[b][u]||Battlestar [i]Columbia[/i], Interior_[/u]/[b] Kapitan Utkin kept waiting for the familiar atmosphere of a starship to surround him: wires and piping everywhere, beams lancing across the passageways at odd intervals, and systems both vital and nearly-useless crammed wherever there was space. It never came. These corridors were spacious and well-architectured. They were practically empty. He could tell that it was making Volkov uncomfortable, too. Neither realized the size of the ship until they got to the rail transport station. It stretched on for ages. Utkin was surprised at the lack of foresight demonstrated throughout the rest of the ship, however; the cart had no windscreen, and it was almost hard to breathe, the cart was moving so fast. Eventually they arrived at an airtight door nearly indistinguishable from the rest, save for the sign that read “Ward Room” and two armed guards outside. The door opened when one knocked on it with a loud thud. Volkov felt less ridiculous now. He had been, of course, ordered into dress uniform, but at least the Soviet officer’s dress space uniform (which was nearly identical to the naval uniform, in fact) was an intelligent black and white. Nothing like the ridiculous blue and green thing that one of the aliens was wearing. Though he supposed the blue uniform of the [i]Columbia[/i] wouldn’t be terrible. At least they didn’t have to deal with keeping white gloves clean. Then again, they may not be in dress uniform. He sighed; this would likely take a while. Utkin said, “On behalf of the glorious Soviet Union, I greet you. I am Kapitan Utkin, the Executive Officer of the [i]Romanova[/i]. This is Kapitan-leytenant Volkov, commander of our Cosmonaut forces.” Utkin elbowed Volkov, handing him the pad of paper and pen. “Volkov,” he muttered, “please write that down so they can understand us.” --- The new arrival, apparently another new alien that looked Hiigaran, though dressed in an incredibly severe uniform, marched into the room and started speaking in a language she hadn’t heard before, and wasn’t translated by her communicator. Never a S’jet around when you needed one. She eyed the alien with a certain amount of distrust, weighing up whether or not to continue her previous line of speech about the capabilities of the Tor-Selim. It was a risk, but in the interests of trust she decided she would. After the appropriate introductions of course. She assumed that was what the newcomers had done at any rate. Looking up at them now with her diplomats smile, she spoke, letting the translator continue functioning in case they understood the ‘Caprican’ language it currently seemed to be working with. “I am Commander Ariel Manaan, representing the Hiigaran exploration ship Tor-Selim.” --- Lorne took the piece of paper, reading the message and nodded. He spoke out of courtesy as he wrote down his message, as well as that from the Tor-Selim delegate. “I am Commander Tyrell Lorne of the Colonial fleet. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintances. Please-” He indicated to the chairs in the room. “Take a seat.” He moved himself slightly so that they would all occupy one of the many tables. With the need of translation and writing on paper it wasn’t practical to have them all split up. He continued writing what he was saying however the fact that he sat down and indicated to seats he probably didn’t have to include the request. He copied down Commander Ariels message. “We were discussing the possibilities of a treaty between our vessels until we find a way to return to our respective planets. As an offer of good Faith your vessel is free to use the cover of the Columbias hull as a shield if you wish to navigate into position. However Commander Ariel was about to tell us the capabilities of her ship.” He finished writing this down then slid it over to the two newcomers, he would have to remember to bring an aid to the next meeting so he didn’t have to do all the writing himself. --- Volkov turned to Utkin with a surprised look on his face. How Utkin managed to remain emotionless when the new aliens spoke what was obviously some form of Arabic actually impressed him. “I can understand new aliens, sir. My family had good friend from the Third Great War - he was a desolator, stationed in Middle East.” Utkin reached over from his seat and picked up the new piece of paper from the [i]Columbia[/i] delegation. “Inform the… Hiigarians know we can understand them, and continue translating. And writing.” He faced the tables at large. “We appreciate the offer, Commander, and we vow to protect your vessels should hostile action be undertaken against them. We may be a peaceful mission, but our ship has bite. Please, continue.” Volkov started speaking Arabic while finishing the written cyrillic, and then handed the message to Commander Lorne. --- Ariel was very surprised when one of the newcomers started speaking thickly accented Hiigaran. Well at least she found that out before using any codes in front of them