Re: Akreonic Reconnaissance

[Offizier Necro]

Things seemed to be going well at first. It seemed that the reptilian under stood the message at first, but the results were clearly contrary to what most of the humans were expecting and striving for. The shocked look followed by the ceasing of communication and the initiation of an aggressive charge seemed to imply the start of the Freemen's first battle in the void. Addy looked at the static-filled television for a few moments as the chaos began to unfold... and seemed pretty satisfied with it all. Welcome to the true man's world.

As the bulky television-broadcasting equipment was hauled in, he informed them that they needed to put it back alongside the regular film camera and the folding furniture. The muscular men sighed, but were startled back to work once the Herald publicly announced that everyone "should probably go head to combat stations" and "get ready to party". With that announcement, missiles began getting loaded into the launch tubes and people across the flotilla began securing things and otherwise preparing for battle and possible emergencies.

The Freeman ships began thrusting out of the way of the predicted path of the 'murder cube' (as Addy referred to it), for two reasons. One, it takes an equal force to stop a moving object as it does to move it to begin with, so the hulking mass would likely have trouble chasing after the purpose-built and -engineered corvettes. Two, it would likely allow better ability to target the pirate fleet with minimal risk of the primitive homing missiles hitting the allied alien vessel.

The three bigger Freeman ships formed a 'ring segment' at a good distance from the pirate fleet and fired a large volley of missiles toward the pirate fleet. The missiles had automated guidance to the nearest large object upon reaching a calibrated distance, and would detonate upon getting too close to the target or being too damaged. The payload was a shaped charge that would fire a superheated jet of thermite mixture at about 5000°F (2760°C).

Meanwhile, the smaller Freeman vessel with more maneuverability quietly remained behind its three big sisters. And all the while, Addy was playing some dissonant music over the loudspeakers.

[The Clans]

The kinetic barrage does little more than create deep dents in the hulk's armor plating, having little effect in this early stage. However, the human missiles burn holes in the plating and rend and tear the plates off of it, showing the empty scaffolding underneath. Nonetheless the weaponless ship continues on its collission course. The smaller ships, however, make token efforts to move out of the way of the missiles. Their beefier burners allow them to easily move out of the way of the missiles, but make no attempt to get further away than necessary to pass them. Most of the smaller ships are blown apart in the first salvo.

Despite, and because of, its hulk the box ship has no problem keeping up with the smaller and less advanced corvettes in the frictionless environment of space. As it barrels its way into the human flotilla, slabs of armor plate slide back to fire harpoons into the flotilla to keep them from escaping without risking further damage to their hulls. The large equipment meant to cut and weld together metal beams in space fire up in preparation of cutting through whatever gets close. A swarm of space suited bodies in open skiffs spill out into the surrounding space to attach themselves to the hull and make use of their personal welding torches.

Whether out of recognition that the humans pose the greatest threat with their homing murder missiles, or out of simple impotent rage and horror that comes from seeing several vehicles full of comrades be wiped away in an instant, three of the remaining four combat shuttles tear themselves from their busted formation to haphazardly fly toward the human fleet, leaving only one to charge at the machinegun nest of a ship without support.

Six more ships exit the hyperlanes, one of comparable size to the alien corvettes with 20% more mass and a larger build. The other five ships are part of a tight formation independent of the larger escort. Both sets of ships are of a sleeker design in comparison to the box ship, but still angular and rugged. The armor, where it is visible, is obviously incorporated as part of the design rather than haphazardly slapped on.

The corvette's engines fire almost immediately as well as its forward guns, shooting shell after shell across the system and into the back of the box ship. The five other ships stay behind in the relative same spot, loosening their formation to make themselves harder to be hit.

Within the span of ten minutes a transmission originating from the fleet broadcasts to the alien ships consisting of a hasty computer rendered animation showing the rough representation of each combat ship shooting at the box ship with only a few frames of animation.

"I really don't see the point in all of this there's no need to waste a whole rig just to-" yells the distressed Seeker Virtuula before getting cut off by the resigned and tired Warboss Ar'valiim.

"Every salvaging flotilla has been assigned a rig in case of-"

"Salvaging?! Is that what you think I do?! What all of this equipment is for?!"

Ar'valiim sets aside his sweet smoke stick and takes a breath of fresh air before tearing into the uppity science officer after muting the scientist's mic on his client "I won't pretend to understand what you think you're doing. What I know is that every flotilla has been assigned an escort in case of bandit attacks over a month ago. And over the course of two months of ignoring transmissions you've lost 60% of your crew and officers rummaging around in glorified graveyards that not even outcasts would wander into without a bomb implanted in their head. So, for whatever reason, Command thinks my crew is more expendable than yours and that my talents are better served watching you like a damned hatchling instead of killing bandits. No, I'm not even going to call you that. Hatchlings will at least sit down and shut up if you tell them a story, and I can still see you ranting at nobody. You're free to operate within your mission parameters, and only that. Welcome to the world of oversight."

