First Contact

The four ship squadron moved silently through the darkness between the orbit of the system's 12th planet and the thick haze of the Oort Cloud that was scattered with debris from the formation of the stellar system.

The three ships were small, lightly armed and armored, with small crews and a tiny complement of Marines. Their battlescreens were lighter than some tanks, their weapons were lighter than the main guns of some Mechs, and their armor was thinner than that of some civilian ships.

It was their eyes and ears that were more powerful than almost anything else.

Temporal scanners, string-seekers, particle sensors, and much more passively examined space around them. The massive sensor arrays being towed behind the ships were sensitive enough and well enough calibrated to detect a stray hydrogen atom and plot its origin point.

Despite their fragility they moved without fear. Their guns were on standby, their battle screens down while their particle-screens didn't even glimmer, and the majority of the crews were at rest stations.

They moved through the system without fear,

They were Terran Space Force Naval Vessels.

There wasn't anything for the three destroyers and the light cruiser to fear. Anything strong enough to challenge them would have a strong enough reactor or energy source for the sensitive instruments to pick up at light minutes away.

The ships were specially designed scout ships, upgraded with multiple ways of FTL travel, with fast charging systems enabling the ships from going from cold drives to jumping to FTL in bare single digit seconds. The sensor arrays were a new design, undergoing final field testing in the system.

The light cruiser and its escorts were under full silent running. Whisker lasers and paired isolated quark communications only.

The ships weren't even black holes. Black holes have mass and can be detected by their effects on their surroundings.

These ships didn't even do that.

Carefully calibrated and monitored graviton generators offset their mass, adaptive camouflage kept them hidden, energy was masked and hidden, no communications outside of verbal direct face to face communications even on board.

The crews moved in silence, talking quietly, despite the heavy sonic baffelling in the hull.

Each ship had four complete shifts, all some of the best Space Force Navy Testing could provide.

Currently, Captain Lisa Talikik Davion was on duty, watching her bridge crew work. Her EW officer suddenly looked up, motioning. Davion wished the datalinks were still online, but the linkages were all down, the network broadcast system disabled.

"Captain," Lieutenant Cordell said, her voice quiet.

"Go ahead," Davion said.

"I've got something. It keeps kicking across us. Scanners, across the Precursor spectrums and then some new ones that don't correspond with any of the known Precursor scanning spectrum," Cordell said .

"Estimations?" Davion asked.

Cordell held up her hand. "That's not all. This is an anomaly," Cordell said. "The Type One and Type Two Autonomous War Machines have several differences in their scanning frequencies and methods. These new ones, they're using both."

"Both? Isn't that interesting?" Captain Davion asked. "How many scanning sources?"

"Just one. It's heavily cloaked, operating further in the Oort Cloud than what we've seen before," Cordell said quietly. "Could be a Goggle-Imp out there peeping around with his googly-eyes."

Captain Davion leaned forward in her command chair.

There was three weeks left on the testing, including tests further in-system of the weapon systems.

"There's been no whisper of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines in over a year. Nothing. Now we've got one here," Captain Davion said softly. "You're sure it isn't an old damaged one still carrying out its last orders?"

Lieutenant Cordell shook her head. "No. This one is using Type One and Type Two systems. I can detect an active Hellcore on standby but it's heavily shielded. A Type One Hellcore, Type-Two Stealth systems."

Captain Davion thought about it.

Break the test run and go after an obvious anomaly that might exlain the absence of the Autonomous War Machines or keep up with the test and not reveal anything about the systems.

"Go to battle stations, full stealth," Captain Davion ordered. "Alert the other ships, chatterbox link only. Let's box him in and see if we can bring him in intact."

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Surveillance Unit 2832ae99675ae5 slowly scanned the system in front of it.

Stellar mass readings, normal.

No planetary communications outside of previous scanning.

All systems nominal.

Continuing system sweep.

Stellar mass readings, normal.

No planetary communications outside of previous scanning.

All systems nominal.

Continuing...

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Technical Sergeant First Class Lavent drifted slowly, looking at the cards on the inside of his suit visor. Technical Captain Clark had opened with a pair of fours, 887 had raised with only an eight and a jack showing, while 316 had opened with a sixes. Lavent had a three and a nine showing with two other nines in the hole.

"Raise," he said.

887 folded.

316 flashed an icon of a cigar smoking cowboy and raised.

Captain Clark raised.

The four Marine team drifted toward their target, their suits recording everything. The two Techborg Marines holding hands to enable communication, the two green Mantids plugged in through their cybernetic bladearms.

Strapped to Lavent's chest was a stasis box full of dense hash warbois. Strapped to Clark was a demo-charge just in case.

887 looked around, checking the star positions, and then went back to waiting for the others to decide if they were in or out.

He knew he should have cheated.

The Goggle-Imp had no idea.

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Surveillance Unit 2832ae99675ae5 slowly scanned the system in front of it.

Stellar mass readings, normal.

No planetary communications outside of previous scanning.

All systems nominal.

Continuing system sweep.

Stellar mass readings, normal.

No planetary communications outside of previous scanning.

All systems nominal.

Continuing...

-----------

Captain Davion leaned back in her command chair, looking at her Bosun.

"They're only a few minutes out," her Bosun, Gunnery Sergeant John Iktikik Verun said.

"This better be worth breaking our testing," Davion said. "Or this will be the last command I hold."

"It hasn't changed its scanning pattern and the Hellcore is still on standby," Lieutenant Cordell said.

"Let's hope it works."

-------------

SFC Lavent had always had that sixth sense. It had carried him through all kinds of situations. He paid attention to it, always listening to those senses that warned him when there was no possible way that he would have had that split second warning that he was about to be dropped in the shit.

He felt it now.

"Abort," he said, braking. "316, tell them to warm up the string-drive. We're on our..."

The feeling got more intense.

"316, have them mat-trans us back, now!" Lavent ordered.

-------------

"Ma'am, signal from Lavent, he says go to battle stations and request immediate mat-trans retrieval. He's warning us to fire up the string-drive," Lieutenant Astler said, looking up.

Captain Davion knew of Lavent's reputation. Knew that he had a preternatural sense of ambushes and things going wrong.

"Go to battle-stations, all ships. Order Mat-Trans to get them out of there. Navigation, get us out of here, string-drive!" Davion said, sitting up.

The lights flashed, going red. Across all four ships crews moved with a purpose, getting to the battle station, putting on their armored vac-suits.

Captain Davion watched as each ship went to full battle ready.

"Tell me we've got them," Davion asked her Bosun.

The Bosun looked at her panel. "We've got them."

"Lavent better have..." Captain Davion snarled. "Get him up here to..."

"STATUS CHANGE!" Lieutenant M'kul barked out. "Six, twelve, MANY MANY INCOMING HELLJUMPS! ONSCREEN! MORE INCOMING! MANY MANY SOURCES!"

Davion looked over at the main display.

Dozens, hundreds of Helljump points were coming across the system.

"Talk to me, Guns," Davion snapped out.

"Two hundred Harvester Class signatures!" Lieutenant M'kul barked. "STATUS CHANGE! More incoming!"

"Get us out of here! Now!" Captain Davion yelled out, coming to her feet.

All four ships vanished into nothingness without even a sparkle.

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The Shadow Which Ends All surveyed the other Harvesters and their minions as it exited the Hellspace rip. It noted that they had exited the hyperatomic plane without letting loose with their normal shrieking battlecry.

It gave the orders.

Do not destroy the life forms. Seize the high orbitals. Begin the preparations.

The Balors would need Shrieking Arrays.

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CONFEDMILINT

They're back.

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