Chapter 1

“Rasha valhasen, Pretoret,” said the young officer on the screen before him, swallowing nervously.

“Shietva taleko !’talvor kiriso balforse,” replied Mathias Brightstar, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.

“Kiave salitnen drevato,” said the lieutenant, nervously rattling off the daily fleet report Mathias had requested.

“Well said, Mr. Mahäse,” he said, smiling at the young man. “Let Commander Horus know that I’m on my way to the bridge, would you please?”

“Yes sir!” Mahäse said, snapping off a sharp salute and shutting down the screen. Mathias made his way to the lift, which then whisked him up to the bridge.

“Admiral on deck!” cried one of the officers, and everyone on the bridge snapped to attention.

“At ease,” he called out as he settled into his command chair. “Return to your duties.” Cmdr. Horus walked calmly to his place beside Mathias’s chair. Horus was a big man, standing a good six foot eight inches, his body rippled with muscle, showing that he worked out and kept his body in good shape.

His ship was the Guardian Warship Starlight’s Shadow. The Shadow was a Supernova class Dreadnaught; at just over twelve kilometers long and eight kilometers wide, it was the largest ship in the Guardian fleet. It was also the most powerful, with enough firepower to outgun a dozen of the Nebula class cruisers, which were the second largest and standard heavy weight warships. There was nothing that could go toe-to-toe with the Starlight’s Shadow, not and come away in one piece.

Lately, however, the guns of the big ship had been silent. There weren’t any wars that the Guardians needed to step into, and there weren’t any issues with races coming from outside the galaxy to attack everything in sight.

Mathias’s fleet included nine other ships besides the Starlight’s Shadow. The Manticore, Gorgon, Basilisk, Hydra, and the Chimera were all Nebula class cruisers. The next three were the sister ships Hammer of Dawn and Hammer of Demons, which were both Comet class heavy frigates, and the Tempest’s Fury, which was a Meteor class missile boat. The last ship was a troop carrier/hospital ship, the Angel of Mercy. She was a Nebula class cruiser that had been redesigned to hold eighty thousand men, two thousand hospital staff, plus enough equipment, weapons, light and heavy ground vehicles, and supplies to stage a full planetary siege for up to four months.

“Have the scout ships reported any activity in our range?” he asked the officer manning the nearby coms station.

“No sir,” the man replied, looking up briefly from the screen in front of him. “All’s calm and quiet.”

“That’s what’s bothering me,” he said quietly to Horus. “It’s been too quiet for far too long. I don’t like it, commander. I don’t like it at all.”

“I know, admiral, neither do I,” he said, spreading his feet to shoulder width. Matthias knew that he could stand like that all day long without the slightest amount of discomfort. “All the trouble-making races have been well behaved, no political or trade disputes of any kind. It feels like the calm before the storm. Like it’s peaceful now, but soon all hell’s going to break loose.”

“Sir,” one of the men on the bridge called, and Matthias looked up. “One of the scouts just reported in. He says that his scan systems have detected some odd readings right at the very edge of their range. He’s requesting permission to break off his patrol route and investigate.

“Give him the go ahead and send one of the Wasp fighters out to cover his place until he returns,” he replied, and the young man snapped a crisp salute and began issuing orders into his headset. “Lieutenant, patch my command screen into the feed from the scout’s sensors so that I can watch what’s going on.”

A few seconds later, the screen built into the arm of his chair flickered to life, and he watched the readings as they scrolled across the screen.

“Yeah, this is definitely odd,” he said to Horus. “Remind me later to put a note of commendation on that scout pilot’s file. Look at this; elevated tachyon levels, proton emissions, nuclear fission readings, heat signatures, and fluctuating gravity levels. What the frak did he pick up?” New data began rolling across the screen, and Mathias’ eyes widened, then his face settled into a grim expression. “Lieutenant Mahäse!”

The young man looked up. “Yes, sir?”

“Order all the scout ships back to their hangers and begin launching Wasp fighters! That scout that moved ahead has just picked up an entire Wolfen battle-pack! All ships, go to full alert, Wolfen battle-pack detected! This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill!”

            
            The bridge exploded into action as orders were sent back and forth to the various parts of the massive ship. All around them, the scouts were zipping back towards their ships as wave after wave of Wasp fighters streamed from the hanger bays and into the space around the fleet. Shields were brought online and weapons charged up and armed as the fleet quickly readied itself for action. Just as they finished, the enemy ships dropped out of FTL flight and engaged Mathias’ fleet. The Hydra, Gorgon, and Basilisk all leapt forward in a swift pincer movement and trapped two medium cruisers between them.  The Hammer of Dawn and Hammer of Demons along with the Tempest’s Fury fell back and formed a defensive triangle around the Angel of Mercy, with the Fury at the tip so that it could bombard the enemy fleet with its powerful long range concussion missiles. The Maticore and Chimera both fell into flanking positions on either side of the Starlight’s Shadow, and then the three of them surged forward into the Wolfen fleet.

            The Shadow, being a Supernova-class Dreadnaught, wreaked absolute havoc, despite the fact that the Wolfen fleet outnumbered the Guardian ships almost three to one. Heavy cruisers, destroyers, frigates; none could stand up to the enormous level of firepower that the big ship brought to bear on them. In a matter of minutes, the number of ships in the Wolfen fleet had been reduced by almost a third, and the rest had been damaged in one way or another. They retreated in complete disarray, and six more ships were destroyed before the rest managed to escape.

