First Contact

Chapter 913: Edge of Twilight

War makes monsters of us all and forces us to embrace our own monstrous nature in order to carry out something monstrous we claim to be valorous, ValesAwk, Rigellian Philosopher, 1228 PG

The Hellspace portal clanged open with the sound of great iron doors forced open by a battering ram. Flames reached out into space in defiance of physics, as if space itself had not only caught on fire but contained the necessary gasses to burn.

From within the portal emerged a massive black starship. The primary hull was a black disc, lights burning sullenly on the black metal that shone with twisted and eye-watering runes. It was connected by a short, thick swoop of hull to the lower hull, three cylinders jammed together and wrapped with heavy spiked chain. From there, two more pylons reached out, thick at the base, narrow where they connected to heavy engines. The engines were rapped with black chain and wire, all of it burning with crimson runes.

Chains tried to hold the craft back even as hands, no longer wispy but now charcoal colored with red cracks in it, reached out to try to hold onto the craft or perhaps pleading with the craft to be taken with them. The chains shattered, the sound crashing across the stellar system despite the lack of atmosphere.

The entire craft was jet black, as black as space, lit here and there by Hellspace fires burning on the hull that quickly guttered and went out.

The Hellspace portal collapsed with the sound of iron doors clanging shut.

The Dakota had arrived.

"Red alert! Shields up! Evasive maneuvers!" Pikark called out, his voice tight with urgency. "Nice job, Mister Chekov, she's right where you said she'd be!"

"Thank you, Captain," the Terran playing the part of a thousands of years old character said, feeling the very real flush of victory flow through him.

The viewscreen cleared to show a massive ship, nearly the size of the Eurasian continent on Old Earth and a thousand miles thick. A ragged edged rough oval, an egg with the narrow end chopped free to provide the anchor for hundreds of engines.

"Phasic shielding is engaged and holding at 14.75%, Captain," the Worf said from his combat command position.

In the old vids, the old series, the Worf would have been standing. Hell, in the Trekkie LARP ships only a few years back, and on most ships still in service, Worf and Yar Class personnel still stood behind a podium during starship battles.

The Dakota was different. A Murica Class warship, originally in-spec heavy cruiser, was now a class all of its own and so far out of canon that the crew knew they'd never be able to return to the LARP that had taken over decades, even centuries, of their lives.

But that was before.

And this was now.

"Scans show it's her. She's dropping troops on the planet," the Margelle called out from her station at the sensor systems. "Long range sensors show the planet is heavily industrialized and is not able to put up much of a fight."

"We'll change that," Pikark growled. "Tell The Elephant that we're prepping him for launch."

"Aye, sir," the Uhura said, her hand on the side of her vac-suit helmet.

It was only a few years ago that the bridge crew would have been in duty uniforms, unarmed, unarmored. The bridge would have been pressurized and kept at a comfortable temperature.

Now, they all wore adapted Confederate Navy vac-suits, carried sidearms, and worked in a bridge that was totally in vacuum, the atmosphere pumped away.

"The Elephant reports ready for launch," Uhura stated.

"She's seen us," the Margelle stated. Her character was from the Dominion Wars Saga, a difficult class to spec into, only the best sensor techs and close quarters combat specialists could qualify. She had nearly two hundred years in the class and had been in the Top Ten of ladder ranked.

In the last year she had been pushed the limit by the Dakota's mission.

"Time to range?" Pikark asked. He grabbed the 'oh-shit' bars on either side of his command cradle and pressed his feet against the 'oh-shit' plate to bleed off his tension.

"Two minutes until we're in range of all weapons. In range for torpedoes, missile pods, and the Pike Shot Cannon," the Worf stated from where he was strapped into his chair and watching his command consoles. "Five minutes until we're in boarding party range."

"Tell the Yars to get their men onto the mat-trans pads," Pikark ordered. "This is all or nothing. We won't be recalling them if the Omniqueen jumps again. It's her or us this time."

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the muted beeping of the consoles.

"The Yars acknowledge. Reply message is as follows: The Digital Omnimessiah protects," the Worf said.

Pikark just nodded, focusing on the screens around his command cradle. They burned crimson and amber, the full color spectrum displays tossed out the airlock after the Phasic Shade Assault, but had all the data he needed.

