Unknown Circumstance [OPEN]

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

The inky blackness of the void were serene on a visual level. Empty, completely devoid of activity. But in reality, EM waves, neutrinos, and many other things traveled at lightspeed through it all to wherever they were destined, being distorted by whatever gravity field they entered. It was normal in space. Gravity, radiation, neutrinos, all of it. But not a space-faring race, not yet.
The Wolf Goddess dropped out of hyperspace without much issue. A simple, ordinary exercise. With an extraordinary reason to do so. A small, black sphere floated quietly in the depths of space. The vessel quietly positioned itself in an orbit around the body.

"Status report, Lieutenant." said the confused Sherwood. "Why did we drop out before this place?" 
The science officer was working furiously on the back computer display. "I- I don't know, sir. It's just a rock. There's no reason for it to be pulling us out of hyperspace."
Sherwood himself pulled up the sensor display, tapping a few buttons to get various views of it. The rock floated in space, painted by various indicators, topographical readings, and other parts of data that Sherwood skimmed through. Something that is important will stand out from the rest. But why are we getting hyperdrive problems from this? He thought to himself.
"Lieutenant, switch to a gravimentic display. We're in the middle of deep space. Shouldn't be much here., but that's the only thing that could drag us out of hyperspace."
Warning klaxons sounded alogn the ship as it changed sensor sweep parameters.
"Why are we suddenly getting these warnings? This isn't something we don't scan regularly."
"Unknown, sir, but there's a massive sensor shadow moving exactly opposite of the rock."
"Battlestations. All hands, battlestations. Prepare to launch fighters. Shields up." Sherwood could be considered overly cautious, sure, but with a war about to break between the Alliance and Earth's forces, he had to be on his toes. It was as important as breathing in this day and age.
"F-302's ready to go, sir." came a report from the tactical officer. "They await launch commands."
"Analysis concludes that this seems to be some sort of mass shadow that seems to be keeping us from jumping out, sir. We're lucky the event horizon closed spat us out before we ran into it.  We need to clear the area if we're going to go back into hyperspace." 
Sherwood nodded slowly and turned his head to his console once more. "Set a course from the area, and leave probes at the minimum safe zone. Mark it off for the navicomputers for the future. I have a feeling others will get dragged into this place more often than not."

[Wolf]

Cruising through sub-space, the dreadnaught, nracha-dte bhu'ja was on a plot toward it's owner's homeworld. The pilot seemingly asleep in the command throne.

Suddenly and without warning warning lights flash while klaxons blare as the ship is suddenly ripped out of sub-space, the sheer violence of the event awakening the pilot.

Growling the large wolf-like creature presses a few buttons on the side console with a clawed hand and a large viewing screen emerges from the back of the throne and arcs over to face the pilot. Looking at the symbols on the screen and the voice communicating in a unusual language, the Kantin pilot makes a series of clicks and growls before beginning a damage check.

The results were his phase drive was offline. Checking his systems again the pilot tried to engage his active cloak, and for a few seconds it seemed to work, as the massive dreadnaught seemed to vanish into thin air, but a few seconds later the cloak drops. His cloak gone, the pilot instead arms the shields and weapons on the 2 1/2 km long ship.

Contemplating blowing the strange rock which was causing the issues into dust he primes his plasma missiles but stops as his scanners pick up another ship close by. Powering down his missile launchers he decides to wait and see what the other ship would do.

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

The Wolf Goddess seemed serene as it began a course to take it's nose to face the incoming dreadnaught, but on the inside, it was far less calm. People ran to and fro trying to ready to battle stations. Most were already in position for an incident, but this, this was not what was expected.

"Status report!"
"It was pulled in just like us, sir! It follows no known classification of ship!"
"Shit. Shields to full. Weapons, on standby. Prepare the normal broadcast for first contact. All frequencies."

From the various comms dishes and antennae on the top of the ship, the Wolf Goddess began to broadcast the localized area with data stating basic information about the ship, its intentions, and the human race. It did not, however, go past that. It was not in the ship's best intentions to declare its Kryptonite so early in the meeting.

