[center][h3]Collab Between [@Tortoise], [@Raylah] and [@Irredeemable][/h3][/center]

Finally, the show is about to begin.

The Cultural Union can do nothing without pomp. Without pizazz. And so it’s no surprise that this will not be a quiet war; this will be a loud, screaming, shouting, cheering one, projected across all of New Hollywood on screens mounted to buildings, in private viewing galleries, in holo-suites, and famously, into the office of the Savant Heralds himself. Every citizen of the ECU will witness this. Win or lose- but they’re sure to win.

Heralds raises his hands to the display in front of him. With a sweeping motion, like a conductor with a baton, he orders a swarm of ships to move in unison. It’s like watching an angry colony of ants; little true formation, but everyone seems to know where everyone else is going. These ECU ships are mostly small, single-pilot little things, expecting to overwhelm their enemy by numbers rather than strength. There are only a few large cruisers among them; sadly, the single battleship was too incomplete to join this august war.

Across the planet, fireworks are launched. Crowds cheer, announcers speak to their audiences faster than auctioneers, and the first wave of fighters venture into the Gateway. Destination: Zeta.

[i]They’re coming.[/i]

Like a thought across neurons, the message was conveyed through the Collective. Repeated, iterated, screamed, whispered and said. Just over a hundred craft stood ready to defend, along with the few defenses the Aegis had to offer. There were no dramatic speeches, or cultural posturing: Zeta was fighting to survive.

When the first enemy ships came, they unleashed everything they had. The void was lit up with pinpricks of light as missiles and flak guns unloaded their payloads. The Aegis core’s battery of rail cannons joined in as well, volleys of electromagnetically accelerated steel sent hurtling through space. To the Zetans, it was the most firepower their nation had ever put out at one time.

And it tore through the makeshift ECU ships. At least, the first ones; when they fell, upwards of one hundred more came through the Gateway behind them. They had little strategy except what Heralds gave them, and by his remote commands, a third of the ships broke off and headed for the Aegis. The rest tried splitting the Zetan fleet in two, driving a wedge between it.

If any of the Zetans were listening to their comms, they could hear protectors screeching insults and cries of vengeance. The crowds on New Hollywood were, likewise, taken aback by the ferocity of the cyborg's defense, but when the music swelled again, and the ECU fighters continued on, they cheered as before. Both for the show their own ships put on, and occasionally, for the worthy performances of the villains.

There was something beautiful about the way the Zetan ships moved. Something smooth and sinuous and perhaps even a little seductive. Although junkers, although retrofitted and slapdash, the Collective’s power came from their togetherness. Thirty ships slid away from the main body, intricately weaving between the fire of their fellows, to try to protect the Aegis as best they could. In response, the Aegis itself unleashed its missile pods. In retrospect, the Collective would acknowledge these were fired too early, but in the moment, the blue glow of their propellant in the void spoke of a beauty born of science.

The remaining sixty or so ships started to spread out. With the initial barrage eaten up by the invaders, they needed to switch to their less powerful weaponry. More flak guns opened up, clouds of weaponised detritus sent hurtling towards the Hollywoodite ships, their whoops and jeers ignored by the fighters within.

But the protectors laughed when the Aegis’s missiles missed. “Hey toasters, all those gizmos and ya can’t shoot straight?” That particular man was shot down a moment later, but his brother in an adjacent fighter fired torpedoes of revenge. They were aiming for the Aegis now, dodging around its defending ships by Herald’s commands. They swooped and dipped, spun and showed off. Even when one fell, their painted hulls made for sparkling debris not unlike confetti.

But nearer to the Gateway, the ECU was feeling overwhelmed. The sixty Zetan defenders were matched almost one-for-one by Hollywood’s protectors, who could not coordinate nearly as well. They jolted and thrusted randomly, hit their targets by luck or anger, and when they ran out of fuel or ammunition, crashed themselves haphazardly into the enemy and took out as many of the 'toasters' as they could. The resulting debris was now transforming the war zone into a nightmare to fly through.

This, finally, is when the first Old Earth Cruiser made it through the Gateway. It was an odd sight to anyone in the Collective who knew their history, being an ancient design simply painted over in bright new colors. Two dozen more golden fighters danced around it in the void, weapons flaring like a light show. If it didn’t mean death and destruction, it would be dazzling.

This is near to the end of the Cultural Union's available fleet, but the Zetans didn’t need to know this. Herald's voice was projected through the second cruiser to enter the battlefield: “We have countless more warriors on the way. If you surrender now, we will show mercy.” Both of these statements were lies. In his office, Heralds was sweating.

