[center][h1]The Imperial Systems Commonwealth vs Asrian Ascendancy[/h1][/center]
[b]Location:[/b] Agdemnar System - Outer orbit

Captain Sumri was not a fool. She had seen the Commonwealth “rogues” in pursuit. It seemed that they finally made their move though. Their shifts drifted in the void in front of them. Denying them to leave through FTL. She ground her teeth when she saw the images. Her Prince just died. She had more important things to take care of. These rogues had no idea what was coming. What was going to happen.

When the Commonwealth leader spoke, Sumri let out a little chuckle. Though it did not travel over the communications channel. To call herself admiral despite being a rogue force. Despite being denounced by her own home. Of course, everyone with half a brain knew it was all about denial. Not even the Commonwealth could not break the Treaty so blatantly. Though that might change soon as more and more were dropping out of the Treaty. Her ‘reminder’ felt like an even bigger slap in the face. If Sumri felt any credibility towards the woman, she might have heeded her call. Not now though. The glassing was not a grandiose statement made by some power-sick admiral from a long ago era. She burned the corpse of her own Prince there.

“What neutral conduit could a pirate like you summon forth?” There was no image. Only a voice transmission.

Anisimovna shifted in her chair, a half-smile briefly flickering across her face. Her staff communications officer nodded to indicate a live-mike and real time broadcast. She went with full audio-visual, feeling no need to respond to the Asrian’s dramatic flair. Pirate was an interesting choice of word, she reflected briefly. Under a strict interpretation of the Detente, she was not a pirate. She was not violating anyone’s territorial sovereignty, since Agdemnar was unclaimed. She’d announced her intentions to the system when she’d arrived, and outside of combat her ships operated with their transponders broadcasting their identity to anyone in range. Technically, all that meant that she could not be convicted of piracy. Of course, by a more traditional definition, her existence as an armed combatant of no national allegiance could be construed as piracy. But it wasn’t like anyone was going to be fighting any legal battles over the question any time soon.

“I’d have to re-check the exact wording of the treaty, but I believe what I’m doing classifies me as a ‘warlord’, not a pirate,” she said to the blank display thoughtfully. “Regardless, I’m sure the hospital ship [i]Hermione[/i] would be willing to relay the Ascendancy’s stance on orbital bombardment back to the Federation of Nations, and from there to the galaxy at large. Of course, I suppose you could destroy her first. It wouldn’t be the first hospital ship to be lost to Asrian weapons, would it?”

The [i]Laurentian[/i] incident was still a sore spot for the Asrians. MSV [i]Laurentian[/i] had been a Commonwealth hospital ship in the Great War. The Asrians had destroyed it when it attempted to complete its aid mission on the besieged world of Volfus, claiming it had actually been carrying weapons to the surface, but most of the galaxy was disinclined to believe them. Which was fortunate, since Anisimovna was one of the relatively few people who knew that [i]Laurentian[/i] certainly had been smuggling weapons, and that the ship’s captain had triggered a reactor overload to destroy the evidence when the Asrians had successfully disabled his ship. The Asrians had plenty of sensor footage of the incident, but civilian ships were so fragile, and GDC reactors in particular were very sensitive; it was no wonder that damage to the engines had caused a reactor overload. The whole incident had combined with the Manir occupation and the frequent glassings to thoroughly vilify the Asrians in the eyes of the galaxy. A reputation they richly deserved, in Anisimovna’s opinion.

The mentioning of the [i]Laurentian[/i] delivered a bitter taste in Sumri’s mouth. She remembered her own father, an admiral, defend his colleague again and again. His faith that the hospital ship was carrying weapons was absolute. Yet the Asrian courts raked in every account they could find that it was civilian. She knew that certain footage was shown behind closed doors and after that, the judges dropped the case entirely. Sumri thought she would not have to carry her father and his colleague’s sins forever but clearly the Commonwealth was all to willing to remind them.
 
