While Kiru and her fellows were planning an alien abduction, Megumi’s avatar was on the bridge. She was pretending to look at the sensors, but her actual focus was elsewhere. Something that Melia noticed when she walked into the room. “Is something wrong?” asked Melia.

“One of the mortal races is up to something really stupid,” said Megumi as she turned around. Melia frowned and asked, “Mortal Races?” It wasn’t any terminology she had heard the ship use before.

“Sorry, it was something one of my previous captains used to say. The Soleans are remarkably long-lived, practically immortal, and like all long-lived races some members look down on those with shorter lifespans,” replied Megumi apologetically.

Curious Melia asked, “How can a race be practically immortal?”

Megumi practically bounced, and replied, “Oh that’s easy, even your science is advanced enough to know why, but to make things simple lifespan is directly connected to psionic ability. The greater the psionic ability the greater the lifespan. The most powerful beings in the universe can literally stop their own aging process, and even enhance their own physical health. All Soleans have extremely high psionic ability, and as such their entire species is considered among the ranks of the immortal races. On record, I know of eighteen thousand immortal races.”

Moving closer and playing with her hair, she asked, “Are they truly immortal?”

Megumi laughed, and replied, “No more than I am. They may be immune to aging, but they still die. War and diseases claim many immortals. Their psionically enhanced immune systems make them immune to most diseases, but some can still harm them. The ones that do often being the most virulent and debilitating. Not to mention their immunity to aging lasts only so long as they have the will to live. The immortals have a saying, ‘boredom is the greatest killer.’ They aren’t wrong either, boredom really is the number one killer among immortals, but that is also true of mortals.”

Melia glanced at the sensor panel, and while she found this interesting she was curious about what stupid thing was drawing Megumi’s attention. “So what was that stupid thing you were looking at?”

Taking a serious stance she answered, “Shield World 49117 is under attack. Her guardian has sent out a distress signal. We can’t do anything, but I will bring the feed up.”

“Wait what do you mean we can’t do anything?” asked Melia worried. She already knew about the shield worlds, and the dangers they hid. Megumi with a sad expression replied, “The system is too far away, and while my hyperwarp drive has the speed, it will take too long to form the necessary conduit. If I was Rift-Drive enabled it would be a different story, but I’m not.”

With a frown, she asked, “Rift-Drive?” Megumi was quick to reply, “An extremely powerful form of FTL tech created by Jontharr of Clan Countryman. Its greatest downside is the extreme power requirements, which leaves the equipped ship completely defenseless after a jump. One of the main reasons it wasn’t used in the war, but it is the fastest form of FTL travel ever discovered. We did consider switching the gate system over to rift technology, but the exotic materials required made the cost prohibitively expensive.” Then she switched on the feed, and a holographic projection a battle on the other side of the galaxy appeared.

Violet energy burst impacted an energy shield, and then hundreds of glowing blue projectile separated from the ship. Each one being launched vertically from the drone ports, and they zipped across space to the nearest hostile. While none of the hostiles were individually a match, the guardian knew there were too many. That didn’t stop it from making its stand, however, but that did mean it was going to make preparations to ensure its core survived the battle.

The glowing drones slammed into the alien ship, and punched through the hull as if it was tissue paper, and came out the other side before slamming back into the ship. They zipped in and out of the hull several times, and then the ship went up in a large explosion. The drones flying towards the next target. Another nearby ship opened up with its main batteries. Powerful bursts of violet energy slammed into the shields one after another.

The guardian returned fire, a blue-green beam of plasma fired from the main battery tore into the alien battleship. Her shields absorbing the brunt of the blow, and rift melting into the side. Before it could recover a second beam fired into the hull, and the ship exploded. The AI launched more drones, and immediately they were being targeted by nearby frigates. Hundreds were blown apart, but it wasn’t enough. They swarmed around several nearby ships and a web of lightning surrounded them. Energy discharges slammed into their hulls one after another, and despite their struggles, the ships were torn apart. The drone quickly moving on to new targets as other ships fired on them.

At the same time, the ship released more impactors firing at a nearby battleship. They quickly zipped across space and slammed into the ship repeatedly. Ripping into it, and then diving back in after tearing through it. A fate a dozen other ships were facing from other impacters in the field. Several beams of plasma fired into the side of the ship, hastened its demise. Suddenly in a burst of light, the ship exploded, and one of its comrades fired a volley into the guardian. Her shields flared, and finally collapsed under the barrage. Energy burst began slamming into its hull one after another. Each one melted entire layers of armor, which began to regenerate almost as quick as it was being damaged.

Another powerful beam ripped into a nearby battleship. Her shields flared, and her side melted but the ship survived the impact. Moments later it pulled back, her captain wisely pulling back so that the engineers could restore the shields. From ports all along the guardian’s hull more drones launched at nearby targets. Swarming them, as they dived in and out of the hull. They were quickly followed by the lightning net type that she sent after bigger ships in the area.

A squadron of destroyers unleashed their payloads against the guardian, and entire sections of her hull erupted in gouts of fire, and huge chunks disintegrated. The guardian accelerated in a new maneuver, and returned fire with its beam arrays. Several blue-green bursts slammed into the destroyers one after the other. The ship’s shields were too weak to absorb the beams, and they were ripped apart. Another battleship moved, braving drones that went at it, and unleashed its entire payload into the core of the guardian, even as it was regenerating. The impacts dealing massive damage to critical systems, and then the primary reactor of the guardian went critical. A massive energy shockwave was unleashed into space, and a massive chunk of the attacking fleet was vaporized.