"Status report."
"Ship is at full power, sir, but sensors tell us we're going to be in one hell of a fight. Scans are indicating multiple weapon points all along the ship's form. Unknown classifications of weapons."
"Everything's going to be unknown at this point. Begin a full sensor sweep along the craft. Record everything."

[Wolf]

The Kantin pilot watches with what seems like interest as the other ship changes course, moving closer. At the same time his scanners show that the vessel's shields and weapons were primed, but it was not locking onto his ship.

Picking up a general broadcast, the pilot, Wolf activated the translation system on the screen which turned the unusual broadcast into his own language. "Humans..." Wolf thought to himself. He had encountered other beings that were of that species, some of them were prey, a few others were honourable hunters. Figuring to keep things civil for now, he opened a communications channel on the same frequency as the broadcast he had received.

Activating the translator on the console, he sets it to the same language as the broadcast "This is Wolf, of the Predator vessel Relentless Spirit, responding to your broadcast." "State your intent and purpose." Wolf decided to keep the reply simple for now till he knew whether the intent of these humans, which would determine what his course of action would be. Usually humans would just be blasted out of the way in a situation like this in which their vessel was showing hostile signs. Wolf, however decided to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

To make it very clear if what he would do if things became hostile, he primed his targeting computer, but left his weapons in standby mode.

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

The stand-off that the ships had was almost palpable in the Wolf Goddess, where crews were patiently awaiting the order to open fire or stand down. It was a very hard moment of the crew. In fact, once in history, there had been an incident where crewmen had accidentally fired before the order was given, casuing a war that lasted for over a month. So the 'shoot when ordered' rule became a very hard-taught lesson for the crew. Especially those that are in the Alliance.

"Relentless Spirit, we're just explorers of the region. We were pulled out of hyperspace just like your ship by the mass shadow of whatever's here. You caught us on our exit vector."

A little message scrolled across the screen, sent by the conn statoin, reading: They're targetting weapons!
Sherwood sighed and bit his lip gently. He was in a bad situation. Not only did he feel he was outgunned, but he was out maneuvared. Few options were before him to use on this circumstance. So, he planned. Commands were sent to create an outbound vector to the helmsman, while targetting solutions were given to the conn officer. 

"Mind explaining why you have a weapons lock? Know that we do not take such actions in a kind light." stated Sherwood. "Hostilities will be responded to in kind. We respectfully request you disengage weapons lock, and we shall disengage ours."

As if on cue, the thirty-two railguns on the ship rotated to lock onto the larger vessel, while various missile silos opened their hatches. Nothing was armed or primed, only pointing.  It would be an impressive sight, if the ship were not hopelessly dwarfed by the larger vessel. But that didn't shake the crew. Larger ships were not always better ships.

[Wolf]

Wolf received the reply from the other vessel "Relentless Spirit, we're just explorers of the region. We were pulled out of hyperspace just like your ship by the mass shadow of whatever's here. You caught us on our exit vector." "Mind explaining why you have a weapons lock? Know that we do not take such actions in a kind light." stated Sherwood. "Hostilities will be responded to in kind. We respectfully request you disengage weapons lock, and we shall disengage ours."

Wolf was mildly impressed at their tactics, they did not seem to want open combat, which was rare. But they were ready for it none the less. Pressing several buttons he pondered the next move.

A small alert pops up as the scanning of the Wolf Goddess was complete. The results showed that the vessel did not appear to be a threat But Wolf knew that looks can be deceiving. Brows furrow as the Kantin disengages his weapons lock. But kept the plasma turrets and missile launchers pointed in the direction of the Wolf Goddess. He still kept the targeting info at the ready though, just in case he had to quickly re-target them.

Replying on the same frequency as before and translator active he replies "Was a cautionary move giving how many human vessels have targeted me before, Usually I would of simply opened fire and be done with it, but you seem different to the others." 

Reaching to the side of the pilot throne, the Kantin picks up his bio-mask before placing it on, He was unsure if these humans would use a video hail next, and only worthy hunters see him without the bio-mask, in battle or otherwise.