"That's all well and good, slayer, but your goons and gangs have no place doing the job of seekers!" She fires back at nobody, the call having been dropped. It was more for her own psyche and pride than for anyone to actually hear her. Her mission was to scan every planet and asteroid she came across in an unsurveyed system like a glorified tool, report in and relay findings back to command like a a computer monitor, and to drop everything at the drop of a hat if Command wanted her to like some kind of slave. This was nothing like she had been promised. The reclusive astrophysicist was promised total and free autonomy to analyze any strange anomoly she saw fit, but if anyone had actually told her this no one was claiming responsibility for it. She would rather be back on her surface observatory. It was all very humiliating.

It took a good few days in hyperspace to arrive in the system, long enough for initial tempers to cool down. So what if a bunch of armed goons wanted to poke around abandoned stations and ruins instead? Better them than her fellow seekers, but better her fellows than herself.

When all six ships arrived, a quick scan relealed that a construction ship looted from the dockyards of Suxur was engaged in combat alongside several distribution freighters engines multiple vessels of unknown origin. "It looks like we're going to see some action after all. Fire the engines and stage for boarding."

Alarms ring out over the ship and whine five times before going silent. Technicians and boatswains hurry to man their stations in preparation of maintaining the ship in combat. Flight crews check over their gunboats and boarding shuttles while the marines and pilots that man them sit and rest outside of the hangar in meditation to clear their minds for the coming combat.

"Ar'valiim sends one simple transmission to the science flotilla before launching the first kinetic shell at the bandit commandeered vessel and taking off toward it. "Stay back, Seeker, this is why I'm here." Down below the gunnery crews load their next shells for immediate fire from the magnetized guns.

While the corvette springs into action, Virtuula sits stupified at what she is seeing. Alien vessels. Actual alien vessels. Not alien skeletons, not pits full of preserved tools and toys, not even degenerated tomb dwelling troglodytes. Actual living aliens aboard ships in their prime. Or at least some kind of automated ships with the coordinates of their homeworld buried within its computers. Who would be the best candidates to send over in case they went into emergency warp...? She breaks out of her thought process and flags down the nearest ensign "Those ships are attacking bandits! Bandits of our species! Make sure they know we're different! Make aaaaa.... Rendered images of our ships firing at theirs! Us and the alien ships shooting at the bandits! Do it quick!" She lets go of the ensign to send a reply transmission to her escort, "You had better not so much as scratch the paint on those other ships!"

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari ship tries to burst down the lone ship with several rapid firings of their cannon. Once the lone ship is down their intention is to make an attack on the large ship with the harpoons, attempting to target the harpoons, one releasing "friendly" ships and two penetrating deeper into the presuming that there is not additional armor behind the armor that was moved to allow the harpoons to fire.

In addition to their combat maneuvers they send back the the animation from the new alien flotilla with the Xengari ship highlighted in blue. Attempting to convey a sense of agreement or acknowledgement.

[Offizier Necro]

The human flotilla was surprised by being successfully caught by the cuboid hulk, and was greatly concerned at the harpoons and the swarms of aliens trying to cut into the ship by hand. This was identical to the Age of Sail's boarding actions, so the command assumed it was some kind of boarding action rather than considering the alternate possibility of "steal plating and run off with it". Thankfully, the defense gunners on all Freeman ships formed a counter to this tactic of manual boarding despite being originally designed with point-defense in mind. The remotely-controlled ball turrets fired rifled ammunition at the aliens in space suits, intending to kill, puncture, and/or scare off as many of them as possible. The armor-piercing rounds could only hit their own ship at very low angles, reducing any self-damaging shots to undamaging scratches.

Meanwhile, another salvo was fired from the larger trio of ships away from the hulk they were attached to. The missiles tried to home in on their mother ships and began turning immediately to deal friendly fire, but by the time they had circled around and turned to beat their parents in their ethanol-powered rage, the hulk was closer and thus was targeted instead. The hulk was honed in on by the thermate missile swarm, aiming towards the sides with the majority closer to the rear.

The arrival of new ships resembling the pirates was concerning, but as they were trying to help kill the pirate fleet it wasn't protested. Enemy of my enemy and all that. The transmission seemed to communicate that they thought similarly at the very least. The human flotilla sent back a modified copy of the newcomer's animation as a reply, with some lines and spikes drawn in red ink moving from the Freeman ships to the pirate box to indicate missile paths and overexaggerated explosions.