“Where are they?” one of the protectors cries out as two Zetans converge on him. “I thought the Undefeated were coming!”

Although he couldn’t know it, on the end side of a Gateway, they were. “Deflector shields at maximum. We are going through.” Oscar Pawlowski glanced at the fleet status screen one last time and sent a quick prayer to whoever was out there. The Undefeated had long lost beliefs in any of the old Earth gods, but saying things like ‘God help us’ was too deeply rooted in the daily language of the soldiers to just disappear. How could there be any god? They were literally above the sky and there was just one big nothing. The Grand General shook those thoughts away as the ship was passing through the Gateway. He needed to concentrate.

“Status?” he asked right as they emerged on the Zetan side.

His XO studied the screens for a second. “Our fleet passed through unharmed, however the shields seem to be only at 70%, there must be some interference in the wormhole that drains them.” Oscar frowned, that was not good. Still, shields at 70% were better than no shields. “The battle isn’t going well, looks like the ECU has already lost a large number of ships.”

“They are getting their asses kicked,” Oscar scoffed. No surprise there. You could tell at first sight that these people were no warriors. “Time to turn the tide.” He activated the channel shared with our vessel commanders. “Spread out a bit. Thorsten stays in the middle, Eclipse goes left, Horizon takes the right flank. Sonne, what is the status of the fighters?”

“All ready to go.”

“Aright, launch all fighters, but don’t let them go too far in, concentrate on protecting the fleet. Send some to protect the ECU cruisers as well.” He watched the 3D tactical model of the battlefield as dozens of small dots emerged from one of the bigger dots. "Cruisers and Destroyers spread out between the Battleships. What about the new plasma cannons?" He turned to an officer at the weapons station.

"Sir, the enemy ships are too small and fast to target them efficiently without significant friendly fire on the engaged ECU fighters."

"Damn, what a shame. Conventional weapons then, projectiles and guided missiles, fire at will." He walked to the bridge window, watching as the space around the Gateway filled with even more ships, rockets and, eventually, more debris.

In all this chaos, it wasn’t just Union ships that were destroyed- the Consciousness’ own vessels were taking a hammering too. The missiles that were loosed at the Aegis found their mark: it was, of course, near impossible to miss a stationary target, and although the vacuum of space robbed the ECU of the bright explosions they no doubt desired, a portion of the Aegis buckled and crumpled, the rail cannons falling silent as targeting systems and crew were removed from the equation.

Several of the Zetan fighters too, now spiralled out of control or had been blown into shrapnel. The Collective welcomed mind after mind, the shipsmen who perished watching the conflict through their comrades’ eyes.

Then the cruiser came through, and with the cruiser, its message. The response to the message was quite firm, and utterly unmistakeable. One of the largest of the Zetan’s ships had pointed itself directly towards the golden bow of this ghost from the past. As the corvette ploughed forwards, the crew prepared their fireship’s payload… Its uranium-enriched engines.

The protectors were not the kind to recognize this strategy. They fired at the suicidal corvette as it darted past, but made no real effort to stop it; they were certain it couldn’t hurt a big, tough ship like the cruiser. So they were understandably shocked when the ship erupted in a blossom of blinding light, and half that glorious shining cruiser burst inwards, the void of space rushing in while their air rushed out.

On New Hollywood, the holo-screens cut away from this sight.

Within an Undefeated ship, Claire was sitting in one of the auxiliary control rooms, monitoring the shield status as the battle went on, also going over the data from the Gateway passage. So far it seemed that the shields reacted to the wormhole passage as to a hostile environment and tried to protect the ship from it, depleting a part of their capacity. Claire wondered whether a simple change in the programming would help prevent it in the future.

It felt strange, sitting here in a comfortable armchair while a battle raged outside. One of the other scientists was even sipping hot coffee from a regular open mug. Bad idea, Claire thought but didn't comment on it. The man would quickly find out himself when the ship suddenly shook violently. He screamed in pain as the boiling beverage splashed on his hand, but nobody paid any attention to him.

“Status report!” Claire yelled, looking at the screen.

“Shields are at 25% percent!”

“I can see that myself. What the hell happened?”

“WE ARE GOING TO DIE!”

Claire jumped up and moved to the hysterical technician, grabbing him by his collar and throwing him to the ground. “Get out of here! Call the bridge.” She tried to move back to her station but got knocked to the wall by a second impact. This time the ship took longer to stabilize, lights were flickering and all the screens turned red with numerous warnings.