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

"Thats because we are different than others. The Wolf Goddess and all her crew do not follow under the Earth governments, but a new one, with goals to garner support to help us overtake those aggressors. We are part of the Alliance to Unite Earth."
At the request of Captain Ludwig, a data stream was sent to the alien vessel, containing various general bits of information of the Alliance. It came in coded specifically to the registry being broadcast by the alien ship to ensure security.
"We just sent you a basic informational package on the matter. We request that we perhaps meet on a neutral ground, discuss relations and officially recognize a government between us both."
To support his ideas of peace, the missile silos closed, and most of the railguns went inactive. F-302s, however, still were at the ready to launch. Sherwood was not about to be completely defenseless to this situation. There was just something... wrong with this circumstance. This was space, not New York City. It is incredibly infrequent that two ships meet in this way.

[Wolf]

Receiving the information, Wolf waits a few moments while his translator sorts the information. Seemed what they said was right, the information was clear that this group did strive for more peaceful world. Not that this mattered too much, but the kantin was curious.

In a return show of good faith, Wolf disarms the plasma missile launchers and most of the plasma turrets, but kept the forward laser cannon armed, since he did not have fighters on standby like the other Vessel.
Replying on the frequency Wolf responds "Interesting, the data seems to backup your claims. This is a first giving your species history of almost constant conflict with one another." Wolf ponders what to do, Predators were not known to form alliances of any sort. Wasn't in their nature as a hunter race. Even if they did he was not authorized. "I am not authorized to discuss relations on behalf of my fellow hunters, nor is my government one to make relations with others...Well not with a species as a whole anyway. But I agree that we should meet somewhere neutral, if for nothing else than to figure out who is behind this device that has us both trapped here."

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

"Their weapons are powering down. I think you made a good impression, sir."
"Stow it for now, Lieutenant. Helm, set a course for the nearest habitable planet, then send it to our newfound allies."

As ordered, another data package was transmitted, containing coordinates to a nearby system that would take only a few hours to get to at maximum sublight speeds, while the F-302s made ready for full sublight speeds by shutting their own engines down.

"Relentless Spirit, we've sent you coordinates to a local star system with a habitable planet. Previous scans have indicated it to be only inhabited by flora and fauna, so it should be suitable for a neutral ground to meet." said Sherwood, eyeing his consoles as he spoke. Something really was itching at him now. Something big and very bad.

((OOC: I plan this to be akin to an antlion's trap. Draw things in, kill 'em while they're disoriented. NOt sure if biological opponent or something else.

[Wolf]

Wolf receives the co-ordinates for this neutral world. Scanning it from his ship, Wolf growls Something about this world had the fur on the back of his neck stand up. Punching in the co-ordinates His ship turns around and heads towards the world. Entering a safe orbit, Wolf heads out of the control room and into the armory. Selecting his battle staff, twin plasma casters, ceremonial knife, several shurikuns, his extended wrist blade and phial of liquid acid.

Heading to the lift he takes it down to one of the drop ships. The drop ship separates from the Relentless Spirit before heading down to the planet surface. Inside the drop ship, Wolf presses a few buttons on the console which engages the active cloak of the Relentless Spirit.

Landing on the planet surface Wolf exits the drop ship before engaging it's active cloak before walking out to the meeting location where he waits for the arrival of the meeting party from the Wolf Goddess. Something still seemed wrong about this world, he had the feeling that he was in the middle of a trap, but if whoever made this trap expected a easy victem, they were sorely mistaken.



(OOC Active cloak means his ship becomes invisible, both to the naked eye and all scanners. As for the trap idea, sounds nice, it'll even give Wolf a excuse to show off his skills, hehe)

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

Sherwood watched as the larger vessel moved off through space to the nearby world. This is going well, he thought. A bit hostile, forces.
"Helm, set a course for the planet. Dispatch a probe to remain here. Have it preform a full analysis on the circumstance and transmit the data to us. Once it has finished, we can use it as a warning for other vessels in the area."
The helmsman nodded and said a short "Yessir." as he laid in a course. The science officer behind the captain's chair began progamming a probe, which was launched from the aft of the Wolf Goddess.

