If you find mistakes, pls tell, thx. I don't like mistakes.

Also feel free to ask for more background information on the world. I am somehow running out of interesting points regarding the small comments at the beginning of the chapters.

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“

[398:39440] Drazi ship leaving standard patrol pattern detected.

[398:39441] Unknown ship detected.

[398:39643] Weapons Fire recorded at Drazi-Base-349, Drazi are engaging unknown ship.

[398:39698] Entering record mode.

[398:39752] Accelerating out of system to report new situation.

”

-Empire's Spy Drone

***Sol-System, Aether***

***Melan Alvar***

“It, it isn't as bad as it looks, Mother.” My daughter is patting my shoulder while I am resting my head on my office desk. “We'll get it done. I'll help, I promise!”

I raise my head to look at the three huge stacks of folders in front of me. “This isn't fair! Just because we are the representatives of Aether we can't be held responsible for the failure of our cloaking barrier!”

“The elders were the ones who ordered us to leave Earth in the first place. If they hadn't put us under such time pressure we could have avoided flying over the Philippines!” I rip the mobilization order in front of me apart.

“And Hedeon ran away when he saw the pile of regulations, explanations and reports which have to be filed.” We lost the cloaking barrier just for five minutes!

Our government shouldn't make such a fuss when it was their fault in the first place. Earth's government knows about Ather's existence, so what's the problem if they get to see it with their own eyes for a few minutes.

It's doubtful that we'll fly Aether back to Earth anyway. I never understood why we were entertaining such a huge base of operations there. A small outpost without civil personnel is in much less danger of getting nuked if the normals start feeling itchy.

“I'll stay and help you file those reports. It's not like anyone is blaming us, we just have to do the necessary paperwork which is required for such an event.” Rhiannon gestures at the folders.

“It's just that Hedeon is the one who should be doing this.” I sigh. “I wish that Gideon would come home. His little trip around the solar system turned into a catastrophe.”

“I am sure he'll be fine. And we'll finally be able to see Saden more often if we relocate to the Forge. Did you already hear that she and Paul are intending to marry?” My daughter asks happily.

“Paul? The rich kid?” I ask astounded. “That fits. A money bag and a money grubber. They'll surely be happy. At the same time we are moving farther away from Galia though.”

“It's not like we get to see her less because of that. Keeping up her cover doesn't allow her to make up too many excuses to disappear for a long period of time from the radar.” Rhiannon sighs. “And please don't call Saden a money grubber. It may be accurate, but it's still not nice. She and Paul like each other.”

I snort. “I call my granddaughter whatever I want to, but I admit that they seem to be a good match.”

I contemplate the pile of work in front of me for a long moment and let out a deep sigh. It can't be helped. “Let's get this done.”

***Kaus Australis***

***Gideon***

“There is definitely something going on in this system.” I mumble while inspecting the map which is projected in front of me.

We've identified a mars-like planet with a big orbital base and a gas giant where a mining operation is taking place. “I think they are gathering fuel at the gas giant. Is there any chance of deciphering their signals?”

Cyla shrugs. “It may be possible, but first we need to sort out the data. Then we can search for patterns to create a template for decryption.”

I massage my knees while thinking hard about our possibilities. “Sadly this seems to be just a small outpost. The settlement on the planet isn't large at all. If they weren't emitting signals like crazy we wouldn't have seen them.”

“There are twelve ships in the system which we can see. Should we try to wreck some havoc before ship number eight arrives?” Cyla growls and starts plotting possible attack courses.

I furrow my forehead. “Isn't the proper order of things to try to talk to them before we cause a war?”

“Our instructions were to catch the ship and take whatever measures necessary to keep them away from Sol. If this is really a small outpost, then giving them a bloody nose will surely teach them not to mess with us.” Cyla gestures at the red dots on the map.

I flick my fingers. “Okay, but we've to do this with a plan. I am not confident to take on those juggernauts with our ship. The only real advantage we have is speed. I am inclined to play a little Total Annihilation with them.”

“Sorry, what?” She asks confused.

“We haven't played Total Annihilation yet? Supreme Commander? Forged Alliance?” I ask.

Cyla shakes her head. “I've never heard about those. Are you talking about games again?”

“Of course. Every couch-general should know about those!” I've yet to teach her a lot of things. “First we need to sneak our way further in towards the asteroid field. Then we'll rig up some surprises there.”

I gently nudge the ship forward and Cyla checks our course. “As long as we don't run into one of them they shouldn't be able to see us.”

We wait while our ship creeps forward and I use the time to introduce Cyla to Forged Alliance. It's about three hours later when the ship's computer calls a new development to our attention.

“They changed their course towards us.” Cyla starts chewing on her fingernail. “How likely is it that they are flying accidentally in our direction?”

