Futuristic Light in a Lonely Galaxy

[Mr.Sandstorm]

Lettli found it rather curious that, out of all ships, they chose his frigate for diplomatic transport. To a planetside city.
He was never too confortable with some of Bvalthu's administrative behaviours, and specificaly this one.
Lugging people around trough interstellar distances only to let them loose like this. It just never matched well with his own, martial-bound discipline.
A Watchtowers is no place for diplomats, it only escorts diplomats, it doesnt carry them too. But someone chose to hop inside his ship, so now it's being refitted for a task she has never done before.

As the massive tapered frame of the ship was being adourned with landing gears, aerodinamic casings for it's irregularities, multiple hovering heli-blades and a set of massive tapered straight wings, the svessian captain began his old checkup procedure once more while he floated trough the wide spaces of the Third Hangar. He brought up his "crewcomm" channel.

"Crew. Status."

" High-dawned and working, captain." A female voice answered first. " As usual, the warm-up procedure was already done, and the antimatter cells, yes, cells, are being cradled. We've been issued two more cells for this mission, captain. And, uh... "
"Excellent. Good day-cycle to you, Ásh, yes, I'm aware that we're making an atmospheric drop." he gave a miniscule sigh "And that were carrying passangers now, apparently."
This time a deeper voice answered. "We're mounting some storage crates, as well as extra seats for the..."
"Diplomats. We're making first contact."
"Right, diplomats..... If so, shouldnt they have brought us bio-suits too? For the diplomats, that is. Our MCS's are here already."
"Right. They should. I'm pretty sure Bvalthu didnt forget that we organic creatures can get infected if we just run around shaking hands..."
"I will double check, they might be in one of the compartments."
"Acknowledged, Vas. Ásh, how are the airframe diagnostics?"
" Nearing completion, captain. Minor structural adjustments are queueing up, they should beign shortly."

He diverted his attention to the giant compartment humbly floating trough the main shaft of the Bay to it's storage center. Multiple fighter drones were visible neatly packed in the frame that formed the cargo compartment. He wondered for a second how his old drone wing, the 50th, was faring.
Now hanging on a pipe shaft, he could see underneath him his ship as it was being refited by a series of mechanical arms surrounding it.

"Cal, you're being very quiet."
"What, uh, yes, captain. Antimatt--"
"Just keep watch of the diagnostics." Len cut him before he could embarras himself by giving a reactor cell report 3 minutes late.
"I'm coming in."
"Aye. Aye. Uh, yes, aye."
Shaking his head, he leaped downwards toward the ship, carefully leaping from strut to strut to avoid getting hit by the reffiting arms.

 

[Keltoi]

"Wryad'Wrin," Taermr snapped, as soon as he saw his second-in-command. "Do you have our equipment ready for transportation?"

"Yes, Krin." The younger Karugan saluted. "In secured electricrates with a genetic lock. It will only open for Karugan. Sir, what are our orders?"

"As soon as possible, load the equipment up, and do it carefully. After the flight, we are to escort the diplomats and stand ready. I don't expect much danger, but you never know." A thought struck Taermor. "Oh, and get me a list of everyone heading down to visit the Zu'im. I don't care if the AI are keeping count, if the captain himself is keeping a list, just get one yourself, and bring it to me. And keep records on who is going where. We can't guard anyone, but we must know where they are. If that understood?"

Wryad saluted again, and marched off to relay the orders. Taermor folded both pairs of hands behind his back, watching the crew if the freighter patiently. There was no hurry for the Karugan soldiers and other guards, but the diplomats might become troublesome if it took too long. Politicians.

 

[General Deth Glitch]

He sighed. Then, looking up as though the AI was floating above him, he responded "I swear, if you don't give me a chance to pilot a craft before we leave this system I will not be a happy bunny. I will not spend my time between Cryo-sleep without fun!" he then pushed off from the craft he had hoped to board, floating gracefully across to the ship he was told to get in. Muttering as he went, and completing yet more calculations, this time to prove a point.

Eventually he reached the ship and, using his arms to brace himself, gracefully pirouetted about to the airlock. He clicked on his mag boots and suavely entered the ship. As he began wandering the decently sized ship he soon found someone. "Hey, can you direct me to where it is I must lazily suffer the journey, please." wondering where he was meant to keep himself on the large ship. Why he couldn't just make his own way down. Oh well, Captains orders. He would need to find a local scientist and get down to the real interesting work instead, if he couldn't have Adrenalin pumping fun then he could at least get his brain flowing and entertain himself that way. He was looking forward to the trip, even if he was not going to be given command of a small fighter.
Fishman Lord Mr.Sandstorm

 

[Mr.Sandstorm]

