Interlude 1

The ship warped in system, Belelph 4 just off the port bow. This system was the tenth for the crew, and their Darklight sang loud, craving a gravwell where it could feed. The mostly human crew synched with the ship, monitoring and feeding information to the bridge. Captain Jilian Gruty lay back, her lined face relaxed, letting the gestalt from the crew flow through the organic sensorium. The AI was always slow to wake and often misleading with RipSpace beating against it. The view showed a gas giant close by, and beholders deployed by aliens, several illuminating the 'Doggerel', her ship.

She opened her eyes, glancing at the AI holo taking shape, where 5 false fixes cluttered the view of the one true contact her inner sensorium had showed. Still give it time, the AI was good at probable's, while the sensorium was good at short term hard contacts. And the short term was bad. Mines in front, two impacting already, and an ancient Dread naught just leaving the grav well.

Heading for a Gravwell

Jilian fired off an attack drone, and a GravStar, moving the ship towards the Giant. Anything was better than open space against the monster she could see. Then distress claxons sounded, an explosion amidships, and another aft cutting off the factories. Her crew shaken, some wounded. She ordered the ship into the gravwell, firing up the racks for three small scramblers, hiding, until the fleet arrived.

Another impact, forward hull, forward bridge, the crew screaming as attack nano subsumed them, some donning exosuits in time. Most altered, fuel to the aggressor, perverted towards the machine death of space combat. Jilian broadcast the view to the galactic, letting the fleet know and raced her damaged ship towards the scrambled space. Two attack drones chased her towards oblivion.

Then her allies arrived. the Grutyre out of the deep dark, the Youryl from a near system. Then three more, five allies in total, some old vessels, some young. All would make the interloper pay a dear price. Then the attack nano moved deep, and the Heart cried out, for three habs blew in nano death and only one was left. The crew, her crew died in hardwired agony, their molecules rewritten, just like the ship about them....

Jilian ordered those left to her to prepare, and preyed to the heart for release, instantly feedback and infinity cleared the sensorium, the RipDrive griped her, skipping the ship away, even as new motes appeared in the sensorium; her allies confronting the foe that had killed her friends.