Re: Warning: an unknown ship is approaching Haven

[Caspoi]

Suddenly attacks had started to be made on the isolated groups. Enemies had emerged from small and otherwise irrelevant holes on the sides and roof of the ship. Doors had been opened to reveal even more and larger enemies at the most inoportune moment and overall much use had been made of the general labyrinthian feel of the ship, as well as the fact that the intruders had not yet breached the new doors.

Outside the ship was slowing down, not hurtling quite so fast towards Haven any more. Tentacles suddenly extended so as to pierce the hull of the surrounding ships and insert their interior with bases.

[The Clans]

Corps naval doctrine dictated that when marines boarded a ship that Corps Scouts cut into and invade the enemy’s air ducts to harass and cause chaos deep within pirate ships. Given that they were unfamiliar with the floor plans of this alien ship, it was decided it was best not to subject the young apprentice soldiers to the unknown when they had been trained to infiltrate Yuxun ship designs. Because of this there was a reason why the marines kept watch over the vents and the ceilings of the vessel. They were used to carrying out and encountering such harassment tactics.

The smaller bugs were met by shredder rounds from the barrels of some of the Yuxun shotguns, and caustic acidic shells from the barrels of others. Some of the bugs found themselves shot from their high velocity mag rifles, and others found themselves shot with a spray of flechettes fired from the barrels of larger magnetic guns. All who got too close that didn’t die from shot or slug was stuck with their monoedged bayonets and wrestled until they succumbed.

Once the fighting started the the marines at the landing zone jumped to attention and, having no other way to communicate, smacked the backs of their human counterparts and pointed forward toward the door and to the vents to get their eyes trained on the proper places. The soldiers within the landing area could feel the vibrations of machinegun fire rattling the hull of the ship as the captured shuttles tried to cut the tentacles away from them. Their parent corvettes launched a retaliatory warning broadside into the side of the ship at point blank range, the vibrations of which were more easily felt by the soldiers within.

The welders at the door worked doubletime to cut open the emergency bulkheads that separate them from their comrades fighting for their lives and to open the ship again the lifegiving cold void of space. With a burst of decompressing air the door flies back into the landing zone and out into the void.

[Offizier Necro]

The back-slaps were confusing for the humans and were at first taken as an indication to blow the charges, but thankfully the reptilians' pointing corrected the humans' thoughts before a severe mistake was made. The humans readjusted their aims to include the vents and stood ready to open fire. The faint vibrations of gunfire and explosions only served to increase the nervousness of the paramilitary humans, but they stood firm and made sure to open fire on any and all non-allied entities that entered.

Then the humans all got blasted around the room and thrown around chaotically due to the sudden rush of air from the other rooms and the lack of magboots or other similar technology. The lack of expectation for the shock left the humans no longer aiming and prepared for about thirty seconds, but the fact that anything not braced (like a charging enemy) would similarly be inconvenienced almost certainly mean it wouldn't matter much aside from no longer being in cover.  Thankfully, the mining spacesuit padding helped remove any damage that could have occurred from the flying around. The Freeman forces resumed covering their allies in the oxygenless environment once again. They hoped that the retreat or victory could be completed soon so that they could blast the ship into chaos and get home.

Meanwhile, the tentacles of the strange ship began puncturing the exterior sections of the construction ship that sent the shuttles. The other Freeman vessels were very much keeping their distance in order to potentially bombard the alien craft from a safe distance, so they were left untouched. The remotely-controlled ball turrets on the construction ship began firing away at the tentacles in an attempt to sever them and free their parent ship. The construction ship also planned on attempting to thrust away in order to tear itself free, but the Herald insisted on not doing so for whatever reason that he neglected to explain.

In the contrast to the chaotic and violent environment happening aboard the alien hulk, the Herald stood on his own bridge sucking on another small lollipop. Noting the bulky unknown ship's attempts to puncture and ensnare its enemy, he ordered another "math" problem to be sent to the allied reptilian ships. The video transmission was of two photographs, one of the giant unknown vessel shooting tentacles to puncture and ensnare its enemies, and the other of the reptilian pirates shooting harpoons to puncture and ensnare its enemies. The two photos were put into an equation as follows: "unknown vessel tentacle attempts" = "pirate vessel boarding attempts".

