The Past is Prologue(Metroid)

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.221

Galactic Federation Science Research Vessel Marina
Cygnus-Orion Transit

It was the middle of the ship's night cycle. More automated drones were manning the stations, with a bare minimal organic crew overseeing the drones to make sure they didn't accidentally run into an asteroid or something similar. The SRV Marina was on the sixth month of its cataloging rounds; recording stellar phenomenon, any strange gaseous objects, and picking up data from any active science probes. Despite the code string designation of the region they were in, the Marina was a good distance outside of Federation space, in the stretch of the Orion Spur between the Perseus Transition and the intersection with the expanse of the Cygnus Arm. It was where the outer reaches had already give way into the extremely vast Unknown Regions of the galaxy, and every small find could mean something to the Science Academy.

The captain of the Marina was an Alphinian; tall, hairless blue-grey skin, lankily built, and possessed of slower, almost deliberated, movements. The large dark orbs of her eyes were glistening as she read over a data tablet while seated in the command chair of the Marina's bridge. More probe data, most of it cataloging gaseous anomalies and gravitational irregularities that could indicate new Jump Points. Mostly standard findings, with little to give in terms of a really significant discovery.

"A new package of reports from the deep space probes, Captain Taun We." The bridge drone hovered before her, breaking the captain from her bored trance. "Per orders from the Science Academy, it is recommended that you review the latest data as soon as possible."

A tired nod was the only answer that Taun We afforded the drone unit. She wanted to get to her sleep cycle, but the night rotation needed a command member present, and she had drawn the short end in the attempt to keep things fair with her staff. Captain or not, they were commissioned by the Science Academy on Daiban, not some military like in the Confederation. "I would appreciate your assistance with that, Ee-Nine, I've been reviewing these probe bundles since the night cycle started."

"As you request, Captain. Four new Jump Lines have been recorded by Deep Probe AT-17613, gravitonic trace tracks these new lines to areas in the Cygnus Arm region. Nebulae regions in the Cygnus Arm were recorded by Probe TK-42163 and compared to current record observed data, allowing for updates to twenty-seven astronomical features to fifty-three servers. And one new planet with lifeforms observed not currently in any recorded database, in the star system designated NGC-1918388, no known planetary designations beyond system listings."

"Which probe recorded that?"

"There was no attached catalogue, Captain Taun We." The drone showed no reaction, but such was very unusual information to the Alphinian. "The transmission pack came in from what looks to be an older pre-Reformation probe based on modulated frequencies."

Taun We tilted her head in a curious fashion. Almost all deep space probes sent into unknown space had a cataloguing number. And one from before the Reformation would be close to three hundred years old. Most anything in those times was also from before hyperburst communications were widespread. "NGC-1918388...I'm not familiar with that location. What information do we have?"

"System is in the Pendulum Nebula, seventeen parsecs from our current location. Data indicates that NGC-1918388 is a binary system with three planets, but one of the paired stars is in fact a low stellar-mass singularity located one point three-five astronomical units distance from the partner A-class main sequence white-blue star. The planet in question, current designation listing NCG-1918388-C, is located four point six-three astronomical units outside of the paired orbit and is the only orbital within the projected habitation zone."

A quantum gravitational singularity binary system. Taun We frowned as she pulled up the calculations render and punched in the needed numbers. "How far out from the singularity is the system's major jump point?"

"Six astronomical units. Adequate safe distance from a class-two stellar mass singularity for entry via the jump point. I have pulled up the jump line data for you, Captain."

Examining the plotted route, Taun We found that the destination vectors were indeed safe enough, and recording a previously unknown life form certainly would be a huge boost to her career, and possibly get her reassigned to a different sector than the dead end nowhere of the Cygnus Arm. The source of the data was suspect, however. An uncatalogued probe that gave frequency modulation from before the Reformation of 2687 would generally mean that the probe had been out here since about the late 2700s. The data was likely a century old, but the region was not actually yet surveyed and explored. It might still be worthwhile.

And again, the accolades for discovering significant new life forms on a previously unknown planet would make it worth the trip. It was about three days via the needed jump points, enough time to send a hyperburst to the Science Academy and inform them of the change of course. "Lay in the vectors, Ee-Nine, and have a brief of what we know about the system readied for me before tomorrow evening. I expect to have all the available information before we make the last jump point."

"Acknowledged, Captain. I expect you will be taking your sleep cycle soon. Should I schedule a crew briefing for tomorrow before we make the first jump point?"

A nod as she stood from her seat. It was about time for her shift to end, thankfully, and the briefing could wait until she had gotten her sleep cycle. Even if her species only need sleep every two or three standard day cycles, sleep still was appreciated when it came. "Have first officer Gr'mal review the flight plan while I rest, and I'll conduct a briefing after I inform the Science Academy."

"Acknowledged, Captain Taun We. Briefing will be scheduled for oh-nine hundred hours, and first jump will be plotted for fourteen hundred hours. Expected arrival to NGC-1918388 will be in four days."

---

2976.223

The bright white-blue light of the burning main sequence star twisted away in a stream of plasmic matter toward the point of utter pure black void that lay some distance from the star, surrounded by a swirling corona torus of burning hot gases and plasma while a stream of gases erupted from either 'pole' of the spherical void that was roughly forty kilometers in diameter. Three planets hung in space in orbit around the pair, the innermost planet a barren world that had long ago been stripped of any kind of biosphere due to close proximity to the highly active pair and exposure to the plasmic trail. It was barely half an astronomical unit out from the burning central star of the system, giving it a high speed orbit that was flinging it right between the star and the singularity that would eventually consume it.

The second planet was situated better, but radiated a lethal glow that revealed its inhabitable nature. Cracks along the crust exposed the sickly green light that spilled out from an exposed mantle of radioactive materials and nuclear level molten materials. Plumes of what looked expelled ash and glowing green 'magma' arced between points on the planet, revealing something that defied so much which should have been the laws of physics.

The third planet, however, was covered by deep emerald clouds and had a yellow-green coloration to the few bodies of visible water. Storms visibly gathered on one side of the planet, swirling in green masses over the viridian hued surface, while a pair of moons silently orbited.

Further out in the system, the blue-white flare of space-time opening signaled inter-system entry as the Marina emerged seconds later. The ship's hull was still crackling from the stabilization fields that protected it from the folded point of space-time and its energies during the near-instantaneous transit. With the raging rift sweeping back in on itself, the science vessel re-orientated itself after a needed time to get the bearings of the system, now making way inward toward the third planet.

It was following the micro-hop via slipspace that the Marina carefully settled itself in orbit around the third planet. There was already a probe launched to survey the surface, and while the conditions were unsurprisingly hostile, they weren't impossible; it was survivable. Which led then to the next step that the crew of the Marina faced; making planet fall and landing safely to further investigate the survey data from a probe that was likely two hundred years old.

"There's some odd activity in what looks like the native lifeforms on this peninsula here," the first officer noted as it pointed to the holographic projection which displayed the region that they were charting to make planet side arrival. "Nothing so far on the surface really goes beyond a class-three rating, mostly looks like basic herbivore and small scavenger carnivore species. Shouldn't be any real danger to us."

The captain set her gaze at the planetary image, slowly rubbing her cheek as she contemplated the situation. "The probe data indicated some new lifeform that had never been seen before, but none of these are matching what we found in that data, unique as they are."

"Could be something that lives in the subterranean zones, initial readings show a network of caverns nearby the area indicated in the probe data."

It still wasn't adding up, but they were here and even what their own drones had found was valuable data. It was possible, as the first officer had noted, that the larger lifeforms were subterranean, and perhaps only surfaced at night. No matter what, the stop was going to be valuable.

"Prep the dropship and suit up in full sealed enviro-armor. I want a full geared pair of teams, including the Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier units and the particle shield generators. Just because we're a science vessel doesn't mean we go in there blind and stupid." Taun We glanced to the squat amphibious Gr'mal with a particular tilt of her head. "Make sure those E.M.M.I units come back operational, they cost the Science Academy twenty million seguru a piece."

The first officer gave a low croak vocalization as they smirked to the captain. "And to think, that was the discounted price from Exelion."

With the Q'roq'us first officer now making their way to the main lift, Captain Taun We gave a sigh of resignation. Gr'mal had a questionable sense of humor, but they were a skilled and experienced officer of the Science Academy exploration corps. Loyal as well, and she was grateful to have them as her first officer on this long assignment. If they ended up being reassigned from this dead-end region of the galaxy, she'd make sure to insist on the Q'roq'us remaining her second.

"Just don't throw your mass around too much, you crazy saurian."

---

A thud as the dropship released from the hanger bay of the Marina, drifting out into the expanse with a slight motion toward the planet below. After a moment, the forward thrusters flared to life while orientation jets jostled the craft around to direct its course at the surface. A storm system was visible in the upper hemisphere, but nothing that would blow near the dropship's projected landing zone. After clearing distance between it and the Marina, the small landing vessel fired its main drives and shot forward, soon reaching the outer atmosphere regions as wisps of entry plasma flickered around the ship's phase shielding. Within seconds, a full corona of superheated air enveloped the dropship, only to fade away as entry reached into the stratosphere. Retro jets fired and allowed the vessel to realign itself and fire the main drives again as it shot over the landscape of the planet.

Coming near an upthrust of a mountain side, the dropship roared to a halt and slowly descended to the surface. As the craft touched down at last, several green-yellow amphibious creatures hopped away as fast as their two legs would carry them. Dust and rock were blown about as the landing thrusters eased the ship down, then discharged with a final burst. After a long minute, the back of the dropship gave a hiss before releasing and swinging downs to convert into a landing ramp.

Moments later, six full enviro-armored figures emerged, followed by four large mechanized units equipped with heavy weapons and containment gear. The bulkier set of the humanoids clad in enviro-armor took a cursory look over the area as they pulled their weapon unit free and pumped the charging action. An instant later, the unit expanded into a long and wide particle rifle, a low whine emanating from the weapon to signal it was powered and ready.

"Is that really a T-53 APS?"

One of the landing team trying to break the tense silence. Gr'mal didn't blame her. It was an impressive tool. "Qikost Merchant Assembly, fresh off the line about three standard cycles ago. One of their first compression storage models on the available non-military market."

"Must have cost a pretty Seguru to get one. I thought the Sangheili didn't sell to many outsiders besides the Terrans."

A slow nod as the team and their automaton escorts stepped down off the landing ramp and onto the planet's surface. The white-blue light of the main star of the system flickered as it could be seen swirling away toward the invisible point that was the system's singularity, a reminder of how much in the universe was an invisible danger. "The exchange ratio was brutal, but it's worth the quality. Cost about a month's pay to get this piece of art."

"Think you'll actually get a chance to test it out here?"

The Q'roq'us gave a grunted chuckle as the unit split up and sent half the team off in one direction, while it lead its quartet toward the nearby cavern entry. "Obviously, as an officer of the Science Academy, it is always desirable to avoid the use of violent force in any situation." That being said, Gr'mal gave their companion an anticipatory grin. "However, in the name of science and due examination of an as yet untested tool of defensive capabilities..."

The Yl'fyn female, Acxa, gave a laugh as the other organic member of their team shook his head and sighed at Gr'mal's remark, though it was obvious they we both entertained. "Even when you saurians drop your own eggs completely solo, there's still enough of you that love a good explosion to question the whole lack of bio-gender you claim."

"It's lack of bio-gender division," the gruff reply came as Gr'mal shouldered their particle rifle while hopping over a large rock. "Technically, we fit the classification of biological hermaphrodite species, since every one of us can gestate and self-fertilize our eggs for procreation, but we don't have any of the dimorphism characteristics most species do. So we don't bother with gender labels since we don't have use for them."

"Don't the Kromus do the same thing?"

The insulted snort signaled that Gr'mal wasn't exactly amused by the comment from the Divolu member of their unit. "Only in that they don't seem to need any reproductive cycle besides laying a shit ton of eggs and breeding like damn roaches." Now on steady ground, they hefted their particle rifle back into both hands while continuing toward the cavern entry, black spherical eyes watching carefully even as the visor systems of their armor was relaying data into the translucent information display. "Nothing too weird so far. Apart from the fact these are all unidentified species, nothing is reading like that probe data."

The E.M.M.I unit took a step into the cavern entry as slits on its head lit up and widened to illuminate the depths of the mountain cave. It would have continued in order to run point ahead of the organic crew, but a squelch from the coms caused all those involved to halt. Gr'mal frowned as they tapped the responder switch, sure that there had been something actually said. "Beta Team lead Ez'r, this is First Officer Gr'mal. Say again?"

Another squelch, this time something could be more clearly heard. "Sounded like she's screaming." Acxa knit her brow as she noticed the Divolu tense up. More static and the snippets of screams and some kind of shouting over the intercom channels, which was the signal to Gr'mal as they turned face and began sprinting back in the direction of the dropship, with their companions and the E.M.M.I unit trailing behind them as the Q'roq'us hurried in the direction of Beta Team's biometric signals. More squelches, only now the voices were becoming more clear, and the sounds of weapons discharge and shouting could be picked up even without the com lines.

"Ez'r just went off the biometric status, Nerti's are showing heightened adrenaline and anxiety!"

"All the excuse I need." With a growl, Gr'mal pulled the powering action and took a running leap over a series of rocks as the exploration team raced past the landing site of the dropship. Short burst boosters mounted in the backplate of Gr'mal's enviro-armor fired to allow the saurian a flying jump across the rocky landscape, their pace becoming frantic as a scream was heard very clearly just past an uprise. A bounding sprint, backplate jets firing to slow their descent to the earth, and then wide eyes of horrified shock as Gr'mal got a good look at what they had heard.

The accompanying E.M.M.I unit was strewn on the ground, sparks snapping out from its crushed in head. The particle field containment grid it had been carrying was smashed open on the ground, glowing green fluids splattered on the yellowish-brown rocks. What was left of the organic crew was even more horrific to take in; a pair of enviro-armors rested on the earth, face down, while the third figure was frozen in place, hands stopped in what looked to be an effort to push something away.

"Nine hells," came the whispered utterance from the Divolu member of Gr'mal's team. He took a few steps over to one of the collapsed enviro-armors and carefully turned the figure over, revealing that only dust remained inside the normally protective suit. After a moment of shock, the other armor was lifted to reveal the same condition. "What happened to them? What kind of thing does this?"

Gr'mal was looking around with narrowed cautious eyes as they stepped over to the still standing form of whom the locators identified as Nerti. Shifting about, the Q'roq'us gave a pained sigh as they saw the state of what one had been Nerti's face; sunken in, ashen in color, and twisted in anguish. After a few more long seconds, the armor slumped into a heap as the body inside crumbled apart as dust. "Swift roads to Vol'ku'va, Nerti. Your gods watch over you."

A soft chirp sound garnered the surviving team's attention. Gr'mal snapped their particle rifle up and aimed as they saw a small half-meter wide creature hover up from behind the nearby rocks. It was topped by a translucent green membrane dome with veins and a quadric set of red nuclei visible within. The underside was a pink tone of reddish flesh with a small pair of mandible fangs protruding forward, and a larger pair toward the central sides of its underbelly. It rose further, chirping again in what almost sounded like curiosity.

"There is no way that thing did this," the Divolu stated in disbelief. He tilted his head inside the enviro-armor helmet, looking at the strange floating creature while it hovered in the air and turned about as if it were looking at them, despite the lack of any discernable optical organs. Another chirping as it shook both sets of mandibles, then suddenly surged forward and flipped its underside upward just before it slammed into the Divolu with a meaty thud. He began screaming as sparks shot out of where the fangs penetrated his enviro-armor, trying to force the creature to let go, but its grip only got stronger while the mandible dug deeper into his armor, crushing the metal plating and causing more sparks to flying. "Get it off, get it off!"

Gr'mal took aim, trying to make sure they wouldn't hit the Divolu, but the creature was moving them both far too erratically to be safe. More screams as the Divolu dropped to the ground, still unable to pry the creature off of him as his voice went higher in pitch. The fangs had penetrated through armor and into flesh now, and after a few seconds, the screams suddenly became a gurgle while tendrils of almost electric blue-white light pulled out of his body and into the creature through its mandibles. Acxa was stepping away in horror while the E.M.M.I moved into position with the particle field containment unit, leaving Gr'mal to accept that their remaining compatriot was done for and take the shot. "Sorry, but you deserve better than this."

A piercing crack of the particle burst exploding out of the rifle's muzzle was enough as the bright flare of energy crossed the distance and took only an instant to rip through the Divolu's enviro-armor and end his pain. The creature, in response, gave a very angry screech as it release the armored corpse and turned toward Gr'mal with its front pair of mandibles shaking. Another charge, though this time, it was sent flying aside as a second burst round fired and impacted directly into the translucent greenish dome membrane.

Yet, a second later, that angry screech and a hiss came as the creature rose back up, shocking both Gr'mal and Acxa. It reared in the air, rushing forward again, only now slamming into the bright yellow crackle of the containment field as the E.M.M.I finally was able to activate the unit it carried. The projected field wrapped around the creature now, keeping it imprisoned even while it slammed against the energy barrier. Again, it threw itself against the containment field, only for escape to be denied it.

"What the nine hells is that thing and what did it do to Kro'lak?!"

Gr'mal grunted as they walked over to the Divolu's corpse and sighed; he was already crumbled into dusted, just like the other team had been. "Hate to say it, but I think this thing was what that probe data was talking about," the saurian grimly noted as they stood back up and triggered the rifle back into its collapsed compression state. "Get it into hazard containment on the dropship, and notify the captain, we're heading back."

There wasn't anything left of their lost comrades to take back, sadly.

---

The creature screeched as it floated in the reinforced containment chamber aboard the Marina. Taun We narrowed her black orbs in concern as she contemplated Gr'mal's debriefing about what had happened and the biometric data they had recorded. Six hours since the horrifying first news had come to them. While this certainly seemed to match what the ancient probe data had given them, it was unsettling to say the least that this creature had not only chewed through enviro-armor rated to survived some of the most hostile biospheres, and had done so previously, but had done something that drained all life energy out of its victims and left only an unstable mass of null energy particles.

"We lost four exemplary crew to this thing... I hope it's worth the price we paid to catch it."

"Have you ever seen something that sucks energy out of anything it latches to?" Gr'mal gave a tap to the containment chamber's viewport, eliciting a clicking hiss from the creature. "I'm sure the academy will have tons of fun trying to figure out what this thing is and how it does what it did to Kro'lak and the others. It wasn't even blood or anything tangible, just drained them, and their remains crumbled into dust."

A nod, though pained and full of regret. "I'll write up the messages to their respective significant relations myself. It's the least I can do, especially for Ez'r's brood." Always the least desired part of a captain's duties, and despite rarely ever having to pen such communications, Taun We always dreaded the day it was necessary. "Get ready for the jump out of this hellhole system, we need to get back to Daiban as soon as we can to deliver this thing."

"That's gonna be at least a month just to get back into Federation territory, and another two to three without a serious assist from someone with higher end slipdrives than we have."

"The Confederation has an outpost in Sigma Eri at the edge of Federation space. Use the jump drives to conserve power where we can, and use the Fornax slipdrives to cut the distance where we don't have a direct jump line back." After a moment, Taun We bit her lip in contemplation. "Actually, fire up the Fornax drive now, Ee-Nine, I want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible."

The done floated down briefly to approximate a nod before heading off to carry out its orders, though Gr'mal was still not convinced. "We've been relying on the Jump drive this entire tour, Captain. Navcoms will take some time to make the field calculations to keep the ship safe in slipspace for that kind of trip."

"We'll be back in the main region of the Cygnus Transit by day's end instead of another four days hopping from here." It was obvious Taun We had no desire to stay in the system any longer than required. After they had lost a quarter of their crew to one creature, it wasn't like any on the ship could argue the sentiment. "We may not go as fast as the human's glorified precious fleet or the Sangheili and those monstrous ships of theirs, but I'd rather get back to Daiban and get that thing off my ship as soon as possible than spend possibly our entire tour thus far just jumping back. A few hours to have the Navcom AIs change processes for a higher workload is worth it."

There was a shudder, a perceptible shift in the ship's gravitational center. Taun We and Gr'mal glanced at each other, then at the containment chamber that held their captive specimen. "That was odd, that almost felt like the gravitonic displacement when entering slipspace."

"The Fornax drives wouldn't even be warmed up yet," came the first officer's reply as both of them made way out of the observation lab and to the primary lift. There was an odd creaking as the ship seemed to shift again, eliciting the black orbs that were Taun We's eyes to narrow in concern. "We're far enough from the system's singularity that it wouldn't affect us, what's causing those shifts?"

Another shudder, causing a momentary flicker as the lifted stopped suddenly. Moments later, another flicker of the displays and lights, and the lift resumed its motion. As soon as the doors opened on arrival at the bridge deck, both captain and first officer hurried down the corridor to the bridge doors, hoping to find answers. "Ee-Nine, tell me that was-"

"We have a problem, Captain Taun We."

Her blood ran cold as she saw what was outside now sharing planetary orbit with them. Three massive ships, all over a kilometer in length each, and while the computers had no matches for the designs, the very deliberate blade-like construction was one any who had lived through the war almost two decades ended knew should be feared.

"Tell me I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing."

"Screens don't display hallucinations like this," Gr'mal replied as it hurried down to the navigation station. Even as Taun We claimed her command seat, the first officer had taken up the post once held by the now gone Kro'lak and was already quick to look for any way out. "Acxa, I need you on station now. L'frg needs to heat up that Fornax drive now, or we're all about to be -"

And then the rumble shook through the Marina like thunder. No sound should have been detectable in the expanse of space itself, but once the captain and her first officer saw the source of the displacement, nothing else mattered. Over six kilometers long, shaped like a claw blade, and the evil no doubt within it simply radiated even through the visual displays. It had appeared literally from nothingness, but the waves of gravitational displacement it had generated were greater than any ship had any right producing. They both knew what it meant.

"The Cunning Death," Taun We whispered in horror. She remembered well the horrors of the Kromus War and the devastations this vessel had wrought on the galaxy. Planets burned to lifeless rocks, entire fleets decimated in a single shot. It had taken the combined force of the Confederation and the Sangheili to hold this monster at bay during the final conflict over the Kromus home world nearly twenty years prior, and all reports had said it had died along with Krom.

And yet, here it was, as pristine as when it first appeared in the war. Inspiring the same fear that it had then, only now, the crew of the Marina weren't safe behind a holo projector in their homes far from the frontlines of a war.

Suddenly, Taun We found herself regretting her ill comments about the humans and their Sangheili allies, and the value both put on their military forces.

