Melia was walking down a corridor towards the temporary command center, when suddenly the entire corridor shook. Having not expected the sudden jolt, her small body was tossed into a nearby wall. Pushing herself off the floor, and she inspected herself to find that she was fine. She knew Megumi was about to have a training session belowdecks, but she inquired anyway. At the same moment, she noticed the hum of the warp drive weakening indicating they were slowing down.

“What was that?” she asked through the mental link, as she resumed heading towards the command center.

“We hit something,” answered Megumi via the link. Her tone indicated that she was busy, and a bit distracted. Melia was a little surprised to hear that they had hit something. While dust impacts were common during FTL with warp drive, all warp drive equipped races had something to deal with. In the case of the Soleans that would be their hull plating, which was designed to simply absorb the impact energy and then shunt it into an energy field running through the plates. Since she was able to feel that impact, she was able to infer that they must have hit something big. The impact also explained why the ship was reducing speed.

An impact between a ship and a large object however was not so common. In fact those were so rare as to be virtually unheard of. Especially between systems at FTL velocities. In a system near a major port of call on the other hand collisions were to be expected if traffic control was inadequate. Out here they should have detected the object, and been able to change course to avoid said object.

“What did we hit, and how bad is the damage?” asked Melia over the mental link as she rounded a corner in the corridor.

“Not quite sure, what we hit. I’m a battleship not a light cruiser, so detecting cloaked objects isn’t my forte. Whatever we hit, survived the impact and is still cloaked. I am detecting debris, but not enough to account for the full object. As for damage, the impact left a large crater in my hull. A number of forward sections were compressed into each other, but I should be able to fix it. Also, I’m diverting power from hull regeneration, and warp drive to the sensor array,” replied Megumi.

Melia knew that most of the ship’s systems were at minimal power, and that the ARU’s which were responsible for hull regeneration were using most of the ships available power. She guess Megumi was diverting power to the sensors, so that she could find said cloaked object. As she entered the command room, she said over the link, “Looking for the cloaked object? Just let me know when you find it.”

“Will do,” responded Megumi. Then she went quiet over the link. Melia figured she would be waiting a while. It would take the ship several minutes to complete a thorough sweep of the area. So Melia took a seat near a console, and began to look over the readouts.

Alarms blared as the man stumbled from his quarters into the corridors. Confused crewmen and women were crowding the corridors as they tried to make their way to their duty stations. He himself wasn’t sure what was going on so her didn’t blame them for being confused. Most of them had been sound asleep, only to be suddenly tossed about. The alarms that no one had turned off, only made things worse.

The man made his way to the bridge, and adjusted his hastily donned uniform. There was nothing else he could do about his appearance, but he didn’t really care. He was only adjusting his uniform to distract himself for a few moments.

He found the bridge to be in total chaos. The ensign in charge of the night shift was clearly inexperienced and had not been able to reign in the officers under her. Stepping toward his station he cleared his throat, and then thumped his scally tail as hard as he could against the metal floor. The loud noise gaining the attention of his subordinates.

“Someone turn that alarm off, and get me a status report!” barked the man. The results were instant, and someone reached over to a console and turned it off. The ensign in charge her scales flushed with embarrassment approached, and began to give her report.

“We had a collision with an alien capital ship. The hull is mostly intact, but we lost a number of forward sections, and a good chunk of the starboard side was sheared off in the collision. The damage has also disrupted the power grid, a bit, and decks fifty seven, fifty eight, and fifty nine have been compressed into each other. They are now all the same deck” reported the ensign. He wasn’t surprised to hear the extent of the damage. FTL collisions were a lot like high c fractional collisions and consequently involved massive amounts of energy, and there was only so much that could be done to protect a ship. The only difference was the presence of spatial flux caused by the interactions FTL fields. In the case of his ship powerful structural enhancement fields, subspace energy radiators, and inertial dampers were largely responsible for dissipating that energy. While they had been unable to dissipate all the energy involved in the collision it had been enough that ship and crew could survive the impact. Without these devices his ship would be an expanding cloud of dust by now. Well maybe with large chunks mixed in. Even without those devices Xantium is a strong metal alloy.

“I take it since you identified what we hit that we could see it. So why didn’t you change course to avoid it?” asked the captain with a stern face.

Still flushed with embarrassment she replied, “We didn’t have time. That ship didn’t even show up on scanners until it was too late. We can’t even track it via normal methods, and it isn’t even cloaked.”

Confused he settled into his command chair, and asked, “Why can’t you track it via normal methods, and how are you tracking the ship now?”