Waiting to see how the reptilians would respond to the equation, the Herald waited and watched as the combat unfolded. The missile tubes were kept loaded on the military Freeman ships, but were not fired yet despite the allies' broadside. This further confused his subordinates, but once again they received no elaboration.

[Caspoi]

When their initial charge against the intruding forces were met with only a marginal successs the aliens changed tactics: They would at random open up a door and do a massed charge, including Hunter Castes against the enemy, killing them all and do so with another room, keeping the enemy very much unaware of from which direction they would attack.

Outside the ship dispatched smaller ships that begun charging at the enemy ones, hoping to pierce their outer shell and dispatch more swarmlings.

[The Clans]

(Oi, I didn't say I actually killed any of your guys. I left it up to you whether or not their ammunition could pierce their chitin or not. Does the machinegun fire have any affect on the tentacles? We need details or there's nothing stopping us from handwaving the encounter and blasting the ship to scrap.)

[Caspoi]

[I missunderstood and did not want to raise the issue, Acid would generally not work and neither would shrapnell, a direct hit would pierce their chitin however, but remember that there are more where they came from and they are both strong and fierce for their size. The tentacles are meant to safely contain any liquid inside them and do not present a large target either, again a direct hit from one of your more powerful weapons could punctuate them but Little else.]

[The Clans]

(If you're deploying hunters then I'll have to go and look them up on your page. The only people you can allow to die are your own.)

[Caspoi]

[I don't Think that I have technically killed any of your own]

[The Clans]

They would at random open up a door and do a massed charge, including Hunter Castes against the enemy, killing them all and do so with another room, keeping the enemy very much unaware of from which direction they would attack.

I:

[Caspoi]

[I am just giving their overall tactic, not any specific instances of success]

[The Clans]

The Yuxun marines attempt to grab ahold of their flying comrades. Due to individual preparation and reaction times only a few humans are actually caught and prevented from flying back and from having to reorient themselves. The welders, supported by two squads, move up to keep cutting at the next door to vent the next compartment into the vacuum and save the trapped squads. The trapped marines try to fend off their attackers by taking advantage of the limited channels that the insects can attack them from. They lay down a constant stream of fire for as long as their ammunition holds out, or until a hunter gets within their midst and tears them to pieces. As each squad goes dark the welders stop their work and enter the entry point again to await extraction with their weapons pointed at every possible nook and cranny. The overall feel the remaining marines give off with their body language is that of uneasy tension and terror.

Outside the ship Command attempts to salvage the remaining marines by launching the strike craft of the nearby corvettes. Six fighter bombers move out of range of the tentacles and target the ones piercing the shuttles in order to free them. Command responds to the human transmissions by showing their strike craft launching missiles at the tentacles spearing the shuttles. They then show the away teams reboarding the shuttles and returning to their parent ships while the strike craft and Yuxun corvettes target the tentacles spearing the construction ship.

[The Clans]

(Post order is me, Necro, then you.)

[Caspoi]

[Oh, sorry, I thought that Necron's post was after mine, I can mosify mine if his change something drastically]

[The Clans]

(I deleted it so it wouldn't influence his post.)

[Caspoi]

[Alright]

[Offizier Necro]

The human forces maintained their positions defending the shuttles and remained firm and ready to lay down assault rifle fire on any rushes through the limited number of routes as needed. No hollow points, no acid payloads, no elaborate designs. Just good old assault rifles with good old uranium rounds. The poisonous and self-sharpening penetration of uranium, a Haven classic. However, the armor left much to be desired as a simple blade or bullet would puncture the mining suits despite the padding protecting against blunt force. When the rushes and retreats would eventually reach the final corridor... there likely would be plenty of blood to go around.

Meanwhile, the ensnared construction ship was relaying the communications between the 'ground' forces and the distant military Freeman vessels. This was also combined with the panicked communications of the construction ship itself, who had been punctured by a couple strike craft in addition to the tentacles. The punctured compartments of the construction ship rapidly lost air and caused the nearby crewmembers to be thrown around and occasionally mangled by the depressurization, but the attempts of the remaining crewmembers in the affected compartments to retrieve emergency suits were cut short by being painfully ripped into gore by a wave of swarmlings. Thankfully, the automatic emergency measures kicked in immediately and sealed the punctured compartments as they had in the boarding events of the reptilian pirates in another system, which had the additional effect of putting solid metal obstacles in the path of the swarmlings, including the vent systems since this system was originally intended to protect against the vacuum of space and potentially raging fires or other similar atmospheric issues.