and assuming they wouldn’t know. Regardless, everyone seemed to have good intentions, so she pressed on. “The Tor-Selim is a Hiigaran carrier, and is designed to function as the core of any Hiigaran battlegroup. It possesses the sensors and communications to facilitate command and control for an entire fleet over the course of the entire deployment. It carries a modest compliment of smaller craft in internal bays. Those internal bays are also equipped for the rapid repair and rearm of any Hiigaran craft in combat. It is not heavily armed or armoured though, and is best kept back from battle where it can best make use of its resourcing and construction facilities. Fully one third of the ship is devoted to construction bays, and with sufficient raw materials fighter squadrons and even frigates can be assembled and launched within the time most skirmishes will last. A portion of the ship is also devoted to storage and refinement of resources, which onboard resource collector ships can gather from asteroids, dust clouds and nebula. In a battlegroup, those collectors would also fulfil repair function for the Tor-Selim or accompanying capital ships. In order to transport any ships that cannot dock or Hyperspace on their own, we have a Hyperspace Wake Jump module that allows nearby ships to be carried along with the ship through Hyperspace. That is one of the most damaged modules of the ship right now though, so I cannot offer to take your ships in hyperspace if your own drives are damaged. As I mentioned to Commander Tyrell before, the ship is currently equipped with advanced research modules and a third of the crew are Kiith S’jet. Finally, we have a large Cryostasis vault for extra crew to man ships constructed in the field.” Ariel took a breath as she finished, it was a lengthy description. Hiigaran carriers were quite the marvel of technology after all. She looked expectantly at the newcomers, hoping they’d follow suite and give a run down of their ships capabilities next. --- Lorne listened to the description, glad that he no longer had to worry about writing it down. “The Columbia is one of twelve Battlestars currently in service-” It was annoying that he had to still write down his own comments however. “-she’s a Battle Carrier. Fully capable of constructing her own ammunition for combat she-” he noticed how Ariel had not given a gender specific pronoun in regards to the Tor Selim, however he simply guessed that they did not see the sense of identity that each ship seemed to have. “-has a compliment of 240 Vipers, fighters, split into 12 squadrons with two acting as reserve. We also have 20 Raptors which are multi-purpose for Recon, Electronic Countermeasures, Combat and transport for DC teams and Marines. Despite her carrier role she has a thick hull with interchangeable armour plating designed for taking ordnance from cannons or missiles. She has just over 50 main cannon batteries, can deploy a flak barrier, has six regular missile silos and six designed for nuclear ordnance capable of leveling any enemy force on the surface of a planet. Our main advantage is that she is jump capable, as soon as we have the co-ordinates of an enemy attack we can be there instantly to deploy and counterattack.” Once he finished writing this down he slid it over to the Romanovas crew members to allow them to deal with it, and to go next. --- Utkin read the lengthy (and somewhat hastily scrawled) message. He was very glad that he didn’t have to write anything down. Volkov, when Utkin glanced at him, had a look of steel. Clearly the man didn’t want to write anything down, either. Such were the privileges of rank. “The [i]Romanova[/i] is the latest Soviet spacecraft, tasked with a five year mission of exploration and friendship. She is armed with nine celestially-modified tesla coils of short to medium range, one primary coil of medium to long range, nine 23mm autocannons for point defense, and has six silos capable of nuclear or conventional missile launch. We also carry a full complement of 300 cosmonaut forces and have a temporary force field that is nigh-impenetrable. The [i]Romanova[/i] also has the repatriated capitalist chronosphere technology, granting us the ability to teleport the [i]Romanova[/i] and surrounding space to a new location. This is the technology that allowed us to arrive in this galaxy. As well, we have magnetron technology graciously gifted by the traitor Yuri in his pathetic surrender. The magnetron is capable of lifting car-sized objects from low orbit into space, though it can, of course, be used on objects of much greater mass when they are already in orbit.” He paused for a moment. “Rest assured, of course, that we would never use our great firepower unless a dire need should arise. We are on a mission of peace and brotherly love, after all.” --- Ariel couldn’t help but be impressed by the descriptions of the other ships. They sounded like significant forces on the field of battle, though of course they didn’t seem designed to operate alone as Hiigaran ships were. She didn’t quite understand some of the events the crew of the Romanova were talking about, though she assumed they were significant. The fact she was unaware of the events both of these aliens had described only served to further prove her theory that they were from other galaxies. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring that up yet though, not until she’d checked with Kira. There were more pressing matters for the moment. “Now that we know what our capabilities are, what course of action should we take? For full repairs my ship needs to locate an asteroid field and harvest it for resources, but there seem to be more ships getting dumped out into space here that we could possibly ally with. I would personally prefer to leave here with as many allies as possible, but we should make decisions as a fleet now.” The success thus far had made Ariel quite optimistic that more of these strange ships would be allies, but there was still potential for a Khadesh scenario. She truly hoped that wouldn’t happen. --- “The nature of our mission is to lay the groundwork for alliances. I cannot create an official alliance without the approval of the Premier. I do have, however, the power to make declarations of friendship and working alliances. I think it is in the best interests of the great Soviet Union to declare friends as many cultures as I am able,” Utkin said. Volkov, writing the whole thing down and translating into Arabic, suspected that Utkin was being long-winded on purpose. All he had had to do was say ‘Yes, I agree,’ not write a propaganda leaflet. “If we do decide to make allies, then we should transmit the decision on as many frequencies as we can, explaining our intention,” Utkin finished. --- Allies, more and more allies? This was just turning plain old weird. He didn’t mind working with people who he knew would be beneficial in the terms of these… Hiigarans and the Romanova became their allies out of distress. The more allies he had the more he had to work with, the more complicated things got. This was a warship gods damnit not a freaking diplomatic vessel. “I will go by the majority-” God he hated saying that as a military man. “-However I will say now, meetings like this should be compulsory when a new ship joins our little band so that they aren’t just lying through their teeth. I also wanted it noted here and now, that while I not accept networked computers. AI programs or robotics of any kind aboard my ship. Those are my ground rules. I am however willing to facilitate as the largest ship with the most deck space for the meet and greets.” That was the best solution anyway, he did have the most room and that way he could keep an eye on it himself. --- Ariel nodded at the consensus, happy that they were taking the diplomatic route. She wasn’t sure about using this ship as the hub for meetings and such, the commander seemed like he had some strong views on certain things, but on the other hand keeping the meeting point here meant any issues would be seen before they caused trouble. And he was right in saying this ship had the most space. The Tor-Selim may have had a few luxuries the Columbia didn’t, but it was also packed full - every bit of available space taken by some sort of system. “Alright, it is decided then. We will seek out more allies from among the other ships.” She was finally getting to put her diplomatic education into use. “Without trying to sound arrogant, I suggest I be the one to negotiate. I have training for first contact and diplomacy as well as the most advanced translation technology. If I could have access to communications, I could begin contacting the other ships immediately.” She hoped it wasn’t too pretentious a situation, but it was obvious the others didn’t have any sort of training for diplomacy. She was the obvious choice, and there was no point wasting time, and potentially making the situation worse if others made mistakes in their own communications. --- Lorne nodded his head, ever so slightly. “I was about to suggest so myself. I’m a military man not a negotiator. I am okay with you leading the negotiations for as long as you keep myself and the Romanova up to date with any terms of a treaty. I’d also like to be present during first contact. However if you agree to these terms, the Romanova agrees to these terms and your Commander also agrees then I will set you up with Officers Quarters and get you up to speed with our communication system.” He finished writing this down and slid it over to the delegates from the Romanova. It was up to them now. --- After the Romanova delegation agreed, before stating they had to return to their ship. Lorne lead the other delegate, Ariel. Too CIC. He turned to her before he went in, “Your marines will have to remain outside.” With that he nodded to the marine at the other side of the glass door who opened it and he then walked in. There was the usual chatter that filled the room as everyone went about their stations.