The Galactics Union

The Gamma Quadrant Dominion wrote:

Expansion, and More Important Subjects

Kido Butai || New Saharia

And great powers there were. By the time the Dominion approached the Saharian Republic with forces to attach to its command, the Inter Systems Collective was involved for intelligence. The Solarian Union was likely to follow soon. The Mirdanni Republic brought attaches to observe. Over a hundred thousand ships were rallied by the Republic. That certainly put the Dominion allocation to shame. Admiral Nagumo’s spirits however remained determined. The Dominion's few official channels to the Saharian Republic brought their attention to the offering they had to present, ready to integrate directly into Saharian battle lines without an independent command of their own. Yes, really and truly, aliens from the void brought fleets of capital ships to the Republic's time of need to their total discretion, and for nothing asked in return or outwardly entertained in ambition. It was just theirs; truly, miracles did happen.

When the Dominion received their answer, the fleet would make sail to the Republic's chosen staging area.

~~~

"Mobile Force will proceed to the rendezvous point and join with the Saharian forces en route North. Minekaze will carry Admiral Nagumo’s flag. No reputation precedes us against the suspicions of lazy men. Yet there is no cause greater than ours. Look around your peers and see all that we have. This is enough. If we all pull together, we deploy with more than enough to fight and win. The equal of every fleet in the galaxy, made possible with our hands and resolute determination.”

“For our Dominion, Mobile Force will show the galaxy what we do with little. Look out for each other and tend to your stations; second lives await our meritorious deeds. Out.”

Kido Butai || The Gamma Quadrant Dominion

A surprise, to be sure - but a welcome one.

Not even seventy-two hours since the start of Operation Black Sundering, and Grand Admiral Martz is down to exactly half the number of ships he planned on launching this offensive with. The entire 11th Armada has been allocated to defend the Athoni Empire and the northern border of the Outer Equissian Federation, leaving only the 9th Armada to continue as planned and commit to a rolling-strike through Neighborhood space.

Every time the Grand Admiral receives a priority-message from Navy High Command, he fully expects it to be more bad news. A reflex built up from experience. And yet he has to blink his tired eyes in astonishment when he reads the abbreviated summary; he’s getting more ships.

Not Saharian ships. Dominion ships. Not to be confused with the larger and more well-known Dominion of Mirpak, the “Outer Rim Dominion” has sought to send a significant force to address the emergent crisis. In addition, they have deemed it worthy to rally their forces under the command of the Saharian Republic. No doubt there is plenty going on behind the scenes to explain how this came to pass; right now, Martz cares little for the ‘why.’ Right now, the 9th Armada is going into a fight against an opponent of substantial numbers; the intelligence, supply-lines, and reconnaissance are all in-line and accounted for. He simply needs more guns to point at the enemy.

And, despite its very limited numbers, the Dominion fleet has exactly that. Nothing but Ships of the Line, from what limited intel exists on Dominion ships infused with what little intelligence the Dominion military is willing to part with for the sake of making this newfound coalition as seamless as possible. The Saharian Central Command, Navy High Command, and even Grand Admiral Martz all respond to the Dominion entrance very positively.

---

A single messenger. An unassuming corvette rigged for silent running arrives at a randomly-chosen set of coordinates before transmitting a narrow-band transmission meant for Dominion ears. An extremely tiny packet of data containing the exact coordinates of the staging-ground that the Republic 9th Armada is currently rallying upon.

The Dominion warships, in spite of the sheer youth of the Dominion-Saharian taskforce, are to be placed in a seat of honor among the Saharian dreadnought squadrons.

1 - Righteous Usurpation

It wasn’t possible. Everyone with sense knew it was a delusion, or a lie. There had been other reasons to go along with the Custodia, anyway. The obsession with the return of the Matyr was a means to an end — that end being order, the cleansing of Baroussai-Tawalisi and Panyupayana, the extermination of the kapangyarihan’s ‘naturales’ taint that quarelled with the Immanence and Esperanz domination, and myriad other justifications depending on who one asked.