In the distance, the Herald stood aboard his relatively-quiet ship and looked at the information being presented to him while moving his hard candy from side to side in his mouth. Despite the dozens if not hundreds of deaths occurring under his watch, he seemed to remain rather nonchalant at the situation as though it wasn't actually happening or as if it were an everyday affair. With the reptilian allies' reassuring transmission that they would be attempting to sever the tentacles with strike craft, the Herald proceeded to remain nonchalant aside from a small smile like from hearing a bad pun. Not professional, just a pretend-bored demeanor. At least it seemed to be a relieving change of pace to the rest of the bridge, considering that the previous pace was a Freeman vessel getting a new red coat of paint on some of its inside walls.

Any small ships from the unknown vessel approaching the Freeman military flotilla standing in the distance were simply met with a hail of machinegun fire from the ball turrets loaded with armor-piercing ammunition, combined with a small swarm of missiles armed with a shaped charge for blowing all of the explosive energy into a pocket of thermite to inject it into the target burning at several thousand degrees, well above the melting point of just about any known material. While the defenses of the pinned construction ship might not have been successful at shooting down boarding ships before they delivered their payload, the range advantage combined with the higher firepower left a vastly lower chance of the same tactic working on the distant military vessels.

To reflect the threat level of the boarders to the personal safety of the Herald (as he perceived it), he ordered a transmission sent to the reptilian allies to clarify why missiles and bullets were fired before the go-ahead was delivered. Instead of showing anything professional, he started the video transmission with a commercial for bug spray, with a human spraying annoying bugs flying around herself and causing them to drop dead on-camera. This was followed by another "equation", with a photo of one of the bugs and a photo of one of the boarder ships being together. "Bug Boarder" = "Sprayed Bug".

While this was trivializing both the agonizing deaths of humans at the hands of the "bug" boarders and also the fact that the bug spray was recently banned for causing cancer and other health problems, neither of these facts were deemed "important" enough to mention to the reptilian allies.

[Caspoi]

While there were still attacks against all outlying parties and anyone trying to venture deeper into the ship the attacks had started to fall of. there were stillsome noice to be Heard as the the aliens scuttled about in the corridors and the ventilation but for now they seemed to have contended with the intruders fleeing.

Outside many of the smaller ships were destroyed by the barrage, lacking much finesse or technology. the survivors started to draw back to the larger ship, which had started to change it's course to avoid those annoying Little stingers which had attacked it.

[By the way how far are we from Haven, orginally I said it was a month's worth of travel and some time has passed.]

[The Clans]

Once the Yuxun shuttles are free, they dock to allow the marines to board. Trusting the humans to do their part and stay behind to cover their retreat, since the marines took most of the risk in this expedition, they collectively board their shuttles and return to their parent ships. With the tentacles retracting and smaller craft retreating, the daredevil pilots continue to exert void superiority by launching missiles at the swarm survivors to ensure that the retreating shuttles remain safe and out of harm's way.

The human transmission completely perplexes those who grew up on Yuxun, as insect life was a food source. Only those who had vacationed on and own land on the colony of Suxur comprehend the bug spray commercial as anything other than a demonstration of chemical weapons. Even with this insight, Command transmits an upscaled bug spray can attached to the hull of the alien ship and pumping it with chemicals followed by a question mark, trying to ask if they want to spray the ship and leave it intact rather than blow it up as planned.

They also transmit another video to explain the change of plan and to get them to stop firing missiles that may hit the alien vessel on accident. They set footage of the boarding corvette's broadsides and strike craft attack of the tentacles equal to a video showing a group of eight Yuxu in a rocky valley lying on their bellies, almost completely unseen. A quick rapport of gunshots peppering the sand and rocks around them cause them to jump up to their feet and throw down their weapons with their arms in the air.

(I want to say, like, a week or so away? Necro will be able to say.)