And then the holo-communications array came to life, projecting a towering figure that made both Alphinian and Q'roq'us go pale as the blood almost literally froze in their veins. There was no mistaking the face that looked down on them, the glowing red-yellow eyes, and even thought it was merely a holographic projection, those eyes seemed to radiate heat right at them.

"I must admit, when we were coming here, we didn't expect other visitors." Gleaming teeth flashed into a malicious grin. "No need to run, however. I'm sure there is much about the planet below you have to share with us over a nice exchange and some dinner."

Taun We was very much regretting her attitudes toward the Terrans now.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.223

Sol Station, Jupiter Orbit

It had been a matter of hours since the Concordia finally made berth with the massive orbital central command of the Fleet. Adam normally was a patient man, but in light of losing his entire battle group and narrowly escaping with his ship and crew, with the aid of a secret hyper-advance AI and classified engine drives no less, his tolerance for secrets had run out. The call to Admiral Dane had been made as soon as they made contact, which left the young commander to prepare everything they had. And now, he was all but storming his way to the admiral's station-side offices as he didn't wait for the message chime to announce him.

As it was, Dane was already expecting him. "I'm sorry about what happened, Commander Malkovich." He was still looking out the viewport at the raging red storm far down below on Jupiter. "If it helps, I'm not holding you responsible at all, Cora already sent me the black box data from Tarawa and the Tiger's Claw."

"Not responsible?" the young officer snapped angrily. "All due respect, admiral, I was damn well responsible for over two thousand men and women who died in efforts to cover our asses while we ran, in part because I was not informed of what my ship is host to, what it's capable of, and because we were ambushed by a force we weren't supposed to expect."

The admiral sighed. He didn't blame Adam at all for the rage. But he needed to channel it. Temper the fury into something they could better use in the coming conflict. "Cora and her creation have been a heavily guarded secret since the Kromus War, just like the Concordia." After taking a deep breath, Dane turned to see the anger in Malkovich's eyes. That had been far too expected after reading Cora's report of what had happened. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you everything about the ship, but there are a lot of people beyond merely the Pirates who have an interest in seeing the Confederation brought down low and put on a tighter leash than we already are."

"Did you know that the Kromus have a precursor ship foundry?"

His calm aged eyes went wide as he turned his body in full now. "They have a what?"

"At least three new ship types, including a four kilometer dreadnought, and they jumped in system without any signs of slipspace, or using the jump point." He was all but fuming as the entire incident came back. "Five ships gone in a matter of minutes, sir. Those weapons and defenses were comparable to what we know of Forerunner, which we know the Kromus have a serious difficulty using, which likely means ancient Chozo. They were intentionally there, to send us a message."

Dane was silent as he looked out the viewport again, contemplating what he had learned. After a long silence, his gaze returned to Adam just before he started walking and gestured for the younger officer to follow him into the main corridors. "Chairman Kea'ton is trying to get the Galactic Congress to recognize there was no actual end to the Kromus War, even if that bastard Ridley has been dead for almost twenty years. Na-Gli is still ranting that we're 'violent, angry paranoid fools' and is behind the insistence on Orange Nine."

Something Adam was sadly familiar with. They'd been fortunate as it was that Na-Gli and his faction hadn't blocked them on his battle group being set to handle policing actions with the Kromus pirate factions. The fact that the Fro'mal factionists and their staunch stance on "remind the Terrans of their place" had not thrown a fit about the reveal of the Concordia had truthfully been more surprising than if they had said anything. "Considering that Na-Glis' faction was opposed to the original declaration of war on the Kromus in the first place thirty years ago, I truthfully get the impression he has some reason for giving the Pirates so much room to breathe." Where was Dane leading him, he wondered. "We've never been in the business of genocide-"

"We left that to the Covenant and the Kiranka clan until four hundred years ago."

Crude, but at the same time, true. "But we never should have just left the Kromus to scatter throughout the Sol-Daiban Galaxy after we dropped a fifty gigaton seismic resonation bomb on their home planet. What worked on the Kilrathi three hundred years ago isn't always a guarantee with another war-obsessed race."

A nod was Dane's further response as they continued down the main corridor. "G'mar Vog'l insisted we had to be better than the Kromus, but even we didn't expect them to literally scatter like roaches into the uncharted regions of our galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds." It was almost ironic that the nearby viewport was facing in a direction to observe both stellar cloud galaxies in question. "Now we have no less than three trillion of them scurrying in our galaxy, and even if their great supreme commander is gone, there's always a chance that one of them might stand out and pull an Atriox."

"We may be looking at that, Admiral." With a sigh, Adam held out the data tablet he had carried in with him. "This is everything we have, from the first encounter with the Cunning Death to the attack in the Heaven's Gate system. Cora compiled it with everything else we've encountered since we left Sol System as well, and there has been definite coordination going on."

The Admiral paused but a moment to take the proffered device and pulled up the data in question. While he held his composure, his face was revealing his concern as his eyes scanned over the reports and the prediction diagrams. "Cora ran these numbers?" he asked, receiving a confirming nod in response. "Damn. She's got the entire network processing power of the Concordia to run simulations, I definitely don't take anything she predicts lightly. This is exactly what I've be warning the Federation about since the massacre on K-2L."

"I'd appreciate knowing more about the ship you put me in command of, Admiral." He knew it wasn't subtle, but Adam had never been a subtle man in his career. It came from being part of the army for over a decade. "I have been on every type of FTL capable vessel in Confed. I know jump drive, I know the Fornax drive, and as rare as they are for us ground pounders to see, I know Reclaimer-class drives. Whatever the hell is on my ship is decisively not a slipdrive of any kind, and Cora said we entered the quantum slipstream."

Silence. It was something that wasn't of expected of a man like Dane. It as enough of a surprise that Malkovich found himself a bit taken back. The admiral simply led him down the corridor and to a lift, waiting for Adam to enter before keying in a destination command on the keypad. It was then, as they were sealed in for their journey, that he spoke again.

"Commander Malkovich, there are a number of thing you have to understand about the ship I entrusted to you. Not just Cora, but her purpose, what she carries inside her, and the things that cannot get out about what she is capable of." Dane gave a heavy sigh as he leaned on the wall of the lift, as if now revealing an enormous weight he carried on his shoulders. Whatever secrets he was hiding, it was obvious now that he didn't like the reasons. "The truth is, Concordia is something we began even as we were knee deep in the Kromus War, and what she carries inside was started even further back...we just couldn't power the damn thing until recently."

"So it is a Chozo flux drive."

He blinked in confusion at the younger officer. Not for shock of being found out, but in honest uncertainty as to the conclusion Adam had declared. "Flux drive? Son, I have no hesitation in admitting we have no way of building a Chozo FTL drive, and you are the one person I know I can tell the truth of it if we could."

That didn't make sense, at least not to Malkovich. "But Cora specifically said we were the first humans to enter the quantum slipstream in-"

"Oh, that little terminology." Now the admiral was chuckling as he shook his head. "As brilliant as the mind who cracked the zero energy equation, but her comprehension is a bit off and missing experience." The lift jolted to a halt, doors sliding open to admit them to a level that Adam noticed was far more guarded than one would expect inside Sol Station. The stationed marines moved to block him as Dane walked past them, but a gesture from the admiral halted them in their tracks. "Commander Malkovich has provisional clearance under my authority, he's good to see what we have down here."

A nod from both as they resumed their stations, allowing Adam to pass by and catch up with his superior. "I wouldn't expect marine security set up this deep in ConFleet headquarters, sir. What's down here?"

"The Department of Advanced Warfare."

The infamous and feared Confederation Armed Forces development and intelligence section. Centuries ago, their predecessor was known as the Office of Naval Intelligence, famous in history texts for spearheading the projects that saved humanity from annihilation during the Covenant War. Succeeded by Confederation Fleet Intelligence and later the Strategic Readiness Agency, until the near collapse of the Confederation in the Machine War. It was the very late 2700s that saw the birth of Advanced Warfare, founded under the guidance of then ConFleetCiC Admiral Ezra Tadashi just ten years following the dismantling of the SRA. Ever since, much of what was known outside of rumors and department myth was that DAW contained the best kept secrets in the Confederation, and it was perhaps better not to know them.

"I'm not privy to most of what they do, but some things, like Cora and the Concordia, are in my scope." A number of turns deeper into the bowels of Sol Station and its den of military secrets. "The special drive array that allowed your very expedient escape and return to Sol is one of them, it's called a quantum wave engine."

"As in wave motion theory?"

A nod as Dane placed his hand against a security scanner at the sealed junction now before them. A moment went by as the palm scan zone glowed, followed by a tight beam sweep of the admiral's face and retinal patterns. After a long silence, the heavy doors split and slid apart to allow them entry. "The very same, Commander. We've had a number of reasonably intact drives since the end of the Machine War, but no way to power them on the level they required." The heavy security doors slowly shut behind them as Adam followed the admiral further into whatever den of black boxed operation he was leading the commander into. "It wasn't until DAW and AMDC worked together on the ÆSIR project that we got a breakthrough into zero point energy. Not quite Forerunner or Machine Empire level, but it was enough to start testing the drives and figure out how to build our own again."

Again? That implied that humans had used wave motion technology before. "Was Confed Intell testing it in the Kilrathi War? I remember reading the Behemoth flap that occurred toward the end of the conflict, but I didn't think-"

"That, commander, had been a dead end that gathered support out of desperation. We haven't had wave motion based drives since the Gamilas were wiped out by the first Machine War in the late 2200s and our own wave motion fleet was decimated."

Definitely a history he had not learned. It meant that the old adage of history serving the needs of those in power was still more true than ever. How long that truth had been hidden was probably something Adam knew was best not to ponder or inquire. Sometimes, it was better not to know. "So the Concordia is a reconstruction of those drives?" The reply was an amused shake of Dane's head. "Machine Empire, then?"

"Definite research basis, combined with our understanding of Forerunner power technologies, and some help here and there." They stopped at a long observation window, and as Dane gestured for Adam to look down, it was obvious now just how deep this went. In addition to the obviously human engineer teams down in the bay deck, Adam could see at least two or three floating blue creatures with elongated eel-like heads and tentacle form limbs. He'd read enough documents both restricted and not to know what they were, and it explained quite a bit now.

"I wanted to tell you sooner, son," came the apology from Dane as he clapped Adam on the shoulder. "But until now in this station, it hasn't been safe. We have a new form of Wave Motion drive, and it runs even better than the one on the UNCN Yamato over seven hundred years ago. Concordia is a strong lady, and she's capable of so much that I want to tell you. But we're still not able to match the Machine Empire for speed or brute power."

And now it hit him. Why he was let in on the secret. "Or these new Kromus ships with their ability to jump into systems without any kind of trace." He'd already seen what the fleet was preparing for, that's why Dane was willing to bring him into this section of Advanced Warfare's space side facilities. And that's when another realization hit him; the Cunning Death. "Concordia was designed to match the Cunning Death joule for joule of power, and it's the ZPE issue that's limiting her."

No answer. But silence did more to confirm the conclusion and the questions behind why they had sent a ship of the size and importance of the Concordia fresh off the ship yards and into a "policing" tour. Intelligence had no doubt suspected that the Kromus were up to something, and despite the declarations by then Chairman Vog'l that the Cunning Death had been destroyed in the aftermath of Krom's death, no one really believed that the feared vessel was gone, and that had been clear for the last eighteen years. This was never a policing task, it had been preparation and proving exactly what Terra had been warning the Federation about for almost twenty years.

And then the unintended price they paid for forcing the fleet to make due with capital class ships that were anywhere from fifty years to a century and a half in age.

"So why raise up an army captain into the fleet and hand him command of a carrier that's more heavily armed than a battlewagon?"

The admiral sighed. It was obvious he'd been anticipating this discussion for some time now. With a shrug of his shoulders, Dane looked down at the bay deck and took a deep breath. "Because I don't want someone who thinks like a fleet officer, I want someone who knows being on the ground and front lines and thinks like a field commander."

Someone who could lead in a war. The words were carefully chosen to appease if ever asked the same question by the Federation, but the meaning was clear; Dane expected war. If this was indeed part of some grand arrangement in preparation for a second and even more horrific round of the Kromus invasions, then someone higher up than Dane also believed it was coming again and had signed off on all of this. And then, something else clicked. He would wait on it, but conversations they had been involved in were now appearing to be far more related than they otherwise seemed.

"When do I head back out?" He assumed he would be sent back into the thick of things as soon as a stronger battle group was formed, likely to be headed by a senior experienced captain, but Dane hadn't indicated a lack of faith in him. If anything, he had a very good grasp of Adam's expertise, but the younger officer just wasn't experienced in commanding a ship yet.

"You're not."

Now Adam was staring at the admiral with a mix of confusion and shock. He had just said he wanted someone with ground combat experience in a place of command. If there was something coming at them, then the only option was to regroup their forces and get back out to hunt the Kromus leaders down and eliminate the threat. "Sir, I don't under-"

"I'm not sending you out ill equipped for what we're looking at, Malkovich." He turned his head away from the observation window, now meeting Adams's confused eyes. "Cora is already transferring all her data to the DAW database, and we need more than one new carrier and half a dozen aging escorts for this. You and your crew have been through enough to warrant shore leave." A faint smile tugged at the old man's lips. "Go home, spend time with your family, and get ready for what we know is coming."

Hesitation came, a pause that Adam did not miss. It was brief, but long enough that he knew there was worry behind the encouragement. Dane believed that they had hardly seen the worst of what the Kromus were capable of. Many a time had he made it clear that he thought of the victory at Krom to be a fluke at best, and a planned calculation at worst. There was much about that months long operation that even his talents and seeking information had not been able to find the truth of, but Adam knew one thing; the massive fleet gathered between Confederation and Sangheili forces that went into the Magellanic Cloud had been over sixty capital class vessels. Including the Olympus and the monstrous CSO class Ardent Contrition, only a third of them had come back, and many Confederation vessels had been decommissioned upon return.

"A shuttle will get you back to Terra by the end of the day, we have some work to do to Concordia before she's ready to sail again." Again, that telling hesitation to continue. Dane had more he wanted to say, but couldn't yet. Something was already being planned. It was entirely possible that to a point, this had always been the plan. They just had not expected the Kromus to have surged forward this much to where the entire battle group had been wiped out. "I'll keep in touch as we prepare the fleet to mobilize. Once we deal with GalFed's hold up to let us do our jobs, we'll have to move quick to get underway as soon as possible."

A nod, a salute, and then, before he turned, Adam realized two things. The first was that he would likely be detained if he went anywhere in this section of Sol Station without the admiral. The second was that he was likely to not see his family for quite some time after this leave his crew was being given. And Dane had not indicated how long they had. It could be a matter of weeks, or even months depending on how much of a fight the Federation Congress gave them. At least this time, they had the Chairman on their side instead of trying to block them.

"Let's get you home, son. Last I heard, you had another baby due soon, may as well make sure you don't miss him joining us in the world."

Well, that was at least one immediate quandary resolved.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.229

The Quantum Slipstream, En Route to Dakona System

The prismatic hues of the strange other realm continued to surge and flicker around the tiny red and yellow craft as it raced though the chaotic planescape, nebulous strands of gaseous clouds flitting in exchange as they glided over the extending curved wings of the craft and the main hull. Ever since its mad escape from Zebes, the tiny vessel had been traveling through the mysterious plane known to the Chozo as the slipstream, yet still had not emerged to its destination despite being capable of speeds in the range of ten parsecs or more an hour.

Whether it was a malfunction or a quirk of its locked-in autopilot commands, the small craft was still speeding through the hyper-dimension. It was inside that the wear of what had happened on Zebes became evident. The blonde girl whom had barely turned eighteen years of age was curled up still in the pilot's seat, her cheeks stained from the tears while a soft blue light was projecting down on her, a stabilizing stasis field that kept the young woman in a sleep for the journey to her destination. Food and drink was less concerning with the stasis field, allowing her to extend what supplies had been stored aboard longer than if she had remained awake.

Yet it could not take away the nightmares that had plagued her all her life, compounding even more with the invasion she had narrowly escaped. Reliving the events that had been the massacre of K-2L, feeling herself locking up and unable to do anything, had been just as traumatic as enduring the Kromus invasion itself. She didn't want to remember, but everything haunted her now. Azure Path's broken and wound riddled corpse, Platinum Chest's horrifying screams, and the wet crunch she could hear as she and Maru had fled.

Maru. His last act of locking her in the small runabout craft and setting the autopilot to the nearest friendly territory, all before he had thrown himself into the fire and fought off as many Kromus as he could. She had no idea if he was still alive or dead, but Kromus were not exactly known for taking prisoners. She had been the only survivor of K-2L, a testament to their brutality that no one else on the colony had escaped. That fact had been enough keep her from coming out of stasis for days now. The thought of losing her strongest example of a parental figure and often her only emotional support was enough to make Samus withdraw completely.

"Deactivating stasis field, preparing to depart slipstream. Restoring life support levels to active."

The blonde girl slowly blinked as the blue field fizzled and faded, returning her to the waking world. After a moment, Samus sighed and sat up in the pilot's seat as her eyes blearily looked around and took in what was going on. "Are we finally there?" she muttered as she walked about at the main cabin. Her powered suit and its containment chamber were at the back of the ship, status readouts displaying the constant array of diagnostic tests being run. In a storage divider at the central area of the cabin was a small station for food and drink dispersal, which she had been using sparsely as she didn't know how long it would take to arrive at Calliope-IX. Normally, a flux drive of mark one or better grade should have been able to get a small ship like this from Zebes and into civilized space within a few standard day units or less. It had been over nine, according the chronometers, since she had escaped Zebes. Something had to be wrong if the ship could maintain slipspace travel this long, yet was taking ten days to reach its destination.

And then, as stated by the ship's navcom AI, the cascading realm of the slipstream began wavering moments before the tunnel-like plane withdrew from around the craft and deposited the tiny vessel into normal space. Immediately she could see the Dakona system; two main sequence stars ranging with over thirty astronomical units between them and a much smaller dwarf star in the further distance. Navcom renders revealed six gas giant planets in orbits around the trinary stars, and dozens of moons that could be considered planets themselves orbiting those. One of the gas giants, then, was Calliope, with one of the habitable moons in orbit being Calliope-IX.

"I need to contact Dane." Anxiety was already kicking up at the thought of that had been going on back on Zebes since she left. "Confed has to know, they have to send the fleet out there, secrecy be damned..."

Sublight engines roared to life and brought the lithe little ship about on a course for the third gas giant from Dakona-A, the smaller yellow-white star of the primary two solar masses. The Navcom had brought the ship back into normal space just outside the orbit of Calliope, and more importantly, outside of the gas giant's gravity well. That meant based on the cruising speed the ship was at, she'd be arriving within just an hour and a half.

Somehow, that didn't help calm the panic attack she could feel building up.

---

Clio City, Calliope-IX

Of all the planets considered to be throwaway backwaters that no one would miss if it suddenly ceased to be, Calliope-IX would be in the top ten of the list, despite being a moon. The colony was one Terra often wished they had not been forced to settle, but the early days of reconstruction following the Machine War had been one of careful politics with the Galactic Federation as they had all but in official words forced 'membership' on the humans. As a result, the colony had been dumped unceremoniously on the muddy moon after surveys had found what seemed to have been vast quantities of titanium in the crust. It had been prosperous for the first few decades, as mining operations rooted and expanded over the surface, but easier processed sources and the depletion of the titanium mines left the colony with a recession once resources began to become expanded far sooner than thought, until any desirability it once had held was gone.

After that, the only thing of value had been the quartz, moldavite and peridot veins, as well as the occasional platinum and tungsten finds. Beyond that, Calliope-IX was more useful as a penal colony since the throttling of its economy, and sending prisoners to serve as indentured labor there was cheaper than trying to sell legitimate migration of new blood colonists as an option.

At the center of it all was Clio City, once the original mining outpost almost two hundred years ago, now developed into what passed for a capitol for a total population of maybe a few thousand, excluding the prison sector. Named after some long nearly forgotten figure of mythology of same roots as its mother planet's designation, Clio had taken a ramshackle visage as of the last few decades, as the last of the titanium veins had been cleaned out since before the Kromus War, leaving only a few precious metals and the gem veins. Even the civilian residents, many having been born into mining families that had been on the moon since it was first colonized, had become more than a touch embittered and resentful of the Federation at large, as well as with the Confederation for not offering more than token support since the war ended.

Yet remaining a colony of the Confederation was better than defiant "independence". The Dakona system was on the opposite side of Federation controlled space from the Confederation itself, leaving it without any semblance of protection otherwise if, in the extremely low chance of it happening, that they were raided. And after the Landerich had been effectively wiped off the galactic charts during the Kromus War, it was better to be a token effort than to be all alone. It also didn't help matters that an entire sector region of the moon was the penal colony, and as minimal as it was, the presence of the containment staff and Confederation military police kept them in better relations than the more obviously negligent Federation.

Just a number of kilometers outside Clio City was one of the main moldavite mines. Equipment breakdowns were unfortunately common, requiring frequent repairs that often were preformed by prison sector inmates than actual contracted mechanics. One of those repairs had just been completed, allowing the primary drills to resume operations even while smoke was belched out of its engine drive.

"Why can't we just get one of those new Axium plasma drills and just be done with it?" One of the junior supervisors sighed and set his data tablet down on a table while looking out the plexisteel viewport at the ground operations. "This rust bucket laser bore has been in operation since before I was born."

"If you have twenty million seguru lying around, seeing as Cortamin refuses to take Confederation credits, and the jeweler companies sure as hell isn't going to pony up the cash when the laser bores are still working seventy percent of the time." The primary unit manager looked up from her work load, noting the morose expression on her subordinate's face. "Facts are facts, Gil. This mud pile hasn't been relevant to the Federation since Daiban came and tapped out the last of the titanium veins decades before the war. Confed wasn't happy about that, because they needed it for the shipyards, and my old man never got a straight answer back when he ran operations here as to why Daiban nearly screwed over the fleet."

A shrug. The old history lesson was an often repeated one. Much of the operations management was family held, as the manager had noted, but nepotism was hardly the issue. The lack of any real oversight from a company management had been something the colony and operations had come to accept long ago, and so long as the person in charge was competent at their job and could earn the respect due to their position, who they were related to didn't matter.

"Miss Keiths, this is Clio City space traffic control, please respond."

The woman blinked for a second in confusion before reaching over to the comunit and tapping the response switch. "This is Chief Keiths, confirming. Not often I get a call from you boys."