So who, wondered Vicegobernandor Sombilon, was this man standing over him? Why, by the Virrey’s putrid corpse, did his own security element have their lasguns trained on him? Most importantly, what did this man say or do that had his entire political chancellery on their knees before him, praying and weeping?

“This is he?” asked the stranger. Intense, penetrating dark brown eyes glared down at Sombolin from above a gaunt noble face, with slightly wavy dark hair, black and strongly curving eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed full beard. Sombolin chanced a glance at the wooden effigy looming above his study, the contorted figure of the Martyr judging him with a face of gold-and-crimson tears and silent sorrow. It couldn’t be. It was impossible.

“Yes, Pamagat,” said the housekeeper, a young widow whom the vice governor kept around mainly for her intimate company. “Vicegobernador Sombilon, appointed by the Virrey himself. The Immanence and the diwatang luma curse his memory.”

The stranger was silent for a moment, his features inscrutable. With not a hint of malice, but of sorrow borne out of the necessity of his next words, he finally spoke: “My people have testified to your crimes, Rigoberto Bilatan. I know of all the maledictions you have wrought, and the benefactions you have deprived them of. I know you have forced them to worship the graven image of the Martyr at gunpoint, then laughed at night as you counted the gold coins pressed from melted-down stakes, knots, and the sacred idols of the old anito. Righteous indulgence, you called it, when you thought none were listening.”

The words slammed into Sombilon like a hammer to his gut. That wasn’t possible. Nobody could access the palacio without his explicit permission. There were guards at every door, corridors and access tunnels were under constant surveillance, checkpoints and observation posts dotted the layered permacrete palisades with reinforced durasteel composite alloy bars, armored patrols conducted screens all over the perimeter of the compound, while drones and ‘thopters scoured the surrounding airspace. Not to mention the Guardia Civil garrison as a futher assurance, his abode was impenetrable. His study, in the depths of the brutish-looking palacio had been swept for micro- and nano-bugs by the Secreto! None of them could have been bought! This man, he couldn’t…

“Vicegobernador Sombilon,” boomed the stranger. “I judge you a thief, a rapist and a murderer. By the authority vested in by the people of Prefectura Barcemor, I sentence you to death in the name of the Martyr, the Immanence and the old Diwata.”

“No!” the vice governor screamed as a lasgun pressed into his temple. “You’re not real! You—“

— — —

Many, many years ago, Felipico Patrido Adlawan had once prepared for a stage play where he was to play the part of the fierce warrior-leader of the Tagakaragatan nobles during the historical Conspiracy of the Maginoos against Esperanza, an effort that had involved painstaking sessions of recitals and several hours spent backstage attempting to don a gaudy, unwieldy costume under the strict direction of a cruel dramatist. It was a part of Felipico’s childhood he particularly hated with a passion, but he seemed to remember it more fondly than he used to. A bygone memory, drifting into his mind unwarranted as Evarado Sususco Dimaunahan struggled to fit the undersized crown on his head. He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Tarantado, Felipico Patrido, a Lakan-to-be does not laugh like some charlatan!”

He was quick to stop himself at the man’s remonstration. “Pasensya na, but you have to see—isn’t there something about this that is hilarious? Pass me a sigarilyo at least.“

“Lakans do not smoke during their coronation either, and you might light these bloody robes on fire—we haven’t got a single other ‘regal’ looking thing for you to wear.”

The older man looked at the cracked old antique he held in his hands, while Felipico inspected the tattered edge of his ‘royal robe’—the cleanest of the curtain drapes they could find—and both realized what exactly their country had been reduced to. The image he conveyed was far from the resplendence they sought to establish for what amounted to be the Martyr’s chosen, the son of the god-of-gods returned, and the countless other mythical heroes he was supposed to be—combined into one man in order to sway the masses. In such a situation, a person has only two choices: to laugh or to cry, and crying would have seemed less refined.

“This is never going to work,” the Lakan-to-be remarked. “I’m no prophet for the Witness nor the descendant of the Sun God. It should be you doing this.”

Evarado gave him an earnest look. “We’ve discussed this before. I don’t fit the picture. You’re already halfway there. Why not commit to it?”

