hull seemed to indicate that something had melted the hull in long straight lines. The ship turned suddenly and gave her view of more battle scars across her underbelly, which looked even worse, with countless hull breaches, and she even saw the jagged remains of a pair of linking struts that would have connected the nacelles to the primary hull. Both had been severed down the middle by some kind of weapon, but the remains were still attached to both the remaining nacelle and the primary hull.

Not far from its position, a Syndali heavy cruiser opened fire. The ship’s heavy railguns fired multiple high-velocity bursts into the hull of the battle-scarred alien cruiser. She had expected the damaged ship to be torn apart by the deadly weapons. What happened instead left her jaw wide open. The round slammed into the hull at high speed, and just bounced off harmlessly. Leaving not even a scratch on the scared alien hull. The alien ship then returned fire, in a manner that was very unexpected. A single spot on her hull suddenly glowed brightly a fraction of a second before a coherent stream of blue energy streaked across the void. The energy beam punched through the hull of the heavy cruiser, tore through fifty decks at an angle. It erupted out the other end of the dorsal aft plating opposite the impact point. Then the beam faded away, mere microseconds before the entire ship went up in a massive fireball. The source of the detonation was naturally the ship’s magazine storage, where her missiles torpedoes and railgun rounds had been stowed. A section that was honestly more heavily armored than even the bridge because of how devastating a hit to that section could be. The only other section with equal armor was the main reactor housing and fuel pods. With the bridge coming up as a close second.

The shocking part about this sight was the fact that a Syndali heavy cruiser was heavily armored and the critical sections had enough armor that even battleship guns had trouble penetrating it. To counter modern armor many ships had recently begun to carry laser cannons. However, no laser could have done what the alien beam weapon had just done. She didn’t even realize when she muttered, “What in the seven hells was that?”

“I have no idea, sir. Energy readings from that beam are massive. I estimate a yield of nine-hundred-forty Meules. The computer thinks it is some kind of particle weapon.”

She didn’t need to be told the significance of that. Her own ship was outfitted with a dozen high energy linked laser batteries. Each battery contained about twelve cannons each with a yield of barely half a Meule. The cannons used on orbital installations had a yield just over a Meule. No energy weapon she knew of could sustain that kind of yield. Not to mention, she didn’t know any that fired a continuous beam either. The reason had to do with the fact that it was much harder to sustain a continuous beam than a pulsed energy bolt. As for the mention of particle weapon, as an admiral, she had access to some of the research reports. As such, she knew that they were bulky energy-intensive weapons that suffered from numerous problems that limited their range and effectiveness. Problems they were still trying to solve. Evidently this alien race had solved those problems. That one shot had told her all she needed to know, that these aliens were not to be taken lightly.

A message that predictably their enemies the Syndali did not get. Four full battlegroups broke off and engaged the alien cruiser. This time their opening volley was supplemented by laser and missile fire. Along with a number of torpedoes. The cruiser made no move to evade, and the fire rained harmlessly against her hull. Not even the heavy torpedoes made a dent in the sturdy materials the alien ship was made of. Then she returned fire. Vibrant blue beams slammed into ships in quick succession. Each beam punching straight through the unfortunate ship to be in the firing line, and not even evasive maneuvering prevented them from getting a deadly lock. With every shot, a Syndali ship exploded.

As the Syndali were being slaughtered by the cruiser’s guns, three more ships emerged from the vortex. One of them was huge, she had never seen a ship that big. It measured roughly three times the size of the first cruiser. Making it twice as big as the average dreadnought. The new ships opened fire as well, and the massive dreadnought demonstrated an even more powerful energy beam. There was nothing left of any ship unfortunate enough to take a direct hit, and grazing hits were powerful enough to lacerate the hull. The alloys melted from the heat of the beam, and the resulting sudden decompression often killed a large portion of the crew. Needless to say, even a graze was enough to leave a ship disabled.

In a matter of minutes, all four battlegroups were nothing more than a cloud of expanding debris. As the alien ships proceeded deeper into the system, more poured out of the vortex. Mostly in groups of two or three, but a few smaller and larger units entered the system. Most of the ships she saw were cruisers, but she also saw a few larger ships that must have been the alien’s equivalent to a battleship. They were a bit bigger than their cruisers and better armed. However smaller than the dreadnoughts that she saw.