            Mathias sat back in his command chair with a deep sigh of satisfaction. “Ensign, damage report!” he called out.

            The young man hurried forward, and saluted. “Sir, the Basilisk and Hydra both report some mild damage from enemy torpedo bombers, and the Manticore reports minor damage to its starboard sensor array. We also lost seventeen fighters and three bombers to Wolfen patrol ships. The Wolfen lost thirty two assorted cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, along with one hundred and three various fighters.”

            Mathias nodded in satisfaction. “A very good tally. Well done, all of you!” everyone around him cheered enthusiastically.

            He sat back in his chair, well pleased with the performance of the men, women, and various others around him. Then he turned to Horus.

            “So, what do you think an entire Wolfen battle-pack was doing way out here?” he asked, studying the data from the battle that was being fed to the screen built into his chair.

            “I’m not sure; perhaps they were separated from the main invasion force?” Horus ventured. “It would have been relatively easy to miss them out here on the fringes of the galaxy.”

            “Hmmm, maybe. Or……..” Mathias lapsed into silence, and Horus didn’t prod him, knowing that he would speak when ready. “Or they were fleeing from something.”

            Horus blinked in surprise. “Sir?”

            “I noticed that the typical Wolfen enthusiasm was lacking from the battle. We should have suffered worse damage, yet most of our ships got off without a scratch,” he said. “It’s almost like they were shell-shocked or something. I also noticed two other things; one, the insignia on the ships didn’t match. There were ships from at least twelve different battle-packs. The second thing I noticed was that almost all of the ships showed signs of previous damage and repair, some of it rather extensive, and all of it relatively recent. What does that tell you?”

            “That someone or something gave a very large Wolfen war fleet a serious beating not to long before we came across them just now,” Horus said.

            “Exactly, and that bothers me quite a bit,” Mathias said grimly.

“The question is what would have the strength to do that kind of damage to a full sized Wolfen fleet?” Horus mused aloud, then shook his head. “Nothing I know of has that kind of power, admiral.”

“Sir,” said one of the younger officers, approaching the command chair. “I was going over the sensor readings from the battle, and I noticed something that was deuced odd about the Wolfen fleet.”

“Go on,” Mathias said, giving the young man his full attention.

“Well sir, I noticed that the hulls of the Wolfen ships had an unusual high-energy residue coating them in several places,” he said, glancing at the data pad in his hands. “I analyzed it, and the computer detected organic matter. It seemed like the Wolfen ships had been attacked with some kind of biological weaponry. I did an in-depth scan of the matter, and the computer was unable to identify the genome and several of the chemical compounds within the material. I….. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the results, sir.”

Before Mathias could reply, the proximity alarms went off. “Ensign, report! Are the Wolfen back for another thrashing?”

“No, sir!” the young man called back. “The computer is unable to ascertain the identity of the approaching ships, but there are a lot of them, and some of them are quite big!”

Just as he finished speaking, the mystery fleet dropped out of FTL flight.

            None of the ships were symmetrical in any way. They all had protrusions and bumps that stuck out at odd angles from the rest of the ship. The material they were built from looked almost organic, more like flesh and muscle rather than metal and synthetics. Several of the ships were almost the size of heavy cruisers, while the majority of the ships were more like medium frigates.

            “Sir, the ships all have the same signature as the residue that I found on the Wolfen ships,” the officer called up to Mathias. “I’m detecting power surges within a large number of the structures sticking out from the ships. They could be weapons of some kind, sir. Hey up, what the duce?”

            “What is it, petty officer?” Mathias prodded.

            “Sir, the sensors are indicating that the power surges are biological in origin; a combination of bioelectrical and body heat,” said the officer, scratching his head in confusion. “Sir, judging by the sensor readings, I’d bet a full month’s salary that those ships aren’t built so much as they’re grown, and that they’re more or less alive."

            “Biological technology?” Mathias asked. “Like living machines and weapons?”

            “I think so, sir, and if it is, it’s far more advanced than anything that we’ve ever come across before,” the young man replied.

            Before Mathias could reply, the communications officer approached and handed Mathias a comm-screen. “Message from the…….whatever the hell they are, sir,” he said, then stepped back.

            Mathias read the message and then showed it to Horus.

WE ARE THE SSIRI. YOU ARE IN OUR TERRITORY AND MUST LEAVE IMMEDIATELY, OR YOU WILL BE DESTROYED. THIS IS YOUR FIRST AND ONLY WARNING. IF YOU IGNORE THIS MESSAGE, YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON. YOU WILL VACATE ALL OF YOUR SHIPS AND LEAVE THEM BEHIND AS TRIBUTE TO THE SSIRI PARADIGM AND PAYMENT FOR TRESPASSING IN OUR SPACE.

LONG LIVE THE PARADIGM.

            Horus raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Arrogant little pieces of sketii, aren’t they?”

            Mathias nodded and smiled. “That they are, commander.” He wrote something on the tablet and handed it back to the comm’s officer. “Send them that message in reply.”

            “What did you say?” Horus asked.

            Mathias grinned, and his eyes glittered mischievously. “A simple two word answer that I think they’ll understand quite well; ‘Bite me’.”

            Horus laughed. “Better hope they don’t try and take you up on that offer, sir.”

            Mathias’s grin became positively feral. “Let them try. Red alert! All units to battlestations!”