Things Don't Just... (FT)

Shein pops on the comline. "We've been listening. At the moment, I'm trying to keep out of any further military entanglements. With the civil war, we're stretched pretty thinly already. If you need a few MIDAS bombs, let me know. We can get twenty under way immediately. Any more and it'll take a while."

The FTS ship is still just monitoring the situation.

"That's why I contacted the Rheans first," Jenova says. "I fear involving you, even with the provision of MIDAS, will cause the Dark Burninites to go after you. Th -"

All communication transmissions are interrupted. Several enormous ships appear behind the Dark Burninite lines, sensors indicating massive quantities of power building up in them. Since sensors are scrambled because of the strangeness of being outside the universe, and because the quantities of power involved are so enormous, it's impossible to determine the exact number of ships that appeared. Safe bet would be six of them, which would make them twice the size of a Star Destroyer each if there are really only 6.

The Burninite fleet launches all Jumpers, which mostly cloak, and reappear around the giant ships. They begin firing at them, but are mostly ignored, and it doesn't look like they're having much effect. Nevertheless, they continue.

A single Dark Burninite Mothership targets the Rutian FTS vessel and begins firing upon it. It's not a coordinated attack. More like a feeler.

The Dark Burninites launch all Jumpers which begin fighting the Rhean fighters in earnest. Some of the Burninite jumpers join the Rhean fighters in the ensuing dogfights.

The Star Destroyers otherwise continue to be ignored.

The Burninites record the loss of three starships and a mothership in just this engagement so far, and the Dark Burninites record losses of two motherships and a starship as well as six jumpers. However, the Burninite lines look increasingly strained as they continue to attempt to keep Dark Burninites from reaching the Craftworlds and avoid being destroyed themselves.

The Spotlight appears. Communications begin working again. "Bastards," Thorgood's voice rings, "nobody jams Dr. Thorgood. Nobody."

"Ah, nice of you to finally show up old friend." Jenova's voice.

"I'm good, thanks for asking."

"You and I have very different conceptions of the word 'good,'" Jenova responds wryly.

"Is that an FTS ship?"

"Yes."

"You didn't have them try to install the necessary mods without me, did you?"

"Did I have a choice?"

"Send me what you have," Thorgood says, "and I'll have us out of this in no time."

The Burninite fleet seems to gain morale when The Spotlight appears, and the superships move apart, as though expecting something ridiculous to happen.

Indeed, The Spotlight seems to shimmer, then appears in exactly 23 different places at once...

The FTS ship disappears as soon as it's been targeted by the enemy, though it doesn't go too far. It reappears a fair distance away. It doesn't return fire. It's clearly going to stay out of any major entanglements.

Against the really big ships, they fire away with the infrequently used heavy turbolasers. Accuracy against something of that size is not really required.

By concentrating their fire, the Star Destroyers quickly destroy one of the ships.

The rest, all of which had previously been ignoring the Star Destroyers, now fire upon them with all batteries. It seems like the Burninite jumpers have actually knocked out a few of the weapons batteries on the superships, but there are still a frightening number now shooting at the Star Destroyers.

"Captain Needa, this is ProtoConsul Thorgood," the Star Destroyer receives, "Sorry we're late. I suggest you max out the physical deflection capacity of your shields at the expense of energy weapon resistance if you have that ability. Hold your ground though and appear unthreatened by their counter-attack."

"Please tell me you've built more Dr. Devices," Jenova's voice crackles.

"Only 2."

"Fire 'em like we've got boatloads," Jenova responds.

Two of the 23 apparent The Spotlight ships disappear, reappear near the superships, and explode. The first Molecular Disruption Device is well-placed, chaining its effect to destroy 2 superships and several smaller ships that were too close. The second is poorly placed and destroys only a few Dark Burninite minor vessels.

Five more of the 21 The Spotlight ships disappear, but before they can reappear, the Dark Burninite capitol ships vanish.

"Well played, Jenova."

"Thank not me, thank gullibility."

"You can't possibly be speaking in couplet right now," Thorgood says. "Oh, and I've got specific modification instructions that I'm sending to all ships, so we should be out of here shortly."

