Sekhmet Navy's Story

A male voice came across channels often used by the TNG ships defending Terra. "Terran fleet, this is Lieutenant Commander Connolly, pilot of the CONCORD DED corvette Muirear providing security for multiple Ayen diplomatic fleets. We request permission to enter Terran orbit." The Muirear had came out of warp close to Phobos, one of Mar's moon and ahead of thirty-six other ships to include five very different Ayen battleships each escorted by two Ayen cruisers and four Ayen frigates. The fleet looked to consist of thirty-seven total ships and was separated slightly into five very different looking larger groups of seven ships with the two CONCORD corvettes providing escort.

The fleet waited here for a reply. These people from various governments had come to view the destruction wrought by the attack on The Great Seto Bridge and speak with the Terran leaders involved. This was one of the few times these five different governments had worked together. It had been over fifty years since all the five navies had come together to accomplish a single mission. Rest assured though that each had very different goals and not every nation had benevolent intentions.

"Lieutenant Commander Connally, please hold position one moment. Escalating hail."

---

Up through the channels, the DED vessel's hail passed increasing levels of clearance, until it reached the office of a man arm's deep in paperwork. Glancing disdainfully at the phone, Minister of Defense Max Dirge scowled, putting his pen aside as he lifted the receiver. Listening for a few moments, he nodded to himself. "Permission granted. Give them a commercial orbit, and shift some fleet to cover them."

Hanging that phone up, he glanced at it, raising it and dialing a number himself. A moment later, the other end answered. "Minister Dirge. Tell the boys both eyes on the sky, now. No more surprises."

---

"Lieutenant Commander Connally, permission granted. Transmitting orbit coordinates you now."

On the surface, TNG anti-orbital installations shook themselves awake, including those repositioned by the Minister to cover the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

As the Ayenee ships came into Terra's orbit, one by one, while the TNG was handling channels, a second element was coming into play. Brilliant red icons lit up across the screens and controls of the Shintenchi Shogunate's ParaSOL Command and Control.

There was a flurry of activity as alarms began to blare, alarms masked by the sound of telephones ringing, and Command officers shouting orders in Taiyou. This flurry of well coordinated activity culminated into the Ayenee vessels being marked from the ground, massive Wide-Spectrum Scanner domes swiveled upwards in response, while the Shogun was sound asleep.


"Do we have a firing solution on the Ayenee fleet?" One Commander asked, as icons continued to flash on screen.

"We're readying our missiles as we speak..." A Crewman reported, while firing solutions from across the Shintenchi Countryside were being garnered.




----

In Orbit over Terra itself, the TNG And Ayen ships would likely note several large satellites in Geosynchronous orbit above Shintenchi began to come to life, slowly swiveling on their Axis and coming to bear on the Ayen ships, while spreading solar panels outwards to gather solar energy, which was being stored in massive capacitors and fed into sunstones. Each Pile Driver type satellite could deliver upwards of 150 Megatons of pure solar energy concentrated in a beam through a high focus lens in a single two second burst.




----

There was a trepid silence as the Commander picked up his red telephone, it was time to wake the Shogun. It would be uncertain if Shintenchi forces received the hail, but perhaps not firing was fairly indicative.

----->

The thirty seven ships exited warp with brilliant flashes of light and settled into orbit after leaving Phobos just seconds earlier. The moment they exited warp each pilot announced through the link that their HUDs were alerting them that they were being directly targeted by ground based missile systems and multiple defensive satellites. There was a brief break down in their peaceful stance towards each other for they considered the other groups in their fleet far more dangerous and deceitful than the forces arrayed against them on the planet or floating above it.

It took Lieutenant Commander Connolly nearly a full minute to get them to stop pointing their guns at each other. After that was dealt with the commander re-opened the channel with Captain Dirge. APD's buzzed the pile drivers and a few other orbital assets and relayed information back to the two DED pilots. "Terran fleet, this is Lieutenant Commander Connolly, pilot of the CONCORD DED corvette Muirear. We are diplomatic and have peaceful intentions. Why are we being targeted by your orbital and ground assets?" EGO corrected the Commander, displaying a image of the Shintenchi Shogunate Global Military Forces symbol on the side of one of the pile drivers.

"Terran fleet, this is Lieutenant Commander Connolly, pilot of the CONCORD DED corvette Muirear. Sorry about that. Apparently the Shintenchi Shogunate is targeting us. Please direct us to a channel on which we can contact the Shogunate if such information is available to you." He said this with such calm that it would seem he thought very little about all the missiles other weapons that were targeting the Ayen fleet.

Phone ringing again, the Minister sighed before picking it up. “Yes?”

A moment, and the man stood upright, looking about ready to erupt. “Thank you. Watch those orbital weapons, and paint them with active sensors. I want the Shogunate to know we willshoot those installations out of the sky if they force us to.”

No sooner had Dirge hung up the phone did it ring again. “Yes? ...Tell them to hold, it’s being worked on.” Max set the phone down, yelling for the secretary outside. “Get me whatever line we have to the Shintenchi Shogunate now, and then get a hold of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and get them on that line. We have problems, and they need fixing. Move.”

Less than a minute later, Max was waiting for a response on the established line with the Shogunate, flagged as “Urgent: Immediate Attention”, while his aide worked furiously to contact the PM and MoFA and get them in the loop.

ParaSOL Command and Control
Somewhere in Shintenchi

Screens continued to flicker, displaying several icons in relation to the Ayen ships, in addition to red icons across the surface of Terra as wide spectrum arrays shifted and pointed upwards.

