She watched the screen as yet another blue energy beam tore into the side of a Rykoni Cruiser. Its weak energy shielding struggling to stop the beam, and for the most part, failing. A large chunk of the beam simply passed through the shield to tear into the hull it was protecting. It was merely the expected result given how much of a mismatch the battle was. The Rykoni simply weren’t equipped to engage the enemy they were fighting. The guns on their ships didn’t have the power to punch through the alien armor, and their shields were woefully insufficient for warding off their enemy’s weapons. Not to mention their general state of disrepair further hampered them against this foe. They couldn’t even run, as their hyperdrives were being jammed, and their poorly maintained engines couldn’t generate enough thrust to outrun their opponents.

Looking over to her Pathfinder, an officer who was responsible for keeping the fleet safe by finding the safest routes between ports. A position that was also responsible for finding new ports, and gather information on potential enemies or allies. In more sedentary cultures she would be called an intelligence officer. “So how many similar engagements did you say have been recorded?”

She replied in a crisp tone, “Thirty-Seven Mistress. Over the last week, two similar groups to the one that attacked Urokia have engaged the Rykoni in multiple systems. We have been able to determine that these aliens are fast. Their ships can move far more quickly than the counterparts of most other navies in the sector. In addition to being fast, their ships are hard to detect. So far they have only been seen engaging the Rykoni, and given that they seem to be well equipped they might make a good ally.”

She nodded, and the Grand Matriarch remembered another problem in the making. One almost as pressing as the out of control Rykoni issue these aliens were cleaning up, “Yes, they would. Would we happen to know where we can find these aliens? Or for that matter what they are called?”

She shook her head, and said, “Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of information on this new player in the region. They seem to be mostly active in the sectors to galactic south of us. We are likely to run into them if we head that way, and more importantly now would be a good time to return to the sector, and see if we can’t find any of the ships that got separated from our fleet when the Rykoni attacked.”

The Grand Matriarch had to agree with that assessment. She was not comfortable with the fleet so close to a Cylovan Warship. Even if it was heavily damaged and half-blind it could still inflict considerable damage to the fleet. Finding their lost ships, and maybe even linking up with a few other clans would be of great help in accruing the fleet strength needed to deal with the threat before it could repair itself. Fortunately, they had been able to determine that they would have months before it had repaired its systems enough that they would break orbit. It was clear to her that they would need to gather ships and allies in preparation to engage the ship. Otherwise, it could threaten half the sector or more depending on the Cylovan inclination. So she told her pathfinder to alert the Matriarchs to set a course towards the Ilyar Sector. The Region of space that Urokia could be found in. Given the distance, it would take them about a week and a half to reach the sector in question.

The Elder was studying a star chart displaying recent fleet movements, and Cylovan responses. It was nothing all that important at the moment. He was still waiting for a report on their recent campaign, but it would be another week for that. The fleet was taking the long route to the target, so as to avoid the majority of Cylovan defenses. Then he heard the door open, and a young aide swam in. She was far younger than his normal aide, but she was new fresh out of school and still nervous.

Her body language told him she was very uncomfortable as she handed him a report. He reached out a tentacle and patted her on the head, “Don’t be so nervous. You got here thanks to your talents. So what is in the report?”

She fidgeted for a bit, and then leaned into his limb, before replying, “Um, its an intelligence report on the activities of the Refuge, and the Union.”

He perked up, and asked, “The Refuge? Anything interesting?”

She paused for a moment, and the continued touch seemed to be helping her relax. After a moment’s thought, she informed him, “They are currently in the Orialias belt, Ilyar sector. Their fleet is engaging the local Rykoni clans on multiple fronts, and the clans are taking notice. A few of the local clans have made arrangements to meet. If they can get past their rivalries they are likely to form an alliance...”

He interrupted, “That is unlikely, but even if they do I doubt they could much threaten the Refuge. I have seen the scans of their ships. They leave a little to be desired in the terms of energy weapons, but they have some of the best armor in the quadrant. Not to mention excellent missiles and torpedoes. Still, we will need to keep an eye on the situation.”

Seeing he was done she continued the report in an almost relaxed tone, “At the same time, several nomadic fleets have also noted their presence. A few of them are changing course to return to the sector, and the Refuge has been aiding isolated nomadic ships that were hurt by the spike in Rykoni activity. It is likely that when these groups meet up that they will form an alliance of their own. Especially given the presence of a Cylovan Dreadnought in the neighboring Symira Sector.”