[The Clans]

The single ship bum rushing the Xengari ship attempts to twist and turn and pull off a variety of maneuvers to evade incoming fire, which works only for a time. The first shot to hit it disables it, and the second pops it into loose scrap. The Xengari fire also manages to break some of the harpoon cables keeping the human ships tethered to the box ship, the accuracy of their small guns allowing them to fire into a few of the hidden gun ports and disable them before the covering armor can be replaced.

The thermite missiles continue to burn and tear the exterior armor plating off from the box ship, revealing the scaffolding and vulnerable completed decks beyond it. The remaining three cobbled strike craft intercept the missile firing human ships. They narrowingly forget to swing around and fire their engines in the reverse direction. They scrape along the top of the ships, nearly getting flung back into space until their own harpoon launchers sink into the larger boats' plating and winch themselves closer until they sit pretty on top of their targets. Once in position their commandeered construction equipment starts to tear an entry hole to board from. The operators of the larger dying hulk flail their cranes and grinders at the ships closest to them while the harpoon winches whir and grind to ratchet the human ships closer and in range. The space suited pirates attempt to crawl, kick, and some air jet their way to the other side of their targets to escape from the withering fire of the ball turrets and set up on more vulnerable points, while those that have nowhere to go attempt to give their welders cover by firing their personal weapons at the ball turrets. However their gyrojet rounds do little to nothing against the ship armor, relying completely on random chance to hopefully knock out the cameras from volume of fire, though most drop dead before they can reload another ten round magazine.

"Slow our approach, exploit the gaps in the rear armor and take out the engines and fire into the scaffolding. We're not going to risk a boarding reclaiming that thing, not with the light show going on. They may think that we're vultures and turn on us the second the construction ship is down. We're going to bank on the boarders weakening them to the point where they aren't willing to turn their guns on us if they do believe we are. It's better that they make it out alive and damaged so they'll be prepared to repel this shitshow of a boarding rather than a proper one."

The corvette slows its approach, continuing to lob shell after shell into the back of the construction ship to similar effect of the Xengari guns, except where their shells hit true and exploit the weaknesses opened up by the human missiles.

Meanwhile back on the science flotilla, Seeker Virtuula, having calmed back down knowing that the outcome of the battle is completely out of her hands. She personally monitors the responses given back to her by the alien ships. One was transmitted back with no alterations other than for one of the ships being... blue. The second transmission was just a static frame with wavy lines and explosions. "What else did I expect? They sent a hatchling's drawing and a hatchling's drawing is what I get back. Of course. Wait..." She sits up and leans forward, comparing the two transmissions, one in the same quality sent out with one model highlighted in blue, and the other retransmitted in a more archaic resolution with drawings on it. Could these ships be separate entities? Was this how the Yuxu entered the galactic stage? Making first contact with two species at the same time? The odds of that happening were... staggering. Were she biologically capable of shuddering, she would have in realization at just how improbable that was, but yet was happening before her eyes.

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari Corvette continues it's assault on the the large ship, though it stays clear of the ship from the third alien fleet. It's targets ship from openings into the ship to the harpoons and their winches, attempting to free the "friendly" alien vessels. The Xengari Corvette keeps moving, circling and diving around the large ship.

In addition to the fighting, the Xengari attempt to make scans using their Gravitic sensors to detect areas of higher density materials such as would be near power plants and other locations of rarer materials. They run these scans on all near by ships not just the ones they currently fighting. Their intent seems to be gathering more information about the alien ships, possibly for future military planning.

[Offizier Necro]

The Freeman flotilla failed to notice the gravitic scans being run on their ships due to inferior technology, but they certainly noticed the aliens' successful breaching of their hulls. Air was rapidly forced out of the penetrated sections and into the void, but automated systems ensured that only the air of the breached rooms were compromised and not the rest of the ship. A rare few crewmembers were injured in the depressurization from being thrown around into objects, but most noticed the torch-cutting and braced themselves fast enough. After depressurization, they kept their breath exhaled (air pressure inside + vacuum outside = ouch) while scrambling for emergency closets and such containing emergency space suits (basically just wetsuits to give counter pressure) and air tanks. It would do them little good, however, as they were easily gunned down by the prepared and armed boarders. As the boarders entered the gravity-less external portion of the ships, an announcement rang out across them over the loudspeakers:


"ATTENTION CREW: Aliens have boarded our ships. This is not a drill. We have boarders. Repeat, we have boarders. They seem to have anatomy and equipment similar to our own. All crew in the external section are ordered to reach the nearest shelter or armory depending on assignment. Remain wary of flashes or other signs of the boarders cutting through. All crew in the internal section are advised to be prepared in the event of sudden deactivation of the central centrifuge."

