Captain James Benead shook his head, recovering from the sudden surge of warp force his ship had gone through. The battle for the Tesseract had taken a drastic turn during the discovery that the Solar Liberation League was employing Bydo craft, and so this super-dreadnought-class vessel was brought forth to wipe out the enemy. It wasn't long into the battle afterwards that the Tessarect appeared to be activated, swallowing a chuck of the combating ships in an abrupt wave of white. With the disorientation wearing off, the crew of the cruiser seemed to be coming back to reality again.
"Status report," Benead sounded off to the bridge. The available crew got to work on their consoles as fats as their minds could recover.
"No further hull damage beyond former combat. We're encountering heavy tech distortion, weapons operable at 61% efficiency; Bow gun is offline," came the reports from the ship operators. Bringing up a HUD of a digital cross-section, the captain found that the Positron Cannon was indeed undergoing some severe malfunctions.
"Immediate area scans reveal several unidentifiable cruisers... at least two appear to be dreadnought-class," The navigators chimed in. "Bydo craft appear to be largely disabled and unresponsive. Confirmed 4 available R-fighter squads." So they still had fighter capabilities. That was going to be key here, given the Jotunheim's current condition and apparent situation.
"System location?"
"...Unknown. We are not picking up any known Star Systems in range, much less our own." Cossord reported disdainfully. A silent wash of concern swept over the bridge. If they weren't anywhere close to the Solar System, then where exactly were they? The farther they were from home, the harder it would be to get back, especially if they had no means to enter Dimension 26. Plus, there was no telling how much Bydo power the SLL still had: if they controlled the Tesseract, they would be within Earth range in a matter of minutes if uninhibited. With the combined effort of the EAF and the GRA, that may not be too much a problem, but it was still a war, and war meant coming out the far least wounded.
James sent a call down to the dreadnought's hangars. "Commander Oersted, copy. Contact all capable R-series fighters and prepare to bring them aboard."
Markus's face, appearing on a visual screen earlier, twisted a bit in confusion. "With all due respect sir, there are still Bydo fighters out there-"
"We have greater concerns: no available range to the Solar System, and visuals on at least 2 super-dreadnought class vessels," the captain stressed. "We're not going to risk combat until we can confirm what we're up against, especially with the Jotunheim under such interference."
"Yes sir," Oersted saluted, signing off to issue the orders. The four remaining external fighter squadrons - two sets of Arrowheads, a Range-Wave team and a Bomber team - were contacted with the information, and they gladly came aboard under claims their own systems were having issues. In the meantime, the Jotunheim attempted to gain deeper scan knowledge on the other cruisers.
"Captain, I think you'd be interested in this," Lieutenant McKellen called to Benead. "We're getting vague reading of Wave Cannon- no, wait, not quite..." James leaned forward, urging for more information. McKellen monitored his station a bit more before continuing, "No, not an operational Wave Cannon, but still some sort of Wave Motion tech." He motioned to Navigation, who brought up the ship on scanner. "We can get a serial: Earth Defense Fleet Ship Andromeda. Doesn't match classifications of any EAF vessel... What do you think, sir?"
Captain Benead returned to a resting position on his chair. The fact that this ship hailed from Earth spoke volumes, but there was no evidence they came from their Earth. It brought forth the possibility that the Andromeda in fact hailed from some sort of alternate Earth, in some different timeline. Since the discovery of Dimension 26, the idea of time travel and even trans-universal and inter-dimensional travel all became far more likely in science and theorems. The idea of a different timeline in which the Earth developed in a 'different but similar' fashion was not at all beyond the range of reason for individuals in the EAF Space Corps. Regardless, the fact that they both shared similar origins and technology was reason enough to establish a link.
"Hail the Andromeda. Tell them we are from the Earth Allied Forces, that we suspect we have encountered some sort of quantum displacement, and request that we should establish some sort of allegiance given our similarities in origin and ship design," Benead commanded. McKellen complied, relaying the appropriate message to the Andromeda. The captain held fair hopes that cooperation with this other Earth-designed ship would bring profit to both sides.