Her scales returned to more normal coloring and she took up a confidant pose, “Her emissions profile is far lower than normal. Especially for a ship of her size, but I was able to reconfigure the sensors to track the spatial flux caused by her warp field,” glancing at a console and pressing a couple controls she continued, “she is currently point three eight lightyears distant, and moving at warp two point six seven. She has slowed down quite a bit since the collision she was moving at warp six point nine seven at the time of the collision.”

The captain did the quick mental math. The ship had originally been moving twenty four thousand, five hundred and fifty times the speed of light, and it was now moving at mere crawl compared to that speed. She was now moving at a mere seven point seven seven six times the speed of light. A speed that was considered too slow for interstellar travel. Unless you were willing to spend months between stars.

“Sounds like they might be in worse shape than we are. Anyway do we know who we hit?”

She idly scratched the scales on her cheek, and replied, “Unfortunately the computer has not yet been able to identify the ship. We might be able to identify them, if we decloak, but that would make us visible, and unfortunately if any Vorinae ships are in the area they will detect us.”

He knew given the damage they had just sustained that they were no match for Vorinae. They had been sent out her to investigate evidence of Vorinae activity in this sector. The Vorinae were one of the oldest races in the galaxy, but they were also the most secretive. Which made them dangerous opponents. Unfortunately, he felt that they needed to take the risk.

“Decloak, and use active sensors. If you determine that they can receive a transmission, hail them, tight beam only. No need to draw any unwanted attention,” ordered the captain. Instantly an officer deactivated the cloak, and used active sensors, giving them a detailed view of the alien ship. Immediately a holographic representation of the alien ship was projected in the center of his bridge, which gave him a clear idea of how much damage it had taken. It was immediately apparent that the ship had sustained quite a bit of combat damage, but the impact damage was also apparent in the forward sections. More importantly he recognized the design style. He had seen similar albeit smaller ships, and all of them had been found orbiting worlds protected by powerful energy shields. Worlds that were frankly more trouble than they were worth. He remembered how a scientific expedition to one such world had ended in disaster. The natives had proved far too dangerous, and it had been a struggle just to contain them again behind the shield. What they did learn was that those shield worlds were actually prison worlds, and best left alone. The ships protecting said worlds were actually far more interesting.

“A Precursor Warship,” he muttered in awe. He was certain it was a Precursor ship as he actually spent most of his free time studying the Precursors. There were over two hundred identified Precursor races, but no one knew the actual names of the races. They were only identified by nicknames. This particular ship belonged to a group known only as the Starlords.

“The computer agrees, sir. It has identified the ship as a Starlord Battleship, but it has very little information on the ship to offer. Most of what is does have is contradictory, sir,” reported a young man at the ops console.

“I would be surprised if it did. The Starlords were the most enigmatic of the Precursor races, and very little is actually known about them. Hail the ship. Let’s see if there is anyone over there to respond,” replied the Captain feeling excited about the prospect of learning something new about the most mysterious of the Precursors. Of all the Precursors, the Starlords were the ones that they knew the least about. The Starlords had left behind very few relics, and most of those were derelicts that were long stripped of anything useful. Then there were the Guardians that protected the ancient prison planets, but those were highly aggressive and territorial. The prospect of engaging with an active vessel was very exciting for him.

It took a couple of minutes for the Starlord ship to respond to the hail. Then a projection of a winged humanoid figure with scales appeared in the center of his bridge. It took him a couple moments to realize that the alien dragonoid was female with an exotic kind of beauty. In her shadow he noticed another alien figure that was slightly smaller than the first. The skimpy clothes, light blue skin and pointed ears gave her away as an Erali. The Erali were not known for being a particularly large species, so he realized this figure was about the same size. Making her about half his height. She looked around his bridge, and then focused on him, “I’m Megumi, and may I know the identity of the people who rammed me?”

“While an accident, I apologize for the inconvenience. I am Captain Armak Gregaria of the Ludole Contingency starship Ukal Ren,” said Armak as he adjusted his posture to be more diplomatic.

She adjusted her posture a bit as well, and he noticed the Erali in the background whisper something to Megumi. “So you are one of the Elder races in this galaxy. Let me introduce myself more properly. I am Megumi, primary AI to the Solean Imperial Battleship, Constellation. Behind me is Melia Reshia. I have chosen to help her people investigate some odd happenings with the Neku Imperium.”

He adjusted his tail slightly, and replied, “There have been other oddities in this sector. We were one of several crews assigned to investigate this sector for signs of Vorinae activity. It sounds like our goals align, perhaps we can share some data,” said the captain. The alien returned a look he knew to be a thoughtful look from his interactions with similar races. After several minutes of waiting she gave her reply.