"I tried contacting the local MP unit, but they just told me to get you and let your office handle this." There was a tone of apology in the voice coming from the small communication unit. "There's an untagged craft that appeared out of nowhere just past the magnetosphere, we're still not sure how it got there."

"Probably some new Confed slipspace capable test craft and they don't want Daiban seeing it in the central systems," Gil said with a grumble as he walked over and sat down by the hard metal desk. "Someone probably didn't think we were worth notifying."

"It's registering as just a bit over fighter craft sized, sir. Too small for a Fornax slipdrive, and none of the usual energy readings from a jump or a slipspace vector have shown up. It just literally appeared without any sign of how it got here...and its coming in for landing just outside the mines you're at."

That information got Andrea Keiths' attention as she looked at Gil and frowned. Even slipdrive was obvious in exit vector, just as much as a jump point. They might be a backwater mining colony on a mud ball of a moon, but she still knew basic subspace travel. "Gil, get site security. Have them meet me where this thing lands. Control, I want a projection on landing, relay it to the security team here."

"Make them actually work for their paychecks?"

Keiths gave an amused snort as she opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out a large taser shock gun, checked the power cell, then slipped it into the back band of her pants before clipping her comunit to her belt. "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that if this is some kind of pirate raider, their rent-a-cop asses are still useless." She checked the messages coordinates for projected touch down of the vessel and gestured for Gil to follow. "You drive better than I do, Watts. Let's hurry and get there before it does."

With a nod, Gil Watts followed his supervising manager out of the main site control office and down the lift to a waiting transport carrier. "Keep that drill going while we check something out!" he shouted to the main crew, then loaded himself into the driver's seat of the repulsor craft while Keiths slid in on the passenger side. After confirming his authorization to operate the vehicle and powering the engine drive, Gil pushed the throttle lever and steered the craft down the main road until they saw the streak of an object flying down toward them, still glowing red from atmospheric entry. It was an odd design, red with a yellow bottom section and a pair of elongated wings jutting out from under the cockpit to curve back and frame the main body. Definitely not what one expected for a pirate craft, and it was being far too obvious in its appearance and descent for a scout or a lone raider.

By the time they reached the projected landing coordinates, the local security unit was waiting for them. Most of them were locals, hired by an out of system corporation that had been given special license by the Federation to the sector for how much they cut costs and had paid off the senators who had sway over the contracting offices. The upside was, no off-worlders of note with an ego and a badge that made them think they were in charge. The downside was, no one outside the prison sector military police had any skill worth a damn if things blew up. And even that was debatable.

"Are we really out here for some lost cargo hauler again?"

"Stow the jokes," Keiths growled as she pulled herself out of the carrier and raised a pair of electro-binocs to her face. The microcomputers ran calculations as they locked on the incoming craft and gave a gauge of how quickly it was approaching. "I know Mej'ith pays shit, but it's not like you actually have to do much for a hundred credits an hour." It was coming in decently fast, and definitely under power as it was exceeding thirteen hundred kilometers an hour. "They sure as hell are in a hurry, whoever they are."

For a moment, it looked as if the craft was in fact out of control and on a course to slam into the moon's surface at full atmospheric thrust. Yet just as it was near enough to make the group of half a dozen men and women drop for cover, there was a high pitched roar of retrojets and overclocked repulsors firing to bring the craft to a sudden and surprisingly controlled halt. The energy field and rapid air pressure shift was enough to blow a couple unprepared members of the security team off their feet as the craft reorientated itself to a clearer landing area, then settled into place with the repulsor field allowing the vessel to hover above the ground.

And then, other than the low hum of the repulsor field, it was quiet. Keiths looked over at Gil, uncertainty in her eyes, but the situation was here in front of them. She took a step toward the craft, cautiously approaching it and running a hand over the cooled yellow lower hull. It was then that the woman noticed faint precision etched markings in the surface, a writing system, maybe, that she didn't recognize. That wasn't too hard as the Dakona system was rather isolated save the occasional cargo hauler and once in a blue moon precious gems merchant coming through.

"Do you think anyone is actually in this thing?"

As if on cue, there was a banging from inside the craft. Keiths took a step back, turned her head, and groaned to see the security unit trying to subtly back away themselves. Her repeated comments about 'rent-a-cops' were sadly proving more true than venting frustration. If the military police over at the prison sector wasn't so eager to brush off things like this, despite it being their job to investigate the kind of situation they were looking at, this would be much better handled.

"Is there a hatch on this thing, or an access panel? Someone is in that thing!"

And then there was a hissing sound as something swung open from the rear, revealing a cargo hatch of some kind that landed one side against the ground and revealed a girl, no more than seventeen or eighteen, who stumbled out and caught her footing just in time to not fall on her face. She looked around, blue-green eyes wide with could only be described as panic, and her blonde hair was clearly disheveled and a bit grimy after what looked to have been days since she last showered. The same could be said for the blue jumpsuit she was wearing, with several blackened stains in the fabric.

"I need Dane...Someone get me Admiral Dane, right now!" She looked around, as if expecting some kind of immediate response to her wild demand. "Why are you all just staring at me? Someone call up Confleet headquarters and get me Admiral Castor Dane, this is an emergency!"

The lead of the security unit gave a gruff snort as he walked toward her, hands raised to lead her into assuming him non-threatening. "I can tell a hypo-junkie when I see one. Probably stole the ship from some rich Confie with too much money and got too much of a high before they started hitting jump points." Now his hands were lowered to show he intended to make sure she didn't struggle. "Come on, let's find out where your parents are, kid. I'm sure the guy you stole this from will be nice and not press too many charges."

She looked at him in abject horror. "What? No, I told you, I need to reach Admiral Castor Dane, it's the Kromus!" The blonde girl was clearly past the edge of panic as she backed away from the approaching security unit. "They've taken Zebes, he has to know and mobilize the fleets!"

"She's probably on stardust combined with a mental breakdown," one of the other security officers stated as she pulled out an elecro-stun baton. "No need for the MPs, we can handle this, Miss Keiths. A nice million volt charge to knock her out and a few nights in a cell should sober her up, and we can find out who owns this thing."

Her eyes went narrow suddenly as, just when the security officer approached, the blonde girl whipped a hand out to swat the stun baton away, then moved almost like a blur as she slammed her other hand like a piledriver into the uniformed woman's chest. The impact sent the security officer flying back almost ten feet, leaving her curled in a fetal position and clutching her sides. The girl, meanwhile, had taken up a hunched guarding posture, centering her weight in the fashion of someone who had clearly been military trained.

"I said...I need to talk to Admiral Castor Dane, Seventh Fleet, Confederation Naval Operations Command." The blonde glowered at the stunned group before her, her feet shifting to root her center of gravity in case she had to further act. "My name is Samus Aran, I'm the daughter of Captain John Aran, and I need to warn the fleet that the Kromus have taken Zebes!"

"Little girl, do you know where you are? Whatever shit you're on, doesn't change that Confed ain't exactly a warm welcomed group here since dumping a penal colony sector on us."

Another one of the security officers stalked in on her, causing the girl to give what almost sounded like an angry bird chuff. Ignoring it, the larger man made his way in, only to be welcomed with a rapid series of impact against his head and chest as the girl moved almost too fast to be seen. A pair of quick punches caused him to spit out a glob of blood and saliva, leaving him open as she twisted her own form around and brought a sharp scissor kick in an upward motion that caught him by the chin, and with a faint crack, sent him to the ground.

"Admiral Dane," came her hissed words, her eyes narrowed like a hawk preparing to strike prey. "Zebes has been taken, this is not a joke. The Chozo need help now."

The lead of the unit took a moment, drawing out the hand blaster harnessed at his leg, but the speed at which the girl moved was blinding as she did the same, and her weapon discharged a flaring bright blue burst that slammed into him with a loud crackle while his body convulsed in reaction to the high energy electrical charge he had been shot with.

Yet when she spun toward Keiths, the girl found a pair of wires latching to her chest in the split second before she was hit with an electrical charge that normally would have dropped someone twice her size. Instead, it made her grind her teeth and drop to a knee as she could smell the ozone from electrical burns, but she was still conscious. "You assholes attacked me first, all I wanted is-"

Another surge of the taser shot through the wires, this time charged as high as the device could go, causing the blonde to scream, but she was still resisting, against all logic. Keiths was close to panic, as the hand unit she had brought only had so much charge, and this girl who couldn't weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds was all but tanking over ten million volts at almost sixty milliamps. Enough in anyone else to nearly kill an average grown human adult, but she was gritting her teeth and trying to grab the tether wires. Yet in the time it took for the girl to wrap her hand around the wires, a second set of electrodes snapped out and caught on her skin, allowing a second high charge to hit her nervous system. Seconds later, the girl collapsed, an occasional twitch from the high voltage that had been run through her.

"Shit," came Gil's exclamation of shock as he unlocked the load cartridge on his taser hand gun. "She just took like...that had to be over twenty million volts and enough amps to kill a bull elephant. How the hell was she still functioning after you hit her with that first surge?"

Keiths only shook her head as she dropped the hand unit she had been holding and walked over to where the girl was still having small twitches. She was breathing still, but the fact she had taken all that charge just to go down was indicating there was something else going on besides just a high strung addict. "Even stardust doesn't hype the system that much," the woman muttered under her breath. What was going on here?

"Holy hell, you see the size of this hand cannon she was packing?" The remaining security officer who had not been incapacitated was standing over the girl, examining the large silver hand blaster that had taken their local lead person out in a shot. Compared to the tasers they all had been carrying, the blaster was massive. "It's like one of those MR-1 MagRail Magnums they used to give the ÆSIRs as standard issue in the war. Those things had enough recoil tear a man's arm off, how the hell was she one handing this beast?"

Keiths didn't respond. Energy based or not, the size of the hand blaster in question indicated it could have done a lot more than just incapacitate the target, and that they had been lucky. This girl wasn't anymore than maybe five foot nine, looked to weigh about a hundred and fifty or so pounds, and yet she had taken out three trained and armed security officers on her own. Admittedly, they had threatened to electro-stun her when she had just been begging them for help for something regarding...Zebes? But that wasn't exactly something they were likely going to admit to if they could avoid it, not when they were technically ten kilometers off the mining grounds, and legally not on company fielded property. And as long as no one went into the video files of the security unit's body cams, no one would call them out. "Call Captain Harper at the prison, tell him we got a crazy one...and see if they can get this thing towed out of here so we can figure out later where they both came from..."

For once, Andrea Keiths wished things on Calliope-IX had stayed dull.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2961.218

Afloraltite Mining Colony K-2L

The air was thick with smoke blotting the darkening green sky, screams coming from the small town across the plains. They were running, racing away from the town under the cover of twilight. A rabbit style stuffed animal was clutched tightly in her little arms, about half her own size, while she herself was carried frantically by the tall woman with reddish blonde hair and blue eyes. A pulse rifle was slung around the woman's broad shoulders, shaking and slapping against her back as she hurried to get them away from the burning city.

"Mama, why?!"

Kromus had no reason to anything they did. Nothing would make that any different, even trying to explain it to a three-year-old little girl. "We need to find papa," she exclaimed as she continued to run through the long grass plains. They could hear the reports of energy bursts in the distance, the sound of a high-power particle pulse rifle that they both recognized. "John!" the woman cried out. "God, this is insane...John!"

There was a rustling in the tall grass moments before several sets of glowing red-yellow eyes appeared to rise up, dark forms framing those points like they were hot coals. The woman came to a halt, shifting the girl in her arms even while grabbing the grip of the pulse rifle and bringing it about to aim and fire at the insectoid crustaceans. Crackling screams echoed as the alien raiders were riddled with particle beam bursts, finally collapsing and allowing the humans to continue deeper into the plains.

Another round of pulse reports, this time followed by a high pitched screech that seemed to rise up in the air. It wasn't a death cry like the pirates that she had just killed, leaving the woman to halt suddenly. More shots, another screech, and then the sound of a concussive grenade going off. She knew who that had to be.

"Jonathan Rodney Aran, we did not survive a twelve year war and that damn siege on Krom together just for you to die on me here," she muttered as she readjusted her daughter, let the pulse rifle fall back behind her back, and started running again toward the forest where she could see the smoke start rising up from the grenade charge they'd heard.

"John!"

The sound of rushing air culminated in a heavy thud as a large dark form landed before them. A cruel chuckle as the hunched over shape uncurled, a long tail unwrapping and rising to reveal the three foot long spear-like tip while a massive wing span opened up. Glowing red-yellow peered out at them, and the white gleam of a maw of sharp teeth opened into a malicious grin.

And then, it laughed. A terrible, high pitch, cackling laugh.

"Going somewhere, little human?"

The toddler was lowered to the ground and nudged back be behind the taller woman. It was once she was sure her daughter was shielded that she gripped the pulse rifle and brought it up to aim at the massive dark form. "Stay behind mama." A heavy click as she pulled the action of the grenade launcher of the pulse rifle and loaded the explosive into the chamber. "It's going to be okay, sweetie."

The creature cackled as flames licked out from between its teeth. It dropped down to stand on all fours, tail curling around as it fold in its wings in and tense its body. "Oh yes...It will all be over soon." Smoke rose out of the open jaws of the creature as it laughed, framing its face like some kind of demon. "In flames...and utter agony!"

"MAMA!"

Flames erupted out of its mouth, racing at the woman as the little girl screamed, only for a roaring explosion to throw the creature back with a screech. The woman quickly picked her daughter up again and ran as fast as she could before the monster could recover from the grenade she had fired just as it was unleashing its fiery breath. They had gotten further into the forest, almost to where the earlier explosion had drawn their course. "John! God damnit, please be alive!"

A rush of heat overhead came slamming down to explode and set the trees before them on fire before they could reach the clearing. Another thud, and the creature was behind them. Its face was burnt, bits of skin blown off in the explosion to expose muscle, but it was grinning as it raised its haunches and stalked toward them on all fours. "I remember you...Aran's damned mate. So you're the mother of that tiny, delicious looking spawn who was foolish enough to tell me her name, trying to 'befriend' me." Another cackle as it closed in while the woman and her daughter backed toward the burning trees. "To think, a pitiful little human child having delusions of garnering favor with the cunning god of death, and she turns out to be the spawn of the human scum who humiliated me..." That flame licked grin came back as the hellfire eyes narrowed. "Such delectable irony...I think I'll have her for a snack now."

The creature lunged forward, and all she remembered was the gunfire and the screams...

---

2976.230

Erato Prison Sector, Calliope-IX

She awoke with a start, gasping for air as pain shot through her lungs. After several harsh coughs, the blonde youth clutched her chest. Her jumpsuit was a bit torn, but intact. After a moment, she looked around as her eyes adjusted to the low light of wherever it was she had ended up. Bleak pemracrete walls surrounded her, no windows, and only a low humming plexisteel panel indicated a way in or out.

She'd been thrown in a prison cell on Calliope-IX.

"You always warned me, Sergeant Xim," she muttered as she swung her legs around and slowly stood up. Muscles were a bit sore still, as she recalled being hit with at least two tasers before she had blacked out. From what she had learned back in the academy, the amount of volts and amperage that would have been charged through her body could have killed any other human. The fact she was still sore even after however long it had been was not surprising. That left her concerns as getting out of this cell and contacting Admiral Dane back on Terra.

And conveniently, there was a monitoring camera in the upper ceiling corner of the cell. That was enough for her as she walked over to stand right below the camera, well within its line of sight, and looked straight up at it. "I assume you have video-audio receiver holo-transmission vector, so if someone can come let me the hell of here and let me speak to Admiral Dane, then maybe this whole thing and throwing me in a jail cell can be overlooked." Silence. "My name is Samus Aran, my father was Captain Jonathan Rodney Aran of the Terran Confederation Army Corp, ÆSIR Special Forces, One-Hundred and Seventeenth. Unit nickname was the Spartans, big and famous in the Kromus War. I need to speak with Admiral Castor Dane, ConFleet Naval Command operations, flag admiral of the Seventh Fleet about the security of planet FS-176-2."

Nothing still. The blonde sighed and sat down on the lone stool of her cell, contemplating possible options. Once she could tell someone of actual authority what happened, she should be free to contact Dane and tell him about the invasion. The problem was, her gut told her that the security guards, who had blatantly said they were going to electro her for no reason other than she was panicking, were not going to admit what they did was illegal. She knew that from her lessons on twenty-third century Terra and the issues with the mega-corporates' abuses of legal loopholes to strong arm and dodge laws. It was why the biggest corporation of the time had been seized and liquidated by the government after the massive host of laws broken without compunction had gotten out.

"You corporate assholes are just digging your own graves with this."

There was a squelch just before a blue tinted holoimage appeared before her, projected from the same camera she'd addressed previously. The man appearing there looked in his late thirties, possibly early forties, and was wearing what Samus recognized as a Confederation military police active field uniform. "While we're running your facial ID through the Federation database, I thought I'd have a word with the supposed Dust sniffer that I had handed off to me by Mej'ith rent a cops." The image shifted to include a chair as the man speaking with her pulled one into the broadcast area. Now he sat, positioned as if interrogating her. "So...my name is Captain Roland Harper. I've been told you arrived in some supposedly stolen ship and somehow jumped into Dakona, and that when you landed and they tried to find out what was going on, you simply attacked. I have reasons to doubt a chunk of that story already, but facts I do see are two security guards with broken ribs, a shattered jaw, and one hell of an electro pulse shock that the third guy is still not walking off yet. And then there's you." The image shifted his posture in the chair while pointing in a direction to indicate Samus herself. "Five-eight, weight is barely over one-twenty-five, and yet somehow, you did the kind of damage we saw armored ÆSIRs do in wartime reports when I was a kid."

Her breath was caught for a moment. In her panic and anger out by the Chozo runabout, she'd forgotten to rein her abnormal strength in. The results were...rather obvious, the comparison was already in place. "My father was John Aran, and he was an ÆSIR, Captain Harper."

"So you claim, Miss 'Aran'. But John Aran died fifteen years ago on an afloraltite mining colony in a Pirate raid gone bad, along with everyone else on that planet, including any family he had with him." Again the captain's image shifted. "And I may be stationed on this mud ball little hellhole, but I still went through officer school and learned my military history. They stopped ÆSIR enhancements right after the war because Daiban didn't want to front the costs more than they had to and needed the resources elsewhere. So I'm quite interested in how the hell you did what you did."

And the holo-projector cut off, leaving Samus further with no answers and more frustration. She clicked her tongue under her breath, then finally gave into her rage, let out an angry series of chirps, and slammed a fist into the wall.

---

"Shit, did she really just punch out half an inch of permacrete?"

Captain Harper could not help but appreciate what they had just witnessed. "Still think those Mej'ith rent a cops aren't being honest with what happened, but she definitely can do a number on you." He moved his chair back over into the nook of his station and let out a deep sigh. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the moldavite mines supervisor had requested they pick up this, rather unusual 'hypo-head', as they had called her. They insisted that she had walked out of some ship, that they claim clearly was stolen, and had just attacked them. He already had reason to doubt the claims of 'just doing our jobs', and found it more likely the girl had in fact broken some bones in self-defense. But, she had put three of them in the local med center with nasty broken bones and a hell of an electric pulse shock, as he'd told her. Be it likely self-defense or not, she had gone overboard. And then claiming she needed to talk to Admiral Dane, a rather taller order in concept alone, and that she was daughter of John Aran.

"So I put in that ID request, but it may take a few weeks, Captain." One of his subordinates set down a data tablet for Harper and gave an apologetic shrug. "Dakona-B is having some flares that are gonna slowdown the transmission, since we don't exactly rate high on the equipment list out here."

"Probably would have taken at least a week anyway," Harper replied as he picked up the tablet and began to peruse the file displayed. Primarily a weekly report on the prison workers, any problems had, and maintenance logs. Once again, the mines had requisitioned a number of prisoners for mechanical work on the aging drills and processing equipment, plus the manual labor of the mined gems and what precious metals remained. "Guess miss 'Samus Aran' is just gonna have to be patient and sit tight like a good little girl while we verify that crazy claim."

The MP corporal tilted his head up upon hearing that name. "She said her name is Aran?"

"Yeah, specifically said her dad was John 'Captain Confed' Aran of the Kromus War." Harper gave the corporal a glance as he noticed something about the enlisted man's expression seemed off. "Meyers, don't tell me they stopped teaching everyone about the ÆSIRs and how John Aran 'saved the galaxy' with his Spartans."

"Actually sir, I was thinking maybe we should signal ConFleet and at least notify Admiral Dane." The corporal looked slightly nervous as he looked at the security feed from the isolation cell currently occupied by the blonde girl. "She might be telling the truth, my cousin told me a couple years ago about a girl in her class out at Mountain Point who was John Aran's daughter...I think she said her name was Sansa or Samantha, something like that." He seemed to squint a bit as he studied the girl's face, even as she was sulking in the cell corner. "Have to admit, she's his spitting image. Said she was pretty, but a hell of a temper, and had some nasty rumors following her real fast. Wonder what a cadet would be doing all the way out here, though, she should be fourth year by now."

That information made Harper knit his brow. On the one hand, an ID request was sent put and should be back within a month, though likely longer due to bureaucracy. That would still answer questions for sure. On the other, Meyers might be right, and sending a message to ConFleet command might not be a bad idea. It would take even longer for that to go through, but at least there would already be some answers about her by the time the admiral responded. "Send the message to the admiral's box then, let him know a 'Samus Aran' is requesting him regarding some planet designated FS-176-2. We'll be looking at a month at least before we get a reply with no hyperburst relay, so she best behave in the meantime."

"What about that ship she came with? Keiths claims it was on company property, but region maps say it was sitting ten klicks out from the registered grounds when we picked it up."

Well, that further verified that Mej'ith's security unit was trying to cover their hides, and Andrea Keiths was not in a position to not back them for the sake of saving face. Still, questions still were there as to how a little ship like that had gotten this far out from the center of civilization, especially if she was whom she claimed she was, and was supposed to be some army officer cadet. "I say we move it into the isolation hanger for now and keep it under lock. Something that made that kind of jump probably is a ConFleet slip capable prototype, and something we don't want the prisoners or local workers messing with."

"I'll have Flores move the thing in. Should be about an hour or so."

Harper nodded while seating himself and pulling up an e-comm screen. Templates were selected, and then a directory search to pull up the communications box for Admiral Dane's office at ConFleet Command on Terra. He wasn't sure other than the base detail to list, but it would be, he hoped, an ample enough report for the Admiral to know what was going on. With any luck, it wouldn't take more than month for the admiral to receive the communication.