The stellar system was simple. One stellar mass in the yellow-green life-cycle, two planets, then a green zone planet, then another planet, an asteroid belt, and four gas giants with the usual assortment of moons.

Which meant there were no tricks, no sudden surprises, that the Omniqueen could spring on him.

"Hellcore energy transferred to phaser arrays," the Worf called out. "Hellcore discharged. Warp engines on standby."

"Moving at three-quarters impulse, approaching point six-two light speed," the Sulu called out, his words slightly lisped from the scar down the side of his face.

"She's maneuvering," the Worf said right as Pikark spotted it. "Breaking orbit, looks like she's heading for us."

"Looks like she knows this is it. There's no escape this time," Pikark said. He smiled, a cold and ugly thing.

The Dakota jumped forward, the massive engines at the core of the lower trio of cylinders lit with a cold blue light around a reddish core. The shields were thick enough to blur and distort the Dakota's lines to any viewers.

The Omniqueen stared at her monitors that surrounded her, deep inside the hull, in a newly crafted chamber that was nearly dead center of her great ship. Miles of battlesteel armor surrounded her, shock absorbers that would cushion a collision with a supernova blast wave cradled her, and she had her last three Overqueens around her.

The rest, and most of the Queens, had been killed in the previous months of dueling with the hated ship that once again had found her.

It had harried her, chased her, hounded her heels no matter where she went.

It galled her to admit it.

She feared that ship.

No longer did it shine with polished metal, or gleam with brushed steel coloration.

It was black, with burning red runes, and used the burning hyperatomic plane to chase her, despite the fact that the Lanaktallan had ensured that no living creature could use the hyperatomic plane and live.

Yet the hated ship still headed for her.

Still sought to destroy her.

She knew better than to reach out with her powerful psychic abilities. Knew better than to try to shut down the brains of those on that hated ship.

The ship was made of hatred and crewed by insane creatures who knew only hate.

"There is no sign of that terrible weapon being readied, oh Great Omniqueen," she heard one of the Overqueens state, her voice full of confidence.

"That overconfidence killed six of your sisters when that ship fired the cannon and nearly blew a hole through my ship," The Omniqueen snapped.

"Their phasic protections are fluttering," another Overqueen, this one younger than the others, cried out with glee. "The damage we inflicted in our last engagement is still hampering the vessel."

"Do not be stupid," an Overqueen rebuked the younger one. "We have seen that trick before. They are attempting to lure you into reaching out and touching their minds."

"We are the Mantid, master of the communal mind and phasic powers," the young Overqueen shot back.

"And they are something new, something terrible, a master of rage, hatred, and fury," the same Overqueen answered. "Now, mind your duties ensuring the engineering caste are operating at optimum performance and leave the battle to your betters."

The young Overqueen returned to guiding and monitoring the green servitor overmind, hiding her discontent at the rebuke.

I know we're in range of your weapons, so why are you not firing? the Omniqueen wondered.

The ship's lines were slightly twisted, almost organic looking in places, baroque appearing in other spots. Here and there brushed metal poked through the black hull plating.

She could read the ship's name, in proper Mantid runes, on the forward section of the disc.

NX-80102DX DAKOTA

Those runes haunted her dreams.

"I WANT THAT SHIP DEAD!" she screamed over the telepathic link with such force that more than a few Omnispeakers collapsed, their phasic spinal cords and brains turned into slurry. "Ready the guns!"

Pikark tapped the rune on his console, opening shipwide Captain's channel. There was the odd whistle.

"All hands. This is your Captain speaking. We have pursued our foe for nearly three months, but this time, we are ready and she cannot escape for long. We are the Rulebreakers. The exception. We can never go back, but that's not in our mandate. ONWARD!" Pikark said. Without closing the channel he turned to the Worf.

"GUNS READY!" Pikark yelled, his voice carried through the whole ship.

"The Elephant is ready for launch. Flight path and landing angles already loaded," Uhura said.

"In range of all weapons. Five minutes to extreme range of enemy weapons," the Worf stated.

Pikark looked at his monitors.

"The Elephant is cleared for launch. Launch package," Pikark ordered. The Uhura relayed his orders and there was an odd whooshing sound that made the Dakota tremble slightly. A streak, fired from a modified hyper-launch fighter system, lanced out from the Dakota, heading for the planet the Mantid ship was moving away from.