“Prince Nauthilian of Asra is dead. To deny the enemy from desecrating his corpse and violating our tools we purged the land. That is my declaration you can make the [i]Hermoine[/i] broadcast into the wider galaxy. Do make sure  you don’t leave your weapons behind this time. But now, get out of my way.” The voice message was sent out. At the same time the [i]Throne of Xerileth[/i]’s weapon batteries came to life with faint blue light. Lightweavers had already woven their paths and were preparing to circumvent the enemy’s shields. The Deliverance beam weaponry would take more time to spool up and would deliver a more escalated the threat. So with a mere move of her hand she bid the Gun Master to wait to prepare the Deliverance Cores. Still, she had send her wish down the ship towards the Choirmasters already. Now she could feel the soft hum of the choirs. She could feel the tinge of psionic power coursing through her ship. Soon it would start building up deep within it. Like everything with the Asrian’s greater weapons, it would take time to fully charge the Manifestation Engine but that too was a threat. Give Asra enough time to prepare and they will deliver unmatched destruction.

“Ma’am, PsyOps reports they’re charging weapons,” Rekkavik said, unspoken worry in his eyes. The Asrians had glassed enough worlds, shattered enough Commonwealth ships, for the RCN to have an intense appreciation of the capabilities of their psitech weaponry. The unnamed Asrian would doom her ships to destruction in the face of the much larger 8th fleet - Deliverance fleet, officially, since it was no longer an RCN formation - but in that brief window the Asrians could kill more ships than Anisimovna could afford to lose. Her PsyOps, the small divisions of psintegrae on each of her ships, could provide cover against mental tampering and scout out enemy dispositions to an extent, and the Asrians didn’t have the same gift for telepathy as the Ashtar, or even most Su’urtugal. But that wouldn’t matter in the slightest if a psitech weapon blasted Anisimovna’s aging battleship out from underneath her.

“Ma’am,” Rekkavik said quietly, “this isn’t the time or place to...dwell on the past.”

Anisimovna sighed. Her chief of staff was right. She glanced up at the FTL clock; scarcely another minute before her ships recharged their FTL and could make a swift exit. She desperately wanted to stand and fight, to annihilate the smaller Asrian force, and the intensity of that desperation was surprising to her. All the more reason to put it aside.

She did so with a long breath. “Rammel, pull the fleet back slowly, prepare to jump back to our standby position at Cipion as soon as we’re spooled up.” Then she nodded at her communications officer to resume transmission, and turned back to the display. She would stand down, but she could get a few jabs in before she did.

“Very well, far be it from me to stand in the way of Prince Nauthilian’s funeral procession, as it were. My condolences on the loss of your prince. My ships will FTL out shortly. One more word of advice, Captain, Admiral, whatever you are; the Asrian Ascendancy has spent a long time trying to convince the galaxy it’s changed. I don’t believe it for an instant. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the rest of the galaxy came to share my view? You might consider that next time you prepare to open fire on anyone who minorly inconveniences you. Good day.”

A scant few seconds later, 8th fleet disappeared in a cascade of flashes, retreating to the outer system. One they were securely back in orbit of Cipion, Anisimovna ordered a cruiser to rendezvous with the [i]Hermione[/i]. The galaxy indeed needed to know of Prince Nauthilian’s passing, if only to prepare for the Asrian response.

Sumri could almost taste the iron in her mouth. The arrogance of the Commonwealth truly knew no limit. She only heard mockery in Anisimovna voice. They didn’t just insult the prince by making them stop. They also insulted Asra as a whole by accusing them with old charges. For the passed thirty years the High King and most of his family had tried to show that they became peaceful. The Darkstars vanished from known orbits. Supposedly decommissioned though nobody truly believed that. Still, for thirty years they have been paying and this was the respect they were expected to receive? Sumri wished they could return to the old times. The good times. “Prepare the next FTL jumps. We should be out of harms way. Make sure the Envoy vessel is prepared to jump immediately towards Asra. I don’t want to agonize the Asrian people because a Warlord wanted to make a statement.”
[right][sub]Collab with [@Ozerath][/sub][/right][hr][center][h1][b]Princess and the Speaker[/b][/h1][/center]
[b]Location:[/b] Hunter's Lodge - Rolvius III