The smaller vessel took a bit longer, as it was simply cruising through space to follow. By the time it reached the planet, Wolf was already standing seemingly alone on the planet.

"Sir, the other ship! It's... gone!" alerted the conn officer.
"Sheilds to maximum. Where are they?" ordered the captain, looking around at the starfield.
"Sensors aren't getting anything. On- wait, I'm picking up one life form on the planet. It's our meeting spot, sir."
"Bring it on the holoprojector. Magnify."

Sure enough, there Wolf was, standing in the middle of the landing zone, waiting for them. "Well that's not weird."
Sherwood folded his arms and frowned at the whole situation. "He's the guy we're looking for, no doubt. But I don't think his big ship really left. Keep at a geosync'd orbit over that position. We're taking the transporter room."

It would take but a few moments, but Sherwood, along with a small squad of soldiers with standard BDU green and various pieces of military hardware equipped, ranging from more modern energy projectors to Sherwood's own M1D Garand. A rather myraid assortment of weapons, but still lethal.
"Away team two, you're to reinforce should things get hairy. If we don't make it back, have the Wolf Goddess jump out of the system, and make these guys Earth's next big problem. Paint them with Alliance signatures should things get hostile. Keep those F-302's hot."

Onto the transporter pad they went, and in an instant, they were on the ground before Wolf. None of them had their weapons raised, but it was clear they were ready for any hints of trouble.

"So, we'd like to know where you parked your ship. I don't think our ship running into yours would be a fun thing to have to deal with."

[Wolf]

Wolf crosses his arms across his chest as he waits for the other crew to arrive. As he waits with keen interest he cannot shake the feeling that things were about to get ugly. He trusted his instincts as they had saved his life many times over during hunts and cleaning missions.

As the crew seem to beam down from their vessel he gives a simple nod at their arrival. Switching on his translator, the Kantin speaks "No need to worry about your ship colliding with mine, I left the avoidance system active...As for where it is...it's in orbit, protected by an active cloak." Wolf's gaze turns from one of the guards, to the next, to the next before finally resting on who he assumed was the captain, he had a amused look on his face, but the others would not notice that due to his bio-mask.


"You are cautious, a smart move. But rest assured if I wanted you dead, I would have done so as soon as you appeared." "Seems you humans have advanced much, to think thousands of years ago, the Yautja taught you how to build Just like they did with my own species." Wolf was of course speaking of how the Predator's had helped human kind advance for the sole purpose of preparing a hunting world, just like they had done with his own species, the Kantins.

Shifting his hands to his side, Wolf's posture became more relaxed, while still showing signs of being ready for combat at a moments notice. "Anyway, this is not why we are here, we are here to discuss what that device is that has us unable to use our phase drives to get out of here."

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

Sherwood scowled at the notion of the cloaking ship. This never made negotiations easy when the other party could have more than just one of it's forces in the area and you'd have no idea. This was a technology he knew they had to get their hands on at some point. It would be an immense help against the Earth forces.
But now wasn't the time for technological acquisition. Now was the time to figure out why they wetre stuck. And ignore the comments the individual before him had said for now. He wasn't a history major, so he could let that be dealt with by the science department of his ship.

"Our sensors have determined that there's a mass shadow in the area. It interferes with FTL systems by replicating the effects of a black hole. It can be just as lethal, too, as it could tear a ship apart as it passes by. Major, mind continuing?" started Sherwood. One of the crewmen, a man with blue highlights to his BDU, tossed a small sphere on the ground gently. From it, a large, three-dimensional display of the rock that they had met beside was visible.
"The problem is that the rock itself does not have the mass necessary to do such a thing to that degree. It's literally a rock, maybe a small moon or a large asteroid, that's floating aimlessly in space."
The display shifted to one of the rock on a two-dimensional grid, with the rock causing a small divet into the plane. "This is what it should be creating based off the sensor readings we get. Nothing too special, and we'd have ignored it no problem." The display shifted again, with the asteroid causing a massive trench in the plane, far deeper than the one before it. "This is what it's giving off, and what set off the FTLs safety procedures. The data just doesn't add up."