"Enemy is in range of Yar Patrol," the Worf said.

"Send in the Yars," Pikark ordered. He looked at the Sulu. "Angle us to keep our distance open. She's in range of our guns, we're out of range of hers, lets keep it that way."

The Sulu nodded. That was the standard manuevers until the missile and torpedo volleys got too thick and/or geometry forced the two combatants close.

"Yars out," the Worf stated.

"Any sign of her signature moving?" Pikark asked.

"Negative, Captain," Margelle stated. "Same cluster, deep amidships."

Pikark smiled again.

"Load the Lorca Cannons and the Georgiou Battery," Pikark ordered. He pressed his feet against the oh-shit plate in anticipation. "She better hope she's hiding under the bed instead of in that command center."

The ship shuddered slightly as weapons went to rapid fire.

"Torpedo salvos alpha through epsilon away," the Worf stated. He could taste venom on his tongue as the stress and anticipation made his vestigal venom glands pump out toxins to mix with his saliva. "Missile salvos one through six away."

"Let's see how she likes new tricks," Pikark smiled.josei

The two ships headed toward one another. The massive ship of the Omniqueen filling space with missiles fired from batteries measured in square miles. The missiles would arrive without terminal guidance, their drives dead, only with the terminal manuevering systems operative, but there was always a chance the Dakota would be in terminal range. Torpedoes were launched by the Omniqueen by the tens of thousands, all of them would arrive with dead sticks and proximity guidance, but again, the Omniqueen was hoping for quantity overcoming any luck.

The Omniqueen snarled as the hated ship launched volleys of torpedoes that vanished from her ship's sensors. The six volleys of missiles did the same and she knew, through past experience, that each missile was really a pod full of missiles that would fire an nCv round at the end.

The Elephant, launched at nearly .6C, made minute adjustments to its flight path to avoid any of the weapons starting to fill realspace. The real estate of any stellar system was vast, so The Elephant had room to maneuver.

Both ships shifted as they closed, the Omniqueen rolling her ship to bring other weapons to bear even as the just fired weapons went into cooldown and reload mode after burning through their munitions.

Space was filled with jammers, howling Nikelbak 'Look at this Photograph!" missiles, false images spawned by Gygax Class Mirror Image Missiles, and missiles that just put out huge volumes of static and chaos.

In some missiles slavering warbois pressed their digital faces against the seekers, gnashing their teeth with excitement as open I/O ports on the Omniqueen's ship began to emerge as the missiles closed.

Both ship's point defense went to rapid fire, the Dakota clearing away the missiles that were any threat, the Omniqueen's ship trying to hit the missiles before they got in range.

Sprint drives kicked in on the Dakota's missiles, jumping from .65C to .99C in less than a second. Other missiles engaged hyperdrives, vanishing from realspace, to emerge only a kilometer form the Omniqueen's vessel.

"Hyperatomic plane interdiction shields holding, Oh Queen!" one of the Overqueens cried out in joy as the missiles and torpedoes suddenly dropped back into realspace instead of impacting and/or detonating deep within the Omniqueen's ship, bypassing armor and shields.

Before the Omniqueen could feel any joy, the missiles detonated. Not in the standard brimstone awls that cored into the ship's armor to allow a bursting charge to detonate deep within the armor or ship spaces.

These erupted into showers of burning white chunks, the artificially generated tesseract warheads allowing the missiles and torpedoes to put out more mass than they should have been able to carry.

Anti-matter white phosphorous with anti-matter FOOF cores.

AKA: Dickhead rounds.

The burning particles, when they hit, reacted to the armor, stripping away huge volumes of it. When the energy released by the collision of matter and anti-matter faded, the craters burned with white light as the enhanced FOOF laughed at the lack of atmosphere and just used the hull plating itself to fuel the fire by turning it into vapor and burning that.

The Omniqueen didn't bother screeching. She knew the hated ship didn't care about her wants or desires.

It was coming to kill her.

Beam weapons from the hated ship crossed entire light minutes in only seconds, raking at her shields, which were visible to the naked eye as they struggled to deflect or absorb the titanic amount of energy.

She no longer was enraged by how much power those beams had, by how much firepower such a small ship possessed.

She was just determined to kill it.

The two ships kept closing.