He tensed, and in surprise said, “A dreadnought! Why wasn’t I informed there was one in that region?”

She nervously replied, “It only recently entered the region. It retreated from a disastrous encounter with the primary Union fleet, and is too badly damaged to represent a threat. Well to anyone but the local pirates and nomads of the belt. Not sure about the Refuge though.”

He curious as well had the computer look at the report of the dreadnought, and simulate a Refuge engagement with the Dreadnought. The result was rather interesting and very different from expectations.

Meanwhile, in the Union, the president received her own reports. Given the recent events with the Dreadnought, she had been able to spare a few ships to scout the belt. She had sent a small fleet of twenty ships into the belt, and they had just recently sent a report back.

One that she was now watching in high definition in her office. On her screen, a Refuge battlegroup was engaged with Rykoni raiders. The fleet larger than the one that attacked Yugal. The Refuge had only a single carrier, four cruisers, eight destroyers, and sixteen frigates in their attack group. It was a good chunk of their battle strength, but not their full fleet. As for the Rykoni, they had thousands of small raiders in the system, and nearly six hundred cruisers in the system. It was clearly the base of a major Rykoni Warlord, who had lived long enough to accrue a large fleet.

Not that it was helping much. Just as she thought that she watched the Carrier open fire on a cruiser group that had managed to slip into range of the ship. A powerful blue particle beam lanced out from the carrier, and struck the lead cruiser. Her shields flared up, and tried to stop the high yield energy beam. They failed, and a significant chunk of the beam bypassed the shields. The energy tore into the dorsal fore section of the hull, and the entire upper deck exploded. Rapidly followed by the deck below it, as the decks proceeded to sequentially collapse. It was the kind of explosion that happened more often in movies than the real world.

Regardless the ship was finished, and the carrier rapidly targeted another cruiser while at the same time it recovered a few squadrons of fighters. Hanger bays opposite the attacking cruiser group opened up into space, glowing force fields keeping the air in. As the fighters began to land at high speed. The targeted cruiser lasted a little longer than the first. This time there was no sudden explosion on contact with the hull. This time the beam cut a swath from bow to stern in the ship. Deck after deck explosively decompressed, and the ship split in two. Seconds after the beam cut out, the ship exploded without any warning.

Behind her, an advisor commented, “The Analysts concluded that their reactor overloaded. The systems responsible for regulating the energy output was disabled during that attack, and the backup was poorly maintained and was unable to prevent the output from spiking out of control.”

As he finished his statement, a third cruiser was destroyed. This time it wasn’t an energy beam, but a kamikaze attack that spelled its fate. The ship had suddenly accelerated to full speed, and slammed into the side of the carrier while firing every gun they had at the carrier. A glorious fireball detonated against the side of the carrier, and when the dust settled the cruiser was a cloud of dust, and the hull of the carrier was only slightly singed. As the other three cruisers in the group accelerated, a destroyer opened up on them. Beams and heavy cannon tore through their shields and hull reducing them to dust before they could even touch the carrier.

In the distance, two Refuge Cruisers opened up on the Rykoni station in the system. Its shields lasted barely a minute before they buckled, and the hull lasted only seconds. Energy bolts tore through entire decks as if they were wet tissue paper. Entire sections were reduced to swiss cheese in fractions of a second as men and atmosphere were vented into space. A formation of raiders and a fighter escort engaged the cruisers, but it was already too late the station was nothing more than a floating husk now.

During all this, the commodore of her own fleet was keeping its distance. Her ships weren’t as tough as Refuge ships, and couldn’t risk getting swarmed by the Rykoni like the Refuge could. It was actually quite wise of the commodore to keep their twenty ships out of the battle, and maintain their distance. Not that they were able to avoid the entirety of the battle. Hostile fighters engaged her fleet, and Refuge fighters moved in to engage the Rykoni fighter craft. The hostile Rykoni fighters were completely outclassed by the faster, and better equipped Refuge fighter craft.

Feeling she had seen enough she turned off the video and looked over towards her advisor. “How many ships did the Rykoni lose here?”

