[Inaius] Accidental Invasion (Closed)

[Pikabo]

NEAR THE USG-CETHENIAN BORDER
Mazix Habitat, Dunton

The TABLET vibrated. A male AI voice announced, "3 messages received." Sirthi stretched, letting his chitin skin bend on healthy cracks. He took out the pocket device from his pants to play his inbox. Sirthi's curious eyes curled under furrowed brows when he heard the obnoxious voice of his boss. "Hey, Sirthi! Something strange is happening. Corporate called and told us to gather at the square. I don't know about you, but I think you should join us too."

"Message completed." The AI said.

Sirthi buried his eyestalks in his head. He's xiradian. A molluscoid race. He can do that, unlike his human boss.

Seeing plenty more voice messages, Sirthi set the TABLET on the nightstand and slithered over to the kitchen counter. He turned on the replicator to get his breakfast. Granted, synthesized food isn't as good as the natural stuff he enjoyed in his rural hometown. A synthesized tomato salad still beats starving while listening to an annoying bipedal fleshbag. Plus, his apartment view of the ocean planet Dunton and the wide-open space helps him forget he has work to do.

"2 messages received." The AI said.

What now? Sirthi thought, munching down on a leaf. The doubtful look on his face crumpled into caution as he listened to his boss's panicky voice. "Okay, I'm not even joking around. You got to come here to the square. Everybody in the habitation is here. I don't know what's going on. I don't even know where Junk is- HEY!! WHERE'S JUNK?!! I SAID JUNK!!! JUNK!!!"

Carefully, Sirthi served himself one mouthful of leaves and sliced tomatoes. His boss didn't totally faze him. It's like what his boss said. He doesn't know what's going on. Why should Sirthi worry when the most important meal of the cycle is right in front of him?

Sirthi almost spat out the contents of his mouth when he heard what his boss said next. "THEY'RE TAKING US TO A BOMB SHELTER!!! WHY ARE YOU STILL UP THERE?!! YOU CAN'T STAY THERE!!! GET DOWN HERE!!!"

Shaken, Sirthi ran to pick up his TABLET. He wanted to call his boss. He needed to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on. But then the lights in his apartment went off—save for his home holoscreen. It turned red with a message in all caps: "EMERGENCY."

"Message received." The AI said.

Sirthi was gathering some of his things. His apartment keycard, his work briefcase, his TABLET... He noticed and saw shadows moving across the floor. He looked at his apartment window.

"RUN!!! HIDE, SIRTHI!!! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!"

Coraygal City, Dunton

The USG Peacekeepers HQ has been receiving a flood of calls from the habitation orbiting above them. The initial calls tried to report a spaceborne alien attacking Mazix Habitat. The calls evolved the supposed spaceborne alien to a leviathan threatening both the orbital habitation and the planet. Thrown in the mix, some people reported these calls as fake. The Peacekeepers took reports on fake calls more seriously. The HQ began blocking devices to free up emergency hotlines. Deputy Commissioner T'Rootik thought she finally reached the point in her career where she regrets her life choices. Fortunately, and unfortunately, her avian behind jumped when the USG Peacekeepers detachment in Mazix informed her about the real situation with the same frantic voices.

"Hoo! Military starships from Cethenia?!" T'Rootik asked, shrinking the irises in her big eyes. "Are they acting hostile? If not, what are they doing?"

T'Rootik walked back and forth behind her desk, her tapping claws echoing in her large and solitary office, listening to the hologram relay information. "Nothing." The man's holographic projection said, sighing at his own words. "Nothing we could confirm, at least. We tried hailing them without much avail. I'm sure everybody in the system tried. We already asked them. They all said the same thing: We don't know."

 

[BorkWI]

Liam stood on the bridge of the Titan Class Super Dreadnaught, the largest of the Republic’s ships. His police side would never let him be internally calm, but he put on a composed facade, for this was as much a political move as a diplomatic mission to Ibai. Unknowns are what the mind fears the most as they say. And well, space has a lot of them. Did Liam own his own personal small ship? Yeah. Did he really ever use it though? Not really, unless he was flying somewhere on Tierra. It's not that it wasnt a nice ship or anything--it really was! It was one of the nicest personal ships money could buy. It was the unknowns that he hated. Previously being a police officer meant that his job was unknowns. Day in, day out. You’d think that he would have gotten used to it by now, but nope. No one really does, and he’s the same. But now was not a time for worry, as they would arrive at the planet soon. A small hyperspace trip would make quick work of the otherwise several hour trip across the Ottan lands. He’s done this before, so it should be fine. Hell, he’s on the Republic's largest and most powerful ship, surrounded by a fleet large enough to invade a planet. There’s nothing to worry about, right? Right?

