[b]Battle of First Contact, Planet N-1, orbit & planetside[/b]
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The Explorer, shown above, continued forward, the inaccurately fired railgun shot scoring a glancing blow to the front of the ship, scarring and denting the armor, but otherwise was unharmed. The round itself had partially disintegrated on its impact, and bits and pieces spun away from the scarred section of the Explorer. In response, as the two enemy ships came out of sublight, the ship fired with its two particle cannons, attempting to slice another ship in half, this time spacing the cannons firing so that a beam was constantly being fired, switching back and forth instead of at the same time. Missile launchers again extended out from the armor, and fired two salvos of missiles, half the size as the first salvo against the first ship, against the two attacking ships. At the same time, plasma began to hit the ship, splashing against the armor and bubbling into it before losing energy. The ships' armor was decreasing, but it could hold, and the captain on board would most certainly destroy or be destroyed.

In the case of the rising transport ship, who now had a panicked load of passengers and a worried, fearful captain, the ship lost its engines and was grabbed by tentacles. However, a Hunter was on board, as with all the transports, due to a need of someone that will adapt to situations and will take control in emergency. In this case, the Hunter rushed to the pilot's cabin, and set the engine to overload. While overload wasn't bad on its own, only causing minor damage over time, it's very bad if there isn't anywhere to go, or if the power generated isn't released. The transport, clung to by tentacle things, as was felt by the Hunter, slowly became hotter and hotter, until the reactor and its batteries simply ran out of space, and broke. When it broke, the transport exploded. The Hunter could see what was above him, what was waiting, and he didn't want to meet it.

On the ground, the spores were already infecting people. Some had made their own bunkers, sealed and locked, and were there now, but others were out in the streets, or in buildings that weren't able to use airlocks. The next transport ship that rose only made it above the tallest building, before wobbling and losing altitude faster than it gained. The ship fell, turning into a nosedive before scraping against a building, showering the ship and the ground below with steel, titanium, and Valkian concrete. No glass would fall; there was no need for it in their sightless world. As the ship fell and the dome closed, either everyone was infected, or they were belowground in emergency tunnels, sealed inside, and not to be dug out. Hunters patrolled the endless, pitch-black halls and rooms below, refugees weeping with unseeing eyes for the first time in thousands of years. 

As such events were going on, ten minutes still remained before two more Explorers arrived, unless they were to in-system transport, which for the Valkian technology is similar to going sublight through a debris field. Transporting or teleporting only worked on the edge of the system, to another system edge. The remaining cargoship was fleeing from its post above the city, picking up other transports from other cities along the way, evacuating what it could before the other ships gained on it. 

Now labelled 'Derelict 6,' with the first destroyed being Derelict 1, the second ship that released the original spores and the pterodactyls being labelled Derelict 2, the ship that grabbed the transport being Derelict 3, and the ships currently engaged with the Explorer being Derelict 4 and 5, the hostile ship approached the half-dozen floating containers. As the ship obviously meant to grab whatever it was, all six containers exploded with the force of more than a dozen salvos of ship-to-ship Swarm missiles per container, first one ship erupting into a fireball, setting off the closest one, which in turn set off the other four, resulting in a massive fireball, completely consuming the containers and the two Hunters that had stayed in one to detonate the explosives, in hope of evening the odds in favor of the Explorer. 

[b]Planet C-1, Homeworld of Valkians, Council meeting[/b]
Watching the holographic recordings of what had gone on prior to the two cargoships' withdrawal, all of the decision makers of the planet were suitably impressed with how the captains of the cargoships handled their part, and with the combat capabilities of a Hunter captain and her ship.