The crew proceeded accordingly, with those authorized to engage in combat equipping themselves with combat spacesuits (steel 'knight armor' with internal 'padding' to keep the air sealed in), oxygen supplies, and firearms (just imagine AK-47's). Gunpowder has more oxidizer than fuel anyways, so no modification is necessary to use such weapons in space.

Meanwhile, officers worked panickedly around the Herald. The Herald himself kept collected and was actually somewhat excited to have some justified conflict again. To the dismay of his subordinates, the Herald ordered that the Freeman ships should not attempt to escape just yet. Instead, he ordered that the flotilla should fire another salvo of missiles, this time concentrated specifically on the revealed portion of the cuboid ship on the side opposite of the allied scout ship. The full might of the fleet was unleashed from the side facing away from the cuboid and the boarders, sending them away. The mess of harpoons forcing the cuboid to the flotilla was being used as an anchor by the flotilla to inhibit the cuboid ship's movement and chances of escaping the swarm's strike at its rear innards.

As the humans' first space battle approached a crescendo, Addy placed another song over the loudspeakers as background music to keep everyone pumped up. An even more roundabout reference to taunt the pirates behind their back to their faces. Wondrous.

[The Clans]

(Abbreviated because it is late and I had to retype after a misclick wiped out my previous post.)

Once the interior of the ships are depressurized the remaining pirates move in, hauling their cutting equipment in after them. Any stray crew members the pirates find are immediately gunned down, stabbed, slashed, and beaten with repurposed maintenance equipment and a few actual weapons. When an armored suit is encountered and ammunition appears to be almost pointless, a few of the more well equipped pirates take advantage of the zero g environment by jumping over their less equipped brothers toward the ceiling at an angle and kick off to fling themselves at the tin men in an attempt to, if not knock them over, then wrestle their weapons out of their hands. Those unfortunate enough to fall prey to disarmament are dragged back to have their armor forcibly removed with cutting torches, but are thankfully stabbed once soft enough material is exposed.

Outside the pirate mothership explodes from the combined arms fire, sending chunks of slag and scrap scattering.

With the ship down the newcomer corvette comes to a stop a good distance away while both it and the science flotilla comb through data gathered from their own scans in order to prepare for a potential hostile encounter. They freely exchange their findings with each other, meaning the science flotilla, with its more sensitive equipment, shares the bulk of the findings.

"This stolen construction ship is confirmed destroyed and irrecoverable, Warboss. The remaining bandits are aboard the alien rigs, however they do not possess the numbers to do anything other than to be annoying and die. It appears that most of the rig is a spinning anti-boarding component. They can be confined to a few external rooms, but if they attempt to reach the bulk of the crew, they will be shredded."

Ar'valiim hums as he taps the ashes of his smoke stick into a tray and considers what he has been told. "Good... We have no reason to assist and show our hand. We'll only board if systems start to go offline."

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari ship, after the Pirate mothership is destroyed, moves towards a boarded human ship and stops relative to the ship outside.

Once it has arrived near it's target the Xengari ship launches a small shuttle towards a point where the pirates cut into the human vessel. Once there the small shuttle hovers outside the entrance, eventually releasing through an airlock, on the shuttle, a large amount of small robots or drones. The robots move through the breach, they are carrying some netting and webbing, presumably for  carrying some larger easily. Once reaching bodies of Pirates a few of the robots take the bodies and put them in the webbing, carrying them back to the shuttle. However, most of the robots move down the corridors following the bodies and breached doors chasing after the pirates. Presumably for live samples.

The Robots are spider like in appearance though they have only six legs and two manipulator arms, as well it is fairly obvious they are robotic. The webbing/nets that they carry appear to be meant for launching at a target. They are made of a mesh of advanced material though likely would stand up to a cutting torch or another such material. The two manipulator are are completely focused on holding this netting. The nets also have small magnetic bearing on the end of net string, likely to seal the net once it has hit a target. The spider bots move down the corridors by using the walls and other such crawling along them using magnetically locking mechanisms on the ends of their legs allowing to move on the floor, walls and ceiling. As they move down the corridors they mostly ignore human bodies or other humans, sweeping around them as a robotic tide moving trying to get closer to the pirates. It is also important that they are not sweeping over the bodies as such would break their magnetic connection to the metal of the corridors and thus cause their main method of propulsion to be useless.

Meanwhile the Xengari ship is not quite targeting the lone alien Corvette, merely having it's guns pointed in a direction near the Corvette, and powered and ready to lock on and start firing.