Their impromptu 'guest', however, was a more immediate matter.

---

She had gotten tired of waiting, but despite what she knew she was capable of, Samus knew that she couldn't break down a permacrete wall on her own. The low hum from the plexisteel door panel was enough to tell her it was charged with an electrical field, probably enough to cause her another blackout if she tried punching her way out. And they seemed to have settled for leaving her to wait in the cell while they waited for a hyperburst to verify who she was. That left her with little to do while she waited for them.

In the hour since her talk with Captain Harper, Samus had cleared some room and began keeping herself distracted with a series of press-ups. She had figured out from the lack of any inmates in the area that she was in some kind of isolation block, which meant she probably wouldn't see a real person often as it was. It was reason enough to wish she had some of the rations from the runabout being as she hadn't actually eaten in a number of days.

It was another hour since she had started that the holo-projector crackled, and Captain Harper appeared again. She halted as she heard the low hum, then hopped to her feet and re-tied her ponytail. "Captain. I assume you got verification back on my ID."

"That's probably not going to be here for at least two or three weeks at best, miss. We're thirty parsecs from the nearest settlement world that actually has a name and not a designation code, and we certainly don't rate having any kind of any hyperburst communications here." Harper had a slightly annoyed look on his face as he realized most people from the more populated inner systems had no idea how crude technology out on the barest reaches of civilization tended to be. "Truthfully, it kind of pisses me off when people from the inner worlds just assume everyone has hyperburst capabilities. That kind of equipment and power demand is expensive, and a labor prison sector on a mining moon sadly doesn't get considered to be that important."

Weeks? How could it take weeks to get a simple ID request? "If you got raided, the whole colony would be smoke and ash long before anyone responded. How the hell-"

"That's exactly what happened to K-2L, something a supposed survivor should know."

He was trying to tear her identity apart with frivolous 'technicalities'. "I was three years old when the Kromus attacked and my parents died." The venom in her voice wasn't at all subtle, as she'd been reliving that night almost every day since her escape from Zebes. "I have nightmares from seeing it, memories I had suppressed for fifteen years until now. So don't try and act all high and mighty, and think you can try and tear who I am down!"

"Miss, I have no reason to believe anything you say to me as to who you are, because there were no survivors of K-2L. Federation relief teams didn't get there until a week after the distress beacons were activated, and they were actually further from civilization than we are." The holographic projection gave an apathetic shrug. "It's simple logic. How did a toddler survive a massacre that was total short of a planet glassing, when it was a week before any rescue efforts arrived?"

She didn't answer. Not because she had no answer, but because she had been sworn to secrecy about how she had been rescued. Samus knew that if anyone besides Dane and Adam knew about what really had happened fifteen years prior, questions would be further asked about the "class-delta unknown" genetic markers that made up half of her DNA, and any freedoms she still had would be ignored in the name of dissecting her for study. "My parents managed to hide me during the attack. An Alphinian cargo freighter responded to the distress beacon, they found me and took care of me until I was fourteen and wanted to go back to Earth."

That was the official story. It was recorded, documents entered, names and registries listed, and that's all that mattered for official inquiries. It was the same information Harper would get once the identity request came back, just in more bureaucratic detail. And that should have been enough.

"Being on an Alphinian ship for eleven years doesn't grow feathers on the back of a kid's neck, miss."

Again, her ability to respond was stalled. Truthfully, Samus had been hoping no one had noticed the downing feathers since they were just growing in again. There, too, was an official story, but Harper was determined to punch holes even in the truth. Even if she was honest and said she had been given Chozo genetic infusion for three years, she doubted he'd believe the real story. "I was six when I got a genetic infection that required a transfusion from a Kig-Yar. Gene infusions do some crazy stuff."

The hologram raised a brow, almost in disbelief. "Truthfully, I have seen odder reactions to cross-species transfusions, but this is a first time seeing feathers, or hearing of a successful transfusion from a kig-yar to a human." Harper paused a moment as he looked Samus over, studiously examining her. "I have sent a request to Admiral Dane's office, since one of my corporal's says his cousin told him about being in the same class as John Aran's daughter. I still have my doubts, but it doesn't hurt putting the inquiry in. But keep in mind that could take a month or more for a response to even be sent back, so I'd get patient with my situation if I were you."

The young woman growled as she turned and threw herself back against a wall. A snorted chirp escaped her lips as she crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at the hologram as if her mere gaze could kill. "The longer this takes, the more danger it puts the galaxy in, so I hope you're ready to accept that blame when shit hits the fan, captain."

Seconds later, the hologram just cut off, leaving Samus to her own frustration and rising hunger. She had the feeling that the prison staff were going to try and just forget about her, since she would never show up in any their records, and if communication really took so long to and from, then they were intending to just deal with the situation only when they had to. It didn't take being on a frontier backwater to realize that fact.

Gods help her before she ended up killing someone...

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.243

Federation Capitol Daiban, Al'kya System

The shouting was more than his already strained ears could take as the yellow scleras of his eyes framed weary red irises. Ball-tip fingers rubbed at the bridge of his nose as the antennae reaching up from his forehead drooped in an expression of dismay and depression. Once again, there had been a violently worded argument between the Pradaxium Union and the Xytab Ecumene. The councilors representing their governments had long had a history of personal issues, which neither one was apparently mature enough to keep out of Congressional business. Former Chairman Vog'l had seen fit to let such be, being the Divolu of Pradaxi Negus were his species. But as a Mantu, Arba'dos Kea'ton had a vested interest in being impartial, especially when he had so vocally risen to the chair of the Federation on a platform of speaking for the lesser treated species and worlds who had been thus far denied congressional representation, and not the elite Inner Worlds.

And right now, he was sorely wishing he had one of those 'primitive archaic' Terran firearms that Vog'l and his ilk had so long decried as 'savage and repulsive.' The old M6 line came to mind, a classic staple still of the Confederation's Armed Forces. If it were legal, he'd have shot the two bickering councilors in the heads and been done with it.

"The Gamol'ak Sector has been harassed by not only Kromus, but by free-roaming traffickers and smugglers using Ecumene territories as a shield from our pursuits for the last five standard cycles, and the ties they have back to your government, Councilor, cannot be disputed!"

"Get over yourselves, you horned bricks. The Onyx Sun Syndicate had been causing the Alphinian people just as much grief as you have with processing any kind of higher thought!"

And once again, these two were throwing insult like infants. No doubt the rest of the Congress was just as tired of the routine as he was, but many of them by this point had taken to placing bets on which of the Councilors would give up the rhetoric first. Sadly, today, neither of them was looking to concede for the day. What made it troubling is that they had far more pressing matters to address, the entire Congress knew it, and it was for certain that they were doing this because neither Laus Nu nor J'kmor Yok'r were willing to discuss matters of galactic war upon them all again.

Which is exactly how they ended up where they did three decades prior when the Kromus suddenly appeared in the backyard of the Confederation and lit an entire planet with a population in the billions in a blaze of plasma, killing almost everyone. Vog'l had not listened to the warnings, insisted that the Terrans were savage warmongers, and he had paid the price when planets were suddenly being set aflame in a campaign of annihilation the likes of which had not been seen since the Covenant collapsed four centuries prior. When Beacon had been ignited, many had realized the threat that the humans had warned them about for decades, yet those like Vog'l insisted it was nothing but exaggeration and claimed the planet had died due to the folly of the humans. But it was when several of the inner worlds had suddenly burned in the following surprise attacks that Vog'l relented and given the vote of war to the Congress.

And unlike Vog'l, he was not able to let history repeat just to maintain an ego.

"Councilors..."

"Everyone knows that your pockets are lined with Syndicate blood money, why else do you always deflect any efforts by the Federation Police to investigate them?!"

"Councilors..."

"How dare you accuse me without any kind of proof for such baseless-"

A heavy boom echoed out from the central pod of the assembly hall. The reverberation was more than enough to gain the attentions of all the councilors as another such crack filled the air. That had been enough to halt the argument while Kea'ton glared angrily at both Laus Nu and Yok'r with narrowed eyes that would likely have struck them down if looks could kill.

"How you two infantile fools ever gained any kind of respect enough to be elected the representative councilors of your systems, I will never comprehend." The diminutive Mantu growled the unspoken threat the instant he saw Yok'r open his mouth in effort to refute him. His race had not endured what they once suffered and helped unify the various former Covenant vassal worlds just to see them bicker and spit like children at every turn. "We are facing the resurgence of the Kromus, the race that burned over a hundred of our worlds to glass in a matter of a decade, took the combined might of the Terrans and the Sangheili to bring to a halt nearly two decades ago, and unlike G'mar Vog'l, I will not tolerate this squabbling that serves only to delay and stall us while they gather their forces again!"

The Alphinian Councilor blinked with mouth agape while Yok'r was visibly seething. "The Kromus are in no state to come even close to the horrors they inflicted on the Expansion Reach, let alone come near us here in the Inner Systems. Due respect, Chairman, but the Terrans have clearly been engineering these so called 'incidents' to justify their violent need to wreak havoc in the galaxy." The Divolu briefly touched one of his head-horns in a delicate fashion, a gesture of concern and worry. "We have no real evidence to substantiate their claims that the Cunning Death has been spotted anywhere in any kind of battle ready condition, and only their word that-"

"Forty-seven ships!" came the furious retort from the bird-like Firekkan ambassador. She gave a hiss and a click of her beak, then shifted her wings while gesturing to the empty observation pod that would normally be occupied by the Terran embassy. "Forty-seven, Councilor, no less than seven thousand dead in just three standard month cycles, including my esteemed fellow ambassador from the Confederation just last week! And you have the gall to claim that they are 'engineering' these horrific attacks?! On their own people?!"

A huff as Yok'r gave but a sidelong glance at the Firekkan ambassador. "I wouldn't expect such a ill-tempered adolescent level species such as your own to understand the nuances that we older and more refined members of the Galactic Congress observe and notice, Ambassador T'kaya." There was a faint, yet perceptible, tug at the corner of Yok'r's mouth as he noted the rage and fury in the Firekkan ambassador's expression. "Violence should never be the answer to every problem you come across, yet the Expansion Reach insists upon-"

"The Machine Empire!" Ambassador T'kaya screeched from her observation pod. The Firekkan may have held no authoritative voice in the Congress as yet, but the Councilors still had a obligation to the vassal members of the Federation to at least let them be heard. "The Kilrathi! The damned Covenant that your people so proudly point out you avoided militarization and service to!" Now the avian for sure had everyone's attentions. "Any one of them attaining their goals would have meant the end of all life in the galaxy, and yet you still ride your sanctimonious arrogance over so-called 'passive existence' while everyone you denounce as 'savage and immature' fights to make sure your species doesn't go extinct in the process of war!"

With his eyes rolling at the Firekkan ambassador, Yok'r once more touched the surface of his horn, though his expression was instead annoyance rather than concern. "If the Terrans, and even your own people, ambassador, would consider peaceful discourse and alternatives to sheer violence, then perhaps the Galactic Federation would not need such protection, let alone face the dangers at all." Now his mouth curled into a snarl as his hands came to rest on the front of his pod. "The Terrans brought these conflicts on us by always running off, firing weapons and screaming for open war at the drop of a hat. It is no surprise that they would make any excuse, even engineer the reasons, to plunge us all back into war and make themselves the center of attention as they 'save' us from the consequences their own foolish actions." The Divolu turned toward the watching Congress, not even acknowledging T'kaya now. The grandiose fashion in which he swept his arms out spoke volumes of the melodrama he sought to invoke. "The Cunning Death has been destroyed since Krom almost two decacycles by Terran reckoning, Ridley killed in the same brutal siege that left the Kromus with a cracked open husk of a world to call their origin and no terrible great leader to unite them. They have scattered between our own galaxy and the Greater Cloud because they are a shattered race, and without that vile creature to enslave them-"

"Please tell that to the two thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven people who died two weeks ago in the Heaven's Gate system to give our one new ship in over fifty years a chance to escape and bring us you even more proof that the Kromus never gave up their crusade, and we are all facing a war of total annihilation."

Heads turned as the once empty observation pod of the Confederation Embassy was not only now occupied, but had undocked from its platform and was now moving out into the center of the assembly hall. Standing there was not any human ambassador dressed in the formal attire of a politician, but the stark white uniform trimmed with gold of the Confederation Navy. The speaker was flanked by two marines, each attired in battle dress armor and bearing a carbine assault rifle, but it was him, his officer's hat in hand and his eyes glaring directly at J'kmor Yok'r, that commanded the attention of the Federation Congress.

"I'm sure it will console their souls and the pain their families suffer when we are all burning from Kromus plasma igniting our planets like what they did to Beacon thirty years ago."

"You are out of line and not of any position to-"

The heavy crack again as Kea'ton banged the staff of office against the floor of his own executive pod. "You will hold your tongue, Councilor, or you will be removed from the Congressional Halls!" After allowing the following silence to linger, Kea'ton whispered a thanks to the universe for such small favors. He was ready to slam the staff of office in his right hand full force into Yok'r's head if the Divolu kept it up. "Admiral Castor Dane of the Confederation Navy is here addressing this assembly on my invitation, and you will all accord him the due respect he has more than earned, Councilor." Another glare quickly shot toward the Alphinian Councilor even as he raised a hand to object. "All of you, do I make myself clear?!"

Laus Nu visibly shrank away. While the Mantu were not known for being physically imposing or large in size, the grandeur of their confidence and command of authority was more than enough to make up the difference. The fact that they had fought the Kilrathi to an unheard of standstill prior to the Terran-Kilrathi War in the 2600s was also why none wished to incur their fury. That went double for Arba'dos Kea'ton.

"Thank you, Chairman." Setting his hat to one side on the small display podium in the pod, Admiral Dane took a moment to hold up the silver data drive kept previously hidden in his free hand, making sure it could be seen not just by those near him, but by the relay cameras as well. "This drive contains data from the last two months of the Concordia battle group, a task force that was wiped out save its command ship, I might add."

"A vessel that you Terrans clearly have hidden from us until now in effort to circumvent Congressional oversight and monitoring to ensure proper procedure followed, such as your purposeful exclusion of an Aurora Unit Central Computer Core!"

The Admiral wasn't phased or amused by Yok'r accusation. "During the initial years of the Kromus War, Councilor, the Aurora Units became a liability as we have numerous recorded events of compromised command codes and kill switch orders being sent from Kromus command vessels to our own." The move to contest the facts stated was too obvious as Dane narrowed his eyes at Yok'r, shifted his gaze to Laus Nu. "Two dozen command vessels in the final sweep into the Large Magellanic Cloud lost to randomly triggered destruct orders was enough to prove the Auroras were compromised, Councilors, it's why we pulled the plug on 313 and 242 before reaching Krom."

And when it was clear neither Yok'r nor Laus Nu were going to relent, Kea'ton tapped the staff of office to signal he was going to speak. "Admiral Dane, your message to my office indicated that you had irrefutable evidence of the Kromus build up and coordination, as well as proof of the continued existence of the Kromus Dreadnought super weapon known as the Cunning Death. Contrary to my predecessor, I take these matters seriously and at value, so please present your evidence."

With a nod, Admiral Dane slid the data drive into one of several port slots on the console of the pod. Within moments, after a series of command entries from the human, the chamber was filled with video playbacks and tactical data showing movements, recorded ship numbers, and the data records from the disastrous incident in the Heaven's Gate system. "All these flight records are pulled directly from black box recorders of involved fleet vessels and can be verified as unaltered if you need further confirmation, Councilors. Of particular note, I suggest you pay attention to time date 2976.200, the Antares encounter."

Despite his position, Dane had to refrain from rubbing the facts in the faces of the disbelieving Congress even as many of them gaped and paled with horror. The vessel displayed in the still images and various playback was unmistakable, and data calculations all lead to the same identification match. Not even Yok'r could utter a word as his eyes were wide and glassy with fear, denial, and terrified acceptance.

"That encounter was just over a standard month ago." Another series of commands punched in while Dane gave a saddened huff. Moments later, the images of the new Kromus ships appeared, eliciting shocked cries and demands for answers. "This, Councilors, was Heaven's Gate on 2976.218, just two weeks ago. Seven ships of unknown configuration type, that were able to arrive in system without using either the local jump point or slipspace exit rifts." Disbelief was the next cry, unable to comprehend the possibilities. "And this."

The quiet that overcame the Assembly Hall was staggering in its rapid dominance. The human admiral could see that even Chairman Kea'ton was staring with abject horror at the video image of the four kilometer vessel that appeared out of nowhere and was seen tearing the Confederation battle group apart.

And it was surprisingly Yok'r who spoke up as the visual data concluded and all projected images vanished. "This data...is indisputable, Admiral? All measures to verify authenticity will conclude as positive?"

"Over two thousand of our own died in that ambush." Dane hesitated to continue, allowing the gravity of those deaths to weigh down on the assembly. It was then that he took a deep breath and leaned on the console of the observation pod. "Beings of the Federation Congress, over thirty years ago, Admiral Delinda Spenceman, our Armed Forces Commander in Chief at the time, implored this respected body to not treat the Kromus as a petty annoyance, based off prediction data that revealed them to be a threat on par with the Covenant in its era. She warned both Chairman El'kora and Chairman Vog'l to consider the projections, and both ignored the warnings, until worlds were being burned just to deliver a message to us."

A whisper went among the Councilors and their aides, leaving Dane to glance down from the pod's position and toward Kea'ton within the Chairman's podium. There was more, the human admiral could tell, that Kea'ton wanted revealed here, to turn opinions and force the resolution they needed.

"It is also confirmed by the Concordia's records of the Heaven's Gate System attack, Councilors, that the Kromus are capable of closing off the slipspace compression jump points and preventing Akwende drive use."

And then the assembly hall exploded with outrage, horror, disbelief. Accusations of warmongering resumed, cries for confirmation. It had been the exact reaction Dane had expected to that bit of information, but it was still unsettling all the same to watch the Congress all but tear itself apart again.

"How can anyone just close off a jump point?! Even the Mantu can't shut them down, and they've been using the gravitational intersection points longer than the Covenant was using Slipspace!"

It wasn't unnoticed as Kea'ton shifted quite uncomfortably at such a statement, cluing to Dane that the Terrans were hardly the only species keeping their technological secrets. The fact that the chairman was trying to stay silent on the matter of the Kromus capability to shut off the jump points told the admiral that the Mantu knew things about such technologies that the species was trying to keep hidden. And the surprising thing was that the realization didn't at all surprise him. As the Phrygisian Councilor had noted, the Mantu had been masters of using the jump points for thousands of years, and few knew the slipspace folds like they did.

If anyone knew that it was possible, it was them. And Kea'ton knew something.

"Chairman, your own people know the jump points and slipspace even better than the Covenant did! Is this even possible?!"

The Jovians now, followed by the Qro'q'us, the Ylla, the Yan, the Varni. All demanding answers, all demanding something be done, to the point even the Divolu and the Kig-yar were crying for action.

And it was, sadly, what Kea'ton and Dane needed for them to have any chance. Unlike Vog'l, the Mantu Chairman was willing to consider their last resort, and he knew quite well the history and horrors that inaction would wrought upon them again if they delayed again.

"Councilors of the Galactic Congress, I implore you now!" And the reverberating thud as he slammed the staff of office down echoed through the assembly hall, silencing all arguments. "My predecessors ignored the warnings given by the Confederation over six decacycles ago! Since 2913 or even earlier, we have been harassed by the Kromus, our ships attacked and pillaged, and it only escalated as the previous administration continued to disavow the pleas of the Terrans to take the Kromus serious, until worlds were burned."

All eyes were on the chairman now. Kea'ton had an opportunity that his predecessors had wasted in effort to ignore the problems and threat that face them all. He would not do the same. "Consider that we speak on behalf of not just our own worlds, but for those not yet granted congressional power and privilege. The Terrans have been denied this for two hundred years despite standing between this galaxy and annihilation for over four centuries, and yet the Federation refuses to raise its own military, instead depending on the Confederation even as we ignore their every warning and place them under a leash that forces them to construct their first new combat vessel in five decades behind closed doors."

Even the Divolu Councilor, infamously known for being in favor of further restriction on the Terrans and their military forces, could not argue. "We had thought after nothing came in over a century following the Machine Empire' withdrawal in 2763 that such a force would never need be maintained again, Chairman." Yok'r gave a saddened sigh after his pronouncement, revealing the regrets now, with indisputable facts, of their folly. He could not continue, not after he so often spoke against the Terrans and their forces.

"Many of our worlds have long memories of the Sangheili," came the words of Varni Councilor, her reptilian scales shimmering as she gave a lowered head gaze to Admiral Dane; her species' gesture of expressing regret and respect. "And as the Terrans' closest allies despite both their once antagonistic relationship, and the great distance between their home systems, it has been the positions of both species that many of us fear. Yet these memories unfairly influenced us all when the humans warned us before...until they were the first to pay the price of our refusal to act." Another pause, a long sigh from the Varni Councilor, and then she continued. "But it was also the Terrans who gave us Varni sanctuary after the Kilrathi conquered our people, even as they were themselves rebuilding from their conflicts with the Covenant and the Reclamations. Congressional privilege or not, they still deserve far more respect and latitude than many of this Congress have given them following the Machine War, especially since the Chozo were the ones who insisted on the Federation welcoming humanity since they helped the reformation almost three hundred years ago."

"We said to let them fight on our behalf as they do best back then, and we say again now!" The words of the Wu Councilor echoed out from the far up pods. "The Terrans have had every reason to build their forces after near-extermination no less than three separate times, and yet the elite of this Federation saw fit to further tighten the leash on them like wild animals, including these ridiculous restrictions on what kind of vessel they might build, how long they must wait until they can construct anything larger than picket and patrol craft, and even taking their needed resources to build newer capital command class vessels that we all depend of for defense!"

"The Yan call for war!"

"Let the Confederation eliminate the Kromus threat once and for all!"

More cries, and out of habit, Kea'ton found himself looking to Yok'r, Laus Nu, and their like-minded fellows in expectation of their opposition to the idea of renewed war. Surprisingly, the various members of the Fro'mol faction and those of similar thought were silent, some even joining the calls for resolution by any means. It was unprecedented, and despite the bitterness of the matter, it caused his mouth to tug at the corners back in a smirk. The Mantu had lost much popularity with the older elite inner worlds of the Federation due to his devotion to the lesser respected worlds, but it was that very vocal stance of his that had gained him the trust and popular opinion of the vassal members and downtrodden worlds.

And very in particular, it had made him very popular with Terrans.