An Alarm bell began to chime through the command and control network, and a Lieutenant shouted.

"Commander! TNG Is painting our Pile Drivers! We're being targeted by Anti-Sat defenses." He cried out, while the Commander nodded.

"Bring us to Condition Yellow, I need the Shogun on the line now!" The Commander shouted, before a phone rang, and the Lieutenant called out.

"Moving to condition Yellow... Air Force will be ready to mobilize in fifteen minutes to fly sorties ." The Lieutenant reported, as numbers scrolled across the large map of Terra, and every major Terran city lit up red.


The Commander slowly reached for the red telephone, which offered a direct line to Narita and the Shogun.

---

Narita
Across the City and surrounding country

As events unfolded within ParaSOL Command and Control, emergency alert broadcasts had yet to be announced, and the people continued about their daily business. However, unknown to the population, orders within the Military infrastructure were being dissemenated, as the Shogunate was slowly preparing for war.

In airfields across Shintenchi, Type-0 Cosmo Zeroes, along with Nakajima Bombers were fueling and arming to fly sorties into Aslund once the order was given. Once they were fueled they would take off, and fly a pattern around Shintenchi until they were deployed into Aslund.

At this point, the Shogunate fleet had also began to mobilize, making their way out towards the ocean where they could get a clear takeoff trajectory and reach orbit, while several Shogun battleships turned around, to make their way towards the Shintenchi strait. In the event they would be deployed against Terran coastal targets.

And finally, Ground based Solarcannons, along with various Shori missile emplacements swiveled and adjusted their headings, with several installations moving to target TNG ships in orbit.

---

Narita Government Bunker
Shogun's Quarters

It had taken roughly fifteen minutes for the Pile Drivers to align, and an additional five for the TNG to call, which prompted a readiness from the Shogunate Military that was unprecedented.

As Sato sat in the war room of her own bunker, two red telephones rang, one from the TNG, and one from ParaSOL Command and Control.

Picking up the one from ParaSOL, a brief exchange was made, and the news relayed of the TNG Briefly painting the Pile Drivers.

It would be some time before the Shintenchi Military could mobilize should things escalate, but mobilization was clearly under way.

As the red phone rang, Sato picked it up knowing it was the TNG on the other side. Her voice was terse as she confronted whomever was on the other end.

"Are you trying to start a war with us? Targeting our defenses is an act of aggression! Explain yourselves immediately!"

The smaller frigate and cruiser class vessels of each navy orbited the battleships which sat in geosynchronous orbit awaiting TNG instruction. There were a few glaring problems with this whole picture.

The first problem was that the pile drivers would take roughly fifteen minutes to align on target. The vast majority of that time had yet to pass in relation to the mixed Ayen fleet. With such a long window of time they could have very easily destroyed the satellites and then decimated the entire Shintenchi controlled landmass given the frame of time that the bombers in Taiyou controlled space obliterated the surface of entire planets. If they had been anything but peaceful they would have long since attacked.

The Shintenchi Shogunate simply did not realize how absolutely, absurdly, and hilariously outgunned they were even when taking the fleet at face value for the number of ships currently on the field and their capability. The comparison could be likened to a miniscule colony of ants facing the Orkin Man. Of course the similarity to the aforementioned insect and exterminator was moot because the mixed Ayenee fleet had been truthful to the TNG representative. Most had only peaceful intentions for the nations of Terra. Others thought of the whole Terra debacle with CONCORD to be more of a set piece to distract their competition.

The satellites and the ground weapons were monitored but the fleet showed very little concern for them. "Siad ag iarraidh iad féin a scrios. Cad is féidir a dhéanamh chun scor an brjálæði? They seek to obliterate themselves. What can be done to halt this madness?", Ameir Astarte asked over the link. The eldest son of Empress Amunet Astarte and a Duke in the Sekhmet court stood upon the bridge of the Sekhmet battleship. David Cameron, president of the Ardenian Federation was also with the fleet. He knew the Duke cared little for the humans and even less so for the humans of this galaxy. His only goal with the remark was to strengthen his support by playing the benevolent leader and humanitarian that some already knew he was not. "Lig Tá súil againn a fheiceann siad a n-baois. Let us hope they realize their folly." Prime Minister Cameron could not call the Duke out on his false concern without escalating the encounter to hostility or weakening his own political position.

"Terran fleet, this is Lieutenant Commander Connolly, pilot of the CONCORD DED corvette Muirear please update us when able. We await your direction.", communicated the DED pilot.

"Affirmative.", Lieutenant Commander Connolly replied. The mixed Ayenee fleet held position and awaited further instructions. The mixed Ayenee fleet pilots continued to squabble with themselves across an alternate channel. LCDR Connolly controlled fleet communications on the primary channel and had enforced radio silence by the rest of the fleet on the channel they shared with the TNG representative.

"I wouldn't know whether an attempt was made or not. If not, I'd imagine the reasons they didn't contact the Shintenchi nations ahead of time is the Sato incident and the muddy circumstances and perpetrators around it. If you would keep this line of communication open, I can personally update you on their intentions at the earliest time possible. Is that acceptable?"

Max waited for a response.

Sato nodded to one of her Officers, and the speakers in the war room came online, so everyone could hear the ensuing conversation.

"I've got the speakers up and everyone can hear this channel." Sato said, nodding.

"Now we wait, and see what's going on."

The Cultist (EtG) humed to himself.

The Cultist (EtG) crashed on the side of the Space Station

Ow

Anyone?

Jay Null, are you there