“Claire! We … the shields .... NOW!” Oscar’s voice came through the intercom, almost unintelligible due to interference.

Claire glanced at the monitor and cursed. 3%. She finally got to the table, wiped the blood off her forehead, and pressed the button to respond. “What the fuck are they shooting at us?” she shouted. “Meteorites? The shields weren’t designed for this.” Even at 70%, they should be able to withstand attacks from every weapon they could think of, be it based on plasma, electricity, antimatter, explosive missiles, or simple projectiles. At least for a while. This must have been something with much greater mass or power.

“They … suicide … . I repeat, they … suicide ships …  with tons of explosives.” The transmission was getting better, but that was the only good news.

Crap. That’s why the power in the shields went down so fast, trying to stop the sheer mass of a ship ramming into them as well as containing the blasts. “You need to stop them, the shields can’t take another hit.”

Laughter came through the intercom, distortion making it sound even scarier. “The fuck you think we are trying to do?!”

Claire took a deep breath, wiping more blood from her face. She vaguely remembered that with head wounds there is always a lot of blood, but wasn’t this too much? It didn’t really matter though, if they can’t recharge the shields, it will be the last of her problems. The main issue was that the shields were designed to recharge slowly over time, with safe moderated increments. There were several balancing and safety buffers preventing dangerous spikes. The buffers. Of course.

“Discharge all power from the auxiliary buffers to the shields.”

The other people stopped moving and stared at her. “We… we can’t do that. Those buffers are there for a reason, if we pour too much power to the shield generators at once, it could damage other ship’s systems.”

“As opposed to getting blown up to pieces by a suicide bomber?” Claire hissed. “I’ll take that.”

“But there are security protocols…”

“OVERRIDE THEM! Start fuckin moving you incompetent jerks or we will indeed all die here, as the idiot before said.”

It took them four long minutes to create a program that bypassed the security measures and rerouted almost all available power to the shield generators. As they ran it, the lights began flickering and sparks came out from some of the equipment, followed by a strange, weightless feeling.

“We fried the artificial gravity control, but… the shields are coming up. 20, 40, 58%. That’s all the power from the buffers,” one of the men reported.

“We can live without gravity, plus the backup system should kick in soon. But the shields… Send the program to the other ships right away.” Claire turned around after hearing a high-pitched scream. The scientist who was holding the coffee before was now helplessly spinning mid-air, trying to escape a big bubble of still very hot beverage. She reached to him, pulling his leg towards the floor. “Idiots.”

“Ma’am, I have received confirmation from Eclipse, Sonne, and most of the smaller ships, but Horizon is not responding.”

Claire shivered. “Bridge? We have sent the shield recharge procedure to the rest of the fleet, but Horizon didn’t return confirmation. Is there a problem with their communication?”

The solemn silence confirmed what she already expected. “It was too late, the Zetans got to them first. The Horizon is gone.”

The Hollywoodite protectors witnessed the massive Horizon ship burst open just like their own, and for a moment, even these simple men almost lost heart. They are brutes, men of intimidation. What could they do against an enemy so fearless that they’ll kill themselves just to hit back at you?

But at last, the Gateway opened again, and the third and final Old Earth cruiser entered the fray, bringing with it the last of the ECU invasion force. With the Undefeated still intact, they now heavily outnumbered their targets. The protectors have slowly ceased to cheer and jive, but grim-faced, they know what needs to be done.

Beckoning their friends to join them, the two cruisers took on command roles: they cast off to either side, bringing with them half the fighters each, and began mopping up the battlefield as two massive navies. The smaller ships spun in circles around their commanding cruisers, fanatically shooting down any further cyborg vessels that got to close. They were not going to allow a repeat of that little tragedy.

One by one, the Zetan vessels fell under withering firepower. The Aegis quietened- a small plume of scrap metal and bodies floating free from a particularly nasty breach, making it look like smoke from a burning fortress.

Eventually, all resistance halted. Not a single Zetan fighter remained in one piece, nor were there any signs of escape pods. The ECU and their ally, of course, would not know that not one life had been lost in this battle, the minds of each and every ‘dead’ soldier safely returned to Zeta thanks to their new, accelerated transcendence protocols, but the cost for the Consciousness was still dire. Their navy was gone, the infant Aegis shattered and rent.

“We got ‘em, boys.” The protector chief called out across the system, although it doesn’t sound nearly as joyful as he meant it. “Someone get the troop carriers ready. Oh, and send the Undefeated a damn cake!”

The path to Zeta-5 lay open.