In Harmes way...

[Harme]

Its been years since that fateful day, and we feel no closer to the truth now then we did back in '78. I still remember vividly the first time we saw them. It was on a vaguely charted planet dubbed by the corp simply as "PPNZ-13", an alphanumerical nickname given to it when it was discovered back in 29475. We were there to investigate incursions of combat and mining ships registered to Sol banking. The job was simple enough... If we found intruders on omni space, we took them out. But this was deep space, not back planetside, and here we were way too far away to reclaim. It was dangerous, and we knew that.

We were flying the new yalmaha "Archer" class strike fighters, and we were all trained in air superiority. Every odd at our disposal seemed to be in our favor - numbers, training, technology... But nothing could have prepared us for what we would see...nothing...

......

May 3, 29478
Time : Unkown
Location : Omni PPNZ-13


The hull of the battleship mozart was dimly lit, the combat scanners and heavy equipment was running at active. They had just arrived to their destination, and the atmosphere was loose considering the situation. It didnt matter much to them, most of the onboard activities were monitored by nanobots anyways. The crews attention was fixated on the galactic communications network, the news today was especially stunning.

"No reports have been heard from the inner sanctum explorers in almost five hours. Though many experts attribute the strange electrical storms in the desert outside of home. Omni officials urge citizens to remain calm, but phillip ross has issued a team to jobe to investigate the jobe research facility and gather data on the teams progress. This finding was sparked just one hour after a leaked communication vid was sent through the portal to jobe officials, showing what appeared to be an attack by an unrecognizable creature before going ---"

As the reported continued, the admiral walked into the room. The gridfeed was disturbed by the captain announcing loudly "Admiral on Deck!" and the room stood to a stiff attention.

"I sure hope everyone has a job to do here, unless you guys need me to find you some more work?" the admiral stated slyly, as the crew muttered and shifted in their step. His wrinkled face smiled a bit and he stood tall. "At ease."

The crew seperated, prepping their stations as the admiral and XO walked up to the command deck and began to speak softly to the XO.

"A beauty to behold, isnt she Omer?"

"Aye sir,"

"I suppose you question our involvement here?" the admiral asked as he tilted his head to look into the distant reach, just beyond the green gas giants atmosphere.

"Sol banking, sir. I read the mission reports. From what I can tell they have been intruding on our holds here for some time." the XO Answered quickly.

"There is more to this planet than simple security detail, Omer. " The admiral then said as he handed Omer a small blue disk. Omer loaded the disk into his hand computer and watched. A display lit alive, with a holographic map alive with blue glowing dots all over it.

"What exactly am I looking at admiral?"

"PPNZ-13 was discovered some time ago, but due to extremely hostile conditions, and our inability at the time to send a large enough force to colonize it we didnt act. until recently the planet has been kept secret, only discovered after several leaks in the internal security were made public."

"By the dust brigade..."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. Either way, what hasnt been made public is not the planets location, but rather what it contains..."

Omer cocked an eyebrow and looked out to the planet, then back to the admiral in awe. "Notum? Sir, this cant be poss-"

"Its very possible Omer, nowhere near the source found in Rubi-ka, of course. But thats not the issue. If another corperation were to gain sole control of another notum source"

"Then the corperations economy hold could suffer..."

"Yes, that is correct, Omer. With omni tek already having lost sole mining rights, this could be a chance to gain market control again."

As their conversation continued, they found their words interrupted by a horrible screech. The sounds of what appeared to be a million beings crying out in pain echoed through the ship, and the admiral stared out into the distance, blankly. He saw himself being swallowed by light of some sort, and everything went deafly quiet, his peace interrupted as things began to speed up again, flowing back into what he could only call "normal time" and he heard his scan officer yell to him.

"SIR! Somethings coming from the planet, radiation signitures off the charts!"

The admiral looked on to the scanners, then to a beam of light that seemed to blaze from the surface of the planet well out into space as far as they could see. He reached down and switched on the comm link and patched himself through to one of the fighter squadrons out front.


"Archer 1 this is the admiral, report status." a crackling voice came booming through the comm speakers of the archer class fighter. Harme looked down into the comm then back to the light beam again.

"Ahh... well, " harme mumbled as he looked over his staboard. "We heard somethin' sir, then...this. some kinda light, doesnt look like a weapon though..."

"Then what IS it, Commander?" the admiral responded, his patience wearing thin.

"Looks like a beacon of some kind..." harme responded, his vision suddenly blurred by the bright flash of a distant solar flare, his helmet dimming to compensate for the light.