[Offizier Necro]

At the cuboid pirate vessel's destruction, the Freeman flotilla suddenly began thrusting away from the smoldering wreck, with rootless harpoons still attached and waving in the void. A sense of victory washed over the humans, but the battle wasn't over just yet. The boarders were now the primary concern. However, it was additionally worrying that the allied ship seemed to dump a horde of machine spiders into the hull, but at least they seemed to be only attacking the pirates for now. The stealing of the reptilian corpses was somewhat bemoaned by the more scientifically-minded as it would prevent researching the pirates' equipment and biology, but there was little sense in fighting free help.

The human forces suddenly ceased sending soldiers after the pirate boarders, for two reasons. The first reason was obvious: The machines seemed to be handling the situation rather well, and with no bloodshed, assuming that the spiderbots weren't actually the people of the alien scout ship. The second reason was the pirate boarders themselves: They were not equipped very well for the situation. Their weapons seemed to be incapable of penetrating the metal armor of the knights, and they needed to advance by cutting through walls room-by-room. It was assumed that they carried weaponry that couldn't pierce metal for the same reason as law enforcement aboard airliners using hollow-point rounds: Depressurizing a room and damaging vital equipment is not good.

Instead of going after the pirates, the defenders changed their plan to simply letting the pirates come to them. They lacked reinforcements, so it was only a matter of time before they had to charge blindly through walls. Their use of air tanks and having painted their biology on the sides of their ships (indicating noses, AKA breathing passages) made it certain they needed air, and their speed/size/sapience combined with not bursting into corrosive flames upon touching anything indicated they used oxygen and not ultra-reactive fluorine gas or inefficient reductive atmospheres. It was only a matter of time before the pirates ran out of oxygen supplies, and the swarms of drones only made it so they might not even have the chance.

The soldiers simply braced themselves in rooms the pirates would have to enter to advance, and kept their distance from the walls and aimed at whatever holes they would have to make to enter. In other words, spawn camping.

[The Clans]

The pirates that are still alive do not go down lightly. Most of the pirates surrender out of horror while others fight to their last against the strange machines with bullets, welding torches, and suicidal daring.

The war rooms aboard the corvette hum with activity as corded phones ring to relay information from the intelligence department and put up on screens for the benefit of the senior officers. A similar scene plays out far away on Yuxun among the general staff.

No one knew exactly what to do. One one hand outcasts and exiles were considered the lowest form of life, on the other they possessed the same genetics as the rest of the species. Gene tailored bioweapons were a very distinct possibility to explain taking dead and live prisoners. The threat could be ended here and now, at the cost of sparking a whole host of new threats in a theater of war unknown to them.

It was decided that, since the ships were shown to be capable of receiving transmissions, an image of three soldiers dressed in their fatigues saluting would be transmitted. No discernable marks of rank or status, no military equipment, nothing that overtly shows implies military equipment or tactics. This was fiercely opposed by those who wanted to show full regalia or combat gear to showcase their strength.

The science flotilla starts broadcasting beeps in an orderly pattern. Two beeps, a distorted beep, two more, a different distorted beep followed by four beeps as well as the images of the Yuxu symbols for 2 + and 4. Each ship transmits its own signal with a different pattern of beeps to every visible ship to maximize the chance of someone aboard recognizing what the transmissions have in common, all of them representing simple addition problems and their solutions. The fifth ship transmits a problem without the solution to see if a response will be transmitted back.

[Joe Joerson]

The Spider bots take many casualties but there are many more. After the capture of the last pirates the robots retreat back to the shuttle, carrying Yuxun dead, the living in nets, and the actual guns that they carried, they seem less interested in the maintenance equipment. Upon reaching the shuttle and the captured being brought through the airlock, the weapons and bodies were stored away in compartments. The Living Yuxun Pirates are taken and put into various cages, not released from the nets however. The cages have a sort of electronic lock, the nets are hung around the cages, not simply left on the floor, likely being fairly uncomfortable for the captured Yuxun. After all are secured the shuttle moves off towards the Xengari corvette, docking with it.

Once the shuttle has docked with the Corvette, the corvette pulls back from it's close position to the Human ships, mostly moving away from both Yuxun and Human ships. On board the Corvette the dead Yuxun are callously put on hooks and conveyor belts taking them to be dissected. The Weapons are also put on conveyors, though different ones leading to other areas of the ship. Large floating robots are present reminiscent of some marine life, they have many arms under them and seem to floating using magnetics and the metal of the ships construction. They start taking the living Yuxun, still trapped in the nets, to cells. The cells are completely sealed, the only outside communication being a protected viewscreen and speaker inside each cell. In each cell there is a raise platform, presumably to act as a be of some sort. In addition to a small bowl and small faucet, presumably for water and other meals. There is a small light and likely various kinds of recording and bugging equipment. Once reaching the cells, the marine-like robots lift singular trapped Yuxun above the cell, opening a hatch, and dumping the Yuxun through the hatch opening the netting to allow the Yuxun to fall into the cell. Once the Yuxun is in one of the cells, the robots close the hatch, lock it and continue the process.