"You're going to want to rearrange those chairs, Ásh." Len said as he waved his hand at the four heavy-issue inclined chairs arranged in a circle amongst the wires and screens that filled the center of the helm room; the four commanding seats of the Hailed Scimitar.
"Yes, of course. It only hit me now that this wont work for atmospheric missions, sorry."
"I'm not used to flying a brick trough an atmosphere for taxi delivery either, Asha. Let's just keep from making any oversights here, we've got soft people coming..." he said as he walked up to his own chair. Taped to one of the control screens was a robust chip the size of his palm.
"Oh, left it wapred here in duct tape just for me, how charming...."
He plucked off the chip and motioned to insert it on one of the input slots of the main console.
"Are you sure you want to put him back here again....?" Ásh rolled out her inquiry slowly, feeling uneasy by even having to ask it.
"No. Which is why I wont. I'll just keep him confined on a quarantine module so he can give me some advice." he stepped close to a control panel on the wall behind his chair.
"I learned my lesson...."

Just as he opened the casing of the chip and was about to insert it into a port, a muffled *thud* came to signal him his passengers would be coming onboard.
Lettli paused for a few seconds. No, let's not reconnect with the moody AI while there's passengers here. He tucked the chip on one of his pockets. Multiple softer bumps traveled trough the hull as the visitor was making his way to the open airlock.
He stood in a corner farther from the floor hatch where the entrance tunnel led to the airlock, and as Asha and Vas were working the commanding chairs into a better-suited position for the trip, soon the hatch opened. And from it rose...
.....the noisy Old-styled human.
Spirits.

Ásh took a second to recognize that he was, in fact, on the passanger's list. His style of clothing definitely did not fit with the words "ambassador", "diplomat", not even "scientist".
"...well." She slowly pointed upwards to the wall opposite to her chair. "There."
she nodded to the stranger to further clarify that the lines of horizontaly alingned chairs strapped to the wall of the command deck were, in fact, where they were supposed to be.

"With due respect, friend, this is exactly what you get when you ask for a ride on a war frigate." Lettli made his presence known to the man at last.
"Captain Len Lettli. Seriously tough, how did you people get an order from Bvalthu to refit my ship? The only thing it was made to transport around is nuclear weapons. "

General Deth Glitch

 

[Fishman Lord]

Isak made his way on board the frigate, inviting Taermor and Alex to come along. "Shall we?" He saw the vessel being refitted rapidly for atmospheric entry. Maneuvering his way through the zero-g corridors and hatches, he made it to the interior. He saw Lettli and that 'Lord of Skytown' fellow talking, and heard Lettli ask "Seriously though, how did you people get an order from Bvalttu to refit my ship? The only thing it was made to transport around is nuclear weapons." Isak joined in with his own answer. "Well, it could be as a minor show of force. While these people seem nothing but peaceful, we have been tricked and attacked before, especially by those foolish enough to think us unarmed. While it might be unnecessary, showing that we can take down many of their orbital habs and maybe even their planetside cities will definitely deter any ideas they might have about attacking us."

Isak found the Lord of Skytown to be very odd. He spoke strangely, he piloted his own ship, and was apparently a genius (though who wasn't these days). He was very near Old Standard, and Isak couldn't even see the difference between him and a baseline of an era before Earthkind had even landed on the moon, which was extremely rare in these times. He wondered what kind of world he came from. Some Old Standard Supremacist backwater? A primitive world? A deep space hab? What was his culture, what were his memories? Isak would find out, now that he was interested.

Mr.Sandstorm Keltoi General Deth Glitch kursku

 

[Tarmagon]

"It shall be as you say Large Claw," Kthara replied. "Though, with your permission, I shall take a scout to the city. If something happens and someone needs to return to the ship, it would be good to have a small vessel to make the trip, rather than the larger one. "

While he waited for his answer, Kthara made his way to the armory to draw his weapons. Only a fool went unarmed, no matter how friendly the populace of a world seemed. Augmentation units clipped unobtrusively to his armor, making it far tougher and resistant to penetration, as well as capable of providing life support for an extended period. His sidearm and rifle fitted neatly into their slots, as did the ammunition generator. That piece of nanotechnology he loved. Say what you wanted, and if there was a schematic for it, the tiny unit produced it in moments.

"Stun rounds, " he stated, and the device hummed quietly before ejecting a clip of electrically charged rounds. After loading both weapons, Kthara made his way towards the service craft bay, wondering which of the ships would volunteer to fly him down.

Fishman Lord

 

[Keltoi]

Taermor followed Isak aboard the frigate, keeping a calm demeanour about him. As soon as he heard what was being said, however, he could not help but laugh lightly.
"I am not so sure one frigate would put a stop to any ill will a whole system might wish us, and even if they did stop in their tracks, can they not scan the ship for anything they should look out for? And there's something I want to ask you, Captain Lettli. Would this ship be vulnerable to an EMP? That could prove disastrous, now that I think on it."

