Driving off the Shadow Week 2: The Calm

The Calm:

Any normal power-suited soldiers, even those from the EEF, would not have been up to the task. General Malthus’s soldiers accepted their suicidal mission with eerily calm professionalism.

Their mission was to sneak inside a dimensional bubble and provide information regarding the movements of an unknown foe. The first step was a mad dash to the innards of the fleet. This was not simply done.

Even with their expert training, only five members of the scouting team survived to see one of the massive shield-stations. It was unlike any vessel they had seen before, and it was far afield from what they knew of E-strain construction. Instead of being a chaotic pulsating mass of cancerous flesh wrapped around some metal, the shield station was almost elegant. It was like a massive grey starfish with sleek chitinous armor. A single similarly constructed command carrier was docked at the central maw of the vessel, half-wrapped in some sort of slick membrane. The troopers began their stealthy approach, and landed on the station. Scans they performed while approaching indicated that the only way through would be to get through the station.

While planning their infiltration of the station…the arms of the Shield-Station moved forward, away from the shield they were maintaining. They could see the shield begin to slowly weaken, and took a desperate chance. Without a second’s hesitation, they flew through the turbulence. Only two survived the journey, as the others were torn apart by the huge shield’s minute fluxuations.

The last two began their scouting run…and reported back. The burst transmission was hazy, but it held.

“Sector General Malthus. There are 29 planets which have been converted into ships at the center of a fleet here. They are surrounded by many bloom ships. Please advise.”
Those assembled at the planning station at Midas began receiving reports of casualties, and of the E-strain’s fleet disposition. The dimensional shield hiding the second E-strain fleet was dissipating, but at an incredibly low rate. Calculations indicated it would take a week for the fleet to be fully exposed, though small vessels would make it inside. It also seemed that one of the command carriers was floating dead in space, but it was intact.

The allied fleet had time to regroup, repair, and investigate.

(OOC Note: This thread will close on May the 18th. Please use this mission to perform scouting runs, investigate the mystery of this E-strain threat, and perform any housekeeping you feel is appropriate. Fleet battles are fun, but I thought it might be nice to have some proper "heroic" actions available.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This thread has no post limit. If you are initiating any sort of scouting action or investigation of the command carrier in a format which requires multiple updates, I will perform said updates as fast as I can in this thread. Message me to request the resolution of an action in this thread.)

Lief hopped out of his command variable. "Casualties?" He asked scribe.
Scribe shook his head and gave a thumbs up.
"Good, let my ship commanders know there is no rest for the wicked. We have a lot of time to get it done."

-First, get the echineas out there with variable escort to reconstitute the debris field into new FL ships. I want all of our medical dudes and blessed khazga monks on board, the echineas will sort out organics. If its human we revive them and help em out. Make sure we have FL banners everywhere. I want all em to know who saved them. Sort out the magnavores too, who knows vlad or the uloh may want to torture them.

-Next get the stalking horse compendium into science config. Off load all non-ess pax. Get them close to the pocket demension with variable escort. I need to know if its safe to push small stuff through. If it is send an eye spy with cloak and hack kit. I want to know whats going on in there. Specifically find the masturbator in chiefs planet.
-when we know what can and can't go through the rift share the knowledge with everyone else in the class, they will likely want to do something too.
-finally send a diplomatic message giving our condolences and congratulating everyone on killing trillions of starved beings looking for relief.

I am taking a quick shower then I have to meet with some people about the next stage in the plan.

The Ft. Lendil battlegroup was quick to respond to Leif's orders. Their crews were remarkably fresh after the last engagement...though their electronic warefare crews were quite worn out from the battle. On the positive side, Leif's many coders were learning a great deal from their analysis of the E-strain's chaotic coding and were performing a forensic investigation of the Lendil virus. Traces of it's code were present in much of the E-strain electronic parlance.

The Ft. Lendil ships were able to provide much-needed supplies to allied fleets who agreed to be helped. Even with their great technology, though, there were limits to what they could do. 1/2 of all destroyed vessels could be restored/salvaged, the other half were simply scattered useless debris. Only half of the crews of those vessels, though, could be saved. The rest were eaten and there was nothing to save.

