All around the solar system, Sub-Fleet 2C was finishing its processing of the heliosphere and preparing to move on to the next uninhabited system. As the larger ships prepared to embark ahead so as to anoint their newest brother with the remainder of its required energy, the smaller ships continued to finish their processing of what planets, planetoids, and asteroids still remained in the cold, dark heliosphere. Yet before they could leave, a message reached them. If one observed carefully enough, the signal could be detected bouncing off of the rocks and debris of the planets, with the faintest feedback coming from hitting the system's Oort cloud and outer asteroid belt... yet the signal did not bounce off the hulls of the gold-tinged vessels. In fact, it seemed as if the only signal which reliably reflected was just the color gold, as if the hull's construction was designed to omit that wavelength so as to provide a visual signal to others that it's there. The message itself, however, seemed to simply disappear into the hulls like an event horizon, destined to be digested for what miniscule energy it provided even as the message it carried was parsed. And indeed, on any imaging system other than visual light, the eerie vessels showed up as a black starship-shaped void against the background of stars and light debris.
Aboard the largest spacecraft, a ten-kilometer tall tower-like structure that floated in space like a mobile space station, a lone crewman sits in the bridge. Other crewmen are around on the lower levels, mostly around where the ship's armored dropships and other vessels are docked in case of surface deployment. The Crucilandians all appear much the same, clad from head to toe in topaz and crimson-colored armor, except for the color of their visors- a sign of rank and status among Taagiyd L'chiymah Shiput, the official military body of the Nomadic Legion. From blue-visored Knights to yellow-visored Seers, the minions of TLS eagerly awaited the opportunity to command their own ships, or perhaps perform the more delicate work of personally meeting the inhabitants of foreign worlds. But high above the hangars in the upper region of the tower, a red-visored Scion sat. He was a Tat-Netzer, or "Under-Scion" in the common tongue- analogous to today's Brigadier Generals and Vice Admirals. And when the first blip of information reached them from the Traveler, he was the one who spoke on behalf of Sub-Fleet 2C...
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"You are hailing Sub-Fleet 2C of Martial Judgement Corporation, the military body of the Nomadic Legion of Cruciland."
...Not another word was given. The Crucilandian vessels remained idle, suspended in the vacuum of space with the larger vessels still pointed in the direction of their destination. Before they could even get a response from the Traveler, however, another vessel stormed onto the scene. It was alone, but it was well-armed, just like its occupants- the Decepticons. Normally, the arrival of a ship occupied by giant genocidal robots would be cause for alarm, but the shared history between the Nomadic Legion and the Cybertronian Empire put them at relative ease instead- there was no conflict to fear. Yet, not everyone knew the other side; the ship's commander promptly opened up communications with the fleet, at which point it became obvious she didn't know who or what was in the system. "Denizens of this star system," she began. As soon as the phrase reached their collective ears, one of the crewman turned to another and asked, "What star system?"
And there was much laughter.
The joke had spread like a wave, rippling to and from the other ships like a viral meme that only the psionic legionaries knew about, before at last it calmed down by the end of the message. The command ship's Under-Scion had heard the whole message despite the break from their stoicism, and hailed them back...
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"Greetings, Downthrust. We had detected you in this galaxy and saw an opportunity to secure its 'resources' more easily. We will help you obtain whatever you may seek here, in exchange for whatever sentient organics- or former organics- you can capture."
It was good to know that the Sub-Fleet was not alone... and yet, also quite worrisome, considering that they were mere light-minutes away from a giant planet-sized spaceship with a singularity of raw power at its core. Also of note was the brief warp in the fabric of spacetime in a location between the three parties, where an otherworldly girl sat in a chair with its own "artificial gravity." Although the girl was only there for an instant, the Crucilandians' sixth sense could clearly sense the anomaly. An eldritch entity had become attracted to the goings-on in Cymopolia... and yet, they did not seem bothered. One would think the fact that they could most-clearly perceive aberrations like this would make them the most wary of something that powerful just deciding to appear like that, or the fact that most of the crewmen had lived their entire lives trying to outpace a reality-consuming eldritch predator that regularly caught up to them and ate their neighbors. But instead, the anomaly was met with benign acknowledgement; these crewmen were survivors- jaded veterans of countless unspeakable horrors that their technologically-asymptotic civilization had been studying with a thirst for knowledge as terrible as their thirst for entire galaxies' worth of mass-energy. To their knowledge, the being was benign- and they were keen on keeping it that way by leaving it the hell alone.
C