“Prime Minister Iker, we’re making the jump to hyperspace,” a female voice interrupted his thoughts. He looked over to see a small Vúnno with a headset on, staring at a screen that he could only assume had something to do with hyperspace on it. He looked back out the front window, as he heard the whirr of the hyperdrive coming on as some of the ships in front of him made their jump, and disappeared. Suddenly he heard a beeping noise coming from the Vúnno’s computer screen. She muttered “shit.” as her purple eyes widened.

“Raul! The hyperdrive’s become unstable! Cut it now! I repeat, cancel the jump!” she yelled to someone who Liam could only assume was her superior.

“It’s too late. We’re already jumping.” Raul replied.

Just then, the many millions of stars, which looked like white dots in space, turned to blurry lines as the colossal ship made its jump into hyperspace. There was a slight panic within the crew as no one knew what was going to happen. This lasted for a few minutes, until Liam calmed himself enough to speak in a rational tone.

“Why not just turn the hyperdrive off?” he asked.

“With all due respect, are you crazy man?!” Raul exclaimed. “At best we’ll lose our balance and fall out of chairs, and at worse the ship’ll be torn in half by the abruptness of leaving hyperspace in that manor.” he paused to compose himself. “Look, we’re finding another way right as we speak.”

“And how long will that take? We’ve been in here for minutes, and we don't know where we’re going. Better to leave now, then wait and leave when it's a month’s trip without hyperspace, no?”

Raul let out a sigh and a grumble. “Fine!” he stated. “Shut it down, turn off the hyperdrive.”

Liam gripped the corner of a nearby computer station as the ship jerked out of hyperspace. Anything small that wasn't taped down rocketed towards the front of the ship. The force even brought Liam to his knees as miscellaneous pocket-sized electronics flew past him and bounced off the windows that separated the bridge from the great unknown. Liam looked around him as he stood back up. Red lights flashed as a few alarms went off throughout the ship, seemingly triggered by the abrupt exit from hyperspace. The crew seemed dazed, but relatively okay. He heard random calls from person to person asking if their fellow crew member was okay. He did not ask such things, as he had a much more looming question: Where the hell were they?

Liam carefully stepped past debris on the ground as he made his way to the edge of the viewing platform. He looked out, and unsurprisingly, recognized nothing of what he saw. But, what he did actually see piqued his interest. His black-tipped silver ears perked up as he turned around and looked at the rest of the crew, who were also seemingly wondering similar questions.

“Are we able to contact the rest of the fleet and tell them our location?” Liam asked.

“Maybe,” a crewman responded. “But it could take hours to reach the fleet depending on where we are.”

“Hmm. Well based on what I’ve seen out there, I can infer that we are within some nation’s territory due to a giant artificial orbiting structure that I can only assume is not ours. Unless someone didn’t mention to me that we had a structure half this size of a moon orbiting a planet when I was inaugurated as Supreme Prime Minister.” This was met with a few smirks and chuckles as the alarms ceased.

“We should probably send out a distress signal to the rest of the fleet with our coordinates, so that they don’t freak out as much when they realize the massive ship with myself on it is missing.” Liam stated.

“Make sure it’s encrypted too, we want to make sure that this stays confidential, and that only the right people have access to it.” A Wolnos dressed in an admiral’s dress uniform interjected.

“Aye,” Liam acknowledged. “Also, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and contact whatever the hell that floating space station is to try and find out where we are, and to also make sure that they know that this is not an invasion.”

The crew then started to reorganize their workstations and work on Liam’s orders. An encrypted distress signal was sent out to the rest of the fleet, and a message was broadcasted to the mysterious space station orbiting an unknown ocean planet.

Spoiler: Message

Spoken in Tierran (irl Spanish):

“This is Ottan military vessel ID: 176544. Our hyperdrive has malfunctioned, and we know not of our location. We do not mean any harm to any intelligent races that find themselves here, but we will defend ourselves if attacked. I repeat, this vessel does not wish to act with hostility towards any who find themselves here, but will use the armaments present to defend itself if shown hostility.”

 

[Pikabo]

Hyperboloid, Ringworld One

...Inbound and outbound traffic has ceased in Dunton. The governor-general approved the state of emergency for Dunton to prepare citizens for an impending invasion. The planetary governor is calling on everyone to remain calm and act in an orderly fashion, instructing citizens to follow instructions from local Peacekeepers.​

Trok'Okt listens carefully to the news updates, typing in her datapad. She separated information into columns under the titles "Public" and "Not Public."

"Chief of Staff Trok'Okt?" A Horkbajiri male knocks on the open doorway of Trok'Okt's office.