This is good, because the fight is not going well. The Dark Burninites have broken the Burninite defensive bubble, and are now freely striking the Craftworlds. Though the Rhean fighters had been enough to tip the tide of the fighters in favor of the Burninites, the few remaining Dark Burninite fighters move to defensive formations and use the help of anti-fighter guns on the Dark Burninite ships to avoid being destroyed. The Burninite fleet begins suffering heavy casualties repelling attacks from the Craftworlds themselves.

Suddenly, something explodes in the center of the Harlequin army as it appeared to pick off a ship, destroying both the ship and all the Harlequins.

"What was -" Jenova's voice is then cut off by Thorgood, "Needa, you might want to get out of here. That was a rip-off of an MD Device. Craftworlds, please make sure that your disruption fields are operating at full strength. If one of those appears within, the casualties will number in the millions."

One of them is nearly crippled after a while and leaves, taking its fighters with it. The others hold their ground, waiting for reinforcements. At around the half hour mark of when Captain Needa mentioned reinforcements would arrive, another half dozen Star Destroyers appear, with a complement of Acclamators, frigates, and other smaller vessels.

After only 13.5 more minutes, the Burninites complete their modifications. Sending warning to the FTS ship and Star Destroyers, they switch on drives to return to normal space.

A starship is sent to go first.

It flips its drive on, opening a Trans-Warp window, and enters it.

The fireball from the explosion is particularly disappointing,

"How many -"

"Three. Captain and two techs," Thorgood answers before Jenova even finishes transmitting the question.

A voice is transmitted to all ships present. It's undeniably Burninite, but it seems wrong. "THOSE FROM THE OTHERRACES, FREE TO GO ARE YOU. THE DEPRAVED CANNOT ESCAPE THEIR FATE -- WE HAVE ACTIVATED AN ALTERRO DEVICE."

"Thorgood?"

"...We're fucked."

"They've bested the great Thorgood?"

"No seriously, not even playing around right now. Even if we destroy their entire fleet, which seems unlikely given the mounting casualty count, we'd just rot in space right here. The Alterro device...it's something that I gave up on two years ago as impossible. Renders every form of FTL travel impotent. Explodes when activated. They've targeted all of our Trans-Warp drivers simultaneously. Which, in summary leaves us at ..."

"We could ask the Rutians and Rheans to take us back," Jenova suggests, "as a last resort."

"And Shein might agree to take you, maybe me if we're past the old grudges, and maybe some others. But what would they do with the billions on the Craftworlds?"

"I want options Thorgood. We will not be destroyed. We cannot be."

Thorgood doesn't respond immediately, and in the interim period, a Burninite Mothership is torn apart by a Dark Burninite strike.

"OTHERRACE OF THE LARGE-SHIP, YOUR INTERVENTION ON THE BEHALF OF THE DEPRAVED WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED FOR LONG."

"Captain Needa, this is ProtoConsul Thorgood," Thorgood transmits. "Get yourselves out of here before they target you with the Alterro Device and you share our fate. Your intervention saved us from certain destruction at the hands of their superships, but you can do no more here."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Teresa (remember her?), still on the Raptor, presumably watching all this unfold via link to the FTS observer the Rutians have in place.

"Emperor Darson," she says, "I know you are all busy, and Doctor Thorgood has given our cause up as hopeless, but I can think of one person who some say is smarter than Thorgood. Would you grant me communication with Lucas? Maybe he can solve what Thorgood cannot."

"Very well. It's been good fighting with you." They exit into real-space.

Shein raises a brow, then nods. "Of course."

Teresa is shown a console where the call is already placed. Lucas is quick to answer and it's actually both audio and video. Pretty unusual for Rutian technology. They used to go for either audio only or written. That's not to say they don't have it, but rather that they choose to not use it on ships. Anyway, Lucas doesn't initially look at the monitor as he starts speaking. "To what do I owe the honor of...." He looks. "Oh, hi Teresa. I thought you'd have gone poof with the other Burninites. Glad to see I was wrong. What can I do for you?" His eyes shift to what's likely another monitor briefly. "Well, well, well. I see there's a big problem." He's obviously hacked in to the relay then.

Teresa giggles. "Well since I'm Burninite by naturalization not birth, everything AROUND me went poof. I barely survived. Anyway, there seems to be a technological issue Thorgood's given up on. I figured I'd call you. I can offer you boons if you want, but I figure beating a challenge that beat Thorgood might be enticing enough without."