The advisor sighed, and replied, “If you had watched the entire battle you would know they lost the entire fleet. There were no survivors. Our commodore was able to keep his ships out of the fray, but wasn’t able to retreat from the system like he would have preferred. The Refuge has some way of jamming hyperspace engines. No one could make the jump to hyperspace, nor could they make any transmissions while the field is active. As for the Refuge, we noticed their smaller ships and fighter were communicating via radio signals. None of the cruisers were making any transmissions, and the carrier only transmitted signals intended for the smaller ships.”

She didn’t need long to figure out why she remembered what she had learned from earlier interactions with them. “Telepathy, they are a highly telepathic race. They were likely communicating orders via telepathy. As for why radio was being used for the smaller ships, if I had to guess the ships are either unmanned, or the manned by people that aren’t telepaths,” said the president after some thought.

“That is a sound theory,” replied the advisor. She turned back to the video, that she had turned off. Her considering the implications of the battle. She guessed if they had the budget, and resources they could build ships as effective as the Refuge ships, and she was quite impressed with that carrier. The president looked back at her advisor, and asked, “Think we can learn anything from studying the scans of that carrier? It seemed to be fairly durable, maybe we can use the scans to develop a better battleship.”

“Likely not to the same level, but combined with our scan data of the Cylovan cruiser our engineers can likely design something. The real problem is techniques, both races have construction techniques superior to ours. It’s why their hulls are so durable, even if the how is very different. The Refuge and the Cylovans have entirely different methods for making their hulls as tough as they are. Our analysts have determined that the Refuge relies on unusual technical trickery, and composite materials. While the Cylovans use advanced versions of more traditional methods to achieve their high hull strength.

We think the Refuge methods have a higher potential, but we are lacking in the data we need to replicate their techniques. Fortunately, we did find samples of their hull material, but we can’t replicate it...”

“Wait! When did we get samples of their hull material?” asked the president surprised.

“They were found in the debris from the Second Battle of Aizur II. Our friends missed part of a nacelle when they swept the field of their ship components. We even got our hands on what looks to be part of an intact warp engine. It’s not much use to us, but I am sure the alliance would be interested in it.”

She nodded and then asked what they could tell her about the alien hull material. “It’s a very unusual alloy. It is primarily composed of Titanium, and laced with artificial polymers. The most interesting factor about it is the presence of an element we have never seen before. We suspect that it must be that Rydium material they mentioned they use. I recall they mentioned it had an application in armor, but we found it is actually blended into the material. The amount is small, but not something we expected. Even more interesting is what happens when the material is subjected to a structural reinforcement field. The material actually becomes far tougher than it normally would.”

“In other words, if we can replicate the material we could make ships far tougher than the ones we use now.”

He shook his head, “Not to the same level as the Refuge. Our few tests with the material have revealed that the Refuge is decades if not centuries ahead of us in the area of Hull Reinforcement technology. Not to mention we have no idea where to begin with replicating the Rydium or even finding a natural source of it. We aren’t even sure it can form in nature.”

She decided to task a lab to it, and hope they could create something with it. However, she decided not to keep her hopes up for that. It sounded like they wouldn’t be able to do much with the material. Still, it was better than having nothing, and with the war, any new tech was beyond welcome.

Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise, the elder council was holding a meeting. The recent campaign had netted them large stockpiles of rare and valuable minerals. Most of which had likely been stolen from passing freighters or mined by slave labor. The amount of useful material coming back to the fleet was greater than expectations, and the labs had all the material they needed for their projects. At least for the foreseeable future, and the council was convening to discuss what to do with the excess materials. Not that they had many proposals. Their options were to either store them, sell them for things they have a more immediate need for, or to invest in new ship construction.

Storing them for later use had its advantages and would help proof them against future losses. However most of the council saw no point storing the entire stockpile, and as such the other two options were being more heavily explored and debated. They had recently lost a ship, and it made sense to spend some of the material on replacing the lost ship. Grayman was arguing that they didn’t have enough destroyers, and wanted to take the opportunity to increase their destroyer escort, and not just replace the one lost ship. The question was how many. Greyman wanted to increase the number of destroyers from the current twenty-seven to fifty-four. While Megumi countered saying that thirty-six was more economically feasible. Airi, on the other hand, wanted to increase it even further to seventy-two ships. A number that would be quite difficult to fill, even with the recent materials boon. Countryman much preferred the middle option, and wanted an additional four cruisers added to the fleet.

While others wanted to increase the fleet Ruri, wanted to sell the materials and buy a few items she needed for her own pet projects. There were quite a few things that they needed and so many new ideas she wanted to explore.