Olliana took up Vanniffar’s invitation but when her lodge’s door opened, out came not the huntress of yesterday. A silver circlet nestled itself on her forehead. Long braids made sure the hair on the side of her head was held tightly in place. In the fashion of a warrior maiden. Her eye shadow was black and danced on the edge between extravagant fashion and war paint. She wore only a cuirass with channels of blue energy flowing like a heartbeat along the armor. It was light and did not at all restrict her movement. Nothing indicated that yesterday she had been covered in mud and blood. 

She approached Vannifar. “I’m not hungry.” There was no subtlety to her. The truth was she had lost all her appetite yesterday. She barely touched dinner yesterday. Every waking hour on the planet felt like torture. Stolen time that should be dedicated to something else. “Will you let us on Manir?”

Vannifar, for her part, kept a cool head despite knowing she was the proverbial mouse standing before the lioness. Her only other choice was to turn around and leave knowing that would lead to a less desirable outcome. She wrapped a net around her hair as soon as the assistants finished at the food preparation station, withdrawing to the vehicles. Out of sight, out of mind. Vannifar fished a few strips of protein from the trays, adding them to the portable stove system.

“Will I let you on Manir? I’d use the Terran phrase of ‘Over my dead body,’ but I think the proper application of that term is ‘Over the dead bodies of one-hundred-million Rolvians.’ We’re still digging them out of Relithan. The colonists have taken to calling it ‘The Bonefield.’ Seems poetically fitting for an outdoor camp that was bombarded from orbit, but most of the remains are buried beneath the sand and glass.”

Vannifar began stirring the protein strips in the pan, adding a dollop of a sweet-smelling sauce, a dash of this spice and that.

“My question, though, is what happens if that answer is my final one? I have two fleets massing on Rolvian space’s borders for ‘War Games.’ I have multiple offers from star nations to intervene and ‘Protect Rolvian sovereignty.’ But we both know that’s a sham. They’re waiting to carve us up if you attack and take what you want, or will invade to deny you access to the Manir site if I commit political suicide and grant you access. The Commonwealth will absorb oir belt moons - the minor colonies that produce our exports - under some sham protectorate, keep the grain and work the farmers there until the soil is rendered barren. The Lokoids will offer to help me at the cost of my entire treasury. The Federation might work with me, or they might just snatch everything that’s left. So if I give your people access, and you don’t enact a second planetary sterilization, and my government is toppled, and Rolvius itself becomes the first front in a pan-galactic war… what then?”

Olliana was many things. Enraged. Ill-tempered. Powerful. Impatient. But she was not a fool. Even now she kept thinking as clearly as possible while Vannifar pretended to be a cook. With every sentence she pieced together a bit more information. Of course, the Princess was briefed on most things. For one she knew the Lokoid were coming in as well and that FedNat was conduction not so innocent games at their borders. It felt almost inevitable that Adgemnar would leak out towards Rolvius. War was coming.

From a briefing, many would expect Olliana to act as the tempest that she is. Vannifar no doubt expected her to claim she would cleave through all of them. That she would occupy Manir and blockade any fleet. Perhaps Olliana would dare say a Darkstar would return to cast its dark omen over the planet once more. Perhaps, in a fit of cruel irony, she would have searched the archives to find out exactly what Darkstar glassed Relithan to make it all truly poetic. As for her who dare stand in her way? Obviously she would declare them to be crushed. Their forces scattered and broken. Maybe by herself.