Lucas grins. "Yes, well, that explains it. I'm assuming now, that everything is trying go poof back here then? Hmm, Thorgood can't figure it out? Well, I'll take a shot at it. Send me what you have and I'll start immediately. If possible, I'll need everything he's tried too."

"Yes, I'll get it for you now. Everything we know about the Alterro Device. I'm assuming you've been watching the communications and don't need the situation explained?"

The data would arrive with Lucas in a minute or two.

Lucas shakes his head. "No. Actually I haven't been. Once I got this call, I took a look to see what was going on." He looks a little ashamed. "I've been playing video games for the past six hours." He nods when the data comes in, looking away at another monitor. "I'll have to go over this and get back to you."

(OOC: Anything specific you want him to find/discover?)

(OOC: Well he can discover a way to disable the Alterro device, or a way to get around its effects. The most likely solution would be a way to isolate WHERE it is, so that a force could be sent to destroy it.)

"Good videogames hopefully," Teresa responds. "There's some good video feeds you could have hacked into."

Lucas shrugs. "The games aren't so good once I've beaten them, but I was bored and didn't feel like hacking." Now that's a surprise. "Now that you've presented me with a puzzle that stumped Thorgood, however, I'm not bored anymore." He's looking at another monitor, clearly able to follow the conversation while working on the problem. "Hmm. Now that's a problem. What's this?" He sends something back to Teresa. Without knowing it, he's isolated the location of the Alterro device. Hey, he didn't even know what he was looking at. Teresa might not even know, but Thorgood would.

"That is WAY over my head, but I'll send it on," Teresa says. She does so.

In ten minutes, The Raptor's comm registers incoming call from Thorgood again.

And the call is picked up rather quickly.

"Hi," Thorgood's voice rings, "I don't know where you got it, but we have isolated the location of the Alterro device. Is Emperor Darson there? I need to ask for a rather large favor."

"I'm here." Shein responds. "And Lucas solved the problem, if you're interested."

"Yes, yes, that's what I'm calling about," Thorgood says. "Lucas isolated the source of the Alterro Device's signal. The way he put the data together to do so is absolutely brilliant, and it gives us the location of the Alterro Device. For all its brilliance though, it's totally useless to us. We know where the signal's coming from, but we can't get to it because it's preventing us from going FTL. See the problem? I was looking at the data Lucas cobbled together, and the Alterro device is almost certainly on either a planet or enormous spacecraft out here."

"Someone's going to have to blow it up."

"And that's where we come in." Shein sighs. "You can piggyback us, but I cannot get involved in this more than we already are. We can get you there, but not take the shot. The Rheans might be willing to go blow it up though." He doesn't sound happy about having to give that answer, but hey, there's still a civil war going on at home.

And they're not too happy diverging that many Star Destroyers and Acclamators when they're still patrolling for Sith remnants. They'll offer the services of the Eclipse if necessary but only if there's no risk of losing it. It's the biggest and most expensive of their vessels, after all. That ship being crippled severely undermined the efforts against the Sith, after all. And, of course, it was the Eclipse's superlaser that blew apart the Star Forge.

"If anyone appears with us here," Thorgood says, "it is likely that their hyperspace mechanism will be targeted by the AD. It should be attacked directly from your end. Technically, we could pull off the shot if you give us the MIDAS. Conveniently, there is one Burninite capable of flying a ship on your side. And I might have a ship hidden away somewhere if it survived," Thorgood says.

Teresa groans.

Shein nods. "We don't use hyperspace. We'll let you piggyback us, but I can't let you just have MIDAS. We'll fire it and make it look like it came from you."

There's a dry and solemn giggle from the other end. "Thank you Shein. Though I feel compelled to add that Dark Burninites should be destroyed anyway, so it won't matter who it actually came from. They'll get enough data only to know it was a Burninite ship. Also I don't think Teresa is quite technically inclined enough to give me enough info to rip off MIDAS even if I wanted to."

There's a data transmission.

"That is the location I left a spare Starship, and how to disable the security protocols I have in place there. Teresa should be able to read it."

There's an explosion noise.

"*...shouldn't have been able to track th ... Not really impor....*"

Thorgood's voice alone returns after a moment. "Gotta go, and please hurry."

Transmission ends.

Meanwhile, the Burninite lines continue to to contract. The Craftworlds are yet untouched, but the fleet is reduced to less than 65% of its initial size and strength, and losses are piling.