Without waiting for an answer, Taermor lifted himself up to one of horizontal chairs, before securing himself within it.

 

[Mr.Sandstorm]

The captain gave a long breath. It's that question again.

"No, karugan, my ship is not vulnerable to EMPs, at least not ones that could fossibly come from vessels of my same class. Even if it wasnt eletronicaly hardened, there's a reason our ships fight so far away from eachother." He paused to get to his chair and sit down.
"EMPs are 'Area of Effect' weapons. And AoE weapons arent worth their cost if the enemy is dispersed around thousands of kilometers minimum. Sure, someone might end up disabling one frigate with an EMP, but it will have to repeat the attack against the whole fleet to acomplish anything. EMP's only work well for planetside targets."
Securging himself in the seat, he finished his statement.
"And, in fact, my ship is about to become a planetside target, because some cheeky bastard wanted a ride on a frigate. I thank you for your compliment on my ship's capabilities, Isak, but I am completely certain that I'd pose a much bigger threath in orbit. And without civilians in my ship."


Keltoi Fishman Lord

 

[Fishman Lord]

Isak sighed. He really didn't understand Bvalltu's choice either, but that was nothing new. Bvalltu was an entire ship and had far more processing power than even the greatest of the lowly sapients. What was perfectly logical to him often made no sense to his crew, but in the end Bvalltu was almost always right and so they followed orders. Isak wasn't going to start questioning his captain's decisions now.

"Well, Bvalltu always seems a bit cryptic in his decision-making, but more likely than not it's some nuance no sapient with less than a ship-sized brain could even understand. I trust our captain's choice." Isak was really convincing himself as much as anyone else. This ship couldn't even really fight in an atmosphere, at least not nearly as capably as it could from space if at all. Isak pulled himself into one of the chairs as well, preparing to descend planetside.
Mr.Sandstorm Keltoi kursku

--

Bvalltu noticed Kthara wondering which ship he'd be taking. "You'll be in that ship, the frigate being modified for atmospheric entry. It's headed to one of the Zu'im capitols. From there you'll likely be able to get transportation to anywhere on the planet that the Zu'im will allow."
Tarmagon

 

[Tarmagon]

Kthara eyed the indicated ship with distaste, his ears flattening. This was folly, but the Large Claw had spoken.

"As you order, Large Claw." he said flatly, his ears remaining down in silent reproach that he was quite certain the AI did not fully comprehend. Some perspectives just seemed to elude the electronic lifeforms, which made the choices made by this entire planet, uncomprehensible.

Deactivating his mag boots with a gesture, Kthara kicked off the wall, judging the jump with practiced ease. A lithe twist near the end of his flight brought his boots in contact with the bulkhead beside the boarding hatch just as he re-energized the mag fields. Rather than float through an unfamiliar ship, Kthara reduced the power of his boots to a comfortable walking strength, and walked into the frigate with the peculiar step that mag boots imposed as one rocked the foot forward to break the hold of the field, then planted the heel firmly to set the grip. Making his way towards the largest amount of conversation, he found himself once more in the presence of the crew members from the briefing room. There was some, discussion going on, but it was not his business. Pausing only to salute the captain of the vessel, he made his way to one of the seats and settled himself, calling up the information that the AI had provided about the society they would soon be interacting with. He had much to learn before they landed.

 

[Mr.Sandstorm]

As what seemed to be the last passenger entered the vessel, Lettli decided to simply rest his case.
"Hrr. At least he made the decision to send marines to guard the diplomats. That much is reasonable, if anything else...." He waved his hand at the karugan warriors and the anthropomorfic cat(..?) that were now seating themselves.

"Ásh?"
The female svessian who was now strapping herself turned to the call. He always felt a rather childish jolt of excitement upon hearing:
"The Hailed Scimitar is ready for launch, captain."

"Begin launch sequence."

--------------------------------------------
Launch Procedure Initiated ((playthisfuckingsongorIswearIwill-))
--------------------------------------------

A quiet mettalic moan surrounded the chamber as the massive vessel began being rotated. Deprived of a reference frame and floating in zero g the passengers had no way of telling it, but the ship now stood completely vertical from the servicing pad. As the slight vertigo from the rotation ceased, Vas finaly dropped his inquiry:
"Len, how exactly are we leaving this hangar bay? We cant exactly light up the fusion drive inside a civilian dock."
"Why, the same way the service craft leave their pads. Ion Drives."
"....ok", he turned his attention back to the engine screen. "This is going to take a while...."
Soft hums and digital sounds emmanated trough the otherwise quiet chamber as the ship made it's way out of the jungle of arms and beams that colored the landscape of the Third Hangar.

Powerfull as they possibly were, the temporary sets of automated ion thrusters werent made to transport vessels covered in centimeters of railgun-proof armor, and nobody wanted to risk firing the vaporising stream of a fusion torch inside a confined structure such as the hangar they were on.