Suddenly a truly massive ship emerged from the vortex followed by another equally massive ship and she found herself revising her rough estimate of class sizes. Perhaps both of the smaller ship classes were cruisers, and that would make the large ship type she had seen earlier not a dreadnought but instead a battleship.

She quickly discovered that the new behemoths were carriers as they began launching craft while joining the growing fleet formation in the middle of their battle lines. Not that they had to worry about the crossfire seeing as their ships were immune to conventional weapons fire, and could destroy a modern warship in a single shot. The Syndali had learned that the hard way having lost nearly a hundred ships in the process.

Her comm officer spoke up and said, “Fleet command has issued a general retreat order. We are to guard the jump node until the main fleet leaves the system. Then rendezvous with the main fleet at Gamma Eridon.”

“Acknowledged,” then she glanced at the tactical screen and issued a new formation for her small auxiliary fleet. On the screen, she could already see ships from both sides pulling back. The armada of damaged alien ships had made no aggressive actions yet, but both sides were already wary of them. However seeing as all of the alien ships were battle scared with horrific looking wounds, she found herself wondering what they were running from. It was the only conclusion she could make. A conclusion that left her quite worried about the future. As what or who they were running from could very well be far worse.

Just then a new ship that was roughly the same size as the carriers emerged from the vortex. She was in better shape than many of the other ships but was quite clearly damaged, with multiple hull breaches along her sides. Her comm officer spoke up at that moment, “Sir we are receiving a broadband transmission with embedded lingual code.”

She ordered it to be placed on the screen. An alien visage appeared before them. One that was generally humanoid. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the alien was male. He had dark hair on his head that was streaked with grey. His features seemed a little rough, and he certainly had some muscle. Then he began to speak in a very alien language. The entire vid looped a few times before the computers could interpret the code. Then it looped one last time in a language she understood. Although it did have a few odd spots that were likely errors. Errors that made it a little hard to understand.

“We are the Solyeni (People of Sol). We urge you to vacate the region around the Dokan in a radius of half a Konen. We will be Hokai Suru the Dokan. Failure to vacate will mean your Shisha.”

The message continued a bit longer but she had heard enough to get the message. A few words clearly failed to translate, and she looked to her comm officer. “I’m sorry the computer is having trouble with their language. It was almost as if they were speaking two tongues at once.”

Present-day, October 3rd, 080 SDE:

Countryman woke up and considered the strange dream he had just had. It was very odd, especially given that he didn’t dream very often. It was also different from the others he had in the past. Slipping out of bed, he adjusted his nightwear and headed for his desk. Glancing at a clock he saw he had time, and began to type up what he had seen in the dream.

It had been very surreal given that he was looking through the eyes of an alien and yet somehow knew the date on their own calendar. That was also odd given it was a date that was nearly forty years from now.

Soon his mind drifted away from the dream and to his own more immediate concerns. Glancing out a window he watched the swirling gases in the clouds and considered his plans. The council had come to the conclusion that in order to assure their own future they would have to wage war with the collective. That war fell on him to wage, and he had passed a number of special measures for that purpose. In the months since the incident at Zur, he had rebuilt much of the fleet and even expanded it. Manpower and resources were both major concerns, and he had solved them both for now.

For manpower, he had approved the use of growth vats and using Ruri’s new techniques they were now artificially growing people to help man their new ships. The process took months and it would be a couple of years before those new people could be put to use. As such, they would still need to rely heavily on synthetic labor and crew. To fuel their growing fleet and demand for manpower he had commissioned a number of specialized mining ships that were sent out into the clouds to strip worlds of the minerals they so desperately needed. They had even more industrial vessels in the fleet as well, to allow them to more rapidly build new ships.

He couldn’t see it in the clouds, even with his cybernetically enhanced eyes, but out in the clouds was a growing armada. One that when completed would be the largest fleet ever employed by humanity and its descendants. In the meantime, he just had to keep the Cylovans away from this part of space so he could build his fleet in peace. Time was all they needed, and he expected that they would be ready for large scale incursions on Cylovan controlled systems in just two years. Moving away from his viewport he noticed on the monitor that he had received a report from one of the Star Knights that he had strategically positioned in the nebula to keep the Cylovans away from certain parts of the nebula.

Reading it her learned that they had located a modest Cylovan fleet escorting three dreadnoughts in sector forty-seven. While the fleet wasn’t an immediate threat, he recognized that it was in position to threaten several operations in the area. Assuming the Cylovan scouts located those operations. He quickly drafted orders up for the ships in the area to engage the Cylovan fleet.