But Olliana was not a fool. “You will get flooded.” She declared. “If part of Rolvius remains standing a week after the first guns go off over Manir, you yourself will be flooded under a tide of refugees. You think a hundred-million dead is bad now? Wait until FedNat and the Commonwealth start slinging insults and then shots at each other over your planets. The war will be the least of your worries as desperate people with nothing to lose and everything to gain start rioting in your streets. There will be bloodbaths not even a Darkstar could rival.” She paused for a second. Letting the Prime Speaker absorb Olliana’s more militaristic and much more doomsday image of the coming war sink in. She did not talk about how she would handle Manir. That was something you solved on a Battleship’s bridge.

There was one thing, however, that the Asrians had in almost obscene amounts: space. That cataclysm had claimed far too many. “So I will offer you and your people refuge. In the Ascendancy.” At home that would cause trouble. If the Greater Houses wouldn’t rise up then the general population surely would. Still, they had space. Entire abandoned planets. The Rolvians could walk on the aftermath of the Cataclysm. “The more you’re willing to give us now, the more people you save.” It was only after she said it that something clicked. No diplomat could do what she did.

“You’re presuming that we’ll have the means to get there. I have, what, four battlegroups to the entire nation? All my heavy ships were bought from the Lokoid after the war. We could maybe dislodge the collective mess of ships in orbit above us. But once we’re rolled, there’s no way to get out of Rolvian space. We had that problem when we dislodged you from Manir. It took us years to scrape up enough ships to launch an invasion of one of our own core worlds. And we needed the Lokoid for that too. So no. Much as I appreciate the offer, it will not work once the bombs start dropping.”

Vannifar made a conscious effort to throw a dozen protein strips onto the stove, the air filling with the sound of crisping and crackling fat and grease. 

If anybody’s listening, I’m fucked. But if they are listening, they did a damn good job getting this close. And the hexacatl was going to get out of the bag eventually.

“Highness. There is a third option. One that bears consideration, but also will require a… deft touch. Manir is being rebuilt through refugee resettlement programs. But a number of those settlements are made up of deserters from the belligerent powers of the Great War. They are given protections under galactic concordance, and we see to it that they are given contact with their home states. Military Police from said nations are permitted to investigate these sites for unresolved crimes against individuals in their home states. The Federation Assembly has dispatched a single fleet support ship to Manir to investigate the wreckage of their heavy cruiser Trident, and to ascertain if the surviving crew were ordered to evacuate or mutinied to escape the battle. This is all spelled out in the Treaty of Detente, which Rolvius still is a signatory.

“Now, I understand during the war there was a battalion of Asrian troops that were declared dead to the last in a heroic stand against a Commonwealth assault. The 51st Support Battalion. Swept up from their positions within minutes of being attacked. The newsports billed it as a stunning victory for the Commonwealth, to destroy an Asrian combat unit so quickly with minimal casualties. It was the victory that prompted your full withdrawal from Manir. But if members of the 51st were to be found alive, then as long as Asria is a signer to the treaty, then I must allow a limited number of Asrians onto Manir to validate that they were captured in battle and didn’t just kill their officers and run for the hills.

“Tell me, what is the punishment under Asrian law for mutiny and desertion in an active war zone? And do you have access to a suitably lightly armed vessel, with people who could pass for Asrian deserters if that was what would get them to the dig site?”

Maybe Olliana had underestimated the Prime Speaker. She certaintly came up with some politically creative solutions. The sudden implosion amongst the 51st was somewhat of a strange mystery to the Asrians. Military researchers had theorized that the Commonwealth or some other faction had used a secret weapon. They almost had to, considering that within an hour almost all communications died. After the Great war all dead were seen as celebrated heroes. They were mourned and praised. To hear now that they may still live. Worse, that they deserted Asra.
 
“It’s a punishment you cannot imagine, Prime Speaker.” Olliana said, eyeing the sizzling protein. With a subtle move she lifted a thoroughly cooked pieced out of the pain and let it drift into her hand. After which she took a sharp bite. It was something different than her usual diet. “And I have what you need. I thank you, Mrs. Vannifar. It appears there will be no senseless blood spilled over Manir for now.” She ate the strip then moved back towards the lodge.
 