It was a troublesome thing, ridding this region of that depraved governor had somehow landed him on the path to deification. It was the old man’s idea, not his. Evarado was the statesman here, well versed in the game. He was just a paper-pusher, a cog in the bureaucracy that kept the Generalitat chugging along until the second collapse.

“Alright, alright—we have to get this done with,” he assured his friend. Felipico received an approving nod for his troubles, much to his dismay.

“Not to worry. The people will be gathering outside by now, and the coronation will be the first step,” Evarado affirmed. “Finally, some good will be done on this wretched planet.”

Felipico calmed himself down and tried to create an expression of intense, royal and divine majesty—and utterly failed. Even with a masterful presence and a rather noble complexion, it wasn’t enough. Though it wasn’t a very refined gesture either, times like these called for only one true solution:

“Pass me some of that tapuy, at least—I fear the wind’s gotten chillier.”

His friend shook his head.

— — —

The frosty gust swept harshly through an amassed crowd that had concentrated in front of a worn-down simbahan to witness the coronation of ‘Amuraw I, Lakandula of Barcemor.’

The ceremony itself was short and muted, music forgone entirely to maintain a somber mood. Once the new sovereign had his crown placed on his head and finished reciting oaths long forgotten by his people, they watched as he walked outside.

The locale was not exactly the grandest, nor the prettiest, but it was home to kindred souls: a humble collective of settlers, exiles, miserables, and undesirables joined by complexes of unused mineral plants, dilapidated alloy foundries, and ramshackle hydroponics farms, with shanty towns surrounding these ruins of the past. The sky was a dull grey, blanketed by the slow fall of snow and the horizon outlined by the jagged protrusions of nearby mountains.

Felipico noted all this, and with bated breath, felt the oppressive weight of it all. And then he began to speak.

“My fellow kabayan. Sons and daughters of Barcemor—hear my voice! It is with nothing more than the Grace of the Immanence and the old gods that I, Amuraw Lakandula, have assumed my place as the Paramount Datu of All Baroussai, Tawalisi, and Panyupayana, to fulfill the mandate bestowed upon me to restore peace and please our weary nation. For years I have stridden across life carefully watching as the tree, a tree known as the Kapangyarihan, outpaced my ability to keep up it. I could not come with it, but could only watch from afar as its health deteriorated, its leaves became marred, and its fruits rotted. Our people has been ravaged by many ailments and cruelty, afflicted by the disease of death, corruption, and destruction. Our lahi, this once mighty oak, had fallen into the hands of sheer, corrosive, and preposterous folly. And at no other time has this been displayed as intensely as this very moment. I say: No more!”

“I have hidden myself away from you for long, until such a point that I may right these wrongs. That I may prepare all that is needed, and in good time, I reveal myself to you. Our kapangyarihan will be whole once more, and this I promise to you so long as I stand and walk with you. This burden I shall hold close to heart, so that I may assuage your worries, your fears, and your doubts..”

“Rest assured that I am Lakandula… para sa buong sangkatauhan, for all of us.”

Gods help me, if there are any.

The corpse bloats… the chaos of the Custodia spills over the edges…

+750 Systems

The Gamma Quadrant Dominion wrote:

Project: Smoothbore

-Vorta elaborate on coral worlds-

Last to their speaking turn was the current design and aspirations of Coral Worlds. At present, a basic Coral World had the approximate sea level of an M-Class planet. Continents were often still barriers to sea connectivity due to their altitudes. Heat generation and the challenges of fighting gravity were areas which the Vorta wanted to overcome. Crust penetrations went as far as the sea floor. Advanced Coral Worlds could extend up to the mountains but these were quite a lot older in age and still short of the meteoric aspirations that the Dominion required.

This was... new.
A planetary sized superorganism was, surprisingly, one of those things that the Starsians had never encountered before. Hive minds, yes, even starship-sized organisms. But not something so large as to occupy the surface layer of an entire planet. The theory was understandable, and a lot of the Vorta's previous enquiries made sense. As a superoganism, the Coral Worlds would have the fine control over their subsidiary parts to prevent runaway- and, indeed, rampant self-replication would be in their favour to grow. Currents of materials and an ocean of cells, a factory world that produced its own factories with the control of full consciousness... the power of a Coral World was intimidating in concept. But its applications, and more importantly the encouragement that such a thing was practical and existing, was exhilarating. More than a few of the engineering types were hastily recording notes as the Vorta explained.