The Ft. Lendil repair teams found many horrific scenes of battle inside of destroyed ships, and found the occasional feral E-strain straggler. These were not the creatures that they had been expecting. The E-strain they found were emaciated, but had bloated bellies. They were covered in weeping sores and vestigial limbs. They were remarkably difficult to dispatch, and a number of rescue crew members lost their lives. No teams were annihilated, however, and so there were no permanent losses.

As for the shield, the small eye-spy could enter, and began its search for the lead ship. Through examining communication patterns, Ft. Lendil programmers were able to narrow it down to three of the planet ships.

Remi activated the defogger on his Warg Power Armor's viewer. He could see the amazing beauty of the sculpted living starships. It was a fine fine thing to be the last thing he saw before he would face death.

Across from him, his old squad-mate Booli, a tempermental K'iorn Shapeshifter argued with the A.I. built into his Hermetic power armor.

Remi was an Immutable, a veteran of the Border Wars and had fought in the Draco Liberation.

He had seen the worst of the trenches of the Northern Kingdoms of Refuge. Remi had faced WarGiants and even Boriel I'tash, the nephew of the Grand Magi.

Then the EEF had convinced him to sign on to Project:Darkside where he had fought IR Brethren on once side and Unity Praetorians on the other side. He had battled through the scrapyards on Thuban fighting at the head of a rebel uprising.

Now as he waited for the cavalry, whatever that might be, Remi was bemused he would probably die on a crab fleet. Damn Estrain, why did those fools in Tarris ever unleash these monsters on the universe.

As he cycled his shoulder mounted Gatlin Laser, Remi eyed Booli's Reverse Metal Cannon jealously.
One of the rarer artificed cannons, Booli's cannon could crush a starship of any size. Against this living biomatter of the Estrain vessels it was just a shiny light.

Remi watched the flickering light of his comm. Waiting for a call from backup. A call with further orders or a plan. Until then the plan was stealth and Booli kept them invisible and obscured using the Leyas.

As repairs were carried out on the EEF fleet a single gunship moved away from the battle line and into the debris field. The ship stopped about halfway across the field using thrusters to avoid the large chunks of drifting wreckage. It deployed a group of ten cats paw drones. They spread out toward the e-strain ships. Half going silent and activating thier specter cloaks. This group observed the fleet assessing damage and enemy activity and the exterior of the shield probing for an access point or weakness. They sent all the data back to the fleet for review.
The second group did not engage thier cloaks. Instead they approached openly broadcasting a request for parlay with leaders of the migration. The message, broadcast in earther and translated by uloh magnavore was as follows.
"Migration leaders. We of the EEF and this Allied fleet wish to see no more lose of life. We understand that your people are hungry and we are willing to help. We ask that you speak with us to find a solution with no more bloodshed."

From the reports Orleos was receiving on one of the observation decks of the Horror Nexus, a possible parley with the E-Strain was going to be attempted. He scoffed at the absurdity of attempting to bargain with a species that was driven by hunger alone.

Species like those were best wiped out or quarantined, they proved to be nothing more than mindless and untrustworthy. Although the sources of power their souls could provide did make them somewhat useful.

'Useful indeed,' Orleos thought as he oversaw Harvesters being loaded onto ships as well as colossal obelisks the color of obsidian being loaded onto accompanying freighters in 0gee.

These would be placed on the poles of the planets that had been devastated by the E-strain, every last one. Meanwhile, an accompanying satellite would remain in orbit around the planet, siphoning off the sheer amounts of Shadow Leyas produced, and sending it here, to the Horror Nexus.

Prime had never told him why, just that he desired it to be done. Besides, so long as Prime paid and played the gracious host, Orleos would be happy to oblige, always.

His thoughts turned to what Ryuk and he had spoken of in passing. There would be time for action soon enough against these so-called 'leaders' of the E-Strain, but preparations needed completion, and Orleos had enough tricks up his sleeve when the time came.

As for the matter of the shield, there was something Orleos wanted to test as per the limitations of the Wretches. 10 ships armed with Wretches would break away from the fleet when they found the chance and send Wretches against the shields in high concentration. It was time to see if they could penetrate or interfere with highly fluctuating planar energy.