“Prepare the shuttle. We leave tomorrow at dawn. Tell the Battleships to prepare an envoy ship to send back home.” She commanded. One of her Witches was already heading towards the comn console. Olliana turned around again and faced Vannifar: “I still want my skull.”
“Oh, you’ll be staying for the conference, Olliana.” Vannifar began removing protein strips, very noticeably creating plates for two. “At least, for the next few days still.

“The fate of the 51st is a state secret. We’ve been lending them our protection in exchange for whatever insights they can give us to the nature of the Manir vault- which wasn’t much since they don’t have half the equipment your teams brought in during the first war. In this situation, I would take care of leaking their existence to the press but the presence of your ships and your royal self in system has already unsettled the locals on Manir. Mass evacuations to the underground shelters began without my issuing so much as a ‘See something? Say something’ to the Planetary Defense Corps. 

“It’s likely the Asrians will become public knowledge in the next few days due to some enterprising young reporter hoping to break the story of ‘potential spies and saboteurs in system.’ Once that hits the com-waves, I expect you to make a ruckus here that will make your hunting trip look like a Commonwealth tea party. I’ll put my foot down. You’ll invoke the Treaty of Detente. I’ll honor the stipulations the Asrians signed. You’ll be invited to send a trusted team of investigators to the surface. We’ll work out the details of the visitation restrictions to the Manir vault when the time comes, but they will all be within the parameters of the Treaty.”

Vannifar grabbed a spice tumbler from the portable stove, upended it over her own protein flakes. The red seeds and flakes floated downard, immediately stuck to the grease of the protein strips, a pungent and hot spice aroma filling the air. “Forgive me. I prefer my breakfast with enough spice to wake me up in the morning. Now, does your royal highness find this plan to your liking, or do we need to take this to the public negotiating table?”

Olliana was completely calm and turned around to face Vannifar once more. She listened, attentively, with no real change in her demeanor. She took it all in. How the 51st were apparently not the glorious last defenders that died with honor. She listened as the Prime Speaker told her how to act in the coming talks. And finally she had to hear how some weakling Rolvian had the arrogance to think she stood checkmate. The Witches of Olliana began to come inside and whispered amongst each other. The psymeters inside were going haywire. Massive fluctuations were measured. Those without an innate sense to measure those invisible forced could assume it was simply broken but the Witches felt it. Olliana was radiating her power from her back. Venting it away from her as if she was afraid from what she would do. The witches, for their part, redirected the power upwards towards the trees. Where it manifested in simple soft ruffling like a constinious win was blowing through the canopy. In the meantime the Princess had approached the table and sat down. Locking eyes with Vannifar.
 
“Let me get this straight. You’re forcing me to sit her and remain for the next few days. After which I’m supposed to play your puppet during a meeting. All so my people can get access to honorless traitors and the digsite?” The question was rhetorical. But Olliana smiled. If not for the circumstances, it might have looked sweet. It wasn’t though, it was pity. For right now Olliana wanted nothing more than to crush every bone in the Prime Speaker’s body. Again, if the circumstances were better, she would’ve. “And you ask all that even though you must know my brother died on Adgemnar and if my reputation wasn’t known before I came into orbit, I’m fairly sure I’ve made it yesterday.”
 
Before the Prime Speaker could even say a word. Olliana rushed upwards. The chair some eight meters backwards. Still, there was no direct hostility in Olliana’s demeanor. “Very well, I’ll stay and play in your little theatre. But I hope for Rolvius’ sake, that you know what you’re doing. I might have offered you and yours refuge but know that I and Asra as a whole is still very much capable of making the refugees.” With those words she marched back towards the lodge before she screamed, now with an exceptional amount of hostility: “Fix me another hunt!”
[right][sub]Collab with [@Aleranicus][/sub][/right]