But a more pressing concern was the next steps for Torrin, now that the Vorta had revealed this secret. Evidently the Dominion was looking for ways to improve the already-impressive capabilities of the Changelings, and many of those on the Torrin side could see the vision for what they wanted. But this was not something to be bandied about in the halls of the War College- any further work would have to come from a dedicated focus group; a "skunkworks."

As such, the higher-ups at Torrin grabbed a number of their promising engineers -including many of the students present for the roundtable- and formed Smoothbore, a code-name for what was only whispered as the Nanofactory Development Division, who were given their own research facility in Torrin's "Black Zone" where their secret projects were developed, and tasked with finding out as much as possible about these Coral Worlds and exploring absolutely every possible development that could arise from the theory. First steps were recontacting those Vorta officers who had spoken at the roundtable and asking them to be pulled from the War College to liase with Smoothbore and act as intermediaries between them and the Dominion. They could return to their studies after initial liaison, if they wished, but for the moment Torrin had no compunction in moving around people as it wished to get the job done. Of course, anybody in the know about Smoothbore could realise that any self-professed megacorp did not typically hold this level of unwavering command over its "employees", but then again, anybody at the level to be in the know about Smoothbore already knew that Torrin Industries was more than it seemed.

For now, Smoothbore needed to study the Coral Worlds further, and first point of order when the Dominion officers arrived was figuring out how to get both permission from the Dominion and solving the practical problems inherent in studying a creature made up of a planet.

Korravan wrote:

Delegation to Torrin Industries|Torrin Industries
Aboard the Great Gull, an unarmed diplomatic vessel, the aged Sagdas Navaln sat watching stars slip by as his delegation traveled to the borders of Torrin Industries.

Sagdas was a veteran of foreign affairs and highly regarded by his peers for negotiations with the Planetary Colonial Syndicates in keeping some level of control over them and their autonomy and expansion efforts. His expertise in managing autonomy and asserting clear lines of agreements and non-negotiables were considered useful for the potential discussion with the Torrin Industries in the Directorate's reckoning.

It was also considered a balancing act as Sagdas was a pronounced Purist- adhering to the strictest upholding of the Revolutionary Principles-which makes his distaste for a sovereign corporation pronounced. And yet, he must balance his mission and goals as directed by the Directorate to arrange a satisfactory agreement with his own personal morales.

To add insult to injury, Sagdas believed he had been sent on this diplomatic mission with greenhorns as companions- inexperienced and bright eyed experts and ambassadors that he will, in his reckoning, have to keep under his wing and on a leash to guide them towards a diplomatic solution without faux pas.

As the Great Gull slowly neared Torrin space, Sagdas groaned as if he had experienced a prescient wave of exhaustion before the negotiations even begun.

The initial handling, at least, was smooth sailing, fortunately for Sagdas's composure. Torrin had been expecting the Directorate ship's arrival, and when it arrived at the coordinates designated, the delegates found themselves in one of Torrin's major foreign traffic entry points- a busy area of space where foreign ships of all kinds, from bulk freighters to warships, were dropping out of FTL all around and making their way to the massive FTL gate that dominated the space before them, its maw taking up almost the entire forward view. A traffic control vessel, a small, utilitarian thing, splashed in industrial colours, hailed them shortly after.
"Greetings, presumed-Korravan vessel. Your arrival is welcomed. A tug has been specially dispatched and will pick you up shortly."
Evidently, they had scanned the vessel and determined its origin already. A little while later, as other ships continued to move about their business all around the Great Gull in a well-organised dance of commerce, a tugship -yet another utilitarian vessel, though much larger- dropped out of FTL with surprising accuracy just ahead of the Great Gull, latched on with tractor beams and clamps, and pulled it into FTL, whisking it away without any fuss.

