[center][h1]Eknes Galaxy[/h1][/center][hr][hr]

The Dyson infrastructure was frequented by massive titans of ships. The galaxy was entwined, held together by Dyson tubes. But more importantly, it was a center for the military of the Aeolians. Docked in particular was the UUGNV Learia, a hulking, round ship. In the heart was an artificial dwarf star, the power source for the gargantuan. A second-rate ship, it had been commissioned 35,000 years ago for the scouting of the Milky Way. Only now had it made its way through the bureaucracy.

It was manned by those who had been cast out from the conventional military, a backwater assignment for screwups or those who the military didn't want attention thrust upon. A strange mixture of brilliant and foolish. Among them, too, were those looking to hide. Nobody would think to look for them on such a tiny mission, in such a backwater area. The preparations were just about complete, and soon the ship would be off, stored inside the small scouting fleet.

The ship didn't even have to leave dock. In one moment, it was there, in the next, it was gone. Within the hour, the sphere would be at its destination. Eariol watched, from tinted windows, as the dwarf star pulsed and strained under the pressure. With such an old vessel, the possibility of a supernovae mid-travel was not to be ruled out. The newer vessels did not have such problems. Hopefully, the star would hold steady.

The crews of the various vessels aboard the Learia prepared for immediate undocking after reaching their destination. Initial scans done by the ship indicated unusual energy readings, ones that for billions of years was the signal of intelligent life. A target hard already been selected. And so thus, the great ships of the Union prepared themselves.

[center][h1]Milky Way Galaxy[/h1][/center][hr][hr]

The old beast shuddered as it dropped out from four-dimensional space into the physical world. The ship crews were forbidden from looking outside of their vessels during such warps. They were enough to drive any Aeolian insane. As such, Eariol began to make his way to the edge of the ship, entering a high-speed quantum rail system. The ship was simply too large to wander through without such rails.

Several minutes passed. The train came to a jarring halt. No amount of dampening would ever solve the problem of such a sudden deceleration. He was at the outer edge of the Learia now. The windows had already de-tinted, allowing the crew to view the deep black that lay before them.

But there were more important matters to take care of. One of the Valkyrie class carriers was disembarking, as well as three frigate escorts. The frigates looked absolutely puny compared to the carrier, but it remained a dangerous foe. Eariol simply looked on as space warped and tore asunder beneath the unyielding dimensional drives of the ships, each one slipping into the shallow ends of the Abyss, the new homeland of the Fallen.

The Union knew they were only skimming the surface of the dimension. Billions of years of research, and yet they had not even dented the secrets of the ancient cordon of the universe. No matter, for it still made for a good FTL drive. Entirely stolen off of the designs of ancient ruins, but still a good drive.

The ships, soon, reached their target. Near a Roman planet, space began to condense, seemingly ripping itself apart. And then, suddenly, where there used to be nothing, a 50-mile long ship, escort frigates at its side, appeared. One moment the area was empty, and the next it was occupied. All the ships put up their thermal deflectors, preventing thermal scans of the ships. And there they broadcasted, in their alien tongue, on a dark wave channel, a radio frequency, a hailing frequency, and a quantum entanglement signal interceptor.

None of what they said made sense, for now. No translations yet existed.

[@duck55223]