YSS Kanagawa
Bridge
The
Kanagawa slid silently towards the ring. It began to light up as they approached, tendrils of energy siphoning into it from the nearby nebula. Its energy readings rose higher and higher, far beyond expectations. Yet, the ring itself remained stable and motionless.
At some tipping point, the energy from the ring coalesced inwards in a brilliant ripple, swirling and twisting until the plane settled into an inky blackness. The rings energy levels became consistent as they grew nearer, the massive structure - easily big enough for the Kanagawa and a few of her sister ships - having finished whatever preparations it was going to do.
Gen stared at the dark before the ship, somehow blacker than space usually was. There were no stars, no light from the pulsing nebula just behind the structure.
And then they were in.
Kuvexian Command Ship - "Hard Day's Work"
"Your affluence, sir," said a diminutive alien. Its collar jingled as it approached the gold-clad Kuvexian who sat so casually on the captain's chair.
"Go on," she said, looking up from her book.
The alien nodded, tapping a few buttons on a datapad. The bridge's screen, which had been dark before, lit up with a view of the space outside. "A-as per your orders, sir, we launched aether-powered missiles towards the alien structure with their output set to far beyond maximum. Th-the signatures were carefully calibrated to match those of a number of our own l-larger ships."
The captain rolled her hand with a 'get on with it' motion. The slave jumped a little in fear, nodding furiously.
"As according to your br-brilliant plan, the enemy pursued us here. Th-then they entered the ring in pursuit of the de-decoys we sent."
Another hand roll, more exasperated now. She wanted him to get to the good part.
"H-however," he began.
She arched a brow and began to sit up more. "However?"
"It- it appears that they were
not destroyed, as you expected."
"
What?!" she growled.
"L-like the decoys, they appear to have vanished. Our head s-sciencer believed that the decoys had merely been destroyed outright upon entering it, but - but given the larger mass of the enemy vessels, that ... no longer seems to be the case."
***
The "head sciencer"'s pay had been docked so thoroughly that they went down two ranks. The captain regarded her
new head sciencer and waited for an explanation.
"It seems that the ring is, indeed, a gateway of some kind, your affluence," the sciencer said, motioning with one of its four hands at the screen where the ring was displayed. "And, more importantly, it seems to still be fully functional. My..predecessor assumed that due to its advanced age - likely tens of thousands of years old - that the device would not be in normal working order.
It seems that assumption was incorrect."
The captain rubbed her purple fingers against her forehead. Her plan had been perfect - until that sciencer's bad information had ruined it. All that she had stood to earn by wiping out their fleet with zero losses - up in smoke. The enemy was not destroyed until she could
prove they were destroyed. She gave the gate an angry glare.
"Where does it go?"
The head sciencer shook his head. "I'm not sure, ma'am-"
The diminutive slave from before stepped forward and whispered 'sir'. The sciencer paused, then tried again. "-sir. It seems to be a powerful Fold device of some kind, but its exact origin.. I can't say. It is pointed towards Kuvexian territory, so it could just as easily drop them inside the nebula as it could deep in our space. Or farther."
The 'inside Kuvexian territory' part gave her pause. She was prepared to call the whole thing a bust, but if a Yamataian fleet -
her Yamatain fleet - emerged inside their home territory there would be more hell to pay than a simple garnishing of pay.
"Blast it all. Let's go in after them. I'll figure out the rest of the plan while we're in transit."
"Yes, sir!" came a chorus of replies from the bridge. The slave cast her a worried look, then made an even more worried look as they considered the gate. Something felt very wrong here, but it didn't know what.
YSS Kanagawa
Bridge
The space around the ship was pure black. The usual streaming lights and fireworks were completely absent. The ship's orientation, location, and all other sensors simply reported..nothing. The only saving grace was that the ship was still whole and the crew had been reporting in regularly from across the ship. Contact with the other Plumerias had vanished along with everything else, but the assumption was that they were in similar condition.
This continued for nearly a week.
At last, color began to return to the space outside the ship. Brilliant clouds of reds and oranges, flashes of light and odd shapes in the distance creeped into view and then swallowed the ship entirely. The
Kanagawa regained contact with the other ships at the same time and was pleased to find that they were safe.
Periodically, they passed through structures that resembled the ring they had entered through. The rings went by slowly, as though they were traveling at barely cruising speed, but the instruments reported that they were traveling well in excess of the ship's maximum FTL capability.
"Surreal," muttered Gen.
The next ring would not be so graceful. The moment the taskforce passed through it, energy readings began to spike wildly across every ship. Comms traffic exploded as the other ships reported in, reporting that visible energy was arcing through their vessel. The same was also true in the Kanagawa's lower decks, growing in strength and frequency based on proximity to the ship's core.
A metallic wrenching and whining sound reverberated through the ship, as though something were trying to rip it apart. Gen was shouting orders, demanding to know what was going on.
The wrenching finally stopped when the ship's power readings began to drop drastically. Engines and the generator room went completely silent. No errors were reported - simply.. nothing. A moment later, one of the other ships in the taskforce disappeared. Then another and another. Until the
Kanagawa was all that remained in the strange space.
The ship fell out of FTL dramatically, emerging into a field of asteroids or debris and beginning to tumble wildly. The onboard gravity control, deprived of much of its power, was barely enough to give the crew a sense of 'down' - it certainly could not keep them pinned to the floor. For the second time within a week, anyone not strapped in was sent flying.
Systems from across the ship were flashing red on the bridge's displays, destroyed or heavily damaged from whatever had just happened.
"Sagara-Hei! Get this boat under control! Someone get status from engineering! Sivins-Hei! What the fuck is going on?"