[Offizier Necro]

The humans fulfilled their end of the plan and defended the retreating reptilians as they boarded their shuttles. It was fairly easy since the monstrous owners of the ship were no longer pushing their attack. The humans misinterpreted the "let them go away" behavior as simply being regrouping for another final wave, so the humans took a note from their allies and kept taking turns spraying bullets at the empty entrances to suppress the area. Once their allies were safely in their shuttles, the Freeman forces braced themselves for their own retreat. Intending on securing their own survival against the imaginary final assault, they finally blew the explosive charges they had planted on the ship and sprinted (well, quickly jumped around) to their own shuttles to escape with a couple smaller corpses from the enemy.

Unfortunately, the penetrating tentacles caused a significant problem for one of the shuttles: A main coolant line was torn and the coolant had run out since no one was keeping watch of the shuttles. With some quick thinking, the humans hastily redistributed themselves among the remaining shuttles. The abandoned shuttle was given a final task. Since it was still docked, they forced down the acceleration so that it would be stuck accelerating. While this couldn't possibly make any meaningful thrust on the massive ship, it would force the shuttle to build up heat in the absence of coolant and eventually detonate itself in a fireball of shrapnel infront of the exposed ship room. It was honestly more of an act of spite on the part of the paramilitary humans rather than a legitimate tactic of any real value, especially considering how massive the ship was compared to the puny shuttle, but it was done in any case.

As the shuttles fled the scene, the Herald was grumbling in frustration at the communication error caused by cultural difference. While the Freeman corvettes did in fact have chemical payloads aboard their ships, they were corrosive and would not be for leaving technology and corpses intact for examination and dissection. Even if this was desired, the alien hulk would need its armor softened up by thermite missiles or other attacks first in order for the chemical payloads to reach the more vulnerable innards. To snuff out the confusion as to the meaning of the bug spray message, another transmission was sent out: A video transmission of the Herald politely ripping up a photograph of the "question mark next to the gassing idea" transmission to firmly establish that it wasn't the intent. An additional short movie snippet was transmitted of a man writing at a desk and swatting and shooing an annoying bug away absentmindedly. This was then followed by a still of the man swatting away being put as equal to a photograph of a swarm of missiles and bullets be fired at one of the small would-be boarding ships from the arthropoids.

Once this issue was (hopefully) cleared up, the humans obeyed the message of "Let's try making them surrender". The human ships ceased firing missiles at the retreating "boarding bugs" and waited for another transmission or other signal as for what to do next, since firing missiles at the mothership would be a more direct attack and might be viewed as giving no quarter. There was also the issue of the scared human boarders having set off minor explosions unnecessarily in the enigmatic hulk, but nothing could be changed about that at this point.


((No idea. It all depends on how long this battle went on, and the time has been pretty vague. There is ship combat happening in the minutes/hours of the boarding activities despite the ship combat taking days or even weeks, so it's all kinda vague. It could be anywhere from one to three weeks in my opinion. I'd go with one week away.))

[Caspoi]

The ship had once again sent out smaller ones against the enemy in retaliation of the explosion, they have started to pursue the fleeing shuttles and wherever they try to land so as to unleash their creatures on those inside them. The mothership itself countinued travelling to it's destination, unable or unwilling to change it's course. Worked seemed to be commencing to repair the hull so as to not let more air out.

[How large was the explosion exactly? It is important to know both for exactly how fired up they were by it as well as how easily they could repair the damage]

[The Clans]

The strike craft divert from shooting down retreating alien ships to focusing exclusively on taking down those that threaten their shuttles. Those that manage to land inside of the hangar find themselves fired upon by mag rifle wielding crewmen and exiting marines. The corvettes close their small hangars, leaving the strike craft unable to refuel and resupply. The crew of the nearby corvettes prepare themselves to repel boarders while the helm and engineering make every effort to turn their ships around and escape. The strike craft move to assist in keeping the alien shuttles away from the human construction ship so that it can get away.

Command was likewise confused at the new series of images. Upon seeing the increased surge in alien boarding shuttles as a response to their retreat they send back an image of a missile, a crosshair, and one of the shuttles one after the other. The computers and gunnery chiefs aboard the Corps corvettes start crunching optimum firing vectors, and continuously update them while their guns are loaded. Command sends a transmission to the alien vessel by all frequencies that it is able to transmit in, as well as tight beam laser bursts at what the science officers believe could potentially be laser receivers. The transmission consists of a flat drawing of Haven with ships arrayed in a moon shape in front of it, with firing lines advancing on the alien ship as it gets close, followed by explosions on the exterior of the hull.

