New Scalding Pass

Time: YC123
Region: Scalding Pass
Constellation: QI1M-Q
System: V-S9YY
Security: -0.13
Sovereignty: SOCO

They came out of the jump close to the fifth planet of the V-S9YY system. The blue and green globe below them floated beset on all sides by ribbons of vibrant red and orange colors. A pink sun shone brightly in the distance.

Scalding Pass is a vast stellar nursery, the birth place of stars. A harsh and unforgiving region of space home to violent ion storms and rocked by intense solar winds, the Pass is littered with the wrecks of ships that were blindsided by the unpredictable dangers this region holds.

The Ayen ships came out and into normal space just before those they were escorting and aligned for the next leg of the journey. "This is Scalding Pass.", said one of the pilots over a channel the fleet had been sharing. "We have a short hop and a course correction before we get to Curse. This will take us through a tight spot between some mean dead-space. Keep straight and do not stray. The fleet commander had to call in a favor to pull down Farit's inhibitor but be ready on your guns. The Cartel is not to be trusted.", warned the female SOCO pilot.

Brilliant flashes of light erupted off the vessels as they surged forward on the next leg of their journey. Not long after they left the orbit of that blue planet they would exit into normal space. There was no bright star here. The void surrounded them. This was the route that explorers had taken many eons ago before the creation of the gates. The pass consisted of a narrow choke point between two dead-space sandbars. It had been centuries since the natives had come this way. This was interstellar space between Scalding Pass and Curse.

The three SOCO frigates and the cruiser were the first to come into normal space. The rest would be right behind them. They were on edge and for good reason. The inhibitor activated behind them. There would be no going back.

Darkness surrounded them. The passing ships cut neat, narrow lines through the very epitome of emptiness - small, insignificant barges wading through an ocean of black space. The void echoed silently around them. There were no planets. No debris. The nearest system was lightyears away and the distant starlight in the canvassing darkness looked almost non-existent. Silence settled upon them - the symphony of the void - the utterly deafening sound of absolutely nothing.

They were right to fear.

It came without warning - a massive shockwave of relativistic energy. To the inhabitants of the ship, it would feel like an earthquake. It hit the convoy with monstrous force, pushing them on either side like a sailboat caught between opposing typhoons. Spacetime on their left and right flanks began to bend and warp into ungodly shapes. EMP pulses and radiation drenched them. Something was coming.

The Convoy continued to sail through space, with the Rising Sun, the Ryu-oh, and the Taiyou ship escorts, along with the SOCO ships.

The blackness of space surrounded the tiny specks of ships, imposing as a velvety blackness that silently stood, watching as if something was lurking in the darkness.

The relativistic explosion rocked the un-shielded Taiyou ships, shaking and causing them to buck about. Radiation shielding dampened most of the radiation, and hardened electronics helped with EMPs, but many taiyou ships found themselves affected.

Panic rang across a multitude of Taiyou ship bridges as the crew tried to stabilize their vessels, some of them losing power as a result of the EMPs and relativistic energies.

The shockwave however washed effortlessly over the Ryu-oh's shields, like water ebbing and flowing around a stone in a river, the Ryu-oh remained unaffected as Admiral Yotsuga watched a large holographic display, surrounded by the interior of the Ru-oh




Yotsuga frowned as he stepped back. He was going to ready his ship for battle. "Something is lurking out there..." He said, thinking that the ship would need to be ready for battle, which it responded by engaging it's shields, but with no visible weapon emplacements, one would wonder if it was armed at all.

"...but for all our purpose, we are tiny, ember-flecked sparks of stardust and ash
Flickering bravely, hopelessly in the undying night
Oh brief, foolish light that wanes dim in the shrouding dark
From nothing you have come, to nothing you shall return
Your color, your warmth, your passion
All lies. All breathless, beautiful lies
For where your gasping flame is smothered and snuffed
Oblivion will follow..." - Excerpt from Rakitin's 'Theopany'

The Solari call them the Ogdru Hem. In their religion they are the sons of the Ogdru Jahad, the dragon of their book of revelation. While the three Garmur class frigates and the single Onyx weathered the massive shockwave of relativistic energy, EMP pulses, and radiation like the Ryu-oh they knew from the stories. It is one thing to be able to stand in the presence, even in the awe of a great elder dragon or old god but something completely different to survive its assault. The battle hardened SOCO pilots already knew what it was.

