[civ2buf]

(OOC: This story is based in the gameplay world of Proportions)

First Battle of infestation Soluk
536145.32 Teracycles since Emergence

An entire battle over one enemy ship, the thought flew across the collective as an incredulous fervor. Those on the emergence homeworld were three seconds behind the actions in the Tricali system that was found to be the exit of one portal. Even with the quickening devices, three seconds was the best sync disparity possible. This created brief 3 second rifts of opinion between the DeInfestation fleet and the emergence world.

It was only 33 teracycles since the discovery of the portals, but already a valuable lesson in Infestation training was affecting the thought waves of the entire Imperium.

Six containers were destroyed with no losses for the infestation, 5 of them being ships and 1 of them a sacrifice container with a large-yield nuclear explosive.

Zexlak remained at an onship broadcasting station on the fifth DeInfester frigate where the infestation was to be informed of its impending death. To properly ensure this, Zexlak had the distasteful task of learning the vibrations that made up the infestations language. They found out it was called the Soluk Empire. A thought rang through the collective, that perhaps, although tainted by the Infestation nature, this infestation had at least a few similarities to themselves. The Imperium now knew the name and their history. And they knew that the Soluk shared no regrets about trying to take over everything that opposed them. That was a good moral stance to the Cryslonite. It seemed they agreed quickly on things, another good moral to the Imperium.

Nonetheless, the Cryslonite role was being redefined only slightly. The collective felt that no infestation should exist, and the emergence world found nearby the infestation, which had produced a great deal of crazed thought waves in the collective, could not be properly investigated until the system was clean.

Kruzk had contributed a great deal to the onslaught of thought waves that concerned the first battle of Soluk. This was the first battle as opposed to earlier skirmishes.

The problem throughout the battle, which Kruzk first expressed, was that planetary infestation bases had too many missiles for the ships to consider coming in range of the planet. Plus ships on both sides were as fast as the missiles themselves. When the enemy frigate was surrounded, it was surrounded around the planet, thus ensuring it could hide from fire within the protection of planetary missiles.

An escort and a frigate were both destroyed for failing to fall back in time to avoid enemy military. The collective did not want to fall back from the enemy ship, because it would give it space to wait and attack again. This was a mistake of the collective reasoning process.

After everything looked hopeless, the ships moved away from the planet, while holding a roughly circular formation. With the complete focus of the entire collective on this battle, 3 second delay or not, They managed finally draw out the enemy ship where previously their enemy had operated with flawless tactics.

But even after being impacted by the suicide container, and being hit with a missile, the enemy frigate still held form. The frigate managed to fall back into close orbit with the infestation planet, safe there indefinately.

Larger ships were being built by the collective, but the suicide containers were discontinued due to lack of effectiveness. The Cryslonite were great researchers due to quick cooperation and sharing of information, and they managed to quickly learn to build large containers.

From what Zexlak could tell, the Soluk infestation world had not been affected in daily activities. Only those manning the missile platforms remained busy. From detecting the energy waves coming from the infestation, it appeared there was much speculation about the Imperium itself. Zexlak and his cadre had still not thought of any way to communicate back to the infestation. Perhaps the energy waves could be recombined in different patterns to tell the Soluk to surrender.

(Translators Note: all names are transliterations of Solukian and Praetorian naming schemes, created by Zexlak in order to interact with the infestations on a limited basis. Zexlak created his own name as well.)

[ April 10, 2003, 04:53: Message edited by: civ2buf ]