Three more smaller vessels arrive in the system bearing the same design as the Corps noncombative science ships. One of them sends a transmission to the station in orbit around Haven showing two Yuxu heads flapping their mouths at two heads of the Herald with visible sound waves between them. The heads stop moving their jaws and the waves disappear, followed by the Herald heads opening and closing their jaws farther than they're supposed to with sound waves traveling to the Yuxu heads. This is followed by an image of the ships docking with the space station.

[Offizier Necro]

The human forces were relieved to finally be rid of that accursed ship and could finally relax in their own atmosphere and wind down. They requested permission to dock and prepared to do so, lining up their shuttle. They were denied. A wave of concern washed over the spacemen, and they requested permission again to see if it was some kind of mistake. They were denied permission. The humans began to panic due to the situation, but understood once the construction ship explained that they could not risk opening the airlock while the alien boarding craft were skulking around. The humans deployed some adhesive landing gear designed for asteroid mining, but it worked just as fine for sticking to its host ship until it was allowed back in. It would save fuel, coolant, and precious oxygen to hitch a ride rather than attempt to keep navigating independently.

Meanwhile, the Freeman ships noticed a new round of boarding attempts. This new round was greeted with the same responses as the previous one. The Freeman construction ship fired some bullets from remote-controlled turrets at the boarding ships, but it mostly relied on the reptilian strike craft to defend it. Any successful breaching attempts would be met with the same automatic lockdown system. The construction ship was finally given the go-ahead from the Herald to thrust away from the alien mothership, so it tore itself away from the remaining tentacles and attempted to flee ahead to the distant safety of Haven and the joint reptilian-human defenses.

The distant Freeman corvettes defended themselves at a distance if any bothered to approach after the thorough defense put up last time, but in this case they fired full broadsides of thermite missiles reflecting the reptilians' orders. The alien mothership was not targeted just yet, as the humans had still not received the signal to open fire, but the Herald was content to fight the "baddies" at hand even if he still acted flippant about the "interstellar justice smackdown THIS SUNDAY NIGHT".

The newcomer vessels were clearly with the allied reptilians, even though they were late to the party. The communications officers that received the message at Haven's space station at first thought that the bizarrely distorted faced of the Herald meant that they were shapeshifters that had bloodily assimilated the first human they met since these pre-computer age humans were not familiar with computer-generated imagery, but this was soon cleared up by scientists. Human central command silently communicated with the Herald to ask what this disturbing transmission was supposed to mean. Surprisingly, the Herald actually explained the situation that the reptilians have been using the Herald as a placeholder for humans. It was quickly figured out from there that the reptilians seemed to want to talk, presumably to decipher one another's languages and establish translators. The Herald instructed the space station to let the reptilians board the station, and to inform them they could do so. The space station proceeded to retransmit the short video clip of the ship docking with the station back at the reptilians on a loop, as an attempt to indicate acceptance of the proposal. The space station then prepared the airlocks for the docking procedure, and prepared a pressurized room and gave their "negotiators" some hazmat suits to protect against potential interspecies pathogens tracked in. It was figured to be infinitesimally likely that the reptilians would breath the exact same gas ratio and pressure in their atmosphere, so it was just assumed that the reptilians would be entering the discussions in their space suits. The chairs and tables were set especially high and open so that the reptilians would be capable of sitting in their space suits, assuming their suits possessed the flexibility to do so.


((The explosions weren't too big. The blasting charges would probably puncture the walls of the rooms they were in, but the cutting torches already punctures the nearby rooms so it's not a big deal. The Freeman shuttle was pretty small, so it was probably just equivalent to a car bomb, if that. Since the main colony ship is huge, it'd probably just crack/damage the nearby armor and send shrapnel that would puncture the breached rooms and maybe cause a little more depressurization. I wouldn't imagine there was much real damage, just annoyance. If any Swarm were in the rooms getting ready to do repairs, then they'd probably get killed, but other than that it'd just be some minor hull repair duty and refilling the atmosphere.))