"I call now, Councilors, for a resolution in light of these facts presented us! To be counted this day shall be the voices of all those here in this hall, both of Congressional power and those of the Embassy systems!" Silence overcame the assembly, allowing Kea'ton the chance he needed, the moment to prevent the mistakes of the past. "I call for a end of this political conflict that divides us, to recognize that regardless of how we wrote history, the Kromus have never surrendered or agreed to an end of the war, and that we have never indeed been in a time of peace, but just a hold in the terrible war that they, the Kromus, have brought upon us!"

A pause as the Mantu looked to where Dane and his escorts silently watched. No, this time, there would be no leash, no demands of how this war would be conducted. The Mantu species valued peace, but knew that conflicts would always hound the pursuit, and so they had fought their battles and defended their own. It was something they had always related to the humans on, and like the humans, they had even faced the Kilrathi and various splinters of the Covenant, and they had overcome.

He expected a cry of opposition from the usual camp of the Fro'mol factionists and their allies. He expected to be challenged by those whom had stalled this very declaration over three decades prior. And yet, despite everything he had learned to expect in his tenure as chairman, the arguments he had endured with Yok'r and Laus Nu, the rhetoric opposing any suggestion of allowing the Terrans and their military forces to do what they felt had to be done, Arba'dos Kea'ton found himself shocked and amazed, as doubtlessly was Admiral Dane in turn, to hear Yok'r say the words none of them imagined possible.

"Chairman Kea'ton, we have clashed and contended on this very matter for decades. When you were elected as Chairman Vog'l's successor, I made it clear then that I would never support another conflict of the scale we faced then. And yet...for the sake of not only my own people, but the trillions we share with this region of the galaxy, I will put aside my pride, and call for the support of the Terrans and their armed forces once more."

The cries of agreements, screams for the destruction of the threat of the Kromus once and for all. And then the squawk of the Firekkans and their ambassador, and those words that would echo forever in the Mantu's mind.

"I call on you all to rescind the leash you placed on the Confederation! Let them unleash their might, let them undo the decades of damage wrought by well intended yet misguided fears! Let them be the force of hope they gave so many of us when they brought down the Covenant, when they defeated the Kilrathi, and when they put themselves between us and the cold embrace of the Machine Empire! We owe them our trust and gratitude, and it's time this Federation gave it to them!"

Cheers rose to deafening levels. Never had he thought such a united front in favor of what the Confederation had said for decades would have been possible. The elite Inner Worlds had always opposed the notions of war, and it had been the burning of worlds that had pressed the issue so hard before. Now, no one was willing to risk seeing it happen again.

"It seems that even the Divolu and the other Inner Worlds learned a valuable lesson in the last round of this war." Kea'ton rubbed his temples, red irises looking to where, in the Terran observation pod, Admiral Dane appeared pensive, solemn in the wake of such an outcry. He clearly had not expected the Congress to actually agree to the Confederation's pleas so quickly, but the victory, they knew, would be bittersweet. The galaxy was descending back into the chaos of war, and all they could do was defend what they could and pray that the Kromus had not rebuilt their forces to a point of unstoppability.

The cosmos help them all.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.261

Tokyo-II, Japan

With a sigh, Anthony Higgs gulped down the shot of sake and set the glass down before him. A nod to the cook behind the counter-bar signaled he would need another as he returned his attentions to the large bowl of ramen and fiddled with his fork before taking a bite of the soft noodles and pork. He'd been in the Confederation capitol for a week now, needing time away from his brother's family after have been on leave from shipside duty for about a month. While the commander was handling the new arrival to his own growing family, Higgs was left to keep himself busy with taking what semblance of a vacation that he could get before the Concordia was outfitted with a new battle group and what fighters she could get to replace the losses in Heaven's Gate.

Everyone had taken that entire fiasco hard, and most of the crew still hadn't heard all the details on what exactly had happened, just that Admiral Dane had taken all the data with him to address the Federation Congress on Daiban. That had been weeks ago, which left them all essentially on furlough while the brass made whatever plans they were going to use.

Usually, that meant fighting it out with the Federation to be given their "permission" to do what the entire Orion Spur knew they should be doing anyway, only to be held back until the last minute, or until more planets were cooked by Kromus plasma. He hadn't even been born when the last war kicked off, but he'd been old enough when it ended to know how bad it had gotten. Over a hundred planets burnt to their rocky surface, incinerating entire biospheres into nothing. None of the ruined worlds had been even close to recoverable even after almost two decades, and at least two sapient races left nearly wiped from the face of the galaxy.

Another glass of sake was readied for him as he finished his bowl, and after a moment, he took the last shot of sake before setting his thumb on the scan reader and tapping an extra amount via the projected holo keypad. "Thanks, man."

"You heading back out soon?"

The tall dark skinned human shrugged as he gathered his carry bag and slid off the barstool he'd used. "I dunno, lot of crazy stuff happened, and I can't talk about it. But the whole crew is on furlough until we hear back from-"

A flicker as the nearby holo-radio switched stations abruptly and projected the sigil of the Confederation over the ramen cart's bar. That immediately got Anthony's attention as it wasn't often that the Capitol forced frequency change. In fact, the last time he knew of it had been the official end of the Kromus War close to eighteen years ago. Moments later, the crisp and refined accented voice of Confed's President Takashi Iwata took over from the anthem music that had played.

"Citizens of the Confederation, I come to you in a time we had all prayed would not visit us again, yet we have prepared for. It has been nearly two decades since former Federation Chairman G'mar Vog'l proclaimed the war with the Kromus Imperium at an end. Since then, the pirate raids and harassments by these extra-galactic aggressors have only continued, despite the assurances and insistence of the former Federation administration that the Kromus were beaten."

Anthony's blood ran cold as he could tell what was going on, where this was going. Admiral Dane had left for Daiban right after they had disembarked from Sol Station, meaning he was presenting everything to the Galactic Congress, including what had happened in Heaven's Gate. And since Kea'ton was far more sympathetic toward the worlds and species not part of the old elitists of the Federation, it meant that he would actually listen.

"In the last six months, there has been a severe increase of pillaging of not only our own outer colonies deep in the Orion Spur, but of our allies and friends in the Galactic Federation. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, including many of our own brave men and women of the Confederation Armed Forces, and Ambassador to Daiban Desmond Abdul and his staff became tragic victims to the Kromus thirst for destruction mere weeks ago."

That was certainly news. The transit routes between Sol Sector and the Al'kya System were supposed to be the most heavily secured corridors of travel with Galactic Federation Police outposts at every fifteen parsecs. If the Kromus had broken the security of that route and were slaughtering the ambassadors of the non-congressional member systems, then this was even worse than what he had seen on the holonet as a kid.

"Communications with Chairman Kea'ton's office and the recent congressional assembly brought an unprecedented call from the entire assembly, councilors and ambassadors alike, to resume a state of war with the Kromus Pirates. As such, as of twenty-nine-seventy-six point two-four-three at eighteen hundred hours Daiban Standard time, the Galactic Federation has renewed a declaration of war with the pirate nation of the Kromus Imperium. Article One-Seven-Three of the Federation Military Oversight Accords has been indefinitely revoked by executive order of Chairman Arba'dos Kea'ton, allowing Confederation fleet shipyards to resume construction of capital class warships and the release of funds to assist our forces in readying for the renewed conflict. As of sixteen-hundred hours today, the Terran Confederation has mobilized all active forces and will issue activations and recalls for all reservists and inactive service members."

The rest was a blur to Anthony. He had known this would eventually be happening after the events in Heaven's Gate, but on this scale? Confed was mobilizing on a scale that had not been seen since the Second Machine War in the early 2700s, and there had been far fewer humans alive, let alone those in service, back then. This was on the order of over two and a half billion people out of eighty-seven billion humans across the Galactic Federation.

The distinct tone of his comphone drew Higg's attention. With a deep breath, he pulled the rectangular device from his pocket and glanced expectantly at the display screen; untraceable. Exactly what displayed when it was Army communications on the line. A moment to collect himself, a tap of the accept button, and Anthony brought the comphone to the side of his head. He already knew what was about to transpire. "This is Corporal Higgs. I'm in the Capitol right now, just heard the announcement on the radio-net by the President."

"Furlough has been rescinded. You are to report to Akohito Air Base by oh-nine-hundred tomorrow for transport to Camp Kikaida at ConFleetCom on Reach. Your assignment to Concordia's ground infantry has been reconfirmed under First Lieutenant Gorman and Platoon Sergeant Ohmar, Lieutenant Halbrook and Sergeant First Class Houston has been reassigned to the GFS Daedalus. Commander Malkovich will be relayed to Reach once he's seen to his family."

Reach? That was where most of the larger fleets were berthed for refits and drydock. And reassignments like that were a sign of something big going on. If they were just getting a new battle group, they'd be at the Jupiter fleet yards, not Reach. What was going on?

"Making sure I heard clearly. Confirm orders are to report to Camp Kikaida on Reach to meet with Concordia's new battle group?"

"Concordia isn't getting a new battle group, Corporal. This is full fleet mobilization, Admiral Dane has requisitioned her to the Seventh Fleet as point of command. Pirate movements have been triangulated to be moving coreward, Fleet Intel suspects they may be looking for something. Further orders and information will await you on Reach."

A beep as the line was terminated. With a heavy sigh, Higgs slipped his carry bag's strap over his shoulder and pulled up the local cab service directory. Akohito was about an hour and a half via ground based transport, a fifth of that if he shelled out for a ground-to-air transport, although he had until the morning to arrive and report in for relay to Reach. Sleeping in an actual bed before shipping out again for only god knew how long sounded preferable to a base side cot. Another tap of the screen, and the directory changed to that of nearby motels. Being the capitol, there was thankfully no shortage of places to stay the night, just a matter of how much of his bank account it would cost him.

Better to get himself sorted out now and be up early so he could get to Akohito Air Base before he was due. It was going to a long day once he arrived at Reach FleetCom, may as well get all the rest he could.

---

2776.262

Henry Glassman Memorial Hospital
Portland, Maine

A soft glow of electric amber light ebbed from the corner of the hospital room, slowly rising and lowering to keep its occupants in a relaxed state. It was the dead of night in the eastern coastal region of the North American continent. Passed out on a small fold out bed was the tiny four-year-old girl who had curled herself up in a pair of pink blankets while the deep auburn haired woman who was her mother rested in the hospital med-bed, getting some overdue rest.

And standing in the corner, looking at the glowing screen of his comphone with the logo of the Confederation Armed Forces flashing on it was a worn and weary Adam Malkovich. His blue eyes were drowsy, black-brown hair tussled a bit from the long nights since they had hurried to the labor and delivery wing of the Henry Glassman Memorial Hospital in Portland three days ago, and had been waiting for Madeline to be cleared for discharge along with their newborn son.

He'd been expectantly dreading this call since the night before when President Iwata's address had gone out through the sixty-five parsecs of the Confederation's primary sphere of territories. At least it had come after his son had been born. With a deep breath, Adam tapped the "receive" button on the touch screen and lifted the comphone to his ear. "This is Malkovich, go ahead."

"Apologies, sir. Leave has been rescinded, Admiral Dane has sent orders for you to relay to Reach as soon as possible. He wanted you to have a few more days with your family, but the fleet is mobilizing within the week, and Concordia has been reassigned as the Seventh's flagship under you and the admiral."

The flagship of the Seventh Fleet? Now a few things were beginning to make more sense. A ship like the Concordia wasn't built for the intention of just policing wild space and dealing with roving pirates, especially when it was test bed a new experimental engine type and an evolved AI. Never mind that for a supposed carrier, the ship was armed to the teeth, and resembled more of a battlewagon or even a dreadnought with carrier capabilities than a actual carrier.

Their maiden assignment had been a test for the ship, not her actual purpose. And judging from the shifting around of assignments, she had more than passed expectations. This had always been Dane's plan. The only problem they had hit was the disaster in the Heaven's Gate system, and even Dane had absolved him of fault in that.

Because no one had expected the Kromus to find something that would let them make a leap of technology and shipbuilding lightyears ahead of what was known of them.

"Transport to Camp Kikaida on Reach will be arranged at the New Brunswick Air Base facility, report in before oh-nine-hundred for relay via slipspace shuttle." There was a hesitation in the voice on the speaker. It seemed almost to be regretful. "For what it's worth, commander, I'm sorry we had to pull you away so soon, but congratulations on the new arrival."

A beep as the line terminated. Malkovich gave a sigh as he looked over at his sleeping family. Their newborn son was in the nursery, being observed and checked for any possible health issues during the first few days of his life. They'd had to do the same wait when their daughter was born, and she was now here, the older sibling, asleep and waiting to see her infant brother in the morning. While he himself had to now leave and prepare to make a jump over ten light years away to prepare for war.

At least he had time to say his goodbyes before leaving for Brunswick. The air base was just over half an hour away, meaning he could catch some sleep still and make sure arrangements for them all were set before he left. Ten years ago, he reflected, racing off to face the Kromus in a grand battle to end their scourge was the exact idea that would have driven him into the fray. But everything he'd already endured, everything he knew others had suffered, those realities far outweighed any naïve notion of battlefield glory.

"Adam? What's wrong?"

Madeline was awake. It probably shouldn't have surprised him, sincee he hadn't slept at all despite her, and the nurses', insistence that he rest. As it was, the coffee sitting on the counter was enough to reveal how he was even functioning. And the thing was, there was no making excuses for being on his feet, nor was it much of a secret what he'd been dreading since the week began.

And he was still holding his comphone.

"That was Fleetcom, wasn't it?" she stated, her voice calm, steady, and clearly prepared for this. Even after this long, nothing surprised her, especially after the broadcast from Tokyo-II the previous day. "Did they say you need to leave tonight?"

His head shook. "Oh-nine-hundred." Which was about seven hours away, but still, far enough that he should have been attempting some sleep. "I report in to New Brunswick Air Base, it's only half an hour by ground car, maybe ten if I get an air lift. From there, I jump to Reach."

The auburn haired woman slowly sat up as the bed adjusted for her. With a sigh, Madeline Malkovich brushed a series of bangs from over her face, looking at Adam with worry. "I still don't know what happened out there that put you on furlough, and I know I probably never will. But I do know that it had to do with President Iwata's broadcast about the Federation reinstating a state of war with the Kromus."

A simple nod was his answer as his comphone was slipped away into his pants pocket. "Not a word of this to anyone, Maddie. It went bad out there, and Dane took everything we had to Daiban." There was a pause in his words as Adam moved to start packing up his own bag of clothes and make sure he was ready to leave as soon as possible. "The fact that the Kromus are penetrating into the heavily guarded travel corridors between Sol and Al'kya and killing ambassadors to the Congress after eighteen years of hiding out in the unknown regions of the galaxy is a sign we're dealing with serious reorganization of their forces."

"You think we're about to see another Beacon?"

A terrifying proposition, but one that had only been possible due to the apathy of the previous chairman of the Federation. "Kea'ton has invested too much into the goodwill and faith of the systems and races outside of the Fro'mal party and their old guard founders to let that happen again." Even if he had barely been born before the Kromus War had begun raging, Adam well remembered growing up in the news bulletins and the broadcast recordings from the front lines, the horrors of worlds burning on the inner borders, and the ever present fear that the Kromus could break the lines despite humanity and the Sangheili throwing everything at the invading swarms.

He had been twelve when the news had come that the combined human-Sangheili task fleet had returned from the Large Magellanic Cloud. Two-thirds of the ships that had crossed the void of Sol-Daiban's sparsely filled halo into the satellite galaxy never came back, and there had been news reports claiming a near defeat and narrow reversal at Krom itself. The only confirmed information had been Krom was cracked open by a temblor bomb after the defeat of the Kromus' supreme commander, the dragonoid called Ridley, and the assumed destruction of his flagship.

Except Adam had witnessed himself that the Cunning Death had not been destroyed and still sailed the stars. And the result of that had been five valuable combat ships destroyed and over two thousand of Confed's own lost.

"Kea'ton is a politician and represents a species with interests of their own, no matter how much they claim to empathize with humanity, the Yl'fyn, or any other race that Daiban has screwed over for the last two centuries." It was a harsh sentiment, but not an uncommon one with the Terrans and far more in similar positions in the Federation. Even Kea'ton and his extreme efforts had not won over everyone. "He'll do what he needs to in order to keep his office, and he might have personal sympathies for what our species has endured over eight hundred years of space travel, but make no mistake, Adam, even the humans he appointed are not on our side."

It was not a time to argue, though Malkovich had far more faith in the Mantu chairman than his wife gave. The fact that the Federation had rescinded the state of "peace" and admitted that the Kromus War never really ended spoke volumes of Kea'ton's own convictions and resolve. But he would find out more once he met with Dane. According to his orders, he was to resume as the Concordia's CO, but this time under the admiral's flag command.

And considering they were going into full scale war this time, Adam wasn't sure what to expect now. History holos and the news broadcasts of his childhood only told him so much of what it had been like. Even then, much of it had been propaganda to boost morale, focusing on the heroics of the common soldier, and pumping out news of the victories led by the ÆSIR troopers that had become likened to the Spartans of old. Even those that knew better still had believed in the lofty ideals the name of their program invoked...and ironically the betrayal by the Federation of shutting it all down once Vog'l proclaimed the War over.

That was what he remembered. And that, sadly, was about to repeat itself for his own children. Planets, he knew, would burn once more. Blood would be spilled. And the fears of who might not come back were those he knew his wife had, as much as she put on the stoic face.

"Just promise to let me know before you and your crew ship out."

Madeline's voice startled him from his thoughts, but with a nod, Adam stepped over to the med-bed and his beleaguered wife to meet her lips with his own. "I'll be at Camp Kikaida by the end of the day, fleet mobilizes within the week, so I should have the chance. My parents will be getting into town this afternoon to help you out for the next month or two, I'll let them know the recall came before I catch my cab in the morning."

"I better hear from you before Hector's six month check ups so that boy can see his father, or I'll send a Halsey-class AI to harass you for the entirety of this war with constant updates and pictures to remind you what's here."

He had little reason to doubt she could, either. "Save the AI witchcraft for the fleet boys who are going to need it when the Kromus start hacking the Aurora Units again." He gave a pained smile as he settled himself into the larger couch in the room and set his head on the pillow that waited for him. He had about four hours or so to get some rest before he had to ready himself for the relay to Reach. On the upside, the shuttle itself would likely give him a chance to sleep on the trip there.

"Make sure you come back from this, Adam Malkovich. War or not, I want my husband home when you blow those maniacs back to the hellhole they crawled out of."

---

GFS Breaking Fire, Reach Orbit
Epsilon Eridani System

The flare of reentry into realspace from slipspace was always an unmistakable event. The frigate and its escort craft burst from the higher-dimensional realm and into orbital distance over the brown and blue sphere that was Reach. Visible as points of light near the planetary curve was the massing forces of the Confederation's Seventh Fleet, and as the collection of warships came within visible range to discern details, the head of the pack was the nearly two and a half kilometer length of the Concordia, fresh from repairs and resupply.

The sight was one that Castor Dane had long wanted to see since he had conceived this hybrid battleship of a carrier almost thirty years ago. A single vessel with the firepower of a dreadnought and the capacity of a carrier to unleash a fighter swarm needed to fight the Kromus and any other threats on more than equal grounds. And that wasn't even the end goal of the vessel. If Dane had his way, he would see the feared Kromus supership that carried the name of Cunning Death blown to scrape by the very vessel he had helped develop.

"Reach space traffic control is on the com, Admiral, we have clearance to shuttle down once we've established orbit."

A slow nod to the communications officer while Dane watched their approach on the main screens. His transfer of flag to the massive vessel would wait a bit. After all, the Concordia's actual commander deserved to be present when they set off. "Once we've settled into Camp Kikaida, I want to be notified as soon as Commander Malkovich arrives and we can start massing the fleet. The Kromus aren't going to sit on their asses for too long before whoever is running things over there decides to start lighting planets on fire again."

His orders given, Dane took the chance to depart from the bridge and make his way down into the frigate's shuttle bay, where his ride down to the surface was waiting for him. A nod to the waiting pilot as they boarded the sleek and compact Goshawk gunship that had already been prepared for the planet side descent. Smaller than the more classically famous and well venerated Pelican Troop Carrier gunship, it was none-the-less Dane's preference if he had a choice. After serving in a twelve year war, the Goshawk had earn its own reputation as the transport of the ÆSIRs, and even now, old habits did not die. They also took up less room than the old D79s due to using repulsor gravity manipulation drives instead of needing a twenty-five meter wingspan for aerospace maneuvers.

His wristcom beeped, causing Dane to pause just as he and his pilot were ascending the rear entry ramp. Raising his arm and tapping the device, the admiral brought it near his mouth so he could answer the communication notice. "This is Dane. I'm five feet from my drop to get surface side, this better be good."

"Sorry, sir. But we just got notice from Sol, apparently there was a priority message for you from Calliope-IX regarding an information request. I can have it relayed to your quarters at Kikaida once you arrive."

Calliope-IX? "That's the ass end of the inner Spur reaches," the man muttered under his breath as he continued up the gunship ramp and headed for the secondary cabin. "Patch it to me here, may as well see what they need."

As a series of relay notices appeared on the small screen, Dane mentally recalled the colony in question. It was out at the furthest edges of Federation territory at the coreward end of the Orion Spur, where the region branched out from the Sagittarius Arm, and there had been a flap about a decade before the war, which had later escalated during said conflict, regarding the Federation taking possession of the remaining titanium mining operations and "requisitioning" the extracted metal ores for their own use. The upper brass in Confed Armed Forces never bought the excuse of "needed resources" and saw it for what it later obviously had been; yet another leash on the humans to keep their fleet from building faster than the elites of the founder worlds felt comfortable with.

There were still gem mines there, as well as a prison sector that Dane had heard also acted as a labor force when the mines needed extra workers. But why would the military police unit there be sending him an information request?

And then he saw the information being inquired about, the name being checked, and the star system location code of FS-176. And reference to the Pirates. His eyes went wide as he realized exactly had been going on, and what all the Kromus movements had actually been towards.

"Shit."

He ran into the main cabin, garnering a surprised looked from his pilot as he began pulling up the navigation plan and redirecting their planned course. "Sir, we're supposed to be prepping for surface side. Is everything-"

"Get me to the Dauntless, marine, and make sure you step on it, that's an order!" Seconds after giving the command, Dane moved himself back to the secondary cabin as he keyed up a private frequency on his wristcom. It was likely the middle of the night where he was calling on, but this could not wait. Not after reading the message from the Calliope-IX prison.