I shake my head. “Very unlikely. I think that they have some means to detect us, but I doubt that they know what we are. The ship is just investigating us, maybe they think we are some kind of rogue asteroid.”

“What if we entered a part of space which they are keeping clear of debris? The ship that's approaching us could be the housewife with the mop.” Cyla starts making some calculations. “We could avoid them if we go full power.”

“No.” I lean back. “Probably we've to fight them sooner or later. We could retreat and try another approach vector, but it could turn out to be the same because we don't know their means of detecting us. And then we would have lost our advantage of surprise.

I think we should try to punch right through towards the asteroid field. In there we should be just one pebble under many. And while doing so we'll get to see their capabilities.”

“Do you also still think that speed is our best bet?” Cyla asks.

I nod and connect myself to the ship. Cyla sends me a possible course. I go with it, then I power up every system our ship has and activate the drives. Both our seats rotate forward to protect us against the acceleration which we aren't able to compensate with counterfields.

“We'll approach the other ship at maximum possible acceleration, counting on the fact that the enemy's computers aren't able to get a targeting solution for our ship.”

Even if we'll almost touch each other in interstellar perspectives, we'll still be at the edge of each other's reach. Or at least that's the plan.

A few seconds after we started our wild dash towards the enemy ship it reacts too, trying to steer towards us with its puny drive.

“It took them long to react. We are almost on top of them.” I notice.

“It feels like we are fighting people without sped up minds.” Cyla confirms my hunch.

Then we wait for the confrontation. It's almost laughable if you think about the fact that the actual battle will be decided in fractions of a second.

I plot the enemy course and start firing the plasma cannons, rail cannons and sand rockets, which are basically just a pack of explosives with shrapnel inside. I devised them for nothing more than to place obstacles in our opponent's paths.

Cyla's voice enters my head. “Isn't it a waste to use the cannons like that? The lasers have a much greater chance of hitting them.”

I contemplate her words. After my first battle I made a few important changes to my ship. The first was that I dumped the huge torpedo launcher completely and added a second rail cannon instead. The second cannon may as well give the ship a much needed second punch in a close range encounter.

Rockets in their current form are completely useless. It would take dozens of them to overwhelm the laser-defence-turrets of a puny freighter. The huge tube launcher just gave them a little unnecessary extra speed.

Instead we replaced a few of the plasma cannons with rocket batteries. Though the rockets don't need to fly very far as they are primarily used for electromagnetic warfare.

Other plasma cannons also had to go for a few more lasers, which are the ship's primary weapon now. They are the only weapon with reasonable reach in space battles.

Sanguin also gave us the plans for a molecular disruptor, but the changes to the ship would have been hilarious and we didn't have the resources. I would have had to strip both railguns to make room for the disruptor. I decided that it's better to wait until we reach a real shipyard. There are limits to what the IMs can do.

“I just want to see how they react to it. They are accelerating towards us, so if they realize too late that we are filling their general flightpath with surprises, we may as well get lucky.” My voice trails off. “Close your suit.”

The decisive moment is almost there and I use the gravitational fields around our ship to force us into a series of evasive manoeuvres.

Our laser arrays fire at the same time as those of our enemy. I notice in relief that their first salvo missed us. But the second shot sheers off a part of our hull, breaking the shields like a thin layer of glass.

The seat bucks away from under me and I bite my tongue as I am suddenly hauled in a completely unexpected direction.

“We are free. The ship is out of range.” Cyla's voice reaches me from a distant place as I call up the damage report. One of the enemy lasers grazed us, evaporating about twenty square metres of our hull.

I cough and wipe the blood from my lips, gulping down the rest which is slowly filling my mouth. “It was a good idea to place water tanks on the hull. The evaporated water formed a cloud which dispersed the laser energy. But why is one of our energy banks out?”

“I think that's my fault. I burned it out when I used the energy to deflect the third laser strike.” Cyla confesses with a groan. Apparently the sudden forces didn't leave her untouched either.

“How.” I ask.

“I created a gravity abnormality and poured enough energy into it to create a gravity lens. It worked and I almost managed to deflect the laser shot back to the enemy.” She explains.

A gravity lens? “Good thinking, but we shouldn't get into the habit of burning out our energy banks.”

I return my attention to our course and the enemy ship. Then I curse. “They are completely unharmed!” After taking a look at the recorded sensor events I find out why. “They shrugged off our lasers and entered FTL-flight to punch right through our cloud of projectiles. That's cheating!”

“Apparently they can fly right through the amount of mass which we can throw into their path. It's like breaking through a wall. I wonder what happens if they don't use their drive, though I suspect that they did it because their shields can't take such a beating. We've confirmed once more that their FTL-drive takes the inertia and speed from the real universe. This time they flew much slower than the ship which we were following.” My co-pilot concludes.

I nod absent-mindedly. “Then lets get over to that asteroid field and rack our brains on how to break that shield of theirs.”

.