After all the living Yuxun have been dumped into cells, various images and sounds came through the viewscreen and speaker attempting to get across the idea of the prisoners speaking in exchange for water. Those who cooperate receive a paltry amount of water from the faucet into the bowl, those who do not simply receive more insistent measures, for now.

Outside the Xengari corvette with relations to the the Yuxun transmissions, after speaking with various Xenologists on board the bridge has decided to respond with this simple message: The solution to the problem, to the fifth ship only. As well as after a small delay, two beeps, then three beeps, then five beeps, seven beeps, eleven beeps, and then a large silent area followed by seventeen beeps after that transmission ends. Someone might recognize the missing prime number from that sequence, 13.

[Offizier Necro]

Once the boarders have been hauled off and the scientists finished mourning their lost research opportunity, the crew left the shelters and the fighters put away their combat gear. Meanwhile, maintenance technicians in space suits began soldering and welding steel plates to the outer hull to patch it up. It was a relatively simple fix, aside from the need to prepare an EVA mission to do so.

While the space men did their space jobs, the bridge was brimming with activity from all the different radio transmissions being sent simultaneously. It took a bit to separate all the different broadcasts, but eventually it was managed. Most of it seemed to be just beep noises, and a couple of strange symbols. Eventually it was discerned that they were attempting to share... math problems? It was simple stuff like two plus two equals five four, so the ship broadcasting an unanswered equation probably was implying it wanted an answer rather than broadcasting it before figuring out the answer to its own math problem. The equation was answered with beeps in the same format as received (actually using recording snippets played back).

Once this was sent, the Freeman flotilla sent another transmission: An audiovisual transmission in black-and-white, with the Herald standing infront of a blackboard. Still in his casual clothes, he gave a polite smile and a clenched-fist salute resembling that of many movements from Black Power to uppity ancient Assyrians. He then followed by mimicking the noises of the transmission with his writing, loudly making one quick 'dot' mark for each numerical beep and leaving empty spaces for the plus- and equal-signs. He then followed by drawing the represented number above each grouping of marks, saying the name of the number aloud, then did similarly for the mathematical signs between the integers. He gave another salute, before changing the course of the program.

He put down the chalk stick and wiped the residue off his hand with a handkerchief, then grabbed a stringed instrument from off-camera. He then began to play a song for the reptilian aliens, just as the Freeman fleet had sent a recording of music before.

[The Clans]

Most of the captured pirates fight their way through the entire process while others are completely unresponsive. While in the cells the bulk of them either cooperate or shift curiously around their small cell. Even fewer sit completely still after they've picked themselves up. Some of these indulge the instructions and either open the visors of their enviro suits to slurp the water or leave it be. Some search their cells with a greater intelligence than those who are merely looking to satisfy their own curiosity. Within seconds of each other they remove an ice pick-like weapon from within their boots or under their pantlegs and systematically stab and disable the various bugs and monitoring equipment (those that they find from individual competence) one after the other before they get to work on stabbing and puncturing where they had entered the cell from, surprisingly poking holes in the metal due to their monotipped spikes. They twitch and dart around at every noise that isn't them, ready to jump out if their hatch opens and attack whatever lay beyond, and to attack any appendage that may come in from the wall to subdue them.

Those assigned to the task of assessing the other beings' knowledge and capabilities through mathematics go practically buzz over the audio-visual feedback from the human ships. Instead of blasting their signals to every single ship, they refine it to only transmitting to the ship they had received their return message from. They mimic the human setup, using smart boards whose screens they can write on as well as flip to images if they so desire, as well as a group of their tight robe wearing scientists whose energy give off that they are very eager to be making contact. They quickly attempt to relay more problems to build the foundation for subtraction, addition, multiplication, parentheses, exponents, integers, making sure that all parties involved mutually understand the basics of mathematics and their symbols to prep for higher tier calculations. For these early lessons they utilize a few waving children to do the actual writing of the new set of problems, to give them something to brag about later in life. In the midst of this they send over what appears to be a periodic table with music played over the image. A low intensity example of their music, as was sent to them, albeit not live and with more instruments in order to show off how many instruments they have without being overly flashy.