"A beacon to what, commander?" the admiral questioned, the speaker crackling again in the archer unit. But before he could answer another communication came through the speakers, so loud harme winced at the sound.

"SIR, we got incoming, 3x3 formation, unknown enem --- AGHHHHHHH ---" the comm was cut off by the hiss of some kind of energy weapon, in the distance, harme could see a plume of explosions flashing out. His monitor was filled with green circles representing active spacecraft in the various squadrons, and he watched helplessly as the entire third squadron flashed to red in a matter of seconds.

"Incoming incoming, we got hostiles on mark, squadron three is down ALL FIGHTERS BREAK AND ENGAGE." Harme shouted, taking evasive maneuvers and activating his energy lancers.

He saw them ahead, hundreds of green streaks of light, looking like four pronged spikes of some sort. The enemy fighters came close, a zip sound rattling past harme on either side as he corkscrewed and pulled up, getting a beat on one of the enemy fighters and letting loose on the lancers. Two white blazes of energy sparked from his archer, one of his wingmen flying right between them before they collided with the enemy fighters hull, the first one absorbed by some kind of shield while the second chinked off the hull itself. He followed through, another shot, and another. Explosions off to his side shattered a friendly archer, the debris from the ship hitting his own archer along the hull.

The empty silence of space was then interrupted as a roar of sound like an earthquake of fire and anguish unleashed from the fleet of five battleships. The admiral had began his barrage. Green, red, and white streaks of energy flung from the fleet behind him, and he saw two or three enemy fighters explode as he flew through the swarm, juking and diving in between the enemies. He reached the end of the enemy swarm as he broke off and turned to get on the tail of one of the enemy fighters trailing a friendly archer.

"Archer 2-1 this is archer 1-1 im on your tail, you got two on your six, im locked on, break right, break right" harme said as calmly as possible, firing one miss after another, the enemy fighter zipping around his fire like it didnt even matter. Harme tried hard to ignore the screams of his wingmen through the comms, roaring over the sounds of muffled space combat. His nerves wrecked with fear. His final shots hit the rear engine of the enemy fighter, it burst into some sort of green flame as it jerked to the left and smashed into the other. The explosion heard was only muffled, but harme could feel his ship shake and shudder, a huge blue shock wave flashed over the battle, then it occurred to him.

He looked back over his aft, past the remains of his squadron. One of the friendly battleships was no longer there, but in a million shards, flames dying out as the oxygen is cut off from them. His vision darted back ahead to a ship larger then anything he had ever seen. a Gigantic green glowing vessel, easily ten times the size of their fleet. Before he could respond he got a signal lock warning, and dive down, out of the dogfight. He corkscrewed then dove, attempting to loop as he tried to find where the lock was coming from. His vision just catching an enemy fighter on his tail before he felt the collision. His entire rear engulfed in some sort of plasma explosion, burning through his rear as he lost control. He couldnt hear anything, it was as if his entire world went silent, and blank. harme tried to message for help, but only to watch his entire fleet be obliterated.

Everything went black, he could hear nothing but the sound of his own breathing. A brief flash of vision was seen, he thought it looked like the planets atmosphere, but he couldn't move, or think. The G force of him being pulled into the planetary atmosphere was enough to black him out. The next visage came to him, his heart thumping so loud it was deafening, he saw trees, thousands of them, and a thick gas cloud, then his vision went black again. He felt a jolt and a shudder right before his vision came to, watching as half of his ship flung off from the archer. He was spinning uncontrollably, and the gravity keeping him from moving at all. Then he watched as he flew past some sort of pyramid structure, and finally collided with some kind of cliff before his vision was blackened out, but this time it was different...

When he woke, he could feel the cold chill if his planetary suits respirator inhaling. his vision fogged from the heat. He crawled out of a shattered hole in his cockpit, barely able to see through the thick green haze. He rolled onto the rock and then crawled, not yet able to walk. His fighter seemed to be perched atop a cliff high into the mountains, and he viewed down below, his ears filled with the sound of some kind of synchronized thud. But what he saw baffled him beyond belief.

Below he saw huge pyramids nearly two miles high, and several dozen large ships flying above, with what looked to be hundreds if not thousands of shuttles parked in rows. The 'thud' sound was what frightened him the most. Creatures of unknown origin, carrying weapons he had never seen or heard of, marching by the thousands to their shuttles, accented only by the sky. The planet was raining fire, it was debris from the previous battle. Somehow he had wound up here, and lived but what he would do next was beyond him. He was years from earth or rubi ka by normal space, and weeks away from any FTL Lanes he knew of. He exhaled and his eyes widened, and he said simply to himself "Ah...crap..."