Now the Omniqueen was getting reports of heavily armed and armored boarders, some with armored vehicles they were driving inside the hull of the Omniqueen's vessels. Platoons, companies, battalions of those blasted insane lemurs.

She could feel them, feel their rage moving through the hull.

Reports were flooding in of the lemurs heading for the massive engineering spaces, heading for gunnery control, seeking out Omnispeaker Chambers.

And slaughtering anything that tried to put up a fight.

Computers started throwing errors across the network and the Omniqueen knew her ship had been boarded by the lemur's terrible phasic digital hybrid attack programs that tore her through security systems like tissue paper.

The ships slid closer.

"My Queen, hyperspace interdiction fields are failing!" was wailed over the link.

She knew they would. She had felt the bright snap of the crew manning the interdiction field generator die only moments before as a lemur boarding team just drove their vehicle through the wall and fired on everything in sight.

It didn't matter.

She would prevail.

Boarding shuttles launched from the Omniqueen's ship, heading for the Dakota.

The Elephant reached the planet, grav-spikes slowing it and angling it for atmospheric entry.

Pikark watched it all, trusting in his crew, as the battle grew more intense.

The Dakota optimum range for its heavy guns.

"FIRE MAIN GUNS!" Pikark called out.

The entire Dakota shuddered, jolted, and Pikark felt like the ship was running over a rocky road.

The tri-barrel C++ cannon, labeled "Georgiou Battery" emptied its magazine in a rapid fire burst, the struts and recoil compensation system howling and twisting.

The Scotty watched it carefully and was relieved that it was only stressed. No cracks.

The Lorca Cannon fired. A single shot. The struts howled and crewmembers were knocked down two levels up and down as the shockwave shook the entire ship.

The Pike Shot fired, the shattering mirror effect lancing out from the front of the ship.

The Scotty ordered his men to replace cracked parts, shore up the main compression buffer spring housing on both weapons, and ordered the pistons wound with heavy warsteel wire.

The Mantid missiles got close and detonated, guiding lances of pure energy mixed with phasic energy into the Dakota's shields, which rippled and flared.

But held.

Pikark was grinding his teeth into the plastic mouthguard he'd popped into his mouth only minutes before as his ship rocked and shuddered from the massive impacts across the primary shields. For a few seconds the Dakota was completely engulfed and hidden in a flare of enemy firepower.

When it faded, the Dakota was unmarred.

The Omniqueen started to scream in rage.

The C++ Cannon shells, barely skimming back into realspace inside the Mantid ship, emerging more as a particle wave than mass, exploded. Tens of cubic miles of mass just vanished, converted into hellish boiling particles.

"Decoy Chamber Two is just... gone..." one of the younger Overqueens gasped, her 'voice' muted with shock.

The Lorca Cannon shot hit.

The massive plasma wave phased motion gun hit and blew a crater in the Mantid ship sixty miles deep and nearly four hundred miles across, the remaining hull white hot for nearly ten miles around the crater.

"Decoy Chamber Five, Six, Seven, Nine, are all... gone," another Overqueen whispered.

The Pike Shot hit, the munition enhanced, improved.

It blew clear through the mantid ship, detonating inside the hull and the explosion lancing clear through the ship to blow cubic miles of armor out the other side.

The blast knocked three of the Overqueen's down and made the lights in the Omniqueen's chamber flicker.

The Overqueens stared at the Omniqueen as they realized something that the Omniqueen had realized but kept hidden.

They could lose!

-----

The Elephant hit off the coast, a huge fountain of water gouting up for nearly a mile. The waves were seventy feet high when they hit the coast.

Seismic sensors detected something massive, weighing tens of thousands of tons, approaching the coast.

When it breached the water, the Mantids that had rushed to the beach to defend against whatever the Hated Ship had launched had only a chance to gawk before the massive construct lunged forward.

It was a massive construct of black warsteel with a cupola on top. Guns pointed everywhere.

Guns that went to rapid fire with computer controlled accuracy.

From the huge vehicle a single sound erupted across both the audio and the phasic spectrum.

NYAH!

I have made landfall. My Kentai Commander rejoices as our guns tear apart the Mantid before they could even react. We plot a route to intercept the largest force of Mantid troops my sensors spotted during my landing phase.

I am Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL.

The Mantid are the Enemy.

And the Enemy only exists to be destroyed.