It took a minute, but a groan and heavy sigh came over the speaker unit. "Castor, it's two in the bloody morning here on Ganymede. This had better be damn worth-"

"FS-176." That one word was enough to silence the commander-in-chief officer of the entire Confederation Armed Forces. After letting it sink in, Dane breathed in to continue. "The Kromus are making moves to take Zebes again, General. I'm taking the Dauntless to the Dakona System to retrieve our informant, but I'm breaking off the Daedalus and its escort group to make way ahead of the fleet and set up a defense blockade."

"Dakona? Why the hell do you need to take a carrier to a backwater system like Dakona? And what informant? Did we get a message from the Chozo again?"

He bit his lip. Even his own superiors did not know about John and Virginia Aran's daughter. Dane had made a promise to keep it that way if at all possible. And technically, Morris' assumption was correct to a degree. "There looks to have been some misunderstandings when they arrived on Calliope-IX and tried to explain they needed to contact me. I need to get out there and clear stuff up, since it took a month for us to even get the relay message in the first place. I trust Captain Ikari and the Daedalus battle group to handle defense at Zebes while I'm in Dakona, and Commander Malkovich can meet up with me with the rest of the seventh fleet there."

There was a hesitation from the other end of the transmission line. Dane knew that Morris was having to consider so many factors in a situation that they had faced before twenty-three years prior. But Dane also had been there himself, and knew first hand what it had taken then.

"Do whatever you consider necessary, Castor. You were there in 'fifty-three when they tried last time, and you survived being held prisoner by them. They may not have that blasted dragon leading them anymore, but the Kromus have never stopped being a threat we can't take lightly. Make sure Ikari and Daedalus keep the Birds safe until the fleet arrived, and hopefully we're not too late."

With a beep, the line terminated. Dane took another breath as he began entering commands into his wristcom. New orders had to be relayed, and the Olympus needed to be prepared to depart within the next few hours if they were to have any hope of reaching Dakona in time. "ETA to new destination?" he asked the marine pilot as he continued entering and forwarding his new orders to the fleet's battle group commanding officers. "We need to get underway ASAP, son."

"Goshawk hits three hundred klicks a second in open space, sir, we can be there in a couple of minutes."

That left him to send a message to be received by Malkovich when he arrived. The Dauntless was no Olympus, but it was a carrier with a Reclaimer-class translight drive that could be spared, and could be to Dakona within a day at full slipspeed, less with certain classified routes. Once Concordia made way, it wouldn't take that much longer for the fleet to rendezvous and regroup for Zebes. That gave the Daedalus battle group to get as much of a head start as it could get to make for FS-176 ahead of them with a two day stretch to make.

He only prayed that they hadn't lost too much time.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.261
Erato Prison Sector, Calliope-IX

There was a general sense of unease as many of the inmates turned to notice the young blonde while she walked out into the courtyard. Word had been spreading over a standard month of their "non-existent" guest, and rumors already had started as to why she was still being held at the prison sector. Already it had gotten out that something happen just outside the land and region owned by the mining corporates, though as to what, details were vague enough. Several of the inmates had begun wondering if what happened had been so out of control that the mysterious blonde girl was being held until she could been taken to a more populated system that actually had a judicial presence.

Except Galactic Federation Police wouldn't have taken more than a week to arrive if that were the case. And it didn't explain why she had no records in the databases as yet.

And as she walked by, several of the inmates gave a few low whistles. Despite the electro-barrier field separating her from the rest of them for the moment, it didn't stop them from looking her up and down. Her usual blue coveralls attire was currently in holding, leaving her to wear the same bright yellow and orange prison fatigues used by the actual inmates. That didn't change that fact a number of them were giving her looks that she recognized nominally as those of predators observing prey.

Sometimes, Samus was not sure she wanted to understand her own birth-species more. Between the behaviors she observed and occasionally picked up at the academy and the odd reactions she was garnering from the inmates, her desire for comprehension of humans was beginning to wane. As it was, she didn't understand what the point of those stares was. If anything, she was the bigger predator that they needed to worry about.

"Why do you think they put that baby ass in solitary all the time?"

That comment, she well understood the meaning behind. As it was, she rarely, if ever, saw anyone in the last month beyond a food handler and Captain Harper's hologram projected visits. This had been the first time she was let out of the isolation block, and it was unnerving how she was being watched by the actual prisoners.

"You get one hour to start, kid." That was the nearby guard who was acting as her handler. "Captain Harper is still waiting back on that ID request from Daiban, but decided it wasn't right keeping you locked in an isolation cell, so let's see how this goes."

"Basically don't screw up and I can see the sun more often." Simple enough. She'd noticed her skin had been getting paler since her 'stay' with the prison sector had begun. While the mining company that had attacked her on her arrival had yet to trump out any actual charges, likely because they knew their claims would fall apart on actual examination, Samus had not been released as there was nowhere to release her to, and apparently the mining site manager was putting pressure on Captain Harper to make sure she was not released. It translated, in her mind, to the prison getting some kind of off the books funding, especially in exchange for the use of many of the inmates for mineral processing operations during the day.

It was merely more things that made her not want to know more about her own species, and the once innocent faith in the Galactic Federation and its sense of justice also wavered. After all, the colony may have been of a primarily human population with a Confederation manned prison sector, but Calliope-IX was still a Federation world above all. If they turned a blind eye to this, then ignoring other problems would only follow.

Speaking of problems, it didn't escape Samus that several inmates were closing on her slowly once she was free of the handler guard previously right behind her. She knew that look many of them had, and what thought process was behind it. She'd broken arms for similar attitudes back at the Academy, thinking she was an easy target for anything.

"Probably some local from the mines who got too mouthy and not worth the trouble she caused."

A number of people back in Wyoming who would probably agree, and thought they would get some fun out of her. The cause of the broken arms she was recalling no less. And judging from the group moving toward her, she was likely going to be breaking some more arms. An eye shifted to where a guard was supposed to be keeping watch; gone. The multiple shiny black panels high up on the walls were telltale of the observation cameras. So they could see the prison yard, they just decided not to be here.

"Hey, blondie!"

Two of them already. A taller brunette woman with tattoos and patches of pale flesh of otherwise darkened olive skin, and her rather lanky male companion, who, while tall, was not as suited to a brawl as his obvious lead. And they were actually calling her attention.

"What does a kid like you do to end up in confinement for over a month?"

"You can find out, and have a long sleep afterward in the infirmary."

It was not the smartest thing to say in her situation, but despite such, Samus found herself smirking as the taller woman gave a rancid glare at her response. It was pretty clear exactly was going through the various prisoners' minds in regards to the blonde girl's backtalk, and what they planned to do about it. It was, sadly, no different from the academy.

The tall brunette woman now was making her way right up to the girl. "Guards are away and no one's looking, little girl," came the venomous words as she cracked her knuckles. "Labor prison or not, we're not a bunch of sissy asses who don't put shits like you in their place."

They made the first move. Brutes and thugs who felt they were the ones in charge in the prison halls. She had learned after the events that gotten her in this situation that she was better not taking the first swing. It earned her a throbbing pain in her face as the brunette woman slammed her balled fist right into Samus' face. A moment as she adjusted her jaw, noting the look on the inmate's face as she had barely shifted outside of moving her head with the punch. "They got that on camera," she muttered, just loud enough that the nearby inmates could hear her. "My turn."

The shriek that resulted from her retaliation gave Samus a vengeful smirk on her lips. The woman was now on the ground, her right leg bent backwards into an unnatural angle at the knee, and her mouth wide in anguished howling. Her companion took a step back, then glanced to see the other inmates in the yard gathering to see what had happened. He gave his best effort at looking like he was able to take charge, but the sickening crack as Samus open-palm impacted his ribs told far more than the wide-eyed shock that followed. Another such crunch sent him crashing back several feet as the other inmates stared in shock.

Her shoulders hunched as she brought her balled fists up with forearms ready to guard upon recognizing a shift from malicious playfulness to shocked anger in the expressions of the other inmates. That had likely been one of the prisoners who held some semblance of power in the prison that she had snapped the knee joint of. No doubt the others were ready to retaliate after that display.

"Hope you made your peace before you wake up in Hell, you little shit!"

"This isn't Hell." The blonde whirled and slammed a foot square against the oncoming inmate's shoulder, another series of crunching snaps signaling broken bones. His arm went limp while he screamed, but the man was shoved aside as one of the bigger prisoners managed to get in close and take a swing at the girl. Even with his surprising speed, Samus twisted her own body and movements around the large ham-sized fist, then returned with a shocking strike that was a blur to the humans watching. "I've been in Hell, you assholes are the warmup before I go back.

Another swing, another counter, this time a palm right to the large man's face and cracking directly against his nose. Samus didn't give him time to even register what had happen before her form rotated and slammed her readied elbow against his forehead. An instant later, he hit the ground, hold in his nose while blood began to drip from under his hands.

It was seconds after that Samus felt a tingle up her spine. Something was coming at her, but where from was the question. An instant later, she realized the obvious, but too late as she was tackled from behind. The blonde girl grunted as she tried to bring her weight around, but a second impact was enough to drop her to the ground. They had, evidentially, picked up on the fact she was more than physically a match for any of them. Maybe they weren't all idiots.

Her legs buckled, then braced as a third body hit her. They had decided to make an example of her for snapping back like she did; just like the security staff at her landing. Nothing to do but handle it the same way. Her body bent a bit, then tensed just before she used all her power to push her torso back against about six hundred or more pounds of weight and move three large adults pressing all their mass on her back and off their balance. Seconds later, a harsh screech like angry goshawk earned stares as her lithe frame lifted the piled bodies and brought them all plowing backward into the courtyard wall.

As she managed to put a few feet between herself and the now collapse trio of inmates, there was a shout, and sudden something latched to her skin. That's when Samus felt the shiver up her spine again, but it was too late as high voltage slammed into her, just like the confrontation with the mining security. And just like then, she grit her teeth while falling to a knee to brace herself. The prison MPs had finally decided to intervene, though she seemed to be the only target of the more extreme containment measures.

"Gods damnit," the girl hissed as her breath came out in gasps. She glared at the guard at the other end of the taser wire, noting the surprise in their eyes that she was still standing, let alone conscious. "I didn't start this damn fight!"

Another charge, and she screamed as the voltage pushed her past her pain tolerance, but even then, Samus refused to collapse. She caught herself before she could fall over, every breath filled with pain, but she could only glared vengefully at the poor guard who was frantically rechecking the output of the taser gun in her hand. "Shock me again," the girl managed to get out as her chest heaved in agony with each labored breath. "And I will smash your gods damn face in...I was defending myself!"

Before the guard could pull the trigger a third time, Captain Harper managed to grab her arm. Despite everything, MPs now filling the yard and containing the other inmates, Samus dropped her head, breathing irregular as she struggled to keep on her knees, then found herself grabbed by the arms and hoisted very violently up.

"Get her back in solitary," came the cold orders from Harper. "Protection protocols, now."

"I don't need your protection!"

"And I'm not talking about protection for you," Harper shot back as he watched her being dragged off and out of the prison yard. He turned back to see the results of the girl's handiwork; the first assailant being tenderly loaded on a stretcher for the med-section, the second as well being taken away for attention, and four more with a smashed nose, impact bruising from the wall, and some concussions from all signs.

Six inmates all together, by herself, three of whom had been trying to dogpile her while standing. No normal human girl weighing a hundred and twenty pounds should have been able to do any of this. Something was very much not right with the story that the mines had given of that she was some junkie, and her own story of being the child of ÆSIR augmented super soldiers, despite logical saying such enhancements didn't carry over in such a way, was less of a nebulous claim and perhaps closer to the truth.

But things still didn't add up.

---

Her throat was raw as spots of her skin smoked from where the electrodes had made contact. The ten minute journey back into the isolation wing of the prison complex had become rife with screaming of rage and agonizing pain from the stun units the guards were armed with. It had taken all her willpower at this point to stay conscious from all the voltage and sheer flaring pain she had been put through to subdue her, but even so, the only thing Samus was aware of at that point was being set on the floor and the confinement panel slamming shut just before the pitched hum of material charge filled the air.

After a long silence, she finally moved rolling onto her back and wincing as her sore skin touched the cooled paved floor. Her tolerances were far might than normal for a human of her size and weight, but she wasn't impervious to pain, something Samus had long ago learned. "Do your people get off to using me as a punching back because I take it and heal faster than your actual inmates, or because I 'officially don't exist', and you think that makes me free game?"

"Truthfully, I'm not sure why you run your mouth like that, considering you could be here a very long time if nothing checks back from Daiban or Sol."

That wasn't a filtered speaker or a holo-projection. Painful as it was, Samus pushed herself up into a sitting position to see the actual Captain Harper standing on the otherwise of the charged translucent aluminum panel. "This is a first," the girl managed to say as her breathing started to finally regulate. "I was starting to think you were actually some Halsey-class AI who ran things around here instead of a real person."

"GalFed AI regulations forbid that level of AI sentience outside of Sol Sector Confederation territories." Something that generally wasn't known outside of said Sol Sector, Harper had to admittedly remind himself of. A month roughly, and he was noticing certain things which would confirmed bits of her story, and what he had been told back when they had sent the ID request. "So, 'Samus'. I have quite a quandary to deal with here. On the one hand, I've been reviewing the camera feed while I came down here and can attest that you were attacked first." He saw the shift of her expression; distrust. That was, sadly, to be expected given the situation. "On the other, you put two inmates in the medical ward for the next month with bone fractures that will take very delicate treatment to heal properly-"

"They made their choices that got them here, let them deal with those decisions."

"A third who is going to be in outpatient for two weeks for a shattered nose and fractured facial section of their skull," as Harper ignored the commentary from the girl, "and three more who have some serious bruising trauma from the otherwise rather impressive slamming you gave them against the wall." Over six hundred pounds between those three, no less. "You officially don't exist as far as we yet know, meaning I can't file official charges against you. You acted in what could be considered self-defense, but you also put half a dozen inmates in medical, not counting the three rent-a-cops you hospitalized before you were dumped on me." There was a pause as Harper sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His vision was getting a bit blurred, meaning he was stressed and hitting that need for some serious sleep after two days of headaches.

"You could have just given me back my runabout and let me go on my way."

A brow was raised at that suggestion. "The questionability of Alma-Core's claims about where they encountered you aside, you still put three Me'jith security in medical and less than an hour ago put six inmates there as well. And considering the shit I've seen you do, miss 'Aran', I'm not so sure GFP or even ConFleet wouldn't be interested in having a few words with you."

He meant the Confederation's Advanced Warfare division. She knew enough from three years at the officer academy to know about that open secret. "Same thing I've said for a standard month now, captain. Get a hold of Admiral Dane, and this will all get cleared up."

Harper narrowed his eyes, then turned on his heel and left her be. His eyes glanced again to the tablet he had been using to review the footage from the courtyard. He was starting to believe that this girl was speaking enough truth, but she was also obviously leaving things out. ÆSIR augments didn't breed through, not to the level of abilities she had displayed.

A tap to the headset he wore on his right ear. "Anything yet back from either of those requests?"

"Not yet sure. Dakona-B has been crazy active still, so it may be relay issues. They also may not consider an ID inquiry from us a very high priority."

All very valid points. With a sigh, Harper had something else come to mind. "One more thing, Meyers. Check GalFed astro-cartographical charts for an 'FS-176'. I wanna know where that place is after hearing it for a month."

"Might be a bit. We're out at the edge of known space, and the only thing further charted past the boundaries is K-2L, about a fifteen hundred lights coreward."

"Not like we don't have plenty of time." A second tap, and the comline was closed, leaving Harper to ponder a few things as he continued to the main lift. The big question he had, in trying to get answers now, was why this system their guest kept referencing was so important.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.263

GFS Dauntless, En route to Calliope-IX

Less than ten standard Terran hours had passed since the Dauntless had charged from Reach orbit and roared out of Confederation space at full slipdrive power. The carrier vessel was still racing through slipspace at translight velocity surpassing five hundred light years an hour, having made no breaks since using a little known jump line to V404 Cygni using the central singularity inside the Charybdis Quasar as a jump point. Over seven thousand light years and close to fifteen hours had been cut from the journey using the classified jump corridor, over half the journey needed to reach the Dakona system. Normally such navigational tactics were highly discouraged due to the extremely close proximity to an active gravitational singularity both the entry and exit points were, but in exceptional circumstances, such as these, it was within a commanding officer's authority to deem the risk a necessary one.

And the situation that had already formed in Castor Dane's mind based on the message from Calliope-IX was nothing less than catastrophic. The Kromus were making for Zebes again, and they barely had begun any kind of mobilization efforts. If they hurried, they might have time to head things off this time, but then there also the issue of when that communication had been sent.

"Less than an hour to Dakona, admiral. Stations preparing to standby for translight exit into orbital-entry range of Calliope-IX."

A solemn nod from his position by the primary tactical display table as he looked over to the command landing. The captain proper of the Dauntless was looking tired as she watched the primary external viewers, but she had hardly seemed exasperated at the sudden change of plans when Dane had come aboard with his new orders. She gave a brief look back to the admiral, a nod, then resumed her watch over the navigation crew.

"I apologize again for shanghaiing you and the Dauntless, Captain Ran, and for the lack of details why."

"Anything that drags you away from the Seventh and the Olympus is no simple matter, Admiral." There was the hint of a smile in her voice as the dark skinned fleet captain tilted her head again. "I was just a kid going into the academy when you and the Sangheili were charging into the Clouds, sir. Feels kind of like a small taste of history to have you aboard like this."

A crease of his brow as Dane considered that sentiment. It was a bit perturbing to hear such a romanticized notion about the war, even if it was such an otherwise innocent comment. He had seen planets burn when they couldn't halt the Kromus advance, forced to pull back and regroup. More so, he knew firsthand the prices paid in that war, and the prices to be paid again. "You may get far more of that taste than likely expected, captain. I just pray we're not too late when we get to Dakona."

---

Erato Prison Sector, Calliope-IX

It was mid-day on the gas giant's moon and its primary center of inhabited region. The usual routines were well underway as Captain Harper entered the prison command management center. On the main screens, he could see the hundreds of inmates in Erato, a number of whom were being prepared for the day's work at the nearby moldavite mines. After a moment, he tapped a video feed indicator on his tablet, bringing up the observation camera of their sequestered guest. She was keeping herself occupied with pushups, it seemed. A momentary look of confusion crossed his face as he tapped a few commands into his tablet and instructed the AI routines to run a biometric assessment on the young woman. A minute later, suspicions were confirmed; their guest, despite routine meals and her obvious physical regime, had lost mass. If anything, she should have gained weight while kept isolated away.

"Captain, we're getting a tight burst message from a ship currently en route via slipspace, identifies as the GFS Dauntless. They say Fleet Admiral Dane is onboard."

That garnered the captain's attention as he looked up from his tablet. "He seriously came out himself on this?" Harper frowned as he set his tablet aside and stood up from his desk. His expectations for any kind of response to the information request had been little to none, not a personal visit from a four star admiral to the backwater coreward edges of Federation space. "Was she telling the truth about knowing a freakin' fleet admiral?" he muttered as he walked over to the coms-station. "This is verified?"

"You want to tell a ten million metric ton carrier that's flying at over five hundred lights an hour that they need to wait for a message to get to Daiban and back to verify them?"

Valid, he had to admit. The mere fact they had anything more than a prison courier or a cargo hauler for the mined minerals coming in was odd enough. "Prep the landing zone for a shuttle, make sure everyone is on notice about this visit." A moment as he considered the possibility that their 'guest' was indeed the subject of this rather unusual visit. And the matter of what he had seen her do. "Do we still have those Brute binders we had to use when Thompson had his breakdown three years ago?"

"They'd have to be adjusted for her, but yeah, those things are in storage."

"Get her dressed and prepped for this." Harper frowned as he watched the corporal head off to carry out the instructions given to her. He didn't like this, and if this girl was in fact of any kind of connection to a fleet admiral, what they were about to put on her was not going to earn any points. But what had happened since she arrived on the moon demanded precautions. Hopefully Admiral Dane would understand such.

---

It was nearly mid-morning when she head the approaching footsteps and clanking of metal. Too early for second meal, not that an earlier meal would do her any good. As she stood up and wiped the sweat from her forehead, Samus took the chance to get a look at who had come to visit her; decisively not the captain. "Captain Harper decide that I'm not good enough for even a holo-visit anymore?"

"Get dressed and submit for the binders." The humming charged panel suddenly silenced before retracting, and a distinctive personal effects container was slid into the isolation cell. "We brought what clothes we found in that ship, but don't get any ideas that armor that thin will do anything if you step out of line."

Her base armor was in the case. Why were they worried bout making her presentable? And why now? As tempting as surprising the guards was, Samus knew better at this point. Besides, there was a reason for this. "GalFed decided to check up on things here and you can't have an unlisted prisoner being found?"

"Captain wants you dressed and ready for-" The corporal halted in his words as the girl pulled her shirt off in front of him, continuing to strip down like she didn't care at all who saw her. "What are...you...in front of-"

"You need me changed and ready." A second later, she peeled the prison fatigue pants off and those of her base armor were pulled on. Her armor jacket followed, sealing itself and sealing the separation with the pants before she latched the utility belt around her waist. "Swear to Na'bru, humans are so hung up on seeing their own skin. Fashion and function are no reason to act like a naked body is shameful."

With her boots pulled on her feet, Samus gave a sigh, then noticed the large metal apparatus being held by one of the accompanying guards. "What the hell is that?"

"Binder harness, rated to be able to restrain even a Category Two ÆSIR." The corporal narrowed his eyes now that the shock of witnessing the girl strip down and dress in front of him had passed. "You're coming up, and Captain Harper isn't taking any chances after what happened in the prison yard."

Her eyes narrowed even as her mouth tightened back with a snarl. They were treating her like she was one of the convicts housed in the prison, even though all she had done was defend herself. But those things didn't matter as the binder harness was held up for her to be put into, and her lack of options was punctuated by the powered hum of the stun rifle carried by the other accompanying guard.

"Hope you have a good backup career once Admiral Dane finally hears about this," she muttered under her breath as she held out her arms and allowed the restraints to be slipped on. Two lengths slid over her arms, clamping around her shoulders and fastening in the back between her shoulder blades before pulling her arms together and locking them in a downward position. It was highly uncomfortable, which she knew was the entire point, and left her unable to do much of anything.

There was a jab at her back, signaling for her to move. With a growl, Samus did as directed, heading down the corridor as led by the corporal with both guards flaking her. Why, she wondered, did they need to bring her up from isolation? And why dressed in her belongings from her shuttle?

