7185-04-01 (Monday)

2 AM GMT

“Did you really just wake me for a stupid April fools joke? Could you not have waited a bit longer? Like, five hours longer, you goddamn idiot!”

“Sorry, sir, but this is sadly not a joke. There really are unknown space ships in the system of Canios. If it helps any, I am sorry.”

“But that is so unbelievable. Not just merely my homeworld, but on the first of April as well? Someone up there hates me. Ok, give me the basic briefing while I put on my clothes, and get the fleet combat ready. Get it there, so that it can look menacing. How many ships does the enemy have?”

“32 ships, only seven of them capitals. None of the ships look like transports, but we simply do not know.”

“I know and understand. Well, lets send a quarter of the fleet there for now, and hope that Operation Outreach is not impeded by this shift. Our political masters do, after all, want to strike back at the Kyreikon.”

“I am guessing you want to send those ships without a Terra-class FTL drive?”

“Yes. But if we, for one reason or another have ships with the correct FTL for Canios, if we even know what that is, we should send them there. Showing our strength as an interstellar power. I think that makes sense. I really need my daily shot of caffeine.”

“Yes Sir, Immediately, Sir.”

Two hours latter, Samwell Arasim, Military Commander of all forces of the UE, had a far clearer picture of the situation. Not that it helped him anything. A fleet was bearing down on a highly populated earth. He had already ordered evacuations, something like the losses that had happened on Terra would not happen on his watch, if he could in any way prevent them. And they had been lucky with Terra, as he knew. A lot could have gone wrong, the Kyreikon could have been far more aggressive with their orbital bombardment, and so on. But now he needed to safeguard a different earth. He could merely hope that it would not mean another war. Especially because they would need to do the research to figure out what was the correct FTL for Canios was. Because things could not be easy.

At least they now knew that there was an FTL method available, because backtracking the newcomers had proven that they had just appeared in the theoretical space between Mars (Canios) and Jupiter (Canios). Which reminded him: “Can we petition the renaming of at least the planets of the solar system in Canios’s Universe? This gets annoying. Also, even if we manage that, we need a quicker way of designating that for military, and likely scientific, use. Because I guarantee you that we will continue to run into this issue.”

“I have sent a note to someone more qualified than us here to deal with that, Sir. What shall we do?”

“First, we position our fleet in front of the unknown fleet, and then we give the planets in Canios universe new names. And with new names I mean we number them. Mercury is one. You can do the rest.”, Arasim laughed at his own comment after that: “But in all seriousness, for at least a short time that is viable. As soon as we need to juggle multiple universes at once, that strategy becomes untenable, so someone design an emergency number scheme that is close enough to inexhaustible that we do not need to worry about it for now.”

“Understood. Will take care of that immediately, Sir. What shall we do next?”

“We send our nice, prepared and updated first contact package over to the newcomers. In every single frequency and using every method we can pull of. Hopefully this will not devolve into a war. Oh, and if they sent anything back, do check with the captured kyreikon databank if there is a translation key. It is not all that likely, but it is certainly not impossible. Although we need to be aware that in that case there will be differences, most likely. Now, get to work.”

A chorus of “Yes, Sir” came from all over the room as it devolved into a kind of controlled chaos.

It took another 3 hours, and the alien fleet had advanced that entire time, but it finally responded to the attempts to initiate communication. If that was because they had gotten the unknowns attention through the constant barrage of ever shifting communication attempts, or if it was because of the 30 Battleships as well as their escorts that had come from behind Canios, no one but the aliens would ever know.

Who was he kidding. Considering that the aliens had sent out their reply with one of the very first things attempted, it was very likely that the latter thing was responsible for this sudden shift. Lucas Tarson was not necessarily happy about his being here, considering that he had hoped to be part of Operation Outreach, which was getting more and more unlikely the longer this situation took to resolve, but he would cope. And it was admittedly safer being here instead of attacking an enemy forward operating base. Or at least that was the scuttlebutt.

Excerpt from an history book, 7243:

Many of the crews called to contain the Canios situation were unhappy, becasue it meant sitting out Operation Outreach, which was the first true offensive the UE would undertake. Its target was the Kyreikon planet Andraskon, which served as the primary staging ground for the invasion force. Or, to be more precise, its ground elements. While Andraskon had a sizeable garrison of space ships, which had been increased after the defeat in the second battle of Terra became known to the kyreikon leadership, it had very few facilities to take care of those ships. In fact, even though it was an army hub, there were very few transport ships permanently assigned to Andraskon.

The crews defending Canios would latter think that they had dogged a bullet by not being part of Operation Outreach, which would have massive implications for the future of the UE military, as well as its internal politics.