[Caspoi]

Now satisfied that they had properly made the intruders run away, tails between their legs, the ship drew in it's tentacles as well as the smaller boarding crafts inside of it, the breaches now having been filled in so as to not allow any more attempts at boarding it. It seemed more menacing than ever however and was clearly able to attack again if provoked. No signs of response to the electronic signals have arrived yet however, it is unlikely that it has revieved them.

[The Clans]

The council of warboss captains that made up the local command structure all looked into their respective cameras, some lazily looking at the feeds of their peers, all of them projected on their own individual viewscreens inside of their own ships. Some tapped out the ashes of their smoking sticks into trays, some had even taken up drinking ethanol derrived fuel even though their biology did not handle alcohol well enough for the practice to be enjoyable enough to counter the side effects. Once their SitRep maps that had shown the inside of the alien vessel went dark, there wasn't much else to do. They had exhausted all possible responses and the arguing had boiled down into two possible responses that they were split on.

They were to either press every division of marines into service and launch an extended boarding campaign against the alien ship or shoot it down to prevent it from threatening the homeworld of their newfound friends at all. The problem with the invasion is that it would take weeks to assemble the manpower to counter ship's numerical and physical strength advantage. Within the most liberal time projections, there would be mere days before the alien ship was able to threaten the planet they had dubbed Hereketiz. Conservative estamate left at most a day and as little as a few hours. The problem with merely blowing it up would leave massive amounts of wreckage hurdling toward the planet, estimate of 10% of which actually making impact with the surface while the rest flies past with slower moving chunks falling into unstable orbits.

Those in favor of the invasion wanted to take the ship mostly whole for the betterment of their species. Others wanted more reliable and accurate data on the creatures inside should they ever be forced to fight them again in space or on the ground. Another merely wanted the soldiers to do what they were meant for, to fight and to kill land gain glory like their ancestors had during the Unification Wars. Without an enemy to fight the Corps had no purpose, no reason to exist beyond mindless expansion of their borders and that soldiers trained to fight would be repurposed into interstellar scavengers.

Those in favor of blowing up the ship and being done with it knew that yes, the debris would be dangerous if the ship blew up catastrophically but population centers within the estimated landing zones would have a whole week to evacuate. There was obvious danger but that danger was calculable and quantifiable while there was no telling what could happen if the alien ship was allowed to get close enough to the planet. It could invade and swarm the planet, keep going at its current rate and crash and wipe out the ecosphere, there was no guarantee that if a control room could be found that they could even interface with it and adjust its course before collision. And this was only the worst case scenario, it was much more likely that the ship would be disabled and allow for a more predictable boarding once its bulk was pushed off of its current trajectory.

All of this would be a purely mental exercise if the ship made any attempt to communicate or had answered their own hails. But it was silent.

The decision was left up to High Command where the various warlords and the Corps Executor argued the two proposals back and forth. Since the matter concerned their spacebirne holdings, it was up to the Executor to decide what should be done.

He reached his decision and ordered the unknown vessel to be shot down shortly before writing a letter and making a recording to be turned over to the friendly aliens should everything go completely wrong.

Letter:

With a decision finally reached and broadcast to the corvettes in the system, the warbosses snapped out of their exhausted stupors to man their respective helms. The corvettes nearest to the alien vessel fired their broadsides once the construction ship was out of range as they made their own retreats to get out of range of its shuttles. The strike craft fall in behind, ready to refuel and rearm for their next mission once it was safe enough to do so. The ships within the joint Yuxu-Human fleet fired their kinetic salvos, having to adjust for distance so the vessel flies directly into their shells.

Back on Haven, one of the three ships moves along to an airlock and docks. Five space suited individuals enter the airlock carrying suitcase shaped boxes by their handles and await for decontamination to be over.

[Offizier Necro]

With the enemy boarding craft having returned to their nests for the moment, the human boarders quickly unstuck themselves and entered the hangar with the airlock closing behind them with similar haste. The captured corpses were placed in sealed containers to avoid biological contamination and avoid the potential risk of cross-species pathogens, and the boarders were similarly put in quarantine for the time being. It would take about a week or so before they would be cleared for not having actually caught anything through their air-tight space suits, but at least they could kick back and relax in the safety of their own ship even if it was without socialization with outsiders.

