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"What are those bogeys?" Admiral Yularen barks at his tactical officer on the bridge of the Resolute. First, this new, tiny Padawan Commander (the girl was 14, for stars' sake) showed up, as a gift for General Skywalker.
And now, to add to his headaches of dealing with the Seppie forces around Teth, new ships have shown up. They are bigger than his ship, but appear to be much slower and use a different propulsion system, from what little he can tell. He wonders, Are they from the Unknown Regions? Is this a Jedi-caused headache that Skywalker is going to leave for me?
“We don’t know, sir. They don’t match up to anything in our databanks. So, we can’t add them to IFF.” his tactical officer replies.
“Send them a com request.” Admiral Yularen finally orders, as he gets back to commanding the rest of the battle.
–
“Ma’am, I can’t get a reference map with our databanks.” a junior officer whispers to their closely supervising superior, Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Roberts. The junior officer moves away from their console, and the Lieutenant Commander types a few things in, shaking his head after each one, and gradually frowning more and more.
“Ma’am, we can’t figure out where we are.” Lieutenant Commander Rosie Michaels admits to Captain Megan Bennett. We were supposed to be heading to Trevor’s Star via the Junction, how did things take such a wrong turn , she wonders.
Across the bridge, Tactical is having their own similar conversations, of the new, smaller ships that can move even faster than LACs. What sort of compensators are they using? , at least one tactical officer wonders.
Communications finally is the first department to figure out something other than “What’s going on?”.
Lieutenant Matthew Miller, from Grayson, states, more confidently then the past several people who have reported that HMS Amphitrite is lost in space, “Ma’am, we have a com request from the biggest bogey, Bogey Alpha.”
Captain Bennett replies, “Put them on, Matthew.” A holoimage of what she thinks is likely to be the bogey’s bridge shows several identical people, as well as normal, if pre-prolong humans in uniform.
Someone says, “This is the Galactic Republic Navy Ship Resolute, of the Open Circle Fleet, and flagship of Admiral Wulf Yularen. Please identify yourself.”
From making a guess based on the male-sounding name, and the person with the most blue and red squares that this Galactic Republic Navy (which appeared nothing like the Republic of Haven), Captain Bennett suspects that “Admiral Yularen” is most likely the older brown-haired man, instead of any of the identical beings or likely officers with less squares on their rank badges.
“This is HMS Amphitrite , of the Royal Manticorian Navy, Captain Megan Bennett commanding. We are from the Star Empire of Manticore. If you could help us get home, that would be appreciated.” she replies, trying to be confident, when her whole world has disappeared. In a weirdly detached part of her head, she somehow thinks, I didn’t think first contact with this “Galactic Republic” was going to go like this. How could such a Republic have sprung up without us knowing? A lost colony is one thing, but this level of warfare is completely another.
“Transmit it, Matthew.” she orders.
Several minutes later, she receives a reply from a junior officer, “Captain, even if we weren’t in the middle of a battle, there’s no Star Kingdom on our maps. We’ll ask our Jedi, when they aren’t so busy, and see if this is something they can deal with, however.” Nobody on board has no idea who the “Jedi” are, so they keep a communication watch, hoping to get more information eventually.
A hostile bogey that looks different than the Republican ships, and appears to be firing on them launches what look like LACs, but with higher acceleration rates. They appear to first vector towards the Republican ships, engaging in a few firing passes against them, before changing vectors toward Amphitrite .
Once they are in range of Amphitrite ’s Mark 16 dual drive MDMs, she turns to her tactical officer. “Missile launch at Targets H-16 through 50.” she orders. With their higher acceleration, she hopes that at least the laser heads will damage the hostile LAC-like crafts, despite all the changes that could have occurred when ending up in another universe.
Amphitrite fires a double broadside of 40 of the dual drive missiles out of her broadside launchers, while Tactical is trying to get the missile defense systems online. Despite the higher acceleration rates of the starfighters, they don’t try to dodge, or even fire back, and disappear in blasts of nuclear-pumped lasers.
Captain Bennett muses, On closer inspection, from the ship’s sensors, the “LAC-like craft” aren’t LAC-like at all, no matter how much I want to call them that. They are between five and six times faster than even the Shrike-class LACs, and the shape of them doesn’t allow for an impeller drive.
“Tell Admiral Yularen that we'd be honored to let him and his officers pay a courtesy call, once the fighting is over." she tells her com officer.
After the fighting is over, Admiral Yularen agrees to her offer. He probably thinks we are crazy, given that we come from another universe, but Captain Bennett suspects he’ll come to understand.
Captain Bennett and her XO greet his shuttle in the boat bay, after much back and forth to figure out how to prevent bad things from happening, given our differing systems. Eventually, we work out a plan, to prevent damage, in which we take our wedge and sidewalls down, and his shuttle lands in the boat bay, under the control of our tractor beams.
Admiral Yularen walks down the ramp, followed by a tall man with dirty blonde hair, and a ginger man, both in dark brown robes. Following them is a likely younger humanoid alien in robes, who has white facial markings, and blue and white striped headtails in place of hair, along with several likely-officers that appear to be human, in officer-like uniforms.
“I’m Admiral Wulf Yularen.” the older brown-haired man says. He looks at the ginger man, and nods.
“I’m Jedi Master and High General Obi-Wan Kenobi.” the ginger man says. He glances at the taller dirty blonde man.
“I’m Jedi Knight, and General Anakin Skywalker.” the dirty blonde man says, with hints of arrogance and pride in his voice, as Obi-Wan gives him a glance to not do that.
The alien introduces themself, in a soprano, “I’m Jedi Commander Ahsoka Tano, and am Knight Skywalker’s Padawan.” General Skywalker is quickly distracted by the various ships, before his “Padawan” reminds him to stay on-task, as we show them to the bridge.