---

Ten minutes had expired since the nine hundred and fifty-one meter long carrier erupted from the dimensional fold realm of slipspace. The same Goshawk that had carried Admiral Dane out from the Breaking Fire and to the deck of the Dauntless once again launched into the void of space, arcing around for entry into the atmosphere of Calliope-IX. Flickers of entry plasma ignited around the shields of the lithe transport ship, eventually extinguishing while the dropship re-angled and increased its atmospheric speeds. It didn't take long for the Goshawk to come about over the prison center and lower itself down onto the cleared landing pad.

Before the ramp hatch had lowered, Captain Harper was already approaching, flanked by a pair of armed and ready MPs. It was all out of standard operation procedure, something that wasn't often in force at the prison, but considering their very unusual guest, it was better to make appearances at following regulations.

Yet what he was expecting was not what got. When one heard the words "fleet admiral", the image conjured was full pomp and proper display of the fleet; full dress uniform, laden with awards and service markers, and a venerable display of that pride often attributed to the admiralty. Instead, the man who made a determined pace down the ramp and onto the landing pad tarmac was anything but said expectancy. He was clad instead in fleet armored fatigues, dark blue textured shades with a burnished gold trim at the shoulders to mark his position as flag officer, with a matching colored cap in his hands that was quickly placed on his head as he and his own entourage approached the now saluting Harper and his MPs.

"Admiral Dane, sir. I have to admit, this is a very unusual visit. We don't often-"

"Is there a particular reason a message from my informant regarding a highly sensitive and classified watch site was not forwarded to me via priority hyperburst as soon as you were told, Field Captain?" There was no nicety or play at proper protocols in Dane's voice as he cut Harper off mid-sentence. He took a look at the outer walls of Erato and sighed, signaling for Harper to lead him in. The fact Dane's own guards were not only armed and brandishing their weapons at the ready, but were geared in semi-powered combat armor was enough to make Harper begin wondering what exactly had he gotten into. "Even at forty-one hundred parsecs from Sol Sector, it should not have taken over a month for that message to reach me, let alone sending a message to Daiban."

"Respectfully, sir," and Harper put all his effort into reminding himself who he was talking to, "we're at the ass-end of Federation space, where the only thing further that's charted by Daiban's records is an abandoned Afloraltite mining colony." He paused a moment, knowing well he had a look of annoyance aimed at him. "Unfortunately, we have never rated high on any kind of high-end equipment priority, and that includes communications, admiral. Dakona-B also has been in a series of stellar flare ups, which caused transmission delays. I'm honestly surprised it took only a month to reach you since the GFP still haven't responded to my records request."

The admiral was silent as he followed Harper though the halls into the prison's command center. Once they had arrived, however, Dane made sure that the only thing to his back beside a wall was his own escorts. "Bureaucratic nonsense like that is why we watched a hundred planets burn," he muttered, though not making any attempt to not be heard. "Alright, I can accept that reason for the delay. However, why were you trying to verify her identity through me? I cant imagine it's so far that you don't have access to the GalFed network."

He breathed in, remembering that very few understood just how removed from the Federation and its resources the Dakona system was. After a long moment, Harper allowed himself to rub the bridge of his nose and sigh. "Again, I respectfully point out, sir, the fact we are at the literal edge of Federation space. We're outside the communications network array, and we don't have hyperburst capability here due to budgets and a low priority for updated equipment." Another pause as he glanced to a monitor, one that showed four figures awaiting in the isolation section lift. Answers would come soon enough, it seemed. "And there are bits to the events leading to us having your 'informant' as a 'guest' here, admiral. Like putting three hired Me'jith security personal who work at the local mines in medical when she got here, manic according to the mining supervisors, and then half a dozen inmates here, who are now being treated for injuries as of a couple days ago."

It didn't elude Harper that the Admiral did not immediately reply. Such indicated that this was not information which surprised him, meaning that he did know who this girl was, and what she was capable of. And more so, he was clearly all too familiar with her obvious tempers.

"Captain, I want her brought to me now and released to my custody. She has vital information regarding a sensitive site-"

"She's not going anywhere until someone tells me what the hell is in this FS-176 system, how the hell a hundred and twenty pound girl hospitalizes nine people in a matter of minutes, and why she can tank an electrical charge that could down a friggin' elephant." Even though he was snapping at a vastly higher ranking officer, Harper had already decided he had questions he wanted answers to. "And what the hell is that ship and the suit of what looks like powered armor inside of it? You're so eager to just claim her and go, admiral, but I want to know who and what she is."

Silence. This time, however, Dane was not contemplating confusion, but his expression was one of restrained frustration. Something, it was clear, had gone very wrong. "Who she is, captain, is John Aran's only child, his daughter who survived a pirate raid on K2L fifteen years ago, and my informant whom had monitored a highly classified location for the last year."

"We both know that's bullshit." The captain didn't even flitch as Dane gave him a furious glare that could have ignited a sun. "John Aran and everyone else on that colony were slaughtered, and there is no way a toddler would have survived on their own long enough to be found by anyone. Stars or not, I'm not handing anyone over to you until I get real answers."

"Captain." And as Dane spoke, his voice was barely holding back his aggravation at the situation he was facing. "I am here on authority from General Morris, ConForce CIC himself, authorized to take my informant who has monitored FS-176 and made sure it stayed safe, up until the message you barely had enough information on reached me." A steel grey eye glanced back at his escorts, as if reminding Harper who he was trying to strong arm. "I want Miss Aran now, and her ship returned to her so that we can leave and deal with the god damn war that is-"

The command center doors slid open, revealing a corporal, two armed MPs, and the blonde girl who's arms were restrained by a binder harness clear designed for containing humans in the augmented categories. The sight made Dane's heart sink as he realized what his surrogate granddaughter had been enduring this entire time. What made it worse was when she met his eyes, and her expression went from stoic to shock and pleading; she had no idea he'd arrived. He knew the glaze her blue-green eyes were reflecting. Something horrible had happened to her, and a stay in this prison was not even the tip of the iceberg.

"Captain Harper, I'm taking custody of Miss Aran under authority of wartime decree article two-seven-three point five-nine. She is an unlisted informant under operation orders from myself of observation at a classified site." After a moment, Dane gestured for his escorts to take possession of the restrained blonde girl. The response they received, however, was a shock as the prison MPs suddenly lowered their own weapons at the marines. "Captain, are your people insane?!"

"That decree only applies during a state of war, admiral, which we haven't been in since 2959." Harper glared as he nodded for his subordinates to move in between the person he now was clearly claiming as one of his inmates, and the fleet admiral who was losing all patience for any civility in the situation. "Those stars be damned right now. This is my prison, under my authority, and after she has been this much a pain in my ass, she goes nowhere except a sentencing hearing once I find out who she really is and file some goddamn charges, just to spite your ridiculous power trip!"

This had gone from a visit to clear up confusions and misunderstandings into a Mexican standoff. Harper was seriously challenging his authority, claiming that no state of war existed, and at this point had just doomed his entire career with his actions. "We're in a state of war right now, you pigheaded idiot! I was in the damn Congressional Hall when the entire assembly voted to declare the Federation in a resumed war with the Kromus! Kea'ton has revoked article one-seven-three of the Military Oversight Accords, we are making coordination arrangements with the Sangheili! This is real!"

"Sir, something just displaced six hundred and fifty million tons about four hundred and fifty thousand kilometers out from Calliope-IX orbit!" When Harper stared in shock at the corporal at the monitoring station, she gave an expression of fear in return. "The satellite network didn't pick up any kind of slipspace discharge, and the Dakona Jump Point is out eight AUs from Calliope orbital. This thing just appeared out of nowhere!"

At the same time, an alert tone came from the earpieces of the marines. One of them tapped the device at his head, eyes narrowing as he looked to Dane and nodded. "Confirmed, Admiral. Dauntless picked it up as soon as it came in system. They're still running renders, but whatever it is, it's massive, it's already launching craft, and it's running a Kromus IFF signal."

And they were wasting time arguing over custody of a girl who had no doubt been scared and traumatized by whatever had happened to bring her here. Dane growled and turned his full attention to Captain Harper, pointedly now indicating Samus and the restrained harness she was constrained by. "News may take forever to get here, but the war does not wait, and neither do I." Another gesture of his hand to his Marine escorts. "Get the location of her ship, and get her out of that damnable thing. We are leaving now."

"God damnit, I just said-"

"I'm invoking rank here, field captain." The snarl in Dane's voice wasn't even a veiled threat. "Your prison staff are to stand down and prepare for evacuation. If the Kromus are here, they will be making surface side, and likely will be prepping to burn the surface with a plasma bomb that will ignite the atmosphere and kill everyone on this Ganymede sized rock once they find what they're looking for." The admiral's eyes shifted toward Samus, very well aware exactly who the Kromus were here for, and the information they were looking to keep silenced. "And now every second you waste is another second they get closer to carpet bombing us with plasma charges." A glance to the operations station, and Dane could see the panic in the young enlisted soldier's eyes. "Corporal, you said four-fifty megameters out from orbital system. How long until they get here?"

"An hour at their current speed, looks about one-twenty-five klicks a second, and the sat-net is already picking up about a dozen launched ships, looks like landers, coming in at us at about four-thirty-five klicks a seconds."

"We have seventeen minutes before they reach orbit, maybe another five at most until they hit ground and swarm everyone here."

All eyes were on Samus Aran, who until now had been silent as she watched everyone else argue over her. "It's what happened on Zebes, admiral." Her own eyes were looking to him, pleading to be let out of the restricting harness. "They swarmed us in the middle of the night, the defense grid never detected them, or even put up a fight."

It answered his worst fears in reading the message that she had been trying to reach him and had been detained since over a month prior; Zebes had already fallen. "I am making this a direct order, and I don't care which of you glorified babysitters does what I say!" A finger pointed at the girl, his expression raging as he barked the next order. "Get that thing off of her, give her back any weapons she had with her, and get her to her god damn ship so we can evacuate anyone we can!"

"This is my jurisdiction, you pompous, nepotistic-"

"And someone put this idiot in cuffs and on a shuttle so we can get the hell out of here, and I can rake his ass for defying a direct order in a court-martial later!"

The heavy click of live ammo rifles made it clear to Harper and his accompanying MPs that Dane was not just blowing hot air. One of the marines held her hand out, in no way vague about demanding the control key for the binder harness. Drawing out a defiant silence, the corporal who had led Samus from the isolation block pulled the device in question from his fatigues' pocket and tapped in a series of commands. Moment later, the harnessed restraint gave a series of heavy clicks of its own just before slipping off the blonde girl's arms and shoulders to thud loudly on the pavement floor.

"Escort her to her ship," came the barked order to the prison corporal as Dane then gestured to his own escorts and pulled the magnetically clamped heavy pistol from the thigh plate of his combat armor. "We have less than fifteen minutes to before those bastards make orbit, another five at best before they hit ground. Get any live ammo you have here, and get to whatever shuttles you have."

"Admiral, what about the colony?" The question came from the corporal who was manning the operations desk. "Sir, there's five thousand people in Clio City and the mines. We can't evacuate them ourselves, we have no ships except for half a dozen surface shuttles."

He looked to her, his expression worn and filled with regret. He didn't have the heart to say aloud what they all already knew. "Tell them to get as many people into underground shelters or even the mines and seal them off with what emergency atmospherics they have, but we have just over half an hour before that thing gets here, and maybe ten before their landers arrive." It was obvious what was going to happen now. All they could do was get out. "Evacuate who you can, and get off this rock."

"Goddamnit, you aren't taking anyone anywhe-"

And almost deafening crack echoed as the blonde girl was across the room in seconds and slamming her balled fist into Harper's face. Like the prisoners she had fought off days before, Samus had cracked his nose enough that blood was gushing down his face, leaving the captain to collapse even while he recoiled from the shockingly sudden pain.

"Cadet Aran!"

She went stiff, forced learned reactions kicking up from the sound of Dane's voice in what she knew was his "authoritative admiral" tone. After a moment, Samus took a breath, turned sharply on her heel, and looked at the admiral as best she could. "Admiral...He was going to stall our-"

"Is this how you ended up in those binders, Samus?" His eyes were hard from frustration, both from Harper's stubbornness and her own actions in punching the prison's captain in the face. "The truth, Samus. Were you being held for assaulting the prison sector staff?"

"No, Admiral. They threw me in here after I was threatened with electroshock stunning by local security when I arrived, because I fought back." With a pause, Samus looked down at Harper, who was still holding his nose and being treated by the corporal who had escorted her up. "To be honest...that's the first time I wasn't actually acting in self-defense."

His eyes shifted to Harper. The captain was likely to refute such accusations, though he had never known Samus to lie about anything, even if to protect herself, and they honestly had no time at this point to hunt for any records. "All of you in here, including that idiot, follow us to the Goshawk. Corporal, direct Miss Aran to where her ship is being kept, then scramble what security you have, warn the city to take shelter, and order an evacuation. We have ten minutes before the Kromus get here, and we need to leave before that ship of theirs reaches orbit."

The MPs helped Harper to his feet and led him following the admiral while the corporal led Samus toward the impound hanger. She tapped a switch on her belt unit, starting a low alarm tone throughout the prison even while lifting the same device to her lips. "Clio Air Control, this is Corporal Vanner at Erato center. We have incoming hostiles, signal evacuation to any deep shelters available, we're loading up staff here to get clear."

"Say again...we have hostiles inbound?"

"Six-fifty million metric tons of Kromus megaship, popped in at four-fifty kiloklicks from orbit, landers launched and coming in hot. We have no time or ships for a full evac, so get those people to shelter now."

The alarm tone was still echoing in the corridors as they could hear a distant thunder of what Samus recognized immediately as short range bombardment rounds. "They're already here," she muttered under her breath. It was a minute later that the corporal led her into the impound hanger, where the lithe red and yellow Chozo runabout was waiting. The corporal hurried over to the release controls even as Samus was racing to the entry hatch of the craft. Another sound of thunder as she keyed the entry open, allowing her inside to see the containment chamber in the back of the main cabin, and her armor stored within, silently charging and waiting for her this entire time.

"Aran! The admiral and Captain Harper are cut off, we have Kromus already inside the prison!"

Eyes went wide. Dane would tell her to run now and hurry to Sol, to warn everyone. They all knew what was coming once that Pirate megaship reached orbit and pulled its own landers back, they had seen it done over a hundred planets in the war. The Federation had to know what had happened, the terrible threat the Kromus had truly become.

But she couldn't abandon him, no more than he could abandon her. Her brow narrowed even as she sat herself in pilot's chair, activating the runabout's repulsor drive and lifting the vessel off the ground. "Get in!" she cried out to the corporal, leaving the entry hatch open just long enough for her now boarding passenger to do as ordered and seating herself while Samus brought the lithe craft around toward the hanger opening. "We have maybe half an hour before that monster ship gets here, and we need to get the admiral to safety."

"Hang on, what the hell are we doing? Does this thing have any weapons on it we didn't see?"

A tap at the console before her to ready the main thrust drives. She knew she was far from ready for this, but Samus also knew she had no choice. A man who she owed so much to had come to get her away from the nightmare, and she could not leave him to be claimed by it. "It does," the girl responded just before firing the main drives and sending the runabout racing out of the hanger. They were overhead the landing platform within seconds, allowing Samus to see where Dane and his entourage were now pinned by Kromus forces. The Goshawk gunship was intact still, but they needed a clear path. One she could make.

A few taps on the console, setting the ship in the navcom's control while she stood up and moved onto the central lift platform, the same one on which Maru had left to buy her time. An eye went to her powered suit, a lacing shock of fear and hesitation coursing her veins. She was afraid, because despite lessons given to her by the Chozo, all the training she received at the Academy, nothing could have prepared her for the sheer reality of what she was about to face.

And she couldn't run away from it anymore.

"It's got me."

Shocked eyes looked at her as the lift rose up, a panel sliding open in the ceiling to reveal the retracting irised entry hatch up top. She could hear the energy discharge and weapons fire between the Kromus and Dane's escorts. They had managed to pick a few more prison guards as extra hands, but it wasn't enough to match seven or eight Pirates who were moving in on them. They needed something more. Something that had been made for this very purpose.

And as she fully emerged from the shuttle, Samus took a deep breath, tensed her body, and charged down the roof of the shuttle. Her feet pushed off, sending her flying through the air as she descended toward the surface. Her right hand slapped against the left breastplate of her armor, initiating a crackling surge of electrical charge from the lit-up sigil that swarmed out over her body. The same cascade of lacing energy washed over the yellow and red suit of powered armor, pulling it into nothingness as it began to reform over Samus mere fractions of a second later. Vibrant colored plates shimmered as her now armor clad body plummeted down and came to a thunderous landing while dust and dirt exploded up from the cratered ground.

As the cloud of debris settled, the Kromus invaders slowly aimed various firearms. Some were the brownish eel headed Urtraghans, tridactyl hands gripping their rifles and plasma launchers, while the towering black shelled Kromuns themselves readied the biological energy projection nodes inside their claws. A flash of green light came from in the dust, and then a series of blazing yellow bursts flared out to slam full force into the head of one of the Kromus Pirates. Carapace armor exoskeleton shattered into pieces in the first impact, a second smashing the outer framing mandibles into fragments that flew away, giving an opening for the third shot to impact and rupture the arthropod's face into a shower of chitin and internal pulp.

And as the dust cleared, one towering form collapsed to the ground, both Pirates and the humans they had been attacking stared at the figure clad in burnished yellow and red armor, who was rising up from a kneeling landing and training her viridian arm cannon on the Kromus. The forward barrel plates snapped open and swung back to expose the now formed and loaded micro-missile, while the gleaming green visor of the red helmet was tilted downward to indicate a deathly glare from the young woman inside of it.

"That was for Platinum Chest," came the distorted vocals from inside the armor. There was a click from the cannon as the Kromus took a step back, as if not sure what they were looking at. "And this is for the others."

A roar was heard as the ballistic missile launched at supersonic velocity, impacting against the lead Kromun and propelling the Pirate back several feet before detonating into a shower of chunks and shattered chitin. The site was enough to draw their attentions and give the armored human a very wide opening as she charged into the group of arthropods and brought her cannon up to jam the muzzle opening between the dual jaws of one of the Urtraghans. It screeched at her just before the emitter opening flared and a brilliant burst of yellow light ripped through the pirate's head, through the brain cavity, and out the top of its head with a thunder. A grunt was heard as Samus grabbed the still standing and half-headless corpse by the ridged collar plating of its exoskeleton, then swung around the dead Urtraghan just as one of the larger Kromun aimed with their claws and fired a pair of crackling blue beams from the glowing nodes inside the claws.

The corpse snapped back from the kinetic force impact of the twin blue beams, another such pair slamming into the dead Urtraghan's back and throwing huge chunks of chitin plate and scorched meat out. With a grin as she pushed through the cluster now, Samus flung the dead body at its fellow, firing another missile and causing the still living Kromun to explode like the first target of such firepower. Another of the lobster clawed Kromuns screeched at the armored figure, aiming a single biobeam node, but the snap action shot from the emerald cannon slammed a bright yellow pulse into the organic energy weapon, causing it to explode and send pieces of the claw pincer strewn across the landing pad tarmac. The Kromus could only screech in agony and rage as the yellow armor raced up and cracked that arm cannon hard across its face, fragments of chitin and broken mandible flying even as the sheer force of the impact threw the Kromun itself into an unwilling flip that landed it front first on the ground.

The remaining Urtraghans, three of them, roared and moved in, firing their own plasma rifles at the armored figure. One shot glanced her shielding, causing a bright golden grid to appear briefly mere millimeters from the plated surface of her suit. Her posture tensed for a moment as aother volley was fired her way. As soon as the shiver went up her spin, Samus launched herself into a corkscrew twist through the air, slipping through the plasma bursts even as she spun around and brought her own arm cannon to bare and fired a quick trio of yellow pulses. Her feet hit the ground again just as those beam pulses slammed into their targets, cracking exoarmor and sending the Urtraghans stumbling back from the impacts. In a flash, Samus was running up again, this time jumping and catching one of the pirates by the head with her legs. Her body swung itself, allowing her left-hand to grab one of the other Urtraghan by the neck, and then throwing her full weight to drag both of them to the ground. An explosive pop was heard as she slammed her cannon into one pirate's head, caving in its skull as it went into spasm. The pirate she had leg locked grabbed at her armored thigh, only for the girl to squeeze as hard as she could. It gasped, struggling to free itself, then went limp as a sickening thick snap came from its neck.

One was left. As she stood up again, the remaining Urtraghan pirate took a step back. It was clearly assessing what it had just witnessed, gauging its own chances...and then threw the plasma rifle in its tridactyl claws to the ground and ran for its life. The yellow armored figure shook off the layer of dust on her back, lifted her cannon, and tracked the pirate even as the barrel snapped open, gave a heavy click that signaled missile load, then recoiled as the micro-ballistic shot off and impacted with a fireball.

Her cannon shifted back into beam emitter configuration again, leaving the power armor clad young woman to catch her breath once everything caught up with her. She had really done that. Seven Kromus pirates, scattered across the tarmac, and it was all her.

"Nice to see that academy training put to some impressive use."

Her body turned sharply at the sound of Dane's voice. It was after a moment she realized that the others she had just saved were staring at her, especially Captain Harper. More so, they were delaying when they had little to no time to spare. "Corporal Vanner picked up your situation on the comnet, and since we had my shuttle ready, I decided-"

"We can talk later." With a nod to his escorts, Dane led the accompanying prison staff into the waiting Goshawk. "Get back to your ship and get the hell off this rock, Samus. Once that megaship gets here, they will burn the surface to glass, and we need to get on the Dauntless ASAP so we can get the hell out of this system."

Her runabout had already come down to retrieve her. With a nod, mostly for her own benefit, Samus hurried to the hovering craft and lept up to land atop the shuttle's roof. The lift platform was still there, waiting, and as she stepped back on it, the platform slowly lowered Samus back inside, the iris hatch and sealing panel sliding shut above her. Corporal Vanner was staring, expectantly, at her suit, but right now, she didn't have time to explain. "Get in a seat and hold on," came the distorted voice as she sat in the pilot's seat and began tapping on the control console.

There was a rumble as the gravity repulsors began powering the runabout away from the tarmac, and outside, Samus could see Dane's Goshawk was doing the same. A other set of adjustments while the dropship fired its own drives, and the runabout launched itself upward toward space, leaving the prison sector behind as more of the Kromus' own troop carriers were arriving. They had made it just in time, though in the back of her mind, Samus knew that they had been forced to abandon most of the prison sector staff, let alone the inmates themselves.