The Herald similarly was relieved with the change of pace. However, no other Haven-born person would if they knew what the plan was. There was more than enough time to evacuate Haven's cities, and there was more than enough capability to inform the government and people of this situation. The Herald completely neglected to inform his masters and his people's civilians of the incoming debris that could soon be raining down. He was fully well aware that if the ship exploded anything like the pirates' ship, then it would likely scatter scrap and debris in a similar manner near Haven. He simply chose to willingly engage in negligent conduct in support whatever bizarre plan he was running with. The closest thing Addy did to phoning home was to order Haven's space station to support the military action by firing a salvo of its own at the alien mothership.

Elsewhere, the Freeman flotilla took a cue from its allies and initiated firing its own barrages of missiles, all concentrated on the side previously boarded. The missiles weren't precise enough to target the improvised airlock blown up by the boarders and repaired by the defenders, but this was not the purpose of the concentrated fire. The Herald's precise idea was not communicated to the reptilian allies nor even his own subordinates, but in any case it was usually a good idea to try to focus bore as deeply into a big ship's vital innards as possible with concentrated fire, so it's not like his subordinates objected to the plan they were left unaware of.

Meanwhile, the reptilians boarding the space station were welcomed aboard once the decontamination and airlock procedures were completed. The linguists and xenologists aboard the space station were simply buzzing over the "first" meeting between humanity and alien life, and were quite eager to get to work. The meeting room's cameras, microphones, and suited workers were all in working order. The transcribers and code-breakers in particular were particularly ready to get to work on helping translate the alien race's speech, both inside and outside of the room. While the humans in the meeting room were acting very professionally and formally, the workers watching from the other side of the monitoring equipment were eagerly gluing themselves to their screens and headsets and randomly breaking into cheers at minor events like the first docking of an alien ship with a human construction, and the first step of an alien aboard the station, and the first opening of a human door for an alien, and so on.


((OOC note: The current "plan" isn't anything like a spy, planted bomb, created structural flaw, or anything else hidden. Simply potential maneuvers of known and open elements. No cards under the table at the moment.))

[Caspoi]

Now having gotten enough of those annoying Little stingers the ship has turned around and charged at the enemy, tentacles ready. More of the smaller ships are dispatched than ever, charging at every enemy in sight, including missiles. If they penetrate an enemy ships hull they are to dispatch their hunters who are to kill everyone onboard.

[Offizier Necro]

((I'm not sure if damage was left unmentioned/implied, but could you please elaborate the damage that was dealt? I'm pretty sure the description of missiles and projectiles as little stingers is for flavor due to the biological theme, but it somewhat implies that no damage was done and that all attacks from the combined might of 12+ ships was merely an annoyance. I don't know if the "massive" ship would be considered a destroyer, cruisder, or even a battleship in Stellaris terms, but I'm fairly certain that there would be some level of damage regardless of what size if it were ganged up on by a dozen corvettes. Regular colony ships are only corvette-sized in Stellaris and lack weaponry and hangars, but this is either a generation ship, a sleeper ship, or some combination of the two, so it's not exactly a standard Stellaris colony ship even without considering the level of armament and armor it seems to have.))

[Caspoi]

[Depends on the Power of the missiles, some hull damage and mayby a few of the outmost corridors probably. however it would not be too bethered by the initial salvo and has since then deployed it's fighters as a kind of living shield, somewhat similar to Point defense systems I suppose. I will try to write more but I have had problems with the internet.]

[The Clans]

(By little stingers, I had thought you meant the strike craft, still do cause I think Necro got confused. Try to write as much as you can, save it in an external file somewhere if you have to like I do so my posts don't get wiped out. That said, the shuttles wouldn't be able to stop or slow solid slugs from colliding into the mothership.  This ship was built before the swarms could travel the stars effectively, right? Hundredsof years ago?  How is it able to shrug off damage meant to kill ships made from alloys that can tank a couple direct hits from nuclear weapons?)

[Caspoi]

[As I said, it depends on the missiles, right now my idea is that the ship can not so much resist the missiles so much as ignore the damage that they cause, of course if the magnitude of their explosions are big enough then this will not work. And while many missiles will still hit the idea is that the amount of ships in the way will hinder them.]

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