Meanwhile, a communications officer aboard the corvette has a very different idea as to what the first Yuxun song sent to an alien should be. The themes of being mighty warriors from a unified planet would be lost on the humans from not knowing the language. Those on the bridge hoped that they had not inadvertently declared war and would instead be taken in good spirits.

As they do with the humans, they send more mathematical problems to the Xengari, though through the standard beeps with no visuals or additional audio. However, due to hypothesizing that since the human ship likely met the Xengari one with music, if not now then at some point in the near or distant past, they decide to include the original song sent to the human fleet in addition to their periodic table.

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari corvette, in addition to answering and sending mathematical equations, send a return transmission to the Yuxun vessels after much deliberation.

On board the Xengari Corvette, the large floating robots gradually move around to the cells, removing the hatch then going onto another cell to remove it's hatch. After a hatch is removed spider bots start pouring into the cells, launching a net at the Yuxun and removing them from the cells. Once all the Yuxun are removed they are moved to a location out onto the cargo bay. During this movement various robots attempt to remove the picks, stopping before breaking hands and arms. There they are all moved and set down in a line, surrounded by swarms of Spider bots. A large screen is moved in carried by the floating robots, on it is displayed various animations and such of Yuxun like figures removing suits like the Environmental suits. The Yuxun are then dumped out of the netting. After a half minute any Yuxun who do not comply are approached with Welders and Cutting Saws.

Back on the Bridge, the Science Officer now confined to quarters due to a disagreement on the nature of the Aliens and tactical measures, between her and the rest of the Bridge. In addition the Captain orders movement further from the alien vessels and preparations for transiting back into hyperspace, heading on a roundabout route back to Xengari space, in the case of being followed.

[Offizier Necro]

Once the holes in the hull were sealed, whatever scraps of gear and gore left over from the pirates were recovered and put into sealed containers to be later examined by the science staff in a controlled environment. The thought of there being a tracking beacon or similar device never entered the thoughts of the crew, as it seemed the pirate fleet was destroyed and too crude to mount a successful retaliatory assault on Haven even if they did. The rooms holding the gear didn't get air pumped back into them as they would be breached again during the proper repairs anyways.

Meanwhile, the flotilla at large was happily communicating. The next round of mathematics was deciphered fairly easily since the previous patterns had already been established, especially so with the science ship being stealthily relayed the transmissions via FTL comms. It was also interesting to note that the reptilians had smaller versions of themselves working underneath them, which could indicate a caste system, child labor, or even just a "bring your child to work day" event. However, something that the Freeman flotilla could not decipher was the periodic table of elements they were sent. The Freeman version was in a slightly different format and had fewer entries, so the strange table was misinterpreted as the reptilians' flag with the accompanying song being their anthem. The conclusion was not solid enough to justify sending the abstract Freeman flag, which could potentially have an offensive symbolic meaning in the reptilians' culture, so the "flag and anthem" were not answered.

Instead, mathematicians stepped into the next audiovisual broadcast and were taking over for the Herald since the computations would likely become more complex. As for the audio, the Herald played a more intense song to reflect the reptilians' second song choice.

[The Clans]

Having gotten the attention they wanted, the escaping pirates set to work trying to jump and crawl out of the hatches to better fight with and wrestle the spider bots. Despite being disarmed and damaged, the injured aliens yell, threaten, and cajole the formerly docile members of their species into a wild rage. The others draw all manner of hidden holdout weapons and fling themselves at the robots presumably to this sound. They attempt to crawl and hack and kick at weakpoints in an effort to expose wires to rip out and to turn the cutters and blades back against their mechanical captors.

Upon noticing that the Xengari ship is leaving, the scientists conclude that it is purely a military ship and does not have the personnel required to conduct in depth exchanges, and is ignored. Mainly because interacting with the humans is more exciting, even if they look a little grotesque.

The scientists are a little perplexed at the periodic table being ignored by the human ships and retransmit again, showing visual examples of each element when possible along with visible models of each atom and their atomic numbers. They attempt to convey the length of their civilization in terms of the half lives of radioactive isotopes The scientists at last transmit the purpose of the mathematical exercises, a mathematical model of the location of their empire and homeworld in relation to the current system and other stellar landmarks with a map of the local hyperlane network.

Once the return song is sent back, the comms officer who sent the initial song ceased to be in hot water. The science flotilla transmits the anthem of nonviolent Dreamers while the military ship escalates.

[Joe Joerson]

The Robots mostly retreat or move away, leaving room for the Yuxun pirates to group around their cells but otherwise they still cover any doors or hatches. The Robots would fight to keep the Yuxun pirates from escaping and otherwise disobeying. After a few minutes have past the doors open and robots, bipedal and seemingly focused towards combat, one of it's arms has an integrated gun inside of it, come through the door and they start shooting and attacking the Yuxun pirates, the other robots join in the assault. This time clearly not taking prisoners.