So, surely as the man tought, the frigate took much longer than usual to drift past the plasma screens, trough the dark corridors built into the spacings on the hull and finaly out of the gaping hole that led out to the outer shell of the Starmaker.

But soon, they were out in the void and the ion drives could be heard detaching to gently fly back to the confines of the mothership. The Starmaker was now visible in all it's details trough the optical screen.
From above the habitats's shell, the vessel looked like the shining pommel of a great, massive longsword to the frigate, now like nothing more but a fly in comparison.
And below all of them, stood the convex horizon of the Xi'um homeworld.

Lettli had to stop to give himself a moment to breathe in peace. He never liked orbital drops.

Well, at least this wasnt going to involve 3 G aerobraking runs. Hopefully.

"Right. Vas, start the drive. 1 G in retrograde."
*click*
The entire deck shook as the then somber fusion reactor of the ship was now raised to full capacity; It's byproducts began flooding the chambers of the ship's thrusters.
A wave of "gravity" pushed everyone towards the floor of the deck for a few seconds, and in a moment's notice the ship's orbit was already skimming the top of Xi'um atmosphere.
Soon, the Starmaker began to shrink and float away from the frigate, as the altitude began it's expected drop.

"In a few minutes, I will complete the drop burn. I would like to take this moment to remind you all of how lucky you are that this is not a re-entry aerobraking run."
Asha and Vas snickered. Cal was still taping commands on his monitor.
"We should be gliding above their cities within an hour."

((OOC: I would definitely enjoy if we could have a conversation during this wait. This is a nice moment for character interaction before (literaly) diving into the action.))

Fishman Lord Keltoi Tarmagon kursku

 

[Keltoi]

"So, as I am to understand, this is a diplomatic mission. That means no violence if any sort, or I will throw you in the deepest hole I can find. I do not care why you did it, just that you did, in fact, assault someone. But don't mistake me, if we are attacked in anyway, I will burn the attackers alive. Diplomatic missions are difficult, so lets not make any more trouble than we have to. If you wander away from the main group, at least keep in contact. I hope you all understood." Taermor settled back into his chair once his, well, brief briefing was finished. And he was not joking about the threats he made. Troublemakers would be left behind, and any assailants would find that Karugans carried unorthodox 'flamethrowers' alongside the other common weaponry.

"So now that we've cleared that out of the way... who is doing what here?" Taermor'Krin asked no one in particular. "I want an idea so I can distribute my men as best I can."

 

[Fishman Lord]

"Well, I will be conducting diplomacy with several of the Zu'im leaders, as well as with one or two of their corporations to trade. That'll take several days at least." Isak responded to Taermor in a slightly far-off tone. He was looking at images of the Zu'im world they were landing on, Kisi'ilad. This was a small system, with a Mercurian world, Nukaa, being the innermost planet, the main planet Kisi'ilad being a terraformed Terra with a formerly Selenic moon that had also been terraformed, called Mizcrofdya. There was an asteroid belt beyond that, and then a Jovian planet with three Europan moons, one of which supported a multicellular biosphere. Isak would have to see if he could find anyone selling creatures from that moon on the planet. While not a xenobiologist by any means, Isak was still fascinated by alien creatures, and he kept an aquarium full of these strange beings.

The rest of the system was standard, a few dwarf planets and Oort and Kuiper regions. The Star Maker would orbit the main planet, Kisi'ilad and its crew would have access to Kisi'ilad and Mizcrofdya, as well as all Orbital habitats of those worlds. The Star Maker would refill on fuel for the fusion rockets and make other preparations for interstellar travel, as well as pick up and drop off old and new crew and passengers.

Suddenly, Lian's voice came in through Isak's earpiece. "Hey, I'm back. I'll be with you for the diplomatic talks." Isak told her "You can use the ship speakers, we should all get to know each other," and began speaking. "This is Lian, she's one of the AIs on the ship. She's on the diplomatic team as well."
kursku Mr.Sandstorm Keltoi Tarmagon General Deth Glitch

 

[Tarmagon]

"K'tharazhanaa V'nyr N'see," Kthara said, looking up from the data his wrist unit was projecting about the planet and civilization they were approaching. "Though most simply call me Kthara. Officially I am listed as diplomatic security, and will be performing that duty. Once I am no longer needed in that regard, I shall request to travel to more, out of the way places. Sometimes things can be seen away from the scripted encounters of diplomacy that... well, cast a new light upon the situation."

Pausing to consider his next words, he shrugged internally, then continued.

"Has anyone given thought to our communications? While I am certain that our encryption is excellent, we are about to land on a planet where every adult possesses the capability of a major computer within their bodies. They have said they are separate from their AI counterparts, but has anyone bothered to ask if they operate separately from each other? If the populace were to link together, they could rival the largest of the AI."