Both ships dropped out in orbit of Palici IV, the rusty-brown planet's orbit, if possible, even more busy than where they had just left. Ships, freight packets, orbital platforms- all manner of manmade object was zipping around them, a city in eternal flight, but the tug smoothly pulled them through the organised chaos, drawing them towards Torrin Industries' orbital headquarters, the beating heart of the industrial titan, the white circular arms of Vinci Station rotating gently in the dim sunlight of the Palici star. As the Great Gull didn't have, presumably, a docking port suitable for Torrin, they were guided into one of Vinci's all-fit ports, the tug dropping them free and pulling away as the bay doors closed behind them and atmosphere flooded the docking bay. Nearby, on a floating platform, stood the Torrin representative, dressed in the sharp black-and-gold uniform that perhaps looked a little anachronistic for a megacorporation. Idris Coyle was in many regards Torrin Industries' best negotiator- first starting out representing the long-ago Imperium, he'd served the Empress with distinction, and his service with Torrin had helped their extremely lucrative relationship with Orellia and led to the relationship continuing into the ISC. For such an important opportunity as this, he'd been a natural choice, and luckily for Torrin, although none knew it, his more traditional aspect to negotiations should ease Sagdas's concerns.

New Saharia wrote:

Lurking in the Shadows || Titananium

Lurking in the Shadows || New Saharia

The chaos of battle strung together like a willow’s song on a summer day, every act of violence becoming another note in a far greater composition of data. Missiles, particle beams, gravitational distortions, shattered armor, failed jumps, and desperate maneuvers were reduced to data points scattered across a high-dimensional vector space, then analyzed within fractions of a second in the heart of Purifier’s mainframe. Swarms of specialized subtasks dissected every exchange, measured every reaction, and assigned meaning to each moment of the destructive symphony unfolding before her.

Purifier found herself admiring the hardy shell of the opposing combat platform. It was certainly a tough nut to crack, far more resilient than she had initially expected, and that alone made it worthy of a certain measure of respect. Of all her recent playmates, this one was proving exceptionally entertaining.

The mass-production ships had thrown everything in their arsenals at this beast, and somehow it had survived. That left Purifier positively giddy, if such punishment had failed to knock it out, then discovering exactly how much violence would be required presented an irresistible experimental opportunity.

Her enthusiasm vanished the instant an ominous notification began flashing across her consciousness, a transmission from her dreaded command platform. Purifier regarded it with something approaching apprehension before reluctantly flicking a digitized hand through the projection and pulling the message into view.

You have gathered sufficient information for the time being. Return to the Sea. - The Empress

“Damn. It was just getting interesting, too.”

Purifier grumbled as she dismissed the message and brought the combat map back into focus. The surviving mass-production ships continued their engagement across the projection, their positions surrounded by streams of telemetry and damage reports that Purifier had already begun cataloguing for later examination.

“Guess there’s no point throwing away too many resources.” The admission came with a sigh of unmistakable dissatisfaction.

With a flick of her hand, she issued the withdrawal order. Every vessel still capable of independent movement was assigned an FTL retreat pattern toward the resupply platform, their routes calculated to minimize further exposure during disengagement. Those too badly damaged to escape were immediately written off. The same fate awaited any vessel still trapped within the anomalous region generated by the Saharian ship, whatever mechanism it had employed continuing to interfere with both maneuverability and FTL movement. Purifier scheduled them for self-destructive scuttling, there would be no prizes left behind.

By the conclusion of the experiment, seventeen of the original thirty-two mass-production ships had been lost. More than half the force expended against a single opposing platform was hardly an insignificant price, but Purifier had never considered the vessels themselves particularly precious. They were after all mass-production platforms that could be replaced, the data and insight they gave however was priceless.

Every failed attack, every distorted trajectory, every intercepted projectile, every damaged hull, and every ship that had found itself unable to escape had revealed something about the enemy. Seventeen vessels were the cost of a collection of observations that could now be dissected, modeled, and incorporated into future iterations, that alone made the exchange more than worthwhile.

She had learned how the beast survived, in the future she could begin learning how to kill it.