Back on the Bridge with both the silence from the Third Group Aliens and First Group as well as the less than satisfactory results from capturing some of the Second Group Aliens, the Xengari ship charges it's Hyperdrive to leave. In addition there is a growing sentiment of satisfaction among the crew, that their forefathers were right. Any aliens that would be found, would be hostile and a threat.

[Offizier Necro]

In all of the excitement, the scout ship was not prodded very much by the Freeman flotilla. As it seemed to just want to leave and probably report home, no one decided to risk annoying it when there was already a fully cooperative alien race present that was confirmed to want interaction.

On that note, the reptilians' periodic table of elements was finally confirmed to be a table of elements and not a flag or map once the reptilians demonstrated examples of the various entries. In return, the Freeman version of the table of elements was broadcasted. The half-life dating received was likely indicative of the age of their current government, their current ruler, their unification, their time in space, or some combination of the above. The Freeman flotilla took a gamble and assumed it was the government, and broadcasted the age of their young government (not even a decade) in isotope half-lives.

However, what was the most notable of all was the broadcasting of their homeworld. The hyperlane map was not figured out at this point in time due to the warp-based FTL of humanity, resulting in the hyperlane map being guessed as just a demonstration of the local galaxy with the lines between systems being either reference points or just the shortest jumps between stars, or something along those lines. The location of their empire and homeworld were figured out, however, leading to incomprehensible excitement. The bastion of humanity finally found the address of a galactic neighbor! Despite the risks involved, the Herald immediately ordered an attempt at communicating the Freeman capital world: Haven. To communicate this, they broadcasted the reptilian star chart and drew an arrow from the current system pointing at their home system before circling it, then transmitted a photograph of Haven itself.

All the while, more Terran music was played in the background of the transmissions as a response to the reptilians' music.

[The Clans]

Having been given time to regroup, the pirates set their scavenged tools to work, cutting and tearing panels off walls to fashion into makeshift fortifications and to try and create a tunnel out of the cellblock that doesn't go through any of the doors through the robots. They stay behind their fortifications during the assault, those on the edge attempting to grab and throw robots into the middle of their formation to be dismantled, many losing arms and hands in the process. They fight with the ferocity of cornered animals, and ruthlessly exploit any lull of activity to rearm and shore up defenses, especially to tear off any captured gun arms for their defenseworks. They're worn down through sheer attrition, not making it easy to be put down.

The return transmission from the aliens makes a few heads turn. While they themselves had sent over a proper star chart, they only received a circle in return. Were the aliens deliberately keeping information limited? Was it a trap of some kind? Or... was this their only system? A full evaluation would have to be done in order to confirm, but the belief that they had found a starfaring civilization inside of the first system it had ever explored was the least popular opinion aboard the ships. They send back another transmission with rough drawings of their own ships and the alien vessels inside of the current system, then them inside of their home system, indicating that they wanted to travel together to the alien homeworld.

[Joe Joerson]

The Robots continue their ruthless assault until all Yuxun are dead. Once they have been eliminated the bodies are removed to Xenology, the brains attempted to keep intact as the freshest sample of such due to the rapid degradation of neurological cells after death. Due to the fierce fighting the Xengari crew of the ship, or least those who keep the power that their decisions matter, have decided that this species is dangerous. Very dangerous, likely the only way to remove such threat was removal of the Aliens from space. Whether simply destruction of any technology complex enough to be destroyed by electromagnetic pulses, race slavery or a most complete and unchangeable solution. In any case the Xengari corvette charged it's hyperdrive and left.

However not before transmitting one final message, whether as threat, promise or plan they do not decide. A Small white background surrounding their symbol, the symbol of all Xengari. The very insignia of the United Lordships. While the aliens might not yet know of the meaning of the this symbol, the Xengari would soon teach them.

Xengari Transmission:

[Offizier Necro]

The Xengari flag wasn't deciphered as being specifically a flag, and could have been many different things. It could have been some kind of alien map that was rendered useless by the monochrome televisions, or perhaps even a declaration of war since it looked like an explosion, bullet hole, or mace. The Freeman flotilla interpreted it as some sort of goodbye symbol since it left almost immediately after transmitting the image. Oh well, nothing to do about it now but hope it wasn't a death threat.

[Yuxu-Human storyline continued in this thread]

[The Clans]

Before fading into hyperspace, rather than drilling out at the edge of the system, the Yuxu retransmit the image of their soldiers saluting, followed by a full broadside into space (no where close to the Xengari ship if it hasn't already left).

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