Deeper out into space, a large vessel, a cruiser that rivaled Wolf's ship in size and girth, phased into reality a few hundred kilometers away from the gravitational anomaly. The probe that the Wolf Goddess began doing it's job, broadcasting a warning to the newcoming ship, to which the ship simply... vanished. And so did the probe.

Sherwood's communications wristband lit up, and he brught it to his head and turned away for an iota of privacy. "Sherwood here, go ahead."
"Sir, we've lost contact with our satelite. It's not even there anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that's it's gone, sir. No wreckage, no weapons fire, nothing."
"Yellow alert. Stand by."

[Wolf]

Wolf listened intently regarding their analyses of the object. Meanwhile his Ship had finally finished scanning the device fully while he was on the planet surface. Exhaling he listens to the start of this human's report on the object when his wrist device bleeps a few times. Pressing a few buttons, a series of four red lasers shoot out of the device before criss-crossing each other until a full 3D map of the device takes shape. A series of words appear at the bottom. Well they were words to him, to anyone not knowledgeable of the predator language, all they would see is a series of short dashes that joined up to make some symbols.


Wolf rubs his chin slowly while reading the data "Well, this is certainly interesting...." Wolf makes a series of what seemed to be annoyed clicks and growls before hitting a few more buttons on the wrist device. After a few moments a new string of text appears below the image of the device as it rotates and a marker appears on the image at a certain point.


The Kantin looks over at the others "Well, if this data is accurate, then there is a way to possibly disrupt the field for a moment in case a hasty retreat is called for. As for destroying the device outright....my ship's main gun should...."
Wolf is interrupted by a more dangerous sounding bleep on his wrist device. Bringing the new image up on screen he delivers a very wolf-like growl "Looks like our situation just went from a minor annoyance, possibly a major pain in the tail" Wolf hits two buttons on the device and the image of the device disappears as the grid of lasers make a new image, one of a unusual but very large vessel. Wolf enlarges the image to make it clearly visible by all present "My ship's long range scanners have just picked up this ship exiting sub-space mere moments ago...My ship has a database with more or less every planetary symbol from advanced races, but cannot I.D this ship." "Also, that beacon you sent out stopped transmitting about the same time...Guess I'll see if you humans are honourable hunters...be ready for anything."


Transmitting a series of codes to his ship, Wolf puts it in standby mode, ready to use it's advanced AI Warfare suites to engage the new vessel, should it prove to be hostile but kept it's cloak activated. Wolf's scanners suddenly went quiet as the vessel seemed to vanish. But he kept that info to himself for now.

[Sherwood the Kinda-Great]

Sherwood stared at the display of the new ship with a curious expression. Looked more like a cone head than an actual threat. But taking out navigational satelites? Not exactly the best way to go about making friends. Maybe it just didn't like the look it gave to the area. Too modern or something. He really hoped this wasnt some angry spatial designer.
"Captain? We've lost contact with the enemy ship. We're blind again."
"Big surprise there." Sighed Sherwood. "Can't even get battles to be on our level, can we? Stand by for beam-out."

The captain turned and looked back to Wolf, "My ship can't cloak like yours so we can run it like this. The Wolf Goddess will run bait, draw its attention. If it proves hostile, you'll have clear shots while it's attention is on us. Sounds fair enough, no?"
A few of the soldiers aside Sherwood did not really appreciate hearing their ship would play bait. Not something they would call a good idea. But they could not argue, not with their CO. Just another thing they would have to chalk up as beyond their current understanding.

Meanwhile, above the two groups heads, the giant creature was still nowhere to be detected. The Wolf Goddess rotated around in place for an escape vector, but otherwise remained still in geosynchronus orbit around the planet. This mission was getting more and mroe dangerous all the time.