In the hallway behind the Horkbajiri, staff of the Grand Elector's office zoomed to and fro the opposite directions, practically running. It's as if they move quicker every time someone shouts. Trok'Okt could make out the words "panic" and "media blackout" in the distance.

Quickly losing interest, Trok'Okt waves her craggy hand at the Horkbajiri. "You're Deputy Chief of Staff, Moz. Just call me Trok'Okt and close the door."

The Horkbajiri deputy chief of staff presses the door controls. The door slides shut. They can only hear muffled noises from the hallway.

"The DR-notices have been sent." The Deputy Chief takes the holoscreen remote.

Moz switches the holoscreen feed from FNS Core1 to a random news channel in the outer rim. Instead of a huge warship looming over Dunton, citizens in M'henga are watching a news report on the Grand Elector getting pelted in his car with vat plushies by an opposition leader.

"Good. That should give us some time." Trok'Okt sets aside the datapad on her desk. "The Supreme Tribune is meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the meantime, the Grand Elector wants to give something to the public that will tell them we have everything under control."

"Yeah..." Moz scratches the scales on his forearm. "Wouldn't it be wise to let the major news agencies inform the public?"

Trok'Okt's lithoid body rumbled with her snorting giggle. "And let mass hysteria take over? You do know we're running half a quarter of the galaxy here."

"It would be quicker to get the necessary information." Moz insisted.

Trok'Okt shook her head. "Contrary to what you might believe, responsible news media understands their role and volunteers to comply with the DR-notices." She points at her holodisplay with a map of the United Stars. "Besides, with parsecs of distances between our planets, it isn't necessary for the Horkbajiri Empire, a constituent civilization in the other side of the federation, to know every single thing that happens in a far-away border rock like Dunton."

Before Moz could reply, Trok'Okt looks at the holoscreen.

We are getting reports about a suspected Cethenian warship heading towards Dunton, a major border world that serves as a principal port of entry in the USG-Cethenian border. Although there is no confirmation, the Grand Ambassador has contacted the Cethenian Embassy in an attempt to resolve the escalating border crisis peacefully.​

​

"Information eventually spreads. We're just delaying it a few groons." Trok'Okt takes back the datapad on her desk. "With that out of the way, let's establish what we already know."

The deputy chief of staff nods along. He grabs a chair in front of Trok'Okt's desk, looking to her for permission. She nods.

Trok'Okt glances at her datapad, reading through her inputs. "I want to see what we're working with before we start preparations for a wartime speech or statement or whatever it's gonna be like."

"We established contact with the intruders." Moz starts. "We've confirmed the identity of our so-called 'Cethenian invaders.' This is something the public won't know until we make an official announcement."

Trok'Okt taps harshly on the datapad. "How are we going to explain an Ottan Republic capital warship accidentally jumping into Galaxian space due to faulty hyperdrive? Without making it sound like we're doing a cover-up?"

Moz sighed. "The truth of it sounds like a cover-up."

"The truth of it is that we're not going to do anything." Trok'Okt smiles as her office holoprojector vibrates on the desk. She pushes a button to respond. A holographic face lit the air above it.

The face belongs to an ophidian. Their tongue flicking as if it can sense Trok'Okt's surroundings on this end of the communications device.

"Grand Ambassador." Trok'Okt greeted blandly. "What's the good news?"

"The Cethenians have recalled their ambasssssador!" The ophidian hissed with her fangs bared. "Even though we know they're not the intrudersss, the media can't stop reporting the missssinformation."

Trok'Okt lowered her stone face in her rocky palm. "Great. Now we have a diplomatic crisis on our hands."

"I've sssent the Sekari ambasssador an official prote't. We are demanding they prepare an apology to be distributed to the Kingdom of Cethenia and the United Starsss for the unnecessary commotion they have caused by their little acccident."

"So..." Moz said. "What is this Ottan ship exactly?"

"It' currently carrying the Ottan supreme prime minister." The Grand Ambassador answered. "This warship, a Titan Class Super Dreadnaught, was being used for a diplomatic visit. Along with an entire fleet."

Moz gasps and stutters in confusion. "T-That. Uh. Wait- That sounds...a lot more suspicious."

"A lot more confusssing, I know." The Grand Ambassador hissed. "The Supreme Tribune deployed forcesss to Dunton. In reality, it is a show of forccce. The Diplomatic E'cort Group will do the real work. They will accompany the dreadnaught until it returnsss to Sekari spaccce."

Trok'Okt reaches for a glass filled with a cocktail of acid and quartz. "This mess just keeps getting better and better."

She raises her glass to Moz and the Grand Ambassador and downs it in one gulp.

 

[BorkWI]

This Series has been put under hold until further notice​