And then, as they pushed through the stratosphere, reaching into actual space, Samus could see it. Four kilometers long, maybe two tall and one wide. The vessel was massive, bigger than anything she had ever read about save the infamous Cunning Death. And yet, she remembered the thing she had seen in her escape from Zebes, the massive blade structure that had to have been even bigger.

The Goshawk shot away as it cleared the atmosphere, free to fire its full sublight drive power and race away toward the rectangular shape in the distance that Samus recognized as a Confederation carrier. The Goshawk was racing ahead of her, leading her ship in as they crossed the distance and came into the pressure-field contained hanger bay. A few moments while she put her ship into its landing cycle, and a breath of relief for being free after over a month in the prison's isolation block.

"All hands, prepare for slipspace jump. Lock down launch bays and hanger."

Amber colors lights pulsed as the hanger entryway slowly closed via a series of sealant panels. Deck crews were already hurrying to their stations, and with a sigh, Samus keyed open the entry hatch to allow her own passenger to leave. "Get going," she stated as she stood, now flashing with light moments before her armor peeled away as energy and was reformed inside the containment chamber. As the corporal did as directed, Samus took her own time walking out the entry hatch and getting a good look at the flight deck. The Goshawk was already being stored away in preparation for the jump to slipspace, and her own runabout was fine on its own. With a sigh, the blonde girl walked down the deck toward the primary service lift, knowing that she was sticking out like a sore thumb aboard the carrier, but she needed to get to Dane and tell him everything.

---

"Kromus vessel is already retrieving their landers, and orbital position is consistent with plasma drop protocols."

His face grimaced as he nodded. The sight before them on the main screens was one he had seen all too often during the war. Many of those crewing the Dauntless, including her nominal captain, had only read about this in schools and history reviews. He had witnessed it firsthand in similar situations, and those of the fleet who done so had a term for what the Kromus were even now positioning their ship for.

"Exterminus Protocol," came the whispered words. Castor Dane closed his eyes for a long moment as he felt the memories of this very scene, repeated over and over during the war, flood back. "Bastards are going to burn the biosphere to the ground." His eyes opened again, expression stoic as he turned his gaze to where the holographic projection of what resembled a mechanical brain hovered over the tactical table. "Two-Two-Seven, run navcoms and course for galactic coordinates three-zero-nine-eight point one-five-nine-five by zero-two-five spinward, zero-two-three point zero-zero-one-six ascendant, designation Foxtrot Sierra One-Seven-Six."

"Calculating course, admiral." The projection of the Aurora Unit's avatar flickered and shifted as it began processing the ordered course. A minute later, the image steadied. "Admiral, those galactic coordinates are listed as a singularity quarantine zone. I cannot complete the course calculations as ordered under Federation Statute-"

"Two-Two-Seven, this is under the authority of Confederation Armed Forces Commander in Chief General Rodham Morris. Set course for FS-176 and get us into slipspace. We are in a hurry, those bastards are about to light up Calliope-IX and come after us next."

"Federation Statute Seven-three of the Interstellar Travel Codes strictly prohibits entry into any quarantine category zone, except under recognized wartime operations-"

"Pull the god damn plug on that malfunctioning thing, wake the Navcom AI up, and someone at the helm get us the hell out of here!"

The ship slowly turned as maneuvering repulsors strained to rotate the ten million metric tons of durasteel as fast as the gravitational manipulation drives could push. Small thruster ports flared in attempt to assist the primary repulsors, and as it made enough of a turn to begin breaking orbit, the Dauntless fired its main sublight drives, pushing it away from Calliope-IX even as a series of flaring objects shot from the massive Kromus vessel and toward the moon's surface. The furthest one suddenly winked out before a surge of orange-yellow flame rippled out from where it had been, several more ripples of plasmic fire roiling out in succession as the launched plasma bombs ignited the atmosphere. More pulses of light rained down, igniting a massive roil of plasmic waves that spread out, burning everything on the surface and literally cooking the atmosphere off the planet.

The sight was enough to silence the entire bridge as they watched on the main screens. Dane found that, even after having witnessed it so many times in the war, he still could not stomach it. He closed his eyes after the first of the plasma ripples could be seen, knowing all too well what was coming. "Helm, get us out of here and on the way to FS-176. There's nothing else we can do."

The carrier pushed away as more bombs could be seen crossing the distance between the Kromus vessel and Calliope-IX. It didn't take long, at that point, for the bright blue-white swirling vortex of slipspace to open and consume the Confederation vessel, leaving no trace of it as the moon continued to burn.

 

[ChozoHuntress]

2976.264

Dadaelus Battlegroup, en route to FS-176 system

A dozen ships continued to tear through slipspace, racing through the wake of the large battlewagon that headed the group. They were minutes from arrival at a location they had little data on, only that the coordinates were otherwise highly classified. That generally meant a precursor site that was being hidden for a good reason.

"All ships, this is the Daedalus. Ten minutes to transit into realspace. All ground teams prepare for drop, aerospace crews prepare for magnum launch. Expected active combat zone. All ships prepare for Kromus reactive force."

The same command echoed across the battle group. Dropships loaded with troops, fighters and escorts fueled and prepared to launch en mass. There was a telltale shimmer as every vessel of the group force began raising defense grids; no one was expecting a quiet entry at all.

Aboard the Daedalus, the primary ground force was loading into every dropship that could be readied. An impressively outfitted Sergeant Houston was checking over last minute weapons prep, especially with the newly assigned fresh privates, and making sure his own commanding officer was ready. "Platoon Nine is locked and loaded, Lieutenant." And as if to punctuate those words, the sergeant finished his own ammo load and chamber action before tucking his weapon onto the mag-plate on the back of his semi-powered assault armor.

"Surprised you aren't using the suit you keep hidden under your bed for this." Lieutenant Halbrook gave a faint smile as she made sure her own M6 was loaded and ready. A helmet found itself slipped on over her short cropped brown hair, and as she tapped the wristcom display on her left arm, she gestured for Houston to keep alongside her as they made way toward their own Pelican transport. "Roland loaded into that bucket of yours, Sergeant?"

"I admit I missed the capacity and utility of a proper ÆSIR suit," came the projected voice from Houston's own computer unit on his armor. "But since we sadly couldn't requisition the sergeant's old mark one armor from the Vault on Reach, this will have to do."

Houston gave a snort as he followed the lieutenant up the loading ramp and into the Pelican's hold while members of their platoon hooked themselves into drop harnesses and loaded their own weapons into the storage clamps aside each harness unit. "Stingy bastards wouldn't even give me a damn magn'm or a pulse rifle before we left. How am I su'pose to put a five inch space between those flam'in six sets without a real ÆSIR weapon?"

The chuckle that escaped Halbrook's lips was enough as she made her way to the cockpit cabin and settled into her seat behind the pilot. The grizzled sergeant pulled the MA5I-11 from his back and set it into a storage clamp beside his seat before hooking himself in, giving his lieutenant and the pilot a thumbs up. "Been waiting eighteen years to settle shit with those Klackers. You dumb brutes all set back there?!"

The enthusiastic cry from the two dozen troops in the hold made Houston grin as Halbrook only shook her head and keyed in her wristcom. "Battlenet reports transit back to realspace in five four, three…"

And the flaring exit gates tore open to release the battle group from slipspace, into an deep system entry vector near the fourth planet orbital of the system. A massive gas giant with several moons, one of which was large enough to be a planet in size alone, and perfect cover for the battle group's reentry.

"Destination is three standard astronomical units distance. Three-one-four is running insertion vectors for jump into geosynchronous orbit around the second planet, designation FS-176-2."

The captain of the Daedalus nodded his confirmation as the holo-table displayed the projected slipspace jump into orbit. "All ships, coordinate with Aurora-314 for micro-jump. All fighters and dropships, standby for final preparations."

The various destroyers, corvettes, frigates, and support craft came about the curve of the massive super Jovian planet, catching sight of the distant yellow star that lay five astronomical units away. The Daedalus accelerated ahead, punching back into slipspace mere moments ahead of the rest of its escort group, crossing the distance to their destination in a matter of seconds before re-emerging into real space, followed by the dozen vessels it outsized.

A yellow-brown planet lay before them. Two moons could be seen in orbit, silently following their path through the void of space. It was a perfect entry and orbit insertion, practically academy textbook in precision and execution.

"Captain Ikari, I'm getting no readings from the planet surface of any active cities or structures. There's bioform readings all over the place, but it looks like native wildlife more than anything."

And that was why something was wrong.

"Helm, maintain standard geosynchronous orbit. All dropships, prepare for insertion."

The platforms extended out, each Pelican or Goshawk taking point ahead of half a dozen square built DR-4 Viking dropships. The lead transports slowly lifted off the drop platforms, while the Vikings simply released from loading supports and fired their maneuvering fusion thrusters to make their course. Dozens of the troop landers would arc through the atmosphere, protected only by the flicking heat shields that kept the intense heat and rage of the flaring plasma cone of entry at bay.

"Daedalus, this is Pelican-221, breaching atmosphere and heading for designated waypoint."

"Roger, two-two-one. Standing orders are perimeter around designated waypoint entry once surface-side has been reached, further action is at squad-com discretion."

The flares of phase shielding holding back the heat and friction of atmospheric entry continued to light around the landing craft as they all continued their brute force descent toward the surface. The Goshawks and Pelicans took lead ahead of the brickish Viking dropships, rapidly approaching the surface before firing retro-thrusters and turning the full power of the shipboard repulsor units into a braking force mere meters from ground. Within moments, they were joined by the Vikings, controlled bursts bringing the troop transports around to make landing.

Landing struts hit the surface, digging into the yellow-brown soil and firing stabilizing pikes into the ground. Heavy ramps swung down to unleash scores of armed and armored troops, hundreds now unleashed and moving in loose combat formation toward the waypoint indicated on their helmet visors. The Pelicans and Goshawks soon after dropped their ramps, the carried troops following suit while command staff prepared themselves before disembarking.

"Daedalus, this is Lieutenant Halbrook," came the opening communication as Halbrook took a chance to look around. Her face was full covered with atmosphere stabilizers and breathing filters, same as everyone else who was making groundside. "Arrival at designated landing confirmed, proceeding to entry waypoint with platoon nine."

"Copy, Platoon Nine. Just received word from Dauntless and Admiral Dane, they're on their way and should be joining us within the next few hours. Proceed to waypoint and make entry to set up defense perimeter, and eliminate any hostiles. Again, further actions at squad-com discretion, but contact with non-hostiles is imperative. Apparently the planet has been under Kromus occupation over a standard month now. We need to verify any survivors."

Halbrook blinked as she failed to understand exactly what was going on. The system was nominally charted as a singularity quarantine zone, meaning there was a black hole central mass. Except when they had arrived, no such stellar object was here. Even at two astronomical units distance, a star with a singularity companion would have revealed such. Instead, there was a single brilliant mid-aged yellow dwarf hanging in the sky, just a bit bigger than Sol itself back home. It finally occurred that something in this system was being covered up. But why?

What the hell was this place?

"Ma'am, switch to private frequency TEAMCOM alpha-sierra three-seven-niner." That was Sergeant Houston. "What I'm about t' tell you is class'fied and considered black coded."

Black Coded. That meant Advanced Warfare. What the hell had they gotten her into? Halbrook nonetheless switched to the advised frequency and muted her external speakers to keep the conversation private. "TEAMCOM channel set. What's the story, sergeant?"

He hesitated, making sure they were the only ones on the private frequency before he continued. "Lieutenant, we're on a planet that the Chozo call 'zay-bus'." It wasn't exactly how the Chozo pronounced it, but it was close enough for him. "We were last here about twenty-three years ago when the Kromus prev'sly tried to invade." Sergeant Houston paused to let it sink in. The wide eyed expression of Lieutenant Halbrook as it hit her didn't take very long to tell what kind of shock this was. "We came ahead of a Kromus invasion team, with a hefty San'hel'i task force as our back up, DAW put a big black out on th' who'e thing and all us there were sworn to secrecy, b'cause it's a Chozo planet with a livin' population on it."

"So this isn't just a drive out job, it's a rescue mission." Pieces fell into place as they and the other squads and platoons approached the designated waypoint. It was carved into the side of the mountain, a wide entry path that ended at a three meter wide door panel. Halbrook glanced to Houston, then nodded just before he took point position and moved forward to approach the door panel and its adjoined keypad.

A few taps at the keypanel, and Sergeant Houston took a step back while sweeping with his MA5I. "Entry interlock is clear," he reported, now going further in and halting at the second entry door. "'kay, Roland. I assume you still have that slicer pro'col loaded?"

"Requisitioned and active before we left Reach, Sergeant." The interface unit on Houston's wristcom lit up as it began scanning the secondary door lock. "Already in. I'm assuming that we are disabling auto cycle protocols as well as containment and decontamination processes?"

"Don't need to get held up five at a time," came the grizzled response. Seconds later, the inner doors hissed and released to open. Houston gave a grin as he looked back at his lieutenant. "See? Maybe this won't be so hard after all." After a moment, he turned back to the inner entry and proceeded to make his way inside the quite city. Behind him followed the troops that had unloaded from the dropships, now moving to sweep the ruined and quiet underground city. It took a few moments as Sergeant Houston looked around, not sure as to why he had a sudden sense that something was wrong. Even as several squads would pass him, Houston just got the innate knowing that something in their situation wasn't right.

"Roland, do a wide spectr'm scan, run motion trackers as far out as they c'n pick up."

Despite the lack of an avatar projection, the facial expression and reactions he would have given were evident in the tone of the AI's voice. "Sergeant, do you suspect a set up?"

Silence. More of the Confederation troops filtered in, sweeping the broken city, but finding only rubble and debris. Besides the filters of their visor functions and the light projectors mounted on weapons and helmets, the only other illumination was what looked to be dim emergency lanterns embedded into the cavern walls. No bodies, which struck Houston as very odd considering that this city was supposed to have a decent sized population. It certainly had so when he had last been there over two decades prior.

"Sergeant, I've run a full scan with what sensory equipment I have, but it's not very reliable. There's too much urthic and chromium dust particles still in the local atmosphere to get an accurate-"

"Chromium?" His snapped reply stop the Macro AI in mid-sentence, and as his head turned back at the entry lock, then back into the city, something seemed to click. "Roland, we never detected chromium anywhere on Zeb's, let alone in in the region around the Chozo Nest city when we were here with Cap'n Aran twenty-three years ago. Where the hell would it have-"

There was a shifting of rock. Most might not have heard or thought much of it considering all the debris, but Armstrong Houston wasn't most humans. He was an ÆSIR. His senses and physical aspects were enhanced, twice as good as a top condition human in comparable physicality. Even without the powered armor that shared the program name, no ÆSIR soldier ever lost that edge, not after only thirty years.

And no one who had fought the Kromus face to face ever forgot the smell, the presence. This wasn't a defense fortification insertion. This was a forced entry operation. The Kromus had already been here. More than that, they were already here. Entrenched in.

Already in control.

"Lieutenant, we need to fall back now."

"We're pushing in, sergeant, we have survivors to search for."

The private frequency be damned as he triggered his full external com speakers on his helmet. Halbrook may have held the officer rank, but he was senior NCO and had been here before. He'd fought the Kromus face to face, seen their burning eyes first hand. Reprimands could come later. "Everyone, pull back, now! This isn't an entry, it's a lure!"

And just as one of the forward troops turned to verify, a horrendous crack of energy discharge echoed just split seconds before she was flung through the air and came crashing down, several feet away from where she started, in a lifeless heap. Her armor smoked from where it had been blasted open, melted plates of titanium and padding twisted from impact and the sheer heat of what had struck her.

There was another crack as a second bright yellow beam of roiling energy surged out of the dust and shadows to cut down another of the human soldiers. There was shouting now as efforts to regroup were taken, but chaos would insert itself as the debris would shift and tumble when the blackened shellplates and burning quad-set eyes of a Kromus emerged to reveal itself. Smoke was wafting from within its pincer claws, and as the ends open to reveal the still glowing biological emitter node hidden within, a brilliant glow was all the warning before a third crack and discharge of the bioenergy plasma beam would signal the assault.

Dozens of glowing points now could be seen, singular waning before the energy bursts began to rain down at the humans. Panic began to set in as several squad-commanders were hit, though it was the panic of a furious retaliation and not fear. Small spheres were thrown from a number of the more dexterously limbed Pirates, spheres that seconds later erupted into plumes of hot plasma. Screams filled the air as men and women were burned alive by the inferno set loose, while the various kinetic and energy weapons that the human soldiers were armed with quickly returned fired.

"Daedelus, this is Halbrook, we are under assault and facing heavy opposition! Need extraction ASAP, they already have the whole place fortified!"

Silence. No reply came as Halbrook checked to make sure she had coms. No signal jamming that could be recognized, and the TEAMCOM was still alive with other units shouting orders. From the sounds of things, outside the mountain city was just as bad as inside. Hostile seemingly appearing out of debris and shadows, the entire area already heavily entrenched by the Kromus. They had wasted no time in the month they had been here, and whatever delays had kept the message from reaching ConFleet had cost them all, dearly.

But she still had to try. "This is Field Lieutenant Yasmine Halbrook, calling Daedalus Battle Group! We are under heavy fire, no way to evac!" A crackle now, but no answer. "For god's sake, someone tell me what's going on up there!"

She heard a clank, a series of beeps, and turned just in time to see the small plasma grenade roll within a matter of feet of her, then felt a crushing force hit her.

---

The situation in orbit was no different as dozens of Kromus ships were now encircling the Confederation battle group. Two of the smaller corvettes had already been reduced to floating fields of debris, while the destroyers and remaining battlewagons were struggling to bring their own firepower to bare. Brilliant blue-white particle beams laced between the confederation ships and their Kromus foes, burning though many of the older pirate ships like they were butter, but the larger newer vessels were plowing through with crackling shields and unleashing their own weapons fury.

It was aboard the Daedalus itself that the chaos reached its peak. The deep buried combat command center was a flurry of action, orders barked while the holographic image of the biomechanical Aurora Unit brain center was wavering with each impact against the ship's struggling defense grids.

"Captain Ikari, we're receiving distress signal from ground side. They're being swarmed sir, half the infantry is trapped in the underground while the other half is being hammered on the surface!"

A growl came from the captain as the ship shuddered from heavy weapons impact. "The damn Kromus set this whole thing as a trap! They used Dane's informant as a lure, but how the hell did they build up their forces so fast and fortify their position in the system so well in only a month?"

Another rumble, and then an alarm as the holographic tactical display showed another of their battle group's corvettes succumb to the Kromus onslaught. The older vessels from the first war were easy enough prey for the Daedalus, quite true. But for four ships already destroyed in the Confederation group, only one of the new Kromus vessels had been taken out in return, and it had taken everything the sixty-eight year old destroyer had in order to do it.

They had been hiding behind the moons. Dozens of them, from the oldest surviving war era frigate type to the unknown new assault ships that had been seen only in the Concordia's flight records. It was a disaster, one that told the Confederation forces that they had been expected. This had all been a trap, and they had fallen right in.

"Signal ground troops that we're under heavy fire ourselves, and they need to find shelter to bunker into. We need to get out of here and signal to Sol that we need reinforcements before they-"

A violent shudder threw Captain Ikari off his feet. It took him a moment to stand again, but as he finally rose up, he was greeted by the tactical projection of what looked like a massive spaceborne blade. Mass estimates were off the charts, sizing numbers larger than anything outside the single centuries old CSO megaship that the Sangheili possessed. And despite being only a rough fifth the size of that monster of a vessel, the image he saw was no less terrifying, if not more so.

Almost seven kilometers in length from engine ports to blade tip. Bristling with point defense and capitol class armaments, while an escort of innumerable fighters formed what looked like a cloud of gnats about it. Fiery red beams laced out from its defense guns, slicing through one of the lighter Confederation destroyers like a razor on paper. A chain of following beams incited a chain reaction that tore the smaller vessel apart, leaving only debris in the destroyer's wake. Moments later, a massive beam erupted from one of six large ports that were clearly the emitters for an array of accelerated particle cannons. The crimson surge of light was almost instantaneous in crossing the vacuum of space, crashing against the shields of one of the heavier destroyers, only for a second such beam to power it's way through and cut the warship in half.

And then the flaring explosion consumed the destroyer, leaving only half a dozen of the Confederation warships still intact. It was turning now toward the Daedalus and what remained of its battle group, unleashing the swarming cloud of fighters even as the other emitter ports of the energy projector array situated around the blade structure of the ship began to glow.

"Four-one-three, relay Cole Protocol jump directives to the remaining fleet and get us out of here!"

"You are not authorized to initiate those commands."

The words from the holographic avatar brought a horrified silence to the combat command center. Captain Ikari looked slowly at his first officer, then back at the projection of the mechanized brain unit. "Four-two-three, relay orders and enact Cole Protocol directives. That is a direct command under Confleet-"

"Your command authority has been rescinded under the directive of Central Unit Three-Zero." The glowing amber projection suddenly deepened in a crimson red as multiple screens displayed a countdown. "Auto-destruct has been authorized and initiated under the directive of Central Unit Three-Zero. Good-bye, Captain Ikari."

The hecto-megatons force explosion that claimed the ship moments later wasn't even felt beyond a brief instant by the crew of the Daedalus. It saved them from the sight that followed of the rest of the battle group being laid to waste by the massive blade-like vessel that was even now recalling its fighters and preparing to blockade the planet.

TO BE CONTINUED IN
ZERO MISSION​

 

[ChozoHuntress]

Well...now that Ive cross posted all 26 chapters of book 1...and given some cool down time...please, anyone reading, dont feel afraid to give feedback, questions etc etc. Mama birb loves the interaction and discussion. Helps get the muses going for continuing book 2. Lol

 

[ChozoHuntress]

Figured may as well post some of myn artwork to show what a number of the characters are supposed to look like, including Shaded Whisper and the Kromun variant of the Pirates.


Shaded Whisper -




Kromun Soldier caste -




Samus in her base armor(still a WiP)
A collaboration of sorts. The main body was drawn up by a friend of mine as a commission, but the face was giving him trouble as he's more of a mecha/non-humans artist, so i helped out a bit with the head, and have been working with the raw line art here and there.
-




Samus in Academy PhysTraining gear (WiP)
Again, an older work in progress. This one is meant to depict Samus during the Academy flash backs in a physical training jump suit. Mainly still the boots and layering in a gear belt that Im working on
-