"Align! Align! Align!", the female pilot shouted over the fleet channel. The Onyx broke off and started to burn for the shock waves origin point. "Adh mór. Good luck.", said a male voice. The alignment for the next destination set the fleet just two hundred kilometers off the shockwave origin and in line with a distant star. "Ná lig dóibh a ghlacadh tú beo Healy. Don't let them take you alive Healy.", said another male voice. "Ní bheidh mé. Téigh anois! I won't. Go now!"

...great globes of light massing toward the opening, and not alone these, but the breaking apart of the nearest globes, and the protoplasmic flesh that flowed blackly outward to join together and form that eldritch, hideous horror from outer space, that spawn of the blankness of primal time, that tentacled amorphous monster which was the lurker at the threshold, whose mask was as a congeries of iridescent globes, the noxious Ogdru Jahad, who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time! - The Scriptures, Book II, Apocalypse 34:6

---

Many millions of light-years away, in The Andromeda Galaxy...

It was about this day and at this time that Ayen ships first appeared in Taiyou Space and started to attack outlaying worlds, turning once fertile farming planets into ruined, cracked globes. No person living on those planets survived and those planets would not be alone in their fate. Over the course of the following days the attacks would continue. Any outlaying planet or outpost not defended with a force to repell the black-operations fleet would be attacked. Billions would die and once lush worlds would be reduced to smoldering, ash covered remnants that would never again be able to support life. This was only the beginning...

Spacetime moved in a tempest. Wormholes opened like cosmic-windows and gave glimpses into alien universes. Foreign galaxies spiraled across an empty void. Unnamed worlds formed and shaped before their eyes. Life took root. Technology and art flourished. Empires rose. Resources withered. Living things suffered and died. Stars exploded. Sentience died in spectacular apocalypse and oblivion ruled all. It was the history of existence in an instant. From nothing to nothing.

And then it came.

From a jagged tear in spacetime it lifted its leviathan head, a writhing mass of worms and scales, formless and hideous. Its body writhed and wriggled like a nest of insects, morphing and coagulating into geometric impossibilities. Claws thousands of miles long lifted into the black expanse of space in silent tribute to the void. A mouth large enough to swallow planets whole looked at the passing envoy as a dark-spirited child looks at a bird with a broken wing.

It roared, soundless and terrible. A wave of radiation and cosmic force careened into the envoy of ships, likely sending them spiraling out of control unless their ships were sufficiently stabilized. With wormholes frantically openening and closing on every side of them, there was no telling where they would end up if they lost control of their ship.

If they survived the blast, they would suddenly be assaulted by another force - gravity. The monster was as large as a planet. Its gravitational pull was crushing. The ships would find themselves pulled slowly but steadily toward the mass of the beast, wriggling worms from its body reaching out to snag any ship that strayed too close.

The Rising Sun was among the closest to the rift torn open by the leviathan, and the roar broad-sided the ship to devastating result. The hull buckled, and bits of debris and paneling where torn free and sent spinning through space as the ship lost control. Caught dead-center, and at such close proximity, it took the full brunt of the wave with little to dampen it.

Within the bridge, people where throw to the floor, or into control consoles as alarms sounded through the vessel.

"Damage report!" barked Commander Nayar.

"Sir, our navigation systems are down!"

"We're caught in a gravitational pull!"

Shouts and reports filled the bridge as Nayar dragged himself back to his feet.

"Get us-"

Nayar's orders where interrupted as the Rising Sun collided with one of the un-shielded Taiyou ships that had been spun out of control and into one another's paths. The damages where catastrophic as an explosion rocked the ship further, and many of its systems went offline. The smaller Taiyou ship tore along the length of the Volarian vessel before continuing along its own descent towards the monstrosity that had appeared in their midst. The wreckage of the Rising Sun was left to vanish into the remnants of a wormhole that swiftly snapped closed behind it.