The remaining ships gathered in a formation, and approached the planet. As soon as they were in range they began to bombard the energy shield that surrounded the planets. The energy rippled against the powerful shield, and from a great distance away two individuals observed the attack.

“Well, it looks like they are trying to crack the barrier via bombardment. That’s good as it buys us time, and means they haven’t yet figured out how we power the shield,” said Megumi. Melia frowning asked, “Why did they win?”

“Well the Guardian class of drone cruisers may be powerful, but their chief strength is their drones. By the time we tuned in, that fleet had already destroyed most of the drones it had. It was manufacturing more as quickly as it could, but as you can see they weren’t enough. In short, there were simply too many attackers. Anyway, we can’t let them crack that shield. At the current rate, they won’t be penetrating it anytime soon, but if they find the power generators that will change real quick.” replied Megumi clearly concerned.

“Why do you sound so worried?” asked Melia begining to feel fearful about this. With a sigh, Megumi replied, “Shield World 49117 was the disposal site for a failed biological weapon created in the year 357, 217 SDE. That was near the end of the Age of the First Lords, and I am afraid because of the war with the Fallen few records of the age remain. I don’t know what the weapon was designed to do, but I do know that it was a sentient self-replicating weapon system. The records indicate the weapon was uncontrollable and consumed seven thousand worlds, before the fleet arrived to contain it. That is all I know about it.”

“The Fallen?” asked Melia remembering the name, but she had not learned much about them. Megumi looked her in the eye, and replied, “You already know everything I can tell you about them. They were one of the greatest enemies of the empire, and they nearly destroyed it. To this day they remain locked away. Imprisoned in an alternate dimension. What is important is that the empire created many weapons to fight them, and that world is where one of the failed prototypes was locked away. It is likely to be quite terrible, the First Lords were even better at biotechnology than we are today.”

Surprised to hear that she quickly asked, “Why are they better at it than you are today?”

Megumi settled into a seat, and replied, “The Empire lost a great deal in the war with the Fallen, and some technologies of the age were never recovered.”

Melia didn’t bother to ask why. She knew there were any number of reasons why. Her own culture had lost technologies in the past. Some had been rediscovered later, and others hadn’t. She had even seen evidence of it in alien societies as well. Instead, she asked a different question, “How exactly is that shield powered?”

“Why do you want to know?” asked Megumi not sure where this was going. Melia replied, “I was wondering if it would be feasible to detonate said power source?”

Megumi replied, “That would be inadvisable. The shield is powered by deep subspace energy wells. Each one draws more than ten thousand times the output of my primary reactor. Detonating that much energy would cause a subspace shockwave powerful enough to destroy everything in a two and half thousand lightyear radius.”

Melia was shocked, that was a massive amount of energy, and she found herself worried, “If they find these power system what happens if they attack them?”

“Well, they won’t explode. Well, not a big one anyway. These devices work by drawing large amounts of energy directly from the deepest layers of subspace, and transfer it to a series of compression energy cells before beaming it to the shield network. For safety reasons the compression cells never exceed an energy density of 13.7%. A direct hit to the cells would cause a small detonation, and shockwave. Enough to takeout a small planet, but not that massive shockwave that a deliberate detonation would cause.”

“Could you detonate one of them at a lower energy density?” asked Melia hopefully. Megumi replied, “Not remotely. The plasma containment systems are on an isolated network for safety reasons. Honestly, I’m going to have to go out there, and physically deal with these idiots.”

“They just destroyed one of your ships. How are you going to fare better?” responded Melia questionably. “I’m a battleship, she was a cruiser. I carry more armament, better shielding, and armor. I also have a more powerful powerplant, they won’t be getting past my shields. Besides I like the idea of a good fight. I don’t carry as many drones, but that might be a good thing given how heavy they are with the point defenses. Besides if you didn’t notice just before the main reactor blew the core module jettisoned, and went to warp.”

She looked down and replied, “I didn’t see that, but how does that help us?”

She didn’t get a verbal answer instead, through her neural link, data on something called the Guardian Network was uploaded to her mind. It was the AI network created to watch these worlds, and to maintain the ships protecting the shield worlds was a hidden shipyard. The entrance to which was located near the center of the galaxy, but the yard itself was placed in a pocket dimension. While the yard itself couldn’t build new cores it could rebuild any lost ships as long as the core survived. The shipyard itself was effectively a fortress but was small only able to build about two ships every three months. Its slips were just large enough to accommodate a drone cruiser, but nothing bigger. The yard always kept a couple of spare husks at the ready for use in the event a guardian was destroyed, and this allowed a core to quickly return to its assigned duty.

“You're hoping that the cruiser will come back, and take care of the problem. Aren’t you?” asked Melia with a hopeful tone. “It won’t do that. The cruiser will wait for the fleet to give the all-clear signal, before returning to its mission, and I’m the fleet. Anyway it won’t do to focus on this problem, we have more immediate things to worry about,” replied Megumi as a quiet thump was heard. Melia quickly realized that Megumi had launched a drone, and it was of a very unusual configuration. “What kind of drone was that?”

“Its more of a long-range intergalactic missile than a drone. It is equipped with an omega warhead. The shockwave should be big enough to wipe out their fleet, but it is only a temporary solution. We will have to wait for our results though. In the meantime lets look in on our infiltration team,” said Megumi. Melia quickly realized that she must have built it during their conversation. Thanks to her link she knew that the ship couldn’t make too many of those. Omega was a material that the ship had in short supply. The guardian network had a limited supply of the stuff, and access to a couple of small mines, but that was barely enough to keep the guardians of the shield worlds supplied. They would need to find other sources to replace this limited resource.